Cindy Lopez: Welcome. My name is Cindy Lopez, the host of this CHC podcast, Voices of Compassion. We hope you find a little courage, feel connected and experience compassion every time you listen.

What if hope isn’t just a feeling, but a teachable skill that can transform learning. In this episode, we explore the powerful intersection of hope science, and Universal Design for Learning or UDL with Brenda Green – a former math teacher turned to educational leader from CAST. Learn how the UDL framework creates the conditions for hope to flourish by honoring learner variability, removing barriers in design, not in students, and providing flexible options for engagement, representation, and expression. So, whether you’re new to Universal Design for Learning, or you’re looking to deepen your practice, this conversation offers practical strategies you can start using tomorrow. From creating choice boards to designing goals that don’t embed the means to gathering student feedback that amplifies their voice, but most importantly, you’ll understand how small intentional shifts in lesson design can create meaningful change, building not just academic success, but the agency and belonging that every student deserves. Ready to redesign learning with hope at the center, listened in.

Brenda, we’re so glad that you’re able to join us today and have this conversation with us about Universal Design for Learning and the science of hope. It’s all really interesting to me as an educator. So, before we dive into our conversation, I’d love it if you could tell our listeners a little bit more about yourself.

Brenda Green, MEd, EdD: Yes, sure. And Cindy, thank you for having me. This is an incredible opportunity to share about UDL and hope theory and science because this is something that educators are wanting to know more about, especially because it’s closely aligned to UDL, but let me start with introducing myself. So, I’m Brenda Green. I got my start to education as a high school math teacher and taught in a large urban school district in California. I have also held various school leadership roles and outside the school setting I’ve led development of mathematics curriculum and facilitated professional learning and coaching services to leaders and educators across the US but also globally. Currently, I am with CAST and my focus is to provide leaders and educators support on setting and sustaining their implementation of Universal Design for Learning. And you’ll hear me say UDL, so I wanted to make sure I said that fully, so that we all know when I say UDL, it’s Universal Design for Learning.

Cindy Lopez: Thank you for mentioning that and also, CAST, for our listeners, CAST is the organization that has developed the guidelines for Universal Design for Learning that are really intended to be implemented across classrooms, learning environments for all students. I’m wondering, is it really possible to design something that works for all students?

Brenda Green, MEd, EdD: Yes, Cindy, it is certainly possible. It is possible to design options to support learning for all learners. This is possible when educators incorporate the UDL guidelines in the lesson design process. And you know what, while we’re talking about that, let me go ahead and define UDL for us, just to make sure we’re clear. So, UDL is an educational framework based on research in the learning sciences that guides the development of flexible and accessible methods, materials and environments that embrace variability, minimize barriers, and develop learner agency in all learners.

So, the goal of UDL is learner agency that is purposeful and reflective, resourceful and authentic and strategic and action oriented. So, why does UDL matter when we think about supporting all learners? Well, the UDL framework is informed by what we know about the learning brain and culturally responsive teaching. So, from that research, we have learned that learners vary in predictable ways, more specifically in how they engage in the learning, perceive information. So, how they’re making meaning of the learning and how learners are acting in it and expressing on what they’re learning. So, with this knowledge, we can use the guidelines to design options within the learning environment to respond to this variability and minimize barriers to learning.

Cindy Lopez: So, it’s interesting. So, you talked about learner agency. I wonder like, it might be a good idea to talk a little bit about agency and how we define that. As I think about agency, it’s the capacity, especially for students, for each student to really play an active role in their own learning, and they get to make choices and have a voice and take initiative that influences how they engage and what they take away from the learning. Is that accurate? Does that sound right to you? Are we talking about the same thing?

Brenda Green, MEd, EdD: Yes, we’re talking about the same thing. Just generically, the belief in one’s own capacity to take action, right? You know, having a sense of agency and having that sense that they have the power to do what learners think they need to do for themselves to be able to reach their personal goal or academic goal. That’s the core of this idea. Now I’ll be talking about agency in terms of setting up the learning environment so that kids have options to figure out how they want to engage.

When I think about agency, even in my personal life, like if I want to learn about something that I know nothing about, you know, I will likely go to the internet or maybe ask an expert. And maybe I won’t want to read an entire book to learn about a topic. And so in that sense, I have options in the way in which I decide I want to go about learning about a particular topic. And so the idea when we think about agency and UDL is we want learners to be able to have options to decide how they want to engage in a topic or some content within the greater learning environment. 

