 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 here is to direct the Educator Preparation Laboratory, Ed Prep Lab as we call it, is a partnership between Learning Policy Institute and Bank Street 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 minutes for more people to join, feel free to introduce yourselves in the chat box by telling us your name, organization, and where you're from. Hi Kathy from the University of Maryland, good to see that you're on and Kelly from SFUSD. Hi Rod, Dan Brown, good to see you all. I'm glad you're taking the time to join us today. We know that with everything that's going on. Everybody is super busy so we appreciate your time and look forward to engaging in the chat and in the Q&A over the course of the next hour. So let's go ahead and get started. Thank you for joining us today in this one hour webinar. Again, I'd like to thank our partner the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education for their support for this webinar under their leadership of Lynn Gangone. I'd also like to let the audience know that this webinar is being recorded and you'll receive a recording of it via email in a few days. So today we'll be sharing some insights on how educator preparation programs, all of whom today who are with us today are Ed Prep Lab members are adapting during this pandemic. While we will touch on issues of PK-12 teaching and learning, the focus of this webinar and the discussion will be on teacher and principal preparation. Our speakers are national leaders in education preparation from across the United States. They come from three different states, all with varying contexts. And these contexts are constantly shifting, given the nature of COVID-19, as well as the policy responses from states in the area of educator prep. We're talking very nimble and responsive during this time, as such. This conversation is a discussion about how they're adapting educator preparation during this time with the same mission being preparing teachers and leaders for deeper learning and equity. We've organized this webinar a bit differently than those that we've posted in the past with the bulk of the hour be a conversation amongst the panelists. We also have a few polls for you to take over the course of the webinar, and then we'll end with Q&A and some engagement with you all. If you have any questions, please click the Q&A button at the bottom of your screen. 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 dive into the discussion, I'd like to introduce each of our distinguished panelists briefly. Rebecca Chung is the Program Director of the Principal Leadership Institute. You'll hear a refer to it as PLI at UC Berkeley in the Graduate School of Education, a program that provides leadership preparation, leader induction and leader professional development with a focus on creating more equitable and just schools in the San Francisco Bay Area. Annemarie Francois is a faculty member at UCLA's Graduate School of Education and Information Studies and the Executive Director of UCLA Center X, where her leadership guides the work of equity based educator preparation, development and support for urban school communities. She's currently the University of California representative on the Commission on Teacher Convention and representative on the LA School Board Curriculum and Instruction Committee. Ira Litt is an Associate Professor at Stanford University and Director of the Stanford Elementary Teacher Education Program. In addition to teacher preparation and elementary education, his focus is on educational equity and the design and purpose of education and schooling as well as the exploration of the educational experience of students often marginalized by the school context. Jennifer Robinson is Professor and Executive Director of the Center of Pedagogy at Montclair State University, the institutional unit that coordinates initial teacher preparation and the simultaneous renewal of teacher education and the school. Her areas of expertise include include the recruitment and retention of students and teachers of color in elementary and higher education and urban education. Kathy Schultz is Dean and Professor at the Senior Boulder School of Education. Prior appointments have included Dean of the School of Education at Mills College and Professor and Director of the Teacher Education Program at the University of Pennsylvania. Her work as a scholar has been focused on practices that support teachers working with marginalized populations in high poverty areas. Join me in welcoming virtually our panelists today. As a reminder, if you have any questions, please click the Q&A button at the bottom of your screen. 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. So before we get started, I'd like to start with a quick poll of the audience around state guidance to get us warmed up. And this is a poll that is for those of you who are engaged in teacher and leader preparation directly. So for all of you folks who are working with universities or in programs that support teacher and leader preparation, we're going to launch a poll for you right now around state guidance. We have 30 seconds. Our poll is about to close and then we'll get the results as well. And for those of you who have been engaged in teacher and leader preparation, it looks like a lot of you have no about the requirements around clinical and the licensing requirement for teacher preparation, but not so much around the leadership. So I'm glad that we have some folks on the panel today who'll be able to speak to leadership preparation and what state guidance is around that. Thank you for engaging in the poll. So I wanted to start off today with all of you all. You are all leaders and your institutions in different roles making critical decisions every day individually, collaboratively with your teams. And it's a heavy burden. It's a heavy load. So I'm curious, just really quickly in a couple words or phrase to get us to hear everyone's voice. What values are you holding as a way to guide your decisions? What centers you