 Good afternoon, everyone. It's it's great to be coming back to you and very excited about the topic that we have for today and and for the guest that are joining us and to be presenting with the learning policy Institute. We really appreciate their partnership on that before I before I launch into that topic. I just have a few items that I want to go over with you. Just to provide an overview of our restart and recovery supports, we've been putting things out at a very rapid pace and just wanted to make sure that everyone on the call is aware of all of those resources in the past two months that you can engage in rapid, critical decision making to ensure health and safety of your students, teachers, staff and navigating challenges around devices and connectivity and offering continuous learning guidance to school. And many over the past weekend, we were so excited to be a part of the celebration for graduate together. And being able to offer that opportunity where a space keeps could give a graduation note to the their graduates in their state. We're also focused on the hard work that needs to be done, which is guidance around both summer and fall. We recently shared guidance on virtual summer school, as well as guidance on building, cleaning, safety and monitoring, which I need to give a nod to our friends at LPI who just released, I think today, a new resource that I think Linda will share a little more about, but we use that to help inform the work that we were doing. We also released a restart and recovery framework, which outlines the phases of work. I will just say the reason we chose to do this is we felt like there were so many moving parts that we needed to make sure that it coalesced around as clear vision for all the things that we were hearing from both state chiefs and from SEA leaders about what must be addressed as we think about both going back to school and what some of the new things that were. That we're facing and how we can think about the supports and needed things for students. So far our work has included a emphasis on physical safety, mental health, academic success for all students, but most they are both vulnerable student populations and we'll focus on this work in four broad categories. The continuity of learning, the conditions for learning, which includes a focus on mental health and physical health and well being leadership and planning and policy and funding. And so today, I know that that Linda is going to talk about a number of things about the science of learning, but really honing it on some of these things about the conditions for learning that make it so important. We still, we do have a very clear focus on equity as well. And I just feel like we need to take a pause and a moment to say this, but that our focus on our vulnerable populations, including our students living in poverty and our students of color, students of disabilities, homeless youth that are English language learners have been affected in tremendous ways through this crisis, along with all students, but those students in particular face some of the challenges that we're facing. Really, it's significant challenges. So, we have a long history of being a convener and a connector in the education community to get states the best possible supports. And today's webinar is an opportunity to do just that by elevating expert thinking for partners and state leaders in the education community and on improving conditions for learning to support the whole child. Um, I probably don't need to introduce her her name. I kind of stand by itself, but let me do the introductions for Dr. Linda Darlin Cameron is the president CEO of the learning policy Institute, the Charles E. Oh, I don't know, but I've ever said this one. You command. You'll have to correct me. Professor of education emeritus at Stanford University where she founded the Stanford Center for opportunity policy and education. And served as a faculty sponsor for the Stanford teacher education program, which she helped to read. She also serves as the president of the California State Board of Education and she's going to share insights and research on the science of learning and development for supporting the whole child and reflections on the action state can take to support the whole child and restart recovery. And I consider, I consider Linda a friend as well. So, Linda, I will turn it over to you. Thanks so much. Um, and it's great to be partnering with CCS as though I really appreciate the leadership that the organization has shown in this difficult time. We're all looking to one another. I serve as president of the State Board of Education in California. And we're all, you know, very much in the learning mode about how to manage this crisis and also how to bring the whole child back to school as I, as I put it here. So I'm going to share a few ideas about this rooted in the science of learning and development. I have a blog coming out in Forbes today. It's probably posted now that summarizes a lot of these ideas. If you're interested in seeing more about it and I'll ask whoever's controlling the cursor to take us to the next slide. So all around the world is school to reopening. One of the documents that Carissa mentioned is one that we put out. I think it went out last Friday on international guidelines for restarting schools. You can see Denmark on the left with lots of physical distancing and Taiwan on the right with less physical distance but dividers and masks on the students and the teacher. And you can see that people are taking different approaches to this question of safely reopening schools in different contexts. Next slide. And, you know, what we know from the science of learning and development should guide the way in which we approach this task of restart and recovery. The brain and development, first of all, are malleable. That's really good news. That is to say throughout our entire lives, our brains continue to grow and, you know, wire and change in response to the environment around us. Next bullet. So relationships become hugely important. One of the things we've learned from neuroscience is that just the ways in which relationships create the hormonal and brain architecture development. By whether they bring sort of the kind of oxytocin that comes from warm relationships, hugging affirmation interaction and the neuron connections that go along with that. Or whether they bring a lot of cortisol, which is the response to stress adrenaline that actually wires things in unpredictable