What can happen when a child with disabilities is included in a traditional care setting with their peers without disabilities―where they can interact, learn, and play together in a universally designed environment, with adaptations, modifications, or accommodations built to support their full participation? For decades, the UNC Frank Porter Graham Child Institute (FPG) has led the way, proving that with the right institutional support, technical assistance, professional development, implementation, and advocacy, young children both with and without disabilities thrive in remarkable ways when they’re in inclusive environments.

Earlier this year, the International Early Childhood Inclusion Institute celebrated a quarter-century of FPG’s longstanding work in early childhood inclusion. Presentations and discussions at the event recognized the voices and experiences of children with disabilities and their families and highlighted the critical contributions of individuals with disabilities, families, practitioners, policymakers, and many other leaders in the field who have worked tirelessly to create more inclusive environments.

We had a chance to speak with some of this year’s presenters and attendees and will be sharing those conversations with you in a short series of articles over the coming weeks. In this article, you’ll hear from Jenna Weglarz-Ward, associate professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. We’re so glad she made time to speak with us during the conference.

Tell us about yourself and your work.

I'm an associate professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and I work across our early childhood and early childhood special education programs, as well as our on-campus childcare program and running programs to help our students as well as our faculty really create inclusive practices for everyone.

Is this your first time attending the Inclusion Institute and what drew you to attend?

This is my first time attending the Inclusion Institute in person. I'm very excited to be here, and I don't know why it took me 25 years to get here, but I'm happy to be here this week.

What drew me to the institute is that my work—really the foundation of who I am—is really about being inclusive and creating spaces where people feel they belong and they're welcome. And this was a space to let me dedicate a couple of days to that work, to be with other people that are really interested in the work, engaging in the work. They’re family members, they're practitioners, they’re researchers, they’re policy-makers and for us all to be in one space and talk together and learn from each other, that was really what drew me here. And again, it's something that I've been wanting to do for a really long time and finally have the opportunity to be part of.

How does inclusion manifest itself in your life?

Inclusion plays a really big role in I think who I am. First, I'm a parent. I'm a parent of four children, and all of my children have received special education services or specialized services in some way and continuing throughout their lives. So, it's really important for me as a mom to feel that they have a sense of belonging and feel like they are welcome in their communities and their schools, and now as grown-ups, and in college and in their work. It's really important for me that they had those spaces, that they didn't have to work as hard to make the best for them, that the spaces already were there for them to feel that welcome. And for me, as a parent, to also feel welcome in those spaces. That I'm also there with families of children that do not have disabilities and that we're all there to be together for our children to learn together. For us to do PTA things together and to hang out on the playground together and build relationships and friendships is really important to me as a person.

My research has then stemmed from that work. I was a teacher in early childhood for a long time, and I saw it as a continual struggle to create inclusive spaces for young children with disabilities and their families, which led me to then move into research roles and professional development and personal preparation to help other professionals learn how to create inclusive spaces and that it's not that hard to do it if you build it as your foundation. So, it's been really important to everything I do. And I kind of take it everywhere I go. Whether I'm at a theme park—which I really like to go to with our family—really to go “Is that inclusive? Is that accessible for us?” Or we're out in a professional setting like this. Are we being inclusive in the presentations we're giving? Are we bringing voices in there?

And then I've also seen it bleed into my husband's work. He works in the medical field, and he also is the one who is like “Are we being inclusive?” And he's even done trainings for people in his work life. Being from that parent perspective in that as well as living with me, learning about inclusion, how important it is and how it doesn't happen unless we're intentional about it. So, I think in our family and then in our work, that is the most important groundwork for us.

And then everything we do kind of stems from that. My youngest child also has a disability. And we've learned about ableism and how to teach other teenagers about ableism, which is sometimes a hard sell. But, my kids will be like, “Oh, wait, I think maybe that was a little ableist. How can I change it and reframe it?” So, I know that it's been pretty ingrained in my family and then the people I work with.

What were you looking forward to at this year’s Inclusion Institute?

This year's conference for me was really to look at how I can build my toolbox to bring back to my professional world and really look at universities’ work and how we can continue to prepare teachers. I also work with other institutions on helping them review and enhance their own programs to see if they're inclusive and how we can really include that inclusivity component to their programs. So, I was really looking for new and innovative ways to do that. Talk to other faculty and ask, “What are you doing? What's working? What is challenging you? Can we problem solve together?” And also continue to build my network. I met people this week that I'm already like, “Oh my gosh, we have to connect. Let's see how we can help each other out.” We've already shared emails and so really building that network to continue my work and to keep me excited about the work. Because it's hard work and I always leave activities like this feeling refreshed and inspired and invigorated. Like, okay, I got this. It's hard work, but it's important work, and we can do it together.

What advice would you give to prospective Inclusion Institute attendees?

My advice for anyone who's thinking about coming is they should try to come as much as possible. It's been a really great experience. I also enrolled in the pre-conference, which was really great because it was a more concentrated, longer period of time. So, we got to get into some other things, which was really valuable. We had more time to talk and reflect. I would encourage people to come and to really think about what your goals are for this week. What do you want to learn? What do you want to come away with? And to ground those in your activities while also taking time to reflect. There is built-in reflection time—which is a real beauty of this conference—but also find time to sit with it and so that you don't let it all go. Think about, “What am I going to do? What am I going to follow up with? I am going to contact that person I met. These are the resources I'm going to make sure I download them or print them out so I can really sit with them and use them later.” Because I think sometimes we get overwhelmed with all of the things that we're learning. So even last night, I was like, “What did I learn today? Let me pull out the things I really want to revisit.” And I'll do the same today, and I'll do the same tomorrow, and then think about how I'm going to integrate those into my life and work. That would be my advice to people. To take that time so that we actually use the stuff that we get so excited about, and then make a plan to come again. That's my plan already.

You can watch a video of Weglarz-Ward's interview on our YouTube channel.