 Hi everybody. We're glad to have everyone here today. This is a rescheduled keynote from our summer speaker series and we're thrilled to have Dr. Amanda Bastoni from Cast with us today. We are going to make Amanda a co-host as well. Actually, Red Riga, I'm going to need to ask you to do that for me. Thank you. And what we're going to do today, we're thrilled to have Heather Lucan from SB CTE team here with us today. And so on behalf of Marcy Johnson, the head of the SB CTE and innovation team, and the whole SB team, as well as our growing NIU Illinois CTE project team, we're really excited to have this second keynote session of the summer speaker series. And remember, our summer speaker series is focusing on the concept of CTE for all students and for each student. And those two things require some different strategies. And in our first keynote, we really, we heard a whole bunch of strategies. There's a lot to unpack from that keynote. And I'm really excited about doing that over the coming weeks and months, both internally and with the SB team and then with people from across Illinois. I know that Amanda's going to offer us more of that. I'm going to let Amanda introduce herself because one of the things that's so exciting about having Amanda, there's two things I'm going to follow it as being extra exciting about having Dr. Vastoni with us today. One of those is that, like our goals as an Illinois P20 network, and actually I will say one of the things that's exciting about SB is this is true for the SB CTE and innovation team, is CAST has a very wide expansive view of their work instructionally. So rather than saying we're just going to specialize in this element of instruction or in this element of the school day, the work that the CAST does is intended to be very foundational and to allow us to make major shifts and a number of areas for lots of students. And so I hope that that the team of CAST would agree with my assessment of that. But that's, that's I think one of the really exciting things about the work they do. The second thing is, is Dr. Vastoni, while not right here in the Midwest has pretty good knowledge of what's going on in Illinois. She actually just mentioned while people were in the waiting room that she'll be back here. She's already got a date scheduled to be back here in early November when the weather is still nice. But as a New Hampshire, our weather can't scare her. So with that said, let's turn it over to her and we're really excited. Thank you everybody for being with us. We will drop that sign-in link in the chat. Thanks so much, Jason. I'll give you two little shares out before I get started. One is this morning I was presenting to Rock Valley Community College, which is right there in Illinois. So another connection to Illinois. And then I just want everyone to know, so yes, I work for CAST. I have a doctorate, but I want to let you know that I was a CTE teacher. Originally, I was also a CTE director. My husband is a CTE teacher. My dad's a retired CTE teacher. And my son was a welding student and is going into main maritime. So I tell people, if you teach, I like you. If you teach CTE, I like you more. So I just want to shout that out to everybody who teaches current technical education. I think it's the right way to do teaching. So I have shared the slides in the chat with all of you. You do not need to follow along, but in the slides, I have tons of resources and I want you to feel free to, you know, grab those, use them, repurpose them, whatever makes sense for you to do in your contexts. And then I'm going to go ahead and share my screen so we can kind of get started here. I did design this as an interactive session. Since we're a small group here, we won't do breakouts. But as a former teacher, I sometimes call on people. So, you know, don't be surprised if I shout your name out and ask you to participate. As Jason said, the goal is to design learning that works for all, right? And, you know, I know in your keynote earlier, we focused on how do we design for all and for individuals. And I think today we'll really be thinking about how do we craft our curriculum so that it supports the widest variety of learners or all the learners. So, if you could just tell me your name, you can put that in the chat or you could share it out loud. What's your role? So I'm very curious, what's your role in career and technical education? Are you a teacher? Are you an administrator? And this is a funny question, but what's the name of the virtual assistant you use most often? So, you know, is that Siri? Is that Alexa? What's the virtual assistant that you are using most often? And again, I just want to give you multiple ways to share so you can share in the chat or you can, we're an intimate group and I'd love to hear from you individually so you can also just turn your mic on and share out loud. Although first, my name is Gail Appel. I serve as the EFE director for Southwestern Illinois, which is outside of St. Louis, Missouri, but on the Illinois side of course. And I would imagine, I guess I use Siri the most. Thank you, Gail. I really appreciate that. All right, I'm checking the chat. Jason has shared. Google assistant. Good. What about Brian? How are you out with this? Yeah, I'll go next. My name is Brian Green and I'm on the exact opposite part of the state from Gail. I'm in Northwest Illinois near Freeport, not too far from Rock Valley College. I am the EFE director, EFE 220 CareerTech, and I use Alexa a lot at home. Great. Good. All right. What about Bill, Pam, or Heather? And you guys want to weigh in on the chat? I know Rodrigo, you use Alexa and you're the new director for P20. So congratulations. That's fantastic. Anybody else want to share with us? Bill, okay. Good. Google assist. Okay. Well, I'm going to move on. Oh, good. Heather, thanks. Good. Siri is your best friend, Heather. That's great. So let me just tell you something. When we think about special populations and non- traditional learners, we want to look at what barriers are. So in this presentation, we're going to talk about barriers and think about barriers. I'm just going to put one idea out there. Did you know most virtual assistants have female names? For example, Siri translates to beautiful woman who leads you to victory. Cortana, right? That's the virtual assistant in Halo, the female assistant. And Alexa is a female version of Alex. Why I find that interesting is what is the message if all of our virtual assistants are females, right? I'm just putting that idea out there. Google obviously is non-gendered. But the conversation here is why are all of these virtual assistants females named after females, right? And that's the beginning of what I want to talk to you about, which is thinking about the barriers that exist in the world for non-traditional and special population learners. That one is not one that most people think about, but does exist out there, right? If you want to weigh in on that in the chat or out loud, please feel free to do so. I'm going to keep on moving. Okay. So here's what we're going to talk about today. What is learning? We're going to think about the brain and memory and kind of how that informs how we support diverse learners. We're going to talk about why CTE is important. And it's actually very important for all learners. They find that students who are involved in career and technical education graduate high school at higher rates, but it's also specifically beneficial for certain populations. And then what are the barriers that might prevent some learners from accessing career and technical education and how can we reduce those barriers? Okay. So what is learning? One of the first things I want to do is talk to you about learning styles. Now, before I do that, I'm trying this new approach in my presentation where I'm going to give you some pro tips. So you see those pro tips, those are going to appear at the end of the session as a slide you can print off. So if you're interested, you can print that slide off, hang it by your desk and have access to it. So it can remind you of the learning we're doing today. But one of the pro tips is if you want to engage all learners, give prompts, right? Instead of asking, what do you know about learning styles, right? Give a prompt. And what you're going to do is you're going to increase the likelihood that all of your learners are going to engage with the content or be able to respond. So what I'd like to do is ask everyone to respond to the following prompt, learning styles are dot dot dot. So what are what learning styles are? And you can go ahead and unmute yourself or you can share in the chat. And I'm practicing waiting. That's one of the things I have to do. So I'm going to try to be quiet for 30 seconds. Learning styles are our varieties of methods and where you're presenting