 Hello and welcome. My name is Maria Heiler and I'm the deputy director of the Washington DC office and a senior researcher with the Learning Policy Institute. One of my roles there is to direct the Educator Preparation Laboratory. Ed Prep Lab is a partnership between Learning Policy Institute and Bank Street College of Education, Graduate School of Education. It is a growing network of teacher and leader preparation programs across the nation committed to transforming educator preparation through research, practice, and policy. While we wait a couple of minutes for more people to join, feel free to introduce yourselves down in the chat box by telling us your name, organization, and where you're from. See some folks from Georgia and California. Welcome from Mexico. See a colleague there. Joining us from the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. See someone joining us from Saudi Arabia. Welcome. A lot of New Yorkers and I say a rich in Virginia. Thank you for joining us today. All right, we're going to go ahead and get started. Thank you for joining us for this one hour sequel to our April 23 webinar. If you're joining us for the first time, it's not necessary for you to have viewed the webinar. From April 23rd, but we do encourage you to access that at your convenience. And as we begin, I'd like to thank our partner, the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education for their support with this webinar. We appreciate their partnership and the leadership of Lynn Gangone. I'd also like to let the audience know that this webinar is being recorded. A video recording will be emailed to you in a few days. So no need to take any screenshots or be taking notes furiously. We'll have some that information for you in a few days. As I mentioned, today's webinar is a sequel to our April 23rd webinar entitled how educator preparation programs are adapting during COVID-19. You can find the link in the chat box. We'll be continuing the conversations about how some of our ed prep lab members are adapting during this pandemic. And again, while we will touch on issues of PK 12 teaching and learning the focus of this webinar is on teacher and principal preparation specifically. We appreciate that our speakers who are national leaders in education, educator preparation from across the United States agreed to come back and share more in depth about the work they're doing at this time, particularly as states and districts across the nation are starting to discuss what schools could look like in the fall as we start up schools again in September or August. We've organized this webinar in the same format as the first one with the bulk of the hour being a conversation amongst the panelists. We will also have two audience polls for you to take over the course of the webinar. And then we'll end with participant Q&A towards the end of the hour. If you have questions throughout the webinar, please click the Q&A button at the bottom of your screen. And if you'd like to engage in discussion, you may click the chat button and type in the chat box at the lower right side of your screen. Before we begin, I'd like to quickly introduce each of our distinguished panelists by name and title, so we can jump right into discussion. Their bios are available through their institutional websites. First, we have Rebecca Chung. She's the director of the principal leadership Institute at the University of California Berkeley. Anna Marie Francois is the director of Center X at the University of California Los Angeles. We have Ira Litt with us today who is associate professor and the director of the Stanford University Elementary teacher preparation program. We also have Jennifer Robinson, who is a professor and the executive director of the Center of Pedagogy at Montclair State University. And finally we have Kathy Schultz, who is dean and professor of education in the School of Education at the University of Colorado Boulder. Thank you all for joining us today. We appreciate you being here in the midst of unprecedented times. And I'd also like to thank the audience for attending. We know that everyone is incredibly busy during this time, and we're grateful that you took the time today to be with us. As a reminder, if you have any questions, please click the Q&A button at the bottom of your screen. And if you'd like to engage in discussion, you may click the chat button and type in the chat box at the lower right side of your screen. We want you to be as engaged as possible, so feel free to make comments or ask questions. So I'd like to start this webinar exactly the same way that we started the last one in April. I'd like to go around and have each of you just remind us about what values you're holding as a way to guide your decisions. And what centers you and your colleagues as you have to make increasingly challenging decisions in this time. And this will give the audience members a chance to hear your voices and to hear your perspectives of what your values are in your institutions. So if we can go ahead, Anna Marie, can you get us started? And you're muted. Thank you. Thanks for having us back. It's so good to see you and our Edprep colleagues. So much has happened in the past month, so I think that my values have not shifted, but the ones I want to highlight today, given everything that's happened in the last month is social justice, the dignity and worth of individuals in the collective, and the centrality of relationships. And I think what's centering myself and my colleagues across the state are the humanity within ourselves, the humanity of our students, the humanity of our colleagues, especially teachers and leaders in K-12 and ECE settings because they are the ones on the front line and the humanities of the families and the communities we serve. Thank you, Anna Marie. And I appreciate you being on mute because it wouldn't be a Zoom webinar without someone being on mute. Ira, can you share with us the values that you're holding close? Sure. Thanks Maria and thanks to everybody for joining us and thanks to our host for welcoming us this afternoon. Some of the values that I'm holding on to tightly at the moment include community, relationships, equity, access and inclusion, professionalism, and a very healthy dose of humility. Indeed, I think we all need to be holding that. Jennifer, what about you and your colleagues at Montclair? I'll build on what Ira said, humility for sure. I think