 OTAN Outreach and Technical Assistance Network. We'll start here folks. Thank you again for joining us. We wanted to share with you a little bit more about our Digital Leadership Academy, aka D-LAC, and we love our acronyms, right? And so at OTAN today, I am Netta Anasari, and Technology Projects Coordinator. And I'm Penny Pearson. Just give you that little housekeeping bit. I'm a coordinator for the distance learning projects at OTAN. So I'm going to start us off by asking our team from Placer School for Adults to introduce themselves, and I'll start with Areej Moussa. Oh, you're on mute. Sorry. Areej Moussa with Placer School for Adults City Coordinator. You want me to introduce my team? You want to hand it to Beth? I'm Beth Lanning, and I am one of the counselors here at Placer School for Adults. Michelle? And I'm Michelle Raymond, and I am an admin assistant and a teacher for CTE here at Placer School for Adults. Hi, everyone. My name is Chris Anderson. I'm here at Placer School for Adults. I'm an IT side admin, and I'm also a CTE instructor as well. Thank you. And Sandy, go ahead. Hello, everyone. My name is Nate Sobs-Dava. I'm the Program Manager for the San Diego Adult School with San Diego Unified. Hi, my name is Nicole Lincoln, and I'm a teacher in the San Diego Adult School in San Diego Unified. And Francis? Hi, I'm Francis Tornebeni D'Souza, and I'm an ESL teacher at Pittsburgh Adult, and taught distance before we all went distance. And Sir? Yes, and my name is Mencer Azame, and I am an ESL teacher as well as the tech support and helping develop the digital boot camp. We have a special guest with us today, Delac II participant, Martha Clayton. You want to introduce yourself? Sure. Hi, I'm Martha Clayton. I am at my home college is Los Angeles City College, which is part of the Los Angeles Community College District at City College. I am a full-time faculty member and non-credit teaching ESL and Vessel. And for three years, I was the Digital Literacy Coordinator. Thank you, Martha. All right, let's dive in. Who, what, why, Penny? Oh, yes. I think I got this slide because I've been with OTAN for a long time. So, Delac, the Digital Leadership Academy is really meant to look at bringing teams together. And these teams are distributed as much as possible, fairly geographically across the state of California. And our main objective here has always been to grow digital leaders. So part of that process means we're providing digital leadership training and leadership training in general. We're looking at helping these teams recognize their strengths and what they offer, not only to each other as a team, but to their organizations, to their communities, even to their families. We found a lot of folks find that particular piece of training very valuable in many aspects of their lives. Additionally, we're also helping them to look at team building, team strengths as well to help them achieve their goals and what they're looking to complete during this two-year process for working within the Digital Leadership Academy. Of course, we're looking at building technology skills that may be from how to use a new piece of equipment to understanding how to navigate a piece of online software. It can come in a variety of forms, but we're there to help foster some of those additional technology skills that may be needed. And the teams themselves are asked to look at planning and developing and then implementing some type of program. It says distance learning on the slide, and there's a reason for that historically that I'll go over in just a moment. But these teams are asked to identify and find a way to incorporate technology, distance blended in some way to help grow their programs. And this particular group was literally thrown into the fire because of the pandemic. And I'm sure we'll hear a little more about that as we move along. Our prior groups that we worked with, it was very much a choice about using and implementing a distance learning program. This time around, they'd already been, they had to do it. So it's a very interesting dynamic. So all of this comes from the history. OTAN has always been providing some form of professional development on a long-term basis, meaning at least a minimum of a year. Most of our programs were two years. It started way back with the Instructional Technology Assistance Project, ITAP for short, I love our acronyms. And then it moved into the Technology Integration Mentoring Academy, TMAC for short. That went on several years. And then because of the press and push of distance and online learning and teaching, we added the Online Teaching Academy, OTAC for short. That ran in tandem with Technology Integration Mentor Academy for several years. And we basically discovered that agencies were getting so much out of both of those programs. We kind of did a mashup between the Technology Integration Academy and the Online Teaching Academy. And we landed here on the Digital Leadership Academy. So I'll let you see how we've grown and who our current cohort is with Netta. You want to introduce our screenshot that we have on the next page? I do. And fun fact real quick. I was actually a part of the Technology Integration Mentoring Academy. Me too. We have a couple of folks probably on the line that we're probably a part of our other professional development opportunities. Me too. So our current. Yeah. Give a thumbs up in the chat if you were, you know, or say me too in the chat because a lot of us have come from these programs. Long history of PD at OTAN. So we're very excited to share that with you. Delac 3. So we were able to actually increase our participants this time around. So this is a two-year professional development opportunity. And historically, we've had anywhere between six to seven agencies. This year we have 12 agencies representing the north and the south of California. We are very excited to work with our teams. We have a couple of them on the line with you. A couple of others that have actually presented separate presentations throughout the technology and distance learning symposium. So look at those very beautiful faces. We love collaborating with each other. And yes, this year has been a little bit challenging because we don't get to see them face to face. So normally we have a really great photo session. We take photos of everybody and their teams. This year it had to be via Zoom, but we still managed to get everybody together, which is always good. So the application process is pretty rigorous and it's very competitive. We definitely look at the WIOA2 agencies that are funded throughout California. And this is an open online application that folks actually self nominate, right? So this is a teacher that's interested in addressing a gap and forming a team. And we always get the question of how many team members? Can I just do it by myself? And so D-Lap really looked at this as a, you know, we want you to actually see progress within your agency. And doing that solo can get a little challenging. So having a team of two or more really kind of makes that more dynamic. And we were nothing without our encouragement and our support from our administrators. So that's why there's a component for the administrator to also not only sign off and say, yes, I approve and I'll be a part of it either informally, but there's also an opportunity of our administrators to actually be there along the way and be a formal team member as well, which many of our administrators have done. And we'll have a couple of them in this cohort as well. And you'll hear from a couple today as well. So again, a two year commitment and our teams will share that with you, share a little bit more about what that application process was like. So the idea is really along with your experience as a technology expert, not so expert in whether or not you know distance learning or don't. Everybody does now. It really is to identify what's the idea? What's the gap? What's the need? So we're hoping they look at data and not only looking at the need, you're looking at specific programs that might need to be developed. So it really does make the application the strongest when they work together, the teams work together to develop a project outline. So this project is looked at with the team members along with the administrator to provide the support. And then of course, then lead not only we always get, well, can I have five members or six members a part of the team? Of course, we would love to take everybody. The idea is to develop the digital leaders and then