 for clarity around, you know, certain questions and I know that Heather takes time out of her week to offer those office hours, which I think is just awesome because, you know, at times when I was in a in a classroom and I'm, and I'm like, I just need an answer on this or I just need, you know, to talk to someone about something that, you know, is very important, whether it was as a CTE director or whatever position that you're in, you know, I know I now there's access to you where if I have a question about the endorsement or the endorsement process, I can get on to those office hours at ask it directly. I don't have to ask the wrong people or hear about the rumors going on. So that's a great resource I think that thank you Heather for offering that time during the weekend and throughout almost every single week throughout the school year so I just couldn't do it this week because I'm at the conference but otherwise yep every week. So we did also have some information on the Iowa's work. Our recommendation at this time is to wait to complete the application until August or September of 2023 and Heather did you want to talk about that the reasoning behind that as well. So there's two thoughts on it. The new platform and the Iowa's platform will be very, very specific. So yes the same information that you're currently putting in the PWR platform will be unfortunately we can't transfer over that but there will be a lot of stopping pasting that can happen, but it will be very deliberate with especially I'm thinking about like the team based challenges where it will ask for a description what the authentic problem is. It'll have a drop down for which technical competency which essential skill and so forth. So you feel free if you wish, especially you know if you're thinking that you're going to want to issue endorsements for obviously for 23 it would need to be in the current platform but for 24. You can build it in the current platform. You could also create a document that mimics the same thing that addresses the same questions but just just a thought on that, you know, if you want to create one and have me review it. So after I'm done with all the 23 reviews, I can take a look at that just to see if that would if that would work so that that's another option to but for those of you who are a little bit further off, I would wait I would still continue to collect on my information but I would wait until the I was app opens up and then it's just a one time entry for you. I just think that's a great call out that, you know, don't wait to do this work or collect your data. Make sure that you are doing that up until you can do the application on I was. Don't just wait to for the system to go up and say oh now I got to do the work because you'll be you'll be a little behind as you're working on it you may have questions now and so we can we can address those questions now and get that you know answered for you so. Thanks for calling that out. And then just some quick announcements coming up here in 2022 2023 so we have a link here that has the is be career connected Illinois professional learning learning calendar. These are professional workshops that our team put put on throughout the course of the year. We also have access to our summer calendar where we have a whole host of workshops were putting on. We're actually going to be traveling the state to be doing a host of team based challenges through through different geographic areas. So if you're interested in having teachers attend or any type of educator who wants to get into that work with team based challenges that summer calendar is the one that you want to take a look at. And then that last link there has the link to the application process and all the webinar information from is be so really good links there. You're wondering how to access some of the information. And then one other quick call out is the differentiation for all students workshop is happening April 25 at 330pm. That's an online and free workshop. You can register using the link or you can go into the calendar that we we provide. Just in that last slide there's the calendar link, but this one is really great for programs that want to focus on differentiation for students, particularly in CT. It's one of those call outs that as a part of Perkins five grant. You kind of have to hit on that as you're going through to use those dollars. So check out that registration link. I know that Chavina Baker is is working with our MTSS department here at NIU to really offer a great workshop there so check that out if you have a chance on April 25. It could be someone from your special ed department, it could be CTE teachers, it could be an MTSS coordinator. But just wanted to give you that information as a part of this training that's coming up. And then final one other quick one are competencies are the ISB webpage. So if you check out the career pathway endorsement webpage, down at the bottom, you'll notice that the competencies are listed there. You can click on them and it will call out the essential skill competencies and some of the other technical competencies. If you're using that for curriculum purposes, or you just want to share that resource with teachers and staff on the work that we're doing. And then one other one if you're looking for communications work around the career pathway endorsements, these career pathway wordmarks are out there. You just have to access them in the slides, but essentially they're there for your use, and any type of communications around the career pathway endorsement so a great resource there. If you're looking to align to those types of wordmarks. And then I actually just got an email today from a person who was saying, hey, I'm not getting the messages for the career pathway group and so I had to send them the link for our presentation today. So please, please make sure that you're checking your spam and junk folder and that you're changing those settings to allow emails from the pathways group there's a lot of information that we're sharing dates for the career pathway endorsements. There's a lot of information in those emails around what's coming up in our workshops and meetings. And so, and then there's just also pertinent information that what's going on in Illinois and so please check your spam and junk folders on that and make sure that your settings are not blocking those emails. At 9am we're going to be having a conversation around team based challenges, which should lead into that work that we're doing over the summer on the team based challenges workshop so just wanted to give you an update on what it's going to look like for our career pathway user group meeting for the May 12 at 9am we're going to be talking about team based challenges. And so this is our official start to the work that we're doing today and I'm going to turn it over to Jason and Michelle. So, Jason, that's all yours. We're going to turn it over to Heather and Michelle. I'm going to sit here quietly since I'm unmuted. Good morning everybody. I'm excited to review some of the trucking mechanisms we have implemented here at District 211 and hopefully you can take pieces of this back to your district to help you support and manage student completion of these endorsements. Bill, if you want to go to the next slide. Next one. So I'm just going to jump in here real quickly. This is kind of a little kick off to this and that, first of all, one of the things you'll see as Michelle presents is some of the specific tools that District 211 is using and we are we are not actually saying oh you need to use these tools as a matter of fact I think Michelle will probably have at some point or Heather I may jump in there because the reality is, some of these tools actually may not make sense, depending on the size of your district and certainly districts have already invested in tools and so these are these are things that we talk about as as follow ups moving forward in terms of how do you use what you do already have and so there's places it to use most of our major student information systems that are in use in Illinois can be leveraged as part of this. And then there's places to use. If you're a Google workspace district Google sheets if you're a Microsoft Office 365 district, Excel, and so and then with with being able to share on either of those platforms for example they have the information with those who need it. And a couple other key things here thinking about who's doing the different work this can't all sit with any one person it in any size organization, frankly it can't all sit with just the teachers who are teaching the courses that are included in the career pathway endorsement course sequence. It can't be a sole responsibility of the counselors