 OTAN, Outreach and Technical Assistance Network. Hello everyone. Again, I'm Will Natterson. The counterpart of me is Laura Flores Miranda, who's not with me today. You'll hear about barriers, and I'll explain why Laura is not here, but she has taken another job to support herself and just couldn't make it for the session today, but has been very active with me in our midterm project. So just to make sure that Laura is present in the words that are here and the slide itself. So let's see if there we go. So Tuscany Adult School is located in Orange County, California. Orange County is the small county, but has quite a different range in who we serve throughout Orange County. We're part of the South Orange County regional consortium. So we're the lower half of Orange County. Our surrounding cities are the city of Irvine and Santa Ana. To our north is unincorporated Santa Ana as well as Orange, the city of Orange itself. So, Tuscany Unified is the school district we are part of. It's a K-12 district or TK-12 district that services roughly right now about 24,000 students. When looking at our makeup for Tuscany Adult School, we currently have active for this school year, 458 students. I give last year's numbers just to comparison though we are seeing a definite drop in this year's enrollment. Last year we had about 1,239 students. So it's pretty significant and we've been fighting to have students come back on the campus or online as well. Tuscany Unified did open back up in September. We for the fall semester did not open back up in person. We had all of our classes online and then the spring semester we attempted to open some in-person classes in the evening. And even with that, the numbers are much lower. I can give you a total number for all in-person classes that we currently have. We had about a total of 28 students that are attending. So we had to clap some classes and things like that. But with that makeup of who we are for this year, our ESL population is at 262. Our citizenship preparation is at 27. Our ABE is at 21 students with a combination of a focus in reading, writing, and then in mathematics as well. And then our diploma and equivalency program is about 159. I think for this year that's been a number we've seen increase or grow compared to our ESL, which has typically been our largest component of our school, making up almost 75% of our population. Definitely a shift for this year. The age range of our students is 18 to 81 and we're pretty proud of that 81-year-old as she is taking the online learning and running with it. I don't have an image of her here, but it's been pretty amazing to watch her try and work when I've been in the classes observing. There are 12 various languages besides English that are spoken at home. On the side are all, again, pre-pandemic except for the one in the bottom corner of the gentleman Omar carrying his American flag. That was right after he passed his citizenship test in November. So very proud and sharing it with this teacher. But we had to have a special outdoor one-on-one diploma celebration and virtual celebration for graduation. And that was our way of being able to have graduates celebrate if you see the image of the graduate there. And so with that, let's talk about the makeup of our school of teachers. So we have 25 part-time teachers. Again, as I shared, we have ESL, ABE, and then our adult secondary education. Prior to COVID had some basic computer classes, but those had to stop because we didn't have access to the lab. So it's just those four strong, I mean, three strong areas that we currently are offering our classes are mornings. We separated Fridays just out because it's a special group, but mornings from 9 to noon. We had some afternoon our ABE classes, those parents have shared with us, they would prefer to come in from 2 to 5 or be online from 2 to 5 and then our evening classes from 6 to 9pm. And then with our in-person classes starting back up in spring, we have a Saturday multi-level ESL class that is going on. So that is the makeup of our teachers and just the image is one of our department meetings of some of our ESL teachers. So the makeup team is Laura Flores-Muanda. She's considered our lead. She is the instructional coach for our school as of January 2021. That was a new shift in trying to look at support for technology integration, as well as we're a new school to WIOA, bringing co-ops into play as well. So Laura's role has shifted prior to that. She was for five years our lead ESL teacher. The one who suggested, hey, let's apply. And I said, all right, let's go for it. So with that, I'm the other part of the team. I joined Test and Adult School in the 18-19 school year. So this is about my third year in adult education. And then those not present with us when we meet in D-LAC meetings, but who've been present in trying to create our distance learning plan and really trying to think of our steps forward has been support from our school leadership of Virginia Burroughs, who took over the ESL lead teacher position from Laura, and then Stacy Sevkic, who is a counselor and our lead ASC teacher as well. So they are in the background, no images of them, but definitely a part of the work that we've been doing. So this quote stands to sort of start where we were with applying for D-LAC, you know, change begins at the end of your comfort zone. So change when you're really comfortable or think you're doing well. Again, we were seeing growth prior to the pandemic. In the 17-18 school year, we had almost 1800 students that we were servicing. So we're pretty proud of that growth. And knowing that four years earlier, we were just rebuilding from flexibility and all those components. So there was a comfort zone saying, hey, we're doing well, we see some growth in our assessments. We're pretty comfortable. But you know, really to look at change and the need for things, you've got to go past that comfort zone. So with that, there was a nudge towards change. So when we applied for D-LAC, it really was to look at the integration of digital literacy skills into our teacher's instruction. Again, ESL being our core, majority of that was paper pencil in the classroom. We, our paper pencil costs us to school have not done e-testing. So it really was, our students didn't have access to a lot of devices. I bought our first iPad card when I