Staying Inspired While Learning About UDL

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Those of you who face a classroom everyday know how important it is to stay passionate and inspired about what we teach. If we lose our passion, then our work in the class becomes flat, and our students' futures are too important for us to become complacent and just put in our time for paychecks. We need to find ways to keep the drive alive. I have one idea: hang with educators who inspire you.

Now, I'm lucky. I know many great educators, but today I visited with one of my all-time favorites: Justin Metz. Justin teaches vocal music in various classrooms, ranging from kindergarten to high school, for the Fargo, North Dakota School District. He's just in his fourth year of teaching, yet he kicks my 20-years-of-teaching butt when it comes to innovation in the classroom.  Let me explain...

Justin is driven by a great love of music and people. He is committed to assisting EVERY student he sees to reach their potential---potential the student might not even see in him/her self. His brilliance and incredible musical talent enable him to create amazing learning activities for his classroom.

I interviewed Justin for information on UDL, Universal Design for Learning. It's funny; he had never heard of UDL, but he does it nearly every day. UDL is an approach to education that considers the wide range of individuals in our world and then works to accommodate all the various needs presented by this vast assortment of learners. Justin works to do just that; he wants to see each child reach their musical potential...and he doesn't let a little thing like the child's inability to speak prevent that child from sharing his music.

Justin teaches a class called "Adaptive Music." This is a course Justin designed for kids classified as severely or profoundly handicapped. "But I hate that word 'handicapped'," Justin said. "I'd rather say 'challenged." I immediately thought of Aimee  Mullins' rant on her TEDTalk about much she hates the word disabled. Justin's rant wasn't quite so long, but it was comparable.  (BTW...this is another reason I love him). Here is another:

Justin wanted to do something special with his adaptive music kids that would feature each child in a special way. So, Justin used his many gifts (and some terrific technology) and created a modified version of the great play The Wizard of  Oz.  It is an amazing piece of educational creativity, for Justin found ways to let each child shine. One boy who cannot speak played the Wizard and was given a button to push. Each time he pressed his button (on cue, of course), it would say, "No!" 


"Can I have a heart, Wizard?"


"No!"   


Another girl in the class cannot speak, but she can manage four different buttons. So Justin wrote the script so that she had four different "lines" to "say." He recruited the assistant principal to narrate and invited friends, family, and other students to the final performance. They performed to a full room.  After the show, "the wizard's" mother approached Justin in tears: "No one has ever done anything like that for my child." Wow. What a moment...it gives me goosebumps.

But, Justin doesn't just create curriculum and write lessons for those in adaptive music class. He is busy using technology and other tools to enable ALL of his students to dream and achieve. Below is a video of him describing what he does best: make his classroom a vibrant, diverse place where everyone has a chance to learn.


Thanks for the inspiration, Justin. You are an amazing educator!

Comments with Justin Metz