and a lot of I'm going to be real honest here a lot of what you're going to hear today. Michelle did put on her own back last year and say I'm going to do this and this is how we're going to get organized around this as, as this school district really ramped up their number of endorsements and. And so but it can't rest with a single individual, and we know of course that hundreds of districts in the state, don't have people in like a director of college and career readiness or a curriculum director position and so. And finally, remember we continue to make the recommendation you do not have to do it this way. There are lots of ways to do the team based challenges you can do them through a CTSO you can do them through a special event so long as they meet all of the requirements of the team based challenge. But our recommendation for a variety of reasons is to embed them in the course and the reason we bring that up now is because one of those reasons we recommend that is because it saves trouble with tracking it's one less thing to track. If we know that students who successfully completed this course completed this team based challenge. You're good there you've got one less thing taken care of so that I think you can advance and we'll hand it back to Heather Heather may want to jump in but yeah can I can I add one more thing. In addition to embedding those team based challenges into the courses. I also am recommending if it becomes obvious when I'm doing the reviews that things like the career exploration, for example the job shadowing or site visits or so forth are also happening in the courses. I always put a recommendation that you know it's recommended that you would identify the course that that's happening in again for the tracking purposes so that you can verify that if that student has taken that course. Not only have they completed a course in the specific course pathway sequence, but they have also done a team based challenge and they've done career exploration in that as well. So those are just some of the other reasons there just want to add that into that. So I think we can advance and how there's going to know how there's going to jump in Michelle is going to start talking Michelle's going to talk and if I want to add something I will just actually interrupt her. That's perfect. So, as Jason mentioned last year when we were trying to finalize and start tracking our student completion in the pathways. It can be very overwhelming and a district this size. And so, I think that if you are a smaller district, you can definitely do this through spreadsheets and many of you may know on one or two hands the students that are intentionally put into these tracks and be able to work and track that in a different way. But with 13,000 plus students five to seven buildings where we have students potentially earning these, there would be no way for us to do this. So I was very logical and intentional in the tracking. If I say this, there'll be times that maybe a student is going through a track and may not meet all the criteria and I may miss them. And I am very comfortable saying that's okay, I will capture it somehow later, but my initial take has to be that logical. So at the end of the day, I think we all agree, college and career pathway work is good for all students, whether or not we're recording it or not. Yes, we want to capture it we want to be able to be proud of the work that we're doing in our buildings. But when we put this together, if you are a large district, even a small district, I don't think you want these one offs because that's where you are going to be completely overwhelmed. I'm still alluded to partnerships with teacher counselor parents and community, all of them are stakeholders in this. I cannot do this work by myself, right. So I engage a lot of conversation to make this work. And then I just, you know, the big district versus small district is definitely important. So, go ahead though. One thing I will call out there are big districts that one of the things we find in the first year or two. And I'm thinking of specific districts including one right now, where they only have three kids getting an endorsement this year which is fine. Remember one of the slides we don't have in today's slide deck is, this is about the depth of the quality of the experience for those students earning the endorsement. And then in terms of breath, it's about how it impacts, what kinds of authentic experience what kinds of career preparation, what kinds of counseling experiences and what kinds of authentic learning all students are benefiting from across the school and district and so it's it's not unusual in your first few years or maybe in the long term for you to kind of know what these are seniors that we're talking about here and and have those those students be individually identified. So, when I started to take a look at this and I wanted to capture student data. I thought about it very logically and I started just putting it into a spreadsheet and then this spreadsheet morphed into a lot more and it became my central hub of data collection, and I wanted to explain this very logically to my tech team, for example, being able to sit down with counselors, my CTE teachers are really any teacher to say, this is what a pathway looks like and having the conversation did I miss something. Is there other experiences like a field trip that I'm missing that's always embedded that gives them career exploration. Are there other certification industry credentials that I'm missing. So I put it in a interactive Google worksheet because we use Google, but I'd like to share my screen to kind of show you I know it's hard to read here. So I'm going to take the risk in front of all of you to let literally interact with the screen to see if I can share kind of what this process looks like so Bill if I can, I'm going to stop sharing and then Michelle you can go ahead. Okay, so here is the Google sheet live and I will see if I can even make this a little bit bigger to see. So the year that I send the endorsement I put the year that it was approved through is be just so I can be very clear on which students I'm targeting the year that we actually wound up implementing because maybe we didn't have our team based challenges ready, or we weren't 100% on work based learning for example, then I list the pathway endorsement and I put them down as pole so I can clearly get my data correct. I put the related career cluster so I have the 16 clusters tied to the seven pathways. And so I can be clear and intentional on how that aligns. And then I went one step further on exactly what the concentration area is within the district so for education and training for example, we're lucky enough to have embedded early childhood elementary into there. So to make sure and this is our curriculum is more robust than I'm what I'm showing you here but this is allowing me to track the college and career pathway endorsement data. So I wanted to find out where where are the students earning those six dual or college credits. And so I went in and I put the college course code along with our dual credit course code embedded in here so for example a student with a very odd has to take EDU 201, which gives them two credits, and they also have the option to either take speech. 101, or AP psychology earning a three or above on the exam. So this is how our students in this particular pathway with earn their six college credit. Then I go in and I say well, this is where we're embedding our two team based challenges in this EDU 201 first and second semester. We actually take our team based challenges and have them approve through curriculum and make them a critical learning standard for that particular course. So we ensure that our teachers are delivering exactly what we had discussed, and then the course code that is tied to the work base learning, knowing that there are 60 hours embedded experience in there. And then I just added other course required any additional pathway courses that are recommended any certification and credentials that the student may earn this is also embedded into a spreadsheet for our entire district and any credentials that we may offer. And then just confirming. Yep, these are the English and math ready requirements and then I track each year how many students actually earned and then is hyperlink to the spreadsheet that I ultimately send to Heather, so she could report that out. And then when I talk about the team based challenges, we track them here so as they are being developed in each one of the areas. I will update this, and then I will embed them here, and then link them so if we ever get questions exactly what is that team based challenge. I'm able to say what it's called