that we haven't really changed anything about our mission, which is making sure that our students, our students as well as the students that they work with, to all of the resources that they need. Certainly, I think promoting an environment, a culture that is equitable, that really promotes the democratic values that we hope our teachers will take into their classrooms and then their students will learn as well. I think it's important that we definitely are focusing on nurturing, nurturing our teachers, nurturing each other. That's a big thing within our college and we've done a lot to help build each other up as well as we're hoping that spills over to our students and then their students as well. And I think also leadership, helping our students understand that as they step up and recognize that they are essential workers in the midst of all of this as well, I think is important. Absolutely. Thank you, Kathy. So I could ditto what everybody said. As an educator preparation program, we practice and teach pedagogy that acknowledges and lifts up the humanity of leaders, teachers, students and families. We center compassion and our interactions and decisions, and we teach and work with a focus on kindness, dignity, and as many people have said, deep humility. That's the echoing of humanity. Rebecca, can you send us off? We continue to be inspired by the words of Director and Professor John Powell of the Othering Belonging Institute. First, thinking and acknowledging the two opposing narratives in our country right now, one of othering and the other of belonging. And specifically how social distancing and social isolation can lead to a lack of solidarity and how we continue to practice social solidarity during spatial separation. In other words, how do we not hold, how do we continue to hold in the center essential workers? How do we continue to hold in the center those who are helping us to combat this pandemic while we are isolated in our homes when we can't see them and how we continue to practice holding our community together. Thank you. What I appreciate about each of one of you and the words you shared and I want to encourage our audience if you don't know these programs, you should get to know them because the words that these folks are speaking really resonate throughout their programs and it's just not an individual speaking. So I appreciate you sharing those thoughts and know that your programs are working in alignment with these values. So I'd like to turn to the audience and ask you a poll and you'll have 30 seconds to respond to this poll. We're interested in knowing now that we're in this for a few months, especially those of you who directly teach courses in educator preparation. How prepared you're feeling to develop to deliver online and virtual instruction and in particular what types of support you've been having from different places. So we're going to launch that poll. And you have 30 seconds. And it's a choose all that's applied to you. We appreciate that those of you who are still instructing online and know that it takes a lot of time and effort to do so at a quality manner and we'll be hearing a little bit more about the thinking of that from our panelists. We'll give you a few more seconds. All right, and we'll go ahead and end the poll now and we'll see what the results are. All right, it's good to see that at least 50% of institutions are represented here providing resources and a lot of you all are just doing a lot of the work on your own. Oh, and it's good to see the collaborative nature that we're seeing colleagues coming together and giving advice and support so that's very informative. Thank you and encouraging. We have a ways to go but it's a good start so thank you. So back to our panelists. It's been about a month since we've talked and we know that you've had new learnings in that time I feel like every day is a new opportunity to learn something new in this space. So I'd like to start with Jennifer and just ask what types of new understandings or practices have you developed since this is all started in relation to educator preparation. Thank you and I want to thank you again Maria for inviting me back to have this conversation with wonderful people from around the country. So I you know I'm of a mind that since we had our last conversation really really thinking more about some of the principles of working with online and even working with our colleagues and as opposed to strategies per se or specific things that we're doing and you know I want to emphasize the fact that when we went remote we didn't and we still don't have everything figured out neatly and I think that that's true for everybody and so like one principle which is creative group problem solving that absolutely all of us have something to add to the conversation that we ask our students to be flexible and to prepare their students to solve problems that we've never met before. And here we are in the midst of solving problems that we've never met before. And so I think really modeling that for our students and recognizing that that's what we have to be about. And I think not giving it even a nod towards we've never done that before because yeah we've never done that before and and being open. I think that's that's one real principle that we've had to go deep on and I think, I think another thing is trying to emphasize the focus on our mutual work with our school partners and focusing on the fact that they're P 12 students that you said it best earlier that they're really at the focus and at the heart of this their families their communities and the populations that we're aiming to serve. And I think about the fact now that when I start meetings, really turning to our school partners, who we are constantly trying to have at the table and fortunately, during the daytime some of them are actually available. And so I'm going to capitalize on that and hearing from them from their perspective, and I think that really sets the tone for a lot of the discussions that we're having. For example, yesterday was in a discussion partnering our counseling department, our counselor school counselor preparation department with the Office of Student Life, and one of our partner districts, and hearing from them some of the challenges for social emotional learning that they're trying to address, and really really hearing the empathy from our faculty, not only the ones who were in the meeting but