and more challenging ways makes a big difference for healthy development and learning. The next bullet. Children, of course, actively construct their knowledge based on their experiences and context. And as we all know as educators, the nature of those experiences and those context is very, very critical. When children feel that they can connect things that they know to the things that they're learning, they're more effective learners when they are in a safe and welcoming environment. They're able to learn more effectively when the context provides rich opportunities for exploration and inquiry. They learn more effectively. Next bullet. And of course, learning is social emotional and academic and that is all intertwined together. We can't disassemble it. We have had sometimes a feeling when there's been pressure on schools to produce higher and higher test scores that there wasn't time for social and emotional learning. But it turns out that when we give kids both social and emotional skills for managing their feelings for focusing their attention for being resilient for dealing with conflict, productively for confronting and problem solving around obstacles. They actually do much better academically and there are strong improvements in academics when we take the time to both support social and emotional development and give students their own tools to manage their own social and emotional learning. Next slide. Adversity also affects learning and Carissa reminded us this morning that there are some of our students who are experiencing. Much more adversity than others and almost everyone is experiencing some the good news is that it can be mitigated by secure long term relationships. The word long term is important there because our schools are often constructed for a series of short term relationships. It can be mitigated by supportive context that provide a sense of belonging and psychological as well as physical safety experiences that foster self efficacy and purpose when kids feel like they can do things when they're enabled to be successful and confident. It actually gives them a sort of locus of control that allows them to more effectively manage the challenges in their lives. And then as I mentioned, social and emotional supports and skills. Next slide. So reopening school is an opportunity also to not only recover, but to reinvent practice. And I think many of us are seeing it in that way. And if we look at science informed principles of practice, which we've outlined in some documents that you can get from the Learning Policy Institute, one of them called educating the whole child. There are four major areas of work in the school that can dramatically support children's learning and development. One is of course, creating a positive school climate in which attachment and relationships and safety and belonging are prioritized. A second is social and emotional development, everything from self regulation and interpersonal skills to perseverance and resilience that come from a growth mindset. A third is productive instructional strategies and now more than ever those need to deal with metacognition and learning to learn. Since kids are doing more of their learning themselves, managing their own learning as well as learning from others and then systems of support that wrap around the child in an integrated system. Next slide. So in our whole child policy table in which we work with CCSSO and other state-based organizations, we think about the policy work here as focusing on setting a whole child vision that permeates all of the things we do and making that explicit, sometimes with the way which standards and guidelines are set, sometimes the way which grants and funds are allocated. Transforming learning settings so that they build on these principles, supporting the right kind of instruction, building adult capacity becomes, of course, a huge part of the policy agenda. People can't do what they don't know how to do and then, of course, organizing and leveraging resources. I'm going to speak to those in one minute, turn to the next slide. So I'm going to take a minute to talk about a top 10 list for preparing for restart and recovery and I would argue also reinvention. If we reopen schools in the ways that they have existed with substantial inequality across them and built into some of the ways in which many schools function with approaches that are not supportive of the way in which people actually learn, we will have missed an opportunity. I'm very passionate about the moment for closing the digital divide. I know you're all working on that and seeing it, it was raised into relief, of course, by the distance learning needs that have emerged from closing schools. It actually turns out that the amount of money that it would cost to close the digital divide relative to the amount we spend generally is and most states are probably within 15 or 20% of having closed that divide. We've in California probably had about 1 in 5 kids without connectivity and devices at home. We've more than close that divide by more than half, but we have hard work to do to get to the other end of that. But it's kind of like Maslow's hierarchy of needs today in this moment. We not only need to close that divide for the moment, but we're going to go in and out of distance learning as COVID rolls along. Many of our districts are in places where other events will close schools, whether those are floods or hurricanes or fires. So being able to go in and out, but it's also a survival mechanism. Not only does it determine who could easily do their homework and access tools on the internet, but it also determines which families can get telehealth, which families can apply for jobs, get benefits, manage their lives in ways that are safe and productive. So it's a moment where in every state, I think we have to prioritize our ability to close the digital divide. It's also an important way to keep those social and emotional connections going between teachers and other school staff and students when they can see one another, when they can have the personal touch, if you will, without touching that the video as well as audio capability provides. So I think it's got to be a top priority for us. In our state out of the $1.3 billion that will come from the CARES Act, it'll probably cost a couple hundred million to close the digital divide. It's a high priority because on it that we can build so many other things that are helpful for taking care of the whole child. The second