We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Savanna Flakes. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Savanna below.

Hi Savanna, thanks for joining us today. Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?

One of my favorite quotes is, “The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.” Mahatma Gandhi

After many years of teaching children with disabilities, I noticed an important need to empower schools, organizations, and communities with inclusive practices to reach ALL learners (students with disabilities, at-risk students, children of color, and multi-lingual learners). Thus, I started an education consultation company dedicated to supporting school communities learn and utilize effective instructional and inclusive practices, such as differentiation, equity, trauma informed practices, culturally responsive pedagogy, and co-teaching practices to successfully include ALL students. In 8 years, I’ve been able to provide affordable and meaningful professional development sessions, teacher coaching, and planning services for school improvement plans and response to intervention systems for dozens of school communities around the world. I facilitate professional learning around the world with various organizations to prepare teacher leaders to lead colleagues in increasing student achievement and to share effective instructional practices to improve academic achievement for ALL students. Since the creation of Inclusion for a Better Future, I’ve consulted with school communities, non-profits, national conferences, and Department of Juvenile Justice systems, impacting over 130,000 teachers and at least 1,750,000 students’ lives.

Inclusion For a Better Future’s mission and philosophy is to facilitate inclusive and equitable instructional practices for ALL children. We engage leaders in inclusive instructional classroom observations, provide meaningful professional development training for school communities, and collaborate with teachers to provide effective instructional coaching experiences. Our commitment is to help every community seamlessly integrate evidenced-based instructional strategies and technology into training, curriculum, instruction to support the Whole Person.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

My vision of providing all children with opportunity to have meaningful access to rigorous curriculum and providing adults instructional supports to include all children guides my companies’ philosophy. I believe, “Give everyone a voice, whomever they are, the world needs it.” Everyone has something to learn and something to contribute. My philosophy is that all students have gifts to share and the power of collaboration is essential to unlocking All students’ academic and emotional achievement. Inclusive Practices is a mindset then, that drives your resources, professional development practices, schedules, and overall school community. As such, in strong inclusive and equitable school communities, differences are not just expected, but celebrated. Therefore, develop an asset-based mindset, give everyone a voice, an opportunity to contribute, and share their gifts…we all benefit!

Inclusion For a Better Future provides workshops, trainings, and coaching on a range of topics to support Inclusive Practices for children and adults. The companies’ mission to support Inclusive Practices supports can be tailored for every audience, specifically, we can customize trainings to support tech companies aiming to be more inclusive for persons with disabilities or school divisions looking to foster collaboration skills amongst teachers of students with disabilities. For example, I’ve collaborated with Limited Resource Teaching Training to create a training program which trained over 400 teachers and administrators in Guyana in instructional practices for diverse learners, impacting thousands of students. Our target audience is organizations, companies, and school districts seeking to make their communities for children more inclusive.

Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?

As business owners quickly learn, success is the sum of super intentional steps towards a goal and the resilience to learn from failures that will arise while maneuvering through those steps. At the start of my entrepreneurial journey, I was advised to say, “Yes” to every client, job, and request. This was well-intended and terrible advice. Can we do everything? Maybe. Is it wise to try to do everything, Probably Not. We can not do it all. Quality of life, relationships, and emotional priorities take a disastrous toil when our business model doesn’t prioritize a work/ life balance. Reading Greg McKeown’s book “Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less,” which features practical tips on how to discern what’s most important and eliminate the trivial was a defining turning point for me. I embraced the beauty of “No/Not Yet,” asking clients if there is flexibility in timelines (60% of the time there is flexibility in service and deliverable due dates), contracting out services that don’t align with my business mission, and referring clients to other companies that can better support them. This philosophy that falls under minimalism has supported me in serving more organizations successfully and simultaneously prioritizing my spiritual work and emotional self-care.

Thus, answering these 2 important questions, “What is most essential to me as a business owner? and, “How I can be my best to serve my clients in the best way?” has contributed to my success.
Note: Checkout Greg McKeown’s book “Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

Many of us small business owners faced a few obstacles in the year 2020 with the COVID-19 pandemic . With that being stated, we also became more resilient, adaptable, and all-around genius as a result. Specifically, as an education consulting company, when thousands of schools shuttered as a result of COVID-19 and moved online, we had to adapt and customize our in-person coaching and professional training for virtual settings. As a company we took a moment to reset, evaluate quality online programming, obtain Online Training certification, and we quickly began offering virtual services to support Inclusion, Equity, and Diversity. Our commitment was to ensure high engagement using various online platforms and guarantee the remote experience would be more than commensurate and meaningful to our in-person delivery satisfaction. By being resourceful and thinking way outside-of-the box we had great success transitioning services online. Clients love our highly engaging strategies, exciting brain breaks, and discussion protocols we used in our online trainings. In fact, about 40% of our current programming for schools, non-profits, and community organizations is still offered virtual. As Bob Riley eloquently reminds us, “Hard times don’t create heroes. It is during the hard times when the ‘hero’ within us is revealed.”
We all have a “hero” within us.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.savannaflakes.com
• Facebook: Inclusion for a Better Future
• Linkedin: Savanna Flakes
• Twitter: @SavannaFlakes
• Youtube: Inclusion for a Better Future
• Other: Purchase a copy of my book- Shaking Up Special Education: Instructional Moves to Increase Student Achievement
  TEDx Talk- Savanna Flakes, Inclusion and Fast Food: Designing a Meaningful Learning Experience

Image Credits

Jason Flakes