even talking about including other faculty, who have other strengths that that can add to the conversation to help. So we had a really rich and deep discussion and our school partners were very open and honest about what they needed. Hearing our faculty talking about trauma check ins as a model for how to go into a classroom, not only in our, our courses, but again into the classrooms that they're helping out with our interns helping out with them. I think focusing a lot more on why schooling in general, you know, why learning, and hopefully even getting us back to, you know, the curiosity, the desire for learning, the openness to learning has, has really come out of this this situation, because we've had to be a lot more creative we've had to think on our feet and, and, and think creatively about ways that we're going to reach our students in ways that we've never thought of before and I think coming together, much more so than we ever could in other times, because we have to communicate more we have to be together. I just left a meeting a few minutes ago, where we had our faculty department chair, adjuncts our school people, our clinical practice directors, all working together and talking about how are we going to do this work together, which we were doing before, but it's much, much more high stakes now than it ever has been before and I think, you know, learning how to be more respectful of each other and again that word humble with each other as well. So I'm glad that we're going to have this conversation and I'm going to try and make this more for my perspective or conversation because I'm really looking forward to hearing what everybody else, the panel has to say. Thank you, Jennifer. I really appreciate the perspective it made me think that we're becoming the students in that we need to do all those things that we're telling them to do and so the idea of modeling is so important when we talk about teacher and leader preparation for deeper learning and equity. Kathy, what's going on at CU Boulder, what are you all doing and what resonates with what you heard Jennifer talking about? So a lot resonates always with what Jennifer talked about so it's nice to follow her. In the month since we talked last we went from sort of the emergency phase of doing whatever we could because we had sort of been thrown into the remote format to really planfully thinking about next fall and how we will return to campus. Our campus is making the decision has made the decision that we will have face to face classes, though the density of who's on campus will be reduced dramatically. And that's allowed us to have the opportunity to imagine and think about designing what we want our teacher preparation courses to look like. And so just this morning I was in a conversation with all the deans talking about how the goal, you know, sort of given health and safety concerns, the goal will really be to have students spend about 50% of their time face to face and 50% of the time remote in some remote kind of format and and thinking about that in particular around teacher preparation. We've been worried about the idea that students if K 12 schools are in are happening or actually face to face themselves. What doesn't mean to have students fanning out to many different schools and then coming back to campus. As we know that the social mixing that is what we want to avoid on campus as much as possible. And so what our teacher educators have been thinking about is spending the beginning part of the semester in face to face classes perhaps outside. And we're lucky to be in Colorado where we can pretty much unless there's snow we can pretty much predict nice weather that we can be outside, but having the intensity of our face to face classes be at the very beginning of the semester. And then when students and if students can go into their classrooms and this is particularly in the third and fourth year where they students spend a lot of time in schools and in classrooms. And we will shift our time to remote learning and that as we sort of calculate how much face to face time. We have with the students we can count the amount of time that they're actually in classrooms as part of her face to face time. And that's the time that our faculty will meet one on one with students and small groups of students with students by school site. And as potentially a whole group in a in a large zoom format that we've all gotten so used to synchronously and asynchronously. So it's I think it's gotten us to think really creatively about the multiple modalities and also sort of the counting the time in classrooms in a different way and sort of in in concert with the kind of time that we have in the university classroom. We always talk about trying to bridge those experiences the field experiences in the classroom experience, the university classroom experience and, and I do think that this will help us do that. We have interesting challenges in our area because many of our districts don't allow videotaping and so we'll have to be able to be creative and asking students to write and reflect and critically reflect on their experiences in order to bring them alive back to their supervisors or back to their instructors their professors. And one person I was talking to yesterday was one instructor I was talking to yesterday was saying that she plans to meet with her students outside of the school she doesn't want to go in the school because if she visited inside every school she would be the vector that we're all worrying about. She's happy to meet with them outside of the schools and gather together, and that's really in response to the students saying, you know, it's important to us that you see physically see our schools. And so, like Jennifer, we're really listening very carefully to our students, we're listening very carefully to the schools, people at the school site, talking to the superintendent's talking to the supervisors talking to the classroom teachers talking to the prospective students and the current students themselves to both allay people's fears, acknowledge people's fears, and begin to design experiences that feel safe and comfortable, but importantly, educative for everyone. And again, like Jennifer saying I think, you know, these are tough times, and there's so much we can learn and about teaching and learning and about our lives as human beings by you know, centering humanity and everything that we do. I really