and your colleagues as you work in the shipping landscape of educator preparation during COVID-19? Do you want to start us off, Kathy, with a quick. Thank you and good afternoon everyone. In our programs, we center compassion, care and creating humanizing context for learning and teaching. Thank you. Jennifer, do you want to. Sure. Hi everyone. I'd say that we probably focus a lot on extending grace to folks under tremendous stress and pressure. Being humble, as we consider our partners priorities above our own and also providing as much needed support whenever it is within our power and our capability to offer it. Ira. Thanks Maria. Hi everyone. Thanks to our host and thanks to everybody who's joined us. I appreciate the opportunity to be in conversation. And really want to acknowledge all that folks who joined us are doing to uplift others. It's especially important that we're connecting as community in these challenging times. So some words that guide me and my colleagues in our work here at Stanford, our community and relationship, equity and excellence and sustainability and humility. Great. Thank you, Rebecca. Thank you for joining us today. We've been really inspired by John Powell's words and work during this time he's the director of the othering and belonging Institute at UC Berkeley, specifically his words around staying socially connected and building solidarity, while socially distant. I've heard of being physically distanced, but socially connected. And in a Marie. I think that the values that I personally and professionally are holding at this time are humility service, courage and hope. And I think that's what really centering our work right now across the state. Our institution UCLA as well as our colleagues across the state is really we center the humanity of our students, the humanity of each other and the humanity of this communities that we serve. Great. Thank you so much for sharing that because I think also just having folks here from you and what's guiding you will also help to show as a filter for your responses to the question. So thank you. And let's jump in. What guidance has your state provided on licensing and credentialing we saw that there was a range of responses to our poll about what types of guidance they're saying and know about. And how are your educator preparation programs responding to school closures in light of COVID-19. Jennifer, do you want to go ahead and get started. Sure. Thanks, Maria. I would say to begin with, we have as close a relationship as we can with our department of education, our deans and directors meet regularly monthly, but since COVID-19. We've actually started having weekly meetings with our department of ed representatives. And we also try to include all ETS and TPA as well so that we can get a really good idea of what is actually happening and our state, keeping in mind that our State Department of Education is really focused on the P12 students, their families in the community and prioritizing that group first and foremost. And so, you know, I think being as humble and as patient as possible, while we're looking for and hearing from our state representatives about about guidance for teacher and for leader ed. And so we do have guidance and essentially they're giving our educator preparation programs as much discretion as possible and leeway as possible to fulfilling the requirements for critical hours and meeting those licensure requirements. And that extends to our leadership programs as well as some of our other licensure programs. There's a live link that our department of ed partners have provided which provides updated guidance on a regular basis that we can go to the very fact that we're able to meet on a weekly basis and that enables us to ask questions. The department has also put out a survey that all of our EPPs have responded to and so they are definitely on have their fingers on the pulse of what we need. The other is that they have gone to the governor because of course much of our licensure requirements are in law, they're part of regulation. So some of those regulations have to be eased. And so we've our commissioner of education has also received the leeway to make adjustments based upon the needs of the EPPs at this time. But again, we have to be as humble and as patient as we need to be in order to be able to adjust to these closures. So I think I'll stop there and give someone else another chance to. Oh, great. If I have been about what's going on in California, because I was just this morning at a California commission and teacher credentialing meeting that is making decisions and talking about how we're responding right now. And it's a big question right because I've been doing this for a long time and I've never experienced anything like this before. And you've got to be nimble, you've got to be flexible, but you also have to be mindful of what are the things we can change, what are the things we can't change in our on our own authority. And what you don't want to do is give up your core values and you don't want to, you don't want to lower the standards of our profession while you're making these decisions. And California, California actually has been very quick in responding and they have been providing guidance rapidly. They are working. I have to give a shout out to them because they are working over time to make sure that the people on the ground have the information that they need to be informed as they move forward. And we have been very appreciative as Educator Preparation programs to our commission for just their guidance and their support. So in California, we have right now about 80,000 teacher candidates in the pipeline. 