those digital leaders go back to their agency and form their own. Kind of I call it a delac light at their specific agencies where they can grow and make it even more dynamic within their agency. The idea is we do the training for our smaller group and then they'll take it back to their agency and make it into their bigger goal at their agency. I'll give you kind of a couple of minutes here to kind of look at each of our agencies that are on the line with us today. We have Plaster School for Adults, San Diego Unified School District, San Diego Adult School and Pittsburgh Adult Education. And so you can read a little bit about their projects and what they've decided are important for them to address during their time in delac. You see a lot of buzzwords in there, right? I L C E I E T is something that we hear. A lot of boot camps, right? Career preparation, awareness, right? Accessibility, outline independent study programs addressing the needs of our ASC students. So they are rigorous and robust across the board and they are specific to each agency depending on the need they have identified. I move on. We certainly have seen several of our previous cohorts providing a variety of different types of projects and some of them have been very innovative, including from San Mateo. They created a mobile ESL enrichment program where they were traveling to their satellite sites with Chromebooks, created materials and resources for their learners at those different sites. Baldwin Park very involved with training and motivating their technology mentors for that agency and then including them and training them on Moodle learning management system in order to make sure that their courses were available for learners to access at any time. Also along with that, we saw Clovis Adult School mightily expand their offerings after they were a participant in D-LAC. They've put all of their courses onto Moodle, but this particular project was all about putting their CareerTech Ed nursing program on Moodle and it was so successful that the administrator turned around and was like, oh boy, we got to do this for everybody. It kind of made our Moodle administrator a little crazy for doing so many courses for Clovis, but they've been very successful for that. So you see others here of maintaining an online course in Blackboard from San Diego Community College District. And then of course Oakland, they've done a lot with distance, but their project was really about providing GED training and as a fast track distance learning program because they at that time had an impact of being able to accommodate all the learners that they could. Now, this is just a small sampling. OTAN does maintain the reports, video reports that they were recorded when they were providing them during their tenure within D-LAC and the website is there on the page. We can post that in the chat as well in a moment. So you can go and look at what other projects did and how they went through the process of their participation within D-LAC. This is, as Netta said, it's a rigorous program, but we do provide as much as possible notice of meetings, et cetera. And we have a nice timeline to show how we've set that up for our participants. And here's the timeline. So we talked about two-year commitments and two-year professional development opportunity. And so it is in fact that we keep it definitely packed full of activities. And so you're looking at a screenshot of our timeline for our D-LAC too, and it just kind of represents the idea of we meet with our agencies in October, we meet with them in person. Typically, those pop-ups in gray are typically meetings that we have in person in Sacramento at the Sacramento County Office of Education. And then those orange little pop-ups actually represent online meetings. So for this cohort, they're all orange little orange pop-ups. We're all meeting online. Now, our training days are actually a couple of days long. So we have about three days where we are online collaborating and meeting with some of our project specialists. And I'll go deeper into that and what we're doing with leadership. And they're also attending a D-L-101 facilitated course. So it is a course that is offered by World Education. And it's really just kind of talking about recruitment and screening and orientation of students when we're talking about distance learning. They have coaches assigned to them and we'll go over that in just a minute. And then of course, there are parts, a big part of our technology and distance learning symposium. We make every effort to get out and see our sites that are actually involved with D-LAC. So Penny, myself and some of our other project specialists will join us and we'll go to our sites to make sure that is there any other support that is needed? So not only do they have OTAN support staff helping them but they also have their individual coaches assisting them as well. So year one is pretty busy. They have the course that they have to complete with World Education. They have the online training days. They have the online project meeting days which is once a month. And then they have year two. Year two, they're busy actually making those projects happen, right? So not only in year one are they thinking, they're processing, they're refining their project but year two, they're completing another course with World Education. They're meeting with us online to develop and support them throughout that process and they're meeting with their coaches ongoing. So not an easy ride definitely but they're definitely up for the obstacle and hopefully just learning along the way, right? That's just how it goes. We have to spend a little time to gain and earn some of those pieces to move our projects forward at our agencies. So that's our timeline. And it wouldn't be anything without their coaches. Nettah has mentioned them a couple of times but we haven't recognized them yet. So these are our coaches for this year. All of them you may or may not know. So some of them are in the room with us right now. Blair Roy, we've been fortunate to know her for quite some time and she is actually a former OTAN employee and she retired and then we were able to, she's there. I see her and unfortunately we have Susan Gehr. She is the first one there which I don't know why I forgot to put the name on this slide. She's the coach for Merino Valley and Oxnard and Roland and she is like the mother of all things technology integration. Susan Gehr is amazing. If you don't know her, seek her out and become her friend. She is a wealth of knowledge on all things related to technology integration and ESL. And then the second image here is of Susan Coulter. We have known her also for many years. She is a coach for Garden Grove and Tustin Adult School and she's down at Baldwin Park Adult School and has been a part of our projects for many years and she is just one of those people that can take data and take technology pieces and she can fit them all together nicely and as a great person to have on board as we start looking at developing these projects and also in like looking at how effective they are. The middle images of Francisco Wentworth and I believe Francisco is in the room. So she is, she might want to open her camera and say hello. She is, there she is, I see her. Thank you, Francisco. She's been also with OTAN. I believe at least from TMAC days. I don't remember Francisco, were you on ITAP? Yes. Yes, she was. So she's been through all of these programs and she's the coach for Campbell Union High School District in Pittsburgh and Santa Clara Unified. She is currently retired as an administrator from Jefferson Adult School in the Bay Area and we're really happy to have her because she's got the teacher aside. She's got the administrator side. She's got all of those pieces that can help these projects get to where they want to go. Blair turned her camera on a second ago. Blair Roy already talked about her. Cindy Wyslowski, I don't think Cindy's in the room. Cindy, turn on your camera. Say hello. Cindy is from our southern part of the state, San Diego. So she's a coach for San Diego Community College District and San Diego Unified School District. And again, she is, I believe, a veteran out of TMAC at a minimum. She is one of the original Blairettes. You may have seen that in the chat and been involved with these projects for quite some time and seen the growth of them. So all of these coaches are integral to making these program projects work well because they provide direct one-on-one coaching and