appreciate, you know, it's interesting because we are always we in the past we've been so focused on teaching and learning and how do we do deeper learning teacher and leader preparation and now we have to think about the physical safety and health of our students and I think what you just said really highlights the balance between thinking about that but still being committed to that high quality instruction. Rebecca, I know that you all have to have had to do some major shifting in some of your work that you're doing so if you wanted to share about that that would be great. Sure, so I'm going to pull on this theme that is emerging around collaboration and take you into this last month, and how we had to intensely collaborate to redesign on the within three weeks, a major performance assessment that we have inside of our program. So just a little background first. Our program the principal leadership Institute has had a long history of using a formative performance assessment so I want to distinguish it from, you know, summative or external assessments like the ed tpa or the an administrator performance assessment these are all within our program. And we use them as mile markers for students and some of them sound like they have different names we don't call them performance assessment. So for example, oral exams, or a portfolio presentation a mock expulsion hearing, or a mock interview. In the last month we had our spring assessment center. Now spring assessment center is the three quarter mark of the program. It literally demarcates for students how they're doing and how much they're learning tells our program where students still need to go before completion. The day, which is seven hours long on a Saturday in any other year, includes students dressing up in their professional gear and spending the day emulating the life of a leader, what they want to do in the future. So you can imagine, there's a lot of running around the building, you go to this room you go to that room. The schedule is impossible because that's the life of a leader, you have to go to this appointment you have to go to that appointment. You have to get some collaborative work done you have to have individual work, we just really try to emulate that process so that they can practice. And so this is also an event that includes all the instructors that teach in the spring semester, it's actually a culminating assessment of the content of the spring as a semester. And it involves all of our leadership coaches who work individually with our students in the field so this is a large gathering, and it's really a moment where we all come together and celebrate the learning that has occurred. So, a typical spring assessment center would have a case study that's presented in advance with pre work, and then they would come in ready for an initial conversation about the case which situates the days activities. And then, and we would observe them in while they do that. And then there might be some time for the work group to work collaboratively so our students are organized into work groups to work on the tasks of the day the leadership tasks that are often on a plate like designing interview protocols, designing a professional development plan, etc. And then also they would have to give a presentation at the end of what they were able to accomplish and develop. And then finally we did have we do have an individualized part around an a practice exam for the orals. So we do something called a mock oral exam where students get to practice. Now imagine the amount of collaboration it took in three weeks to take that whole seven hour experience and turn it into a virtual experience and we did it. It wasn't perfect, but it was pretty good. And I think that was because of the amount of collaboration we did examples of that collaboration started way before assessment center. We started observing each other's video classrooms. Anytime anyone was doing anything performance like in their classroom, a bunch of us would go in there and just observe and debrief and talk about what we learned from that process and that informed our design this kind of iteration, quick cycles of iteration. And so in the end what we did was we actually we actually extended the pre work to be more we actually had we gave the case out as we always do in advance. And we asked each of the work groups to schedule their own initial conversations about the case separate from the day. And then we asked them to record themselves in a two minute video recording of the three priorities they felt that the principal needed to work on in this case this is the case where you're a new principal at a school and there's a lot of data and etc. And so all of the instructors in the field supervisors the coaches, we were able to watch those videos in advance, because they were actually pre loaded several days in advance of assessment center. And so we had a sense of where people were starting. This allowed us to shorten the synchronous part because seven hours of synchronous activities. I don't need to tell you is not going to work. And so what we did was, we shortened it to only focus on a couple of activities. The other thing that we did though in terms of the schedule was, typically in assessment center, when it's in person, we stagger the we stagger and rotate the activities, meaning two groups might be engaged in the mock or while two groups are engaged in a discussion. And now this time because of the synchronous environment, everything was done at the same time, meaning everyone first did their mock orals, the individual part, and they practice that part. Then we went to work group time for students to work on their assignments we gave them some collaborative time, and then instructors and coaches had time to talk about what they saw in the oral exams who still needs help. Who needs follow ups, etc. What patterns did we see. Then we came back and we went to breakout rooms for presentation so everything happened simultaneously where in the past, the schedule would have been more complicated. And then we ended the day as we always do with appreciations, no champagne and apple cider this year, but at least we were able to come together and celebrate each other's growth, and it was really quite a tremendous day. I would just want to say the collaboration has been really important. It's been intense, but we can do this. Thank you for that I love this thread of