Highlighting Humanity

Joey Cumagun, a veteran special education teacher, seeks the human potential in every student of every ability. Through community-based instruction providing students with real life experiences, Joey helps prepare students aged 18-22 years old for their next steps in life. With a $1,000 Fund for Teachers Innovation Grant, Joey completed an online course on Teaching and Learning for Greater Good and completed a TED Masterclass on Public Speaking to create a venue and a community for space for students and teachers to share their best ideas. We are so pleased to share Joey’s reflection on his Innovation Circle Grant experience, as well as links to his students’ interviews, below.

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As a teacher I’ve always included a component of social emotional lesson in my teaching. However it is not always easy to teach an SEL (Social Emotional Learning) lesson, let alone teach it in my special education classroom. Even as a seasoned teacher, I find myself still lacking in effective ways to teach SEL properly. I see this when I start asking the important questions to elicit the SEL objectives, I hear mostly silence for answers. Silence or acquiescence is not the kind of student participation I want to see. I think that my students have a wealth of experience and ideas that they want to express. I want to draw these out effectively and also provide them a venue to unpack their thoughts and feelings and share their ideas, and even better, move them to action.

With the fellowship, my learning was go back to the basics of SEL and be updated and best practices of SEL teaching strategies. I also wanted to be be able to apply it to my own life as an educator – to be a social-emotionally aware and active teacher. This meant that I needed to unlock my own empathy, compassion and ideas. Lastly, my personal goal was to learn how to be an effective presenter not just in the classroom, but also in the community. Ultimately, I wanted to encourage a community of people who want to share themselves and their ideas.

The courses I took independently provided me with a good foundation of SEL and helped me grow into a more kind and mindful person who happens to be a teacher. Processing that growth with my Innovation Circle group made me reflect on my own values. Especially coming from a very stressful pandemic schoolyear last year, I reflected on my life and thought about the all important question of why I teach. I was also mindful that the students and the aides were also figuring out a new “normal” and with the whole Innovation Circle experience, I felt more prepared to teach this year.

Last fall, I created a blog page on our school’s website featuring interviews of students and staff talking about their life experiences. The interviews are narrative in style, addressing who they are (identify) and what they want to become (purpose). After being asked questions about his life experiences, one student said he felt important and a sense of pride about himself. Another said for the first time he shared his thoughts and profound feelings about his life experiences and that it felt good to share.

Watch Joey’s interview with Aaron here.

I think that my students have a wealth of experience and ideas that they want to express. As a teacher I want to draw these out effectively and also provide them a venue to unpack their thoughts and feelings and share their ideas, and even better, move them to action. What is a meaningful life and how is it connected to education? It has been shown that one of the ways to cultivate happiness and develop a meaningful life is to do prosocial behaviors. And one of the 4 ways through an SEL activity to have meaning in their life is – belonging,
purpose, transcendence, and storytelling – giving a chance for people to tell their story is to say that I value your story, to give a voice to “cultural, historic, and everyday lived experiences” of students.

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Joey currently teaching community-based instruction in high school, he has also taught Special Day Class K-3, SDC 6-8 and also autism intensive classrooms. A teacher for 33 years, his awards include Mary Allan Teacher Fellow 2019, National History Day Fellow 2016-17, Special Olympics Northern California Teacher of the Season 2015. This summer, he will undertake the fellowship he intended to pursue in 2020: Tour two Omron Taiyo manufacturing factories in Japan where the majority of their employees have a disability to design a system for a workplace (simulated in the classroom) that is both conducive and motivating for students with disabilities.