26,000 of those are in their first year of teaching or first year of preparation. And so you can imagine between school closures, university campus closures and the closing of testing centers. It's cause a lot of anxiety. And so what we're trying to do with the through the CTC is really provide relief and flexibility the same kind of relief and flexibility that Jennifer spoke up for both the candidates and the program so that programs can have more autonomy in making decisions for the students and the communities that they're serving. This morning they re-voted to approve what's called a virtual term waiver as one of the ways that candidates who are close to completion of their preliminary credential can complete and finish their coursework, their pending coursework fieldwork and assessments during their induction year. It brings up other tensions though when you make these these decisions other issues arise. So we've got to look a little more closely at now at what the induction year would look like now that variable term waivers are an option. We too have been in constant communication with our state representatives the university office of the president and all of the schools because what we're finding is that we've got to draw upon the resources of the university outside of education to help us to navigate this time of COVID with our students. And so I think you should know that UCLA, aside from our induction program, we don't do a whole lot of online or remote learning and teaching. And so I want to commend our candidates and our faculty for very quickly going online and doing the kind of professional development and learning that they've had to do to get this started almost overnight, it seems like. So some of the flexibility around clinical practice is we've been able to modify what constitutes the 600 hours what counts towards 600 hours of clinical practice that's required for the preliminary credential in California. And what we have found is many of our candidates and their mentor teachers are able to do the work. Obviously they're able to do some online teaching with real students, but they're also spending a lot of time together online analyzing teaching videos analyzing student work together. Really refining and and rethinking and looking for how to how how might we change this particular lesson or unit to be offered online and keeping keeping it culturally relevant, keeping those high level practices at the core. And so really I just really been inspired by our candidates. One of the things that I do want to put a shout out to our candidates for doing is we decided that if candidates, many of our candidates are volunteers at what they call the grab and go center. So the Los Angeles Unified School District is serving meals out in the community breakfast and lunch, and they need a volunteers to help do this because I heard they served over a million meals I want to say it's almost like 10 million meal. And so for our candidates who are out there serving the communities in that capacity, we're counting it as clinical practice, because they're making connections with with those families as they are handing out meal assessment. It continues to be a challenge for us primarily because the commission really can't do anything about that you know you've got to get executive order to make changes to anything that is in statute so as the situation evolves, we will continue to talk to our state representatives to see if we can ease up without letting go some of our quality of our program. Rebecca Ira you but you're both also in California. How are you seeing the guidance affecting what your programs look like and what you're actually doing the work in in in schools or in virtual learning spaces. Go ahead Rebecca. Okay, so I want to echo Anna Marie's acknowledgement of California leaders in trying hard to respond to needs in a very diverse state. As a program leader, I want to say this is a really important time for us to be active with our policymakers. Policymakers need to hear from programs that are doing on the ground work because we bring we have our ear to the ground with K 12 partners with our students, and we know their lived experiences and we're trying to enact the policies. And so they need our input and our thoughts in a collaborative spirit. This is back to what we were talking about in terms of the values as well. This is not the time to critique our policymakers I think to the point where we are not also supporting them to develop the best solutions possible. The other piece I just want to mention quickly is this idea of future forward thinking and implications for programs in the future and lamenting what we had or what we had just a month ago. I think this is a real tension that we experienced as program leaders because it's really easy to fall into the idea that our students are not getting something because the environment is not the same. At the same time, they are getting something in field work that no one else has had the opportunity to receive. And I think it's important for us to hold that tension in a way that also shapes our programs after this pandemic. Yeah, how are we innovating during this time that might be far reaching and improving preparation, even post COVID-19. Ira, what about you? I know that some of your candidates are actually still able to work with their mentor teachers and engage in clinical practice. So what does that look like and what are you doing at Stanford in terms of responding to the state guidance? Yeah, thanks for the question. I want to underscore what my colleagues have offered in terms of appreciating all the colleagues, state leaders, community leaders and all the work that they're doing. I also want to recognize that for all of us and for all of them, we should not forget that we are all living in an emergency and in a crisis, which is essentially foundational to all of this creative, imaginative, important work that we're doing. And we can't lose sight of the fact that we're all living through an emergency while we're being challenged to rise to this occasion. And I think if we can remember to keep that at the center, it will help us to underscore the humanity of this moment that, again, several of my colleagues shared. So I just wanted to add that to the conversation. It doesn't diminish the challenge and the opportunities that we have, but I think it'll help us to care for one another while we're doing this challenging and difficult work. So you