thing, of course, is to continue to strengthen distance learning, but also to begin to think about blended learning. We will have distance learning not only for the, you know, moments when schools cannot be safely opened or when they have to close and then reopen again. We'll also have the situation where when kids have been exposed or staff have been exposed to someone who is infected with COVID, they'll need to be quarantined. They'll need to be home for periods of time. So teachers are learning a lot about how to engage in productive distance learning. And, you know, in many cases making enormous strides in a new pedagogy that I'm seeing examples of working well in some cases. It's obviously quite uneven and we've got, you know, folks, you know, who are brand new to any kind of technology as well as folks who are at the cutting edge of being able to use, you know, zoom breakout rooms and have the paraprofessional aid working with us students with learning differences in a special zoom room while others are working on other things and then bringing people back together and using chats and a variety of other tools in productive ways. But we've got to keep at it and continue to strengthen educators capacities to use those pedagogy as well. And then I think we'll see when people come back into the classroom that technology can be used in more productive ways if we also begin to think productively about blended learning models. And I know many of you are deep into this and I think that that is on the other end of this a part of what we ought to aspire to do is to use technologies in ways that are productive for kids. What we know from research is that when students get the right mix of teachers and peers and technology used for inquiry and the development of products and ways of demonstrating their knowledge. It can be a big net plus in their achievement. We've also seen that simply kids sitting kids in front of computers for electronic workbooks actually does not in any of the big studies produce gains and achievements. So using technology in the right ways and figuring out how to blend it with in school and out of school is going to be important. We may have situations where kids are in school on certain days and home on other days and where they're using technology as the bridge between those two places. I think it's also important right now to begin to think about how to emphasize authentic learning and assessment. Many of the teachers having the most success right now are those who are working with children around how to use this moment to learn things that are relevant to the experience they're having to build on what they learned earlier in the year. You can write that book club essay about books that you read earlier engage in a debate about a social issue or some other issue that you're looking at learn science through experimentation in the home as well as ways to demonstrate what you can learn from inquiry online. Kids need to know that learning matters that accounts that is connected to what they care about an assessment right now is beginning to follow suit to a greater and greater degree. But I think that's positive and something to be built on as we go back to school. Many, many states Minnesota being one that has statewide guidance for social and emotional learning are doing really productive work. Washoe County in Nevada has a social emotional learning program that's a daily program. There are many folks who are figuring out how to blend that in. Of course, we want that to continue as well. Once we get quote back to school coming back to school is going to be very challenging and it's important that we do that a ways that build on build strong relationships. Some experts are actually suggesting that students go back to the teachers to the extent that it's plausible who they had last year who already know them know how they learn understand who they are know their family and can figure out what they need what they've learned what their situation is and build on it to get them back into the groove in a very productive way, potentially passing them on to the next grade level teacher after the first quarter or even continuing in a looping relationship. Schools that have longer term relationships with kids do typically get better achievement outcomes because of the depth of knowledge that they have secondary schools. That don't yet have advisory systems or mentoring systems of some sort will need to create those if kids are going to have an anchor and an adult who will know them well and help them negotiate. Both the souls of a re engaging academics and the needs that they may have for services beyond the the academic so schools across the country have worked on redesign. Many have developed these stronger longer term relationships than the ones that we inherited from the factory model school. This is a time to really strengthen that she's for change recently put out a very interesting back to school document which has a variety of ideas for how to redesign schools around relationships that could sustain educators and kids together in this time. And I think this is a great time to think about it. Next slide. Our images of what that may look like could be a blend of, you know, kids working together using technologies both on their own at home and in school and engaging in really experiential work as well, which is going to be very important planting that garden. Engaging in, you know, water and sand play engaging in the arts so finding that that blend of really experiential opportunities supported by technology will be will be key. Next slide. The last points I will make is simply that as we prepare for for restart recovery and reinvention, you know, closing the gap as Carissa said is so important. And these are times where as we use cares act money heroes act is coming down the pike, hopefully bigger and better than the last recovery act. These are uses of funding that can be thought about and are important. We're seeing how community schools that have integrated health mental health, expanded learning time social services for kids are really able to meet kids needs at this time. And there is funding in the cares act and in the heroes act for that kind of investment to enable schools to wrap around more efficiently and effectively so that families are not trying to deal with fragmented bureaucracies to get what they need. And kids are really the focus of the attention around how to integrate all of the supports that they need. New York and