Welcoming the Sunlight: A Conversation With Mary Kay Zabel and Robert Zabel

Would you tell us how you got into the field of educating students with EBD?

I don’t know who’s going to take this; our careers have been kind of in-step with one another, for the most part. How about you begin and I’ll interrupt?

Well, I started my professional career as a third-grade teacher in Zion, Illinois, on the outskirts of Chicago. I had just completed a bachelor’s degree in English at Grinnell College and I knew a fair amount about Shakespeare and American fiction. I had no professional training to teach anything. What I knew about third grade was from my own experience as a third-grade student. Back in the day, you could get hired if you were breathing and upright.

I had 37 kids in my class and was pretty overwhelmed, but the two most interesting students were two little guys who were a real handful and, I later discovered, had extremely low IQ scores. Somehow, they were the most interesting people in the room. Having survived that year, barely, I decided I wanted to learn what I should have been doing for that whole year and to really focus on kids that had some of the issues of those two little guys that I found so interesting.

I began my teaching career at the same time, although I didn’t know it would become a career. I had majored in history, specializing in modern European history, which prepared me for my sixth-grade class. I had 35 students in that group with a wide range of academic abilities. A couple of the kids were nonreaders and one or two others might have been gifted. Like Mary Kay, I knew nothing about teaching, let alone disabilities or special education. At that time, the only special programs in the district were for kids with multiple or severe disabilities. In my class, though, I did have three kids that I remember really clearly. Only later did I realize that they most likely would have been identified as having emotional/behavioral disorders. Those three students made an impact on me and remained fixed in my mind throughout my whole career.

Mary Kay and I were hired over the phone just a few weeks before the beginning of school. The district had been unable to hire certified teachers, so we were granted temporary waivers. Today might be called emergency licenses. During the course of that year, which was at the height of the Viet Nam War, I had received status as a conscientious objector and that meant that I needed to arrange for an acceptable alternative service.

What year was that?

This was 1969–1970. The Selective Service System provided a list of approved positions. They were social service jobs that were difficult to fill due to the unappealing nature of the work and low pay. I found a position with Illinois Children’s Home and Aid Society at a residential treatment center in Evanston for emotionally disturbed children and, no real surprise, I was hired. After a day of training, I was a house parent for 2 years and then continued for another year as a part-time counselor position when I returned to school.

While Bob was doing his alternative service, I went to school at National College of Education and got a master’s of arts in teaching (MAT). The MAT was a rather forward-thinking idea that might have been a good idea to keep around. So, I was able to get a master’s degree and certification in special education and regular education. I started teaching in special education, emotional/behavioral disorders, while Bob was still at the residential treatment center. Later, he returned to grad school to get certified and a master’s in general and special education. We both taught in suburban Chicago before deciding to go back to school once again, this time to University of Minnesota. After finishing our doctorates there, we came to Kansas.

Where we stayed for nearly three decades, which sounds even a bit longer than 29 years.

How would you describe your career in the field?

I would describe it as really interesting and a lot of it as a great deal of fun. It involved many people that I can’t imagine my life without. I continue to believe that some of the best people on the planet are people that deal with this group of kids. That’s because of their compassion and their intelligence and their really bizarre sense of humor, all of which are absolutely required in this line of work. I was a public school teacher for a relatively short time, but those years have stayed with me and my years at KSU were marked with a lot of changes.

While I was at KSU, I moved into the area of early childhood special education. Behavior disorders was still my main love, but I became especially interested in young children with emotional and behavior disorders. The early childhood special education program was a passion for me. I enjoyed the joint effort working with faculty in Human Development and Family Studies, which was certainly a change. Watching the changes in the state, something was always moving and shaking and you just sort of rolled with the punches, adapted, and tried to stay out in front, and that’s still true.

I would say that our careers have followed very similar paths. I remember when Mike Nelson (Zabel, Kaff, & Teagarden, 2015) was president of Council for Children with Behavior Disorders, maybe 30 years ago, he said something like, “The bad kid business is good business.” That’s always stuck with me and I agree. It is good work, and I think that the people who do this work are really, really good people. I couldn’t be happier about my career choice. I think that given all the possibilities, this was the best match for me, in terms of doing something that I have some passion for. I have found it to be really interesting, especially because of the people—the students, the teachers, the colleagues—that I have encountered.

CCBD was a big part of that.

Yes, CCBD, and, of course, the MSLBD over the years. Those ongoing professional, collegial relationships have been important and continue to be.

Speaking of people, what events, policies, people, and innovations have had the most influence on your professional lives?