the course name and number that it's embedded in what our critical learning standard is it's manufacturing team based challenge that very unique, the course type, the pathway and the cluster that it's aligned to what problem we have the outcomes, who our partnership mentor is for this particular team based challenge. And then we embedded the essential employability skills and technical competencies. This is specifically for Matt, each one of them has their own sheet so it's specific to them. So we would like to see one no more than two of these selected to make it very concentrated and direct for that team based challenge. And then I've asked my teachers to put the outline of information here just, you know, it's bigger than us right it should be systemic so if that teacher is no longer teaching that course for example they could easily pick up a sample of what exactly it's supposed to be delivered. And I just keep copies of any other information that we need or need to reference moving forward. So, you can see as we are working through these we're putting submitted we continue to work here's the manufacturing, this is what it looks like. They will get more and more complicated as we go through this for sure. And that's why I was trying to start small, be intentional and clear and be able to go through each one of these components. So when we want fill out the application we know exactly what we're reporting out and having a central location for this to working with teachers, working with students counselors. They can reference this, they can understand what coursework needs to be completed in order for them to earn this and three just for my own sanity having it all in one place is very very helpful for me. So does anyone have any specific questions on this tracking and then I'll show you how I get some reporting out of this. I did drop into the chat Michelle we have gotten multiple requests both in the chat to everybody and direct to me asking. And I'm not surprised if Bill or Heather may have gotten some too but if this can be shared so that's something I said we'll discuss afterwards in a template format. So, in terms of one question I would ask on behalf of the group and if other people have questions please feel free to drop in the chat this is a Google sheet. And so, who is this shared with anybody besides besides you. I shared them with my CTE department chairs so they have access of viewing access my technology department has access my student service counselors have access for viewing, just as a reference. Ideally, this is not a good document to share out with students I think it would make it complicated for them so we're working on creating pathway document. My goal and my background is school counseling is I would love to be able to provide summary sheets for counselor so when they're in that course request time and students are like, oh I'm really interested in you know business management for example and they say, Oh, have you thought about taking these courses you know I feel it's never too late to get them on track even if the senior comes to us and is like, I really be interested. Maybe they don't earn the ccp but wow I have a really good foundation for them to start taking coursework. So, this is the planning document the forward facing document to our students parents will look a little bit different. So, lots of kudos to Michelle in the chat. Well deserve. Are there other questions about this one that can edit this Michelle. Yes, that's something that you don't want to when I can put information in. Yeah, I actually am very selfish with my data because I've seen what could happen when you share it out. My tech department has access to it. And my assistant who works closely with me but outside of that nobody else can make modifications. Well I think you can fire up your slide deck then. And Michelle is going to continue by telling us a little bit more about the data as it particularly as it relates to students is where we're going to kind of shift to now. Well, in theory this is all great and you know you work in, for those of you may be working in a district building you feel a little bit in isolation, and you're like, Oh, how am I going to get this out how am I going to track this information. So I went to my tech department and asked them if they can create me some visualizations in tableau. Now I know many of you may not have access to tableau but there are other ways to be able to pull this data. For sure. And as much as I'd love to log into my tableau to show you, I can't obviously because the student data is in there and it's very active. So I want to talk through this as best as I can. To share what this does so based on that Google worksheet that I just shared with you, I went through all the criteria that is needed with my tech department and I said, I only want to see students who are enrolled in those core courses. And that will lead them to the pathway endorsement so the ones that are giving them the six credit hours and when they did that and I'm sorry that the screen can't be made a little bit larger. But then the student information starts to populate and you can see very quickly here's the pathway. There's a little box. There's the pathway endorsement the career cluster and the concentration and the green boxes for coursework means that they successfully already completed it. The yellow means they are on track to complete either they're currently enrolled. They're working on their teammate, you know the courses. They're enrolled in that team based challenge. They have the work based learning embedded. Those are all in there. And then the college. The right reading and the math ready is based on their proficiency right so their SAT their dual credit. If they're in transitional English and math, which would be senior year that's why you may see the yellow boxes that they're in progress like there's a potential that may not earn this but they are doing all the right things to get there. And then overall, is there a chance in this senior year in this capstone part of their coursework that they're going to get it and you can see that the yellow is their overall ready so we can communicate out to students. You are on track to earn the college and career pathway endorsement. It is not a guarantee until that transcript is final, but you are on track to earn what that looks like. Can I just call it one one reminder because there's a lot here. Again, we are only looking at 12th graders right now. So if we were looking at 9th or 10th graders, we'd see a whole lot of light gray, not taken, for example, because the data wouldn't be there so I just, I just wanted to kind of center everybody on that. And again, you can notice in the school column for those of you in multiple school districts in districts with multiple schools. Let me say that more clearly. You see that this is pulling at the district level in this case. It's very interactive so if I wanted to just to see the students who will meet. If you see the D to 11 concentration box. And it says total met total will meet total not met I can very easily click on any of those boxes and the students automatically appear below. So I know exactly I can sort by school by endorsement. I can pull a city gender, I can pull a student specifically and then I have an opportunity to export those out to excel so I can share data out on the bottom is another little clip. But when I select a student, it will then appear below the students name details for, you know, Jason Klein, for example, the endorsement that they're working at the career cluster. The concentration and then you see the coursework that is getting them to that CC PE, and then any other additional password coursework that they had taken. So the yellows very clearly show they're actively enrolled in that course. I use this a lot to see why students aren't making it. And I would be like, okay, they have all this including the work based learning like, where are we falling short with students so it'd be a long term tool for us to be able to really get into data like, wow, how come they didn't take transitional English or math like it was that is what stopped them from earning the CC PE like and then working backwards with counselors and teachers to make sure that senior year we're being very clear and intentional on course selection. So we have one question in the chat and as you have ideas or questions, please drop them into the chat. Does this automatically update with your student information system which just caught everybody. District 211 does use infinite campus which you see at the top there whenever a new student enrolls. Daily this gets every night it is updated so as a student transfers in and out as any course changes happen this