Welcome back. We may have some folks join us. I know that a lot of folks communicated when they registered they may have to drop in and out for classes or meetings or things like that. But at this point, we're moving on to our next session and I am the thoughts that you just to clarify the thoughts that you collected in your breakout rooms. If you're doing report outs, those will be incorporated into a proceedings document that Elizabeth manages and puts together for us Elizabeth Wilner one of our colleagues. And so you will get those thoughts and all that shared out. But what I really like today I've invited some of my former colleagues current colleagues as well. I'm going to be a disability services person on a community college campus and we've invited a few folks to serve as a panelist hopes doubt is director of access and disability services at Pierce College. I'm proud is director of accessibility and student support services at Cass Katie college, which shares a, actually shares campus with one of the UW, you'd have to UW awful campus as well. And then Craig Kerr director of services for students with disabilities at Edmunds College. I've asked each of our panelists to kind of start out, start us off with providing any further introductory information they'd like to share about themselves in their backgrounds and then to share some experience they've had related to an neurodivergent student neurodivergent students learning experiences or situation on their particular campus. I'm just going to give a presentation for five seven minutes somewhere around in there. They are all very aware of the fact that I keep them on task. So, I'll, I'm not stressing too much about the time but we're going to invite people to ask questions once they've all wrapped up as well. Why don't, why don't we put you on that first. Oh, I get to go first. Okay. Hi, I am hopes out. My concerns are she heard hers. I am the district director for access and disability services for the Pierce College district in Pierce County, Washington, so just south of Seattle into coma. I have been in this field, I want to say about 16 years. It's been a while like, you know, it's been a while if you've lost track of time. So, yeah, and I want to thank Eric for asking me to come is really. I really appreciate it and I see some faces I know and so high to you all. So, Eric asked me to maybe talk about a student who I have worked with in the past, who is neurodiverse. And so I had to think about who I wanted if I wanted to pick somebody who would think of as a stereotypical autistic student, or if I wanted to maybe go in a different direction and pick a student that maybe you guys wouldn't have even know was neurodiverse. And that's the way I decided to go and I wanted to talk about a student who was actually a female student. One of the things I wanted to touch base with you is that, you know, female students, due to gender bias regarding autism and females are very, very often misdiagnosed as having a mental health issue, or their diagnosis comes much later so they don't get the early intervention that they need to address some of the features of their autism. And the student I had was such a student, female student I'm going to call her Vanessa, and she was a late diagnosis, she had for many years been receiving inappropriate mental health treatment. But as a result, she came to the college with really, really poor, I don't want to say poor, but not helpful compensation techniques and corporate skills. And as a result, she also had a really hard time articulating her barriers not only to our office, but to the faculty and instructors that she was working with. And so we had to really work with her to develop a ability to self advocates, and which was a really big challenge when she really barely talked to other people without bursting in tears. And when she got to college what we noticed her big struggle was that she, like everybody else was really invested in, she wanted to know expectations, she wanted to know expectations of fun, but in, in, you know, in a way that may not be considered, you know, average within the student, you know, the student population. And she became, when she didn't know the expectations in advance, she became very anxious and engaged in ruminating behaviors that spilled over, oftentimes into the first few weeks of the course until she was able to kind of feel her way out and, you know, establish what the expectations are. You know, and unfortunately if the expectations still didn't get clear it could continue for quite a while into the quarter. So, one of the challenges we had was his female because her autism manifested in a different way. She was really good at a skill that we call masking, which you see quite a bit in women that have autism, where, as I mentioned, the behavior does not stand out. It doesn't as a stereotypical autistic behavior pattern, you know, with, you know, necessarily flat aspect or the struggles with communication. She didn't have those things her thing was this ruminating and she would often break into tears in class which you know her instructors mistook for other things and she became labeled as high maintenance. Which was really, really unfortunate. So, after a couple quarters of this real big struggle and her meeting to connect with instructors but not being able to self advocate for her. She sat down and we talked and she indicated that if she could talk to the instructors before the first class started and established the expectations that she felt that she would be able to walk into the class in a better space. So, we, for a couple quarters took the initiative to, when she identified the classes she wanted to take. We arranged for a meeting that was facilitated by my office to help her to communicate with the instructors and understand expectations so that she was able to work. So, when we walked into class that first week and get to work. It also was very good for the instructors to understand where she was coming from and what they might be seeing is not what was really there and it was just, it wasn't a deficit it was just a difference. We did that for a couple quarters before she took on that responsibility for herself and then about a year and a half into her tenure at