came on as an administrator, but I'll be honest. It's up for about two months because teachers were nervous about it in students when they were brought out weren't sure about it as well. So we really, the conversation was how do we integrate these digital literacy skills into instruction to make it feel comfortable. So the classrooms themselves tech being used before this was just a document camera and a projector and a laptop to help if they needed for running our student management system ASAP. But that was the basics of what we were doing. Textbooks were all hard copies. They weren't, there wasn't a digital format of that except the one exception is for our high school diploma and high school equivalency programs, we had started to use a online platform. So for our high school diploma section we use AdminTem and for our HSE preparation, we use Aztec software. So those programs had been doing that again even prior to this application. We knew that we need to do invest more and push more but really building those digital literacy skills. The true that was a nudge, the true push to change making us really look past just digital literacy skill integration was COVID. You know in March when we were told all the school sites were shutting down. What were we going to do for our students it was right at our spring break, having to pivot and think what could we do for our students. What could we have our teachers do as their tech savvy skills. We're very limited. What did we do so we went to an asynchronous situation where we taught our teachers how to use screencastify to record lessons we put it up onto a distance learning website that housed all of our teachers so students could go and select it and watch those videos. Our teachers attempted to email students to keep an interaction or use remind for those teachers that were using remind. So we saw that but we knew from that and our teachers found through that it was really hard to to engage students. So emailing students, not a lot of response coming back remind started to drop off in the middle of April. We weren't able to again do any post testing. So there was a lot of struggle with that so we knew for 2021 that we as a school needed to be different and, and structure ourselves so we can engage our students you know, and that had to start with how to encourage enrollment. And so we had to move to an online enrollment form Google forms became our friend, trying to create that form, put it out on our website so students could register for school or start the enrollment process. And then we even had to then say, okay, what are we going to do for testing. As I shared September test and open back up for the K 12. We were able through executive cabinet approval to have limited testing come in so we started scheduling testing sessions so we had students selecting dates and times that they would come in we'd know those students coming in for contact tracing and having to follow those procedures. So that was the starting of our change in our shift. The other part of that was having our teachers learn how to use a live web based video platform for testing testing unified overall is a Google district. Our students though didn't have Google accounts our teachers very inexperienced with using Google so we taught them Google meet to try and get students to engage with them on so those are just some of those shifts that happen and made us had to understand what we were going to do and really building our distance learning plan. Also, not having Google classroom available to us and testing restricting certain components of access. We went to Google sites to try and make it a platform where teachers could house information, put up assignments for students, and even if they had some recordings that they wanted to put up, trying to give them to shop for our students to access gain information that they might have questions on the other side of that was helping the office staff be able to say well hey let's go to this teacher website. So that was another new learning component that came up with our teachers. Another quote to talk about change here. All great change were preceded by chaos. So COVID made us feel a little chaotic, it was, we're very reactive in our change, instead of being purposeful in our change and what we needed to do and I think that's where being accepted into the process of starting to go through the process has helped us. So we're not having chaos everywhere but and being reactionary, but trying to be purposeful in our change and looking forward to that. So with that ideal 101 comes in and really does it helped us focus on what change did we want not because we were responding to COVID and thinking oh we need change but being purposeful in that change so really going through the chapters of ideal one on one in that is what the stage is going to look like, how are we going to recruit what's screening what's orientation going to be really did provide for us a lens to say hey let's pay attention to those components I think we were narrow. I'm sorry I know I'm doing it into a screen but we were very narrowly focused where I deal sort of brought it open and said hey let's look at all this. And the survey data that we were completing really helped us through ideal one on one and then asking teachers questions as well and asking students access points to technology and those components really helped us. We really hadn't started talking about screening students and orientation of students. The online platforms and making sure students understood so that was a great thought process for us to really go through and then just the insight that destiny would give and provide on each of our components and our proposals really helped us. We learn I enjoyed the questions you know what about this or did you think about that and it just spurred more thought and conversation that we brought back into leadership and really creating our distance learning plan so ideal one on that was a great focus for us but the other component of that was really saying where do we want to near our goals I think we could address everything and it sort of feels like we might be addressing everything but we really in the leadership team and with staff talked about what is it that we need for our students to look at being successful in a distance learning plan, but also bringing