The Power of Play with Dr. Tyana Velasquez-Smith: Nurturing Young Minds Through Sensational Inclusion Literacy Practices

Can play truly transform the way we learn? Join us for an eye-opening conversation with Dr. Tyana Velasquez-Smith, the visionary CEO of Sensational Inclusions.  Dr. Tyana shares her five non-negotiables for education and argues that play is not just a pastime but a human right essential for our emotional and psychological well-being. Learn how Sensational Inclusions is revolutionizing emergent literacy by harnessing students' special interests in sensory-friendly environments.

We also delve into the indispensable roles that both teachers and parents play in enhancing the literacy journey of students. Dr. Tyana emphasizes the importance of empowering teachers with the autonomy to implement effective strategies, while also encouraging parents to advocate for holistic, play-based learning methods. We talk about the need to create an inclusive classroom dynamic where no student feels left behind. This synergy between educators and parents is pivotal for fostering a supportive and enriching educational experience.

Lastly, we touch on the benefits of risky play in developing resilience and essential life skills such as reading and comprehension. Comparisons to learning to walk illustrate the importance of allowing children to experience and interpret their own emotions and failures. We also explore how diversity in children's literature, e.g. Big by Vashanti Harrison and More Than Peach by Bellen Woodard, can shape young minds. As we wrap up, Dr. Tyana shares sneak peeks of her upcoming projects, including a much-anticipated book release. Don’t miss out on this compelling episode that promises to reshape your understanding of play and learning!

Transcript

00:02 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Play is a human right. All behavior is communication. Joy is the essential ingredient for effective learning. Providing inaccessible education is illegal and Queen Beyonce reigns supreme. I want to introduce you to somebody who is very dear to my heart. She is the CEO of Sensational Inclusion, Dr Tyana Velasquez-Smith. Welcome to the Adventures in Learning podcast. 

00:31 - Dr Tyana Velasquez-Smith (Guest)
Thank you so, so, so much for having me, Dr Diane. 

00:35 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
So let's start with those five non-negotiables on your blog post. Tell us a little bit more about those. I think we can knock out Queen Beyonce at the end. We all agree yes. 

00:46 - Dr Tyana Velasquez-Smith (Guest)
I guess we can start at one of the most important right, that play is a human right, and we live in a society where, unfortunately, play is not viewed as a human right. It is viewed and treated as a luxury, or viewed and treated as something that you get after you've achieved a task, and so when I say play is a human right, that's a full stop. There's no negotiating about that, and it's what we all have to do together while we're on this hot rock together for emotional wellness, for psychological well-being, for connectivity, for learning to happen. We know that play is the mode of communication for children and adults, and so it absolutely is a part of the human fabric, and it is something that we need to start normalizing within this high production society that we do live in. 

01:38 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Absolutely, and let's actually connect play to your adventures in learning. You are the CEO of Sensational Inclusion and you've done some really cool things to get there. You know you worked for the Strong Museum of Play in Rochester. You've earned your PhD. You are neurodivergent as well. Can you describe your adventures in learning and tell us how you went from being a neurodivergent little girl to being the CEO of a very successful business? 

02:08 - Dr Tyana Velasquez-Smith (Guest)
Yes, I think this is. I'm still on this adventure of learning, but I think, in being a neurodivergent young black girl especially at the time the community that I grew up was predominantly white I had to do a high degree of escapism in my own head and in my own mind. One of the ways that I escaped was through creating paper dresses for my dolls. Like, I had a ton of Barbie dolls and I loved having dolls. I played with dolls up until the time I was graduating from high school. I just I love dolls I still love dolls, but I would make them dresses and while I was getting them ready, I would kind of like escape in my own mind, like I cannot wait to be a grownup and get to. I always had like this vision in my head that I was going to have like this power suit, a suitcase, like six inch stiletto heels and telling everyone what to do, mostly because I felt like, as an autistic child, everyone was always telling me what not to do, so I would just wait to tell everyone what to do and how to do it, and so I will say that play was so much a part of that meaning making and and a sense of like you're okay. Like you are okay in the way that you are in the body that you, that you're in, even as an adult. So like you're okay, like you are okay in the way that you are in the body that you, that you're in, even as an adult. So like I'm still consistently trying to I get hyper fixated on things, like one of them right now is Oppenheimer and it's just kind of all of that has been really fascinating to me. 

