Building Something New: An Introduction to the Inclusion Innovation Workshop

There are spaces in education that get a great deal of attention. And then there are the spaces that don't. These are the spaces where the most complex questions live, where the most marginalized learners exist, and where the field has, for too long, moved slowly.

The Inclusion Innovation Workshop was created for that second space.

When I founded the Montessori Institute of Northeast Ohio, I knew that a professional training center alone was not enough. Through my years working alongside children, families, and educators a consistent pattern kept emerging. The science of learning had advanced. Our understanding of development, relationships, and the brain had deepened in remarkable ways. However, the models we use to support children with diverse learning, behavioral, and social needs have not kept up. Progressive education frameworks were being celebrated and expanded. But I noticed that those conversations did not extend to the children who needed reimagining the most.

That gap is what the Inclusion Innovation Workshop was built to address.

A Space to Try, Explore, and Build

This is not a traditional professional development offering. The Inclusion Innovation Workshop is a collaborative learning space where ideas can be explored, tried, and experienced. This is a space where practitioners, educators and care partners can explore the hard questions, experiment with new approaches, and begin to build something that does not yet exist.

I wanted this to be an environment where things could be played with. Where a project could be launched, tested, and refined. Where the discomfort of not having an answer is not only tolerated but welcomed. This is where innovation actually lives.

The field of inclusion. Intervention and support has needed a space like this for a long time. This is that space.

Grounded in What We Know

All of the work within the Inclusion Innovation Workshop flows through one compass: Dr. Maria Montessori. Her principles don’t just sit alongside what we do here, they are the foundation from which everything grows. Her vision of education as an aid to life are the guiding principles for all that will be created in this space.

As developmental science has advanced, two contemporary bodies of research have emerged that illuminate and materialize Montessori's work.  They are, in many ways, the modern articulation of what she observed and named long before the science caught up.

These three frameworks do not stand apart from one another. Rather they were chosen because they speak the same language and honor human development in the same way. Montessori sets the principles. Self-Determination Theory names what children need to thrive within them. Interpersonal Neurobiology reveals what makes that possible at the level of relationship and the brain. Woven together, they form the lens through which all work in this space is seen.

Dr. Maria Montessori
Her work reminds us that the environment is the teacher, that observation precedes action, and that every individual carries within them the capacity for growth when the conditions are right. Working in service of children and being a genuine aid to life across the developmental journey is the standard against which all work in this space is measured.

Self-Determination Theory
Ryan and Deci's research speaks directly to what Montessori observed in children: that human beings are intrinsically motivated when their fundamental needs are honored. Autonomy, competence, and connection are not luxuries. They are developmental necessities and they must be at the center of how we design inclusive support across all ages and settings.

Interpersonal Neurobiology
Dr. Daniel Siegel's work brings us back to something Montessori understood at the core of her philosophy: that heart, hand, and mind are not separate domains to be developed in sequence. They are integrated expressions of a single human being, unfolding in relationship with the world and with others. Development is never a solitary event. There is always a me shaped by a we. Human beings are fundamentally interdependent, and this interdependence is not peripheral to the developmental journey — it is the journey itself.

Together, these three frameworks converge into a single orientation. Dr. Montessori sets the course. Contemporary science deepens our understanding of the path. From that convergence, the Inclusion Innovation Workshop grows.

For the Visionaries Who Are Ready

The Inclusion Innovation Workshop is for educators and practitioners who are ready to reimagine how inclusion, intervention, and support are understood and lived. It is for those who are willing to ask the harder questions — not what is wrong with this child, but what is unfolding, what is needed, and how can we prepare the environment to meet them.

It is a place for collaborators, researchers, and community partners who believe that the children and families most often left at the margins of progressive education conversations deserve the full weight of our creativity, our science, and our commitment.

This is about possibility. Not as an abstraction — but as a practice.

What's Happening Now

The Inclusion Innovation Workshop is already underway. Current projects include the Elementary and Adolescent Planning and Reflection Journal — a tool designed to support agency, metacognition, and self-directed growth across the elementary and adolescent planes — and the Developmental Integration Framework, a five-lens observational tool for Montessori guides and educators grounded in human tendencies, Self-Determination Theory, and Interpersonal Neurobiology.

I invite you to follow along as this work unfolds. Explore the current projects, connect with what's being built, and consider what you might contribute to this conversation.

Something new is being built here. We are glad you found it.