 So, good morning, everyone. My name is Rodrigo Lopez. I am the Director of P20 Initiatives at Illinois, Northern Illinois University. I have the great pleasure to also be working on the NIU Illinois CTE project in collaboration with the Illinois State Board of Education. But I also lead alongside Dr. Jason Klein, who's joining us here today, the Illinois P20 Network. I also do want to take a quick second to acknowledge our other colleague, Mr. Ben Owen, who is also part of the CTE project here at NIU and works alongside our colleagues at ISME. I don't see if, I don't believe anyone from ISB is here. They were going to try and join us, but if they do, I will probably take a quick second to go ahead and acknowledge them, but give them a little bit of time to go ahead and introduce themselves, maybe say a few words. I have spoken a little bit about the sign-in form, so for those that just recently joined us, I'm going to go ahead and do that again. If you can please take a quick second to sign in. We'd love to know who is joining us for these events. And lastly, if you could, before I turn it over to Bill Rose to introduce himself. If you could introduce yourselves via the chat box, that would be great. So at this time, I'm going to go ahead and turn it over to Bill. Hello, everyone. My name is Bill Rose and I am one of the new members of the NIU Illinois CTE project. I'm taking the role as a CTE educator on that team and we are just really excited to really move forward with some of the career-connected Illinois efforts. And so one of those efforts is making sure that all of our students throughout the state this summer. We launched a summer speaker series that focused on ensuring access to and success in CTE classrooms. This was based on a focus on special populations and non-traditional careers of the Perkins Five Act. So we've touched on three main ideas around the Perkins Five Act, which is family and community engagement and post-secondary placement. The second one is active recruitment of special populations into CTE programs and non-traditional careers. And then the third one was the elimination of barriers for individual CTE students. For each topic, we had a keynote speaker that basically presented with an educator panel to learn more about these specific strategies and best practices. This second part of that, those discussions is actually taking a look from individual panelists throughout the state that are doing this kind of work. And so we have two speakers, but before I get to them, just wanted to recognize Dr. Amanda Bistoni from CAST, who was the lead of this topic a few weeks ago and really presented some compelling information about UDL and universal design learning. So it was just such an amazing presentation. As an educator, there were things that I didn't even know that she was bringing up using the UDL focus. So we're going to go ahead and introduce our panelists for today's speaker series, and I'll turn it over to Ninja and then we'll have Craig go. Hi, good morning. Thanks for having me here today. My name is Ninja Adrizi. I'm one of the associate principals at Barrington High School. I oversee teaching and learning. But I'm also one of the teachers in our education program CTE certified in developing the career pathway for education. We are running like the state of Illinois suggesting or recommending with the early education pass which has been very well developed at Barrington High School and now we're adding the secondary and or basically the education pass which I oversee and hopefully will speak to that. Barrington High School is also in collaboration with Equal Opportunity School since about 2015. So a lot of the outreach programs we have for our underrepresented students in that regards, we are mimicking for our CTE program. So thanks for having me here this morning. Thank you. Hi, and I'm Craig Stenberg. I'm in the Rockford Public School District District 205. I teach at Jefferson High School. I am the, the engineering pathway instructor as well as the computer science pathway instructor here, which has a real nice synergy between those two, those two areas. And I'm looking forward to sharing some some insights on how I recruit students and bring students into those pathways. Thank you both for being here. And again, if you have not placed an introduction in the chat if you're a participant. Just watching go ahead and introduce yourself in the chat. And that way, everyone can see those those statements. So we'll go ahead and get started on, you know, a few of the questions that were present that we've presented and one of the ones that specifically I like is, you know, does your school or district have a direct policy initiative on how opportunities and CTE programs are communicated to special populations. And why don't we start with Craig and then we'll go to Ninja. We have district-wide as well as school-wide initiatives in place. Rockford Public Schools has been working in the academy model for quite a few years now. And so as part of that structure, the district has an Academy Expo. This is an event where students from all the high schools in the district hop on buses and arrive at a central location. The location varies from year to year. Sometimes it's at the big convention center downtown where the, you know, the Rockford Ice Hogs play. And so it's really unique because it brings the entire community together. And so it's the community that is showcasing the various careers, what they do within their individual businesses and how that relates to the academies in general and specifically CTE within the high school. So the students are introduced to that early on. And then as the year progresses, the schools have individual Academy Pathway, I guess more pathway-specific showcases where in the library, you know, typically here at my high school, but, you know, the other high schools in the district, you know, may have it in another area and maybe in a field house, wherever that might work best. And this is where the teachers and the students, the upper-level students, can actually, you know, really showcase what's going on in their CTE classes. And so that's where, at these more building-level events, that's where the students really get, you know, the opportunity to dig deeper, ask the questions that they need to ask, and, you know, get introduced, not only to what the classes offer, but be able to talk one-on-one with the other, the other upper-class