data is updated. So one thing I'll mention and some of the people on this call know that for a period of time I was responsible for at the district level systems like power school and infinite campus and so the campus for example, has an offering where they bundle tableau with it, but you don't need that to work with an extra system there are lots of ways to, and you're even in a small district in in many cases like if you have a point of cafeteria and you have students earning earning who receive excuse me, free reduced meals, then there's probably a nightly job where at 2am or a 221am, your student information system offloads an updated copy of who the students are that are enrolled. And so there's a one day lag that's typical in these things but. And so that is that that can be done in a variety of ways and there's even ways to do that to connect Excel, for example, with an updated list so again just trying to make this accessible to districts of a wide range of shapes and sizes and it's certainly an area where if there's interest we, we can pull people together and do additional deep dives in the future. But I think that if something like Tableau or you couldn't pull this specifically, I know in infinite campus and I'm very good at the ad hoc reporting I could create reports that would be able to pull that it might not be one report because some of this data. It isn't going to be linear, you know, and I'd have multiple tables, but I'd be able to embed all of that into there and be able to bring my data together and and really like I'm highlighting some of these pathways that have been part of our culture embedded where, you know, we've had some of the. partnerships in our community with education for example with our grade schools really to get these students those opportunities. So, it looks like a lot here but these are really strong pathways for us. And this was low hanging fruit for our district to be able to use this as sample data to try to hone into a process for this. I do want to mention at the top. There are some buttons that I can tab into different screens so Bill if you can fast forward to the next screen. I have some summary reports here and this is no data obviously for obvious reasons, but I can very quickly aggregate my data, just so at the end of each year I could see my populations of students are we not reaching certain expectations like with 504s or IEP what's happening with our low income students are we not capturing them in pathways in terms of an equity is it because they don't have transportation is there other things that are going out how can we help them achieve and have equitable delivery to all our students. So this is a snapshot for us, and I didn't put it on here but there's also a very quick button that I just have my is be report based on the criteria that Heather is looking for at the end of the year that I can push the button and then get the list of my students that way and provide it to the state. So, I'm going to pause for a second and say, this is a lot of information and it is very overwhelming and it's still very overwhelming for me to be truly transparent and authentic in the delivery of this, but I wanted to start very quickly. So I just have really three pathways I've got a couple under review right now. I do not have a lot of students who will continue to grow like the trajectory of ccp will look like this and then eventually you know may start to flatten out, just because it's every student is in endorsement right and we're going to be very intentional, but it will actually if you have a system like this it will be, it will make it much more manageable and enjoyable to see the hard work and what it looks like at the end for students. Michelle, great job on sharing that information with everyone, but also I just, I love this slide because from the work that I was completing in my former work as a CTE director. I, you know, I could take this information and see how it's impacting the special populations in our school and and just use that to report out to staff and administrators about it. Heather, do you have anything to add here based on you know what you've seen an experience this was part of the reason we wanted to help people with this now so they could at least start cracking, you know the smaller numbers and again we we may very know what I'm, I'm kind of seeing from today I'll just say this out loud to everybody is this is probably something we will need to look back at maybe right the beginning of the year and in August or September so and no apologies before Heather jumps in let's let's ask and answer this question. Sure. I'm going to actually defer to Heather on this is an interesting question on, you know, mobility and obviously we have both in district and across district mobility that that can be issues for this. Not as many high school districts with high schools that will have in district mobility but we certainly have we certainly have some. I think I think a lot of that to answer that that question would have to be which career pathway we're talking about. So if we had a student that transfer from one school to another one district to another really school level probably with this one. If that that district and has the has that approved plan, and then they transfer to another district that also has that same plan, I could see where perhaps that would be allowable for us I don't know a way to to report. Besides picking up the phone and calling and letting them know that they were in you know close to completing that or they have done you know this component of it. That's definitely something that we'll need to explore but honestly in order for that to to recognize that student is completing a full pathway endorsement that would have to be the criteria that that both districts have that same career pathway approved. Heather now anything else you want to. Sure. I know that when Michelle knife or stocked and and we were we were looking at this and she she shared this with me. Of course I was blown away and I thought this is fantastic this is a great way to do this. And then immediately I put on my small school counselor hat and thought, okay we don't have access to these things this is not, it's not going to be feasible. However, the first component of this with the spreadsheet, that is incredibly doable for for the smaller districts and certainly a way that you could take a look at it you know even if you couldn't break it down by student you could certainly look at enrollment numbers to see how many of those students are taking. The four classes. Sometimes it's just you know the two classes within your course sequence and if you can look at those enrollment numbers to see how many of them are going on and taking the next one that that can provide you some of that those data points that you could use later on to encourage students to keep going, so to speak with that so I think that there's a benefit, even at the basic level. I can say Michelle did a ton of work to make that spreadsheet basic. But organizing it in that manner is what I'm seeing most common with with a lot of the districts. And so, I think, I think I just want to make all the districts aware of that regardless of the size the station and mentioned, you can adapt this to work for students that are handle on how you can monitor the requirements and if a student meets that and the only other part I would mention to when we get to the recognizing students, you know one of those components is for the academic readiness. And remember to that it is following the structure of the CCRI academic readiness. So there's multiple opportunities for a student to meet that beyond just, I know how Michelle's got that built in and you know I'm sure she's going to expand on that to once that that that gets finalized but you've got all those options as well for for the students to meet those targets. So, I do say to on the bill can you go back one. If you are looking to track on a smaller level like I am I original, if I couldn't pull something like this together, I would have taken for each one of my approved pathways, I would have pulled my students that were currently in the capstone for example and then work backwards and I would have made each one of these fields at the top of my spreadsheet and make checkboxes and then once the final overall was completed you could just very easily and you know excel Google sheets, that line would become green for example right and then you would be able to very quickly track and I would actually do it based on the report that Heather wants have all those fields embedded in there as well, including your local school course codes and tracking. You wouldn't maybe need all the bells and whistles of the extras, right, you