asked about some really concrete examples of ways in which our candidates have been fortunate to be able to stay engaged during these unusual times. And I have to say it's actually been one of the bright spots for us, the degree of connectivity that our candidates have maintained with their schools, their cooperating teachers, their students, families and communities have really been strong and it's been a highlight. It was a puzzle for us initially. How would this look? How would we foster those relationships? But we basically built on the strength of the relationships we have with schools and districts already. We presume that our candidates are contributing members of the professional staff of those schools and districts. And, you know, we tested out that proposition in this moment by asking our colleagues, how did they want to essentially view and utilize the candidates in our program. They were very quick to return a very similar orientation inviting them in as important colleagues in this work. So our candidates are actively participating probably more actively than they were before in grade level meetings and school level meetings. Our candidates bring a lot of resources to schools and communities. Many of them are more facile with educational technology than some of the master teachers that they're working with. So they have some of that comfort and expertise to offer. Schools need some things that extra resources provide. The need for schools to be in communication with families is very high. I think all of us would say that it normally should be really high, but the demand right now is especially strong. And so having extra folks to reach out to be in touch with families to talk to youth and their parents simultaneously on a regular basis to check in about sort of human experience along with academic experience has been one of the places where our candidates I think have shined. And then when it comes to some academic kinds of work, I've really been impressed and excited with some of the inventiveness and the creativity. We have some high school English teacher candidates who are having their students do photo journal essays around lived experience right through stay at home. So taking photos, building websites where you're both, you know, writing and using artistic expression to write to be in the moment and make it authentic and engaging. We have elementary candidates who are doing some fabulous online video art lessons that again their students are finding really engaging. So it's a way to bring them into the work and then they can share the work that they're doing by taking a quick photograph and posting it, which again makes it kind of a vibrant, right, shareable experience for others. I mean, I could go on with other experiences, but I think that also contributes to some uplift within our own community because as somebody else said there's a real sense of loss amongst our candidates. This is not what they signed up to do. It's not what any of us signed up to do. And so while we're helping them grieve through that process of loss and letting go. It's also important that we find moments to celebrate and share joy in the work. So those are just a few things that come to mind. I would like to highlight that especially I think now could be a key time for programs. I know that many of you who have strong relationships. I know this is true at Montclair with their partner district. That is what's getting through the relationships that they're have, but it's also a time if some relationships need mending the idea that these preparation programs are really resources and can really be sources of support and personal personnel power to help the K-12 students is really important. Kathy, what's going on in Colorado? Well, thank you. So our state also very quickly told us that they would trust our judgment on candidates readiness. And so they basically said it sounds like like New Jersey if we recommend our teachers for licensure, they trust the process. Again, like New Jersey, we actually meet as deans and directors of teacher education programs from across the state and weekly with our Colorado Department of Higher Education and Department of Education and it's been a really wonderful collaborative process. They've been, we've been hearing from them about all the sort of next steps like when is practice going to be given and what happens if it's not given this year, can student teachers start. And again, I think they've been nimble and have been working with our state legislature in much of the same ways. We did approach this much like everybody's been talking about and went to our partner districts and partner schools immediately and said, What can we do and so we did sort of center the needs of the schools and the teachers as we sort of thought about what our own student teachers should be doing, but sort of structurally some of the kinds of things that haven't been mentioned yet are are things that structures that we put into place. For instance, in our secondary humanities program, we replace the Colorado teacher evaluation rubric which usually we have to fill out at the end to evaluate our student teachers and recommend them for licensure as an alternative final student teaching assessment tool that made a lot more sense during these times. So the tool is designed to address this reality that we couldn't give them the same kind of personal observation and feedback right now that we usually do. And so we asked the candidates to think, act and reflect on a particular area of growth that they noticed in their own teaching that and the ways that they've been able to explore this in this virtual environment and how what they're doing now supports their aims and teaching for equity and justice, which of course, like I think all of our programs is at the center of our teacher education program. So candidates are writing two reflective memos to capture their experience and then their field coaches or their supervisors are meeting with them to help them sort of reflect on their journals and reflections to implement and