Maryland are two states that have direct support to community schools that in high poverty communities enables them to coordinate those services for kids. And we've heard many stories there and in California and other states that have local engagement around community schools about how much better position they have been to meet students needs during this time. Obviously expanded learning time is on everyone's mind starting in the summer and going beyond this may be the time to move beyond the agrarian calendar. Many districts and a number of countries, you know, spread school out over the whole school year with smaller breaks in between which lead to less learning loss. Florida got terrific results when they added an hour of reading for every kid in about 300 schools that were low performing. They saw tremendous gains by expanding learning time during the school year in a very purposeful way. There are lots of ways to do this. It is a time to really think productively about where and how to ensure that kids have the time to catch up in a way that doesn't identify a bunch of them as behind or below, but picks them up from where they are with good thoughtful diagnostic assessments and moves them forward on a continuous learning trajectory without stigmatizing them. But by accelerating progress around formative assessments that can really support that growth process. It's also potentially a time to leverage more equitable funding in the way that you decide to give out the money from CARES and the HEROES Act to meet the needs of the kids who are most vulnerable. But also, interestingly, it was when California got to the very nadir of its funding under the last recession when we cut per pupil expenditures by about $2,000 per pupil, that a brand new funding scheme was brought in, a new funding formula, very progressive with weighted student formula for poverty, English learners, foster care children, homeless children. Everybody got more money as new money came into the system, but it was distributed more equitably with more flexibility, fewer categorical programs. And the end result has really begun to reduce the achievement gap by taking advantage of that moment when you could have a different conversation about school finance. The last point I'll make because it is what reduces the gap when we, at the very beginning, is how important it will be to sustain our early childhood education programs, which are many of them going belly up. They're very slim margins in early childhood. You know how low the wages are, the tensions between investment in reimbursement rates and affordability for parents. But if we want to continue to build early learning, as so many of you are already doing in states ranging from West Virginia to Washington to New Jersey to Oklahoma and so on. We're going to have to take some special effort right now to be sure that those programs are sustained and can be reactivated when we get to recovery and reinvention. And I'll stop there so that we can have a conversation. Linda, I think we're going to, I think what we're going to do is we're going to follow do his presentation and then we'll do questions all throughout that if you have time to stick with us. That sounds great. Okay, perfect. So it's, it's my pleasure to introduce. Superintendent Paulo de Maria, who is the superintendent of public instruction for the Ohio Department of Education. Paulo is known as a passionate leader, a tireless work worker, a respectful listener and an energetic advocate. I can definitely double down on that an energetic advocate for Ohio is 1.7 million students. And he has been called on with all these daily during his tenure as Ohio superintendent to deal with the COVID crisis. So, you're going to share with us the perspective of how you and Ohio are working on full child matters. And some of the things that Linda probably discussed here and then we'll coalesce around Q and a. Hello. Thanks, Chris. I appreciate it. And thanks, Linda. I really appreciated your comments as well. It's great to be with you all. If this was an in person meeting, I would likely give an OH shout out that would be responded by all the Ohioans in the room saying, I owe, but that really doesn't work in a virtual setting so I'll just have to pretend. Okay, what I'm going to do is just sort of provide a little bit of a discussion about the architecture and the approach in Ohio around meeting the needs of the whole child. And so I'm going to start a little bit by talking about the importance of having a shared vision. Then I'm going to talk a little bit about leadership. I'm going to talk a little bit about structural components that embrace this notion of meeting the needs of the whole child. Mention a little bit about standards, which to me signifies common language and common understanding, and then some programmatic elements. And then I'll talk a little bit about how it all plays in the context of COVID, both in terms of the school building closures that we recently endured here in the state and the upcoming reopening. Let's go back and begin with a vision. When I first became superintendent four years ago, we were very much at the outset of submitting our every student succeeds act plan. And in the process developing that plan it became clear to me that we actually had to do something more than just comply with the federal guidance and the questions that the feds ask and they're very sort of sometimes sterile away. We had to really reconceive of what is Ohio strategic direction for education and and we developed our strategic plan called each child our future. And if you were to go to the website right now and look up that strategic plan and see the infographic that accompanies it, you will see right at the center is the whole child. So, as we had our town hall meetings as we had our work groups engaged with all the associations and practitioners represented as we brought in experts and so forth and so on. It became really clear to us that we had to address the needs of the whole child. And in fact, we had to talk about learning domains that went beyond simply the academic and extended into social emotional learning and leadership reasoning skills. If we actually wanted to fulfill our goal, which was to create students who were ready to succeed in a post secondary setting, we had to get at all those components. And the beauty of the strategic plan is that as more and more people, not only participated in its development, but read it and embraced it that notion of the needs of