support to all of these teams. And we couldn't do it without them. So I give a big round of applause to them. Thank you for being our coaches and I'm sure we'll hear a little more about your efforts with your teams as we progress. So I think from there, turn it back over to Netta and talking about our leadership training. Yes, so we make sure our teams are completely supported all throughout the way. So whether, again, it's OTAN coordinators, OTAN staff, our coaches, they're obviously getting the support they need at their agency with their administration. But then we bring another component into the mix and it's a, his name is Dr. Paul Porter. And we are very fortunate to have him as a retired educational expert. So he has been a principal, he's been an administrator, a director, he's been a superintendent and retired and then went back into teaching and is teaching leadership courses at the UC Davis extension and so on. But Dr. Paul Porter also is a trainer for Gallup Strengths and the Clifton Strengths Assessment and he has also been helping us with just identifying members' strengths and being able to use those strengths at your agency. So as a leader, we focus a little too much on strengths and weaknesses and he really teaches us how to bring and enhance our strengths while we know them and what they are and what they mean to our projects at our agencies and even in our personal lives. So we're very lucky to have Dr. Paul Porter join us throughout the two years as he helps us with those trainings. Not only does he do strengths, but he also helps us with time management, conflict management, mentoring and coaching back at our agencies. What skills do we need to have to be able to approach certain specific topics, et cetera? So again, we're very fortunate to have the support system that we do have to provide for all of our T-Lackers. So one of the things that we do like to stress to folks is and it's been mentioned earlier, this is a very competitive process. So we get a lot of applications to participate in this program and although we were able to increase the number of participants this year, that's not a guarantee that we can continue to do so in the future. So you can see from this chart that we've got our total applications, but we can only accept 12. So it's important that it's kind of an indicator as well is when you start this process, if you are thinking about wanting to be part of D-Lack, start working with your core team early. Talk about what your unified goals may be for your organization. Make sure that your administrator is on board and understands the value that your agency and you as individual digital leaders will receive because this is a competitive process and I'm sorry, but it's grueling for us to make these decisions. It's really hard. And so we want to make sure that you do a good thorough job of creating those applications and getting them done in a timely manner, making sure that they're well-written, coherent, et cetera. And then that just gives you that ability to kind of rise to the top of all of the applications that we receive. So it's those that get in, applause to you of completing the application process and know that you were amongst the cream of the crop, so to speak. So we really appreciate having you here and we really encourage anyone who's considering applying for D-Lack, start that process now. We hope to have the next round of applications open in spring of 2022. I think we're shooting for April, if I recall correctly. So you have time to plan, okay? So I will go back to Netta so we can start a panel discussion here. Well, you know, as we sit here and showcase wonderful D-Lack, really what we want to hear from is our agencies. So we have some questions for you and we do have three agencies that are going to talk to us today. So we wanna make sure that we're giving them enough time. We have a list of questions that we're going to post a copy of these questions into the chat so that you, the audience can take a look at them as we're going along but we're actually going to move on here and we're gonna start with Plaster School for Adults. We have like, they've introduced themselves, Areej Musa, Beth Lanning, Blair Coach, Blair Royas Chris Anderson and Michelle Raymond who are gonna talk to us and kind of address some of those questions. So I'll hand the first question over to, let's see if I can find it here. We're gonna, I'm gonna hand it to Areej who's going to tell us about you, your team, your program, enrollment, the community of learners and the number of teachers you are leading. Areej. Thank you, Netta. I wanted to thank my team also for joining me today and for doing a lot of the work that's involved with that and most importantly, Blair, our coach. We couldn't have done it without her. Thank you, Blair, for coaching us through all this. So I'll talk a little bit about the programs that we offer under CTE and then I'll ask each team member to elaborate a little bit about the area they're involved in. So we have the Career Technical Education Program, Career Pathways for Plaster School for Adults. We have building and construction trades and under that we have construction pre-apprenticeship program and welding and then under manufacturing, we also have welding 1A. We have under business and finance. We have accounting and QuickBooks, two levels of each as well as Microsoft Office applications for the workplace and then under health science and medical technology we have clinical medical assistance program and then we also have workforce preparation which includes digital literacy, career exploration, resume writing, mock interviews, resume critiquing and interviewing strategies. And with that, I'd like to ask Chris to elaborate a little bit about his Microsoft Office application for the workplace and all the great work that he did and then move on to the other team members to talk about the programs also that they're involved in. Great, thank you, Arish. Yeah, so the class that I'm teaching right now is the Microsoft Office for the applications for the workplace and this part is part of our number of pathways that we have here at PSA. And what we do is we're covering a couple of the main areas here such as digital literacy. We all know how important that is for our classrooms and working in today's world. We cover the office applications such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Access. So we go through that. We are using Canvas for this course and I've been real happy with the courses and everything we've learned in the last three days here on Canvas been really good in helping to fill in the blanks and been really, really positive. The students really like it and they're just having a great time learning. So it's good in helping them to grow and be ready for the workplace. I'll go ahead and turn it over to Michelle. I wanted to mention just that Chris Anderson is teaching his class online. So we have some online classes and some in-person classes and Chris's class is strictly online. Right, thank you, Arish. So I'll be teaching accounting and quit books and one of the ways that we're really looking at is to bring our ESL students into some of these career pathways focusing on our IELCE. And so we're really excited to be working with our ESL department chair, Chrissy Agee, into bringing our ESL program to our ESL students to help them get those very valuable jobs. Michelle's classes will be also in-person. I'm in Atlanta and I'm one of the counselors here at Placer School for Adults. We have another counselor as well. Our primary role is to help students transition via getting their high school diploma, GED. We also assist with ESL classes primarily with working with the teachers. We help with career and transitioning. So we do have a counselor here that is also on staff with Sierra College and she is a transitional counselor to Sierra College. So students can have almost like a concierge service with Kaylee Hogan, our other counselor. And she assists them with registering and it can be very daunting for a lot of our adult students that are trying to get into college. So she assists with that. And we also help with resume writing, interview strategies. We can sign them up for classes. Our biggest program area right now is high school diploma. We have several adults earning their high school diploma right now and that's about it. And then we have about 30 teachers under high school diploma, GED, ESL, and CTE teachers. And we serve Placer County. So Areej, can you talk to us a little bit