Pierce, I found out that not she had taken it one step further where she had started to actually interview instructors before she even enrolled in their classes to determine, you know, what the expectations of the class would be whether the instructor was, you know, willing to, you know, collaborate with her to address some of the issues that might come up. And, you know, and that went on and this student went from being a student in my office and her first quarter, who could barely talk to anybody, barely advocate for her needs, very barely express her needs to, with the help of her instructors to just that understanding that they were in the time that they were willing to give her, and step outside of what might have been their professional view of a student, they were able to create a student who had self advocacy skills and actually went on to become the vice president of our student activities board, which is tremendous growth but it shows the kind of growth that you instructors have not just academically, but if they just take that time to connect with the student in their mode of communication. So that's just kind of my story. Thank you so much. Hope appreciate that. I'm so glad that you you focused on female student. Brian, I'm going to ask you to to share next. My name is Brian Fox, I use him for now, and the Director of Accessibility and Student Sports Services at Katsukidea College and Before my position at Katsukidea, I was actually with a state school in California, Cal State East Bay, and at Cal State East Bay, there's a program called the Cards Link Program, which is a program devoted solely to supporting neurodiverse students in college with academic skills, career goals, skills, social skills, and employment skills, and I was able to fortunate enough to coordinate that program for the last some years. So I've been able to get a lot of exposure, a lot of experience with neurodiverse population and it was a great experience. But today I want to share experience with everyone about a student that we've been working with at Katsukidea since the fall quarter began. During the fall quarter, I got reports from three different faculty members by a student in their classroom, who was having a very difficult time. The student was not putting in homework assignments was getting very up. During class, and when that frustration would happen, they criticize the instructor for the ways of class assignments were designed, they would sometimes pull on their hair, they'd bang on the table and storm out of the classroom and the faculty were very concerned about it being disruptive to the classroom environment and also concerned about escalation, about what would happen one day if the student got really angry and you know, so there were a lot of concerns and we didn't know much, we didn't know anything about the student because we kept trying to reach out to the student and and they would not respond. I'm also part of the care team at Katsukidea which works with students facing unique and difficult challenges. So that's how I was made aware of the student. And, you know, finally, it took me until school started in late September, it took me about until mid November to get a hold of the student and it was just by chance that they had their phone on picked up because I had been trying to call our phones for a couple months now and it was straight to voicemail every time I call up. So as it will connect with the student and me with the student and in my care team meeting with the student, I found out that the student was neurodiverse and was, you know, eligible for possible accommodations at Katsukidea. This student, so it was, you know, we were coming close to the end of the quarter. The student was failing all the classes, didn't, hadn't turned in maybe more than two assignments in three of the classes, it was going to have their financial aid terminated and would have lost out on their housing because they depended on financial aid for rent and would have been basically kicked out of Katsukidea. So there was not much that could have been done that quarter, but we started working with the student. You know, just be just a small 30 minute meeting week on some time management or the organization skills, the student, I could tell, you know, they were very bright, but they weren't turning in assignments and even though they weren't turning in assignments, they were still going to every class. So to me that was a sign that they wanted to be in school, they wanted to do well. I think for neurodiverse students, it can be applied to any student, you know, it is the transition from high school to college is a very difficult and challenging one. In high school, there's a lot of support through the K food follow system for a student with a disability that aren't there at the college level because the two different laws that exist between the two different systems. So after getting an opportunity to work with the student, you know, I realized that the student could, could be successful at the college level, but just need to know how to do that. You need to know our access to resources and needed to know how to utilize accommodations and needed to know how to communicate with his faculty with the faculty members. So the student wasn't aware of all these reports that have been coming in that they've been getting frustrated. The student felt frustrated in class, but they weren't aware that they were displaying these kind of behaviors that you know some faculty thought were disruptive. So, you know, going into luckily the student was able to get a financial aid appeal, which meant they had to get a $2.0 and over classes, or they would have been young, they would have had no other options I can get. So coming into winter quarter, you know, we were able to communicate with the student faculty about the student may become frustrated if they do not understand things in a clear and concrete way. And to let them know that if there are some signs of frustration like yelling, criticizing, you know, to make sure that the student is aware of that and make sure if it is uncomfortable interaction to let the student know that. I think a lot of times, we were concerned about telling, you know, knew our diverse students when something's