Episode 42: Durable Hospitality: Restoring Wonder for Every Learner

I know we put universal design in the title.

And I think you're talking about a kind of classical understanding of universal design.

But I may even be wrong about that.

And I was curious how you would respond.

A lot of what you talk about in the course is the term that you're using, which is so beautiful, durable hospitality.

But durable hospitality sounds to me like it has some overlap with universal design.

So how would you respond to that? Is that fair? Would you push back a little?

No, I think you're going down the same path.

We're traveling the same path here.

Um, Universal design has pros and cons, and some people have strong feelings about it.

But it occurred to me at some point, maybe a couple decades ago, early in my career as a special education teacher, that these are just good practices, and these are best practices.

And if we're using the best practices initially for the students with the greatest needs, what if we took these best practices to everybody? Why shouldn't we be doing that for everybody? And I especially came to this thought when we would encounter some border cases, kids who were not quite qualifying for special education.

They were just a little bit too high in their testing.

But man, they were struggling and they were just needed the extra support.

But according to rules and regulations, we couldn't bring them in.

And and that really probably is the impetus of where I started Sundial, you know, as a germ in the back of my head, you know, decades ago.

is why can't all kids have these best practices? And that's the universal design component.

You know, I remember in college learning about this concept of universal design and the professor showing a picture of a beautiful building, beautiful architecture and ramps instead of steps and thinking, well, why couldn't we all use a ramp? You know, why do we call that, oh, that ramp is only for wheelchairs.

Why couldn't it be for everybody? So essentially I think of it as, just incorporating it into the architecture of sundial is just baked in.

It's built in that we use ramps and then everybody benefits from it.

And that definitely

does.

Everyone can roll marbles down altogether.

Yeah.

I have thought about that.