Well, as for people, hands down, it is Frank Wood (Zabel, Kaff, & Teagarden, 2011). He was our advisor at Minnesota, for each of us, and he has remained our mentor. He didn’t know he was signing on for a really long term. Everyone says the same thing about Frank, and I would only echo, he is one of the most amazing men I have known and continues to be so. He’s a model for how to live, as well as how to do this work. So, he was a really positive influence and standard to which I have aspired—have never made it, but he’s a major, major influence.

Policywise, we were certainly on the ground when P. L. 94-142 came about; we were in graduate school. I remember listening to testimony before Congress, considering what that would mean and wondering if this could ever really happen. It was a “be careful what you wish for” kind of thing. Obviously, 94-142 was a major milestone, because now these kids had a legal right to education.

To give an example of just how far back I go, my first special education job was the summer I graduated from high school. I was looking for a summer job and I found one working in an early childhood program for kids with mental retardation in Lincoln, Nebraska. My job was to work with these preschool kids to get them toilet trained, to be able to express their needs, and have some ability to communicate so that they could go to the school for kids with mental retardation, which was not a public school. At that time, those kids would be told, “No, we don’t have that in a public school” and “go home.” So, it was a huge shift when suddenly what I think of as “our kids” were everyone’s responsibility and not just ours. I suppose the lead-up from that to the dissolution of special education services, that I see to some extent now, was a natural process. Maybe in the long run, there’s some good in that. Still, I feel like the services were more intensive when we had programs designed and directed at more specific disabilities.

I won’t repeat everything you said about Frank, but he had a tremendous influence on us coming to Minnesota and our experiences there. And he has had a major influence on the field of education of children with E/BD. In the 1970s, we both were involved as graduate assistants in his Advanced Training Institutes. Several times a year, the institutes brought in cutting edge people like Nick Long (Teagarden, Kaff, & Zabel, 2011), Peter Knoblock, Bill Morse, Bill Rhodes, Dick Whelan (Kaff, Teagarden, & Zabel, 2011), and Frank Hewett to work with university faculty from across the country. These were the pioneers in our field, innovating, researching, and developing programs that became models. It was a fantastic opportunity for us, in relatively small formats, to interact with them, to learn from them and all the other folks who participated. They were all, in a sense, our mentors.

Another early development under way at that time was Bill Rhodes’ Conceptual Project in Emotional Disturbance at the University of Michigan. The Conceptual Project produced A Study of Child Variance, which identified and discussed ways of understanding and treating emotional/behavior disorders. Those were important resources for me throughout my career and helped shape the way I understand emotional/behavior disorders, treatment, and programming.

The interesting thing for us was, we were a part of this—not at the very beginning, but close after that. On the heels of the ‘60s and ‘70s, there was so much turmoil and so much angst and so much fear and anger. It was a very exciting time to be able to latch onto something that had some good to it, to care about and for other people, to be able to do something with like-minded people. We were all kind of the people’s army, advocating for programs and being out there on what we considered the front lines. It was a time where you got people joining together and feeling close about those things. There was an excitement.

Special education became for us a career where we could practice the values that we had formed. We recently attended a special exhibit at the Minnesota History Center focused on the year 1968. It’s not a time I’d like to go back to. Even though today we may look at some of what’s going on in our world, both in this country and internationally, and think that these are the worst of times, that exhibit reminded us that those times were very troubling, challenging times. I think this whole field and our careers have been a way for us to deal with that turmoil and help make something good from it. At least we thought we were doing something for the greater good and we were having fun doing it!

I would also stress the importance of the legislation, P. L. 94-142, on the field of special education and our careers. Bruce Balow, one of our faculty influences at the University of Minnesota, had been director of professional preparation for the Bureau of Education for Handicapped in Washington, D.C., during the development of 94-142 and worked closely with members of Congress, like Congressman Albert Quie from Minnesota, who helped sponsor the legislation, so we felt a special connection to that effort.

Over the past 25 to 30 years, what has had the greatest positive impact on the field?

The light of day, sunlight! Our kids are no longer in the attic, and they’re not in the basement. My first BD class not only was actually in the basement, but the janitor had to go through my classroom to get to his office, if that’s what you call that. So, we were privy to anyone who threw up because we would see the janitor come and get his bag of sawdust and his mop. We had a lot of insider information in my classroom about what was going on in the school in those years. We also had snakes down there, which was marvelous for BD kids and their teacher, who already found life a bit threatening. So, I think our kids are harder to ignore or to dismiss than they were at one time. I see that as a huge improvement.

