Salyne El Samarany on Special Olympics Global Movement for Educators Through Inclusion

Today, SALYNE EL SAMARANY discusses Special Olympics global mission of bringing inclusion into the classroom through micro-credentialing for educators.  She talks about the importance of UDL (Universal Design for Learning) and how Special Olympics leads by example around the world.

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SALYNE EL SAMARANY is the Vice President of the Global Center for Inclusion in Education at Special Olympics International, where she works with a global team to lead initiatives to promote inclusive education and social inclusion for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD). She advocates for leveraging technology, including AI, to improve learning experiences for students with disabilities and professional development for teachers. Previously, Salyne was the CEO of Teach For Lebanon, an NGO focused on improving education for thousands of children in Lebanon, particularly those from underprivileged backgrounds. She addressed educational inequalities by empowering teachers and youth leaders to drive education reform, particularly in emergency settings. Salyne holds an MBA from the University of Balamand and has expertise in consultancy for change, providing strategic advice to improve organizations' social impact. She participated in the 2007 Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI) Program at Georgetown University, which shaped her commitment to addressing civil society and educational inequalities. Throughout her career, Salyne has received numerous awards, including the 2014 UN Special Envoy for Global Education’s Youth Courage Award. She also received the Arab Creativity Award in 2016 for her leadership in social change and was recognized by Facebook in 2018 as part of the Facebook Community Leadership Program for her leadership efforts to create informed online communities through education and technology.

LINKS

Special Olympics Global Center Webpage: https://www.specialolympics.org/what-we-do/youth-and-schools/global-center-for-inclusion-in-education

Special Olympics Global Center Briefs and Case Studies: https://www.specialolympics.org/what-we-do/youth-and-schools/resources/briefs?locale=en

 Community Impact Stories : 

 https://www.specialolympics.org/stories/impact/pioneering-inclusive-sports-education-in-slovakia

Hosted by Katie Corbett & Lee Fox Beauregard

Opening Music by Alex Cap. Incidental Music by Bruce Maginnins.

Produced by Akira Nakano

www.innovatinginclusion.org

Transcript

Intro Music.

KATIE

Welcome to Innovating Inclusion, Everyone! And hello, Akira. 

AKIRA

Hi, Katie It’s great to be here as you had the very distinct privilege of chatting with the Vice President of the Global Center for Inclusion in Education for the Special Olympics, Salyne El Samarany.

KATIE

We are humbled to be speaking with Salyne as the Special Olympics leads the way globally in academic inclusion by providing micro-credentialing to educators in six regions  and 152 countries around the world.

AKIRA

I wanted to define a couple of acronyms for our audience before you get started. UDL…

KATIE

UDL stands for Universal Design for Learning, a framework by an organization called CAST… used for creating learning materials and environments to accommodate all learners.

AKIRA

Great.  IDD?  

KATIE

Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities.  

AKIRA

Katie will be joined on the panel today by our boss, the President of the Fox Family Foundation, Lee Fox Beauregard. 

KATIE

You got booted!

AKIRA

Stepped graciously aside as the Fox Family Foundation supports both Innovating Inclusion and the work Salyne is doing at Special Olympics.

KATIE

We hope you enjoy this episode, Everyone!

Intro Music Fades

KATIE 

Alright. Well thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us, Salyne. We really appreciate it. . 

SALYNE

Thank you Katie and Lee. It's a pleasure to be with you today. 

KATIE

Yeah. So I wanted to just kick things off by learning a little more and enlightening our listeners a little more about you . So I was wondering if you could tell our listeners a little bit about what you did before coming to Special Olympics. 

SALYNE

Sure. First, thank you for the opportunity to be with all of you today. My name is Salyne El Samarany. I'm currently the Vice President for Special Olympics Global Center for Inclusion and Education.