making us uncomfortable because we're worried about possibly, you know, offending someone. Brian, I'm going to ask you to wrap up. Yeah, sorry. No worries. So with working with the student on coping strategies, and you know, developing ways for them to recognize when they were worried and frustrated, they were able to communicate with faculty when they weren't aware. They didn't know what to do. And didn't know when to where to turn in our assignment. Long story short, the student got 2.0 is in both their classes, and now is doing very well our class data. And, you know, I think that was just the acknowledgement and a collaboration between different resources on campus and the faculty members. Thank you. I think Brian's Brian story really illustrates the fact that neuro diverse students in particular, all students all of our students in community colleges and many of our university students have such complex situations sometimes that neuro diverse students just have a such a more complicated way of learning how to, or to overcome those so it's so complicated sometimes and then takes a lot of explaining. Thank you, Brian. Craig, I'll let you invite you to go. We'll, we'll have about 10 minutes for questions after. I love that zoom hey you're talking but you're not talking. So hi everyone. My name is Craig Kerr. I'm the director for services for students with disabilities at Edmunds College. I use he him his pronouns. And I really wanted to welcome you to our session today. You have had a ton of information over last day and a half and you're coasting here to the end so thanks for staying with us thanks for being here. It seems like you got some really good information from Sarah and Marissa about pedagogy so I'm hoping that you've been able to reflect on that. It looks like you got some like real first person stories from Rhonda. And you've had a student panel so you've gotten some really good experiences you just had how to communicate with neuro diverse students.  So I just kind of want to do a review because I'm going to go in a different direction than my colleagues and talk a little bit about what our offices are kind of charged to do with students and accommodations. I'm not sure that that has been talked about I see a smile from Eric so Eric knows Eric and I used to work in the same office together so he knows that I, I will come and I will think, hmm, what's best to be able to share. So I kind of wanted to start off a little bit about the accommodation process. So students have to come to the SSD so ours is SSD but they have to come to the disability office and ask for accommodations. So some of the students maybe that you've talked about or you've had in your classes, either may have been connected to the disability office, or may have not connected. It's their choice as a student whether they connect or not. It's kind of a key piece there. Then we all enter what's called a, oh my gosh, I just, just the interactive process. So what that means is that a student will come to us, and we'll talk to us about the conditions or disabilities that they're managing, how that kind of impacts them in the educational environment. And then we come up with reasonable accommodations based on that. And some institutions also require documentation from a third party so that could be a psychiatrist psychologist doctor. And that's how we form that informs the accommodations that are provided by for the students. Now recognize to that in our process of coming up with accommodations, it has to be on a case by case student by student situation. So some of you might have had students for two quarters. And in one quarter they had an accommodation that was given to you in a letter of accommodation or communicated to you by the disability department, and maybe the next quarter, you didn't get that same accommodation you're like, Hey, what's going on here like I had the student escorting that this accommodation why are they having this this quarter. So as disability professionals what we're looking at is the learning outcomes for the course and the students accommodation and how those meet. So there may be different accommodations based on how the classes structured or what the learning outcomes are from quarter to quarter. So we're also having to take that into account. Most of us in the disability offices are not going to tell you what the condition or disability a student is managing. Now there's multiple reasons for that. One, if it's a privacy issue. So you can all see because you can see my face that I wear glasses. Right. So think about if I was coming into your class and all you kept saying was hey the guy with the glasses, hey the guy with the glasses. Right. What you're doing in that conversation is you're focusing on something that is is non non typical. Right. And so that's going to reinforce to me. Well, I'm this guy with the glasses. So there's something that's maybe a little bit off about me. So one so it's that that idea of some students condition is part of who they are, not who they are. It's a really important piece, because when we talk with about both neuro diverse and neuro diverse students. That's just a part of who they are that is not who they are. And so I wanted to make sure that I kind of explain that piece to because oftentimes when we when instructors or professors want us to kind of say well what the what's the condition. What happens is, as disability professionals, we are steeped in the literature in the diagnosis. So we kind of know what that means if I express that to an instructor or to some staff member. Hmm autism autism means rain man, or autism means the savant who can do a pen scape of the of a landscape after flying over in a helicopter, obviously both of those are true stories. But there are what's called implicit bias in all of us. It could be. Obviously I like the outdoors so if I see somebody and I like silent sports so I like fly fishing I like cross country skiing I like snowshoeing.  But I still have them. So we're trying to reduce that implicit bias. I, Eric, I'm sorry I forgot to start my timer. I have a timer on my phone but I just got excited and started so you got about four minutes. Okay, thank you. And so I really kind of wanted to focus on our part in terms of supporting the student as a whole because they spend a tremendous amount of class class time with you.  