For Uncle Charlie: A Conversation With Dr. Kristine Melloy

Tell us how you got into the field of educating children with emotional behavior disorders (EBD)?

Well, my Uncle Charlie was my inspiration for getting into education and specifically the field of special education. Uncle Charlie was 14 years older than me and had Down syndrome. We actually shared a birthday, so from the time I was a small child I had a special closeness with him. By the time I was 7 years old, I was determined to be a teacher.

As I got into high school and was trying to decide what kind of teacher I wanted to become, my high school advisor helped me fine tune that dream, that desire to become a special education teacher. At the time, special education was something new, so I found a college in Iowa that allowed me to have a double major in general education and special education.

I went from there to become a special education teacher and taught special education for 10 years. First with kids with developmental disabilities and then EBD. But, my Uncle Charlie was my inspiration.

When did you begin your career?

I graduated with an undergraduate degree in education/special education in 1977.

Would you describe your career since then?

I’ve been an educational professional since 1977. I started out as a classroom teacher, and I was literally in a self-contained classroom in the basement of an old Catholic school next to the boiler room. You can’t get more classic than that for special education. I worked with high school age students with developmental or cognitive disabilities. Some of those students had never been in a school because it was right after the Education of All Handicapped Children Act (EHA, P. L. 94-142) was passed. It was a rural Iowa school district where some of the students’ closest neighbors didn’t even know they existed. The students in my first class were 16 to 21 years old.

The next year we moved to a new facility housed in an elementary-junior high building. We weren’t quite at the high school, but we were in a new building that had classrooms set up to teach living skills, social skills, basic academic skills, and career skills. It was a really fancy, state-of-the-art classroom for its time. I taught there for 6 years.

Then I went on to teach in an alternative setting. It was part of a new, grant-funded program in Iowa for teaching transition skills to students who had not obtained their high school diploma in the usual time frame. During that time, I also started my doctoral program at the University of Iowa. As often happens, the grant funds ran out for the alternative program, so I went back to teaching in a self-contained EBD classroom with elementary and junior high students. My thinking was that if I’m getting my doctoral degree and haven’t taught elementary-middle school students with EBD, I should have that experience, so I did that for 2 years.

Altogether, I taught in classroom settings for 10 years, went into the doctoral program at Iowa, finished the program, and started my career as a university professor at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota. I was a professor there for 18 years and taught teachers in the School of Education, Special Education, specializing in EBD.

In 2006, I had an interesting invitation to start up a high school in the urban core for under-resourced students. I took a 2-year leave of absence from the University of St. Thomas and became the founding principal of the Cristo Rey Jesuit High School—Twin Cities, a college preparatory work-study high school. I did that for 4 years.

When I left that project, I had another interesting invitation to become the chairperson of the Education Enhancement Department in a medical school at American University of Antigua. I was asked to chair a department that, of all things, worked with students with learning disabilities, ADHD, and other disabilities and non-disabilities, who had difficulty being successful in medical school. It was one of those lifetime opportunities to live on a tropical island and work at the university. After a year in the West Indies, I came back to St. Paul and worked as a coach in self-contained programs for kids with EBD. So, I kind of made a full circle back to working with kids and teachers in the public schools and settings for EBD sites.

Recently, I went back to higher education and have the great opportunity to prepare special education administrators as a professor in the School of Education at the University of Northern Colorado. One of the biggest challenges administrators face in the schools and at the district level is effective interventions for students with EBD. Sharing ideas with administrators in training about how best to address the needs of students with EBD has proven to be a wonderful twist in my vocational and career journey.

What events and policies have most influenced your professional life?

In my mind, the biggest one was the passage of EHA in 1975. That whole set of legislation has had a major impact on education of kids with disabilities. That’s the biggest piece of legislation, the biggest policy, of course, and all of the things that have fallen out as a result of that.

What have been the biggest innovations?

Although our students with EBD put on a good front and give the impression that they know how to use technology, I’d say the biggest innovations involve technology. Our kids’ use of technology for their own education still has a long way to go. And their teachers, including me, also have a long way to go in using technology to the best of our ability. It used to be that the only way we could communicate with each other and share what we know was face-to-face, but with social media and e-mail that has changed.