I'm based in Abu Dhabi, but I am originally from Lebanon. I was born and raised in Lebanon in a big family with seven siblings. And since I was young, I was always passionate about serving my community and that led me to be selected to a US State Department Student Exchange Program, which is titled The Middle East Partnership Initiative in 2007.

And that program gave me the chance to travel to learn at Georgetown University alongside the great group of young leaders from the Arab region, many of which remain friends to the State and from the program experience in leadership, it helped me develop skills that enabled me to be selected as the Youth Ambassador for the Arab Thought Foundation, which was also an experience that gave me the opportunity to engage in meaningful discussions with youth from the Arab world, as well as participate in various conferences in the region.

I originally studied a Bachelor in Science in Nutrition and Dietetics, but soon after my graduation, I realized that I'm looking for a mission that is more human-centric. And I was really fortunate in 2009 to be selected to be part of the first cohort of the Teaching Fellows with Teach for Lebanon, which is a model similar part of the Teach for All Global Network. You might be familiar with Teach for America, and I got the chance to teach kindergarten kids in a rural community in Northern Lebanon. I think being in the classroom with my students as an educator every day really changed my perspective on many things, including showing me how challenging the teaching profession is, but also how powerful it is to be in the classroom, to learn from the students and as well as share with them my expertise. 

KATIE

Yeah. 

SALYNE

And from there after my fellowship, I was able to join the executive team at Teach For Lebanon. And in 2014, I was promoted to lead the organization as, its Chief Executive Officer. I studied a Master's in Business Administration. Lifelong learning has always been something I'm committed to.

So when I studied the Master's in Business Administration, that helped me also navigate, the organization in a very unstable, if you wanna say political, economic, social climate. I worked with Teach For Lebanon until 2022. And in 2022 I was offered the role of the Vice President for Special Olympics.

And here I am and along the way I was married in 2014, have three kids, and was able also to get many awards from, for my work, whether the Youth Courage Award in 2014 by the U.N. Envoy for Education, Mr. Warden Brown, the Art Creativity Award, as well as basically being part of the first Facebook Community Leadership Program in 2018.

And in parallel with the business background, the education background, I really felt that in order to navigate the nonprofit world, I needed to have also a consultancy lens into my work. So I studied also with INTRAC, a program called Consultants for Change, which gave me a great perspective.

And now it's been two years that I'm with Special Olympics focusing on inclusive education through the Global Center for Inclusion in Education. 

KATIE

Wow. That is wonderful. Thank you so much for all of your great work all over the world. And I especially applaud your interest in being a lifelong learner.

Personally, I found that learning from other people has just really enriched my life. So I'm so happy that you've embraced that as well. What does the word inclusion mean to you?

SALYNE

I feel inclusion is a feeling. Like we really need to feel that we belong, that we are valued, that we are respected, we are empowered. So it's mainly working to create spaces that are inclusive for everyone, where everyone, regardless of their differences, can participate fully, can engage, can, at the same time feel heard.

And so I always think of inclusion and the sense of belonging as being very equal because through inclusion goes beyond just inviting people in, it's giving them a voice and making sure they are heard and considered. 

KATIE

Yeah. Can you talk a little bit more about the turning point when Special Olympics expanded from being primarily a sports organization into the field of inclusive education?

SALYNE

So Special Olympics has four pillars of intervention. Sports definitely is the key pillar, education, health, and leadership. In 2008, actually the Special Olympics launched the Unified Champion Schools program in the US, and after that, in 2019 a Special Olympics had the World Games in Abu Dhabi. It was the first World Games that is hosted in the MENA region and following the World Games the UAE government with the support of His Highness Sheikh Mohamed Bin Zayed (Al Nahyan, President of the United Arab Emirates) invested in establishing the Global Center for Inclusion and Education that was mainly established to help support the scaling of the Unified Champion Schools.

And definitely with the support of other funding major donors like Stavros Niarchos Foundation and many others, today UCS is in over 32,000 schools in 152 countries, 25 of which are supported by the Global Center for Inclusion and Education.