the whole child became prevalent throughout a lot of the work that was being done. And I still am surprised every time I go to a conference or something and somebody uses somebody from Ohio district level uses the strategic plan as a basis for their discussion or uses references to the strategic plan and some of the ideas in it as they make their presentation because that tells me that it has begun to take root in a broader way than simply at the SEA level. The second thing I wanted to talk about is really the notion of leadership, you can have a great vision, but if you really aren't aren't leading against that vision that it's likely not to take hold. And I think what we found is and I especially want to pay compliments to Governor Mike DeWine our current governor, he came to the governorship about a year, a little more in a year and almost a half ago, with just a very, very strong commitment to not only children and their needs in general, but also to this idea of meeting the needs of the whole child. And again, not to, you know, not to really comment on prior governors because I think they too had that sense, but it really became much more pronounced with Governor DeWine because he had an established record both in the US Senate and as the state's attorney general, and even prior to that as the state's lieutenant governor about caring and understanding the real challenges that students face, you know, from a from a from a daily living kind of perspective. And so what happened when the strategic plan was finalized is it resulted on now transitioning to this idea of the structural components at the, at the state education agency, we use that as an opportunity to reconfigure ourselves. So a lot of programs that previously had sort of been in silos got brought together. We asked people to have those uncomfortable conversations that sometimes need to take place to see how do we better integrate. And so we actually established an office of integrated student supports in one of the centers of our agency that brought together all the different things that we had been doing up until that time and really saw a blossoming and a deepening of the understanding of how can we organize ourselves to meet the needs of the whole child and what can we do to support that work as it happens in schools and districts. The other thing is we established a whole child advisory group that again built off some initial work where we tried to identify all the different things that were happening that spoke to meeting the needs of the whole child. That was meant to be a short term project, but it ultimately came a long term advisory group because we saw that that work had to continue and had to be something that was on an ongoing basis constantly thinking about how do we do that better. How do we evaluate the success and the progress that we're making? How do we identify bumps in the road and get past those? How do we leverage all the great partnerships that are instrumental in getting that done? The other structural element I would suggest took place in Ohio was deepening our connections with other state agencies that also had as part of their mission addressing the needs of children. One of those was the Department of Medicaid. One of those was the Department of Mental Health. One of those was the Department of Health. And the other was the Department of Job and Family Services, which houses a lot of our child care programming as well as social services supports and child protective services and those sorts of activities. And we really deliberately strengthened those collaborations as we continue to move forward because one of the instrumental principles in our strategic plan is partnerships. And essentially saying that raising and educating Ohio's children is everybody's business. And so we are going to leave no stone unturned to identify those partners and to leverage what they can bring to the table in the interest of meeting the needs of the whole child. And so I'll talk a little bit more about some of the programmatic elements that derive from those partnerships, but I wanted to spend just a moment to reflect on standards. Because the other thing we have found to be very powerful is having some common language around some of this work to ensure that people can talk to each other intelligently and understand what it is that we're trying to achieve. So one of those pieces was the adoption of a set of social emotional learning standards, which again, once we finalize that work, I was in a meeting with some directors of county mental health boards. And they actually were the ones that expressed to me how how much it had been a kind of a breath of fresh air or allowed to them almost gave them permission to have some of the conversations that maybe they had wanted to have but felt as if they weren't, you know, necessarily empowered or that they might be out of their element if they had those. We also have a set of school climate guidelines that were actually developed a long time ago in response to some anti bullying legislation, but that also form the basis for additional activity that we're doing. And a lot of work in the positive behavior interventions and supports space that that that actually speaks significantly to the notion of school climate. We've also done a good bit of work and trauma informed practices, because we see that those kinds of specific attention and understanding about trauma among students and adverse childhood experiences is really tremendously important. And again, meeting the needs of the whole child and helping students become of a disposition to engage in the learning process. So then programmatically, you know, all these things began to take shape in the last budget and it's and it's in some ways a little bit of a sad story because now that the economy is struggling. You know, some of these programs are being threatened, but but I think the momentum that we built and the interest in the in the in the concepts is actually will speak positively to them being sustained even if all the resources aren't necessarily there. But it started with the governor making a huge investment over the two years of the Ohio biennial budget over an excess of $650 million in what was called the student wellness and success fund. These were dollars that were distributed to all all districts that were targeted towards a broad range of purposes, but those purposes were constrained around meeting the needs of the whole child. And so they not only required a separate sort