And when we think about agency, it also extends to the physical learning environment. So, kids moving about the classroom to, you know, maybe they want to sit in a corner and read a book on their own versus having to sit in groups or things like that, right. So, it’s the broader idea of here’s the learning target, here’s what we need to learn today. Like you figure out the options in which you want to go about in exploring the idea or the concept of the day.

Cindy Lopez: Right. And I think that agency is really important. I mean, it’s important to everyone, whether it’s students, teachers, adults, parents, everyone. We want our students, we want our kids to develop that agency across their life and across all areas of their lives. So, it’s really important and to build that into the classroom setting is a really great opportunity for kids to be able to learn. And learn in a way that makes sense to them.

Today, we’re also talking about hope. And it’s interesting to think about the two: UDL and hope and how they might intersect. Can you talk a little bit about the science behind hope and why it’s considered a teachable skill rather than just like, ooh, it’s a positive feeling?

Brenda Green, MEd, EdD: Yes. So, I’m going to lean into the research. So, there’s a psychologist, C. R. Snyder. He defines hope as a thinking skill composed of three interlocking elements. So, goals. So, specific targets that give direction; pathways thinking, the ability to generate multiple strategies to reach those goals; and agency, the belief in one’s own capacity to take action. So, think of this as an internal voice saying, I can do this, right? So, when a person believes a goal is possible and can visualize pathways towards that goal, dopamine is released from the brain and hope becomes a biological fuel for action. 

So, if I give you an example, for the last couple months I’ve been working out with a trainer. First day into the gym, you know, I’m seeing everyone working out. They look strong, they’re lifting lots of weight, right, but that is not realistic for me. So, at this point, I’m not feeling hopeful, but if I set a goal and realize, and tell myself I can do this, I’m at the beginning stages of my journey, I’m going to start small and over time gain more strength, gain more weight, at some point, I’ll be able to reach that goal. And so that idea of like setting realistic goals and acknowledging the pathway that I need to take. And again, feeling like I have some control with my trainer that, you know what, I’m not ready for this yet, but can we do this? That could be an example to showcase like what hope is. We can actually support hope within our classroom similarly. So, just sharing my example, and if we’re comparing it in the classroom, we can do the same things by helping kids set realistic goals, model realistic pathways that works for them to reach their ultimate learning goals or targets.

Cindy Lopez: And there are so many things, as you were talking, I was just thinking about, you know, former students of mine who really didn’t have a lot of hope. They’d been so discouraged by the system that they’re in that it was hard for them to think of hope as something that could be, I’m going to say achieved, right.

Brenda Green, MEd, EdD: Yeah, I would say students may be experiencing that because in the past we thought of hope as maybe just again, some feeling, but now we know through the research, we can actually teach these three elements that I just mentioned. Students can be taught to set clearer goals. Teachers can model and provide multiple pathways to reach those goals. And learning environments focused around UDL can increase agency through choice, voice, and feedback loops. And I say feedback loops  because since UDL and hope is centered around the learner, we need to increase agency, we need feedback from the students to figure out what works best for them. I often joke with some of the educators that I work with and leaders in training UDL and saying if I were teaching in the classroom today, I would tell kids, “Well, hey, you know, I was born in the 1900s, and I may not know the option that works best for you because you have much more technology at your disposal and you have many options that, for me, those just weren’t available.'” And so that could be a way to kind of like start a conversation. But all to say is that, agency is centered around the learner. We have to get good at getting feedback from students to help inform the design processes and how we shape our learning environment.

Cindy Lopez: Yeah. I just had to laugh when you said, “I was born in the 1900s.” I’m like, oh yeah, that I guess was a little while ago.

Brenda Green, MEd, EdD: Yeah. Yes. That’s what the kids say I mean, when my daughter told me that for the first time, I was like, woah, I guess are technically correct. It was on the, you know, later half, but it’s fine.

Cindy Lopez: So, thinking about UDL and thinking about hope and you mentioned some things like, setting clear goals, the teacher modeling and providing different pathways to reach the goals and the learning environment really set up in a way that encourages choice and voice and feedback loops and all of that. How does that really happen? How does UDL create the conditions where hope could flourish in increasingly diverse classrooms?

Brenda Green, MEd, EdD: Great question, Cindy. So first and foremost, I should at least provide the three core concepts of UDL. Because again, this is what’s working behind the guidelines. So, there’s three core concepts. The first, honor learner variability and understand that it is the norm and contextual. So, we should already be thinking, as educators, of all of the humans we serve in our classroom, they’re going to come in, there’s going to be variability across the learners, across those learners that shape your classroom and it’s contextual. So, some days students may want to engage in one option to learn, and on another day, another option. And this is why it’s important to have as many options available, that students can rely on during the learning process, so that depending on how they’re feeling and what choices they want to make for the day, it’s available.