KATIE

Can you share a little more about the mission? 

SALYNE

Mainly we aim to serve as a hub for promoting inclusive education through research policy and programming. And if I wanna talk a bit about what we do, it's mainly scaling through our education programming. 

The focus is both on evaluation research, but also we've worked on establishing a framework which is called the Inclusive Mindsets and Behavior Framework in collaboration with the ISa Lab at Harvard University. And this framework is basically to teach inclusion.

And the way we try to also influence policy is through different mediums by sharing knowledge and publications. So, every other month the center releases publications relevant to policy briefs, research briefs, but also case studies on best practices and inclusive education.

And we also host convenings where we bring people together to discuss key subjects relevant to inclusive education , provide a space to network, but also to establish a stronger network of public private partnerships in support of our mission globally. 

KATIE

I am also really curious, and you can base this on your personal experiences in the classroom or just experiences you've seen through this work, what are some of the common barriers that educators encounter when they're trying to engage with and support diverse learning needs for all the students that they teach? 

SALYNE

Recently, the Special Olympics Global Center released our chairman commentary on the global state of inclusion. And that addresses a bit on the barriers that educators face. Mainly the lack of funding for specialized material, assistive technology is a key barrier in terms of limited resources as well as the lack of professional development.

So, usually teachers are not receiving sufficient training on how to differentiate instruction, how to enable an inclusive learning environment as well as how to utilize strategies to support students with disability in general, but in specific with kids with IDD.

Also other barriers include our own biases as educators and stereotypes that we are born with. And there's a lot to be done on that lens and also helping educators as well as school community to overcome the unconscious bias that usually affects our expectations and our interactions. And again, the current curriculum, like the standardized testing, the rigid curriculum is also another barrier. Teachers feel overwhelmed. They have so much to cover in the curriculum. There's standardized testing. They stay so focused on the knowledge piece of the learning and give less support for the values and for customization, for learning for kids.

And again, if you wanna look more broader, not within the classroom, but more in the community. There's a lot of social emotional challenges that our students may struggle with, as well as the lack of inclusive policies in some communities and some countries that unfortunately don't prioritize inclusion. And sometimes that helps also reinforce a resistance to change from educators or school systems that are more focused on, you know, making sure the curriculum is delivered and less focused on inclusive practices.

KATIE

That makes a lot of sense. Can you share a little bit about what the data is showing about the impact of the Unified Champion Schools initiative? I know even in the US alone, you guys are present in over 7,500 schools. So there's probably a lot of data and information to be gleaned from all of that experienced.

SALYNE

Very, very true. Actually, the UCS is a proven model for inclusive social inclusion using the power of sports. We've seen that over the past 17 years, whether in the US or in the global, context in which we work that the UCS has helped basically influence and increased inclusion and social impact.

So we've seen improved social emotional learning skills in all the countries that we've been working with and in all the schools where we are implementing Unified Champion Schools. Example of that, a study that was done in India showed that 80% of students without IDD, in both Kenya and India, reported an improved social emotional skill development after participating in Unified Schools. As well as not only affecting the social emotional lens, but also the improved school climate. We have seen that schools implementing UCS report lower level of bullying, a higher peer-to-peer engagement between students with and without ID.

And again, on the same study, we've seen over three out of four students with and without IDD in India and Kenya reported a positive school climate and awareness of social inclusion. The impact does not only focus on the improved school climate and social emotional learning, but also goes to the academic as well as the leadership development.

For those that might not know, the UCS has three pillars. Unified Sports is one of them. The second one is focused on youth leadership and whole school engagement. 

When it comes to the youth leadership, we've seen that students with and without ID work together and basically strengthen their leadership skills while being part of UCS, and that helps the schools to increase student participation in extracurricular activities as well as whole school -wide events.