students back onto campus. What is it they need going back to that original idea of their digital literacy skills and access to technology so as you can see these are the five areas that we've come up with to focus on for our plan and that's technology access for our learners and staff. I'm talking about recruitment again I'm getting knowledge with you like I shared earlier, our numbers are significantly down from the year before so how do we recruit, how do we start making people feel comfortable whether it's coming back into person, or being online, how do we support that, going through a screening and orientation process to really be able to say, hey, can we make some recommendations for you compared to just what the cost of score gave us to talk about your ESL level or should you be an AB class or an ASC class. We're really looking at professional development and support for our staff. We as COVID hit and what we learned from OTAN was opening up office hours was an amazing thing that we started to do to provide teachers an opportunity to come in and ask questions. But we really want to be purposeful and focused in that and I'll talk about that a little bit more. And then instruction and assessment is always there always an important component to be reflective on and know that we need to continue to build. So what we've accomplished so far in our distance learning plan so we've purchased new devices for staff so all of our staff members have a surface pro that our district adopted we've used funds to purchase that for our staff members to give them the up to the date device to be accessible in our classrooms connecting to our TV monitors. We've created an orientation video for students a simple video. Laura loves Bitmoji so you see Laura's Bitmoji down there, just explaining hey this is what you're going to need to understand to be successful as a student. And then the recruitment side of that trying to look at using Facebook Twitter and Instagram to recruit students. We had a Facebook page but it was sort of stagnant and I'm going to be honest as the leader of our school. A lot of balls and near and I think needing to know how to delegate that out so we have worked on that delegation and it started with that out there so we're getting some chatter from that which is always a good thing. And then also looking at when students are coming in. We completed their online registration come in for their scheduled assessment. We're giving them a digital literacy screener that really just ask these four basic questions. What are your skill levels on being able to work with apps, send an email be online, just accessing the computer so that way it helps us to see how we will hopefully in the future be able to provide support, but just give us an understanding to ask those questions in our enrollment form as well. But it's been interesting to see how the answers change when they come in person to answer that so it really tells us at home, completing the enrollment form that there's somebody there with them you know a great example yesterday in classes. We have a teacher doing co apps and we're using Google forms to do some of that collection and this was an in person teacher who said you know what do I do if the student doesn't have an email and that's sort of ironic because to enroll you have to have an email with us so we can send you out the scheduler to set your appointment to come test with us. So we joked about hey that is definitely somebody else who's supporting and working with that individual so they can get to that point of learning so this is what we've worked on so far. So, the other thing to talk about is the, the other trainings that we've learned from Dr Porter conversations with our coach Susan culture, and then just penny and net a year influence as well as other OTAN conversations that we've had as well. So we're able to look at you know team building looking at that creating a culture of change and handling conflict you know if you think about change. It can bring up some defensive walls to say I don't know if we can do this and trying to bring that through and then developing those communication with people informed and valuing our individual strengths you know and and looking at not only us as the D that team members, but we talked about it in leadership and then talking about with our, our, our staff as well as how can we delegate some of that work, building on the skills that that our teachers have so again that whole point of putting us together it's a great puzzle that we all come together and and can create something wonderful, but we've got to build it together so how we did that so part of that team building is really going back to norms you know norms have always been present somewhere but it brought us to back to that point of saying, hey what do our norms mean and one of them is really making sure our teachers felt like they had a voice. It's been pretty amazing for people to feel comfortable enough with the norms being the the the frame for us to exist in meetings to really hear those voices and then really talking about those individual strengths. Just letting teachers share what their comfort level is with certain digital tools of being online itself and how they're engaging their students. It's it's been pretty powerful and then communication. We have weekly communication that's going out, and then handling conflict you heard me talk about that as well. Our challenges ahead. It's a part time staff and trying to keep people engaged as you see Laura is not here. She's had to take on another position somewhere else. Funding for professional development and for technology so we can learn out more components and then building enrollment. It's a huge component for us. If you don't have the students, it's hard to keep things going. And with that our next steps, we're going to be building an onboarding workshop to build on digital literacy skills from our screeners, as well as from teachers, building a marketing presidents. We're going to start class C testing and then establish a clear distance learning class expectations. What is it that we really want distance learning to be, instead of being the actionary. And with that I close the secret of change is to focus all your energy, not I'm fighting the old, but I'm building the new and that's what we're looking forward to.