about your project outline, what your goals and plans are for your project in DELAC, some of your challenges. And if you can kind of weave into what data did you look at to kind of determine that project, it'd be great. So we adopted the project for helping ESL students integrated English literacy and civic education program to 43 funding, working with ESL students to transition them into career pathways and CTE programs and digital literacy. So I'm working closely with the ESL department chair to do surveys for the ESL students. And actually last week we completed a survey that gave us a little bit more information and the direction that we need to go to coordinate more career pathways for them to be able to find jobs and hire paying jobs. So we as a team are working together to accomplish that mission. Hopefully by the end of the second year, we're starting slow. This is our first time. So if we can get a few students this semester to enroll in career pathways, which is our goal, it'll be a great success. And I think we're working towards that goal and it looks like it's hopefully going to happen soon. Some of the challenges is really the because of COVID low enrollment. Some of these classes are online. So it's hard to get. It's been hard to get people in the classroom. So most ESL classes are held online and they're doing both digital literacy and ESL and introducing the students to the workforce readiness. So we have a few students are actually taking reading and writing in math. And some of our CMA classes also are some students who are taking math and reading and writing. So we're seeing integration between programs as well career pathways. Arish Penny here. You mentioned that you had a survey. So can you kind of differentiate a little bit between when you were applying for D-LAC and looking at your gaps? What data did you look at there? And then now you've got some other data that's helping you to kind of redirect. So can you give us an idea of what that looks like and what you were looking at in terms of data? Do you want me to share the survey with you or show, present it? We were looking at career path. The last data that we did, the last survey was capturing information about digital literacy as well as career pathways. Those were focused. We wanted to know how many of them have laptops, desktops, cameras, digital equipment, access to internet at home. That was a few of the questions were focused on digital literacy and then the rest of the questions were focused on career pathways and what direction they want to go from here. And collecting that survey helped us as a team know that there are certain pathways that they're interested in moving towards and that's where our focus is going to be to try to help build those pathways to accommodate the ESL population. We already have some built-in pathways that they will roll into, but we found out that we need to develop new pathways that we don't have right now. I don't know if that answers your questions. No, I am very interested in how, you mentioned before if you got some learners to enroll in your new program that would be a mark of success for you. What else would be a mark of success of accomplishing your goals for your D-LAC project? In terms of bringing ESL students into career pathways? Yeah, I mean, I'm just thinking you have a plan and it sounds like you're really making great progress already. So I think maybe I'm being too much of a quantoid or something of saying, are you looking for specific numbers or enrollments or something like that? It sounds like you're already halfway there. So I'm just trying to- We have a small number. My goal is bigger than that. You know, if we have a few right now like two or three or four, my goal is like double that or- Gotcha. You know, at least 10, but I was told start slow, you know, start slow, bring a few in and the survey actually helped me meet with the ESL students. Actually myself and Michelle and Chris were sitting on the ESL classes and asking students, you know, what area would you like to go into and what pathway you'd like to go into? And last week, I found that at least a couple of the female students wanted to go into the clinical medical, for example. So I'm trying to connect the ESL teacher with the CMA teacher and make that transition for them to visit the CMA class and see what it's all about so they can decide if that's the right pathway for them. So we're, you know, building that bridge between ESL teachers and CTE teachers to work together and collaborate to make that happen. And I think we're moving towards that direction and it's working okay for us so far. You know, I wanted to back that up with what Areej was saying. Last semester, I was able to teach the digital ESL for digital literacy class here at our school and I got to work with some of these students that were just absolutely amazing and they are learning English but they're also learning the technology. So we were able to blend that together. I think one of the steps of accomplishment would be, you know, if I can see one of my students, one stands out to my mind is Francesca, you know, to see her in our pathway growing forward because I remember her talking and saying, where do I go from here? What's the next step? You know, or I talked to Carlos and he's a very smart individual and he is knowing the technology but he's like, where do I go from here? How do I progress? How do I grow? And so I think one of the aspects, you know, if I can see their face here, you know, progressing through our program, then I think that's a badge of success right there. Absolutely. The biggest areas that we found was in office environment, home care aid, housekeeping, construction. So those were areas where they voiced their big, you know, requests for those areas of career pathways. Awesome. Great. I love to also that piece, you know, that you shared with, you know, I have this master plan and I do have a percentage in my head but I have to start small and that's what we encourage everybody is to really focus on a small sample, right? So that we don't have to have that, you know, no, our goal is 90%. Well, let's look at this a little bit more in focus and how do we look at a more realistic approach? So very, very good. Thank you so much, Placer School for Adults, everybody. If you have questions, we do have a Q&A portion of this presentation but thank you for answering those questions, Placer. And we're going to talk a little bit with San Diego Adult School. Nate and Nicole, same questions. Tell us a little bit more about your team, your program, your enrollment, the community of learners and we'll go into the questions. So you don't have to wait for me to prompt you. We can kind of go down the list of questions if you want to give us a, let us know a little bit more about you. All right, welcome everyone. So our team consists of myself as the administrator and Nate Soch-Deva as well as one of our lead teachers, Nicole Lincoln and our coach, Cindy. Through our Gallup Strengths Assessment, we really learned that we bring a diverse skill set to the team. We've all melded really well together and I think that that has made this process a whole lot easier, especially as we all know that it is a little more difficult to interact and to work together in this environment. So cheers to our team working together. Our program is an independent online study program. All students work at their own pace and only you need to recover the courses that they were not successful at during their conference of time at our sites. And with our enrollment right now, we have about 400 students enrolled at any given time amongst our community. And really the biggest thing that we have wanted to do is trying to make sure that we do have an opportunity for all students. And so that's what we strive to do, regardless of their situation or skill set. We do try to make sure that we can figure out a way to make sure that they're successful. And Nicole is going to take the next part of the second. Questions? Forgot to unmute. Sorry about that. So as Nate mentioned, our program pivoted really quickly. You know, we had already started online learning. And so in applying for the opportunity to be a part of this awesome opportunity, we wanted to focus on two segments of our population that we felt are most challenged with online learning. And that's our ESL students and our students with disabilities. Our ES, the range of students in San Diego is diverse. We have students that speak Vietnamese, Spanish, Arabic, Swahili. And