You've gotten the student real story so I kind of wanted to give a different focus in terms of how accommodations come about and how they're communicated to you as faculty. Because oftentimes that is a kind of a, I don't know if this black hole is the correct term but a lot of faculty don't understand the accommodation process and why students get accommodations, the way they do. I just wanted to kind of give a brief overview of that. The last thing that I wanted to communicate was, as both Brian and hope mentioned so disability offices are not just for students. It's also for faculty and staff members. And what we often do is we help translate. So we're kind of mediators and translators so I've often had both students approach me and faculty approach me going. I'm not communicating well in this situation and I need help. I've had instructors are going like, I have a student who, when we have a conversation they jump in, they start on a topic and then they start wandering off. And because we live in the Pacific Northwest, most of us are Pacific Northwest nice, which means we trying to figure out a nice way to get people back to the topic of conversation. So this particular student had a need to have direct concrete instruction to bring them back. So what I talked with the instructor about was, well when that person is doing that, I want you to ask them, could you please tell me if that's on topic. When they say no, you say, please get back on topic. Now, for somebody who is neurotypical that might be embarrassing for this particular student that was neuro divergent. That's what they needed is a prompt to go oh yes I need to stay on topic. Right and then I've had students that are like, I need some concrete and start I need some concrete create answers and I'm getting some theoretical stuff from an instructor and I'm not understanding it. I met with the three of us together and was able to help them understand how they needed to communicate to the instructor and the instructor began to understand a concrete operational communication is going to be the best. So I just throw all of that out into the mix. I'm going to. I'm really interested to know about your questions. Because I know that you've been presented to quite a bit is my assumption I haven't been in on them. I know it is good that you had some breakout groups so that you got to talk to each other but now I'm very interested to know what your questions are for us. So thank you very much for letting me present. Thank you for that Craig and and you're right that's that's a deficit. We didn't address that we really talked to anybody about what the process is I'm the one who's closest to that on our staff but so thank you for filling in on that. And because it is a bit always a big question. At this point though, we've got about 10 minutes left in our session. Hope and Craig Brian may have been pulled off they're all taking time out of their work day here, which I appreciate very much. I know we all are, but we're in the middle of our quarter here. So any questions, feel free to either raise your hand and mute or post something in the chat. I'll be happy to read anything in the chat if we need to. Do we have any questions for our disability services folks. And this is the point where I do say I did used to be in the classroom as well so I can be quiet late. I just think we did such a great job. This is Tammy I do have a question for all of for whoever wants to answer. You know we've heard a lot of the faculty who are in this workshop and a lot who might be watching this later are really accommodating really open really receptive to whatever students need and really meeting them wherever they are. What is the balance that you'll see between your office, the student, the faculty and the law. Anybody wonder. Craig. Yeah, and I see you crystal as well for a question later. Yeah. So this is Craig from Edmunds College. I'll put my hand down here. There was there's a lot in that question. So let me. So let me first caution. I'm a bit of a word nerd so I'm going to caution faculty using the word accommodation or accommodate. The reason why I would caution you with that. I think you can say you can be flexible, or that you can be supportive. When the word accommodate either comes into language, or comes into email. So what we're looking at when when we're looking at accommodations is that it's seen as a. There is work in the law that talks about students who are perceived to have a condition or disability. Right. And so when you start using that word accommodate, or giving them accommodations outside of what the disability office has asked you to do. So I'm going to college in the disability office in a bit of a conundrum, because, because of using that word. So, I don't mean to kind of kind of call you out this is a conversation I have with faculty all the time at the college I work at. That would that would be kind of one thing. And so when so how I try to approach faculty members in terms of accommodations is, I might be a little bit more tight on this. So I ask faculty not to give accommodations. It's outside of what has been communicated to you via the disability office. And the reason why this is is because once you start to be flexible with a student. And another student who is maybe not neurodiverse starts to ask you, you have to give them that flexibility to be equal and have equity in your classroom. If you, if it's through the disability office, and then another student asked for that same flexibility, you can say, well, it's something that has been, you know, communicated and this is something that they have. If you feel like you need an accommodation, you can talk to the disability office. So those are kind of the two things that kind of jump out to me regarding that that question. And because it helps faculty not to get into that he, he, he or she gets this how come I don't. And then it talks about that that wavy line in terms of being flexible with students. Now, I will say that I'm talking about specific accommodations I'm not talking about situational things where a student may, you know, have a situation that comes up that they're not able