 I think we will get started. We'll take a look at the next slide. One starting place for this conversation is to think about one definition of educational equity. Now, we won't have time to do full justice to unpacking this definition in today's context, but I did wanna call out some particular thoughts. Right now, Minnesota students do not have access to a diverse teacher workforce. And you'll hear from our colleague, Amaya later in the presentation, how important that is for all students, but particularly students of color and American Indian students to have access to a more racially diverse educator workforce. This reality is due to several historical conditions and barriers in our system. So broadly, our work is to eliminate those structural barriers, those institutional barriers to allow for a better distribution of resources. And in today's conversation, the resources we're talking about are the teachers themselves, the number one school-based factor on student outcomes in a variety of spaces. So that students experience a better access to school and graduation and all the good things we're looking for in student outcomes. So for today's focus is on approaches to grow your own programs for paraprofessionals and other adults. And that is one structural change, one systemic change that can begin to move the needle to diversify our educator workforce. Next slide, please. And before we dive into grow your own, I wanted to paint a big picture about what do we know about the teacher workforce nationally and then move to what the work needs to look like here in Minnesota. I'm referencing here a 2018 report from Dr. Richard Ingersoll of the University of Pennsylvania, conducted multiple studies over 20 years and found a number of things I'm gonna highlight a couple of them. One, in terms of, and we're thinking national teacher workforce data, a lot of times we hear about the teacher shortage, the teacher shortage, the teacher shortage. Perhaps our minds go to it might be a supply problem. There are not enough teachers working on their license or coming into licensure programs and coming into the profession. Our national data is actually suggesting that the workforce is larger and we are creating a supply of teachers. However, it's retention that is a key issue in nationwide. According to Dr. Ingersoll, 44% of new teachers leave within the first five years of their career. And speaking of that turnover and that instability in number seven on the screen, half of the nation's teacher turnover occurs in 25% of our schools. Those schools often being high poverty, high minority schools in both urban and rural settings. And another thing we know is that teachers of color and American Indian teachers leave the teacher workforce at much higher rates than their white colleagues for a variety of reasons which we'll also explore later in today's presentation. So knowing these factors and how do we intervene on the retention side is very important. Yes, at the same time, we need to continue to increase our supply, if you will, of educators of color and American Indian educators as well. So what are the implications for students around teacher turnover? Ingersoll also found that in 1988, the most common amount of time a teacher was in the classroom was 15 years. Think about, many of you are educators, think about the educator you were at year 15. In 2015, the most common amount of time a teacher was in the classroom was one to three years of experience. I taught for 13 years. And though my heart was always in the right place all 13 years, I know I was serving students better in year 13 than I was in year two or year three. So students are accessing a newer workforce broadly, nationwide. Now I wanna isolate also and identify race. Now our national statistics, some good news and some work yet to be done. The nationwide, our teacher of color and American Indian teacher workforce has more than doubled since the 1980s. It now sits at around 20% of the teacher workforce nationally compared to about 50% of students. That and I mean, again, because we've our awareness is, Tyler, you're on mute. Tyler, you're on mute. And someone else has taken over. I don't know what happened there. I didn't press a button, but thank you for letting me know. I wanted to make reference to while the national number for teachers of color is around 20%, Minnesota is at 4%. And it's been at 4% for decades. So while we've moved the needle nationally, in Minnesota, we have not moved the needle and we've stayed stagnant at that number. So it's on all of us, state, institutes of higher ed, teacher prep, districts, charters, community advocates, unions, districts, everybody to really take a look at that number and figure out, well, what are the ways in which we are upholding the current reality that is leaving us with a workforce that doesn't represent our community. Next slide, please. So what do we need to do in Minnesota? I've tried to synthesize it across these five buckets. Yes, thinking of the workforce that we need to diversify the workforce. We need to increase the workforce. There are real shortage areas that show up regionally in our state that show up in licensure areas in our state. And we need to retain the workforce we have. That's support for new teachers, development opportunities, teacher leadership opportunities. And all of that is interwoven with school spaces need to be culturally responsive and sustaining. That we need to provide that absolutely for our students because after all, they are our future teachers as well as the teachers and other staff in our school community so that they stay. And finally, before I hand it off to Amaya, sometimes in this work, we think about teacher numbers and who's moving and things like that. And we forget to think about it through the student lens. Like how do students experience teachers in our school system? So I very much encourage people to think about how students progress through the system and which teachers they are exposed to during their school careers is a critical way of thinking about this issue. So if teachers in a certain school A are always turning over, then those students are always getting brand new teachers. And what are the implications on that for their education at large? So the state, we are committed to continuing conversations at the state level about the ways in which we can disrupt those barriers and transform systems. And we're committed to partnering with all of you in doing the same work. Now it's time to focus on grow your own. It's a promising approach to create new pathways for future teachers, particularly teachers of color and American Indian teachers. At this time, I would like to introduce Amaya Garcia. Amaya is the deputy director of pre-K through 12 at New America. And Amaya has been researching and writing about growing your own programs and policies across the nation for the past four years. Amaya? Thank you, Tyler. Welcome everyone. Before I get started, I wanna make sure to give a special thanks to the McKnight Foundation who is supporting our work looking at growing your own within Minnesota. Next slide, please, Normada. So we're gonna do a quick poll just to get a sense of who is here today. So, Normada, if you can launch the poll, there we go. Please take a minute to submit your answers. Okay, so all people are still answering the question. Next slide, please, Normada. So we've been writing a lot about growing your own over the years and worked with a couple of experts, scholars, practitioners to try to develop a joint definition of what we mean when we say grow your own. Because growing your own programs are so localized, that means that definitions of what a growing your own program are can also be pretty local. So from our perspective, we see growing your own programs as partnerships between educator preparation programs, school districts and community organizations that recruit and prepare local community members. So those can be parents, their educators, uncertified school staff, high school students, et cetera, to enter the teaching profession and teach in their communities. So Normada, can we see the results of the poll? Or close the poll? So we can see that we're kind of, a third of you are still learning about growing your own, about a third of you already operated growing your own program and then the others are kind of a mix. That's really helpful to know. And I'm sure a lot of you have your own definitions of growing your own. Next slide, please. So as Tyler mentioned, the lack of teacher diversity is really a growing problem. This is an issue that comes up every, I guess a couple of years as most things in education do, there's ebbs and flows in terms of their popularity. But nationally, we see a large mismatch between the demographics of the student population and the teacher workforce. And while there has been progress made, we're not anywhere near where we need to be in terms of making sure that all students have access to educators who not only look like them, but understand their culture, can speak their languages and can provide them with culturally responsive education. So some of the biggest gaps you'll see are actually with Latinx students who represent a growing share of our student population. There are more than a quarter of students, but only 9% of teachers. And then as you can see, we actually have very few Asian teachers as well and Black teachers and kind of all around. Next slide. So the research is pretty clear on the benefits of same-read teachers. We see that most of these studies are related to Black students, but there are a few in here who are actually related to Latinx students as well just to clarify. So you see lower rates of exclusionary discipline practices. We all know that the School of Prison Pipeline is a huge issue and that trying to minimize those kinds of practices among students of color is a really essential issue that we need to tackle. We can see that there's a positive impact on high school graduation and college enrollment, academic achievement, school attendance, and advanced course taking. All things that influence a student's trajectory once they leave school. And one thing that's not here is the power of having a role model. I can say from my own experience, I never had a Latinx teacher the whole time I was in school. And so I never got to see anyone who looked like me in front of the classroom. And I didn't realize till I got older what an impact that had on me. Next slide. So why would we wanna grow your own? So from the perspective of today, we're thinking about adults and we're also thinking about paraeducators. We did some analysis using data from the American Community Survey to kind of get a sense of representation within the teacher workforce, teaching assistants, and the US population. And as you can see from here, teaching assistants much more closely resemble the US population and the teacher workforce overall. Next slide. This slide also kind of emphasizes that point and actually has their bilingualism, immigration status, whether or not they're Hispanic and whether or not they're not white. So you can see there's a pretty similar, there's a lot of similarity between who we have, supporting students in the classroom and the general population. And so from our perspective, we feel that the paraeducator pipeline in particular is a very powerful strategy and tool for helping diversify the workforce because so many paraeducators already have significant experience supporting students working in schools and so many of them share the characteristics of the student population. Next slide. So nationally, when we think about grow your own, we know that there's two primary reasons why people are implementing the strategy. So one is to deal with teacher shortages and key subject areas like STEM, bilingual education, special education, but also because states around the country are kind of grappling with this idea of how we improve the racial and linguistic diversity of the workforce. GYO is a widely embraced strategy for addressing both of these issues. GYO has been around really since the late 90s from see research looking at pathway programs for paraeducators and it was sort of revitalized in the early 2000s with Grow Your Own Illinois, which was the first state competitive grant program that really funded Grow Your Own at a state level. We did a national scan of GYO policies across the country and found that most states have at least one Grow Your Own program, but tremendous variety