information to capture all students. Great. Thank you, Gail. And I see Bill has shared diverse learning styles are diverse. However, I want to backtrack a second. I was thinking of the instructional side of things. So you present things in a variety of ways because to accommodate the various learning styles, auditory, visual, whatever. Hands on. Yeah, great. Good. Thank you so much, Gail. Anyone else want to share? What do you think, Brian? How would you finish that prompt? And Rodrigo, how would you finish that prompt? You can definitely share out loud. And Pamela and Heather, feel free to weigh in as well. I would just say ways we learn. Okay. All right, guys. So there's some good news and some bad news here. The good news is most people think learning styles are a real thing. And that's not your fault because actually in 2016, they did research in 67% of books that prepare educators today include learning styles. The bad news is learning styles are not a real thing. And what we want to talk about, I'm going to show a quick video and I'm going to give you access to a TED talk. And why I want to share this with you is often when we ask educators across the state or across the country, how are you supporting diverse learners? They reference learning styles, but learning styles are not a way to create access to learning or accessibility. And we'll talk about why. And I just want to say that so many times when I share this information, people are keep messaging me like after the session. Wait, but what about this? What about this? And so what I'm going to give you is articles and we're going to watch a quick video on learning styles, the debunking of learning styles. And then we'll talk about why that's important because we want to design for all learners, but that does not necessarily include learning styles. So let me share with you this quick snippet. And you have access to this in the slides if you want to watch the whole session. So let me just pull that up for you and get that started at the right spot. Okay, good. This video, I'm sorry if this makes you feel a little sick, we're going to go to 935. How to be better with a math. Review articles of learning styles consistently conclude there is no credible evidence that learning styles exist. In a 2009 review, the researchers note the contrast between the enormous popularity of the learning styles approach within education and the lack of credible evidence for its utility is, in our opinion, striking and disturbing. If classification of students learning styles has practical utility, it remains to be demonstrated. What we're expecting is if your style was honored, you're going to perform better than if you had some experience that conflicted with your style. And this is where we don't see any support for the learning styles theory. One of the reasons many people find learning styles so convincing is because they already believe it to be true. For example, they may already think that they're a visual learner. And then when a teacher shows them a diagram of, say, a bike pump and suddenly the concept clicks, they interpret this as evidence for their visual learning style. You already believe that learning styles is right when you have an experience. The first thing you think is, is that in some way consistent with learning styles. And if it is, you don't think further. Okay. So I want to pause there. I know that this can be a little disconcerting. So if you want to check out the research, please do. But there's a reason why I want to take us down this path of learning styles. And so bear with me a little bit. Oops, we do not need to watch that at the same time. So here's where we want to go with this. Memory, we want to think about how memory works. If we want to make sure that we're including all learners and we're creating access for all learners, we need to be aware of how we form memories, right? How do we, how do we support learners to create memories? And one activity that is, comes to us from the research at Duke University that you could do with your learners or with your faculty, if you are an administrator is ask how it feels to remember certain things. So if I was to ask you how it feels to remember the capital of Kansas, unless you actually live there, you probably will have a, you'll struggle, right? To remember that feeling. But if you, if I ask you how it feels to remember the first line of Hey Jude, or some other familiar song, you're going to picture where you were when you heard it, you know, you're going to have memories associated with it. And it's the same when I ask you to remember how it feels to think of the house where you spent the most time as a child, right? You have all these memories, smells, emotions. And so what that tells us, and I would really encourage you to do this activity with your staff or faculty, is that you remember it when it's meaningful. And that's the thing we're talking about in that learning styles video. People remember things when they're meaningful, right? And we associate meaning with learning styles. That's why we remember it. Here's another fun activity. We remember things based on our schemas, right? So schemas are ways we think of the world, they're ways we organize the world. Let's do this activity together. It's kind of fun, actually. In Hollywood, you have to come up with high concept movie pitches. So if you have a new movie, you have to try to pitch it. It has to be short and fast. So what do you think, what movie do you think die hard on a bus? What movie is die hard on a bus? Yes, good. Perfect answer. What about Jaws on a spaceship? Alien, alien. What about an alien hunter of humans? Predator? Yes, very good. That's right. What about Romeo and Juliet, but with vampires? Rodrigo knows. I can't remember, but I know exactly what you're talking about. Twilight, right? Twilight, yes. Okay, so why does this work? Because it's connected to what we already know, right? We took ideas that we already know and we connected to them. So let's look at that. What that tells us is that memory is not a filing cabinet, okay? You don't take memories and put them in the file and then learners remember them. What learner, how memory actually works is more like Velcro. You have memories, you have experiences, those are those little hooks in the Velcro. And if you want to make new learning, you need to connect to what already exists, right? You need to connect to what's already there. And what we want to think about is how do we now engage special populations and non-traditional learners? So what we want to think about is how do we make sure that we're supporting all learners to connect to what they already know and to make the learning meaningful? Because that's really the goal. If we want to get students to learn, if we want to support learning, we need to connect to what they already know and we need to make it meaningful. So I want to pause here and just ask the group, what's resonating for you so far? Do you have any questions? And do you see any barriers with applying this? I guess what stands out for me right away is everything that I thought I knew was kind of the opposite. I think I used to even teach in my classrooms that your mind was like a filing cabinet and this is just kind of going against what I thought I knew. Yeah. Well, Brian, I want to say kudos to you for not just leaving the session. So you are a wonderful educator, very open-minded, a lot of folks who confronted with things that don't align with what they think they already know are going to just fight or flight or freeze. And so really congratulations to you for really staying in here and really pushing through and wanting to learn more. Anyone else? Is anything resonating? Do you have any questions or do you have anything you want to share from what I've just presented? I would agree with Brian. I think the difference between the what versus the how. You were defining learning, right? So the way we've constructed the meaning of that versus now you're explaining how the process of it. And maybe you'll get to this, but there's also a question of how do you help anyone really? But I guess teachers, faculty, and our students understand this particular topic. Because I think oftentimes we hear people say, whether they think they have a learning style or not, what they believe to be true is that they have a preference, right? And so that's grounded in everything that they do, whether it's in the classroom or outside. So ultimately, I think, and you might get to this is like, how do you reframe that for those that are learning and those that are doing the instruction? Yeah. Yeah. Well, Rodrigo, we can have preferences. What's different about learning. And so thank you so much for sharing that we can have preferences. What's interesting about sort of debunking learning styles is that it's contextual, right? If