03:41
Recently got back into rollerblading, me recently got back into rollerblading. I love it. It's so dangerous. First of all, it's so dangerous. The amount of time that was face planted, like in front of my neighbors, is hilarious. And so I think about you know how special it is that my brain allows me to create space for me to work against. Like what adult is just outside rollerblading? Like I don't see them a ton. Maybe it's just where I live. 

04:08
But I have a unique brain that allows me to be pretty flexible and very rigid at times and I think that's kind of like the birth of sensational inclusion was like we can flow in flux, we can hyper fixate and we can be generalists and all of those things are fine and well, as long as the meaning making and the mode of literacy learning, which is what we do at Sensational Inclusion, is happening through play and sensory friendly environments. 

04:38
So I will say like I still feel really, really new and fresh on the learning journey that I'm on right now, because it's consistently changing and throughout that time I've had opportunities to meet really, really cool people like yourself and others that are like hey, I'm neurodivergent but I feel the same way, but let's figure out how we play more, and that's kind of what I'm here to talk about all the time. More, and that's kind of what I'm here to talk about all the time. I want to talk about play at any juncture. Every juncture and the work that I do at Sensational Inclusion, I get the opportunity to talk about play quite a lot. 

05:12 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Well, and you and I met at the play conference in Indiana, which was so much fun, and you know we definitely connected over the concept of literacy and STEM, and so I was thinking maybe you could talk a little bit about Sensational Inclusion. Let people know what it is you do and how you're doing things differently than other people have been doing them before. 

05:34 - Dr Tyana Velasquez-Smith (Guest)
Yes. So I will say that is kind of my favorite thing to talk about is how I'm doing things that are different from the ways that other folks are looking at literacy learning. So at Sensational Inclusion, we focus deeply and attunely to the needs of students, what the child is interested in learning about, and then we find that special interest and we teach emergent literacy skills through it. So I'll give you an example. I have this beautiful child and she's just full of light. She's questioning the world. Luckily she comes from a family that encourages a high degree of questioning and she is obsessed with unicorns. Like unicorns is fascinating. She loves to role play with through unicorns. 

06:20
She loves writing the stories, but something that she really struggled with was keeping her eyes on the prints and so being innovative and understanding. When I have a special interest, I want it everywhere. So last night my husband he wanted me to watch Dune with him. I hate movies and any movie that's over an hour and a half it's literally not going to happen. But he's kind of figured out how to get me to do things and so he knows I love dinosaurs, I love dinosaurs. I could talk about dinosaurs forever, me too, yeah. 

06:57 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
I don't know. It's just so cool. We could go on a tangent about dinosaurs but finish the Dune story. 

07:03 - Dr Tyana Velasquez-Smith (Guest)
So you know, he prepped me. I was tutoring. He sent me a text message. He said hey, just so you know, we're going to get really comfy when you come home. We're going to watch Dune part two. He, he coaxed me into watching part one and I have a huge dinosaur stuffed animal. I have a dinosaur robe with a hood and it's just, it's wild. And he, he created the environment so that this isn't exactly what I want to do on a Sunday, but I'm comfortable in my things and I feel really cool in my dinosaur like robe and this big stuffed animal that I have, and I watched the whole two hour two and a half. It's like two hours and 40 minutes, something ridiculous. 

07:43
Sitting still for me is really, really hard, but that's what I do with students in my practitioner work is. I know that, out of all the millions of things that kids would rather be doing, it's not keeping their eyes on the text, especially in the age of like digital um media and, uh, quick content, um. But for the child I'm talking about right now, peach, excuse me, the child I'm talking about right now, peach, excuse me, the child I'm talking about right now she loves unicorns, so I got her a unicorn little figurine and she uses it for her like one-to-one correspondence, while she's reading from left to right and before she knows it she's done with the book and she's like do you have another one? And I'm like what are you talking about? I have hundreds of books and so it's really cool and important to see when you teach children through play, through their special interests, the things that they're able to do because they want to do them. Of course I have some theory polyvagal theory being one of them, pda and autism to understand how to de-stress a child's nervous system so that they're interested and excited about the space. 