know you would just make sure you're very clear and intentional on your pathway, and I would add things like gender and you know some of those other things that you may want to disaggregate later, but from a smaller school like you could absolutely take this kind of mindset and transfer it into a spreadsheet and even link it to that master spreadsheet honestly. Well, and again the one the one call out I'll make to additionally is when you look at the student at this exact format. I know a very, very big schools. This year that are essentially built a spreadsheet and are just hand typing in they have the name of the four nursing students who are going who are on track to earn an endorsement. And they essentially have these same columns they might have instead of coursework each of the courses in the sequence, for example, and then and they're just checking them up and they're, they're checking in regularly and you know I'm not even sure who a who has access to that so I just want to point out that this is especially important, depending on your district's resources or the size of your district, but some of these things truly do cut across district size and, and one of the other things that I don't know that Michelle said it as clearly today as she has said it privately. I found that there may be some advantages to being a smaller district, because it does in this in this very large district it is all still funneling into her. And if she were in a smaller district, it would still be funneling into her, but it would be less to manage in terms of I think they're maybe the number of buildings, maybe one of the big, one of the big factors so I think there are this is truly a case of pluses and minuses and I will tell you that from Jason alone and I know as a team we will all, we're going to roll up our sleeves as a result of today to say okay, how can we make this even more accessible and more doable to give people more templates, so to speak to fit different people's needs and even thinking about what the different student information systems can and cannot offer, because there are some differences. And we're lucky that that there are three major ones in school districts in Illinois but we have to think about districts also that are using one of the other ones and the fact that you are probably not the decision maker if you are on this call about what student information system you're using, and you know you shouldn't switch student information systems because of career pathway endorsements either like that is a switching student information system is a heavy lift in and of itself so lots for us to continue to work on supporting everybody with and if you've got great examples of this please share this your examples with Heather Bill and I so we can leverage those and engage with you about that. Thank you guys, thank you. Thanks, Michelle for sharing this information I think we had some great questions on this and obviously people are impressed with the level work that you've put into it so I know, just with what Jason said, getting some information out to the career pathway user group on some type of template will be a great strategy moving forward so. We're going to move into our question around how schools celebrate the endorsement. And so, this was actually the work of our group of our career pathway user group and essentially the survey we created went out about a month ago, and we were asking you are, you know, our Illinois high schools, how they were celebrating the endorsement and the results came in and we want to just kind of take a moment here to share what those results are. So under the events portion of the survey we asked the question how do you celebrate your students completion of the career pathway endorsement with events. 80% of respondents said they have a senior awards night 30% said career pathway signing day which I thought was a fantastic opportunity. You know, we think about how we have signing days for sports teams and athletics and players who are signing on to a college. We don't think about how the career pathways can play into that and how a student signing on to a work pathway could could be just as a highlight in our high school so I just thought that was a great opportunity that high schools are doing that in the state of Illinois, and then others have an honor ceremony, another 30% have a specific honor ceremony regarding their events. And when we look at external communications on you know celebrating the students how it's being shared with the community. 60% use a school district newsletter, another 60% use social media posts. We saw 60% showed that they were using the district website to celebrate their students. Oftentimes with you know pictures of them holding a certificate or you know having having media on their website celebrating them having placing a list of names from either the school or schools that that district represents. Oftentimes they had their communications team work with the local newspaper to develop a story around the career pathway endorsement. Some school districts reported using a school district blog on that and I think that's a great opportunity for leaders that want to take on that work and write up a blog and work with their communications team to celebrate the students receiving the endorsement or we're highlighting them and with an interview of some sort with the blog. And then finally the last two radio, there were 10% of school districts reported that they were using radio and no reports of any TV stories so maybe an opportunity there for school districts that want to highlight that. And then with our awards we this came up about a month ago where we had people asking, you know, are we, what are we doing as a state in regards to celebrating this endorsement is there a certain type of award that the state is going to look into and I think right at this point, the conversation is let's find out like what what our school districts really doing with this type of idea and so we found that 66% of the schools that responded offer a certificate of some sort to the students that received the career pathway endorsement 55 offered a honor ceremony recognition 44% are doing the graduation program award type where they're they're placing them in their program and saying they had received a pathway endorsement, and they also receive a tassel at the end of the school year. So we think about, you know, if I'm a student that received or received a confirmation, which is a, you know, one of the questions that came up about a month ago. Some of them are receiving a career related gift, whether that gift is sometimes purchased from an outside organization or maybe a local business or stakeholder group. Or received a construction pathway endorsement under the Met pathway. You know, what kind of gift would that look like is it a work belt with some tools in it. I'm a medical student in the health pathway, you know, do I get a stethoscope, or some type of gift like that 11% of districts reported that, and then another 11% reported getting a graduation pin. I want to share this information with the group because we felt like it was important as that as those conversations were happening to just show that these are going on these kind of celebrations and student awards are happening throughout the state, and that, you know, we want to continue this conversation around, you know, do school districts offer a tassel, you know, we even had some people. You know, I think that's something that school districts have to approach within their inside communications and decide how they want to celebrate it and what are the certain trends that are happening around the state. And then some of the comments that came up as a part of the survey and we just wanted to share these because they are comments and we wanted to give a voice to those who responded to the survey. The first one said I would love to see is be in Department of Labor jointly put communications out in Illinois on the what and why in the ass. And then the second one basically says, because this is a current and ongoing discussion the consideration of recognition has not been discussed in depth. And so, those are, we're just going to leave those comments as, you know, placeholders for furthering our conversation, we just wanted to share out that those were to the highlighted conversation components as a part of the comments. And so at this point, we want to just kind of pivot a little bit we want to bring in that idea around celebrations. And what is happening currently around the state. And so I am going to actually turn it over to Dr Eric last key the assistant principal of Ridgewood High School. Thanks, Bill. So we look at celebrating our students and this is sort of, you