I want to learn to be a surgeon, I can't just read about surgery, even if I was quote unquote, a visual learner, right? If I want to learn to play an instrument, I can't just run around the block or whatever like physical thing would help me learn. I can't necessarily learn to play the drums all the time while walking. At some point, maybe I have to sit down and watch. I actually have to do those things. And so in CTE, what I want to remind people is, you know, seat in career and technical education, it's very hands on, right? That's something that we talk about all the time. So it's very applied. And that's contextual that learning, you need to learn about maps, right? By looking at maps. You need to learn music by playing the instrument or hearing it, right? You need to learn about surgery or taking blood pressure, you know, if you're in a health science class by taking the blood pressure, right? And if we say, oh, I have to teach learners to take the blood pressure and using learning styles that can be like disorienting, right? What we need to do is remember that everyone connects to learning that is meaningful and that they can connect to. So if you have a learner and they have no way to connect to that learning, you have it helps them, they're not going to be able to learn. If the learning is not meaningful or relevant for them, it's going to be hard for them to learn, right? So that's what we want to focus on when we think about supporting special populations. Bill, yeah, learn by doing. Very good. Anyone else want to share anything? Yes, yes, Jason. I just want to add, and I think I'm echoing a little bit of what Rodrigo said, but Brian's point is, so what resonated with me is that you did bring out the research about learning styles. And, you know, I have often in the last few years found myself shouting into the wind that, hey, these aren't real. And yet what I want to acknowledge is if we rewind like, you know, 25 years in the past, we spent the first two weeks of school with my students like pulling apart learning styles and doing inventories and having them self-reflect. So, you know, I want to acknowledge that, you know, it's, I guess we have to be opening to questioning these things. And it is hard. One of the real challenges is us having the time and the access to the research and then to applying it to our own settings. So, there's a lot of challenges that we as a profession have work to do to make that easier so that Brian and I don't have to sit here and say, whoa, I just found this out. And so, because, you know, I had, and I just found this out, you know, on this topic too. And so, and yeah, it's, and then, and then it does leave a big hole. And that's the other thing I want to mention. Because sometimes when you find something out with new research, it's like, oh, it just flips it. But this one I feel like is one where it kind of leaves a hole for those of us brought into this space that this was how we learn and etc., etc., because it hasn't exactly been filled by just a replacement. So, there's a little bit of dissonance that people are left with. And that can be uncomfortable and, and leave people unsettled, I think are probably the two words. So, thank you for bringing it up, Brian. Thank you, like Amanda said, thank you so much for throwing it out there. And I agree. I'm in the same boat. So, yeah, and I was to, and I want to say I was to, and I teach an adjunct class, Brian, every summer for CTE teachers specifically. And when we talk about this topic, it's really, you know, I'm telling you, people will continue emailing me for, for weeks after the sessions or being like, but wait, did you think about this? But wait. So, you know, yes, it can create some dissonance. What I want to say is there's, there's two responses before we move on. One is, people learn when it's unexpected. So, you will remember this session, I promise, even when you've forgotten others. So, what you're, what I'm modeling for you is that people learn when things are unexpected and when they connect meaningfully, right? So, I'm modeling that. The other thing that I want to just echo, Jason, is this idea that learning is uncomfortable, right? So, sometimes we forget for, for our learners and our students, how uncomfortable it is to learn something new, something that challenges what we thought we knew, right? And so, part of why I introduced this topic this way is to remind folks that learning is uncomfortable. If you already knew it, you wouldn't be learning, right? You would be in this session answering all your emails and looking at your phone, which is totally okay. You know, I'm not judging anyone, but I'm just saying learning is uncomfortable, and we want to remind learners of that. And I want us to think about that when we're thinking about our special populations. What are the uncomfortable, the pain points? What are the barriers that they are experiencing in addition to the sort of trauma that can go along with learning something new or with school, right? So, this is all about the experience that I'm really trying to model it for us. But thank you. We do want to make that transparent, and we want to be very cognizant of what's happening. So, why is career and technical education important? Let's take a break from the brain for a minute and think about and talk about why CTE is important. This is a topic I think we all can agree on and appreciate. So, there's a little clip from NPR, and I'd like to play this for you. It's only two minutes, and the the clip is why you don't necessarily need a bachelor's degree to land a high paying job. This is something that a lot of us know, right? And I really appreciate this clip. You can share it out with your with folks that you work with. So, I'm just going to give you two minutes of this, and then I'd like to again know if anything's resonating with you from this clip. So, I'm just going to play it here, but you have a link to it. Now, nobody's saying bachelor's degrees are a bad. Let me just make sure I'm starting at beginning. I'm not. Hold on one second. The higher your degree, the more money you'll make. That's something high school students hear all the time. But now a new study suggests it may not always be the best advice, as NPR's Alyssa Maddewerney reports. When I reach Isis Harris on the phone, she's still thinking about work, running some low voltage wire underneath the floor at her latest job site. It's a new construction, so it's been from the ground up. It's going to be big. I mean, it is big. It is big already. Harris is a few months away from completing her training as an electrician in Portland, Oregon. The walls are pretty much standing, but the inside of the building is still required. That's dominance for a two-year-old son you hear in the background. Isis Harris did not know back in high school, when she was imagining her life, she'd work in the electrical fields. Back then, everyone around her was super focused on college. It was definitely like college was the thing that was like the big thing, you know, like in high school that was like what the big excitement was around. After meandering for about a decade with some college and lots of different jobs, Harris took a course designed to sample different types of jobs in the construction industry. One of the activities they did was wire a light bulb. I did it correctly when the light came on. I was like, this is it. Like the light came off for me. That was the trade for me. Her current wages calculate out to me about $80,000 a year when she becomes a licensed journeyman electrician in December. She'll be in a job that pays $100,000 a year or more. So I'm just going to pause there and just see what is, if anything, is resonating. I will say often teachers are like, well, what's resonating is how much money this young woman is about to compare to my salary. But that's okay. If that's what's resonating. But I'd love to know, what are your thoughts? Is anything resonating with this clip? And I would encourage you to share it. It's brand new and it includes a lot of research. So feel free to share with your teams. Bill wants to share with us guys. What's resonating, Bill? Sorry. Can you hear me? We can hear you. Okay. One of the things that resonates is just the student motivation and how money can motivate students or something that is kind of just an outside goal, not really something that where a student is like, I really want to learn this because out of learning, I want to learn this because I have an outside goal. Yeah. Motivations are important. And we have a variety of motivations in our classroom, right? We have variability in the things that motivate learners and contextual, right? So some learners are going to be very motivated in hands-on class. Some might be motivated by the money that they could earn, right? So it's contextual