08:50
But I'm also deeply attuned to what their triggers could be and how to support them out of fight or fawn. I think that's what makes sensational inclusion really different, because that's not what's happening in schools for a myriad of reasons. It's also what's not happening in other tutoring settings, because I think some folks are still learning about what does it mean to do all this work? But I layer on top of it culturally sustaining pedagogies. So it's also deeply important for me that when students come in, they see a tutoring space that is representative of them. So there's tons of representation, there's tons of opportunities to identify a sense of self, for criticality to happen. So the questioning why do I have to do this in this order, and I'm like you don't? In fact, let's come up with a new agenda together, and so that's what I do. 

09:42
At Sensational Inclusion, I mostly work with kids from pre-K to third grade, all of which are on the autism or ADHD spectrum. I support students with dyslexia as well, those same skills that work really really well for autistic students. They tend to also support dyslexic readers as well, and so it's also an opportunity for me to get away from. You know, our literacy wars that we're consistently having every 10 to 20 years, where it doesn't have to necessarily be the science of reading or whole language. It is everything all in between, and it's important to bring in students, cultures and those that are different from them, but all rooted in the context and the pedagogy of play. 

10:22 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
I love that. That was a great answer, and you summed up everything that we were talking about when we were sitting at lunch in terms of the importance of layering on culture, of windows and mirrors and of getting out of the literacy wars, because there's so much good sense in the science of reading, but there's also good sense in whole language, and we've both been around it long enough to know that the pendulum swings both ways and you have to draw for the individual child the things that are going to help them make their transition, and I love the fact that you're doing it in work with neurodivergent kids. 

10:59 - Dr Tyana Velasquez-Smith (Guest)
Yeah, I mean it's great for all kids, but our neurodivergent learners they need. There's no other way to teach literacy skills outside of kind of the methodology that I've just described, and so absolutely, and I know that's what I needed. As a learner, I was like the child that was like Tyana doesn't pay attention or Tyana doesn't. I am paying attention, but I'm also like thinking about how bored I am because you're teaching this in a universal way and I've already learned this content and I'm I don't, I don't want to sit here and do this anymore. So it's really important for all students. 

11:34 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Well, and you know you said on your, on your blog, in sort of your five non-negotiables. One of the things you talk about is how it should be illegal. It is illegal to make education inaccessible. So how can we help schools that maybe don't have a Dr Tyana working with their students? How do we help them to offer some of these same ideas with that kind of sensitivity? How can we layer that into the classroom? 

12:05 - Dr Tyana Velasquez-Smith (Guest)
Yeah, I'll say a couple things. It's kind of twofold. The first is in my work with teachers, I thought that professional learning needed to happen at the teacher level. Right, the higher quality the educator, the better experience the students are going to have. And there's a facet of that is true, but there's so many degrees of implementation that impacts, as a teacher, from being able to listen to all the things that I say and to be able to implement it. 

12:31
The real sweet spot is if we can galvanize parents and caregivers to say, hey, how do you think your child's doing as it relates to their literacy journey? A lot of families, when I ask that question, I get a long slew of like this, this, this, this and this are not going well. And what families and caregivers absolutely want for their children is to be lifelong proficient readers that enjoy reading. And once they figure out that there's a different way to do that, well then, parents and caregivers, they show up to their child's school and they start to advocate for different things. They're not advocating for a one size fits all science of reading. You need to do it in this way. Instead, they want a comprehensive methodology that supports their child. Most of the families that I talk to have neurodiverse children, and so that's one angle Giving parents and caregivers. 

13:28
Teachers are yearning and craving for a sense of autonomy and to have that back, I think, within the last. You know, one of the reasons, truthfully, me leaving my own classroom was I knew that I could only go as high as the culture or the atmosphere or the curriculum would allow me to do so, which is why I ended up getting a degree in teaching and curriculum, because I knew that there had to be a different way, and during my PhD I found out there is tons of different ways to do this. So I will say, teaching, professional learning, has been a huge, huge bright spot in my practitioner work, not because teachers need to be taught another thing, necessarily, but I think what they do need to hear some confirmation, bias and and that I've been saying this I know that my autistic children need this sort of support, and so then what happens is I like to build really tight, close relationships with those schools, with teachers that I know that want to do different for their students, and so we trickle in the PTA. I come in in the PTA and start talking about play-based literacy and how to take play-based literacy instruction and do it at home inbased literacy and how to take play-based literacy instruction and do it at home in really simple and easy ways. And so I look from the teacher pathway and then the parent and the caregiver pathway. 