of planning exercise. Even though that list was fairly broad that focus on those purposes, but it also required that a district have a partnership with one of a number of entities, including local health care providers, local mental health providers and other sort of similar entities. That would be in the local community. And again, you know, we felt like both that that was important in infusing additional resources, but also making people take deliberate action by having to develop this plan and strengthening the partnerships that were emerging as part of that process. The other thing that accompanied those wellness and success funds was an investment in prevention education that was put into the budget of the department of mental health in the state. And those monies were distributed to the county mental health boards to create and provide services and supports to district districts in terms of prevention education. And those were supplemented with a little bit of professional development money around prevention that was in our budget that we flowed through our regional education service centers in the state. Many of you in other states have regional entities. They're called educational service centers here in Ohio. So again, with a thrust towards, you know, issues like suicide prevention, drug prevention, those kinds of things. And very much in a way that that provoked sort of integrative approaches between those resources and the student wellness and success funds. We were also the beneficiaries of a federal school climate transformation grant that helped expand and extend our work in in supporting the implementation of PBIS activity across the state. And then we also started, and this was even prior to the completion of the strategic plan, a school health network. And the idea there was we were seeing increasingly across the state. These very beautiful health health provider education partnerships emerging. And we wanted to elevate the best examples of that work and then replicate and foster even more of that activity throughout the district of the state. So we started this network to serve and we came up with a toolkit. We had all kinds of convenings. We brokered conversations between all our major children's hospitals as well as other healthcare intermediaries and looked for ways to expand. And one of the reasons we did that because of our deep partnership with the Department of Medicaid. You know, we found that increasingly, you know, Medicaid dollars of people understood who Medicaid eligible children were and what their healthcare needs were. You could find ways to access that pool of resources in the interest of helping meet the healthcare needs of students in schools. And in fact, one of the great things we just recently completed was a set of what we called student health profiles that leveraged a matching of Department of Education data with Department of Medicaid data. It's a paint a picture of the Medicaid eligible students in each school district and some of the, you know, diagnoses that they had what percentage of your of your students in that category. You know, have been diagnosed with diabetes or asthma, those kinds of things that again allow for a richer understanding by districts and a guide to the plan full partnerships with healthcare providers in their community. The other thing that we've done is similarly promoting partnerships as part of our school healthcare network activity in the mental health arena because we were seeing many behavioral health providers for forming partnerships with schools and they're to leveraging Medicaid dollars in the interest of providing high quality behavioral health supports for students in in those districts. So, so, you know, so you have this, this, you know, all this different activity, cascading from this kind of grand vision down to these very specific programming elements and leveraging the common language, so that, you know, we now have a lot of activity, a lot of conversations, a lot of initiatives going around, you know, involving at the district level where these things are very prominent and very, very prevalent. So, you know, once the pandemic hits, again, we kick into gear are, you know, our main job ended up being, you know, answering the thousands of questions that came our way about, you know, both the technical like, you know, how do I take attendance and, you know, what is it where the implications are for funding and those kinds of things to more of the, you know, child facing kinds of activities so we developed one of our information documents and all these are listed on our coronavirus webpage on our agency website was, you know, we had a document called how to support your child's health and well being during the ordered school building closure, and it was focused on giving, you know, schools guidelines about the kinds of things they can do. We also found through our interactions with the Department of Job and Family Services, that they were seeing a decrease in the number of referrals for child protective services. And so we developed guidance to help inform teachers, you know, under the idea of your, you're a mandatory reporter, but you're not interacting with children very much anymore but you may still be having interactions by telephone, or are, you know, on video or in other ways, you know, what are those kinds of things you should be looking for, whereas food distribution sites were distributing food to children, what other things could they be on the lookout to help address any abuse or neglect that might be, that might be evident. So again, it was a collaborative effort between the state agency, other sister agencies, the school districts and in the interest of accepting the challenge of the unique circumstances created by the pandemic and acting against those. Now, we have pretty much pivoted towards our reset and restart activity and there too, we understand that, you know, we are going to have to be addressing lots of different whole child needs. And I think the most challenging will likely speak to a variety of different anxieties and traumas, both by virtue of the fact that students have been home. They've heard about, you know, coronavirus, you know, and they're also, you know, how children are, they serve as sort of amplifiers of what the adults around them are feeling. So even as we're developing some of our health guidelines, you know, are students going to have to wear masks or no masks, are students going to have to, you know, come every day or not