The second is look for the barrier in the design, not the learner. So, what we like to say is that we don’t want to blame students for why learning isn’t happening. We want to look to what’s the environment around the learners? What have we put in front of these learners that’s getting this reaction? And if we haven’t given the learner what they need to engage in the learning in the way that they want to engage in, then we have to redesign that experience. So, it’s never that, it’s the students fault of why learning isn’t happening. It’s about like, how can we reshape our environment and our lesson designs to support the learner?

And then the third is use the guidelines to predict and design access and agency for all learners. And so as part of using the guidelines, there is a focus on access to the content while supporting learner agency for students. Because again, we want students to figure out the best way that they learn and get to know who they are as learners. And the only way we can do that, again, is to design a lesson that provides greater access and supports agency along the way and kids will over time begin understanding who they are as learners.

Cindy Lopez: As you’re talking, I’m thinking, oh, this is really interesting, and I’m wondering, what it looks like in the classroom. And so, I believe that in the guidelines, there are examples of what this looks like if you wanted to see it working in a classroom.

Brenda Green, MEd, EdD: Yes. Yes. So, before we get into those examples, let me explain the other part that’s important, especially when we think about teachers designing lessons. There is what we call the UDL design process. And so what educators would do to even begin thinking about these options and these examples is setting a clear goal with flexible means. So, this is important because we want to be sure that when teachers set goals that the means doesn’t cut off the option. So, for example, if I want kids who demonstrate their understanding of the lifecycle of butterflies by writing a five paragraph essay, if I embed the means in that goal, it cuts off other options. So, what if a student can’t write, then writing to demonstrate understanding does not work for that student. So, setting clear goals and with flexible means is going to be very important.

The second part is anticipating barriers to learning. So, just reflecting on those barriers because you need to anchor yourself in terms of if these are barriers, having that list there and really using that as your foundation to determine the options to support learning. 

And then of course, the third is to, again, use those barriers to figure out the ways in which you would apply the UDL guidelines. So, the UDL framework fully supports the conditions for hope to flourish in all learners.

So, the other thing is that the UDL guidelines, there’s three principles that are embedded in the guidelines. So, it’s engagement. How do I engage with my learning? Representation–how do I perceive and make sense while learning, and then action and expression–how do I demonstrate and organize my learning? 

Going back to your question, what are some examples of that, like, what can we do right to support that? 

So, some practical examples, again definitely step one, creating goals that don’t embed the means, right? Providing choice boards. So there’s this idea that you can create a choice board to give kids ways in which they would produce a product of understanding or you can do choice boards to give kids options, to demonstrate a skill. Allowing students to choose an option to engage in the learning process. So, giving them the choice. So, maybe because of your designer bias, right, we have our biases, you didn’t have an option upfront, so therefore you could ask the student. And then of course, the feedback is always very important, understanding what’s working and not working so that kids have a voice in the process of designing opportunities for themselves. So, those are some practical things that you can do to look at and that’s what we see broadly across classrooms is like these options that I presented here. And there’s others, right, I didn’t get into technology much, but there’s other options that could be considered as well to foster learner agency.

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Cindy Lopez: So, what would barriers to learning look like? What would that include?

Brenda Green, MEd, EdD: So, let’s go back to the goal. So, let’s just say again, your goal was students will demonstrate understanding of the life cycle of butterflies, right? And so what’s important to note is that in order for students to make choices about how to reach that goal, they would need to know the success criteria associated with that goal. And what that success criteria does is that it allows students to understand what’s expected of them and that way that will allow them, again, to choose the ways in which they would go about demonstrating understanding. So, what you get back from students would be stronger and better aligned to your expectations if they know what’s expected. So, when I say things like, let the kid choose an option, well, that’s not isolated from understanding the expectations for what is expected of the student. And so, you know, again, like that language of demonstrating understanding versus show me by writing, you can see that there’s some more flexibility in just that idea of demonstrating learning of some content when there’s some expectations for learning conveyed to students. 

And I want to make clear also that even though we’re allowing students choices, these choices are aligned to grade level expectations. So, these choices should not be perceived as one being easier than the other. All of these choices should be aligning to the learning target and the success criteria set out between the teacher and the student because this success criteria can be co-designed. So, that’s important to note as well. So, hopefully that helps you visualize what this could look like just by simply writing a clear goal that’s flexible for kids to like jump in while meeting expectation.