15:05
I'm seeing that the convergence of the two you end up kind of encapsulating the school system and the culture to have to do something that's different Because what's been done in the past isn't working and there's no harm in trying something new. And you know, unfortunately teachers might not have that infrastructure in their school to bring something to the forefront. But what I do see and hear from folks that do do professional learning with me is like I can do one thing. If I can't do everything, I can at least do one thing. And I always say like, don't stop just because you can't do everything. If there's one thing that you can take from me today is this one thing. You can do this tomorrow. And so bringing things down to a bite size content allows the ability for the practitioner to do something that's different. 

15:55 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
I found very similar things as I've been traveling and working with sort of that pre-K and elementary teachers on STEM and literacy. Is it's the same thing. It's not layering one thing on and it's not telling them how to do something they know. It's giving them the autonomy and the freedom to play and to find joy in what they're doing again, and it's not saying you have to make wholesale changes to everything that you're doing. It's like try this one thing, take it and do the one thing and see how that goes for you and then maybe you'll want to try the next thing. 

16:29
And then maybe you'll try the next and it builds and I think that what I'm doing in terms of connecting the STEM and the multicultural picture books and literacy dovetails beautifully with what you're doing, because it's coming from that same place of playful learning and recognizing, I think, the dignity and the value of every member of our classroom community. 

16:51 - Dr Tyana Velasquez-Smith (Guest)
Yeah, that's the piece is the value of every member in the classroom community, which is what universal design tells us. That that's the whole crux of universal for learning. And so it's interesting. I was, you know, trained pretty heavily in my undergrad on in my undergrad on UDL, but somehow we've taken like universal to mean for everyone right, one size fits all. 

17:17 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Yeah, I'm like that's. 

17:20 - Dr Tyana Velasquez-Smith (Guest)
That's not what the advocacy was around. It was a more nuanced approach at looking at how do I make it impossible something? I tell pre-service teachers, um, because I teach a class at the university of rochester on literacy. As um social is, your job is to create a classroom in which it is impossible for a student to walk away and feel like they failed at something. That's your job every single day for every single student. But in order for that to be possible, you have to look at each child individually and identify well, what does failure look like for this child? You know, I had a really perfect example of. 

18:03
I was working with a child yesterday and we create a schedule together when the student walks in for the tutoring session and most students they always want to do the activity first. That has really nothing to do with literacy learning, but it has everything to do with situating their body and their nervous system, as it could be something that's difficult. So this child she really wanted to do drawing. She's an artist, so her drawing comes first. We needed to work on word families. I wanted her to write on some sentence strips, writing sentences with some word families, and then we were going to read a book that took the skill into text and of course she draws beautifully. We set it. I set her up really nicely with the timer. She transitions. We do our word. Families Sentence writing was getting a little iffy. 

18:50
A lot of children don't love to write, but you know they'll get there. And at the same time for the book she was just like I don't want to do this. I hate reading. This is so hard. And she looked at me and she was like did I fail? Did I fail today? And I'm like, oh gosh, there's no such thing, my love, there's no such thing as failure. You did look at all these other things that you did that you worked on when you, all these other things that you did that you worked on. When you come back, we'll work on that word family book. 

19:16
But this idea that children are so prepped for, this idea that they're going to fail at something because the environments that are around them are so quick to be like oh, you failed at that thing, you didn't do your bell work or your morning work on time and and so even taking students, there's a little bit of trauma that you're. 

19:34
You know, I don't. It's really hard to teach something that's foundational, like literacy, if trauma is a part of that experience. So, having to metabolize that out with students, I do a lot of like breathing exercises with them, a lot of diaphragm work and you know afterwards, reiterating like if you feel like you failed at something, then let me know so that I can better prep the environments so for the next time you feel better about the task, when you feel better about the work you did before you leave. And I just I don't know that we have the time and the capacity to do that in a school, but what I am noticing is we have a lot of students that are just so anxious about failing that they almost project it as if they were possible to fail at something as difficult as reading. 