Earlier, I alluded to the fact that I think sometimes services for these children have been a bit diluted. When our kids are in a general education class, there are good things about that but there also are things that aren’t so good. Most of us started in self-contained programs and there was a degree of magic that could happen there. It was a safe haven for some of our kids. It’s a hard, but probably a necessary, loss so they can become a part of the larger world. In general, I think that more inclusion has been positive.

Another valuable trend during this period of time has been further development of behavioral technology. When we first began in the field, it was primarily psychoanalytically oriented. That was certainly true in the residential treatment center where I worked. By the 1970s, we were beginning to see the work of people like Frank Hewett with his “engineered classroom.” In The Emotionally Disturbed Child in the Classroom, Hewett (1970) pulled together the work of B. F. Skinner, Albert Bandura, and others and adapted their work to schools, whereas in the past, they had been used primarily in residential and hospital settings.

I think the most important developments in our field have been new policies and laws and new technologies that enable us to employ more effective interventions in more normalized settings.

Another area of innovation has been medications. At the outset of our careers, there were few effective medications for psychological issues or problems. I’m no expert on medications, but they have been lifesavers for some kids—for others, maybe not so much—but we’ve definitely seen changes in the use of medications.

Any other positive influences?

Oh, I think the good people are still doing what they’ve always done and I think that this field still attracts good people to this work. I’ve taught several leadership and administration classes for Kansas State University. I’ve been really impressed with some of the principals that I’ve known over the years and how they want to know more about working with these kids. That’s a huge improvement, certainly, from the early days when we were in the basement and as long as you were quiet, nobody ever came to see you, nobody. I was never evaluated because no one wanted to sit in my classroom for 15 minutes. It was like, “She’s still alive? Fine. Kids alive? Fine.”

Over the years, we’ve seen many special educators become administrators as principals and in other leadership roles.

That fusion of skills has been a very positive shift away from the separate systems that existed for a long time.

What do you consider some of the negative impacts on the field?

Something that I’ve seen over about the last 10 to 15 years is less professional identification specifically with education of students with E/BD. I think there are larger ramifications when we lose that kind of professional identity. For instance, there’s been a decrease in the number of people who belong to CCBD, CEC [Council for Exceptional Children], and MSLBD. That has a snowball effect, I think, in terms of the preparation of people to work with these kids, access and involvement in peer support groups, sharing ideas, and awareness and knowledge of research and other professional literature. I always had a strong identity, even within the larger field of special education, with emotional/behavior disorders. That’s what I am mostly interested in. I’m not saying that other areas of special education aren’t also interesting and worthwhile—they’re just not my particular interests. I think we’re losing some of the professional identity that helps us feel like specialists, like experts, and are able to form strong collegial relationships with like-minded people.

Also, early in our career there was a nice peak in funding both for training teachers and for schools being able to fund their programs. It seems that every year there are fewer resources and more to do. There’s a point where there’s no more to give. That started a long time ago, but it has continued and that’s really too bad. Our kids are not going away and they’re not getting any easier to help. We might be getting better at what we do, but when caseloads are doubled or tripled and support decreases, you can’t expect to provide the quality programs that these children deserve.

This fall, we had coffee with a former student who was in Minnesota and stopped to visit. She works with kids with autism. She has six paras [paraprofessionals]. She said, “I would like five of them to stay in the hall. I don’t know what to do with six paras.” They’re each assigned to individual students. That might make the parents feel better that their child has an individual person, but the child is losing a teacher, who is now busy supervising all these paras. That’s not a good thing.

I’m also especially concerned about students who are incarcerated. A high percentage of kids in juvenile detention have emotional/behavioral disorders, but we’ve identified them as something else, criminals, so they’re not considered deserving of special education. They are considered bad and needing of punishment instead of education and treatment. Sadly, I think that reflects some prevalent views in our society about criminality and incarceration as treatments.

Related to that is the notion of zero tolerance for misbehavior in schools. That is just a terrible idea and has been implemented badly.

I’ve always wanted to ask you two, if you designed a training module for teaching students with emotional/behavior disorders, what would it look like?

It would emphasize language, language, language. Expanding ways to communicate with kids differently. We talk a lot about using the arts to communicate. We need to give kids a language, give them a voice. The more ways we can figure out how to have the conversation, the richer the conversation is. Despite all the IEPs [Individualized Education Programs] and all the goals for our students, if you’re the only one talking, they won’t happen. That’s my thumbnail suggestion.

