This article addresses the need for novice teachers to receive exposure and experiences related to family engagement as part of their academic preparation to better facilitate their actual parent involvement practices. In a graduate-level parent involvement in education course, early childhood educators had an opportunity to engage in a variety of family engagement practices and reflect on the effectiveness and outcomes for the students and their families.

Special education has the enhanced capacity to address digital literacies and storytelling, especially as parents become instrumental in the delivery of education through technology. While increasing digital opportunities for interventions and supports for students with learning exceptionalities must be a focus and consideration to improve students' outcomes, there still must be a certain level of sense-making for parents and legal guardians—particularly to strengthen student outcomes. Special educators are well positioned to help lead the work of transforming the relationships between themselves and parents. This chapter briefly explores the history of special education and race, family engagement, evidence-based practices, and opportunities to ensure that special educators help create conversations that lead to actionable opportunities to enhance and improve parent implemented interventions to incorporate families of color in the implementation of digital literacies and digitized platforms of teaching and learning.

(2019). “Still going… sometimes in the dark”: Reflections of a woman of color educator. Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies. Ahead of Print.

The preparation of special education practitioners is a field that is ever-evolving. To that end, this paper aims to demonstrate the utility and increased opportunity of embedding artificial intelligence (AI) tools within the preparation programs of special educators, particularly as it is contextualize within the community college space. Additionally, this paper attempts to establish an abbreviated research base for AI within education-centered literature, particularly as this piece illustrates the impact of community college and specific coursework that is used to provide learning opportunities for students studying the fundamentals of special education. Last, this document illustrates how AI may be used as an engaging component to special education coursework to improve the ways in which special education teacher-educators, i.e., research-practitioners who train and provide academic and professional development for special educators, design and develop coursework within settings of teaching and learning.