20:23 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
You know I've been thinking a lot about that concept lately, and particularly the idea of risky play, and that it's important for kids to have opportunities to fall down and skin their knees and get back up, to be able to make mistakes and not to call it failure, but to realize that it's a mistake and it's not the end of the world and I can try again and do something else that we've set up a culture where, as you said, it's so focused on achievement and so focused on yes, no, win, lose, succeed, fail that we haven't paid attention. 

21:04
To build that kind of resilience, you have to fall down many, many times, like when a baby's learning to walk. They don't just suddenly walk, they crawl and fall, pull themselves up, they fall, and our reaction is part of what shapes how quickly they're going to succeed in quotes or fail at that task. But they're not necessarily checking it as success, failure. They're looking at themselves as, okay, I'm going to try again. And if we're supporting that as, oh, look what you did, then they're much more likely to get up and try again versus sit down. Yeah. 

21:40 - Dr Tyana Velasquez-Smith (Guest)
And that's what you want. That's what you want when you're working with a child. Learning to read is the hardest skill. It's somewhere around the early 2000s we had like this children are learning to read so that they can read to learn, and I remember the first time I heard that I was like that's gotta be the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Like I'm still learning to read, like as a 32 year old person. I'm still. There's still words. I'm like what is this? Or even like reading comprehension. There's a. I've had to read Toni Morrison's work so many times in different parts of my life because the first time I read the Bluest Eye I was like I don't know what that book was about and so I had to read it a second time. But just even thinking about being tenacious enough to want to give it another go is something that we have to build and we have to cultivate in children, starting from a very, very young age. One of my favorite things that parents do is like when their kid falls. 

22:37 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
They're like oh, don't do that. 

22:42 - Dr Tyana Velasquez-Smith (Guest)
Well, if they weren't, they're not now. No, you know me and my husband. We talk about this a lot and so we see this a lot and you know it's just funny when it happens. I wonder how you've just encoded this experience in this child's body, like you're not even letting me feel how I need to feel. You're telling me how I should feel, based on your adult reaction. When do I get a chance to create my own meaning out of risky play or falling and getting hurt and guess what? It doesn't, it didn't hurt. It's fine to actually want to go up the slide again and do the same, jump and see what happens the second time. I love that. 

23:24 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
What you just said is absolutely on point. We're encoding our reactions in them, and I love the idea that we need to give them the space and the scaffolding to identify their own feelings and their own emotions and their own way of responding to the world. And so we're coaches as opposed to directors, and I think that if we can look at it that way, we might be more useful. 

23:51 - Dr Tyana Velasquez-Smith (Guest)
Oh yeah, we would be way more useful if we would just give ourselves like a one Mississippi, two Mississippi, and then, if the tears happen, then you say, oh wow, how are you feeling. You know how did that feel? Why do you think that hurt Because you jumped off the tippy top of this slide. 

24:14 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
But I like the way that you paused and you asked it in question form. Rather than labeling it for them, you're asking the questions and then, if they don't have the words or they can't find the words, you can keep asking questions to sort of help them get to what it is they're trying to feel. But I love the way you did that. When you're working with kids, do you have particular favorite picture books you like to use as a way of building identity, building opportunities for kids to engage and play? Geez, what kind of question is that? That is so hard. Yes, I know it's like asking you to name a favorite child or a favorite student. 

24:55 - Dr Tyana Velasquez-Smith (Guest)
I feel like that's what you asked me. Tyana, name one of your favorite students for identity work. Let me see. Oh my gosh, there are so many books. I'm trying to think of the ones that are in my office right now. I love Big by Vashanti Harrison. 