exists in program design and strategy. And then more than half of states have some kind of GYO policy, but funding for GYO programs is inconsistent. Minnesota is one of nine states that currently offers a statewide competitive grant program to support the development and implementation of GYO programs for adults. When I first started doing this work five years ago was only four states and now we're up to nine states. So we do see some momentum happening there with buy-in as GYO is a useful strategy. And then paraeducator and adult pathways are offered in 34 states with the majority being developed at the school district level, which means that the kinds of supports and services that candidates are receiving can be inconsistent within the state because of the fact that different districts and different programs have different levels of resources. Next slide. So that's sort of just an overview of Grow Your Own as a strategy, Grow Your Own from a national perspective. And now we're kind of kind of dig into what's happening here locally within the state. We have a great range of panelists who represent a variety of programs here. And I also wanna note that we have one panelist, Alexander Manuel, who's from the Washington State Professional Educator Standards Board to help provide a perspective of how other states are approaching Grow Your Own. So before we get started with the questions, I just wanna ask each of the panelists to quickly introduce themselves and the program that they're representing. So we can start with Rhonda. Hi, my name is Rhonda Bonstetter. I'm a professor of education at Southwest Minnesota State University. Several years ago now, we approached the legislature and received some funding to start our first Grow Your Own program, which was what we called a Para to Sped program. And it allowed paraprofessionals to work towards licensure and special education for what we call the ABS or Academic Behavioral Strategist License in Minnesota. And they did that on a part-time basis with a fully online program that allowed them to do a year-long student teaching on a half-time basis so they could retain their positions as a paraprofessional and be able to continue working during student teaching. We were finding that was one of the biggest barriers that candidates were having is they couldn't afford to take off a full semester of work to be able to do student teaching. So the coursework is offered on a part-time basis so that they can manage full-time work and family and whatever. And they complete the program in three years. They need to have an AA degree or their generals completed when they come in. And generally we found it's paraprofessionals, people who already have a bachelor's degree in another area. A lot of tier two teachers now coming in that are working towards licensure that we're seeing as candidates. Thank you, Rhonda. How about Jennifer? Hi, everybody. My name is Jen. I'm the program coordinator for the Minnesota Grow Your Own Teachers program at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities. We are in the multiple pathways to teaching office and I've been overseeing this program for the past three years as the two-year model that it is. And then I worked within it before it became the Minnesota Grow Your Own program. I was a supervisor and a course instructor in the Minneapolis residency model that we had prior. So I've kind of seen two phases of the Grow Your Own model go from a one-year model to a two-year model. And so I'm excited to talk about the things that we've discovered that work really well to keep retaining our teachers. Thank you. How about next we go to Danae? Hi, I'm Danae Afronki. I'm representing Souter. It's a St. Paul Urban Teacher Residency program. It is a 15 month teacher prep program that gets our folks licensed and with their masters in partnership with the University of St. Thomas. We recruit within the community of St. Paul and then hire within St. Paul Public Schools. We've been around for about five years now moving into our sixth cohort and come June we will have hired almost a hundred teachers and 60% of them are teachers of color. Thank you, Danae. How about Julie next? Hello, everyone. I'm Julie Phillips. I'm representing Anoka Hennepin School District. We partner with Jen at, and her cohorts there at the University of Minnesota in the pathway, alternate pathways to teacher preparation program. And MINGA we first worked with them in the year 2018-19 and we had four individuals go through as our first cohort. Since then we grew that the next year we had eight and then this year we started 18. In addition, we expanded this year and we are working with University of St. Thomas also and we have 13 individuals pursuing their work and learn program for an ABS licensure. And we also have one that's pursuing EBD licensure through the University of Minnesota also. So this year we have 40 individuals either in their first year or second year. So we've gone very quickly ramping up and yeah, I just see the benefits and I wanna be able to share our perspective and what we've experienced here in Anoka Hennepin. That's great. Thank you so much, Julie. And finally, Alexandra. Yeah, good afternoon, everybody. Nice to be with you. I'm Alexandra Manuel. I'm the executive director for the Washington State Professional Educator Standards Board which is similar to kind of a standards board you have in Minnesota. But we are really focused on grow your own efforts and we've spent the last several years both really transforming how we think about our providers in the alternative routes to teacher certification and really growing our own with a focus on growing our own para educators and growing our own educators that have either subject-based knowledge or school-based knowledge and really helping to, we started out with small number of programs and now we have about 25 programs that are operating in colleges and districts and also part of our regional service districts. So really trying to be responsive to seeing more educators from local communities be successful go through the pathway. Thank you, Alexandra. So my first question for all of you is why is growing your own a good strategy for helping to increase the racial and linguistic diversity of the educator workforce? This is Denea. I'll go ahead. We were really clear when we designed the program and it was extremely important and intentional for us to really focus on the idea of being able to recruit, train and retain folks that share the same life experiences as our students of St. Paul Public Schools. And so that's what it's about. It's about the kids of St. Paul Public Schools so they can look at teachers that have same experiences that they've had so they can relate, learn better and continue to grow. I can jump in as well. I think for SMSU, one of the big things we were finding is one of the things that was previously shown in the slides that while the teachers don't necessarily have the diversity that their students do that many times the paraprofessionals or those who work in those positions with our candidates do show that level of diversity. And that was a lot of what we were seeing. We would have a number of candidates being interested in joining our teacher ed programs but found barriers in places where distances where we're at in the Southwest part of the state to get to a university, they couldn't drive to go to classes and still maintain a position, for example or the distances were just too great. They needed to be able to continue working while they were in the teacher preparation program and in particular while they were in student teaching. The state rules requiring full-time student teaching for a full semester or the 12 weeks at least was a barrier because they couldn't stop working and supporting their families during that time. So that was two of the key reasons for our particular model for our Grow Your Own program was to remove some of those barriers to allow them to have their field experiences in the district they work in with the levels of placements that they need. The only waivers that we have are just to allow the year-long student teaching at a part-time basis at all the grade levels that they need so that they can continue their paraposition and be able to continue working because we don't have any external funding for the candidates but this is a way that still between the financial aid available and them being able to keep their current role has made that possible. I can speak about what MINGOT is doing very similar to what Rhonda's program is addressing as well. We find that the three biggest barriers are of course time, money and stress. And so we wanna diminish and create a program that affords them the capacity to both have the time be invested in their coursework in the evenings and on weekends. So we have a consistent five semester program where our student teachers come, our teacher candidates come on Tuesday evening classes and it's a hybrid model as well. So they're always, they're always, well now we're virtual on Tuesday evenings. And then every other Saturday we swap back between full day classes and then online classes. And so that capacity for our teacher candidates to stay job embedded is a feature because it saves us on that time being a stressor but it also is a hallmark of our program that our coursework and through our clinical coursework as well is job embedded. Meaning that we design our program so that our EAs, our teacher assistants, our Paras, our substitute teachers that what they're learning in class on Tuesday night they're taking back to their schools on Wednesday morning. And it's an immediate integration. And then when we are in our coursework we're always pulling from their everyday lived experience of being in schools and using that as the foundation for the theory that they're learning. And so that model of allowing them to continue to work for the five semesters of the program as well as seeking funding to supplement that money as a stressor is a huge component. And then also just stress in general, right? The stress of being a teacher especially in this day and age core features of our program is our every equity course is offered in every semester as well as we talk a lot about teacher mental, emotional and spiritual health not only just for teachers in general but teachers of color. What does that mean? What does that look like? So that our teachers feel connected to their calling to teach as well as connected to their work in their current district. And we find that that creates just a really whole healthy new teacher who is not going into their first year of teacher and teaching in stage three burnout. Just jump in and reiterate everything that we've heard so far. One of our partners is Jen and so absolutely everything she said and the other pieces from recruitment in a district it's absolutely true. Our para educators and our substitute teachers and our other support staff that are unlicensed in our district they represent a much higher percentage of racial diversity than our teachers. So we need to work on helping them to become. The other thing that I have been able to use this for is actually a recruitment tool to recruit individuals into working in our para educator roles. So when I'm out now meeting with people or someone's considering a para educator role if it's a person of color specifically because that's our strategic and priority here as we're using this program is that I can talk to them about the career path. So even if they're doing a career shift midlife they may have a pay cut to become a para but it's a temporary setback for them over two years they can still stay employed and then become that teacher in two years. There's potential of tier two licensure along the way. It's just things that people had never thought about. And we have individuals that are realizing I wish I'd gone into education. I wish I'd been a teacher and it's too late. Well, it's not too late. And I meet so many people that would love to have that now that they're into their adulthood they have this knowledge that they wish they had been gotten their degree in education. They wanna make a difference in the lives of students and this is a way that they can do that. So I think that it's really reaching out intentionally to people who already work with us that have that batch of the degree and become licensed in one of these programs but also to people who are in our community the parents, the family members of our students who are living