so sometimes these students come into San Diego Unified with two years left in high school and they're not able to finish all of the requirements. And so they'll come to our program. And we wanted to focus on looking for opportunities to help them become more successful. In addition, our special education students can be challenged in completing the work in the four years at the regular high school. And so they make their way. And so that's kind of where our focus is going to be as we move through this is how do we engage those students more in this online environment that we're in. So we have seven teachers who provide services. Each teacher is located at a different high school site. But students from all over San Diego are assigned to each one of us. And we provide instruction to them via Zoom sessions if students are... I feel like I keep saying, sorry about that. But we provide instruction to those students if they have difficulty in a subject matter. Our expertise goes from English math, econ, government. All of the subjects that students need in order to graduate. In addition, we have one teacher who is our expert in literacy. So students who may not be performing at the level we want them to be to be able to master the reading assignments on their own will get additional skills with our basic skills teacher. So that's our team. And as we look through our project outline, as Nicole said, we definitely want to keep an eye on our students, our ESL students, as well as our students with disabilities. We do have about a quarter of our population, our students with disabilities. And we also, in order to keep them engaged and make sure that we're preparing them for success, we try to take a long-term outlook. So as we get started into the next part of our project, we're planning to start the students off of the strengths assessment on their own. So something that they can kind of learn a little bit about themselves as a way for us as a school to get to know them as well. That is something that we have learned is that building a culture and that kind of those relationships is one of the biggest challenges. And so hopefully this way we'll also have some information about the student. And then once we identify what those strengths, interests, and values are, we can align those with possible careers that might be of interest to them. And that can also be something that can help them focus on their goals and achieve those goals. And then we can also map out the different courses that might be of interest and then the courses that are needed to get that career of their choice. So we're trying to take it, not only a guess, we understand that we're in here to get the high school diploma, but let's look beyond that so that we can make sure that you're successful beyond leaving our institution and successful as you move forward. Definitely a gap in things that we are addressing like Nicole said, our student with disabilities and our English learners have really had a difficult time in the online only environment. What we have learned that our program right now has really seen great benefits for our students who are working on typical work hours or who are parents themselves because we have this flexible online schedule right now and everybody's room at their own pace, students have an opportunity to do their coursework at night or on the weekends. And then we can also provide those supports for those students. So that's kind of been our similar aligning, but we still have not solved how we can meet the needs of our students with disabilities in the same manner. So we do hope to reopen when we reopen and we can have students in person again, offer those in person supports that are really needed for specific populations. And as we're looking at the data that we're looking at, we're always looking at the number of grad rates, making sure that students are progressing in their literacy levels, we take Lexile assessments. And throughout their time in our school, we really wanna make sure that they're getting a strong foundation so that they're not only gonna be successful in our program, but also when they've completed their college course requirement, that is one of our graduation requirements with our partners at the community college and continuing education. So that if a student does have an opportunity or an interest to pursue higher education, they go through that experience with our support and they know that they are capable of doing it, whether or not they choose to or not. Wow, I love the work that you guys are doing. I'm especially thankful to hear your work with special education and those with disabilities. I think that the tools like technology can be very useful to them. So thank you, that was amazing. Right, yeah. And notice a theme too, right? Where are we going next? What next? With Placer was, you know, that pathway, how do we go from ESL to career pathways and the same with San Diego Adult School? So that is incredible. Thank you so much for being there for our adult learners. All right, and then we wanna hear from our Pittsburgh friends. So Francis and Mansoura, same questions. Take it away. Francis, you're muted. And Mansoura, you're muted. Hello, I will let Francis take the lead on this. Okay, well we have, we usually have about 4,000 students a year at our school, but because of the pandemic now we have 2,000 or so this year and we have the usual assortment from 18 to 80 people in our ESL department, people from all different places, a large Hispanic component, but many people who are here in the US while their spouse is working in the US for a while or college students who come to study and long-term residents who finally have, it's their turn in their family to go to school. So we have a large ESL department, but we also have a high school and AVE department and CTE department, which is primarily allied healthcare and we have an excellent CNA program. At this time, we have about 36 full and part-time teachers and that's our group that comes through. Initially, when the pandemic hit, we were already considering moving to Canvas. So this became our initial idea of what we needed to do for our campus was to bring everyone online as fast as we could. And we changed our focus just a little bit because in the ESL department, not only do we have a new curriculum, but a new way of delivering. So we put more of our focus onto our high school diploma and into our students and into building a strong, robust infrastructure for being online for our teachers. So our focus has been on getting our teachers into using Canvas and online, our students into a bootcamp where they know how to use technology and to try to build some equity partners to provide them with the tools. And we have found that for example, our high school department enrollment is just going through the roof since we've been able to be more online. And our students are appearing in their classes prepared to participate from day one, which is what is very important to take some of that load off of our teachers, not just to have to teach technology at the same time that you're teaching content. So we feel those have been successful decisions on our part, but we have a long way to go to get our whole school up on Canvas. And we also found that just the energy of being there for our students and Mansoura who runs our technical bootcamp for teachers and for students can tell you that just the energy of providing a lot of one-on-one assistance is what makes the difference that the person just goes with everything they've got. And this is one of the exciting things about being thrown into the pandemic that we've seen this result at our school. Mansoura, please speak to these. Okay, thank you, Francis. So when we initially started, we were definitely, yes, we were gonna use Canvas. And a lot of people have this conversation of why Canvas. And I actually went with my own struggles of going back to college years ago and not knowing how to use a laptop because I'd been working in the world, but I hadn't really gotten into, it was kind of an added thing like everybody else. So my own struggles of not knowing how to use Canvas, I took that and kind of ran with it. And so I could see that a lot of people didn't know what Canvas was, but then going back to why Canvas. Well, Canvas is everywhere. Canvas is at the community colleges, at the universities, at tech schools. So I wanted, I and Francis, all of us wanted to be able to say that at least one outcome would be that they would be prepared to