know, we've added everything each year so it's not like we came up with these ideas right away but we've been having everything and so we do recognize our students at the end of the year award banquet. We chose a royal blue cord for them to wear graduation and sometimes people ask why do you choose royal blue, mainly because that was not being used in any other areas. We put all the ones available we really like that. We put all our students names on our career pathway website, which is good because we have questions about something's easy to find other people find it. And the other thing we do is we instead of like celebrating necessarily them at board meeting, we have our students present to our school board about the work they've done, and how it sort of impacted them. So this does sort of celebrate their work. But the best part about this it also informs our board about the work and helps us out as we move forward. I did want before we move on to the next slide because a lot of times people will ask, what does that mean that they earn this on their transcript. So you can see this is a sample transcript. And you'll see the endorsement right above the state seal by letter C so this particular student or both of those. So you can see now what it looks like if they do get this endorsement and how it's put onto their transcript. All right, next slide. So what about, you know, just touching on how we track this. We do have some lead teachers for a couple of our programs, and they will track the information and report it back. But we also use Google forms as well. You know, as we're looking, you know, to sort of find a better system. Right now, Google forms is working for us. We do run some reports, we run our dual credit reports, our work based learning reports. The thing about work based learning reports, working with Erica Cuba Michael Coon, they helped ensure that all our work based learning courses are coded for each pathway. So that way we have more information when we do those things. And then, and when you look at the big picture, we have been using school links this year, and we're slowly getting that operation system set up, because we want to be able to easily look at reports. And see, all right, what are the components that students are getting where our deficiencies, we're doing need to improve on. We're a little behind in this because we're using a different system and trying that for two years before I finally realized it wasn't working. And then we moved on to school links. So on the next slide. We're going to talk about ensuring equity inclusion for our college and career pathway endorsements. It is now part of our K through 1012 pace framework. So we really want this process to start a lot earlier than he school, and if we want to have that equity piece we really felt as be valuable to embed components into it. Even in eighth grade in our pace framework, we're asking that all students select a college and career pathway endorsement they'd like to pursue in high school that doesn't mean that's the one they're sick with they're going to continue with they're going to earn, but pick one you'd like to start with and at least get going with also to make sure that all students have these opportunity to earn these endorsements. We embed some of this work into our core curriculum. In our English one English two projects, all the students will do a presentation about what pathway they're interested in. And in that presentation they have to include stuff like job location, what are the job hours, what are the salaries, what are the assignments, and then we also asked them to choose a couple post secondary programs whether it be a college or even programs that we offer our community college, you know pick something that you know you would like to, you know, maybe you pursue your post secondary program. And in our freshman math courses, they do a cost benefit analysis along with the English classes they didn't take that information, and they sort of look at what are the long and long and short term expenses for the post secondary program, and then the long and short term salaries, whatever program they choose. So even embedding that and getting them thinking a little bit more in depth freshman year is great for our students. So providing options for each students, you know, knowing that an eighth grade we want to have all our students to choose a pathway endorsement to pursue. We want to make make sure there's an endorsement in every different pathways multiple options. Now this is not something I recommend for for schools that are just starting out with career pathways. You know this is something we've been working on for four years. We're able to expand a little bit of our with our work. In order to do that to get the partner, you know we partner with our community college Triton. We are adding we this year we added some dual credit for our peer students so those are our co taught classes. We want to make sure that every student has opportunity to earn that career path endorsement so how can we get those dual credit into those classes as well. It may be that the entire year is a semester credit, at least over two years then they can earn that those six credit hours. During COVID years we had a lecture time for PD, and we use that time to work with all our elective teachers, and embedding a team based challenge with them because that's really even if you're not looking at career path endorsements that's the best practice is to bring in those outside speakers bring them in so now that provides more once again the opportunity for all our students to get those team based challenges, whether they're earning the endorsement or not. And then communication with parents that we start that with our eighth grade students on transitional night. And then we continue on almost in every communication we have we like to share about the career pathway work as we move forward in the pace framework, we will be doing that even earlier years. So the part of ensuring that you know once again we want to reach everyone is we added a dual degree program pathway. This year which we had four students in Roland. So they finished year one of that it's a two year program, and then we have eight that are going to participate in that next year so we just want to make sure that all students have these opportunities with our work so thank you. Thank you for that section but while we're kind of waiting if you have a question you want to throw it in the chat or want to just speak to it. One of the things Eric that I think that the work that you're doing is is that you mentioned that this is work that's happening over four years right it's not something that is happening in this like one or two year time limit and offering the career pathway endorsements through throughout to every kid. It's not every kid is going to receive that career pathway endorsement it's offered, but you know there's going to be a limited amount of students that actually receive that so I wanted to make that clear. As a party as a part of your work. Yeah, no that's correct. Our goal is once again offer the opportunities. And then the students pick, they pursue it, we know we provide that pathway, but no not every student has earned it or is going to, you know, may say going to earn it, but at least, you know, take the dual credit classes and pursue that a little bit is what we'd like. One other quick question Eric is when you when your district tried to start looking into that conversation around the celebrations component like where where did it begin like what was that. You know at what point where you was your district saying, man, we have to celebrate these kids like where did that start at and what how did that conversation go early on. Yeah, we've always, you know, we always our school board always likes to hear from the kids, they don't necessarily like to hear from us as much so bringing them in has always been sort of like your tradition, we have three meetings a year. We always bring kids in to talk about this work actually in three years ago Jason Klein we invited him as well and he came in and talk to our school board about this. But that's, you know, something that we just traditional we always celebrate that work with our school board. But then as we move down we realize okay, we're recognizing all these other compliments for students. We need to embed this into our awards night, and then at the year later like we also need to have this part of our graduation how could we make that part of our graduation let's get a chord for our students to wear. So truly, you know those things every year we just find something new we want to add in with those celebrations. That's great to hear that those conversations are