to what motivates us. Anyone else? Maybe one more person wants to share anything that resonates or is striking or interesting about this clip. I presented something like this at an in-service here recently. And I think it really ultimately, at least for me, comes back to, as teachers in high school, are we teaching students to prepare them for college or a career? And as one person pointed out, even those who are preparing for college, ultimately we're still preparing for a career. Yeah. Yes. Yes, Brian, totally true. And I think about that all the time, right? Nobody just stops at college. You have to keep going after college. One thing that I find interesting about this clip is this is a young woman and she's going into like electrical, right? And so I'll share a story that a guidance counselor shared with me, which was after I shared this clip, she said, Amanda, you know, I have English language learners that come into my classroom and I often don't even tell them, the young woman, young women, and I don't even tell them about our electrical programs. I don't even tell them about our construction trade programs. And so I only offer that to say, here is another potential barrier that exists within our system, which is who are we telling about these programs? And what would the impact be if we played this clip of a young woman with a child sharing that her electrical program is something that meant a lot to her, and that's turned the light on for her, and that she can afford, you know, that she's excited about the pay that she's making? Remember, if you can't see it, you can't be it. And so making sure that we're really giving those diverse models, right? To think about addressing barriers. Our whole talk today is how do we address barriers for special population and non-traditional learners? Okay, so moving on. So, we know everyone in this room agrees that career and technical education is the best way to go, right? I don't know if you agree it's the best. I think it's the best. So, that's what it is. So, what I want you to know is that CTE students are just as likely to pursue a four-year degree, right, as their peers. And that CTE students, CTE benefits all learners, but especially certain populations. And when you look at this research, young boys and students from low-income families really benefit from engaging in career and technical education. And I've shared with you some more research that talks about the benefits for students with disabilities. They have a higher likelihood of going on to post-secondary of graduating from high school. And also in New York, we have research that's showing that Black and Latino male students have a higher rate of graduation when they attend CTE schools or classes. So, I just want to point out to you that CTE is good for everyone. And it's especially good for certain students. You can have a significant impact on certain populations of learners. And that is why the federal government has identified these special populations. So, special populations you can see in front of you are learners who often might have more significant barriers accessing CTE, but also can see some significant benefits from participating in CTE. I just want to acknowledge we have someone join us. Sarah, we're so glad you're here. I'm going to put the link to the slide, Sarah, in the chat for you. I'm going to open it up again. No, I'm going to put the link in the chat. You don't need to follow along, but I want you to have access to all the resources as I'm sharing them. So, feel free to grab these. And this is reminding me to look at the chat and just see that Pamela says, I think it gives hope to students that they can succeed, even if they don't do well in high school. And I think she's referring to that clip. So, yeah, thank you, Pam. That's really wonderful. And Rodrigo is saying the connection between action and feeling accomplished. Absolutely. We need to learn something, right? You need to feel like you can be successful and at it, self-determination theory, right? So, awesome point. Thank you. One thing I want to, when we look back at special populations, I just want to point out the italicized groups that are listed here. So, homeless individuals, youth with parent who is an active member, that's new since Perkins 5. So, new research is telling us that these are groups of students who are experiencing more barriers to accessing CTE. Okay. So, what are some barriers that exist in career and technical education? I want to pause here. Can anyone think of a barrier that exists for learners to access CTE? Give you one example. Scheduling, right? I think that's a barrier, right? You can all agree. So, what are some other barriers that you might be able to think of? Yeah, that's great, Jason, about the two leaders in self-determination theory in our College of Education. That was my doctoral research was on self-determination theory and career and technical education. So, what are some barriers that you see students experiencing when they try to access career and technical education? Transportation, absolutely, Brian. That is like a huge one keeps coming up. Costs that we pass on to students, right? Like, if they want to participate in an internship, how are they going to get there? They might have to have their own car and that costs money, gas money, but then also they have to have a car, right? Expectations outside of the school day, absolutely. Not meeting the baseline testing. Good, Sarah. Thank you for sharing that. There's also historic challenges. Let's like not shy away from the truth that there was a time when career and technical education really was for the other kids that didn't do great in, you know, traditional classrooms. We even had embedded racism in career and technical education where we had programs that were just for to either learn to be a janitor, and that was for, you know, certain populations of students. We also have stereotypes like we talked about who belongs in which program, right? So, students, like I said earlier, that young lady who's electrical student or become an electrician may not have even been introduced to the concept of being an electrical student in CTE. So, we have those stereotypes. And then we have lab spaces. So, what if you're a learner who is blind or you're a learner who's deaf or, you know, so some of our lab spaces and our hands-on learning experiences can create barriers, right, for certain students to make sure that they're learning the information. Okay. So, I think in terms of, yeah. So, I do want to share this video. This video, I want to offer to you that, again, you consider sharing this video with your student, your teachers or your students. So, I'm going to propose that you could share this video to a class and get feedback on it because it's young people talking about the barriers that they experience. And so, I'm going to, we're going to share this video and we're going to talk about it and then we're going to talk about ways to remove barriers. So, this is our last sort of like identifying a barriers segment. Good. So, let me make this big. Technology, for me, is probably my best friend. I would describe technology as my friend. But technology in my life would look very different. That's for sure. I've been able to accomplish so much that I couldn't before. Technology has really come a long way and it's helped me so much in school, in my social life, and everything in between traveling. So, it's just been life-changing. The iPad really for myself and for my students at our low vision has really been revolutionary for us to enlarge text. You're able to infer the text where you have a light-colored text on a dark background, take pictures and videos of objects. You know, it might be an object on a board or an object on my student's desk that I'm unable to see. So, I'll use my camera. I could not be in any of the classes I am if I didn't have like the technology that I use, like ready and available for me. So, the ADHD is really hard for me to sit down and just type. And I've been using voice type to get rid of some of that barrier. Amazon Alexa or Google Home have opened such a wide range of doors for me because literally I have to say, hey Google, turn on the light and it's done. And I don't have to worry about, oh, did the last person that I was with leave this remote in a location that I can reach it. I think the main accessibility feature that I use is voiceover. It takes the visual information that's on the screen and it translates that into speech so that even if you don't have vision, you can still know what's happening. I think Ella using Bookshare as much as she does, where she is listening to the text and seeing it highlighted in front of her has definitely changed the way she reads out loud. Her reading scores have gone up every year and the only thing we've done