to sort of think forward into the future. We're seeing across institutions the creative use of supervisors now who would generally be in the field and in classrooms observing and doing evaluations really being used for one-on-one check-ins for these assessments. I think that's really important to think about how we engage in the regular business of teacher and leader preparation given the constraints. I'd like to turn to the audience right now again to do another poll. We want to ask you folks who are again directly engaged in teacher and leader preparation. We wanted to ask you about some of your practices and how you're engaging with your coursework and what types of works being done as you move to online and virtual learning. You have 30 seconds to complete the poll. All right, so good to hear that most people are feeling somewhat prepared and well-prepared to move online, and it looks like people are still engaging in clinical experiences and this new virtual reality, so that's good, the majority. And it's excellent that Canada is finding new ways to contribute. I think this idea of resources and being able to support our K-12 students is a really important contribution that preparation can make at this time. So that's encouraging to hear. So I wanted to turn and really drill down a lot of the registrants asked about equity in their questions. All of you are engaged in programs that have a clear commitment around equity and social justice. So I want to ask, how are you centering equity first with your candidates? We know that there's a disproportionate impact of this on our candidates of color and those candidates from lower SES homes. And tied to that, it's also this idea of social-emotional learning and trauma-informed practice. So I'd love to hear from you all about what are some of the practices and how are the ways that you're still centering those core commitments to equity and social-emotional learning in your program. So UCLA, like all of the programs are presented here, social justice and equity is just a foundational value that lives and breathes in everything that we do in our program. And what we find is that, especially right now as we have our students remotely, we're teaching with them remotely, that modeling the kind of culturally relevant and equitable practices that we hope that our candidates will engage in and K-12 schools is still kind of foundational to how we're communicating with them and giving them practices that they can hold on to. And at the same time, similar to what I mentioned before, we're also really keenly aware that our candidates are struggling to meet the physical, emotional and psychological needs of their own family, even as they're trying to complete their program and trying to be there for their peers in their classroom. So we want to always be mindful of honoring that. And so what we're doing is trying to shift some of our coursework so that it lifts up addressing trauma in this moment in explicit kind of ways. In another instance in our principal leadership institute, the assignments, their core assignment is usually to take something from their classroom, from their school, and do kind of an inquiry around it, and they have multiple assignments that's connected to that. Right now, those assignments are really focused on as a school leader. And then you're supporting and addressing the trauma that the teacher, students, parents, and families are experiencing now. And then how will that inform once you go back to normal, which we all know is never going to be normal. Once you go back, how will those practices translate into the years to come. We're opening up spaces for our candidates to share their lived experiences, both academically, personally, professionally, and helping them, giving them space so that they can talk through their own trauma. Because if they can't talk through their own trauma and they're holding on to it, it doesn't matter what we're teaching them online. It doesn't. They're filtering all of that from a space of anxiety, a space of frustration. And at the same time, though, we're also mindful of the fact that our education faculty and teacher candidates, we're not social workers, and we're not clinicians. And so what we've really had to do is, and fortunately for us UCLA has some world class counseling psychological service mental health and wellness units on campus. So what we're doing is we're reaching out to them and having them come into our classrooms to teach us as in professional development and with our candidates about how to take care of ourselves and to take care of our students in this time, time of COVID, COVID. And that could take the, it's taken the shape of webinars, guest lecturers, making accessible online resources that used to just be you were only able to access them if you were at UCLA and making them more open for the field to use. And I also know that my colleagues at in the Cal State system, they've made more formal agreements with their counseling offices to co construct learning experiences for for their students. And then lastly, I think one of our core ways of helping young people that are going into the profession, think about trauma informed practice is we push them to take care of themselves, like self care is really important. So we have them doing meditation, we have them getting presentations, particularly around. And you talked about equity a little bit before we know that many of our candidates come from them grew up in those the most underserved communities that we currently serve. And they have a different load that they're carrying than some of our candidates. So we're doing some of these work in infinity groups to so you know our African American student group or Latino student group might come together and do meditation or yoga. And during that time they can discuss and talk about the different way trauma is affecting them as teachers of color, or them as as women. So, Matt, you know, take the, the, it looks like community meetings, coffee hours over zoom book clubs, things like that. Really