in these communities already and they're not going anywhere. They live here already, they work here already. They're gonna stay, we're gonna retain them. And I just add that everything that everyone said I think is really right on. I think in our state, one of the things that we've tried to do is summarize the priorities for grow your own and alternative route programs that they should be engaging the most diverse candidates that reflect the community demographics to serve high need communities that they should be supporting that grow your own model which really clearly identifies partnerships as the priority to the pathway for employment and the job-embedded learning while teaching where there is a priority of moving folks through both the pre-service and into in-service learning. And then we also talk a lot about providing support services for those candidates students sure, success of retention as well as kind of what does it take to engage candidates in particular shortage areas of our state as well as the final piece is really how can we provide and evaluate credit for prior learning which many of our candidates that are in grow your own programs have participated or engaged in higher education in other ways prior to becoming a teacher. I'm gonna push a little bit on the partnership side of this that Alex just mentioned. We all know that grow your own only works if we have a strong partnership between the Institute of Higher Education, school districts and any community-based organizations that may be collaborating on the work. So I was actually hoping, Tanaya, if you could start us off talking a little bit about your partnership with the University of St. Thomas like what is your role? What is the role of the university and kind of how do you collaborate to deliver the program? Yeah, thanks. And I see that I have several of my colleagues also on the call. So if they wanna chat in things that I'm missing in terms of our partnership, please feel free to cause I really can't, I don't know if I can do justice to what it means to be a partner with a district and a university in a residency model. When we came to the table to create the program it was absolutely in partnership. It was both St. Paul Public Schools and the University of St. Thomas together. We started with creating the goal of the program. We created the look likes we created the timelines. We continue to do so in terms of we interview and select together. We do information sessions together. We have similar folks on all aspects of any of the surveys that we take. We continually look at the data together about what's happening within the coursework and in the clinical at the same time. So that when we see that there's a need that we can continue to make improvements. And so that we get the outcomes that we're looking for. In summary, the residency program itself is a 15 month we license folks in elementary and ABS license and special education. And it's a start in May and then they're done the following August. So in terms of being very targeted and very intentional about the barriers of time and money folks start together. They take older classes together on one day a week. They're at the University of St. Thomas. And in several of the courses that are taught at St. Thomas there's a co-teacher from St. Paul Public Schools so that you have the perspective of both. And then as the program continues to go through residents student teach throughout the whole year. St. Paul Public Schools has been able to get some grant funds as well as district contributions to pay a pretty healthy stipend. Healthy on one end can also be very much not a lot of money to some people. So we do pay $26,000 a year per resident to go through this program and we tell them that we are paying them to go to school and to be a student teacher. So it's both their full-time employee for St. Paul Public Schools as well as a full-time student. So one day a week in school, four days clinical all year long and then we hire them and we're at about of our completers. I think we're at about 87% folks complete the program and then we hire about 95% of those completers into St. Paul Public Schools. And so when you ask partnership, what does St. Thomas do and what does St. Paul do? They do their clinical in St. Paul and they do their courses at St. Thomas, but as a steering committee, as a leadership group, as we collect data, everything's in partnership together and we make decisions together continually to improve the program. Thank you, that's really helpful. Rhonda, kind of piggybacking on that. The Southwest Minnesota teacher preparation partnership involves a lot of different partners because you're trying not to just help their educators become teachers, but you're also having some focus on high school students. So I know you're partnering with a bunch of different organizations within the region. So I guess I'm just curious about the work that went into developing that partnership and kind of what you've learned along the way about the components for sustaining a strong partnership as you're trying to build an initiative off the ground together. Oh, you're right. There's lots of people involved in this partnership. The Worthing Public Schools are actually, last time we were looking on the MDE website, the most diverse district in the state. People don't realize that, that we have those levels of diversity here in Southwest Minnesota. They tend to think it's all gonna be in the metro and not the case. And so they were really putting a focus on building culturally responsive teachers in their district and getting more teachers who look like their students. And we're over 70% of the students are students of color. So the district came to Midwest who talked with SMSU. We also got some funding from the Southwest Initiative Foundation and really started developing this partnership about what would this look like? Where we really work to develop culturally responsive teaching practices. SMSU is bringing the program to Worthington. So for those of you who don't know the geography, it's a little over an hour south of Marshall where Worthington is that way in the Southwest corner of the state. So we hired a new faculty member and she is delivering the coursework on them in West Campus through SMSU. So there are lots of different pathways into this partnership. The first of all is that the candidates in high school, if they're interested in teaching, we're trying to build that interest there so they can take intro to education as part of a concurrent enrollment class through Minnesota West there. Minnesota West got approval for their foundation level coursework standards and effective practices courses for intro to education, technology course, intro to special needs, intro to child growth class and a human relations type class. So all those courses are offered through Midwest, primarily in either a hybrid or an online form and taught by their teachers there. And then we have put them together as part of the SMSU application, the separate application that we have with Pelsby to transfer those smoothly in so that those courses just automatically come to SMSU. The candidates work to get their AS degree but they'll complete it all 10 of their goal areas along the way. And then we're offering the methods courses for elementary ed and the English as a second language licensure. Like I said, either online or in a hybrid model at the Midwest campus. So the program is coming to them. They meet one day a week, typically after school hours because many of the people there are either tier two teachers or they're paraprofessionals that need it to be after school and the timing has to work. The Worthington Public Schools has guaranteed placements in their building and we're working with all the building principles to make sure that those placements can happen for the foundation classes and for the methods classes starting this next year and then for the year long residency model of student teaching. And then the Worthington Schools has also said that if candidates successfully complete the program any candidates that have gone through the partnership program will have a guaranteed interview for any open positions because they are also dealing with trying to hire teachers, very quickly growing district and they're having a new building going up right now. So they will have positions opening and this is a way to make sure that they will have high quality candidates for teaching positions that they will need in those buildings. So it's clear from what everyone has said that running a GEO program there's a lot of moving pieces that you need to kind of be paying attention to all the time. So I'm just curious about some of the key challenges that you have faced and trying to kind of get all those pieces in order and how you address those challenges. So I don't know if either like Jennifer or Julie maybe want to start us off and talking about a challenge that they may have faced and kind of how they addressed it. Sure, Julie, you can hop in at any time. So just because we have such a deep partnership with Julie and Anoka Hennepin I think some of the complications of partnership is there's lots of moving parts in a program and there's lots of moving parts in a district. And so everybody's got all moving parts. So it's kind of like chaos theory. And so it's all about identifying a very manageable plan. And so one of the things that we do in Mingot is host we host advisory meetings where we bring everybody together. And what we do is we take the time to actually just talk about who our cohort is, do funding updates, what our recruitment goals and planning is just as a program. We talk about student teaching placement procedures. So we just, we do the baseline things that just everybody needs to be in the know about to allow the partnership to flow and be fluid. We also use this great booklet. It's called partnering on prep, a toolkit for building strong district teacher preparation program partnerships. And when we use that booklet and our advisory meetings we're using it to use the checklist and the rubrics to kind of identify the things that we should be doing that maybe we might not know or partners might not know. And then we set vision and goals together. And so it is about the logistics but then it's also about the dreaming big and then back to the logistics and then about the dreaming big. And then analyzing the data and talking about how our students are doing in real time. And I just find that that, I don't know, Julie if you can speak to that you've been to several of our advisory meetings. It's just really nice opportunity to make those face-to-face connections as well because we just, we find that that's what our teacher candidates are craving and that's what they love most about the Grow Your Own is that they know that the people at the U and in our program are connected to the people in their district and that there's a connection and that both programs, both the district and the program have their back and are in communication and want the best for them. Absolutely, I think that communication is probably the biggest part of that partnership. It's communication and the planning is the communication in the day to day. So I mean, I think back to your question about the challenges. I think, I don't even know if it's really a challenge but we grew our partnership quickly. So we started small with four, our first cohort. There was other school districts that were involved to make that full cohort. Jen, I think that you only had one running during that first session that we were involved in anyways. And then the next year there was two and we had eight from Anoka, Hennepin. And I want to say we were probably the largest percentage of people in the program at that point and all of a sudden we doubled that. So we've kind of doubled every year. So I think growth is, it's this great thing but it also can present a challenge. So now there's that many more questions to both from our participants, our staff that are going to the MinGOT team but also to us. And so we need to collaborate. We need to be on the same page. And so I think there's a lot of emails and a lot of picking up the phone and talking through things that come up day to day about funding, about specific needs of an individual. It's really being conscientious on their part about the timing of when assignments are due. I've heard that repeatedly and I appreciate that that they're really cognizant of not having too much of the assignments