is use Bookshare every year. I've just loved video games ever since I was little and no matter how hard my vision will get like really bad or anything, I will always keep playing because I really enjoy the stories I love running around in the world, seeing what I could find. It has been the one thing that has kept me afloat, we'll say. Whenever I find a game that is accessible for me, I feel relieved. I can actually include my friends in something, not feel left out and I can actually have fun. I think especially with the amount of disabilities there are, just the slightest bit of accessibility goes a long way. I think it's important to put yourself in our shoes to consider what if the text is too small? What if there are no auditory cues? What if this could be something that causes eye fatigue? I would simply start by having a conversation with people that have disabilities and say what would be helpful for you? What are some struggles that you would have with using it and what could we do to make it easier? The technology that we have available for our students can make the difference and help them to be independent, self-sufficient, confident adults every single day and every single class period. We utilize technology to make it as accessible as possible. We can't go without it. All right, so what are you thinking about? So let's look at some prompts. This video made me feel one thing I wish this video embraces the idea now I know. So what is your experience watching this video? I'm going to welcome Barb, welcome Barb. We're so glad you're here. We just watched a quick video where we heard from learners who use accessibility features and so we're just going to discuss that and then we will continue on with our learning. So let's think about those prompts that I shared with everyone. There should be in front of you now. Yes, so this video reminds you made me feel one thing I wish. Here are some thoughts. I enjoyed the video. We hear these things often or we've heard these things before. Maybe have read them in an article but this really made it personal with the students in the video sharing their experience. So I now know it made it more real, more personal with the students sharing. Thank you. I really appreciate that, Gail. And I'll say that an interesting outcome that I had one time when I shared this with other CTE teachers was a culinary teacher said, yeah, why don't I just get a Alexa or a Siri or whatever and have that available so kids can set a timer. So then you don't have to reach up because they use the timer on the microwave but you imagine if you had a learner who was in a wheelchair or learner who had some accessibility issues just having Alexa set a timer. So that's like a small tweak. What I want to remind you of in this video, one nice takeaway is the students are basically saying just a small change. So people can feel overwhelmed when they think oh my gosh I have to tackle this whole big list of you know accessibility concepts especially if you're a teacher in CTE coming out of industry and you haven't you don't even know what a 504 or an IP is right and now you suddenly are starting to feel overwhelmed. A really nice thing is to just tell them about plus one thinking. Let's just find one thing that we can do this year to make our classrooms more accessible. A great start is to just have an accessibility statement. So when you start a class you just say I I've been trained in UDL or I care about accessibility so if you have any struggles please come tell me and I'm committed to you know helping you remove them. I've also done webinars with in actually this is a gentleman I don't know he's from Colorado who has at the community college and is teaching welding to a person who's a wheelchair user right and so we spend a lot of time thinking about what is that look like. Don't be afraid of the hard conversations which are going to be how can this person with a disability be successful in the industry recognize credential Amanda how is this person with a disability or going to be successful you know maybe they I don't know if they'll be a successful cosmetologist when they grow up right these are some of the concerns how do I know if an English language learner can understand safety directives Amanda I want to keep my classroom safe right so these are some concerns that come up they're all surmountable we can address all of them if we're willing right so you and the last thing I'll just say before I move on is you cannot make something a hundred percent accessible and if you want to challenge that I can give you some examples but you can be a hundred percent committed to accessibility okay and so I just want to throw that out for everyone and that's a nice concept for educators it relieves some pressure right oops we don't need to watch that again technology okay so let's keep going okay this is a really important concept so who experiences barriers we all we traditionally in our mind when we think about barriers to access or accessibility we think of what are called permanent disabilities right we think of people who can't see people who are blind right people who can't hear who are deaf but there are actually temporary disabilities and there are also situational disabilities so you could have you could be a football player and have your right hand right injured in a game so now you have a disability around using your right hand especially if that's your right hand and if you're as you can see in the picture here if you're a new parent right it's very hard to focus maybe you're going to need some executive functioning supports right after you have that uh that young child so the point here is it's really critical for us you know sometimes teachers will say I'm there you know Amanda that's important but I've never had a student with that in like that in my class I've never had a blind student in my class or I've never had a student with a hearing disability in my class well but you have had students with temporary and situational disabilities right and we need to be thinking about designing for all our learners okay so what we say in UDL is when a flower doesn't bloom you fix the environment not the flower right and that's a nice concept to print out and remind your teachers and this is that idea that we change our curriculum or we change the environment not the learner um let's keep going actually what I want to do here is give us a three-minute break so you know take your take yourself off camera but when you do come back in the chat I'm going to ask you what did you do to take that break for yourself did you drink water go to the bathroom you know what did you do so go ahead and take a break and come back and join us in three minutes all right everyone I'm going to call you back um yes Barb we are recording and we would love to share that with you Jason you have a way to share that out right Barb's curious we will we will be sharing all of the keynotes after July 4th um they will be shared on the p20 network youtube channel we will communicate that in both Illinois p20 network newsletters and we anticipate through isby's weekly newsletters and probably on the isby cte web page so that will be coming out frequently so yes the recordings for all three keynotes will be available just after the 4th of July awesome and Barb I'm also going to share with you the slides just so you have those because you can also grab all those resources too so um thank you yeah perfect so what did we do guys what like in the chat or out loud what did you do to continue be able to self-regulate and continue on this learning journey I for example drink some water I did some stretching yes good job bell what else what did you do Barb use the restroom good restroom water checked emails good and then you can shut that off that's perfect so you can check to take the break check the emails and then close that screen love it good pan water so one thing I'll just remind you of it's really great to have students share out their strategies so that they can learn from one another so what we just did is I saw Brian's like oh yeah everybody's getting water maybe I want to quick get a drink right so what we're doing is we're learning from each other as a collective and that's going to be a really powerful strategy for supporting all our learners because some of our learners may not inherently have those strategies or know about them right so let me just share one actually I need to get my there you go one more thing I want to back up a little I promised you these pro tips so just a friendly reminder this pro tip is called chunk and chew that's why we did that pause just like if your grandparents used to tell you mind it chew 30 times before swallowing or whatever 20 times before you swallow but if you're going to teach for 10 minutes you want to give two minutes of processing