25:18
Yes, read it for the first time probably a month ago, and sometimes when I read books with kids, it's so interesting to see that I listen to the things that they say about. In a book like that, where she's talking about her body and her body being too big and the illustration showing this just this child being ridiculed for the body that she's naturally resting in our kids, I always say children are the smartest people on the planet, the smartest, uh, community members that we have, because they're closest to birth, which means they have been less susceptible to like cultural and social constructs. And so reading a book like that with the child and the things that they say it's I read. I read it to this one girl and she was like I think that people need to do better in this world. She's four also, so this is a four year old, and I said well, tell me why you think that she's like, because there's no child that should ever feel like their body isn't good enough. And I just like, wow, if I had that language at four. Like if I had a four years old, I'm just wondering how much money would I have saved on therapy. Because I say that like as a joke, but also like so seriously because I'm thinking now as this child is ridiculing. You know, I think when I grew up, fat shaming and having a problem with anyone's body was just something that mattered a ton in my family. I still hear it a lot in social groups. But for this four-year-old to say how dare, how dare the world strip this girl of her beauty because they don't like who she is, I'm just thinking about how much better off this child is going to be. Yes, and she has this profound, unequivocal, like 10 toes down feeling in a visceral response to say how dare you? You know, like that kind of fight and that kind of grittiness, like that's gotta be so self-preserving and identity shaping. Her body can flow and flux, as our bodies often do, throughout our lifespan and she may have an issue when those moments happen, but she's still going to be really close and tender to a sense of self. So that's one really early example. 

27:50
There's another book, more Than Peach. Please forgive me, what is the author's name of More Than Peach? I know the last Bellwood, I think. Oh my gosh, I never, I, never, I'm going to look it up right now, because now I want to know, because this is a new book to me, so let's look it up. 

28:08
You're going to love. You're going to love More Than Peach. More Than Peach is by. Oh, bellin Woodard, I was semi-close. 

28:15 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Oh my gosh. Yes, I know, bellin. Bellin is the one, the young lady who created the crayons. 

28:22 - Dr Tyana Velasquez-Smith (Guest)
Exactly. 

28:24 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
And when I was at the museum because I used to work at a children's museum we worked with an organization called I'm Just Me and they did a lot of character counts, kind of summer camps. And Tina discovered Bellen and so we got a grant and brought in Bellen's crayons for the summer and I didn't realize there was a book that went with it. You just made my day. I got you. 

28:46 - Dr Tyana Velasquez-Smith (Guest)
I got you. More Than Peach is my favorite book to read, like on a read aloud to young black girls, and the reason why I say that is my research is really augmented in the ways in which black girls one, just exist. Two, how do they exist in predominantly white schools? Which connects to my own lived experience and I remember in kindergarten being so confused like why there wasn't a crayon for my skin, and the girl next to me she had smelly crayons and she was like I'm sorry you don't have a brown crayon, but I have this crayon and it smells like lemonade. And it did. It smelled just like lemonade but it was yellow. So I'm like thank you so much, friend. 

29:30
Also, this does not look like me and the conversations every time I read More Than Peach a group of Black girls. They still have the same things that I said 25 years ago, like there's not enough of us, there's not enough representation. I shouldn't have to have a band-aid that doesn't match my skin color. So if the concept of More Than Peach is exactly what you would imagine it to be, as she has created those crayons, I'm not sure if you're referring to the Color of the World crayon set by Crayola no Belen actually created. Get those crayons and divvy up my support of Crayola and so I do a story time once a month, and this was a book that I read to a group of mostly Black girls. There were two white students in the room as well and they were like this is so unfair. 

30:29 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
And that's powerful too. 

30:31 - Dr Tyana Velasquez-Smith (Guest)
That is so powerful. So what we want for kids is to use play, use stories, use arts and crafts, to have critical conversations. You know, as adults we do this really interesting thing where we have this decision to have kids right, and we know they're going to go out into a society, and then we're like, yeah, this is a society and this is a world, but don't ask too many questions about it, because we are just not prepared to answer questions. One of the girls that was at the play date was a white girl and she said, miss Tyana, your skin is so brown. And I'm like, yes, and yours doesn't have the same color brown as me, let's talk about that. And I could just feel her mom tense up. 

31:20
I'm like she made a beautiful observation, right, if a child is making an observation, that it is our job, in our best capacity, to answer that question, um, and doing the least amount of harm as possible. Sometimes we often like perpetuate harm, even though we're not trying to, and that happens not because of intent but on an impact, and I think if we just brought our shoulders down just a little bit and if we answer the questions in the way that the child has presented it. She said Miss Tyana, your skin is so brown and I'm like, yeah, that's a really good observation to make. What about your skin? And then we talk about the different ways that I moisturize my brown skin. The way I moisturize my brown skin is going to look really different from the way that you moisturize your skin, and so we do a really interesting job of, like you know, so much can be answered through a picture book and through play. You can always lend on that to get us through. 