connecting. Rebecca. Yeah, I would like to add on. And just say that before this pandemic arrived. We were already investigating issues of principle and leader burnout and resilience in a profession that already has a high burnout we have a whole nother layer now to think about related to social emotional learning and specifically we've been thinking about this concept of critical resilience, of ourselves as individuals situated in systems, and what the physical cognitive and collective dimensions are of staying critically resilient and leaders staying critically resilient. So I point that out because I think that that that work continues in an accelerated format now under the shelter in place order. And I think one of the ways that we have to exhibit and model critical resilience is to also model how transparently how the larger culture, the larger issues at play in our country are coming and manifesting inside our programs and in our schools. The most obvious example of this would be the rise again I won't say the new rise because it's happened many times in our history of xenophobia towards Asian Americans, you know, whether it's people that are being personally attacked, whether it's fear for family members, whether they're undocumented and also facing xenophobia. There are many that's the most obvious example that we have and we have to talk about those things and certainly as an Asian American leadership preparation director I need to talk about those things. And so a lot of it is modeling. I told my students that I'm experiencing a lot of what I call silent outrage outrage in my head, because my children are ever present in my house. And I don't have the space, the safety space for example, to really say what I need to say sometimes or that I'm feeling sometimes, and to build a model that as a leader, and then to give permission to others to be able to say yes I'm also experiencing silent outrage, or maybe I can't let it be silent anymore. And also this issue of xenophobia is just one of many other oppressions that are ongoing in our in our country, and that have been here that are only more exacerbated potentially by this situation and so I think it's important for us to understand what it means for certain communities when we ask them to wear facial coverings, for instance, and we think about issues of racial profiling, whether it's what we're thinking about your legal status, or your language fluency, whatever it might be I think it has to be braided and integrated into our daily work as programs and to be ever present of how these larger systemic issues penetrate deeply into our daily work and into our daily interactions. Can I just, I appreciated that so much, Rebecca, because as you know having these kind of hard and courageous conversations around equity, and how the very things you just spoke of the fear of tackling and addressing them head on. We've dealt with this in teacher at administrator at education preparation programs for a really long time. And now it's not an option. We must have these conversations with ourselves and with our students, because it's all around us. And so I've been telling my staff that let's look for the opportunity that this is presenting us right because we can fall into the rabbit hole of all the problems COVID has presented, but I think that this has required all of us to confront to name and confront the kinds of inequities and injustices that so many communities face that we have chosen not to in the path. Thank you for those comments, Rebecca. I want to just add to the conversation because I like the idea that you're saying Rebecca, we as faculty as leaders have to model. What we're hoping that our students will will learn from us and I think as they watch us. I've had a lot more conversations and interactions, not only with current students but even former students coming back and contacting me and reaching out and us having conversations because because they're asking those questions, you know, how do how do I deal with this and I'm asking back to, you know, asking those same questions of them as well. I just want to build on what you were saying in terms of some of our faculty, many of our adjuncts some of our former students are coming and they're they're conducting workshops and leadership speaker series weekly series and a lot of the the content of those speaker series is all about social emotional learning so creating a socially and emotionally rich school environment is one of the topics. And then also talking about the response, you know, addressing student mental health and counseling needs is one of the other, you know, sessions that our former students are offering. Also, I don't know if you're aware of this but crisis planning there are actually FEMA certificate options and so one of our adjuncts is actually offering that so that students can actually get access to this information about how do you how do you prepare and how do you respond to crisis. And we do have some who are talking about special education programs and services in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic and and certainly one of our faculty members is also offering best practices for serving English language learners and their families during this time so a lot of what we're doing is trying to provide services and opportunities for our students to learn from the current situation. We also are encouraging students to work with one faculty person who is maybe they're focusing on a particular interest area around the pandemic that they want to go deeper and learn from and and they're all getting credit for all of this too so we've got many of our candidates are attending these sessions so that they can learn not only from the faculty but from each other as well. I also want to highlight the fact that we have a very strong relationship with our school districts and we've provided a lot of online workshops drawing upon many of our faculty on campus from counseling from the psychology department even our school slide program offering workshops for our current experienced teachers and