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Our goals as teachers are to connect what we teach to our student’s lived experiences, both in the moment they first encounter those ideas and hopefully days, months, years, decades later when they are engaging in their unique life pursuits. In this session, we will explore the defining characteristics of reflections and engage examples that can be used in various time frames, class sizes, and course modalities. These intentional, purposeful, and systemic reflections built into a course’s overall structure have the radical opportunity to support critical and inclusive moments for developing linked meanings with our content. Specific moments for deep reflection are an intentional part of building the radical praxis of hope that brings life and vitality back into learning. This interactive session will offer you a chance to consider more ways to add more deeply considered reflections into your courses.

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (2004) mandated schools engage parents in their child’s educational planning. Despite schools’ adoption of various strategies to promote parent engagement, parents’ perceptions about these strategies, especially among those whose children are at the secondary transition age, are often overlooked. To examine parents’ perceptions of 23 previously documented parent engagement strategies, we conducted a cross-sectional online survey with 642 parents of youth with disabilities (ages 14–21) in the United States. Overall, participants reported that parent engagement strategies were moderately helpful in promoting parent engagement. Parents of color reported lower scores for perceived helpfulness than their non-Hispanic White counterparts. Top-rated strategies included making time when parents have questions and communicating strategies clearly; however, this varied by race/ethnicity. Findings highlighted the need to address racial disparities in parent engagement strategies and the importance of school-parent collaboration/communication.

This “View From the Field” column is part of a series highlighting the important roles stakeholders, peers, families, community members, and school staff have in supporting the implementation of effective practices (i.e., evidence-based, research-based) for students with or at risk for disabilities. We describe how different stakeholders can successfully partner with school intervention teams to improve social-behavior, academic, and transition outcomes. We also offer strategies for how schools can develop and sustain partnerships with these stakeholders.

This final column of the series is focused on how school and district teams can continue the forward motion toward positive student outcomes using data via continuous improvement cycles. We draw on the work of technical assistance providers and researchers from the National Implementation Research Network (NIRN; https://nirn.fpg.unc.edu) and the Center on Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS; https://www.pbis.org/). The key takeaway of this series is to describe how implementation of EBPs in schools can be enhanced when implementation teams “invest in the systems to support their implementation” (Kittelman et al., 2020, p. 96).

In education, the field of implementation science is a discipline dedicated to supporting educators’ use of evidence-based practices (EPBs) to improve school and student outcomes. As highlighted in previous columns in this series, school teams must thoughtfully consider how EBPs align with the school/district core values and fit the local context (Kittelman et al., 2020), how school teaming can enhance implementation of EBPs (Kittelman et al., 2021), and what activities are needed to support implementation of EBPs at different stages (Ward et al., 2021). In this column, we describe how school teams and educators can use implementation drivers to implement EBPs with high implementation fidelity (as they are designed to be implemented; Caroll et al., 2007; Sanetti & Collier-Meek, 2019). We wish to draw attention to the important work of researchers and practitioners from the National Technical Assistance Center on the State Implementation and Scale-Up of Evidence-Based Practices (SISEP; https://sisep.fpg.unc.edu) within the National Implementation Research Network (NIRN; https://nirn.fpg.unc.edu) and the National Center for Systemic Improvement (NCSI; https://ncsi.wested.org).