students to really see if CTE is for them. And I have found that the Academy showcases have been really the number one way for recruiting for my students. I have students, you know, talking years after they've gone to the Academy showcase or the Pathway showcase. And they're still talking about that event and how much they learn and how much they like that and how much they're looking forward to some of the things, you know, down the road that we discussed or that they heard about at that showcase. And then on a more individual teacher level, you know, so I've kind of started with the district, the building, and now just sort of on a more personal level, I have after-school clubs that I introduce all the different aspects of the CTE curriculum too. So I have an underwater robotics team, aerial robotics team, a land robotics team. I have, and I know, sometimes people get a little confused, I have an environmental club and, you know, sometimes they say, well, gee, why do you have an environmental club? You know, shouldn't that be environmental science? Well, I have a background in environmental science as well. But the one thing I like to point out is that, and a lot of my students have mentioned this, why don't we change the name of the environmental club to environmental engineering, which is a valid request. But we haven't, we haven't gone and taken that leap yet to change the name officially. But, you know, one of the things that we focus on in the environmental club is that they have the opportunity to borrow the equipment from the aerial robotics team, the underwater robotics team, the land robotics team, the architecture club that we have. You know, borrow some of that equipment and use it for environmental research. And so we do actual field research when we'll fly drones, we'll take the underwater robot. One time we had a partnership project where the underwater robotics team, who is just wrapping up their season as far as the competition season that they have. And so they had a little bit more time on their hands and we had an after school meeting where we had the environmental club and the underwater robotics team meet together and brainstorm and design together a new robot for cleaning rivers and lakes. And so being able to grab floating trash as well as underwater trash is sunk to the bottom. And through these clubs, oh yeah. Greg, so we're going to get into some of that a little bit longer into it. So I'd like to give Ninja a chance to answer. And then I'm really excited because I know some of the work that you're doing at the school district and we're going to get into that a little bit more. Ninja, we're going to go back go over to you. Does your school district have a direct policy or initiative where you are communicating to special populations. So the policy we have in place we have support of education on board with our equity work. So there's definitely the support at support level zero. But we don't have a direct policy for the recruitment or communication in that regards, but we have plenty of initiatives. So I wanted to share with you some of the things we are doing. If you look at Barrington High School on the website, Ben Rodriguez is our assistant principal he oversees CTE. He has done a tremendous job of posting videos interviewing the students and really highlighting the CTE programs we have at the school. And despite their students have it can see it. It's on Twitter, Instagram, and then especially when the course selection program process is happening. That's when the outreach starts. Before I come to the outreach I also want to mimic what Craig said because we also have a showcase night. We offer the incubator program and usually when pitch night is at end of April, we are combining that night with all of our CTE programs throughout our case night. So all of our CTE programs are throughout the school. So before pitch night starts which is a highlight of that evening because our students usually receive quite a bit of funding from the community to get their students in and running is that all CTE classes are there highlighting the project they have worked on and showing off since it's end of April many of them are moving towards their final projects and seeing that that's also the time where we have a lot of students coming in who see their older siblings and that is a way to recruit and get the students into the building. The students can talk to the teachers and which is way more popular and are talking to me but it's having a student right there with me introducing the project and asking questions. That's really when the highlight is coming into recruitment is starting. Now to target the specialist populations we are really following something where we had to do a little bit of a shift in our course guide. Our CTE classes now all have to wait. Let me rephrase it. Every single CTE class which is a post high school experience receives a higher grade on the GPA. So Barrington High School is very college oriented and that's something we want to shift and really open it to college and career ready. But in order to do so we put all CTE courses which have post high school experience at the equal level to dual credit and equal level to AP classes. So they are alone. The students were very interested in that and that's how we are reaching out to our students to look at that potential. So first we created that change and then we are looking at our underrepresented students. Underrepresented students we are defining as a student of color or as low socioeconomic status. So that's our special population we are recruiting and we're moving out. So we're looking, do they have the grit to challenge yourself through a social emotional survey? Do they have the test scores, a teacher recommendation? Any of them, if one of those clicks in, we are reaching out to them and we are recruiting them to take a post high school class which falls into all or the majority of our CTE classes. We have one-on-one conversations with them with a trusted adult. The trusted adults they have also identified through a social emotional survey. So the trusted adult reaches out to them says, hey, you would like to go into this career path. What is your interest? And they are recruiting our students into those programs, them into the career pathway. And even though they might not jump right into the highest level of that course, they're putting them on track to become successful in that program. I