happening, and that, you know, the community is playing a key role in it as well as that. You know, that communication I think with the parents and the community like you said, you have a certain component with your CCP going out to parents and community members each month that I'm sure that plays a significant role in this work as well. Yeah, I think if you talk to the parents early on like, you know, and you know we always use to like this is, you know, if you look at is be this is a new initiative this is something that really wants students to earn. You know having that bigger backing behind it really helps as well. And then you start to ingrain that into them they start to think about it. And then it really helps if they're involved in the process as much as possible. Thank you Eric for sharing that process that your school district has gone through like you said it's been approximately four years since you got into this work it sounds like you guys are doing great work at Ridgewood and if your school is just getting started in this, you know, I think that advice of just just get started and start with, whether it's a Google form or some type of just, you know, smaller information system that that can be the starting point for you and moving this work forward. And we, because we have we started with the manufacturing pathway and education pathway because we had those things in place. And those were really good get those down and then it's like expanding moving on and trying to make sure we meet all the students in our school so but thank you. Hey, Eric that brings up a good point is, what was the. What was the reasoning you started with those two pathways. Well, with manufacturing we already had students going to TMA, getting their credentials for semester senior and then second semester they were doing internships paid internships. So you look at that we had everything in place already we had to do a credit, you know you have the internship, you know you get then you build in the team based challenges. So I feel like the more difficult components to have. So that was why we chose that one that also education pathway was the same thing where students are going to northeastern, and they're taking two classes so we already had to do a credit in there. And then, second semester they do a mini student teacher internship. So the work based learning was there. So it's like, when you look at what programs you have and the components you have towards ecology for pathway endorsement. And really some meat, you know minor adjustments you need to add into them in order for those students to earn those endorsements so those were the reason we picked those first two. Yeah, so I think that's a great call out is that you had existing programs where you were already doing some of that work and you just made a few tweaks to them. In order to get that work rolling for your district. Well, I didn't see any questions in the chat. I'm just going to just make sure it. I think we're good bill. Okay. So we're going to move on to the currency and I'll Jason go ahead and take it. Yeah, I'm going to jump in as a man of transition I do want to call out Michelle's comment. Excuse me, that she did make at the near the beginning of Eric's sharing out and Michelle after all the awesome work we heard from Michelle it was also great that she shared like oh this is a place that we've got lots of work to do and, and she specifically called out the challenge of if if you're early credit, excuse me early college credit courses include advanced placement courses. You are you're not going to know if students have met that requirement until July right so that that will have an impact on this. And ironically, next Friday is the illicep dual credit summit being held in two locations, one at college of DuPage and one at Johnny Logan. And, and I'm my presentation is about how last spring's legislation and the endorsements offers additional support for dual credit and so, and that really speaks to Michelle's, Michelle's question because that is a real challenge and so, and it is a limiting factor and something that I think we can all continue to share solutions with one another. Around around that and as school districts look at where we using AP or IB versus dual credit and what are the benefits and drawbacks and, and certainly there are those for all of these right. And I think that counseling is a much straighter straighter road on advanced placement than it is on dual credit and, you know, that's being worked on as well but that's the reality. So, with that all said, that also ties into things that are kind of beyond the scope of like is bees work, but very, very common conversations around the career pathway endorsements. There are 71 of us still in the meeting right now. If I had a dollar for every time someone asked me about. What does this get students in the long run, we would all be eating a nice brunch together while we did this and so, and so monthly probably and and that is a very important question so what to kick this conversation off I wanted to introduce it with a couple of things and then take it over to Megan Mitchell who's here joining us from Education Systems Center. And so with that, the couple things I wanted to call it is first of all, I think that the number one thing we heard this a year ago today, I was driving from Oak Park to Vernon and a year ago tomorrow is beheld the first in its series of CT industry feedback tour events. And at the meeting that was 364 days ago we heard from a Pepsi Cola bottler with with plants and distribution centers in in Illinois along with Kentucky Tennessee and Missouri that if this endorsement this sounded amazing to him. And if students really came up the students with the endorsement with the skills that were represented by both the essential skills and the technical competencies. He wants to hire those students right away. But if they come out with the endorsement, and they don't have those skills. He told us he's going to be pretty turned off from hiring students like that again. And so, so this is where our assessment piece becomes really important something we do have control over the conversations we have with our partners in our communities. So, these calls we have a lot of very important people on these calls we don't have a lot of superintendents. So we need to make sure our superintendents, for example, have the talking points. Some of your superintendents do some probably do not, and that when they're out in the community when they're invited to speak they're talking about how students earning endorsements look different as a result of those process and frankly, how all of our students will look different than they did in the past because the work we're all doing in the space that will build currency and so I think there's no way of avoiding that some of this is on us locally to have those conversations and then as we engage with partners. We know there are many people on this call who have had incredible experiences with partners who would love to be champions. And obviously when they can go out and talk about this with with their colleagues. They can go to the Chamber of Commerce at Rotary wherever that's going to be incredibly helpful right like we can't buy that. And so with all that said, we did ask question on the survey about how the business and community partners recognize endorsements. This is this was the answer then bill you can go on to the next slide. And so with that said, what we really want to do, we know why people are asking about it, because if we're going to spend all this time and energy. We want to make sure it's getting our students something. And again, part of my answer is, if we're really doing a good job assessing and teaching all of the competencies the essential skills and the technical competencies. We are setting our students up for success to get jobs, and then to thrive in those jobs even more importantly. And so, so that's part of the answer but the reason people are asking about it is because there is a lot for school districts to do I am not telling anybody any anybody here anything you don't know. Making this a priority does require the question of what does it mean for our students so with that said, we're going to turn this over to Megan. One was a hope to be here to and unfortunately he could not join us at the last minute due to a family a family matter and so with that we're thrilled to have Megan and Megan, you can go ahead and take it away. Thank you so much first I just want to say thank you so much Jason for allowing us space to talk about this are really excited about the work that our community college districts are doing to provide currency on their end for students who earn the college and career