PaTTANpod

PaTTANpod is produced by the Pennsylvania Training and Technical Assistance Network, and it covers more ground than a special education label might suggest. Sarah Frey leads the conversations. She is warm and a little playful: she frames one episode as a mashup of two good ideas and jokes about the alphabet soup of acronyms in the field. Underneath the jokes is a practical instinct. In the PLUSS conversation she restates the guest's point in her own words, then asks the question she says everyone always wants to hear answered: what does it look like? That instinct suits the guests. Dr. Julie Esparza-Brown presents PLUSS, a framework for English learners with disabilities, as an overlay on core instruction and interventions rather than a program of its own. Frey sums it up this way: adding evidence-based practice does not have to mean adding work for teachers. Dr. Robert Balfanz, director of the Everyone Graduate Center at Johns Hopkins University, describes a second set of ABCs. In his account, agency, belonging and connectedness drive attendance, behavior and course performance. The useful part is timing. Schools, he argues, can start building those relationships on the first day instead of waiting for screening data in October and November. Several conversations are recorded on location, at the 2024 MTSS and PBIS Advanced Implementation Forum and the 2024 Pennsylvania Department of Education Annual Conference. One goes the other way, into the IU13 workspace of Sarah Ditzler, who produces accessible educational materials for students with print disabilities. She describes learning Braille while working one-to-one as a paraprofessional, at the urging of a teacher of the visually impaired. The show also makes time for other kinds of voices. Ben, a featured conference speaker who advocates for autism awareness, appears with his mother Sandy, his father Glenn and his brother Dan, and the family tells how a moment with a chandelier gave a book about Ben its title. Youth engagement specialists Natasha Fletcher, Haley Penn and Hunter Steins talk through self-determination, student-led IEP goals and pre-employment transition services, and one of them remembers being a 504 kid, sitting in those meetings with a physical therapist at the table. Katherine McLaughlin covers sexuality education for students with developmental or intellectual disabilities. She argues that it belongs at home and at school, with parents sharing their values and educators offering facts and a range of views. For a first listen, 'Creating joy in MTSS: Agency, Belonging, and Connectedness' reaches furthest, since its argument applies to every student. For transition planning, 'Youth engagement? YES, please!' is the most direct route.