was just taking notes, Ninja. Those initiatives just sound amazing, especially addressing the SEL components of students and special populations. We're going to move on to our second question and we'll start with you, Ninja. And this regard, the second question is, who leads the recruitment of students into CTE programs? And I really liked the component that Craig brought up about looking at it from a district level, school level, and then kind of a personal level. So if you could kind of touch on that from your school district. I know my name when you say it is so much more fun, but the J is like a Y. So it's Ninja. Ninja. I'm sorry. Don't worry. I like the way you say it. I think in the recruitment, it's an all-in model. We need to value the programs we offer and we need to support the students to go in. So it goes from all the way up top from the Board of Education when they are allocating funding to all the way down to the students within the class who welcome their new classmates into the class. So it's all in. Leading that is a lot of our assistant principal, Ben Rodriguez, the department chairs going along with it. And then Craig, you know, I was a German teacher and recruitment and the teacher really is everything. When you have that personality and you put yourself out there and you're in the homecoming parade and you are on the first day of school and you're standing out and you're in the hallways reading the students. So what makes a difference? And that was draw students in. Craig, did you have a follow up on that? Yeah, I mean, I would just say, you know, as far as who really leads the recruitment, I would say that, you know, the support is from the district level all the way, you know, through the buildings and to the teachers. But ultimately it is teachers that lead that recruitment initiative. So it's really that individual dynamic that I think is the most important to the recruitment. And I will say that the teachers with the support of the community members really have made a huge difference at least in the right for public schools. One of the things I didn't mention before, but I kind of wanted to get to and I'll just mention it briefly here is that one of the teacher initiatives in the CTA department here at Jefferson High School was to bring a women in engineering initiative. And it was teacher started myself and several of the other of the CTA teachers came to the building, you know, level of administration and said, Hey, this is what we'd like to do. And they said, Hey, great, let's let's go and get, let's get that the ball rolling on that. And so basically, what we were able to do is we were able to get engineers, female engineers from around the city to come in and have a panel discussion in the auditorium. So all the female students freshman female students. Well, I'm going to take it in the past to head down to the panel discussion. After the panel discussion, there were smaller, you know, like one on one type question and answer sessions and breakout rooms where the female students had the opportunity to ask further questions. And what break up room they went to was based on surveys that they completed at the end of the large panel discussion so. So that was a great event. And again, that was teacher started and then ultimately supported all the way up to ultimately all the way up to the district level. I think one of the things that kind of sticks out with with that initiative is not only is it the women engineers group. I believe there's another group women of today's manufacturing has stepped up in that area and done recruitment. They are very active in the schools and so that that component I think is key when whenever you're looking at getting special populations or looking for students in those nontraditional roles and so I appreciate you sharing that because I think that stands out anytime a program is actively engaging the community so Our next question is this and some of both of you have kind of touched on this a little bit, Nina with your kind of social emotional results with with students at Berryton but can you point to a system tool or resources that your district or school uses to recruit students into CTE programs. Is there something specific that works for you and maybe there's some things that don't work too but can you point to something specific that you are doing in your district. I can go straight to what really works it's those one on one conversations with a trusted adult. That would work I mean we have flyers we have one of the most gorgeous posters you will ever see walking down. We have the display cases everywhere in front of each CTE classroom. They all look good and the students walk by and I think the more they walk by internalizes that there is something the CNA lab. Okay, I see it. What comes to us is when the students indicate on the social emotional survey I have an interest for it for this and the adult speaking with them about it saying you have further questions let's go in. And if it's not the adult it is the students within the building who hype up the other students like did you see what we build are you seeing what we're doing that you see I'm going into the elementary classroom and I'm teaching a lesson. The student to student conversation is actually often who they trust it's either the trusted adult who they identify what students they trust who gets them interested into the program and the adults have to open the doors for them and let them in. Based on survey results we identify because when we're talking about our underrepresented students they might not be the ones who knock on the counselor's door and say I'm curious. So oftentimes we have to lure them out they identify it within surveys and we reach out and we do the recruitment. I'm just curious. Did you did your district develop that survey specifically or was that something you kind of borrowed from somewhere else or maybe a combination where you took some ideas and and then came up with your own. All of the above. We started with us in 2015 when was an ESS EL survey and next year, don't use either of them and are creating our own with those sub question them between specifically looking interest, but then also the grid and trusted adults that we get all those questions in there in order to work on the outreach, which often starts in early already in November so when they sign up for their classes we have them in the master schedule working so that's a quick