collaboration and I want to highlight that all the programs here for the audience have engaged in really deep collaborative collaboration and have structures in place for that. So if that's not what your institution looks like. It's a great time now to start to develop those relationships and structures, because it's been key, I think in the institutions that I've had the opportunity to talk to it's been key collaboration to the success of the work that they're doing. I like to shift a little bit to collaboration with families and communities because I know at the last webinar that was a real deep question and a lot of people had wonderings about how folks are doing that so I like to turn and ask Ira what are you doing and how are you engaging your candidates with families and communities at this time. Sure. Thanks Maria. Maybe actually this is important for thinking about the work that we do with families and communities I want to take a minute and just acknowledge the essential fact that all of us and all the folks we work with. All the educators all of our students families communities we're all living through an extended crisis and deep and complicated one. It doesn't diminish the moment that we need to rise to this occasion do deep and meaningful work. We're all attempting to do that, but we need to hold true to the fact that everybody is living through crisis and I think if we leave if we can keep that fact on the table, it will help us to ensure that we do right by those that we aim to serve. So I just want to take a moment and that's especially true as we're thinking about the work that we're doing with families and communities, we have to acknowledge the experiences the surreal and challenging and complicated experiences that families and community members and educators writ large are living through and trying to work through. I take a little bit of a moment to focus on some of the clinical and community experiences that our teacher candidates are experiencing at the moment. I think we've always framed and thought of our teacher candidates as essential partners in the work of care and community work and education with our school partners. I'm thinking a lot of ways this particular moment has really elevated that fact and brought some clarity to the essentialness of that partnership. We get lots of regular feedback from our school partners from principals from mentor teachers from district leaders that our teacher candidates are essential in this moment. It's really complicated for our schools to do the work in the ways they want to do it without that partnership. So small things like maybe actually these aren't small things schools need to be in touch with every family they can't do the work they're doing without knowing where families are what they need, how we get in touch with them what are the resources that will allow them to be in communication. That takes a lot of person power and also relationship capacity and so our teacher candidates have been really important members of the team from the schools to reach out to folks in the community to figure out where families are what are their challenges what are their stress points what do they need for basic contact and communication. That's dovetailed rather nicely with a course that I teach year round for our teacher candidates and in the spring we typically focus on building positive collaborative relationships with families. Given all the work our candidates are currently doing with families is actually made it even more real and authentic and meaningful. In a traditional year we have to work a little bit harder actually define access points and touch points for our teacher candidates to be in conversation and extended and meaningful ways with families, whereas now that's really a core part of their work. So it allows us to take the framing that we do to offer some of the knowledge base around building positive productive relationships with families, thinking about an assets base approach. Thinking about the funds of knowledge that family members and communities have to offer thinking about the strategies for building positive productive relationship so it's a real partnership between families, educators and schools and helping to elevate educational opportunities for youth. All of that work and the way that we do the work has some real deep resonance because it's in the moment right now our candidates are in fairly regular touch with families and in fact this is true in particular for our elementary candidates. They can't do any educational work without also engaging the family members because this is a real partnership. Family members are on the calls whether it's a regular phone call or a zoom call or FaceTime. So it also helps our candidates to appreciate the essential nature of this meaningful partnership. I could go on about some of the strategies and resources that were using it that's helpful but actually thought I'd take my last minute I actually wanted to take the opportunity to bring one of my teacher candidates into the conversation for a moment. So I have a really brief email that I got just two days ago from one of my teacher candidates that's really relevant to this conversation so if you'll indulge me I'm going to do a quick read aloud and share a short email from one of my candidates. So it says hi Ira, I hope you're doing well. I just had a long zoom meeting with a mother who's had a really hard time connecting with us because of time constraints and challenges with internet access. She only speaks Spanish so I use my high school Spanish and Google Translate to communicate. Unfortunately her son wasn't home because he was spending time with grandma but I had a wonderful conversation with the mother. It made me extra appreciative of our role playing and rehearsals that we're doing in our seminar course. I started by really checking in with her and asking about things other than schoolwork. At one point I said to her in Spanish the most important thing is that you're all healthy and doing okay right now and I want to be supportive of that. If we're able to get some schoolwork done together that would be a nice bonus and I'm happy to help with that as well. So I shared my screen with her, I went over how to do an addition and subtraction problem so she could help her son use the workbook that we sent home. I also told her how and when I could meet her son over zoom so we could do some more collaborative