administrators in our partner districts and they have been flooding those workshops because we're trying to provide the kind of support that we know that our teachers need our administrators need to help them and also our partnership with our statewide organization to provide computer and technology support are providing free workshops for New Jersey educators across any any districts workshops as well as live support to teachers so we're trying to give as many of our educators access to the kind of supports that they need in order to be able to do this work and again I want to underscore what everyone's been saying and and that is it's not it's not difficult to bring up the issues of equity in this environment because it's right on our faces you know and and it's giving us an opportunity to to reinforce the things that perhaps students are reading in in some articles or both chapters but now they're experiencing it and they're seeing it for themselves and we're hoping and and knowing that they're not turning a blind eye to what they're seeing around them and we're pointing that out. Thank you Jennifer I think this idea of this really being an opportunity. What I'm hearing is these different partnerships this way of being cross discipline of really circling around our candidates and the K 12 community during this time is so important. I'm looking at the time and I know that we want to take some of our audience questions. But I do want to know. Kathy Ira, what are you thinking about in terms of the future, like what is, you know, we're dealing with a lot of what's going on right now. But when you think about this summer when you think about the fall. What are your plans and how are you thinking about that so we'll we'll end with those two and then you turn to a few audience questions. So I'll say first, just to underline some of the points that my colleagues have said that we're trying to use this as an opportunity to do creative things that will last longer than this crisis but into the future. Our partner schools interestingly have been enthusiastic when we've been reaching out to them about student teaching placements next fall. Of course, nobody's decided what the neither universities nor K 12 schools, but we're talking with them about what their needs are and again, you know, as we've said again and again, we're trying to center the needs of our schools as we make these decisions, but we have been surprised by how enthusiastic they've been at this point, our districts are saying that they're planning for an in person start, but everybody needs to be online and so as Jen was saying, we're also offering courses this summer on teaching online critical pedagogies for teaching online to our K 12 teachers so that we can support them both in person but through coursework over the summer. We're one of the new innovations that we're thinking about is instead of having a student teacher start in the middle of August, we're going to try to see if it's possible for them to meet their teachers in the summer and so they can work together to do some of the planning that they're all doing and because so many of us are sitting in our offices or bedrooms in front of computer screens. We want to take advantage of that time and and and make the connections even stronger. So those are just a couple of things, you know, I guess we just want to be responsive. We want to think about how what the students are learning will help them and go plan that help them in their future and we want to again foreground equity and justice and all that we do. It's all three. Thanks for those ideas. Let me just add one quick thing I know Maria you're want to give our audience members an opportunity to ask some questions to I think I think we can't forget in this really challenging unique moment that we know a lot about quality practice principles and foundational knowledge and ideas and that can travel across context and we can't we we can't jettison all that we know all of our professional knowledge and expertise because the context has changed so as we're figuring out ways to retool to meet the moment to be creative and innovative. There are things that we know and we need to rely on principles of effective practice, our core mission and our core values, the aspirations we have for our candidates for educators in the field. And for the students families and communities that they serve and I think if we use those principles and foundational ideas and broad aspirations we have. We won't have we it'll be a big lip but we won't have trouble coming up with creative solutions just like some of the ones that Kathy shared. I think we're, we're potentially, you know in dangerous territory when we're thinking about what from our sort of current model and design because we need to start in person student teaching late or because we have a little less contact time should we just take 80% of what we do because we have 80% of the calendar year I think that's not the right way to think about this complicated design project it's what do we know about effective educator preparation clinical work matters a lot there's a lot there's a strong research base for that so we have to be creative about what clinical work looks like. Right, we, we know that a depth of knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge is really valuable for helping future teachers know how to be effective in their work. There's lots of ways to do that and the local context in which we've each been preparing educators is different than it is from one another but we're all doing a terrific job. And that's true across all the educators who are on this call folks who are working internationally in different contexts, and I think actually if we remind ourselves of that. We can see that there really can be productive positive creative ways to get to a similar end that we have aspirations for even if the pathways a little bit different. Absolutely well said. That's how we opened up the webinar is that you've always been committed these programs to high quality teacher and leader preparation so how