Getting Started

Every school system is unique and you can’t always predict what will turn out to make a critical difference. It is safe to say that change requires participation and collaboration among many different constituents, and that no one factor can make or break systemic change. Once the first step is taken—refocusing from presumed limitations of students to the current and potential limitations of the curriculum—the rest follows logically. In Concord, NH, when they started working to implement UDL in 1995, educators trained themselves to ask not “What can’t this student do?” but “What barriers might this student encounter in my curriculum?”

Shifting the focus to the curriculum that serves all learners led to three clear benefits:

• Classroom teachers felt that UDL addressed their work and their curriculum, not just one or two students.
• Special education teachers felt that UDL enabled them to contribute to curricular efficacy for every student, and to participate in the curriculum itself rather than in “catch up” skills
• Teachers, specialists, administrators, and parents embraced the mindset of expanding and improving curricula.
  

Using technology to make curriculum more flexible and more useable by all learners is a win-win approach to resource allocation and professional collaboration. In Concord, the success of early experiments showed teachers that the changes benefited not only the children whose needs precipitated them, but others in the class as well. This realization led to contagious enthusiasm, which in turn fueled more experiments, more engagement, and more learning on the part of educators, administrators, parents, and students.