work together. At the end of the conversation she was so happy that we were both almost in tears. It was her first time to really be in contact with anybody online because I had sent her step by step pictures of how to join a zoom meeting which she didn't know how to do. So as I'm writing this email I'm feeling very proud and happy and feeling a little more ready for family interactions for the coming year. And I wanted to offer that as a reminder about those that we're serving and the work that they're doing to serve others. And also just to share how ridiculously proud I am of all of our teacher candidates and all of yours. I think given the current moment and all of its challenges I'm so deeply hopeful about the future that they're going to bring to us with their level of commitment. It's a deep concern for issues of equity access and inclusion. The future they're going to bring for us for our profession and for those they serve is really bright. And I'm incredibly hopeful to talk to educators like you all because the intentional preparation of the candidates for that type of interaction that doesn't just happen. All of that theory you were talking about in the ways in which you prepare the funds of knowledge the acid based perspective. All that is necessary especially when you have candidates that are so different from the students that they serve. So I'm just deeply grateful for the work that you all are doing to be able to prepare teachers who can have those kinds of interactions and leaders. I know that you're doing the same anemory with the center acts and your candidates so could you share a little bit about what you're doing and how that looks like. Sure, but first I just want to thank I write think everybody on this webinar and all the participants were so encouraged by that email so thank you for taking time to share it with us. The things I want to pick up that I were talked about is about this moment and how this moment is right for how we rethink parent and community engagement and teacher preparation, and I would add that that moment includes a new positionality for parents and teachers and leaders in that relationship to support K 12 students. I think in the moment of the pandemic, there is increased empathy across that those labels, there's increased appreciation across those labels, and there is a willingness to collaborate in ways that I don't think that we have seen in the past because let's be honest so we're all teacher educators, most of us are the one area of teacher development that we haven't really done very well and I don't think the field beyond teacher preparation does well is figure out how to involve and engage schools and parents and families and communities and really authentic reciprocal powerful ways. This pandemic and everything involved in it is pushing us to do that so I'm really appreciative of the fact that this is an equity issue that is being addressed out of necessity right now. So you know traditionally traditional forms of parent involvement and engagement really positions parents as either learners or in service of schools and classrooms and so at UCLA. We're really, we have really been attempting to disrupt that view of parent school interactions and to create a really new paradigm that's more about authenticity it's about reciprocity, being conscious of the humanity of ourselves and others. That also really privileges are individual and collective knowledge skills and power beyond the labels that come with and the meanings behind that label, when you start dissecting people into your just a parent, you're just a teacher, you're just a student teacher you're just a teacher educator. And so in our teacher education program we really believe, like all of our colleagues on the call that one of our primary responsibilities is to help our candidates build positive relationships and families and communities and offer them multiple opportunities for involvement engagement and also solidarity building and I think that's what this moment is helping us to do and I'm really excited about that. So before the pandemic, we have a, we've long had a signature series of courses that build on one another the first of the series is about an ethnographic study into the community so getting to know the community people that live there. Their assets, their needs, their desires and then we move into the second quarter with something more about identity and how do your social identities affect how you see communities, how you see parents, how you see the power of education. And the last part of that series is a course that we call working with parents and families. And in that course candidates create learn about creating and nurturing authentic relationships with families and building with parents and families to improve opportunities for for young people. And as I mentioned in the last webinar. Our teacher education program really does reach out to the other departments and units on the campus to help to help bring expert knowledge that we may not have as teacher educators into our teacher education program. And so, in this case we have drawn upon the expertise of the center x parent empowerment project and local community based organizations like families as schools to serve as not only guest lecturers but to help us to refine the curriculum and to provide provide some support for connecting us with schools and local parent group, someone earlier in the introductions mentioned humility I think Jennifer you mentioned it I think Rebecca mentioned it. When it comes to parent connecting our candidates with parents and communities. I think that's the first value we need to hold on to is that we need to be humble enough to recognize the resources and the assets and the cultural wealth and capital that parents bring into the conversation around how we structure coursework what the content is and what kind of assignments would be evidence that candidates are ready to make that part of their practice. So that's the course series but then what happens. When we have to take this virtual, like all of us we can easily move our courses online. But something else happened at UCLA. Is that when you go virtual. You come together you create something new that builds upon the best of what we, we, what was, because as I reminded us last time, there are things that we really do well. And then there's opportunities to build on those things. So what I worry about is that