turnaround time. Nice. Craig, same question for you. What is there a specific system or tool that your district or school is using. So, I'll say as a building level, but I know that what has been developed here at Jefferson High School has been rolled out to the other high schools as well so I believe they're using it in similar ways. What we what we have is we have almost like a little bit of a scavenger hunt and in a sort of a guide to guide the students through that pathway showcase that showcases the CT. What actually even the other, you know, all pathways are showcased and that culminates in a then a follow up survey after the event so there's so there's a so there's sort of a way that guides the students through that exploration of the pathways. But then culminates in a survey, which then gets sent out to the pathway teachers the CTE teachers so that they can see what students are actually interested. And then that the counselors then take a look at that and then they can coordinate. You know, sort of small group discussions with the teachers. And so there's various techniques that will be used each year, and it can vary from year to year but basically that's sort of the structure that's in place. And then whether it's a small group, you know, discussion with the teachers with the students that are interested, or whether it's just multiple one on one discussions. And that, you know, result from that from that survey. But yeah, those are the structures and certainly order of how those systems are implemented. Okay, so we're going to move on to our next question. And that one is, how do you recruit women students into male dominated career pathways and vice versa. And Craig why don't you start out for us. Well, so, I mean, one of one of the most obvious ways is having, you know, all all the freshman female students going to the auditorium for the panel discussions with the local community members, you know, engineers, automotive manufacturing, you know, females from from throughout the community. And that that's one of our big, big events. But beyond that, you know, there's, there's, you know, the individual teachers, you know, personal, you know, initiatives, you know, where, you know, I mean, I've been a coach for many years, and so just the same way that I would recruit, you know, students, you know, I talked with with the students, you know, specifically, you know, allow the female students and say, Hey, have you thought about, you know, some of these, you know, these fields, some of these, you know, engineering architecture. You know, you know, have you looked into that. And the next, you know, sort of logical step that I encourage the students to do is to consider, you know, not necessarily going into the classroom, although there are opportunities to go in and see the classroom, because we do have classroom tours and different things. But specifically, you know, with a lot of the female students, I'll say, you know, here's an invitation, come to an after school club event, see what we do in club, and that will give you a feel for what we do in the classroom. I teach, I teach mechanical engineering, which is heavily robotics based. I teach the architecture and civil engineering. And so I'll tell this as I say, you know, you don't necessarily want to choose a pathway, just just by by saying, Well, it sounds, you know, the name sounds that's not enough. I say, you know, see it firsthand, what do we do in architecture club and meet the students in architecture club. What do we do in the robot, the various robotics teams. And that's going to give you an idea of what's in the classroom and talk with those students because what I have found is year after year after year. Well, in near near the end of the year, I'll take a look at my roster, my class lot roster, and then I'll look at my, my club rosters, and I'll go and start, you know, kind of highlighting kind of circling and saying all right. There's a correlation between grades. And year after year after year, the engineering students that are involved with with the clubs. You know, almost, almost, you know, 100% you know, not quite 100% but almost 100% of those students are my top students. And I want to point something out, because you might say, Well, gee, you know what happens to all the students that are not top students. Well, these students become the top students. And that's an important differentiation. I had a student who was in my after school clubs for four years. And his freshman year, he was failing almost all classes. He was, he was playing dropping out of school, had no interest in really anything. And discovered my clubs started enjoying what we were doing, you know, after school in the clubs, and by his sophomore junior and senior years. He was by far one of the top students I had that I've ever had. And so that, that club component, I really can't, you know, emphasize enough how, how significant that is to see success, not only in recruitment, but just in success, you know, individual successes, you know, on the individual student level. Correct, no doubt the CTSOs, the participation of students into those organizations plays a big difference. And I know that you even send female students who are part of those clubs to do some of the reach out into classrooms. So I know that that is a key strategy that you use. And it seems successful in what you're doing, because I've witnessed it firsthand. We're going to go to you on this one. What, what are you guys doing in, in, in a strategy to recruit women students to male dominated careers, or vice versa. Often through our surveys we found that they are barriers for the students, like they knew the classes existed, but they reflected and I'm like yeah I know it's existed but I didn't think it was for me. So this is very reflective and say it didn't know it was for me. That's where the extra outreach is coming in. And when you hear over time when something like is so male dominant as a female you often don't even consider it for me, because years and years and years have taught you it is not for you. So by just one person coming to you and say hey try it, that might not be enough up to six times that outreach has to happen from a trusted adult that they start believing oh that could be for me. So just because we're reaching out once and saying but we have done it is not enough when we're talking about underrepresented and I'm counting as women or male is underrepresented