Although students are enjoying a hard-earned week off in conjunction with the Thanksgiving holiday, the halls at Marshalltown High School (MHS) were filled with about 600 educators from around Iowa and the country on Monday and Tuesday for an “All Means All” conference led by the professional development company Solution Tree designed to encourage collaboration between special and general education instructors and ensure that all students reach their full potential.

During an introductory address at the Marshalltown Performing Arts Center on Tuesday morning, keynote speaker Julie A. Schmidt of Solution Tree challenged those in the audience to embrace “All Means All” and incorporate it as more than just a slogan.

“It’s a promise. It’s a promise you make to each other. It’s a promise you make to that individual student… It’s a promise to continue to strive to ensure that every student gets there for all students here in Marshalltown and beyond. All means all,” she said.

The educators then split off into smaller breakaway sessions with a variety of presenters, including Schmidt and Fox Lake District 114 (Illinois) Superintendent Heather Friziellie, who led a spirited collaborative game of “Rock, Paper, Scissors” among participants in her group.

During an interview with the T-R, Marshalltown Community School District (MCSD) Executive Director of Educational Services Shauna Smith and educator Jonathan Beck of the Groveport Madison (Ohio) School District near Columbus reflected on what they had learned thus far and hoped to take back to their day jobs going forward.

“I know that our group has been looking at strategies for powerful collaboration and student gains and also looking at guiding terms toward inclusive excellence (and) maximizing impact through high level collaboration. I think this is really just a great opportunity for us to be able to come this great distance here to Marshalltown, Iowa, and by the way, everyone here’s been so pleasant. And we really enjoyed Zeno’s Pizza last night. That was outstanding,” Beck said. “But there’s just so many takeaways we can get from our Solution Tree folks here in Marshalltown, Iowa.”

The overarching message, Smith added, is that all learners can succeed, regardless of whether or not they come from a disadvantaged background.

“It needs to become our belief and our mission and purpose to make sure that all of our students have that same opportunity vs. only the students that maybe are coming from those better positioned homes,” she said.

MCSD Director of Special Education Benjamin LaConner said the conference helped him gain a renewed appreciation for the importance of general and special education professionals working together, which he described as “foundational” to their success.

“I think, moving forward, I’m really glad everybody’s hearing that message. I hear a lot of teachers reflecting about how they want to make that happen, and then I think, on the administrative level, we’ve got to start to make the structures to give teachers space to do that,” he said. “I think that our teachers really want to work together and really care deeply about our kids, and the challenges (are that) teachers train to be special educators and go through, kind of, one set of teacher training, or they train to be math teachers, and they don’t have a lot of crossover and we throw them in the school together. I see a lot of our teachers really wanting to bridge that gap and work together, and it takes a lot of time to understand each of our areas of expertise and how we blend those.”

He was also excited about the message that being involved in special education doesn’t mean students are less intelligent or less capable, but simply an indication that they learn differently.

“I think that’s a common misconception for folks outside of education. You think the label means less capable when really it doesn’t. And so getting that word out there and making that our focus of how we help those kids be successful, I think, is really exciting,” LaConner said.

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Contact Robert Maharry at 641-753-6611 ext. 255 or

rmaharry@timesrepublican.com.