people are scrambling to create things as opposed to reflecting out what you have, and then enhancing them into this remote environment. So to that end, one of our most recent efforts that we actually launched tomorrow is called conversations of the soul conversations for the soul, which is actually going to take place on Facebook live. And this effort is led by the center x parent empowerment project in collaboration with the center x culture and equity project. And conversations for the soul is going to provide regular opportunities for parents to come together to have real conversation with one another about those school things that matter most to them. To provide the parent audience with information but also and more importantly, to give them space and time to share the challenges that they experienced engaging with schools to help one another problem solve, because they have the answers. If they come together in coalition, they can create these answers for themselves, and then to launch a parent learning community that's ongoing and sustain. And what we have done is we've invited our teacher candidates and our mentor teachers, many of whom are parents themselves to join as equal partners so that they can hear and learn from the voices of parents and community members, and also lend theirs to the conversation. Without that power differential that happens across the two sectors right. So this week's virtual gathering is titled waiting to exhale, and it asked the question. Have you been holding your breath since the beginning of coven 19. It's really going to be a real conversation about parenting during the pandemic. And we have really high hopes that these conversations will impact have an impact on the participant and provide insights that will deepen the discussions that our candidate or teacher candidates are having in their in their 405 parent and family workforce. And as they begin developing their teacher identity, and make parents is invaluable and invaluable partners, part of how they see their, their identity and their practice moving forward, and that parents are resources for student learning and teacher development. Is that a closed group? I'm sorry, I'm raised at a closed group on Facebook line. No, it's open to everyone. And it's not all night. It's at 6pm Pacific time because we want parents to be there and we know how busy parents are during the day so it's an open group and it's going to be an ongoing thing. I also want to mention, I know my time is up, but this activity is really reflective of a statewide effort to really honor the voices of parents and take some of our lead as educators from them. So our state superintendent of public instruction actually last month had his very first parent support circle. And it was intended to provide resources and emotional support for families. And I feel like our conversations for the soul is a more localized effort that aligns with very nicely where the state is going. And then I also want to give a plug for, I don't know if you all read, this probably isn't the right time, but I'm going to take advantage of my 32nd. There was an article in the media and yesterday, I believe it was called we cannot return to campus this fall. And it was written by a high school teacher in Oakland. And he really deconstructs all the challenges for opening in the fall. And I'm really excited to have conversations with our parent and family communities about what are their concerns as their children will be entering schools perhaps sooner than they might feel comfortable with. That's a great pivot actually so thank you for taking the 30 seconds and in the chat they asked for the link if you have a link for the Facebook live. I want to take this chance to pivot back to the audience. You know we were just talking about planning and thinking ahead and so we're curious for you all who are teacher and leader educators. So we have fall planning and what's going on in your institution so we have a poll that we're going to launch that as asking about how, how has your institution or how have your institutions been planning for fall scenarios and we know that there's multiple scenarios that could occur so we're going to go ahead and launch that poll, and you have 30 seconds. It's choose one not all of them. And we know again like we're planning for hybrids some virtual some in person, you might have a BNF place where they're opening. So we want to know if you're doing a lot of planning some planning. A very little. And if you're unaware of your institutions fall planning that's fine. We know some people are further away from the decision makers. We'll give you a couple more seconds. And then we're going to close the poll. And Okay, we see some to a great extent almost 50% to a great extent and some to some extent and it's good to see that very few are not planning at all because we have to be prepared for a variety of scenarios come the fall. And I want to take this time to shift to audience question and answers because we actually have a question about the fall planning. And so I wanted to get to take a question from Pamela Pamela, who is the executive director summit public schools. The question that she has is how are you preparing to build community with newly enrolled candidates, if they will enter your program in a virtual setting. So wanted to see if any of you are thinking about that. You repeat that Maria. How are you planning on building community with your newly enrolled candidates. And I know I've been talking to some of your colleagues, Ira you all have a week orientation usually that's like eight hours a day. Have you been talking about what that looks like. Excuse me let me offer a few quick thoughts so I think for all of us I mean this is a time where we're going to have to be engaged in some real creative problem solving and creative crafting necessity will be the mother mother of invention. And we will build some things that are new and different many of what of which I hope will be exciting and fruitful and valuable. All of the building and creative work that we're doing needs to be founded on core principles values and aspiration. So we can't let go of the things that we know to be true and that drive our work and so community always comes up for us and every conversation we have about how we're going to craft the work that we do. Because it's so essential to the way that we do productive work and the way that we model it for