32:17 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Have you discovered Vanessa Brantley Newton as an author and illustrator? 

32:22 - Dr Tyana Velasquez-Smith (Guest)
No. 

32:23 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Okay, you need to find Vanessa. She wrote a couple. She's also neurodivergent and she is a Black illustrator out of Charlotte, self-taught. She's an amazing illustrator and she's written books like the Queen of Kindergarten, becoming Vanessa, which is all about becoming comfortable in your own body, nesting Dolls, which is about feeling darker than the rest of her family, and so it's all about the intergenerational, even within the family. But she's written so many books that are celebrating Black girls in particular and they're just beautiful. They're multicultural, they're gorgeous. I adore Vanessa. I did a podcast with her last year and I'm actually bringing her back on this summer because she's got a new book out, but she's one you definitely need to find because I think she would. What she does would support your work so beautifully. 

33:20 - Dr Tyana Velasquez-Smith (Guest)
I love that and I love that before it was a few you know authors and illustrators where if you said like, oh, you know this person, yeah, I do. But now it's the. The space of children's literature is becoming much more robust and representative, so anytime that someone asks me if I know a person and I don't, it's actually it actually feels really good to me, because it means that there's now so many people that I know it's not just the few you know artists. When, uh, nupita Lohongo wrote um her book, like, we had a couple of those right Like, and now I just I love this moment that, no, I don't know who she is. I do now know who she is. She's queued up on my phone and I'm really excited to purchase more of these sort of texts because it does. It supports my work and supporting all children. All children need to see diverse representations across picture books, and so this is a really good sign that the field is moving forward. 

34:21 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Another author that I've fallen in love with I don't know if you've run into her is Trudy Ludwig. She writes a lot for neurodivergence, and so she's written books like Brave Irene, the Invisible Boy, and so, yeah, she's got some really good ones out, and Patrice Barton has done a really nice job of doing the illustrations and making sure that they are multicultural and representative. 

34:48 - Dr Tyana Velasquez-Smith (Guest)
I love that. I remember I think in kindergarten I read the Secret Bully and that was a really good one, you know. It's so interesting to me. So I'm working on my own children's book. Hopefully it comes out in the fall. It's been. I have a wonderful, wonderful illustrator. But trying to find, you know, the story is very much like baby Tyana and like this experience of trying to figure out what the world is. Why does the world have to be this way? She also has a fire breathing dinosaur that tags along with her on her life adventures and it's. It was so helpful to be able to go and find real black woman authors and illustrators to say how do I tell this story? Like, how do I convey this story? How do I edit this story? You know my grandmother. She is an author but she writes novels and so it's less of what I'm interested in and I can't write a novel. 

35:50 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Right. 

35:51 - Dr Tyana Velasquez-Smith (Guest)
My attention. Well, don't say can't? 

35:53 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
You don't know that. 

35:55 - Dr Tyana Velasquez-Smith (Guest)
You know what? Right now I can't write a novel. That doesn't mean I can never write a novel. 

36:00 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
You just need your husband to coax you little bit by little bit. 

36:05 - Dr Tyana Velasquez-Smith (Guest)
He tricks me with my dinosaur pens, exactly. Um, I would love to be able to do that sometime. But, like even writing my own children's book, it has been like so cathartic and so healing. Um, because I didn't have what the four-year-old that I was telling you about, where she's like viscerally, like how, how dare the world bother this girl and her body? Um, but now I get to do that in a different way and a lot of it it's. I didn't go into opening sensational inclusion for my own child, like child self, to heal, but that is what has actually happened. 

36:41
I have been in the best mental health um space that I've been in. Um, I think being autistic is one of those things we talk a lot about, but not about like mental health and and what does that look like? And then you're opening a business and someone that thrives and needs routine and structure and like things can't change. It was just in a doctor's appointment right before jumping on this conversation with you, and I was crying in the waiting room, which is kind of like why I looked like this. I was sobbing because the lady was 15 minutes late. Those like the. I can hear the lights. I don't know if anyone has this experience. I can hear lights, I can feel the light. So these huge fluorescent lights and I'm just sobbing. 