or testing done in the same week. And then being cognizant of is it going with the end of our semester or our trimester? All of those pieces are a factor. And I think just that continual conversation and communication, Jen and Laura and Jade at the U have been very instrumental in helping us to write our grant proposal, to solidify our program. And then at the end of the year, as we write our summary and write up our report on how the year went. We do that together. It's a conversation and it's a collaboration. And I would say we have kind of the best of both worlds with Julie as our partner at Anoka Hennepin. One of the challenges that I've just discovered in this role is that when you're establishing partnerships you need to have a strong leader in the district. Somebody like Julie who's all on board, who gets it and who wants to sustain the work in the district, I've just discovered that if we have partnerships with districts where there's a high turnover in positions that are meant to be my contact, right? Between the program and the district, that can drop the communication ball. And that tends to be one of the biggest challenges is just keeping the consistency among the contacts. That's what I've noticed as a coordinator. Thank you. I wanna talk actually a little bit about what's happening in Washington state momentarily because Washington is one of the only states that offers a pathway into teaching for paraeducators who only hold an AA degree. I know a lot of residency programs across the country are really only for those who maybe have a BA or a lot of places don't necessarily have a specified pathway to help you get from an AA to the BA that you need to become a teacher. So Alex, I was hoping that you could tell us more about that pathway and why it's so important to create GIO programs that can meet candidates where they are. Yeah, thank you, Amaya. So in our state, we have really identified kind of four different pathways. Most of them, the focus again is around a post baccalaureate certificate. But one particular pathway which we have seen a lot of action and engagement of our preparation programs has been meeting folks at the associates level and building off of that. In our state, we have now about 10 community colleges and we have some universities as well that are offering this pathway and the community colleges are largely building off of their associates of applied science and either early learning or paraeducation and they are doing that kind of remaining two years to get folks to get a bachelor's degree of applied science which really builds off of like a technical degree so that those students can end up with both a bachelor's degree and certification. Additionally, we have our university partners looking at that as well. And part of it has been with many of the historical structures of No Child Left Behind and other pieces. There were a lot of students and candidates that were in early learning programs that were in paraeducator associates programs and really thinking about how do we continue? How do we get seen as the next step to be fully engaged as teachers? And we did actually a couple of different surveys in our state really looking at the interest to become teachers and there was quite a bit both from our limited certificate professionals or emergency cert and our paraeducators. And so our legislature actually really said, you need to bring different kinds of providers into this work. We need to make sure that we are really thinking about supporting and building up the talent that we have in our local communities. And that has made a big difference. I think the other part of that is that, really designing programs to focus on particular areas of shortage. And we have really tried to say that shortage looks at both demographic shortage. So what you've all been talking about in terms of the lack of diversity in the classroom. Also geographic shortage in terms of looking at rural and remote versus maybe different areas of our state. And then also subject matter role shortage. So we've been really trying to give a lot of context to as we look at that work, our programs have really stepped up and been able to meet those needs with really focused programs that help to build and develop and shape educators ready to engage in job embedded learning in the classroom. Thank you. I'm just gonna ask one last question of the panelists. And in the meantime, if any of you have questions, please put them in the chat because we're gonna have some time for questions from all of you. So if you can put them in the chat, we'll try to get to as many questions as possible in the time we have left. So my last question is, the work that we've done here at New America has really examined the academic, financial and linguistic barriers that paraeducators and other adults in the communities may face in earning their teacher certification and licensure. So I'm just thinking from the perspective of your own program and the individuals who you're recruiting to be in the program, what were some of the primary barriers you identified that were sort of keeping that gate closed into accessing teaching? And how did the design of the program try to address those barriers? This is Denea. I think Jennifer named three of them real clearly before and I would agree with all three she said. And we really looked real closely at time and money in terms of barriers. And so we tried to make it a tight program. You know your beginning, you know your end. It was 15 months in terms of funding. You know we worked with St. Thomas in order to identify what courses were needed and what was approved by Palsby and made the courses in a way that the residents, they just sign up and they take all the courses together. And it seemed to be something that allowed folks to know, okay, I start here. Here's my courses. I know what I'm done. I know my starting salary in St. Paul Public Schools right when I'm done. So I know my, we talked about money. We're very transparent about what's it going to cost you. We continually St. Thomas is fabulous about trying to seek additional funding structures so that we can supplement whenever possible. But also I think what you're making me think about is for us being in the program now and having five cohorts. What we've identified as another barrier is the idea of retention. And so not only designing the program to get people to come in and to have a really strong training program. Now we got to really look at retention. So we have gone out and got an additional grant and we have hired some specialists and a full-time recruiter that she focuses not only on getting folks in the program but keeping them in teaching and helping them thrive in teaching. And I know Rose Chu will love to hear that but it's totally true. We need to have teachers that thrive so that they stay. And so some of the things that we've implemented and we're trying and they're still new but we think might help with retention is affinity groups. We've done something called navigating payers. We are hosting induction seminars and that's what's hitting what Jennifer says around SEL and what people need to feel like they belong and are a part of a group. And then real one-on-one, what we're calling multi-tiered support systems for teachers. What do you need? How can we support you on a real one-to-one basis? So induction is the focus. We can do the best we can to recruit and to train them but then when they get out into that setting we got to do what we can to continue to provide the supports that help teachers thrive. I would just reiterate the same thing. It's the time and the money and part of the money is also that or part of the time is that convenience of knowing somebody's taking care of signing me up for classes for registration. I know exactly what I'm going to be doing. I think they really build a strong network with their peers going through the process in a cohort model. So not only are they connecting with their peers in our district but in other districts going through their cohort with them. So they're going to have that network continuing even once they're into their teaching role. Just to piggyback off what you were saying about retention once they're in their position. This is our first year so we're just starting this process but we have a formal mentorship of probationary teachers of color. So every teacher who's hired into our district that is P12 or three and they can stay in the program for up to the three years is connected with a tenure teacher of color in our district. They're able to get some we ask them their preferences around race, gender and licensure just to try to pair them with the best match. And like I said, it's our first year we're figuring they're figuring it out. We have lead mentors that are figuring it out. They are the tenure teachers of color. It's their program. I'm just here to kind of support it but I think that's going to help with the retention. We want not only people going through this program but also all of our new teachers of color. We want them to stay. Otherwise it's defeating the purpose. So at time, I think before this program existed if I had an individual come to me and say that they wanted to become a teacher they're gonna have to figure out what school do I go to and what classes and how do I take these classes? They're not at night. I'm gonna have to quit my job. So there's all those pieces and there still is not a grow your own program for every licensure out there. So I have somebody come to me they wanna become an English teacher or they wanna become a gym teacher. There's not a grow your own program specifically designed for that at this point that I'm aware of or at least that we have a partnership with. So we don't have it for everything but we have it for some of our highest need areas our elementary ESL licensure and then our SPED licensure is our other program. We have those options they can go out on their own and figure something else out and we will support them through that as much as we can as a district but to be able to offer these programs that we've made partnerships with we have many people stepping on board and the grant that we've been able to get for the last several years to be able to support it's never a guarantee we're very transparent about that up front. We let them know that they need to be prepared to pay for their own education and they know what the money amount is but we also let them know that we're gonna do everything as a district that we can to apply for this grant continue to keep them in the loop as to what funding they may or may not receive from that and our partners have always been great with supplementing with Cougmec and other scholarships that they have also. Okay, well I can jump in and say Ditto to a lot of that. We also use the cohort model having a sequence of classes again that they know exactly what they're gonna need to take each semester, each year of the program. We intentionally chose not to go with full-time coursework because they're working professionals and many have families along the way but we also have to be cognizant of making sure we're meeting financial aid requirements for a number of credits and so on because we don't have external funding so we need to keep this doable for candidates that they meet financial aid requirements. Working with the districts to make sure that they understand what are the requirements for the placements gonna be? What grade bands will they need to be in each semester? All of that comments made before about the good communication are the things we've really been focusing on. You learn more and more every year about what you need to do and what you need to tweak along the way and things that you can do to improve it. So I would say those are the key things. We're taking that into the Southwest Partnership Program now that we're starting in Worthington and we've also put an application in to do a parent EL teacher program that will be modeled on our parent-to-sped program because again, these are the high needs things that are really needed in our region of the state and they're just not available without being a really big distance primarily. So offering things online or in a hybrid format to take care of the time and distance issues and some of the barriers that happen there. Definitely all, like I said, I just did all two, most of the things that have already been said. Thank you so much. Before we go into the questions from the viewers, I just wanna remind everyone