come every day, are students going to be safe on the buses or not on the buses. You know, we know that there's going to be different opinions, different perspectives, different levels of fear, different levels of comfort. And how do we equip both ourselves at the SEA and our districts and all the staff members that are going to be working with students to approach these issues in a way that doesn't necessarily raise anxiety, but more tries to find ways to comfort students. And, you know, and even asking ourselves questions about, you know, social distancing, like, you know, when is it okay for a teacher to hug a child, right, in these conditions? And, you know, because those are legitimate questions that we can't avoid and that resonate both with teachers and with students and with families all the while knowing that it increases, you know, increases the risks. And so, you know, we're partnering in some ways as much with our Department of Mental Health as with our Department of Health as we're designing some of the guidelines. And also, planning on supplementing our, you know, sort of health related precautions and protocols with mental health related resources and resources that also continue to emphasize partnerships. So, we not only want districts working with their local health departments to understand, you know, health protocols, but we want them also working with local health providers in continuing partnership there as well as with their mental health providers and mental health County mental health boards. So that we continue to excel and amplify those strong local partnerships. So with that, I'll stop and happy to join in the Q and A. Thank you. Thank you, follow. I think you answered one of the questions about the different kinds of partnerships. Variety at the variety of ways and public health officials. When in your last comment, you all do have a really great partnerships around that. I'm going to scroll back to a question that I believe this question is for you. It was, are there other after school summer learning opportunities included in the expansion of learning time. There are plenty of evidence that quality programs and partnerships with other community resources are even better. I'm reducing the achievement gap and then just expanding versus just expanding the school day or year. Yes, the short answer is yes, there are lots of ways to use additional after school. Resources including community partners to expand learning time. I think there's evidence that high quality strategies. Implemented in a variety of ways can be effective. So, and I do think that this is a time when there's going to be both a need and an opportunity for schools to partner with community based organizations in a lot of ways. Including the fact that, you know, in order to achieve social distancing, if that's the strategy for reopening schools. There may be fewer kids in a classroom at a given moment in time and various kinds of rotating schedules and community based partners. Maybe part of the regular school day for supports and enrichment and care for students when they cannot be in the classroom. So we're going to need to be creative about how to use those strategies in a variety of ways. I would also note that there's a lot of terrific material on the Wallace Foundation website about the effectiveness of different strategies for expanding learning time. And there's a terrific book by genie oaks on that topic that I recommend to anyone who is trying to think about this. Thanks, Linda. I'll actually ask both of you to address this. So, what, what role higher ed can play any and say free opening of schools that I assume we mean K 12 schools. Because they have their own set of issues and opening back up themselves and in California has made some of those. Right. So this is follow again, I used to work for the higher ed system so they do have their own challenges. I recently had the opportunity to speak to the leadership staff at the OSU College of Education. You know, I think they continue to be interested in being productive and strong partners, especially with Columbus public schools but more broadly with the with the State Department. And so, you know, and teacher preparation is going to be even more important than ever there there have been lots of concerns about, you know, what will what will the pandemic mean to our teacher supply chains and those kinds of things and how do we make sure we're being attentive and a lot of professional development that will have to take place. And also, I think Linda made this point a lot of exploration and innovative approaches. And I think that's another area where higher education can play a role. Yeah, I also think that just back to your point, Paolo about student teachers and the production of teachers. This is an opportunity where we're going to need a lot of adults in schools to both manage the necessary absences of folks who may either display symptoms or have been exposed and need to, you know, isolate both adults as well as kids. And the fact that we may need more classrooms in order to accommodate physical distancing. So, I would encourage higher education to think about how to engage student teachers in as much clinical experience as possible. You know, I've long advocated for all student teachers to get a full year of at least a full year of practical work in the classroom. If not more, this is an opportunity for, you know, really using, you know, the partnership of higher education and teachers and training and leaders and training to extend the capacity of the workforce. You know, there's an interesting question about high school students. We do spend a lot of time talking about younger students. There's been a lot of plans talking about having younger students come back in. If distance learning needs to continue keeping high schoolers this particular question is about how plans to renew and reopen are being geared specifically to the unique needs of high school students. And are the students themselves advising on those plans. So I'll open that up for either of you. How do you want to start on that one? Sure. Sure. Again, you know, in Ohio, we're, you know, we have 600 plus school districts. So invariably I hear stories that are, you know, amazing examples of exactly that. So I know that they're in Ohio, there are a number of places where they are engaging with high school students as they think through their reopening plans. We've done a little bit of that also at the SEA level. And I was just on a