time call it chunk and chew so try to remember that it's in your pro tips slide at the end keep that in mind it's going to help all your learners right it's going to be supportive for all your learners so how can we reduce those barriers so so far we've talked about how the brain works we need to make things connected to what learners already know and meaningful we have talked about some of the barriers that exist in cte and now we want to think about how do we reduce those barriers well one way is to use the universal design for learning framework universal design for learning is a framework that appears in perkins five as an allowable expense it's also called out in all legislation that governs federal education uh and if the government supports it it must be good no i'm sorry that's not that's a joke that we should not be like don't write that one down um but so what what we want to do is consider having a udl mindset right and we're going to talk about how to do that it's basically having a framework a design framework here's another pro tip you're more likely to remember when you have an image and a word combined right and actually when you go back to that learning styles video he he uh that's uh something he works through in that video so here are the core concepts in udl learner variability is the norm you are going to have a variety of learners in your classroom period you know end of discussion it's the norm the barrier is in the design not the learner right we talked about that all those learners those um learners who are using technology they've wanted to learn they just needed the barrier was in the design not in the learner and the last one is learning variability is predictable if i asked you what you know i could ask you what some of the variability in the learners that come into your classroom you might say you know low literacy levels or you might say you know i always have english language you know you can predict the variability and if you can predict it you can design for it ahead of time proactively okay and that's what udl helps us do it looks like this it is not a checklist i don't want you to feel overwhelmed here is the core idea of udl everybody engages perceives and tells shows what they know in different ways right one way of engagement is not going to work for all learners one way of perception is not going to work for all learners and one way of demonstration is not going to work for all learners so what we need to do is provide choice and options that's it that's what udl is about providing choice and options around how we support learners to engage how we provide the material or the context and how we allow them to show what they know so i want to think through us with a student isaac is a student and i supported an educator um when we we worked with isaac isaac was in a cte course let's imagine he's in your cte course uh isaac is deaf i mean he sometimes struggles because people misunderstand and view him as confrontational because he can't always hear them okay so people view isaac as being confrontational but so often he just can't hear them he has a wonderful work ethic he has no desire to go to college so what i want us to think through is how can we use the udl strategies to remove barriers for isaac i'm going to give you an example uh this particular teacher started his question or his class with a question of the day he asked that question out loud if we look at the udl guidelines which i'm going to show you they're interactive so if you go to the guidelines you can actually interact with them right so we can see here we have a question how do i how do i make sure everyone can perceive offer alternatives for auditory information so we can see what are some strategies provide visual diagrams provide written transcripts for videos so what this educator decided to do really simple write the question on the board ask the question and write the question on the board is a very simple strategy but this is not just going to support isaac right this is going to support our learners with executive functioning struggles who have adhd and maybe weren't listening when we shared the idea right so when we just by simply giving a written version and an audible version we are uh providing access for more learners i often show videos in my classroom how can i ensure that isaac understands the videos again always have your captioning on do you know that when is captioning most used do you know anybody want to guess who uses captioning the most or when is it frequently used i'm i'm going to go with i mean this may be a pre-covid example but restaurants and bars showing sports absolutely restaurants and bars what about the gym a lot of people like the gym they screams when they're running on the treadmill or whatever it's most frequently used when you are with your significant other and you want to watch your show and they watch them show right and so just think of all the times that you're on your phone using captions and they're like watching their tv show or you're reading you know you're like watching your quick little video and allows the other person right so it's most frequently used in intimate settings where people are on different devices so it's benefiting lots of folks an interesting thing about captioning also is it helps our students who are neurodiverse so often our autistic learners have struggle with interpreting feelings and emotions and so often the descriptions like you know barb looked happy or whatever you know and that really helps our neurodiverse learners so we found that there's benefits to a lot of learners when we just turned on the captioning also benefits our English language learners right because we're hearing it and seeing it at the same time so I often have students work in groups other teachers have told me that Isaiah becomes disengaged in groups because he feels left out right he's deaf he might struggle to hear one thing we can do is build in more frequent daily check-ins clearly define our goals and provide graphic organizers and this all comes to us from the udl guidelines so each of those ideas we extrapolated or pulled from those guidelines and we can go in if you have questions and see the guidelines in a hands-on way right so you can go in and you can say I want to foster collaboration and community right I want all learners to feel comfortable working in groups what should I do click right in and you have some really tangible strategies for in court for making sure all learners can engage in group settings all right so I'm going to keep going um jam board so what I wanted to do is take a minute and do a jam board with everyone about what barriers might Isaiah experience in your classroom right so let's let's pause here for a second let me stop my sharing um and I'm going to open up the jam board and put that in the chat for all of you what barriers might Isaiah experience in your classroom and if you're not in the classroom you could just think of a a barrier Isaiah my experience uh the second question is how could you use udl to reduce a barrier for Isaiah and the last question is make it bigger for all of us what is your biggest takeaway from this workshop so far okay so I'm going to place the jam board into the chat for all of us and if you're not familiar with how to use a jam board I'm happy to talk that through you will or even demonstrate so just let me know we just get the link here we go guys here we go folks I'm trying to use folks more frequently instead of gender specific language it's a good reminder for me here is the jam board so let's take some um you know eight minutes or we'll see as people are putting their responses in uh but I want us to take some time to really uh craft our responses so go ahead and you'll enter into the jam board is it working for everyone no I'm getting an error message okay good let me try again let me just share directly from it thank you Jason you're welcome okay here go try this one okay good I think I didn't have the sharing whatever thanks okay so just go ahead and what you'll do if you need me to model is um I'll just do that really quick just to make sure everybody has access you'll grab a sticky note like this click on it you'll type your response and save it and it will save right on to our jam board and then we can see everyone's responses you can go to the next page uh sorry you can go to the next page and keep uh sharing your responses so let me just give everyone a minute to do that all right I'm going to give us two more minutes because it looks like folks have finished the first page and most of the second one so let's take two more minutes um and then we'll we'll share out okay so you should see in front of you the jam board um that we have all created together and I just want to reflect on this um so we were thinking about what barriers