to turn into homework so you are flexible for that. So I was mainly talking about kind of accommodations things. So, thank you, Craig. Anything to add hope or Brian, if not, we'll go on to the next question. Okay, crystal. Feel free to unmute and so my question is primarily around suggestions for how we can support how we can best support students who come to us. Self disclosing, you know, various diagnoses that they might have but they don't have the official documentation in place. And so getting them officially recognized accommodations or supports is difficult. Is there an alternative avenue for students to get those things recognized. If, you know, finances or access is a barrier for them and getting whatever required documentation is necessary. Hope you look like you'd like to answer that. When it comes to the documentation standards for receiving accommodations, at least in the state of Washington, each school sets their own standards for documentation and qualification for accommodations. So, right now, most of my colleagues and I in the state of Washington follow what we're called a head guidelines ahead is our professional organization national organization, and it's a three pronged approach to determine whether a student qualifies and what they qualify for and the three prongs are students self report so lived life experience, our professional judgment and documentation from an expert. So depending on where the student is, they may not need to provide documentation or very little documentation at all. So, what I would recommend is having a conversation with your 80 year disability support provider and ask them what their criteria are like I said we all do it a little different. Ask them what their criteria are and then ask them if I have a student who self identifies to me, but doesn't have current documentation. What services do you offer. Do you have referral services do you know of resources that help them get the documentation, or how old. Who does the documentation have to be there are some conditions I mean, when you have, you know, learning disabilities, learning disabilities can change. So sometimes having received documentation is important. But you know if you have another condition of juvenile diabetes, that's not changing.  So do I need a letter saying, you know, David, two days ago that says you have juvenile diabetes when you were 15 will work just fine. Because I'm going to take that and then I'm going to talk to you about your life experiences. But I would suggest right off the bat, talk to your particular person and find out what they need. And then go from there. Great, great. Catherine. So, I teach mathematics, and I'm actually been talking with some people that teach mathematics teach physics teach geology teach chemistry about how we aren't really positive how best to teach for certain topics like how do you describe a graph, how do you teach a student a graph who can't see the graph, or how do you teach a student who has this calculator, or how do you take a student on a field trip to who has a physical disability who can't walk through the field trip. So we actually are proposing to do a grant to bring together some people to create a community of practice to do this. And we're just kind of curious if there are people out there that would be willing and able to help us facilitate Yes, because I don't know anything myself. Yes. Catherine now I'll communicate with you about that. One on one. Okay. Okay, and is this also something that the disability visa officers at your school can do to. Yes, they will they will definitely that would have been the first thing on my list. They'll check in. They'll know how to help figure out tactile graphics they'll know how to help figure out transportation for a student in a chair though yeah. But, but there are trainers at the national level as well. Good question. There are some questions in that I do think we're probably going to go over a few minutes if everybody's okay with that. I don't I don't want anybody to walk away without having at least some interaction with their questions. Chris, I'll just go ahead and read Chris your questions I'm curious to hear your perspective on how an interested faculty member could arrange to meet with students before the term begins. I don't know that would help me to be a much better instructor if I had some specific tips and hints that I can incorporate anybody have any thoughts on that. Brian Craig hope. Brian. Yeah, I think that's a good question I think you know that would be. So if you had a roster of who's involved in your class and you know I think just set out a general invite to everyone in the class, you know, because I think one thing that, you know, we.  So, you know, I think and also having a lot of conversation with students, you can find out a lot about them. It's close to you that they have a disability, but don't even know that accommodations can be possible for them at the college level, and that could give the faculty member great opportunity to refer them to their college and disability support office. So, Brian, Brian suggesting invite any student Craig hope do you have other thoughts you think that's a, are there additional things hope. I know that at least in my campus that my office sends out about a week in advance, all of the requests for accommodations that we've gotten prior to the quarter. About a week before the first day, and traditionally schools have kind of dumped the responsibility for initiating that conversation on the student in the past and what I would recommend is that if you get those letters in advance, just reach out to the student and acknowledge that you've got the letter tell them that you would love to have a conversation to talk about how you can be the best instructor for them. And connect that way, you know there's, like I said in the past is kind of all been on the student and technically legally at the end of the day. That's true, but you guys are faculty want their students to succeed there is not an instructor on earth that wants their students to fail. And you know so just taking that extra step to express your interest in their success. Thank you. Yep. Yep. Last, last couple three questions in this then I will wrap up after this and take