about the agenda. So after we're done with this panel, we're gonna break into smaller groups to kind of debrief a little bit of what you learned and then we will have a break after that and then we will hear from a great panel of GYO program participants to learn more about their experiences in the programs. So we've been getting a lot of questions about funding. Obviously it's a huge issue regarding implementation, design, sustainability of a GYO program. And so one of the questions is, this might be more for Tyler, maybe even, is about the funding sources for schools who maybe already have a program and process. How does kind of the funding mechanisms within the state work, who is supposed to apply as like the primary grantee? How does that model or system work? Sure, actually I just dropped a link in the chat too about different funding pots that could be accessed by districts and charters in Minnesota that come from either Minnesota or the federal government. So this is not including other funders like foundations and so forth. It's on purpose meant to be a place where you can kind of see the inventory and then find the main program contact to learn more about that area. Minnesota has in particular a Grow Your Own grant right now that funds two pathways, one a non-conventional teacher residency program pathway and the other a pathway for high school students. Note, we're gonna have a special Grow Your Own event next week on Thursday to talk more about Grow Your Own approaches for high school students. There are, and Paul is gonna speak later today about some proposals to expand those pathways from Minnesota Grow Your Own grants. I'll leave it to him to explain that a little bit later. Sorry. One other question that we received, GYO in some ways is trying to transform teacher prep at least from my perspective where we're trying to create different kinds of pathways. We're trying to create models that are really responsive to the needs of the candidates in the program. And so we had a little bit of talk in the chat about the pre-course requirements and how to reduce these prerequisites can sometimes be a barrier because you have to take more time and taking those courses before you can actually be admitted into the teacher prep program. And so I guess my question is thinking through how nimble can teacher preparation programs be and kind of trying to address some of those bureaucratic barriers that exist within the institution that can sometimes be hard to overcome. You know, prerequisites I think is one example, but then if you think about sometimes there's testing barriers or other kinds of things that can get in the way. And Laura, even though Laura, even though you're not on the panel, you can feel free to answer also. Jen, were you just going to speak? I'm sorry. I was just going to nominate you to speak. Okay. Yeah, I think the, I put in the chat, the prerequisite issue is one and you know, that really varies of course across licensure. Each specific licensure has their own set of prerequisites and so looking to reduce those as much as possible. And yes, also testing, you know, we are fortunate in that the basic skills testing has moved out of a requirement for what is now the tier three. We still do have the content pedagogy tests that we have found can be a barrier for people being recommended for the tier three. However, Paul can speak to that. I think that we're moving, we're hoping to advocate to move that into the tier four level. And what other, what was, can you ask your question again for me, am I, I don't know if I addressed. Just thinking through like some of those barriers, like I know sometimes you have to do like one-on-one kind of with each candidate to look at what they need to be admitted. Is that something that, that you've experienced others have experienced or you kind of have to do that one-on-one advising to really make sure that. Oh, absolutely checklist. Absolutely. We, we do a pretty significant amount of pre-admission advising with all of our candidates before they even, you know, officially apply and pay for admission into the graduate school at the university because we believe that that one-on-one advising and kind of shepherding into the, the interview process. And I know that, that suitor with St. Thomas does a lot of that hands on work too. That really that, that pre-advising pre matriculation work really helps and also just having actual points of contact with real people in very large institutions who can answer questions is significantly helpful too in getting people from, you know, entry to admission and then those same people following them all the way through to licensure. Thanks, Laura. Sorry to put you on the spot, not actually panelists, but I appreciate that. Thank you for your willingness to share my pleasure. One question that's kind of been raised, and this will be the last question that we, that we, that we ask is what diversity looks like actually at the higher education level. We're talking a lot about it as importance in K-12, but what does that look like when you go into higher ed and, and what are, what's kind of the value of making sure that we're pushing that work up into that space as well. Well, I would absolutely say that it's valuable. I mean, it's the same. It's the same conversation. And I know one of the things that we're trying to do with suitors, like I said earlier, is have our teachers co-teach so that we do represent both St. Paul public schools and the University of St. Thomas because there's value in both. And our residents ask for it. Often. So that will be the end of this panel. And I'm going to, if you can put the slide show back up, we're going to show the prompt for the small groups. You're going to be randomly assigned to a small group. Since there are so many of you, we won't have a dedicated facilitator in the group. And so it's really your time to debrief about what you heard from this panel. What did you hear about their successes and challenges and to share with your small group about how those experiences could be different from yours or to even just ask questions of each other about the different programs that you might be running or continue the conversation that we just started with the Q&A section of the panel. So we are going to have about 20 minutes, 20 minutes for the panel. Well, yes. I mean, for the small groups and then once you kind of get, you know, usually get kicked out of small groups, there'll be a break, a 10 minute break. And so basically once we leave the panel, I'll make an announcement again about what time we need to come back from the break to be able to hear from the wonderful GEO program participants. So, Norma, if you wouldn't mind just doing the groups and we'll get started. So it looks like most folks are back. We're actually going to take a five minute break. And so please be back at five after. Thank you. Welcome back everyone. I know five minutes is a quick break. We thank you for bearing with us, but we wanted to be sure we save enough time to hear from our Grow Your Own program participants. Now a peek behind the curtain, we ideally wanted to hear from the participants first, but they were busy teaching. They were busy working with students. And so we needed to adjust the agenda accordingly. We're so thrilled to have these participants with us. And I'm going to turn to you. Let's start with introductions. Along with sharing your name and any identifying characteristics you would like to share. Would you tell us a bit? We see the Grow Your Own program you're participating in. Would you talk about your current role in education and a little bit of your journey to education? Katie, would you mind starting? All right. Good evening all sorry we joined late, but we were in the classroom. I'm Katie and I was a part of the Sutter program cohort four. I'm a first year teacher at St. Paul public schools. I teach first grade. And I, I didn't see a lot of teachers of color when I was going through, especially because during part of my childhood, I moved into central Wisconsin. So it was really white there. And I was maybe, maybe like three other people of color per class. But I didn't see a lot of teachers of color. I didn't see a lot of teachers of color per class. I didn't see a lot of teachers of color per class when I was growing up until I moved back to the twin cities. And I went through my sixth grade year here through St. Paul public schools and I graduated through St. Paul public schools too. Thank you, Katie. Hi, my name is Sharifa. I am a special education teacher. And that's simple public school. And I was a Sutter resident last year. So my journey to becoming a teacher, it's a long, I've been in America for this is my 13th year. And coming here and going straight to high school was a big shock to me, you know, and I went to a high school in a suburb area in a, in Champlain Park. A lot of my, a lot of my teachers are white. My teachers are white. My teachers are white. My teachers are white. There's only very few, actually I never saw a teacher who was not teacher of color. So it was a shock to me coming from Africa where all my teachers are teachers of color. They identify with me. It's pick my language. You know, the same culture, the same mannerism. And then I came here and all my teachers are white teachers were very accommodating, but I couldn't click. And then I came here and all my teachers were white. And then I came here and all my teachers were white. And then by the fact that I wanted to do something else, I keep on thinking of my own kids. Like I have kids, my kids are children of color. There is no representation. They're not going to see somebody with an accent like me in the classroom. They're not going to see person dressing up like me in the classroom. And I just felt that I needed to do something for my own children. And I started out as a tier. And I just thought for a long time I'll be a tier because of a lot of barrier that affected me as a African woman, a Muslim woman. There's so many things that I couldn't think I'll become a teacher until I found a pseudo resident that gave me all those provided the option for me to become a teacher. So. Thank you so much. How about me? Hello, everybody. My name is Neeming and I graduated from para to spread program through SMSU. I have been teaching in Wellington Middle School as a special teacher for four years now. And I teach sixth graders. Going up from Vietnam, I moved to United States in 2015. And I did help a BA degree in business. But because I live in very small town, there wasn't many choices for me to do much. So I decided to start my job as a para at Wyndham. And I found out that we have para to spread programs. So I decided to join that program. And I was lucky that I got recruited as a community expert after one year when I joined para to spread. So it has quite been a journey and I enjoy every second of it. Thank you. And Marcy. Hello, everyone. I'm very excited to be here today. Well, my journey, I was, I'm born and raised here in Minneapolis and South Minneapolis. And so growing up, I only had white teachers. I didn't have that I, that I can think of a teacher of color. And so that's one of my main goals of why I want to be a teacher is because I want to be that role model that many students of color don't really get a chance to, to have a teacher of color. So that's one of the reasons why my dream is to become a teacher. The way I found out about this program is very interesting. It's a interesting story. So I used to work at Oxford college, a nonprofit program called the Minnesota urban debate team. And I worked with high school and elementary students there. And then I switched to Gillette children. And then I got invited to one of Julie Phillips employment classes. And that is how I found out about this amazing program. She gave me a lot of information and, and told me the great qualities this program has. And so now I'm very lucky to be here. And it was quite the journey, but I do believe that everything happens for a reason. I've always enjoyed being with kids being surrounded by kids and the energy that the kids bring you. And so I think that thanks to Julie and everyone from the Minnesota men got program. Like Jade, Claire, Jennifer, there's a lot of great people in this program that I'm thankful for meeting and, and I'm thankful that they're continuing to help me and, and helping me in my dream. Thank you as well. And finally Kirk. Oh, yes. Hello, thank you for having me. I'm a special education