Last week for example, one of the schools where I work needed some intervention ideas. Some of the kids are in major crisis and that puts the rest of the school in crisis. I needed help now, so I e-mailed Greg Benner and said, “Greg, I can’t wait to see you at the conference next week to get some ideas, but I need help now.” He sent me his “Prevent, Teach, Reinforce” ideas, and I was able to help the mental health professionals and teachers put those into practice with eight students in the middle school. That technology made for instantaneous communication.

I recently had a similar experience with Michael George. I e-mailed him and said, “Michael, I need to bring a team out to see what’s going on in your school with best practices.” Communication in the past that would have involved phone calls, paper and pencil communication, but now technologies do the observations, collect data, and analyze results have helped us to make fast work of all of that. It’s been really helpful to watch YouTube videos showing how to implement an intervention.

You mentioned Michael George and Greg Benner. Are there others who have been influential in your career?

There’s a quote that I’m going to really mess up, and I even forget the writer, but it’s something about someone who takes a sharp stick and pokes you in the butt and keeps you going. For me it has been teachers who have done that, and there have been many. One of the most influential people in my life has been Gary Sasso. He was my advisor at the University of Iowa and he was the person who probably had the most influence on me my entire career and my vocation. I don’t see him very much anymore, but he’s the person who has always believed in me. He probably knows me better than any other educator.

Then there’s Jim Kaufmann, of course. I’ve used Jim’s writings in every course that I ever taught. Jim has been so influential on the field and how we work with our kids and how we are with kids. Another influence has been Nick Long and his ideas about how we treat kids with EBD and how we are with them. There’s Howard Muscott, Steve Forness, Doug Cheney, Kathleen Lane, Terry Scott, and many more who have influenced my career in positive ways.

What has had the greatest positive impact on the field?

One positive influence is the proactive approaches to working with our kids with EBD, positive behavior intervention and supports [PBIS]. Another positive influence has been joining academic and behavioral interventions together. The whole idea is that kids with EBD can learn, and not just learn basic academics, but rigorous academics. The fact that they have EBD does not mean that they can’t learn or that they can’t learn rigorous academics. Good instruction is probably our best behavior intervention. That belief has probably had the biggest positive impact on the field.

What has had the biggest negative impact?

I think the biggest negative impact has been segregating our kids with EBD and the adults that work with them from kids without emotional behavioral disorders. By far the biggest negative impact has been a belief that moving these kids away from others would give us time to teach new ways of being that would allow them to go back in and fit in with the other kids. I never really believed that, but too many people were so willing to get kids out, because they thought they were a bad influence on the other kids and that was harmful. Actually, segregating kids with EBD makes the process of integrating them back in with other kids almost impossible.

As you look to the future for this field, what do you see?

My vision for every kid with EBD is the opportunity to get an education so that they can fulfill their true potential, their purpose in life, and that they have a happy life.

What is your advice for persons entering the field either as a practitioner or as someone in higher education?

My advice is to take care of yourself. That’s a problem for professionals like us. The last person we want to take care of is ourself. I’ve learned that if you don’t take care of yourself, you’re not going to be around very long or you’re not going to be very effective caring for the very people you care most about—your loved ones and the students you love so much. So, take care of yourself, whatever that means to you.

Also, I advise new persons to join professional organizations and become involved in professional organizations. You asked earlier about important events. I didn’t say this then, but I made my best friends in the world through events like the Midwest Symposium for Leadership in Behavior Disorders (MSLBD) and the leadership opportunities within MSLBD, Teacher Educators for Children with Behavioral Disorders (TECBD), Council for Children with Behavior Disorders (CCBD) and The Council for Exceptional Children (CEC). I especially remember some of the MSLBD Think Tanks a few years ago. I encourage people to join organizations and become involved because your fellow professionals and colleagues are going to help take care of you. They’re your supports.

I encourage people to continue engaging in professional development, be a lifelong learner. There’s always something to learn. I’m in the 41st year in my career. I regularly attend professional conferences and I sit in on as many sessions as possible. Taking notes and downloading presentations from the conference websites, helps me to integrate this new learning into my teaching of teachers and administrators. I need to share ideas and approaches with them and my brain can’t store all this information! I also encourage people who are new to the field to read the journals, the professional literature.

So, my advice is to take care of yourself, be involved in professional organizations, engage in academic and professional conversations with your colleagues, and take advantage of the technology that’s available to you. Most important, do fun things and enjoy the kids. Love what you do and do what you love.