Another lens, the whole school engagement element of the program helps as well, enable community engagement and parental engagement. So we've seen that the UCS initiatives are promoting family and community involvement where parents are more engaged in their children's school experiences and sport experiences.

So overall the research confirms that UCS is fostering, more accepting, more engaging, more empowering educational environment. And we have been conducting at the Global Center an evaluation research in six sites which are the Hubs of Excellence, the main six sites in which we started working in 2020.

Soon we will be releasing this evaluation research that is now being conducted by Northwestern University, by Dr. Michelle Yin. So, we're hoping that also this will confirm, and the alignment as well in all that I've shared before in terms of that. 

KATIE

That's incredible. I wondered if you had any specific stories that can illustrate what academic inclusion and an accepting school culture look like both in the US and internationally. Just to get more specific and more personal. 

SALYNE

I'm not sure I can choose one story or two stories only. I feel that every school that is making an effort to support the learners and the educators to be more inclusive, whether by adopting the Universal Design for Learning can be an example. And one resource that can be useful about different stories is our Faces of Inclusion Storybook.

So if you go to the Special Olympics website, we do have a storybook that includes stories from across the globe highlighting different success stories from Pakistan, Romania, Egypt, Argentina, Rwanda, Paraguay, the UAE. In a way, a school that is inclusive is when there's an ecosystem that enables empathy and perspective taking that basically supports universal dignity, but also helps students build the skills to take on courageous actions and support for inclusion, which all these three pillars are part of our inclusive mindsets and behavior framework that I referred to earlier. 

But if I wanna give specific examples, I think some are more focused on stories where like the whole school came together to engage in a specific inclusive activity. Youth leadership stories also come up as an example. And what's interesting about all these stories is that you see that the work that is happening in the school create like a ripple effect where we have different stakeholders also being engaged, like media engagement, community engagement in these events, and I think there's a lot of stories to be shared. So... 

KATIE

Yeah. That's great. Do you think that universal design for learning looks the same in every classroom? 

SALYNE

When I think about the Universal Design for Learning, I always think about education in emergency.

Why? Because having worked in education, in emergency setting, it requires a lot of flexibility, a lot of adaptability to meet diverse needs in a specific context. And when I think about the Universal Design for Learning as a strategy for instruction, it is basically the same.

It has to be flexible, adaptable, that meets the diverse needs for all learners, not just with kids with IDD and it benefits everyone. So, no, it does not look the same for sure. But at the same time, what's great about UDL is that it's really comprehensive in a way, and it's adaptable so you can make sure there's multiple means of engagement for all the students. Multiple means of representation: visual kinesthetic, making sure that every learner is unique and there's no classroom that looks like the other classroom. So the focus on looking at who is in the room, and what they like and what type of resources would be helpful to them and giving them different means to engage, different means to represent the knowledge, but also different means to express themselves. And because some students may like to write essays, while others like to make videos using AI. And I feel that giving that opportunity for the students to express themselves the way they feel comfortable basically allows that space for innovation, allows that space for giving an opportunity for all learners to learn the way that makes them comfortable. 

KATIE

Yeah, I'm really glad that other teachers are learning to be more inclusive because I'm blind. And I remember in one of my college classes, our professor was having us read a book and he wanted us to draw a picture of this one character and what we thought she would look like, and I remember raising my hand and saying, "Professor, I'm blind. How am I gonna draw a picture?" And he said that for me, he wanted me to write a poem about her and incorporate some of my perspectives on what I thought her inner monologue would be. And I thought that was a really neat way of employing a universal design concept to get the impressions of someone who couldn't do the initial assignment. 

SALYNE

Yeah, we already spoke about Universal Design for Learning as an instructional strategy where teachers can use and learn more about UDL so they can tailor their lessons to engage and represent and also provide a space for learners to express themselves the way they feel comfortable.