Cindy Lopez: Yes. And I think that nuance is really good to point out, like while meeting expectation. This is not about choosing the easier option, so to speak. And it’s important as you are designing learning to think about that as well.

So, let’s go back to hope for a minute – agency and hope – and how can educators intentionally design learning experiences that really build both agency and hope?

Brenda Green, MEd, EdD: Yes. So, looking back at the three elements. So, I did mention the three elements of hope – goals. So, as part of the UDL design process, you set clear goals with flexible means. This leads into pathways thinking because with flexible means, students can choose their path to meeting the learning target and grade level expectations for learning. The goal of UDL is learner agency and so the belief in one’s own capacity to take action. And so the more options available for students to navigate their learning will foster learner agency as they explore what works best for them. So, that’s in a nutshell the strongest alignments to UDL because as you can see goals is a big part of the UDL design process. And so, goals is also important when we’re trying to give kids a sense of hope, because we can practice this, the flexible pathways to the learning goals. Same ideas as when we talk about hope, and then of course agency. Huge idea, huge concept when we think about hope and what hope is made up of, right? So, this is strongly aligned to UDL as well.

Cindy Lopez: As we think about creating this environment, and teachers really being critical in the process of designing that environment, what are some barriers that teachers might unintentionally create that undermine this process?

Brenda Green, MEd, EdD: I’m so glad you asked that question because, you know, we don’t intend to hurt our students, right, or harm our students. So, as educators, we have our design bias, and I mentioned this earlier when developing lessons, right? We tend to include options that work best for us as learners. So, to redesign your practice of developing lessons, look for more opportunities to expand on the ways in which students engage in the learning, perceive information. 

For myself again, the way I learn, a lot of like text, but kids now are listening to audio and they’re looking at videos, right? They have different ways now to perceive information. And so we want to incorporate that more. And then of course, including options to give them different ways to express themselves, right, beyond traditional techniques. So, for example, I often like to show a video where there’s a English teacher. His goal was to get students to develop a speech where they’re attending to audience and tone. And so the students got to choose a goal that works for them because some kids are internal by nature and so speaking in front of a lot of kids could be scary. So, he gave them options to record themselves on a video; present their speech to a small group, to him individually-the teacher, the whole class. And so, if we think about traditionally how techniques for giving a speech has been given, everyone presents to everyone, right? And so those are the things you want to think about in your lesson that maybe you normally wouldn’t have experience in your learning experience, but we know this is best for students, right?

The other thing is fostering a sense of belonging by getting to know your students and their interests can inform the options and choices students make within a learning environment. So again, you are hearing me say throughout the through line here is, we got to hear from students because again, the goal is to build their sense of agency. We want them to be hopeful in their pursuit of learning. And so, we want to be sure we’re hearing from students and getting their feedback and knowing them to inform not only our practices, but our designs and even change our thinking just around how to handle students in general.

Cindy Lopez: Yeah. Just listening to you, thinking about that whole belonging piece and get to know your students and a lot of times I’m working at Children’s Health Council, talking with a lot of our clinicians and doing a lot of these podcast episodes with our clinicians… a lot of time what comes up with them is just listening – like, be curious and listen. And so, I think that’s an important thing for educators to remember too, be curious, genuinely curious, and listen. And I think you’ll learn so much from your students and about your students and also that idea that the strengths based piece is kind of baked into UDL because the more you understand about your students and their strengths, like you can create environments for learning where the student gets to not only shine, but really leverage those strengths. 

So, it’s a really great opportunity to design learning spaces that make learning really accessible to kids and meaningful and where kids get engaged in it. 

So, if a teacher’s just getting started with this process and integrating some of these concepts, talking about hope, the science of hope and UDL and agency and belonging, what would be your top two or three recommendations about where to begin?

Brenda Green, MEd, EdD: So, we’ve already established the alignment between hope and UDL, right? And so I’m going to present some questions for the listeners to think through and hopefully this will inspire them to go to the guidelines to learn more. But the first thing I would do is start with reflecting on barriers. So, where are you looking to minimize barriers and honor variability, right? So, there’s this idea and we know that from the learning brain, and the research from that is that learners vary in predictable ways. And because it’s predictable, we can actually plan for that. And so the idea, when you think about variability, it’s not going to be you attending to each of the students, but instead look at the range of what they need and the range of their strengths, right, the things that they need. So, looking at the range of your learners could help start you in a healthy place so you’re not overwhelmed with like looking at, you know, what barriers you’re wanting to minimize. 