Isaiah might experience in your classroom and so those of us who are administrators a great activity is to take my slide with Isaiah introduce it to your teachers and just have them think through what barriers Isaiah might experience so just use this sort of as an activity to help educators think about barriers and remember the barrier is not in the learner the barrier is in the environment what I like about all of the comments we made here is that we commented on the environment not the learner and you know so often in the um teacher lounge potentially you see you hear language around uh that student blah blah you know fill in the blank and what we really want to make sure is we're thinking about where the barriers are in the environment not in the learner so I barriers Isaiah might experience are catching on to humor absolutely jokes like you might miss that right understanding the directions as accurately and quickly so one really big benefit to Isaiah might be if we had handouts with the directions written out or we had videos that showed the directions or we had graphic organizers with the directions right that's not just going to benefit Isaiah of course as we talked about with UDL that's going to benefit a lot of your learners and it's going to benefit your teacher who is tired of saying over and over the same thing right so uh there are some strategies there difficulty working with partners that's potentially true um and then internships uh where masks are worn interestingly Isaiah the teacher did was trying to find Isaiah an internship did find one when cabinet making and uh the the uh individual who was who's the cabinet shop owner was hesitant to take on a learner who was deaf they were able to work through that because of their relationships and have conversations in the end Isaiah was hired by that organization so I think what that reminds us is we are going to have to enter into these conversations and we're going to want to go with strategies so maybe even introducing UDL to the employer um okay so let's look at the other one how could we use UDL to reduce these strategy strategies use of demonstration instead of just verbal instruction absolutely make a video of yourself doing that demonstration so learners can rewatch it over and over assign a student help her to assist Isaiah yes and my only catch there is often with English language learners we will turn to someone who speaks both languages that can become um complicated hard for the learner who's always being tapped to explain to the others so I just want us to keep in mind it's good to pair people up and do partners but we want to make sure we're not sort of taking advantage of free labor with our learners who are able to um you know translate for others it can become a burden for those learners so just keep that in the back of your mind uh provide students with tools such as whiteboard tablets to communicate yes absolutely uh I'll give you I'll talk about that in a minute actually one strategy might also be to make a direction card that's placed in front of each of the students the short set of written directions yes a drawback is you would have to have reading skills that's true you'd have to have a certain level of reading skills um and uh assign groups rather than letting students choose yes I really do think that we should take advantage of assigning groups uh and making sure everyone is included uh purposeful grouping is what we call it right um okay and the last is um and I'm sorry people are pretty okay what's the biggest takeaway so far uh not an aha but definitely critical confirmation to really look at how we spend our time challenges some of our preconceived notions um biggest takeaway is that districts other than mine are trying harder to figure out how to make cte inclusive yes it's happening all across the country I was in a conversation with some um folks from uh across the country and they were really thinking about how do we make those final assessments those demonstration assessments accessible to all that can be challenging especially in uh things like masonry or plumbing right so just people are trying to figure this out um and new favorite quote when a flower doesn't bloom you fix the environment in which it grows not the flower I love that one too okay and you can see that this was a very interactive and engaging uh jamboard jamboard is useful I'm sure all of you know that we've all been through COVID but it's a good way to get people engaged so let me just check the chat yes Jason always assign groups with intention relieve social stress absolutely I agree totally um very good point okay so here we go the other thing UDL tells us actually Jason about um grouping is we want to assign roles so we want to make sure I can actually show you where that's at when we think about building community we want to make sure that we are prompting the learners when to ask for help and how and we are also supporting peer interactions by assigning roles right and responsibilities so that learners you know it's not just that one kid doing all the work all the time right which can happen um okay so let's jump back to our presentation so where I wanted to go is just a few additional ideas before I wrap up and have time for question which is when we look at I'm just going to look at engagement if you can't get a learner engaged right you cannot teach them that's the kind of the first step right when we think about our special populations we think about recruiting interest and engagement one thing you can talk to your teachers about one simple thing is a warm-up activity how are you welcoming people into the space right how are you making sure that everyone feels included from the moment you begin really important if you can do a predictable activity so predictability removes minimizes threats and distractions for all of our learners right these are some options so you can have a daily question some teachers do a stretch and flex where they they say okay the kid's been sitting all day I want to take them out we're going to do some stretching some flexing um it could be about a specific topic or it could be a general question like is serial soup it could be something funny that allows all learners to engage it could be random open ended and one thing I've actually seen teachers do is assign students eventually to come up with the questions themselves one thing I really love about this is I saw a teacher using these mini whiteboards so the mini whiteboards were passed out so students could all write their responses I think I know this is like so old-fashioned I showed you this video on all the tech that can help with accessibility mini whiteboards are like my favorite thing because you know what happens when you look around the classroom we say raise your hand if you have a response right and we keep getting that same I was that kid like every time I raise my hand the teacher's like anyone but Amanda anyone's gonna have a right that's hurtful but it's also hurtful when you're that quiet kid in the back who never gets called on mini whiteboards remove that because now we all have a response right and the teacher can quickly assess everyone's responses the final thing I'll say with mini whiteboards is kids can take notes on them and then take photos of their notes for their phone so they can just take a quick photo on their phone and have those notes handy that's a nice reminder um and then let's look at sustaining effort and persistence when we look at engagement how do we do that make sure you have an agenda you know really purposefully direct your teachers to make sure there's an agenda make sure that we have a predictable habit of sharing what the goal is with learners this is going to support all of our learners across the board but especially our kids with most recent data says one in nine college age kids have a diagnosis of ADHD I'm sure that number is actually higher when you look at k-12 or at least high school so our students who struggle with executive functioning need to know where we're headed right they need to know where we're headed and what we're supposed to be doing and the last one I'll share with you is self regulation all of our learners even our seniors in high school need supports around self self regulation in fact we're going to need that until we're 26 years old so friendly reminder a lot of teachers will say my job is to teach content math or cosmetology or engineering why do I have to teach this other stuff you have to teach this other stuff if you want to teach math engineering or cosmetology right we have to support self regulation and executive functioning and one way to help support exact self for regulation that's easy is have a wrap-up so you start it off right saying what are we going to do today at the end have a closing a lot of teachers use that