a short break, and then come back for our last session. And as asked are we dependent on requests for accommodation in designing our course. What about students who are not diagnosed and doesn't neurodiversity apply to every person. Also how to incorporate communicate neurodiversity goals in our learning objectives so quite a few things are let's let's at first question yet Craig, go ahead. First one. Yeah, so I, I wrote something in the chat. I wrote something in the chat there, Jan. So a little bit. Yeah. Yeah, so it was specific to kind of a hearing impaired or deaf or deaf students. So remember that that public speaking. If your deaf is public speaking. Fortunately, we have sign language interpreters here with us on the call today. So that will be public speaking. So when you're having someone who has a hearing impairment, or who is deaf. You would have an interpreter in your class that would voice for the student who is has who is deaf or hard of hearing. And so that's how kind of that that would work in terms of your public speaking course. The same pedagogy in terms of public speaking is applicable to students who are able to voice themselves as it is to someone who is deaf or hard of hearing. So the, the idea that I wanted to kind of get across as there is a pedagogy called universal design and learning UDL. I don't know if Sarah and I talked about that much at all in the pedagogy, but that incorporates it's the idea of universal and basically came from engineering and our architecture where they created spaces like you go into the grocery store now and you don't have to touch anything because you have an automatic door. That's universal design in architecture. So there is a pedagogy called universal design and learning and so I would encourage all faculty to brush up on that to be able to inform their creating their curriculum and their pedagogy with that in mind. Yeah. Yeah, just, I know that you mentioned classes online. There's also, there's a lot more, I think, options when something's online to make it accessible, you know, there's captions. There's a lot of different tools and also, as we learn through the remote, you know, through remote modality during the pandemic, you know, interpreting. So I think, you know, a lot of UDL, universal design and learning principles can be applied to both modality. Yeah.  Lots of possibilities but but we do need to wrap up. Unfortunately, I'd really like to thank Hope, Brian and Craig for for joining us today. I've been so integral to my own learning as a disability services person prior to coming to, to the do it center and working on these grant projects. So thank you all so much. I know I'll see you all around again. Feel free to hang around if you have time. I know you may not.


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It, in some ways, sows a great deal of uncertainty around the world about what the future of America's regional role is. On the one hand, there are some people who say, well, Trump is an anomaly. He is someone who has been elected because of a particular anomaly within the United States in the 2016 election, and therefore all we have to do is wait out the Trump years and we'll go back to America as usual. There are others who say, actually, Trump represents a sea change in the United States and that this growing number of angry people within the United States will keep on electing populist presidents who will be elected partly on advocating a retreat of the United States from its liberal internationalist role that it's played in the world since the end of the Second World War. And so an inability to kind of make a call on that and an inability in terms of what Trump will do with American foreign policy while he's in office because there has been no articulation of what that is, you know, what that will entail in terms of a foreign policy doctrine has sown great uncertainty into the world. I think it sows an element of unpredictability into regional security. On the one hand, the gap between what Trump has said he would do and what Trump has actually done has been quite wide and seems to be growing. He talked very tough on China during the election campaign, and yet everything that he and his administration have done in relation to China has been quite conciliatory so far. He talked quite tough about Japan and other allies as well, and yet that in terms of real action has been a conciliatory policy line as well. And yet we're not quite sure what he will do about the North Korean issue. So that element of unpredictability has sown a bit of volatility, a bit more volatility into what was already a region that was quite volatile anyway. The concerns really arise as to whether you can trust anything that he says. I would think that people like the Japanese Prime Minister, the Chinese President, probably have left the United States thinking that they've had a positive set of meetings with Trump, but whether he will actually act on what he says is another big question. It's that, again, that very large gap between rhetoric and action for Trump, which makes it very hard for people to take him at face value and to understand him at face value. The other element is, of course, Trump's rather volatile personality, which means that how he will act seems to depend on what actually happens. So rather than there being any clear policy line that he will try and cleave to, he seems to react on a fairly visceral and emotional level, take the Syrian cruise missile attacks as an example. He seems to have completely changed US policy based on how he reacted emotionally to that particular incident. So Trump sows uncertainty into the US-Australia alliance. I think the government's approach to it so far has been to rely on the other strands of the alliance, the multiple strands that bring our two countries together to carry us through while trying to get a measure of the president and how the White House works as that continues to evolve. The policy prescriptions, I think, are about right, not to panic, not to be overly bombastic, to try and rely on those very deep and very long-standing ties to impart a little bit of stability into the alliance relationship and wait till the alliance relationship evolves to see what we're going to make of it.