Other instructional strategies include scaffolding, like breaking the tasks into different manageable steps that offer guided practice for the learners, as well, so everyone feels that they have a roadmap to follow. And currently there's also different tools that are now available: digital tools, assistive technology tools that can help various learners feel more included, whether the visual aids, the adaptive learning apps that are now available. And I think the power of artificial intelligence now is just so promising and what it can provide. I know that there's a lot of tools now available that can help personalized learnings including like Khan Academy, DreamBox and Chat GPT even. And these AI tools have a lot to offer when it comes to supporting reading and writing, special education support, classroom engagement. That's why when we think about the possibility of AI , we as the Global Center, as well as the Special Olympics community feel so excited of what it can bring in terms of evolution that helps include all learners. And definitely, if we think about all these tools, yes, there's a lot of strategies available. There's a lot of tools available. But I think one of the key things that needs to be done is to focus on teacher training and professional development. And this is something that is key, and that's why workshops, certification, but also micro-credentials. 

When we think about the evolution of learning, and now education in specific, just like technology we do need accessible material. We do need micro-credentials to help as build the capacities of educators. 

That said, currently the Global Center with the support of the Fox Family Foundation, we'll be working on micro-credentials for social inclusion that will include seven courses or modules that help teachers to be more inclusive and learn about Universal Design for Learning inclusive mindsets and behaviors. How do they enable a school climate that is inclusive? How do they empower youth to lead in a unified manner? And also how do they utilize all these technology tools to be able to differentiate their learning and be more ready for the classroom. 

KATIE

Could you explain to some of our listeners who may not be familiar with the term micro-credentialing or micro-certification, what that means? 

SALYNE

In all industries, including education, technology, business, when things are evolving quickly, we need tools or we need a professional development that can upskill rapidly. We need things that are practical, up to date, and that offer a short form of more focused credentials that can offer knowledge, skills in a particular area. And micro-credentials and the Micro-credential for Social Inclusion that I just mentioned, will be basically an opportunity to focus on educators.

It can be very targeted to educators to help them build their capacity and inclusive education. It's short term, so it can be over a week or a month, and it's very flexible. So what's great about micro- certification is that it gives that flexibility and for students or for educators to learn at their own pace, and that helps them as well, like build their capacity.

And when it comes to micro-credentials, they can be stackable. So you can start with a specific skill and then build off of it, different micro- certifications that helps you learn a specific skill or a hobby that you are interested in. 

KATIE

Yeah. And for the micro-credentialing that is offered, are you focusing on a specific part of the world?

SALYNE

So currently we're working in all six regions across the world. So we are in the Middle East, Africa, we're in Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia, Europe. And we will make sure that these micro-credentials are also provided in different languages which will allow a wide audience from across the globe to access it. It'll be optional. So we cannot enforce, given the fact that we work with schools, this is going to be an opportunity to upskill our global community of educators. 

So in a way it depends on the interest in different regions, but we will not be focusing on one particular region, but we will be opening it up as a source that anyone within our network interested in joining would be able to do it.

KATIE

Excellent. At this point in the interview, I'd like to turn it over to my boss, the 

President of the Fox Family Foundation, Lee Fox Beauregard. Lee? 

LEE

Well, I just think that, I'd love to know when you're thinking about what's a head, what are your hopes for inclusive education? What do you see would be the most prominent form of success in terms of what could be achieved? 

SALYNE

We envision a world where every student, regardless of their ability to have an opportunity, an equal opportunity to learn, to grow and to succeed. And when we're looking ahead in our work at the Global Center, we will continue as the International Day for Education Letter that was recently released. We'll continue to expand our Unified Champions course programming because it's an evidence-based program that have shown success. So we want to continue to grow the participation of schools globally in our inclusive education programming. We want to also strengthen our programming. So we want to continue to evaluate, we want to continue to learn from what we're already doing so we can improve it. As well as focusing on teacher professional development because we believe that we need to provide support for the educators so they can feel more empowered to include. 