move forward. And in starting Canvas, it was a conversation for us to say, okay, you're gonna be using this at your university. You're gonna be using this. So we have that forward momentum. But in doing that, we found out that teachers, and I'm an ESL teacher and I teach Microsoft. So I know that teachers want to be able to just teach and not have to deal with, oh, this person doesn't know how to do Zoom or can't get into their Canvas account or can't get into Burlington or whatever thing that they're using or can't get their books or can't download something. So that's how the digital bootcamp came to be. So the first question that we start with is what type of devices do people have? And that range is really, the gap is so huge. We have people who are on flip phones, some who have smartphones, some who have, maybe they have a laptop, maybe they're using a tablet. So me being able to know that I can serve them better because I can know how when I give instructions, how they're going to be able to process that information. So that was one of the first things. And we did find out from an equity point of view that not a lot of our ESL students have laptops. They're either using their children's Chromebooks or they are using other phones. And thankfully Canvas is integrated for that. So the first thing in digital bootcamp is getting that information and then finding and then teaching each of these students how to use Zoom. So all of those numbers that Penny, all of those icons that you shared at the beginning of muting, stopping the video, checking your participants, sending a message, going into a breakout room, doing your reactions, I actually have to literally teach that, which they need because some people I can tell the range or like, no problem, easy to do. And some people are like, okay, where is that button? Can you tell me again? So that's important. And then of course having a digital bootcamp where the teachers can also come in. So the teachers come and say, okay, I have this canvas. How do I do this? They've tried on their own and they've gotten to a point that they need that help. So then I'm helping them with that. So that's really the outcome of digital bootcamp is to get those students on day one into their classrooms, be it distance, be it hybrid, be it in the classroom, that they're ready to learn. They have the skills, not just a paper and a pencil and a pen, but they know how to turn on their Zoom. They know how to mute themselves. They know how to share. They know how to make a comment. And that really makes the teachers' lives so much easier. And that has been one of my goals. Awesome. Beautiful. It's awesome. Thank you. For just a real quick question, Mensoro, your digital bootcamp, compared to what you did before to looking at the digital bootcamp now, how many learners have you served or do you anticipate serving in that digital bootcamp by the end of this year, June 12th? Well, I can just tell you that my class itself has jumped from maybe I had seven, eight students to now 22. Awesome. And that's just my class. So I know Francis' class has jumped and what the people were saying from the previous placer they were saying that the parents are able to attend these classes because they don't have to worry about daycare. And this is part of retention. We were dealing with this when we were in-person. Retention was, okay, do we have daycare? No, we don't. So then we have parent classes. So we can offer that daycare and then we have to work with the consortium and make sure we have funds. And so it was all of these things. But now just having this conversation with these students like, look, you can attend my class and then I always remind them, legally you have an hour, you need to still continue working or you can go spend time with your family and then come back online on Canvas and do your homework. And the good thing with Canvas and Zoom is that it logs all these hours. I know how long the student was online. I mean, there's so many different aspects of Canvas as we probably saw from all the beautiful presentations that we did here that it has statistics. It has things that we can back up. Now if I change to an administrator, we can back that information up. If anybody ever asks, we can say, okay, here's a report for this student. It's not just the quantity of hours, but the quality of hours. Right. Thank you, Ben-Sara. A very important part of that is that we've been able to make it part of the registration process. So that when students register, they are also automatically registered into a digital boot camp. So everybody will go through the process. And this is something that makes our administrators something they wanted. It's something we wanted. It's something that serves everyone. That's the great part of our experience with D-LAC is we're able to serve our entire school. Yeah, and I've noticed the students are just half, when they come to my boot camp, they're so nervous and they keep apologizing. I'm so sorry, teacher. I don't know. I'm like, it's okay. They're like, oh, you're so patient. I'm like, it's my job. It's okay. You can ask me a hundred times. When they come, they're so nervous and they're not professionals by the time they leave, but at least they're less nervous. And that's a goal because why should that be something that hinders you from learning is just because of this one aspect? Right. Yeah. Thank you. Well, thank you, Pittsburgh. I just want to note that this session block, session seven is actually a 90 minute block. And we thought we were going to do it in 60. And we're going to meet that. We're going to try to meet that 90 minute block. So we have too much good info. We have some more folks that you need to hear from. And then we want to give you an opportunity for a Q&A as well. So thank you agencies. These are our current D-LAC agencies that are participating. We call them D-LAC three. We haven't found a creative, AKA yet. So we'll have to work on that at our next meeting, folks. All right. But we do want to hear from our previous cohort. So Martha Clayton was a part of our second cohort. And I'll hand it over to her to kind of give us a good, give us some information of what D-LAC two has done for you, what some of your project successes, challenges, and where you are today with your project. Martha? Sure. Thank you. So yes, my name is Martha Clayton. I am a faculty person at LA City College, which is part of the Los Angeles Community College District. We have nine colleges in our district. My home college, City College, is the WIO, a coordinating college for the entire district. So we were the heads of our participation in D-LAC. I had gotten an email from OTAN and casually mentioned to my dean like, oh, this is something we should do. And she was like, OK, you're going to do this. And so it was an amazing experience. Our community, we have, just at my college, we have during more typical times when we're not remote, we have 70 adjuncts. I was just hired, and one other person was just made full time. So now we're running on our seniority list only, which is still like 50 faculty members. We have ESL, citizenship, IET, CTE, ABE, all the acronyms you can think of. And we usually service about 4,000 to 5,000 students. Right now we've lost about a third of that. And we're struggling between a third and half. But enrollment has actually been increasing a lot. We've also been getting a lot of enrollment from other countries and other states, which is really interesting for trying to balance with the WIOA issues, making sure that they're not getting WIOA funds. So our community of learners is typical adult education. I don't remember who said it earlier, 18 to 80. Every language you can think of, every background, experience, whatever you can think of, we've got them. Our initial project was kind of like the boot camp that people have been talking about. When we started in D-LAC II, we had just launched a new student information system for the college district. And so this was supposed to allow students to self-enroll, to access their Office 365 suite, to access Canvas, which really nobody was using, except myself and a few other nerds on campus. And but we needed students to be able to get on to this. So we wanted to create what we called the SIS workshop. And it was part of our orientation. Students would come in. We'd present this information to them, especially targeting getting them to use their student email. And so that was going OK. That was like a cool project. That ended up growing into