37:26
I left my air pods at home. My husband luckily had his and he put on the Oppenheimer soundtrack and it just like soothed me, but I didn't have, like I didn't have that ability to do that, like as a kid. Like as a kid I was like just suck it up, like it's fine, Tiana, it's not a big deal, um, but it is. It is a really big deal. And so there's so much a part of doing this work with, with students and their families, that has been deeply healing. And so finding a book, writing my own book, getting to meet fabulous people like you, like you were the highlight of the play conference. 

38:06
Thank you. It's so interesting how we get into the work that we get into it really is, and I love that. 

38:14 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
I love the notion that by giving of yourself to help others, you're also healing yourself, and I think that that's another message that we just need to send out to more adults. Very serious, I'm getting to the end, so very serious question what's your favorite dinosaur? 

38:34 - Dr Tyana Velasquez-Smith (Guest)
You cannot ask that question, okay. So I love, okay, I love a brachiosaurus. I have a blow up one in my office. His name is Frankie. He holds when my kids are having a bad day. They'll come in and whisper like why they're having a bad day to Frankie. I love my brachiosaurus. I also love T-Rex, like I. I know little arms. I know that they have a bad rap, I get that. 

39:07
But like when I was a baby, my parents would play Jurassic Park on a loop. It was the only thing that would like orient me to the space. To this day, when I'm like having an off day, sometimes I'll call like my husband and be like babe, today was just wild. I'm just like I'm melting down. I had a whole meltdown. I come home, the room is exactly the temperature that it needs to be. Park is on, it's just so. I love the T-Rex for that, because I feel like as destructive as he is um, I don't know, it's just coming, it's just. It's always. And I was also like big into Barney, way past the age, that maybe I should have been into Barney Land Before Time. I don't know. Brachiosaurus number one I just. But also I love giraffes, so I spent like-. 

40:01 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
So dinosaurs and giraffes. 

40:05 - Dr Tyana Velasquez-Smith (Guest)
It's like the long neck thing, I think. For me it's just fascinating. I think I learned that giraffes have seven or nine Seven vertebrae. 

40:16 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
The whole reason I have a smartphone is because of a preschooler I taught who was the king of questions and I did not have a smartphone. I didn't use tech in my preschool, you know, and Andrew broke me because he asked the question how many bones are in a giraffe's neck? I did not know that answer, but I can tell you it's seven. It's the exact same number you have. They're just a whole lot bigger. And I did get a smartphone and he and I learned how to look things up together. So we did the research together. But it was kind of circling back to what you said. It was allowing that love, that interest, to drive the way I taught, and I think that that's so important to how we proceed, Like how do you go on your lesson and not answer that question? 

41:01
You couldn't have. 

41:02 - Dr Tyana Velasquez-Smith (Guest)
That is such an important question. 

41:05 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
And I still remember the answer to this day. And he's graduated and I hope he still remembers the answer, but whether he does or not, I do. 

41:15 - Dr Tyana Velasquez-Smith (Guest)
He does because you created a peak moment for him and you could have easily could have said oh, I don't know, but we can figure that out later and never follow up. 

41:21 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Exactly. So if people would like to learn more about creating peak moments and about building those amazing connections for all students in the way that you do at Sensational Inclusion. How do they find you? 

41:44 - Dr Tyana Velasquez-Smith (Guest)
You can find me at wwwsensationalinclusioncom. You can chat with me via Gmail at sensationalinclusion@gmail.com. You can also find me on Instagram. I post a lot of content on Instagram. 

41:52 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
And it's good stuff folks. 

41:54 - Dr Tyana Velasquez-Smith (Guest)
Thank you sensational_inclusion. You will find me also on Facebook at Tyana Velasquez-Smith. I would love to have you as a friend. And then LinkedIn. You should have no problem finding me there as well. 

42:09 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Well, thank you for joining me for an absolutely incredible program. I think we've only just scratched the surface of this topic, and so I would love to have you come back on in the fall when your book comes out and we can talk about your book and we can go deeper and keep having this conversation and, if you're listening and you've got questions for us, include those in your comments and reviews, because we can address those when we talk again.