And so, I mentioned earlier there’s three principles to UDL: there’s engagement, representation, action and expression. Based on those barriers, maybe the theme of your barriers could fall under engagement. It could fall under how materials are being represented in your class, or it could fall in how kids are communicating their learning. So, I would challenge you to list the barriers you’re trying to minimize, align them to one of those principles so that you can have a starting place within the guidelines. The next thing is think about where are there challenges in your design and or environment, right? Are there issues of access? Are there issues of kids needing more support or are there issues with executive function? So, when you do go back to the guidelines, you’re going see the guidelines organized in three chunks horizontally: access, providing greater access, a role for providing greater support or a role for supporting executive function in your lesson, that’ll give you another area to narrow your focus on in, right? So, you might decide you just want to promote access or figure out how you can include greater access in your lesson. You would just focus in on that area of the guidelines and see what is being offered, and then try to incorporate that guidance into your lesson.

The next thing I would suggest is once you narrow down a principle, a UDL principle of focus, and whether you want to focus on access, support, or executive function, I would choose a guideline, at least one right and/or consideration to incorporate in your design and just start small. So, the goal is not for you to incorporate everything you see within those guidelines. The goal is to narrow your focus based on the barrier you’re trying to minimize while attending to the variability that exists across learners, right? And so that’s what we want to do while flourishing hope (let’s take us back to the beginning) and supporting learner agency.

Cindy Lopez: Yeah, I think what you are alluding to is start small. That’s really good. You know, try one thing at a time. That might be helpful too. And then think about what small shifts can create meaningful change. Educators can reflect on that as they’re thinking through some of these things. So, and also for our listeners, just so you know, we will make sure to include the link to the UDL guidelines in the show notes so you have that because if you’re listening to this, you’ll want to refer back to those for sure. And, Brenda, it’s been such a great conversation today. Thank you so much for sharing your time, your expertise and insights with us. As we wrap up, I’m wondering what you really hope that our listeners would take away from the conversation today.

Brenda Green, MEd, EdD: Yes. Thank you Cindy. So, I’m hoping that you’ve taken away the alignment between UDL and hope, the hope science or hope theory, you’ll see those terms, means the same thing if you were to do your own research. But more importantly, that you’re inspired to take another look at how you would apply the UDL guidelines and the UDL design process to your lessons or your physical environment so that you can begin thinking of ways to foster hope and increase access and agency for all learners.

And then also get to know your students, talk to your students. I’ll leave you with this: during my time, when I was working on my dissertation I studied quite a few urban high school principals, and I was interested in figuring out the ways in which they implemented programs to support Algebra one achievement and African American students. And what I learned is that the leader that had the most success with students, not just African American students, right, but with all students was the leader who incorporated student feedback at every level of the system – whether it was the PLC students were involved, whether it was designing the master schedule for kids who worked after school but still needed to meet Algebra one requirement. What are some other options we can do to help you? Like at every level of the system, students had a voice, and I think that hopefully that inspires you to figure out the ways in which you can capture the hearts and feedback from students. The students have all the answers–they really do, they can really help you with how to reshape your lesson and have you rethink your delivery of content.

Cindy Lopez: For parents who might be listening, how can parents be more involved in this process around designing environments for learning?

Brenda Green, MEd, EdD: I think that it is super important for parents to engage the school system in general. Parents have a lot of information about their child, right, and so that feedback is just as important as getting the feedback from the students because they have a window into the learner that we as educators may not have because they’re with them most of the time. And so definitely figuring out a way that parents are welcome to provide some feedback to folks at your school site, whether it be a counselor or even I’m thinking of the parent committee leader, PTO, right, some way in which parents can actually give feedback so that it can actually inform the greater system. This feedback from parents can help on all levels, So, giving parents a space and place to be able to engage in conversations such as this to support your efforts with UDL. And again, to foster hope, like we want to be sure that we do hear from parents as well. And I know I’ve been putting a lot of emphasis on students because that’s who we serve first, but there’s other voices that we should include in our data points as we figure out the initiatives and the ways in which we implement our programs.

Cindy Lopez: So, to our listeners, thank you so much for joining us today. If you’re a parent and you need help with your child, whether it’s about learning or mental health, please reach out. You can reach our care team via email at [email protected]. Also, please take a look at those UDL guidelines and like I said, you can find that in the show notes.

Brenda Green, MEd, EdD: For the listeners, you can go to cast.org and you’ll find a link right at the top for the UDL guidelines.

Cindy Lopez: Thank you. Thank you all. Thank you Brenda. And, for our listeners, thank you for joining in.

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