our candidates to do in the schools and classrooms they're going to work. It's relational and it's community oriented. I can say for a fact that I am not in order to speak for my colleagues are we expert on building community from a distance but I have a lot of confidence that it's feasible and possible. We're tooling around with different possibilities this quarter again out of necessity. We've made some mistakes we've had some successes. We will build a range of different kind of online orientation activities. We've been talking about divvying up candidates and starting to get to know them from a distance and different kinds of ways. So that they're you know full in their humanity to us as individuals before we launch and you know you know 100 rectangles at a time. So I think there's a lot of creative possibilities we just have to hold to the fundamental fact that community is essential and then that will drive us to do a range of creative work informal and informal spaces that help us get to the outcomes that we so desire. And that's related to another question from Barbara Burrington the director at the University of Vermont who's asking about describe the new conversations and adaptations you are engaged in with schools and mentors about the fall semester and beyond. And I know Jennifer you started us off at that place so I wanted to know if you had any reflections about that and if anybody wanted to jump in after you. Yeah you know I want to first of all thank Kathy for the last time we were together talking about ways that we should really be focusing on what works. And I think that there are a lot of things that we could learn from this period right now that's working. And so one of the things that we're doing is we were actually because there aren't any ceremonies and there aren't any events that are going on. We're still available. It's the end of the semester and we're conducting a series of focus groups we started yesterday, and we had to today. And we're going to continue to have them with our mentors with our cooperating teachers with our school partners with our faculty or adjuncts, our graduates as well, just talking about what seemed to be really effective for them and we're and we're building we've been having a series of conversations, almost since we had this webinar at last with a lot of different constituents and stakeholders who are weighing in and one of the terms that I use and is 360 is is hopefully getting a 360 perspective on what's happening on behalf of preparing new teachers and leaders, so that we were looking at all sides of this situation. So in June, we're going to. I'm holding a special teacher at policy committee meeting or educator preparation policy committee, where we're all going to come together a lot of faculty and again our school partners will be there as well. And, and arts and sciences as well arts and sciences or education our school partners as well to consider the ways that looking at the data looking at what we've collected and beginning to shape out what we hope to do in the fall and that's that's one of the things that we're we're going to be doing. Again, a previous conversation folks are talking about having a virtual orientation that's going to happen closer in August and bringing in people who have really been thinking about this and we're finding those experts so called experts or individuals who have had some success and to come in to talk to all of us. Further about you know ways that we can build community, learn from each other and work together. If I can jump in. I noticed in the chat a question about trauma informed practices and I want to sort of use that to connect to this question to say that we have been using and thinking about how to use trauma informed practices to connect. Really as a group as Jen has been talking about but individually with our student candidates with our master teachers with our principles and, and the superintendents and with people in our community. And so, in terms of trauma informed practices that really starts with listening and eliciting feelings and fears and, and people's concerns about the time that we're living in, as we think about school placements next year, and the kinds of work that we're both preparing students to do and supporting our teacher candidates to do once they're in the, in the schools and so I think, you know really thinking hard not only on about how our perspective teachers and leaders need to think about how to address the trauma that's very real in the schools and potentially in their own lives, but how to use those practices that we know of starting with kindness and compassion, and really just listening deeply to people to shape the relationships that will form the basis for the learning the teaching and learning that happens in the fall. I think we will stop there because that brings us full circle right back to the values that we started with and I'm just so hopeful, like I said earlier and feel really grateful for you all sharing because I think the threads of collaboration with the community and just being thoughtful and intentional at the work you're doing is so important during this time and it's a great opportunity, I think, for educator preparation to be really relevant and really useful in a way that hasn't always been the case and the idea that we're really, you all are really centering K-12 partners and the needs of our students and schools is really powerful and I think is a way that we need to continue forward past the pandemic and to continue to build on these practices that you have continued and innovated on so I wanted to thank you all for sharing your knowledge and thinking during this time, especially coming back again. I feel like we could do this every month. We'd also like to extend the thank you to our partner AACTE for co-sponsoring this webinar with us. Our partners and presenters have had some wonderful resources available on their websites as shown on these next couple slides. These resources are available on the web page shared in the chat box. I'll link to the recording of this webinar as well as to all the resources we share today will be sent to you via email. And finally, I'd like to mention that a survey will appear in your window when you leave this webinar and we'd really appreciate it if you take the time to give us your feedback. Thank you once again for joining us today and we hope you have a wonderful rest of the day.