parent in the end of the school district. And I have been, this is my fifth or sixth year of having so much fun. I can't remember it's five or six years right now. But I've been in, I just came back to Minnesota six years ago, and I came back because my daughter goes, goes to college here and she just graduated last year. So how I got into the program was actually just through through communication through emails and district emails. And I missed the first chord because I kind of ignored it. I brushed it off. I figured it would just be one of those things that I wouldn't qualify for. I just didn't even pay no mind, but they were persistent with reaching out to my principles, making sure my principles reached out to me. And that's exactly what happened. One of my principles reached out to me from the heart and encouraged me to do this because she knew I had a four year bachelor's degree. So I was blessed. I already have a four year bachelor's degree. So he was still not a skeptical, but the program was, was definitely encouraging and, and figured out how if I'm going to qualify, how I'm going to work to be successful in it. So I was brave. I got in it. And I've been having a great time in my last semester right now. Of the two year program in the last semester. But I want to say real quick about as far as creating opportunities. I remember even. And I feel like these opportunities do work because even when I was in the third grade, my parents bought a house. That had just recently been adopted by a neighboring higher enrichment suburban school district. So if I had never went to that suburban school district when that could that suburb adopted these lower income neighborhoods. So that these kids could go to a school in the suburbs. No, that was kind of the first time I experienced opportunity that was designed to help kids of color and lower income class people. So to grow your own is exactly that is creating opportunities for people that otherwise would not that opportunity. And so I just think that it was just a great opportunity, great blessing for me to jump in this program with this support that University of Minnesota and my district. Has really held my hand the entire time. So thank you Kirk and thank you all, you know, before I forget, we're just so deeply appreciative for you spending time with us and sharing more about your story. I'm going to ask you to go a little bit deeper into that. I heard from each of you. That with the exception, I think of Sharifa, who experienced teachers of color in Africa. All of you who came to the United States or raised in the United States did not have great access or need to the Vietnam, excuse me. That did not have access to educators of color. Could you speak for a moment about what it would have meant to you if you did? And what, and then also kind of pivoting to now you are or soon to be educators of color. What, what does that mean to you today to be an educator of color? And feel free to jump in in any order. I guess I can go first. I grew up in Vietnam for 24 years and I have no experience with radical diversity. All my class from K to 12, I have 100% Vietnamese or my teachers have Vietnamese. So I did not really know the word diversity until I moved to the U.S. And I would say I'm really proud of myself to be a teacher of color. This has been chance because there's a gap between language, but I think I have overcome this. So yes, I'm very proud of that. And I'm lucky that I've been teaching in Wellington school where we have a lot of diversity. Our student is 50% make up of diversity kids. And I grew in close even there. So yes, that's been a lot to me. I'm going to just jump in before I lose my train of thought. So talking about lack of teachers of color, I learned a lot from my teacher in middle school because it still probably haunts me. And I was sitting in health class and when we had another student next to me and she was Hmong and her family had just come over from Thailand. So she didn't understand the instructions. So I had turned around and I was giving her the instructions in Hmong as a seventh grader, the best that I could with my phone glitch. And she was like, I'm going to be in class. So I thought I was getting in trouble talking in class. And then she goes, no, you can't be talking that. If you're in school, you need to be talking in English. And then from there, I just felt like my skin crawl underneath and my face felt hot. And I was just like so ashamed of who I was, my language, and just about everything. I used to dread coming into health class because I didn't know what was going on. I was just so ashamed of myself. I was just so ashamed of myself. I was just so ashamed at the door. So now that I am a teacher, I try to be the exact opposite. I taught my kids to bring in their baggage, to bring in their problems, to bring in whatever they're feeling, even if they're in the red zone or having a bad date because I'm going to be spaced for that. Because this is a community. This is a classroom. And our relationship matters first before we learn what one plus one is. And that's what this program gave me the opportunity to do. So maybe in my first grade classroom or not right now, we're not learning a lot of content, but I'm definitely getting to know who my students are and how their family works and be a part of my community and my neighborhood. And my kids are also simple public schools. They actually go to the same school I go to. So it's kind of fun having both of that. I can go next if that's okay. Like I was saying, I was raised in South Minneapolis and most of my classmates were of color. We have Native Americans, Somalians, a lot of Latinos, but that wasn't represented with our teachers. And being a first generation student. It's, my teachers were great. They were really great. But I didn't know what to do with that. I didn't know what to do with that. I didn't know what to do with that. My teachers were great. They were really great, but I didn't have. A role model that looked like me. Or that. Knew about my culture a lot. Or that. New Spanish or just was more understanding of where I grew up. The neighborhood I grew up. And so I wish I would have had that. I wish I would have had that. I wish I would have had that. But now I am grateful that many of my students that I've had. During my subbing time, I've gotten really close to many of my students. Especially students of color. And they smile and it's just that connection. That is hard to find. When sometimes they don't look like you. And so that's why I think that it's, especially students of color. Can in a way see themselves when they see their teacher. I guess I can go. For me. And as you said, I had all my teachers being Africans and. Just growing up. I always wanted to be a doctor because my teacher sang that, you know, why not? Why can't you guys all be doctors? It was, it was, we grow up. It's like, Hey, everybody is the same color as me. We have a black tea doctors, everybody. So growing up, I always wanted to become a doctor and I pride myself and I worked so hard. And I love the sciences. And then I came here. And my first month in high school, they gave me the SATU. Being that the last time I took multiple choice. Question was in seventh grade, eighth grade. Now I'm here and I'm being given this exam. And I did not perform. As I am supposed to being that I've been here for only three months. And that one put me in a category. And that just diminished me in my, my. My aspiration of what I wanted to, it didn't matter that I had. What is it called? I was very good in sciences. But I was in an American school. I had American teachers. I had American. The standard changed. It changed for me. Now I have it. I had completely. Like I didn't have the morale anymore because then even in my teachers were not pushing it. Nobody was pushing it. And I wasn't, when I looked around, there was no people who looked like me. That one does professions. So those that. The barriers that already started that. Did not give me a good head start, even if I had a good head start in Africa, I came here. And within three months, I wasn't capable anymore of becoming a doctor because, Hey, they didn't do, you didn't do very well in the testing. Hey, you, you know, it didn't matter if I was taking organic chemistry, whatever it did. And so having those teachers who their affirmation to me every day was, you can become a doctor. You can become anything. Look, look, when you go here and you go there, everybody is just look like you to coming here. And within two, three months, having all this white teachers, having a computer in front of me that I've never used in my entire life and being told, Hey, you're going to be taking tests. And after that test being told, Hey, you're not good enough. It didn't matter how much good I was out of high, how much knowledge I had. I had a big accent. Most of my teacher could understand me because I was saying the words there in a British way instead of American way. And even in the classroom, a lot of my white teachers did not understand me. And I would have to explain myself and they keep on saying, pardon me, pardon me, pardon me. So many times that I stopped raising my hands. I stopped answering questions because something was wrong with me that these teachers that these students could not understand me. So, and I feel for my students right now. I feel for these students who are aspiring, who are very, very smart, but they might not be able to communicate or they do not have people around them who look like them. Like I remember last year when I was a resident, there is this child who came through the door. And when I found out her name is, she has a Swahili name. I asked her, are you Swahili? And she said, yes, I'm from Burundi. And I spoke to her in Swahili. And she was like, she was so excited. And every day she walks by with her mom, she'll say, Mom, she speaks Swahili too. She speaks Swahili too. So it become an instant bond. And every day she'll come and hug me. And that one just motivates her. Hey, look, there's somebody in this position who like, looks like me speaks my language and can do this. I can do that. So a lot of our students don't get to see that. We are told to take off a hijab to assimilate. And then our kids don't feel that they need to be individual, you know, they need to be authentic self. And I'm so happy that SURA program kind of pushed us with that authenticity. You have to be authentic with your kids. And that's one of the biggest thing I got out of it. It's authenticity. And it gives our student of color and our diverse students the ability to know they have a place in every profession. Do I have enough time for me to go? Please do. Oh yeah, absolutely. Because, you know, even when I bounce from when I lived in that suburb school, high school, then when I went to ninth grade, you know, we felt in a hard time. We went back to the lower income public schools. The thing that saved my life in both those situations was just what the one black teacher that was in the school, you know, if I could just see that one black teacher would pull me in the class and say, hey, you know, stay focused, stay straight. You know, I went to this college and I'm like, wow. You know, and it was only one. It was only one teacher in that school. But I went to, I went to three of my high schools. And then each high school might have had one, maybe two teachers in the neighborhood of coaches too. So I lived in this, in like a small percentage of kids who were blessed to, I play sports my whole life. So I had access to my black coaches. And even just that coach saved my life. I see them every day. I see them, you know, with a nice car. I see them with a nice, how they got their college degree. So now I know, okay, a black man can get a car and get a house and not ever go to prison and raise his kids. You know, because, and outside of that, all my friends who didn't play sports, they didn't have access to my, to that one black teacher who was also the coach. So they only saw what was outside of the football field, drug dealers, gang bangers. So that was like, okay, this is my reality. My reality was that one teacher who was black, who went to college, he graduated. And so when I first came to Minnesota, and this is when I first got into education, I was at Chamberlain Park High School. Those kids were amazed that I walked into that building, the African kids, the Asian kids, the American born black kids, the Middle Eastern kids, they all felt like my