another bigger project, which was Digital EL Civics. We were kind of the first people to put EL Civics on Canvas before pre-COVID. And to try and streamline it, we piloted it. We did some pilots across multiple class configurations, different levels, things like that. And it was really successful. So we had students getting online. We had them checking their email. We had them using Canvas in the classroom with tons of support. And then we went into quarantine. And luckily, because that was at the end of our D-LAC too. Like right at the end, we had just grabbed. I think they declared quarantine while we were meeting in Sacramento. And so my partner on the team, Carmen Delgado, and I flew back to LA and found out we had three days of classes left on campus. And so we developed a really rapid response to the situation because we now knew that we had 70 adjuncts, roughly, who didn't know how to use Canvas or Zoom. And so we put together a whole Canvas shell called Digital Literacy. And we put all of our training materials there. We had rap sessions online every day for the first two weeks of quarantine, doing trainings, answering questions, sharing materials. Because people didn't know how to make a module. Never mind where to get materials that they could put on that. And the publishers were completely useless as far as supplying us with anything that we could really use immediately. And so we were really able to respond to the situation very quickly. And it was 100% because of our experience with D-LAC. And because of our amazing mentor, Susan Gair, cannot say enough about the support we've gotten from OTAN, from everyone at OTAN, from Susan, and from our own district as a result. Because it does cost money for people to be sent to these learning opportunities. And it really proved that it was well worth any time and effort that they put into it. Because we didn't stop teaching for a day. Actually, I take that back. We stopped teaching for two days. And then the following Monday, we had students online. And so it was, I mean, every gap we could have found, we were able to fill with the leadership skills that we had studied and practiced in D-LAC and to really expand all of our projects. Now we're thinking about what is it going to look like in the future, which is now. What are we going to do when we have campus space available again? And I don't really have an answer for that. I mean, I think that you can't put a genie back in a bottle. So we really are going to be having full. I predict that we're going to be doing, you know, everything's going to be hybrid. We're going to be using the digital tools in all kinds of different ways. I personally am actually planning on live streaming all of my classes. Because the increase in retention and perseverance that I've seen from students who have the ability to watch a recorded lecture if they miss a class because of whatever reason, it has changed the game with my adult learners, the fact that they can go back and revisit activities, assignments, things like that, and show their improvement after they've learned more information. Even though our attendance has been lower, my attendance as far as daily participation in classes has been a lot higher than it was when we met face to face. I have a way lower number of absent students. And that's been a really interesting surprise. So a few of the things that we're doing now kind of in preparation for our predictions is we're like, I'm working with the other full-time faculty person who is a voc ed instructor. So she's handling a lot of the technology classes. And we're creating bundles where students can take my ESL class Tuesday, Thursday, and her technology class in the middle. And we align our courses so that way the material, the content, and language is consistent across them to really accelerate their learning process. We just did this. We have one that we're doing this semester with an English for Special Uses course that's focusing on information literacy. My students from fall and winter were really personally impacted by what they saw during the last election. And so we kind of co-created this course where students are learning the skills they need to identify reliable and true information on the internet. And they're using that information to create PowerPoint presentations to solve problems in their community. So they take these two classes together. And it's really already, I see a market increase in proficiency in a shorter amount of time doing this. And it's all because we've been able to look at the different technology tools that we have and take risks to do things that we never would have done a year ago. So thanks, Delac. Wow. That was a lot. Sorry. I feel like I did a round. That was great. No. First thing I'm going to ask is, like, can I have copies of your courses? So we'll talk about that. After I clean up all the syllabi. I love that. I loved your statement about you can't put the genie back in the bottle. I think we've heard that several times in different ways. And I think those pieces that you spoke of, of the successes that your learners are having and the persistence and they're sticking with it, even though the total enrollments may be down, that whole piece about they're sticking around and completing, those are very high numbers. We've heard it in other places. So, Martha, you guys have just done amazing work down there. So thank you. The other thing I forgot to mention our original project with D-LAC2 was this SIS workshop. And we actually kind of condensed that and refined that into a welcome and orientation module that all of our faculty are using in their Canvas shells now that has all the videos we've made and the picture and text step-by-step instructions. So students have almost like a user guide that they can go to at any point. And it gives them a chance. Like, I use it for the full first two weeks of class. I just have them go in and click on everything and try everything out so they can get over that fear of the technology. And they can see that they can't break it. They can go back and review whenever they need to. And we tell them about all the cool stuff in Canvas, like immersive reader is your friend and how to slow video down and how to turn on captions. So that way, I think I heard somebody talking earlier about the challenge of content faculty trying to teach technology when that's not your content, your typical content. This has helped us a lot because we can tell students, oh, you need to just go to the module and go to this section and review that again. And you can show it to them in class easily. So that kind of translated really nicely like our original project to like, this sort of moving forward stage that we're in now. What a great thing to have your entire campus adopting it too. That speaks greatly to what you have done. Well, our program is, yeah. Well, yes, but I see what you're saying. And congratulations are in order for that for sure. Thank you. Definitely. And you know, since then, not that Dilak, you know, she's, Martha's brilliant on her own, but since then she has become a full-time faculty. And she was doing all this, working on Dilak, wrapping up her master's program and working with city college for the time that she was. So all that happening and Dilak, definitely added some different components to it. So today, now she's a full-time faculty. So congratulations on that, Martha. We're very proud of you. It's exhausting. It's more exhausting than when it was like, oh, I'm gonna get my master's degree and do all these other things. But it's good. It's good. I'm joking. I'm joking. It's really good. And when we talk about professional growth opportunities, I think that we've definitely seen, I mean, I'll speak for myself, you know, being in TMAC and growing within, you know, OTAN and then working eventually with OTAN and so on. So we've definitely heard stories about professional growth and how Dilak really helps with that professional growth. Whether they were in our, you know, professional development opportunities and became administrators, became tech coaches, became et cetera, et cetera. It's always nice to hear how it's also been assisting in professional growth as well. All right. So I think it's time to ask our panelists if there's anything that you have, any questions you have for any of our agencies, including Martha L.A. City College, announce the time to ask so you can put your questions in the chat. It'll be a little bit more flexible. We can unmute also and ask questions. So announce