pathway endorsements. Next slide. My name is Megan Mitchell work at system center in the past pathway manager, and you all know my dear colleague one Jose and as Jason said he had hoped to be here today but had a family emergency and kind of come so he send his his love his love and thoughts and good vibes to you all as well. And so here's what we're going to do today so just in the few minutes that we have we're going to talk about some larger currency initiatives that's happening throughout our state, and then we're going to hone into directly what's happening within the colleges and then I'll pause for like some Q&A at the end. So you all know us right we're at system center. Our goal and mission is to shape and strengthen education workforce system segments racial equity and prepare more, more learners for productive careers. And our three focus areas are bridges to post secondary college and career pathways and data impact. Our focus is statewide and we have a huge initiative in terms of supporting various community networks and being very collaborative and innovative in this work. So I'm going to take some time just to kind of highlight some larger currency options that are happening throughout the states. So we already know about the Golden Apple scholars of Illinois. We are aware of Illinois teacher teachers scholarship, or I'm sorry minority teachers of Illinois scholarship. And so students who earn the college and career pathway endorsements will also be eligible to have like outstanding in these particular application processes. One thing I do want to point out that's fairly new to this statewide currency pathway initiative is Illinois Manufacturing Association scholarship. And so this scholarship is new to this space and it's offered for students who earn the endorsement and manufacturing. And so we're really excited about this initiative, and it's like a low hanging fruit for students. Students are fairly attainable. So you just have to be Illinois resident high school senior of course one letter of recommendation, either a 500 word essay, or a two minute video recording, just discussing what made you interested in a career in that particular field, and then a two minute recording video or presentation showcasing a project or an item that you have created. So just, you know, say a shameless plug for this initiative so if you all have students who are earning this endorsement to maybe interested in receiving some additional funding, please please please encourage them to apply for this. And so now I want to get into some of the details of what we are doing. And so we are working currently on a project with a outside funder where we are supporting and encouraging community college to provide currency for pathway endorsements and so the primary focus of this particular project is to increase secondary romance and college and career pathways, particularly in underrepresented industry areas, increase the number of students who complete secondary pathways earning the college and career pathway endorsement and the industry credential. And then of course, increasing those students who transition from high school to post secondary programs, particularly in community college and within the workforce. And of course the main focus of this particular project is to develop currency and increase the value of college and career pathway endorsements within a community college space. And so the expectation, you know, just to give you all some background information expectation from our college partners who participate in this is that they published a currency that they have with their high school partners for students by May next month of this year. And so some sub expectations is that they work with their districts to submit the pathway endorsement and other activities centered around that by fall of this year. We encourage and require them to consider an equity plan and what that looks like for some of our underserved populations and then include some strategies to address those particular students. And then we host a series of community practices, the kind of supports and help colleges move along this process as well. Next slide. Now here's where I show you, as you can see some of the examples of what various community colleges are doing. So in the chat, I am going to paste a link to a blog post that we wrote that kind of outlines. Many of our community colleges and the work that they're doing. And so you all have that there. As you can see, schools are really getting innovative with how they are supporting our and earn earners our endorsement earners. So some students who attend Illinois Valley Community College or Cascadia will be able to receive actual like stipends and scholarships, right, depending on the pathway that they are entering. And so these hold like a financial value and incentive for students. So C Parkland is partnering with their local employers to provide job placements. Other institutions are hosting additional student supports, whether it's additional faculty hours, additional supports for those gateway courses. Lastly, a big thing I think is really exciting is those earners are eligible to receive additional points towards selective enrollment programs, which is key and and providing support for those students. Next slide. So you can see some of our partner colleges, the pathways that they are working with us on and then some of the currency initiatives. Next slide please. And so one thing I don't know if you can see the bolded pieces here, but I wanted to highlight the colleges that are outlined in that blog post and some of their partners. And as you can see they're working with various school districts, but they're also working with industry partners, not for profit organizations as well. And so these partners are key to this work in terms of providing job opportunities for our students, talking through how to support these students long term and how they are going to impact the greater community as a whole. I know we are strapped for time here so I tried to kind of move through this pretty quickly, but I do want to pause just to see if there are any questions that you all may have. All right, so I thank you for your time. If there are anything that you are interested in learning more about or if you would like for us to work with your community college in your district. In terms of thinking through currency we would love to hop on a call and talk through those particular opportunities as well. Thank you. Thank you again Jason and bill for for supporting this work. Absolutely thank you so much Megan and again I think that the we know the community college currency components as Megan pointed out as you've heard lots of us talk about lots of times I mean suck valley. You know big shout out to them for on their own taking advantage of the work being done locally by multiple districts and that the community college invested in from the very beginning. four years ago and and now seeing seeing this work with community colleges near and far is is a great next step and and providing that that direction so Megan that update was great. And we look forward to this will definitely be a topic that I am. I'm sure we will all continue to talk about and so the one the one shout out I'll give us and probably all of us is to remember to be not be shy about talking about this with people in our communities and and kind of bragging about the work and about our students and as Eric talked with the board at Ridgewood getting our students out in front of them and letting our students do the talking because that will that will also make a huge difference and so I think there's definitely a lot of work that we can probably do to support those efforts to as we move further down the road and by we I'm referring to the NIU team and in collaboration with the ISB team and so we will seek to do that. With that said, we do know today was a much longer meeting and everybody's got a million things to do. We will be posting the recording of the meeting on our YouTube channel and we will send that out I did start the recording a few minutes late. I apologize about that that pre conversation was so interesting that I lost track of that, and we will send out not only the link to the recording when that's up but a link to the slides as well. Bill, anything you want to add before we wrap up here. No, I just want to say thank you for everyone. This meeting was a lot longer and but we were happy to share those results from the surveys and have our speakers Eric and Michelle come and present and also Megan from ed systems. Thank you for coming in here and sharing that wealth of information for Illinois schools. Thank you everyone for coming we're going to go ahead and stop the video.