purpose was to be there for them and only them. They was like, you with us. They're like, those are the exact words, like, what's your name? I'm like, Mr. Giz. You with us, Mr. Giz? I'm like, yeah, I'm with y'all. Like they was amazed. And there was a black student services assistant there. And even he had his hands tied with a lot of politics that would go down. So they looked at me like I was going to bring strength to black inspiration and black freedom inside of that high school. So I was just pumped to be, and I didn't know I didn't know what I was walking into, but I saw the looks on their faces. And I was amazed. And right in the near, I think that's what stuck in my heart to where they just see my black face. They're inspired because they found out I went to the university of Cincinnati. Now, when I see my kids that just graduated a year ago that I had from 9th graders, they're like, what do you do? I'm like, I go to university in Minnesota. I'm about to be a teacher. And they say, I wish you could have been my teacher. And so that's, that's the most beautiful thing I've ever heard when a kid tells me that I wish you could have been my teacher. So yeah, what you see is going to impact what you become. And that's, that's real. That's real. I just have to underscore some things. Thank you again. And, you know, in MDU when we talk about our equity work, we talk, you know, sometimes we're talking about head stuff and thinking through things. And sometimes we're talking about hand stuff, like the actions we have to take. And sometimes it's about heart. And I just want to share with all, all five of you that thank you for sharing your story. I could feel the emotion coming from, from your story. And I, I hate that we also had to ask you about experiences that were micro and macro aggressions throughout that story and how you had to move through those to, to be, be where you're at. But thank you. Let's also talk about the, the grow your own program that you're all experiencing in particular. All of us are curious. We're either like leading a program or wanting to start a program and one barrier. I know we've shared and thank you to Julie. He's put some steps into the chat as well. Like talk about how you learned about the program. We've heard a little bit about that. And what factored into your decision to participate? And maybe another way to think about that. Sorry for multiple questions. I'm guilty. Were there any factors that would have been deal breakers? Maybe you saw it. I can't do that. How did you learn about it? What factored into that decision? And did you have any deal breakers? Well, in my district. You know, I'm at a no can end up in school district. Julie Phillips was instrumental for being the advertisement, being the commercial and being the, you know, the speaker upper about it. Like, they'll find these guys. Where is this guy Kirk Gibbs? You know, so my principles. You know, they finally tracked me down. I had a good relationship with one of them with all of my principles, actually. And they was like, yo, do this. So that was like, just the encouragement that my principles actually believed in me. And then the persistence of how one of our. Our coordinators Julie Phillips, how she definitely sent out more than one email. You know, the emails get pushed down to the bottom. You know, she sent out a bunch then. But as far as. What was the second part? You say, Mr. Living. Yeah. What factored in like, when you looked at the program, how did you, how did you say, yeah, this is for me? Oh, okay. I went to the orientation. And it was. J Bo Claire was there. Laura Mobison was there. I went to the orientation. And the orientation. For me personally, when they talked about. Culture and diversity. That's when I became like, you know, I definitely need to fix my brain to be, you know, more open and positive about this. And then I started, I didn't realize it was going to be. The actual management program. That had a platform that was dedicated to culture and diversity. I just thought it would be one of the tools and exits and all, but it was, it was some real deep. So even in the orientation, they talked about how it's going to be culture diversity. And, but. Oh, then of course they, they tailored it to where it fit my schedule. So it fit my schedule as far as my work schedule and. I'm going to be in the class on the weekends and class. In the evenings. No, and then. The opportunity for. Don't don't ship. So there was donors. There's scholarships. There's donors, the donations. All those opportunities. You know, created to where it made me want to do it made me want to. To have less fear. And to take more of a. I want to say more of an ownership of. My part in bringing culture and diversity to the education system. You know, be being a, and then I was the only, it was two black men in the high school I worked at when I went to the middle school, worked at the middle school. I was the only black man in that middle school. Now I'm at elementary school. I'm the only black man at that elementary school. So, boom. But as far as the deal breaker. I can't imagine what the deal breaker would be. I mean. I can't imagine what the deal breaker would be. But I can't imagine what the deal breaker would be. I can't imagine what the deal breaker would be. I guess the money and the money. You know, you. I've been out of school 20 years. My debt school debt was already paid off. You know, that could have been a deal breaker. I'm stressed about having another. Another university bill. But. But right now I can't figure no other reason that would have been a deal breaker. I can't figure no other reason that would have been a deal breaker. And I'm still in the middle of my school. To my school email. Actually, the principle where I work for. He forwarded email from Dr. Randa some information about parent to spread program through SMSU. And I was at the moment I was looking for a. My career path was would be like. And I love working with kids. I thought, why not a special ed teachers. And after a week, I decided to email Dr. Rhonda about information about that, and I got admitted to the Braugans. So I feel thankful for being enrolled in that parent-to-spot, and it's very time-consuming, flexible, and I don't have to travel. So that's a deal breaker for me. I can go next. I found out about suitor off of Facebook. I'm guilty of probably being on social media too much, and it came across my feed, and I'm like, what's this? And so I sat there and I clicked, like a clickbait, and then I read it, and I was like, oh, this sounds pretty amazing. And because, you know, like I said, I graduated from St. Paul Public School, and I always wanted to come back and be a part of it. I've also moved away for like about a good 10 years out of Minnesota while my husband served in the military. So coming back in, I was like, oh, I want to be a part of this. I want my kids to be a part of this. And so I want to be that role model. And so I joined. And what was really helpful was having that pay as a teacher paycheck while we talk all year long, because I also have three kids and I have to be realistic. I have bills to pay. So that really helped. And then I think a deal breaker would have been like the no pay plus the scheduling. We had a really great schedule we did a lot of our chunk in the summertime and then we did more so clinical during the school year and then we had one day of that week for our courses in content at St. University of St. Thomas. And I guess for me, one of my one of I was a tiered special education teacher in that school was just graduated from St. Thomas and he had miss Shelly as his as his professor, and he told me about the program but the time I think it was a quarter, it was a different program that he did. So I went to that in for station and during the in for session they're talking about finances. And I knew I could not afford to go being that I had two kids at the time I had two kids, and I was working as a tier, I couldn't afford to go back so I just came back and I think I continue to be a tier for another year. And at that time we had a social social worker in the school, and she keep on pushing me shows African American she's keep on saying sheriff, you'll be a good teacher, you need to check this out. And so finally, I emailed the next I think a week or two weeks before it was closing and I'm like, I'm interested in this program, and she was very gracious and she let me apply for it if any files like almost out of do like off do that and like that, but they let me apply for it and I got in so it was a word of mouth but being pushed by other teachers of color that you need to do this we need you factors financing financing financing like both. In terms of I'm as a Muslim, I'm practicing Muslim. I'm not allowed to take any interest whatsoever. So for any school I go to that has student loan that is out the window for me that has interest on it. So the fact that there was a lot of scholarship options. It was a big thing for me and at the time, being that I was a single mom. And I had to work. The fact that we had that as the pay, even if it wasn't a lot being paid a month. I knew I could budget and live off that and be able to provide for my family and go to school and not think about having to pay for like $22,000 on top of my own bills. So that was, I think that would be for me if I didn't have scholarship. I would have that was a big deal breaker for me like I couldn't afford and it was a that I choose my religion my God of education and that was a very easy choice. So, yeah. So I can go next. My story was not planned. It was very spontaneous. I like to attend different meetings get to meet new people. And I was online, and I saw that there was an employment class being hosted in one of Anoka Hennepin schools, and I live here in Minneapolis. And so I decided, well, I think I should try something new. Maybe I'll meet some wonderful people. And to my surprise, I met Julie Phillips, and it was just me and her so I got to learn a lot about the program. And she was great at sending me emails, sending me more information. And so I started doing my research on the program as well. And it just goes with all my morals and values and what I believe in equity and having more teachers of color. And it's just something that really connected with me. And so I followed the Julie Phillips, and we kept in contact. And now I'm part of the program and I'm very blessed to be part of this program. Some of the deal breakers would be that I am blessed to have help. I'm receiving help right now by my grants. But I think that a deal breaker would be if I didn't get help. I'm currently still paying my other school debt. And if I were to pay for this debt as well, then I would be forever in debt. And so that would definitely be a deal breaker. So I'm very grateful that I am receiving that help. Another deal breaker would be how would it fit with my work schedule, and it works perfectly. I have class on Tuesday afternoon around 630, and then Saturdays. And so it just works great. And I also have great advisors like Jade and Jennifer who helped me navigate through my classes. Jade actually sets all my classes, and she's really great. And all the teachers are really great and the communication with our teachers is also really good. And with everyone. So it's really helpful having those open doors as well. So we're nearing the end of our time for this segment, but what's a panel without a lightning round. So a final thought. 