My hope is that we can also influence policy. In an ideal world we would like to see. systemic change in world countries where governments, education institutions, even businesses are coming together to shape a more inclusive world, a more inclusive workforce that does not discriminate and that supports kids and students with and without intellectual disability.

The other element of our focus will be also spreading the inclusive mindsets and behavior framework, which will be our tool to hopefully also help change perception in communities globally. Our ultimate goal... we hope that we can catalyze, mobilize, and have a global network that enables a world where all schools and communities, offer a space where kids feel that they belong. They feel that they're included. They feel that they can contribute, and at the same time, feel valued. 

LEE

That's beautiful. If there's any educators, listening and they wanted to see if their school could become a Unified Champion School, what are the steps that they need to take to do that?

SALYNE

The first thing I would like to say for every educator out there is that, we shouldn't wait. We should have a sense of urgency to act and act now. It'll never be perfect. It's about trial and error. It's about starting with a small change in our classroom or outside the classroom.

And if schools or educators are interested to implement Unified Champion Schools, the first thing to do is to connect with their Special Olympic program in their respective country. Reach out to them, show interest, and I'm pretty sure that there will be a great team of supporters from our global community who are ready to support training, technical assistance to coaches as well as support to make sure that they can help their school adopt the Unified Champion Schools model. 

LEE

Beautiful. Is there anything else that you feel that we really should include for our listeners, about some of the initiatives that you all are working on? 

SALYNE: Definitely as I mentioned before, the Center focuses on connecting practice, to policy and research. And a key initiative will be the release of our global research agenda for inclusive education which will be a release in April, alongside the Global Disability Summit in Berlin. The aim of this research agenda is mainly a call to action for educators, for education institutions, for researchers to basically invest in, research that would support inclusive education. There's a lot of gaps currently in knowledge, and data relevant to inclusive education in order to improve any intervention and improve inclusive education practices, we need more research, on different topics. And the research agenda will include seven themes under which we feel there's a need to do more research. So we're excited about that and hopefully we'll be able to engage as many global researchers as possible that can help us in this endeavor. 

LEE

Yeah. And earlier you mentioned that businesses have a role to play.

Do you wanna expand on that? 

SALYNE

In any community when we're thinking about change, it's always better when public private partnership are formed. And I think businesses have a big role to play in inclusive education specifically in changing their own policies to be more inclusive, make sure that they are shaping a more inclusive workforce. I'd like to encourage businesses to recognize, to value the skills of people with IDD and offer them employment opportunities, but also to invest within their corporate social responsibility endeavors in inclusive education. It helps everyone. It's not only in support of kids with IDD. It can. It helps every single learner in the classroom. And again, education is the foundation for any development across the world. Uh, so yeah, I really encourage businesses to consider supporting inclusive education. 

LEE

Beautiful. 

KATIE

Well, Salyne, it was so great to talk with you today. Thank you so much for being here. I am sure our listeners will learn a lot from your great insights. 

SALYNE

Thank you again for the opportunity. It was a pleasure to speak with you today and again, I'm hoping every single person listening to this podcast, reflect on their role as. includers in this world. We need more positive endeavors, supportive of inclusion for people with intellectual disability.

LEE

Salyne, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us today. I really appreciate it. I champion what Katie said, and I look forward to our continued conversations. 

Music Fades In

SALYNE

Thank you, Lee. Thank you, Katie. 

NARRATOR

Innovating Inclusion is a program of the Fox Family Foundation whose mission is to break the link between poverty and disability. The goal is to teach high school and college students to innovate with universal design in mind, where young entrepreneurs of all abilities create side-by-side, so as they become the next generation of leaders and hiring managers, any stigma is gone, and the world is accessible to everyone. 

Our hosts today are Katie Corbett and Lee Fox Beauregard.  Our theme song was written by Alex Cap, with incidental music by Bruce Maginnis.  Our producer is Akira Nakano.

Please visit our website, innovatinginclusion.org.