time to clean the shop right so use that time to clean the shop but also it was a very easy one have a stack of sticky notes handy and have ask a question what was your biggest takeaway today they were right down the sticky note they stick it to the the door before they leave right and you can go through and assess those or you can have this is one of my favorites you have a note card at the beginning of the day you have them write down what their goal is and you have them rate on a scale of one to five how likely they are to accomplish that goal at the end of the day you look back and say did you accomplish your goal why or why not right so you're building in I've seen students say I'm going to I'm going to finish my project today it hadn't even started you know and they give themselves a five on the likelihood now we can have a conversation around proper goal setting and expectations and reflection so I want to pause here and I'll tell you yeah we'll come back to this story so I do want to just let you know that you have those pro tips that you can keep handy and you have a couple of you have a book free book on UDL and you have another video on accessibility if you want to check it out before we go what I'd like to do is have everyone make a commitment this is not UDL is not a religion I'm not trying to convert you but I am going to ask you to make a commitment based on the modeling and the content from today's session and I'd like that commitment remember we talked about how prompts help us learn so based on the learning today I will so I'd like everybody to out loud if you don't mind or in the chat if that's better for you go ahead and make that commitment based on the learning today I will it could be something in the content it could be just something if you observed me doing it could be something you want to research in the future so just based on the learning today I will and I'm just gonna see if anyone wants to come off their mic and share with us or turn on their mic that's what I should have said sorry Amanda one of the things that I will definitely be doing is reading as much as possible on that because it's brand new to me and in hearing the what it how different it is from the perceptions and the ideas that we've been taught as teachers to hearing the actual research that you're presenting I think for especially CTE teachers when when teachers are presented research that's fact-based they want to do what's right and so they want to make sure that they're not basing their ideas on just kind of made up perceptions. I love that Bill and let me just share one quick thing with you Bill what I love about UDL specifically for CTE teachers just quick takeaway is and I'm going to show you the the graphic really quick let me just get there is how much of how much of UDL CTE teachers are already doing so what I like to do is just start with they are already their classes are already filled with relevance value and authenticity right they are already giving learners autonomy and choice they are naturally probably really attempting to remove threats and distractions so I like to start by just figuring out what CTE teachers are already successfully doing and where they're you know finding there's naturally inherently doing UDL and then what I like to do is encourage them to think of a plus one so find one thing on the framework that they could then add you know maybe let's try one let's focus on one of these checkpoints let's just find one that we want to try moving forward and then the next year maybe we find another one right great okay and I think in the chat somebody shared Gail said this was great information and practical I will definitely be sharing it so based on learning today Gail is going to share this information with her CTE teachers that's great Pam saying based on the learning today I will share this presentation with my faculty Rodrigo saying based on the information they will have purposeful conversations about today's learning with my partners and we'll challenge myself to continue learning about UDL that's fantastic thank you so much Barb before you came at the beginning I did let people know I was a former teacher and I might call on folks would you be willing Barb maybe to share what your UDL commitment might be well I'm a former teacher also but I'm not a teacher right now I'm a policy analyst working with students who have IEPs mostly and I work in a school district that's quite large named Chicago public schools that was not allowed the bottom quartile of students to participate in CTE so I am trying to get information in order to figure out some way to negotiate with the district about changing their admissions policies I'm already familiar with UDL I have an autistic child and have kind of spent the last 20 years working on things like that but it's I think another powerful tool if anybody in the CPS administration is willing to actually have two meetings in a row to talk about that yeah and I will say Barb just interesting this year Perkins Five UDL is called out as an allowable expense for the training of teachers in CTE and for the support strategies for special populations specifically English language learners and students with disabilities so from the federal from the legislation perspective CTE is recognizing the use of UDL so I just want to sort of like you know point that out to folks on this call so if you wanted to do PD year whatever your Perkins funding supports that okay and then Brian you shared yours good and so maybe the last thing I'll just share with folks as your final takeaway is there there was yeah when I was a CTE director there's young man Henry who's an English language learner and we were having we had 20% English language learners in our district and only two to three percent were participating in CTE so I was very you know I wasn't wondering why that was I investigated it there's a confluence of reasons one though was that teachers were expressing concerns about safety and so we did create some safety videos in woodshop and construction with the learners so the English language learners and you know learners who spoke English as a native language worked together and created these videos there was a actually a bunch of activities that we did but I wanted to share a link to that video with you in case that is something that you've found as a concern coming up in your classrooms because if it's coming up in one place it's often coming up in another so let me just share that with you so this is the shop safety video and these are some of the other strategies we translated our brochure into Spanish we created an intro course we had a CTE night for ELL parents at the Boys and Girls Club and at the local church not just at the school right that's important to remember and then we created the safety videos in multiple languages and I've given you the link to the Spanish video and I'll put a survey in the chat and that's it so you can stay for four minutes if you want if you have any questions let me throw that survey in the chat for you and then um you know anything else Jason that you think is important just let me know well I I want to jump in and I want to thank everybody who joined us today obviously the reschedule affected how many people will be able to be here but I am convinced based on the comments in the chat and the engagement we had that even as an ongoing video resource this is going to be a tremendous resource for us to use in future professional learning opportunities with people around the state and it's certainly I'm guessing not the last we will have heard with from Amanda and her teammates at cast and so this is again a treasure trove of actionable resources so thank you everybody for joining today and thank you so much Dr. Bestoni this was this was great yeah wonderful well I I'm serious I think CT teachers are the best teachers on the planet so thank you uh yeah and um yeah and in the resources you also have a link to some webinars and so you know check out the like I really try to pack this this video I mean these slides with lots of information for you one interesting webinar is uh isms in the classroom so it's students talking about experiencing racism sexism uh ableism in the classroom and uh and one of the students does say in her welding class none of the like equipment fit her and that was very uncomfortable and like what that experience is like so even if you want to share that with teachers that's available yeah that that welding example um with size of of gloves and helmets and equipment uh has come up multiple times in the last 10 days actually in uh meetings I've been in and that's a great example so uh thank you again for everything so again for those of you signing off thank you so much for being here and to those watching later thanks for for watching absolutely bye everybody