1015 20 seconds either a final thought about this, or I get a recommendation, your advice. Again you have a room full a virtual room full of grow your own people who want to put on a grow your own program so any quick advice or final thought around the horn. My enroll in para to set programs that I talk to them over it. And if I see anyone that have potential in teaching I will tell them right away that let's join that program. So that's a very good decision that I have made. I guess I can go for me is utilize the people of color that you already have in networking. Like I know we have you, but it feels sometimes can be powerful. Like we need to be utilized in terms of networking, and the better the benefit we see in this program, we are going to pass it on to the other people so I believe that, you know, try to encourage people of color to take leadership position and be, and so that they can benefit. I can jump in really fast. What is your mission and how are you selling your program. As they have put in the chat applications are due March 5 for course. Six, I am also helping with the recruiting process of that and so with shooter we're also growing our own suitors to into important roles to and with shooter our main mission is to bring in teachers who represent our student body and that's what sold me, I needed someone like me and I'm going to be that one so. My advice would be to talk to your own community talk to your own paras and spread information about this wonderful program. I think that this can benefit everyone and if you know someone who has a four year degree and it's interesting and being a teacher, then please share information about this wonderful program. Can we catch everyone. I feel like earlier this earlier this evening, I heard someone speak about the programs where you're recruiting and emboating high schoolers to become future educators. I feel like that is a huge part of the grassroots. That's going to be the biggest part because once I become a teacher and I'm in the classroom already have a very good context with the with with all the teachers that are involved with the students with cultural diversity. So my goal is to be working with them on a high school level middle school level to start a program where we're on black and brown and from America or not from America, all these black and brown people and speak all these different languages to be motivated I think that's going to be huge part of my mission to bring because high schoolers that I experienced here in Minnesota they hate their teachers flat out. So they don't want to be teachers, because they hate their teachers, and I knew kid who went to the same high school four years, they didn't even know who the principal was of that school. They didn't even know who their assigned principal was for their like for their alphabetical last name, but they didn't even know who the actual main principal the school was. So it's like, now it's just like a business it's like okay that's just the CEO of the company I don't know who that is. And so they don't have any heart towards being educated just can't wait to leave school. You know, change that whole philosophy of thinking being a black man being a teacher, being the person who's going to promote education as a good thing, you know, awesome. Thank you everyone and panelists if you haven't been reading the chat there's been a lot of expressions of gratitude in the chat. And if you haven't done that do it in the chat or with an icon, or with an applause sign. Thank you very much for for your contribution there. So this is the last part of our agenda it's next steps for Minnesota. I'm pleased to introduce the director of government relations at MDE adosh uni adosh you have a hard group to follow here but you are here to share some updates around the governor's policy bill and what we're pursuing at a policy level and adosh will be followed by Dr Paul space from the coalition to increase teachers of color and American Indian teachers. Thanks Tyler and good evening everybody and I really just I know I caught only a short portion of it but I think I caught some of the really important, really important portions talking about experiences and then advice for really solid programs so I really appreciate everybody's time here for us to fit in for just a little bit, and I saw one of the questions in the chat. What are we doing about resourcing at the national level. And I know. I think there were some other comments about the commitment that the Biden Harris administration has around diversity and find the teacher workforce and we're also in the midst of talking about what state resources that we're going to be put to continue these efforts. I know Dr space is going to talk more about the growing your own program specifically but the governor just came out with a lieutenant governor just came out with their plan a couple weeks ago, called the do north plan education plan, and then the next day they came out with their coven 19 recovery budget, a lot of which was around education, and a portion of that is dedicated to the teacher workforce and programs existing and new around the diversification of the teacher workforce as well as supporting teachers around the state, who are new to the profession, as well as bringing in teachers in in all parts of Minnesota as well as focused on historically underserved communities. The budget bills are just getting introduced and I'll just take a few minutes to kind of walk through what's in them but again then after that I'll obviously pass it off to Dr space to really, really dial into some of the growing your own proposals from from the coalition so if we go to the next slide please. The first program is the statewide teacher mentoring program that's going to be about $5 million a year and as you can see it's about $4.5 million in competitive grants for regional partners so we know a lot of the. The programs go directly to schools and charters but this is around supporting regional regional partners to really build up those mentoring networks for new teachers to provide training, technical assistance, and communities of practice for educators to really mentor those first second third year teachers we know have a. A lot of pressure to want to leave the profession, and then also these partnerships and this mentor and this and these networks are going to help implement the state's induction model, and then a smaller portion is. Obviously mds support to try to help these programs become successful but also looking at contracts with national content experts to come and help us do the Minnesota's induction model I know we'll be looking for. Partnerships with a wider rate of people to be able to help us create this so it's going to be a collaborative a collaborative process. If we go to the next slide please. The next is we're also focusing on grow your own, we'd like to put $2 million more annually into the grow your own program. This is really modeled off of again what Dr species is going to talk about later we're very well aligned with the coalition in terms of what the school is here. So I just briefly go through it adding a third pathway for districts and charters to develop their teacher working force, or I'm sorry teaching workforce, modifying the eligibility criteria for teacher residency for professionals pathway, and then extending extending a time frame over. And I do want to remark that to Tyler's point, yes, the, the programs that were that I'm highlighting here all do have a focus on sporting teachers of color and American Indian teachers. I should really point that out I wanted I came to this group thinking that went without saying but yes, all of these programs really have focus of building up the diversity of our of our teacher workforce. Thank you Tyler. And then the final slide please. And then the final slide is a new set of programs that provides opportunities for that's really focused on diversifying our teacher workforce focused on historically underserved populations getting into the workforce, as well as a geographic fix to so we're focusing on where can we get these opportunities to greater Minnesota to and this is going to come in kind of a three prong competitive grant program really focused at, I think, as correct the end of really incentivizing students to become to to become teachers here this is really focused in that space, and so encouraging middle and high school students to become teachers, recruit them into post secondary programs, retaining new teachers as well as providing the resources for teachers to teach those programs. So that first and the biggest one of them is to create the pathways for teaching horse cohorts of students in high school. This will include things like job shadowing and apprenticeships. The next one is establishing tuition incentives for to obtain credentials to teach the concurrent enrollment courses that are required for these pathways to four programs like educators and teaching teaching and teaching and advising and teacher cadets really those current woman's focused on current Roman courses focused on students becoming educators. The last one is a 5050 matching grant to develop program pilot as an alternative pathway to traditional teacher certification so that's this is kind of the overview we've got of what the governor's package looks like for providing funding and supports and policy around diversifying the teacher workforce, not only for the those that are already in on the education pathway or in the education setting but also students who may be interested in or who just need those opportunities to get interested in those through the statewide mentoring program to grow your own expansion as well as educator career pathways. And I think that is all I have. So I appreciate your time. Thank you. Hi everybody. My name is Paul space. I'm legislative action team lead for the coalition to increase teachers of color and American Indian teachers in Minnesota. In the chat I just put a few links and hopefully we can advance the slides here will skip this because of time will go to the next one, increase teacher of color act tries to not only propose things in terms of policy and that will attract and prepare new teachers of color, but also increase program completion and increase retention and hopefully increase the percentage of teachers of color, which would require a net gain of 650 teachers a year, just for 1%. Next slide please. So, you heard a lot about residency programs tonight, and you heard some mention of secondary school student programs. Those exist in statute already and we're trying to, in the increased teacher of color act, expand the types of grow your own programs to include those serving adults in non residency type programs. So, we are seeking, if you can see the next slide please. Some definitions, better definitions about residency programs in statute. And since this will be on recording I'm not going to leave, I'm not going to read all through this next slide please. Other programs for adults like tuition scholarships or stipends for people on tier two license teachers education assistance cultural liaisons and other non license employees stipends or tuition scholarships for parents and community members and implementing other innovative teacher prep programs involve intensive clinical field experiences and mentorship. Next slide please. Here are the very top row. This is the grant program that we helped get more money for but and expand a little bit but not as much as needed. As you can see in the top line there were about twice as many applicants as awardees in the last biennium and requesting about twice as much money as was appropriated by the legislature. So, next slide please. We are proposing instead of 1.5 million per fiscal year. Not only the expansion of types of grow your own programs to include those that we've already have an existence in the state and others that could be developed. We're proposing 8.5 million per fiscal year in the increased teacher of color act, along with many other different programs as you see here listed. Next slide please. So how can you get involved and help advocate for this. These changes both in terms of policy to expand the types of grow your own programs and the money needed to invest in wonderful teachers like our panelists tonight. See these links in the chat. Get involved. Learn more. Make your voice heard. Get involved in the social media competition or get students to participate in the social media competition. We need your help it's going to be a mass movement to get this across the finish line. We appreciate the support from the department and the governor's office. We appreciate the support of Tyler and Amaya in holding this event tonight. And we hope everybody attends next week's Thursday session about grow your own programs for secondary students. That's all I got. Thanks Paul. Next slide. So here are just some resources and ways to stay connected with all of us. So here we are connected with the state's efforts by signing up for MDE educator workforce newsletter. You can stay updated on the efforts of the coalition. You can look at the information that New America has on grow your own. And as Paul said, we are going to be hosting another event next week on Thursday focused on pathways for high school students. So I want to thank my colleagues Julie and Narmada for their help with running the show tonight. And thanks again for joining us and taking the time to share with us all the participant panels and take care.