the opportunity, gang. Do we have any questions? Can I, there's a question in the chat. Is that okay if I answer to that? Yeah, absolutely. Oh, everybody always loves to know where's Pittsburgh Adult Education. It's not Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It's Pittsburgh, California. I like to, I don't know, Francis, how you wanna say it but I usually say it's about, you know, maybe you know, Walnut Creek. That's like the biggest thing. Walnut Creek, San Francisco, Dublin, you know, Silicon Valley about hour and a half away from Silicon Valley and an hour away from Sacramento. So like in the middle, it's a nice little town. I've lived here all my life. It's changed and I haven't even moved. They moved from a town to a city and I didn't even move. I was stationed, it's, I don't know if you've heard of Concord Naval Weapon Station and that's where I was stationed. So it's right next door to that. And Pittsburgh Adult and weirdly, my parents went to Pittsburgh Adult 40 years ago and I'm teaching. That's very awesome. And my dad tells me and my mom tells me about those stories that they learned and I'm like, oh, and I'm teaching there now. So that's great. That's cool, that's pretty cool. So it's come full circle. So I'm not seeing much activity in the chat box here, gang. So any questions for any of our panelists or for Netta and I regarding the Digital Leadership Academy itself, now is the time to ask. We have the time to answer. This is where I want the crickets. This is where I want the crickets or the Jeopardy theme, right? So I raised my hand, but I think there's so many people you're not seeing me. Maybe I did raise my hand. I don't know what I did. So I don't know that I did. You know, I'm trying to unmute three things, whatever. So my question to the panelists is about the application process. I have never applied for D-LAC. So I don't know what that process is like first hand. And I was wondering if anyone had any pearls of wisdom on filling out that process because I think it was Penny that mentioned or maybe Netta that it was a little bit grueling, possibly maybe that was the wrong adjective, but. Thoreau, Thoreau, Thoreau, I like that comment on that. It is Thoreau. Thoreau is a good way to describe it. It's reflection, you know, you have to kind of reflect on why you're doing it before you start, when you might not really know why you're doing it until after you start. So, yeah, you kind of have to think like what's gonna actually happen here and where could this go? You know, we started with something totally different and we had to consider nine colleges, like hopefully that they would adopt the things that we were coming up with. That's why we targeted this new event in our college culture, in our district culture with this new student information system, because we're like, oh, okay, if we work on this, everybody could use it. And then, but it's, I remember filling it out and being like, wow, I don't really know what I'm, I don't really know what I'm seeing for the future and kind of had to talk with my dean a little bit. And at that time, I was the only person from our district who was applying. Like I had to find other people and convince them to do it with me, because they're like, what are you talking about? And so, but it gave us a chance to kind of, talk about some like issues that, and I don't mean like necessarily bad things, but just like, okay, what are we doing here? What is it that we want to do? Why do we want to do this? So there's like, yeah, there's a little bit of self reflection there that you kind of have to do. And then you have to write sort of little essays. Yeah, yeah, no, you're right. It was good. I mean, it helped us, it was the first step and then it got us off and running. So, you know. Definitely. And one thing I do want to make clear because Martha made the comment, I think one of the other panelists is that participation in D-LAC is at no cost to the agencies in the sense that OTAN takes care of, providing resources, providing the training. When we go back to a face-to-face environment, we pay for the travel and the room and board in Sacramento. But as Martha said, there is still a cost to the agency because you may have to have a substitute or there are other inherent kind of those hidden costs. So it doesn't cost the participant any money out of pocket. There's reimbursements for meals and things like that. That if you want to eat an eight course meal, we might not be able to cover that with per diem but we would definitely try to make you whole as much as possible within the limits of our federal government. But it is something that we hope that people understand that it is not at an out of pocket cost as much as possible because we do have the funds to make sure that you get here and we keep you well fed and we have great restaurants around us. Well, okay, mediocre, I would say. I don't know, my colleagues might think differently. They're good, they're good restaurants. You guys have good ones, yeah. We always had a... I just wanna say too, if you haven't... For those, for people in the room that haven't experienced Eli, we had a really good time doing it. It was hard work, it was a commitment. There were times when it was like, oh, I gotta come up with another presentation for this. I don't know if I have time, but it was so much fun and every time our group got together, it was like a family reunion. Everyone was so excited to be with each other. We're still in contact with each other. And we still reach out to each other to get support or ideas or to share resources. It's, it really, yeah, it really is fun. We always had fun. There are good restaurants. There are good restaurants, the hotel is nice. Yeah, it's good. It's really fun. Which our current Eli cohort hasn't had the opportunity to experience, but hopefully, we'll get there so we can actually meet them in person in Elbow Bump or something. This has been very different for us of not having everybody in our clutches at Sacramento County Office of Ed, so. Anyway. I experienced the generosity of OTAN when I did my OTAC a few years ago. And it was really great and I enjoyed it. And I wanted to tell you something. First of all, I'd like to thank our administrator, Eric Brick, and Stephen Kasparat for their support throughout this whole one year. And they're on the line too, supporting you all the way, even during your presentation. Yeah. And I want to thank you guys, Neda, Penny, and Blair for your support throughout this. And I have to tell you something. Without this D-LAC, we wouldn't have had the focus that we have now towards this plan and this project. We talked about it in the past. We were going to make it happen, but we dragged our feet, we spoke of it. But with D-LAC, it helped us step by step, put the plan together, do our homework, get closer to the program, bring CTE teachers and ESL teachers closer together. And I'm thankful for that. So, and I wanted to thank, in particular, Stephen Kasparat for recommending this program a few years ago. I remember he asked me to look into it. It was one week before the application closed. And I'm like, there's no way I can do it now. But I promised him I would look into it when it came next. So I did and I'm glad I did. I love it. Thank you, Arish. That's great. Thank you, Arish, for those kind words. I was going to go circle back to that investment piece that Penny was talking about and Martha. I, you know, we've talked to several other agencies that were in D-LAC and they talk about, you know, what you guys give us, what, you know, what we actually experienced throughout the academy is great and we love it and thank you for supporting us. But there's an equal amount, if not more of an investment at the agency level. And that's what we try to lay out. We try to really lay that out very clearly in the application for administrators to really check that off, to know that, you know, it's nice to release your teachers to get the professional development that they need, but to actually make the project happen costs so much more than that, right? And so an organization and time, teachers need the time, teachers need that to work and to actually make this happen. So we're very, we're very impressed with the commitment and the investment that agencies make towards their, their people that are involved in D-LAC and then the project itself when it comes back home. So. Definitely. All right, folks. Oh, well, we're, you're getting appreciation in the chat. Plaster. Definitely. Well deserved.