I think that's beautiful, that even that little nibbling of a thought coming up about the familiar, that really is a good summary of the human condition, you know, even if there's this feeling that there's something vast and enormous and spectacular, the only thing that the ego has to offer is the familiar, because the ego will say that the vast and spectacular is the unknown, and the familiar is the known, and that's exactly what we explored this afternoon. The I Know Mind that thinks it knows something, anything about this world, is also the mind, the same mind that holds opinions. It's the same mind that has judgments. It's the same mind that makes comparisons. So, you know, it seems to the ego like that's a leap that it doesn't want you to make. It doesn't want you to open up to something that's totally brand new. It's unlike anything of this world that it calls the unknown. That's the scary thing. And for me, sometimes there's a song that reminds me of what you're talking about. Let me remember Barry Manilow. You remind me I live in a shell, safe from the past and doing okay but not very well. No jolts, no surprises, no crisis arises, my life goes as long as it should. It's all very nice, but not very good. And then the chorus for the Holy Instant. And I'm ready to take a chance again. Ready to put my love on the line with you. Been living with nothing to show for it. You get what you get when you go for it. And I'm ready to take a chance again. Just you can sing this to the Holy Spirit. Really, if you really could feel it. You can feel the familiarity in the first part. It's like sticky. It's like the ego is saying, no, rock the boat. Ego is saying, my world I made for you. It's offered you something. There's some kind of safety and familiarity. And yet I think for most of this we've also found a sense of boredom in the familiarity. We found a sense of lethargy, a sense of laziness, a sense of somehow there's something keeping us down from our full potential. Something that's holding us back from this bursting love. Because we've had glimmers of it. But we have also this sense like, wow, I like that glimpse. Why can't this always be the way that life is? Why can't life be actually fun? You know, why is there just bits and pieces of fun? Why can't life always be fun? And the answer from the Spirit is it is. It can. It is the reality. But we do have to let go of the past associations, the familiar. And we have to do it to open up, open our hearts up to something that's much greater than anything that we've ever experienced on earth. And we know that it's there. There's something inside our hearts that actually knows it's there. We can feel it. But it's almost like we're under glass or something. It's like we're kept from it. But we've had enough of an experience to know that there's something more. Most everybody has said at one time in their life there's got to be something more in talking about in terms of awareness. And we've even seen shifts in our awareness that get more expansive, that have wider vistas, bigger horizons. So we know that we're on to something big. So Armell was talking about trust. And I would say that trust, as we really learn to really choose to trust, that gives us the strength to start to let go of some of the old familiar patterns and to open up to something that's much, much higher, much, much broader than that. And we've all gone through that. I remember the parable of David, I was very quiet and shy and was voted most quiet in my senior class and really stayed away from relationships, stayed away from social interactions. Just kind of, it was a bit of an aloofness that was part of that shyness, you know, like a protectionism, like don't get too close. Don't get too close to me. I wanted to feel safe and I really clung to that. And then when I started to get into spirituality, the course and so forth, I felt my heart opening up really in a deeply passionate way. And something inside went, this feels really good. I want to go with this. I like how it feels when my heart opens. So I think it's a very subtle question.  You had those things going on today and then all of a sudden that dissipated and was gone. And then that, is there anything stopping me from staying in this state? And then that little niggling thought was, well, there's some things that are familiar. Will that disappear? What will my safe world disappear if I fully open my heart up? And I'm aware that the way that I once saw the world, you know, has disappeared. Now I don't, I can't even relate to it. It's not, it's gone. Like it's gone and it's even more so as if it never was. That's the feeling.