does that continuing in this context. So we have a question from Samantha Vargas a program assistant at Carnegie Corporation of New York and she's asking in what ways were you under prepared for this context and how can we learn from this. And what can funders do to create resources to help. I'll jump in. I think we were under prepared as a country because we had no idea what it would mean for schools to close down and what it would mean to have this new kind of education. And of course, what I'm worried about is that we're not studying what's working right now, and we're so much of this and you know everybody saying it's emergency education it's not online education, but we're so much in the midst of it we're not figuring out what's really working well and so funders could help us study that and could help us really work in in a qualitative way as well as a survey kind of way, and look very carefully at what's worked and really collate what we can do in the future. I think the other thing that people are really looking for now are high quality videos of classroom practice because we know people aren't in classrooms are in schools to be leaders, we're not going to have. We need resources to sort of analyze critically analyze what's going on. And one of those resources is from National Board for professional teaching standards they have the atlas library of accomplished teachers that's a great resource for videos of teachers. One other thing I might add just bringing back our you know conversation about equity and access you know we know that a lot of our candidates may not have equitable access to the kind of resources that distance learning may require. And that's true of some of the schools and districts that we partner with. So I think building broader coalitions that might include funders, public policymakers and I he's could really help us lift everyone along the way and make sure that we're not losing anyone as we, you know as we work towards this, you know, unusual, but creative future. I was just going to add that, in addition to what Kathy and Ira said I think it's important for us to engage young people and parents and community in what they think schools should be imagined to be in the future after this situation and so I think we need to. It would be great to see funding supporting that kind of work and engagement with the young people who are most affected in the situation. All right, I think we have time for one quick other question with responses from y'all. A lot of people are really interested in concerned how future candidates are learning to work with students with disabilities in this context so wondering if any of you can speak briefly and succinctly about some of the work that you're doing with your candidates. I'll just underscore I think our candidates are doing a fabulous job as well as their teachers and schools at finding terrific opportunities for learning both for teacher candidates. So, taking, for example, small groups or one on one opportunities to engage with either ELs or students with specific disabilities. So, one knowledge and foundational work that we already know trying to find ways to differentiate finding different ways to engage providing additional opportunities additional supports for assignments and having our teacher candidates provides that for schools and districts and it's part of why I think they're enthusiastic to have them there now and are looking forward to having them with a work with them next fall. I would agree with Ira and I would shift the question a little bit, because I think we need to be more creative in this moment on how we support parents of students with disabilities to maximize the home learning that's going on right now. I mean, you were fortunate enough in Center X to have a parent project that is, has coalitions of parents that they meet with regularly online. And while that's helpful, there's also the question of what about the parents that don't have access to be part of the community. So, I think that looking forward, we need to pay more attention to how we support parents as school changes, because when school changes for this student, home life changes for the parents. Unfortunately, that's all the time that we have today for questions, but there's such an interest and there is an opportunity for you provide feedback for the webinar so there's topics that you want to go in deeper if there's a desire to continue to have these conversations that we really see as emergent. So we're not saying we have the answers that we're just higher lighting practices that folks are doing in these conversations, please do share that if there's a continued interest, we'll be happy to bring folks together to do that. Please join me in thanking our panelists virtually. Thank you again for sharing your valuable information about how you're adapting during COVID-19. I think the way that we talk together and think together is most important for meeting the needs of our K-12 students through high quality preparation for teachers and leaders. So we appreciate your time, especially when you're busy doing the work. I'd also like to extend the thank you to our partner AACPE for co-sponsoring this webinar with us. So we have some resources we'd like to share. Some of them we spoke about today. On the next couple of slides you'll see some links. I just want you to know that the links will be up. They're already up on our website, so don't still need to take a picture with your phone or a screenshot. They're available for you right now. A link to this recording of the webinar as well as all the resources we've shared today will be sent out to everyone via email. And finally, I'd like to mention that a survey that I mentioned before will appear in your window when you leave the webinar. We'd appreciate your feedback, especially if this was helpful and you'd like to dive deeper into some additional comments. What would be helpful for you all is we do the good work of meeting the needs of all of our students. We hope you have a wonderful day and thank you again for joining us.