zoom call with some of our students brought together by Ohio Association of Student Leaders. And, you know, again, I'm always impressed when I talk to students because they have deep insights into not only the experience that they've had during the school closure, but their conceptualization of, you know, how we can improve the high school experience. We also have a little effort underway right now that started prior to all this about, you know, redesigning high school and what that looks like. And I think that that's gotten a lot of my staff thinking about, and we're trying to disseminate some of this information about, you know, how could the high school experience look differently and still be a very robust, very meaningful experience for students that, you know, that goes beyond what sort of the traditional approach produces. I think that just to echo some of that and add on, this is a great opportunity both for high school students to be part of the redesign effort. But also for educators to be very explicit about the fact that we should be gearing the curriculum to support students learning to manage their own learning to learn about their cognitive strategies to figure out how to plan and execute on, you know, projects and activities. They're going to be probably in and out of school, as you noted, they may be on rotating schedules or, you know, on distance learning some days and in the classroom and others. And we should be really getting past transmission teaching to, you know, teaching that's very focused on enabling them to learn to manage as much of their own activity reflecting on their work. Self and peer assessments demonstrating their learning in a variety of ways and potentially contributing to the learning of younger children. Helping with the expanded learning time, tutoring and mentoring, you know, younger students, you know, being part of that effort to create these opportunities for both personalized support and focused, you know, tutoring and mentoring. So it's an opportunity for us to allow kids to grow up and engage in very exciting and experiential ways if we use it properly. Yeah, I think I think you're going to see shifts to more project based learning, more student directed learning, students having a voice in both the subject areas that they explore and the modalities that are used to explore those. But and I think it's going to be very exciting. We have, we have a ton of questions to get to because we're almost at time, but I'm going to close with that with one and give you guys just a couple of minutes to respond to it, which I think is a good capstone. And then we're going to have some resources put out that CCSO has created as well as LPI for and will continue this conversation. But the question balancing the oncoming wave of social and emotional needs with reopening as well as the academic, the academic loss and academic catching up. Can you guys, can both of you talk about how you're thinking about that? I'm sure I'll start. Again, you know, one of the things that we've seen happen within the last couple of years is greater attentiveness to some of those issues, even before the pandemic. So I love visiting schools. It's one of my most favorite things, which is why I'm suffering at this time because I can't do it very at all. But, you know, more, we saw more, you know, a focus on mindfulness in classrooms, a focus on, you know, sort of calming spaces when a student and it's wonderful for me to see students who have a greater awareness of their own responses, their own emotional state and know where, you know, maybe they're reaching a certain breaking point. And they know to ask their teacher, you know, I need to go to the to the counselor or to the calming room for a few minutes to sort through my feelings and get back to a good place. We see a lot, you know, places practicing yoga. I see a sort of sensory walls in schools or sensory walking paths in school hallways. So, so I think all that to me says there's a, there's a greater heightened awareness, not only about what social emotional conditions and learning is all about, but also different strategies to use to to address that. And so I think you're just going to see more people become comfortable and aware and seeking professional development opportunities to to see how that how that can be practiced as we begin to reopen schools. And also, I think we saw it during the closure when people were, you know, just talking on the phone with students or checking in remotely with, you know, with less of an intense focus on necessarily academic achievement and just asking simple questions like how are you doing. And, you know, is everything okay with you or, you know, what, what has you, you know, what has you worried or what has you joyful these days and understanding the importance of making both that kind of connection and showing that kind of care and then addressing the kind of challenges that might surface. Great. Linda, you want to have a final word anything you'd like to have our panelists take away from today. Linda, are you there? Can you hear me? I can hear you now. Okay. Social emotional learning and academic learning do not need to be competitive. If you engage in the kinds of practices that Paolo was talking about have kids center and, you know, feel the sense of support and caring. They will be more ready to succeed academically. And so they don't need to be at odds. They should be seen as synergistic, engaging kids and opportunities to get sort of formative feedback on their work and revise it. We'll build a growth mindset and a sense of agency, building social emotional skills along with academic skills. So I think that's the frame of reference we want to bring into this new era of, you know, restart recovery and reinvention. I want to thank both of our panelists that both Linda and Paolo for your time today and sharing those really important examples and ideas about what we think, how we think about what are some really important needs for students who were there before and are there even more now. And really I'm hopeful that we can highlight the full child experience and the social emotional needs of students in a way that we may not have done in the past and be more forthright with that. On our screen right now are some resources that are for folks to take a look at. And again, I just want to thank Paolo and Linda for joining us. I want to thank the Learning Policy Institute for the partnership and we will close it out for today. Thank you, everyone.