Your question reminds me about the MAT program Mary Kay mentioned earlier. On the one hand, I think that special education teachers are better prepared when they already have a strong foundation of training in general education, elementary, secondary, or early childhood. But I also think that an option should be available for people to enter the profession from other fields of undergraduate study. I’m not advocating reduced expectations or standards, but I believe that people with more diverse backgrounds in the arts, sciences, social sciences—whatever their backgrounds—could offer a more diverse, richer student body and future teachers.

Are there particular skills that the teachers who work with kids with E/BD are not currently getting?

We’ve had some discussions about this over the years, some of it focused on courses in the traditional disability categories. The discussions are about whether they are meaningful and necessary or if they should be combined into generic characteristics and interventions courses. I’ve argued against generic preparation, partly because I believe that understanding the nature and characteristics of disabilities is integral to how we think about and design interventions. I think we need to have clear understandings of our students and conceptual models to guide our interventions.

That was certainly clear last night when people were sharing stories about their most memorable students. Almost everyone stressed the importance of understanding what a kid was trying to say, behaviorally and verbally. That’s a hard skill to teach because it depends on who you have across the desk from you on what the child or that young person is communicating and why.

I think it’s also important as being able to have specific skills—to be able to design a good lesson plan, for example. Those skills are important for teaching all students, but with our kids, there is something different from the get go. Just because you’ve taught for 10 years, doesn’t mean you’ve seen it all. So, having the tools and facility to understand your students and then having the language to communicate with them and helping give them the language to communicate what goes on in their lives is important.

Too often, we think there’s a kind of dichotomy between the art and science of teaching. Teaching isn’t one or the other; it’s both art and a science.

What do you see in the future for education of children with E/BD?

To go back to my funding theme, I don’t know what’s going to happen. If we continue losing resources and schools have to do more with less, we’ll hear things that we heard 30 years ago, like, “Do we really need to educate these kids? Maybe we should be focusing on the gifted kids, maybe we should . . .” and you think, “Really?” That concerns me a lot.

Obviously, one of the big changes in education we’ve seen has been greater use of technology. Although that’s generally a positive thing, I think our kids still need that person across the desk who’s really listening and really involved with them, has the time to be there and finish the conversation, and not have to run on to the next situation. So, I believe that those core skills, attitudes, predispositions, or whatever you want to call them are still going to be pertinent.

I think the numbers of kids who need services will continue to grow. We have more families in trouble, we have more kids that are homeless, the courts are taking over more functions that social services used to do. I have a real concern about that.

Certainly, for the past few years, there’s been a national obsession with accountability as measured by student performance on standardized academic tests. That can be a piece of educational evaluation, but education is so much more. In fact, I think a limitation of our official definition of E/BD is that it “impairs a child’s educational performance.” Too often, “educational” performance has been defined as “academic” performance. Public education has always been about educating the whole child to participate in a democratic society, being informed, understanding, being able to cooperate, having social skills, “playing well with others,” those kinds of things.

On that note, what advice would you offer those entering the field?

Find the good people and stick with them. Find your mentors and find people that you can rely on, because you will need those people. This is not a job that you can do by yourself. There always has to be support, both in your personal life and in your professional life. You need people that you can talk to, let your hair down with, admit your failings and brainstorm over what’s going on. Throughout our careers, we were fortunate to always have each other. I’ve often wondered how the rest of the world does that, because it was always so easy to have an ear that understood and was able to respond. We also found that kind of understanding and support in our colleagues. I don’t think you can do this work alone.

It’s a stressful job. You have to do it every day and you never know what the kids are going to throw at you, literally sometimes. You never know what the administration is going to throw at you, literally sometimes. So, cultivate your support systems.

I agree. You don’t necessarily have to have a partner or a friend who is in the same business, but you do need somebody who will listen, continues to listen and be supportive. I think professional friendships and involvements are important. We need to know other people who have had experiences similar to ours, who experience the same kinds of feelings, and face the same kinds of challenges.

Just in the last day, I had conversations with two different people, who were talking about their jobs. They both said something like, “Well, I really don’t see how I could leave because I have these colleagues around me who are just so supportive and it’s such a great place to be because of the people there.” I think that’s real smart.

My advice to someone who’s beginning in the field is to find those connections or form them with others in this business. Of course, there are people in a work environment where that’s less possible. In those cases, I think they should try to find other opportunities in professional associations.

You know, back to my BD class in the basement with the snakes and the janitor, I had nobody to talk to, except the kindergarten teacher, who got it. To this day, she is one of my closest friends. We became lifelong friends because she understood these kids and the need to provide mutual support. So, your support systems don’t always need to be other special educators.

Thank both of you for sharing your thoughts and time with us.