in a field where not the dominant one, we have to put in the extra efforts. The other thing what I'm learning from surveys is also that often students want to see themselves in that field. So for example we have in our PLTW, in our PLTW class a teacher of color, a female teacher of color. So by having her up there, female students of color could see themselves. Oh, she's doing it I could be doing that. So hiring the diverse population is essential for students to see themselves that they could be doing it. Another thing which we have tried but I'm going to let you guys also know it did not work very well but maybe you guys can do it better. We called it take a peek. So we recruited our underrepresented students and allowed them to take a peek in those classes before they registered for classes. And we reached out, but it did not work so we might have had eight out of 100 students take us up on that offer so please go ahead do it and do it somehow I think it might work better when they can go in groups so they feel more comfortable instead of going in one on one, but our staff is like we don't want too many kids in our class so that's something we have to grow on. Another thing what really works well is maybe not committing to a class right away but Craig you mentioned it with multiple clubs. So we have girl code we have educator rising we have robotics. So that might be a little bit low stakes of something you might be interested but you're not sure is to get the students involved in clubs and recruit for those. These are the four things we are doing actively to recruit underrepresented. I have no doubt that hitting the kids six times and having conversations with them sounds like a fantastic strategy so something for those to think about. So our next question on our panel is what discussions are happening with staff around special populations and career and college recruitment efforts into CTE. And then we'll start with you. Sorry my boss just called I had to push him away. So what we having we have an equity team and our equity team is a team who see through the data and to look for our students with who are underrepresented with those interests so they are the ones reaching out talking to the trusted adults so it's not just the counseling team. We have about a little under 3000 students. We have a lot of people out with that in an effort for that our Ben Rodriguez is our assistant principal he is working with our CTE teachers they are meeting once a month on that and constantly revamping and thinking how can we do our showcase night a little bit different. So we need to recruit. He's the one who's really sitting down with them, looking what they need. He's the one funding the grants, and looking for what do we need for grant funding to get information in. And let me see. Sorry, my principal is still texting me. Maybe Craig you can take on. I apologize for that. Craig, go ahead. Again, the question is what discussions are happening with staff around special populations and career and college recruitment efforts and CT. I'm sitting in my building and I believe across the entire district in general but in my building I can obviously speak to this very specifically and say that what's one of these has been very successful is that the scheduling. That's been done over the past several years at this point, quite a few years. We have a common planning time. And so the teachers, you know, in CTE have a common planning time so we meet together once a week and have these type of discussions. Other discussions to of course, you know, other initiatives but you know one of the things that we do, you know, have as as a weekly monthly, you know, topic is exactly this you know how do we, how do we recruit how do we bring these special populations into CTE. We have a great, great bunch of CTE, CTE teachers here at Jefferson, and they really do care about reaching out to these special populations. So, so that's an ongoing conversation that we have. You know, as often as as weekly, you know, sometimes we miss a weekend and touch on that topic only because there's something, you know, some event or some other critical, you know, thing that comes up but you know it's nearly nearly a weekly topic. You know, throughout the school year. And again, from those, those discussions come the surveys, the coordination of making the women's, the women in CTE events, you know, better reaching out to the community members who's in a contact, you know, who should we invite. You know, all those type of, you know, discussions are, you know, are being had, you know, weekly, you know, throughout the year. Even, even over the summer, you know, we'll have some CTE meetings, not as many but you know, we'll have even some summer meetings where we'll be brainstorming, you know, ideas on, you know, of course, one of the topics being how do we recruit, you know, these special populations. And so, yeah, it's the time going. You know, what do we learn from past events? What, you know, what should we try to improve that, you know, for next year, for next semester, for next week, whatever the case may be. Nina, we're going to come back to you and allow you to get a better answer on this one, because I know you were disrupted. Sorry about that. I think what Craig said, the key thing is for staff to have time. Most of the staff who is teaching career, CTE classes, they know that their job depends on the enrollment, and they are very aware of it. So I'm not necessarily sure if constantly telling them, oh, we've got to recruit, they know that and they are the ones going out there and they are the ones recruiting and they do it. They just do it because it's part of the job they're teaching and the passion they have for that job. So just giving them time and supporting them financially with what they need through grant funding or through creative spending and through supporting them like Ben made awesome posters, but they just need time discussions. And the other thing what we're really working on to not step on one another, because sometimes you're recruiting the same students. Don't step on one another kind of coordinated we're all in this together a CTE program or even as all electives we're in this together and we're recruiting them. They just need a little bit on through our equity training on information on how to reach out to certain populations because you only see, you see everything through the lens of your lived experience. So we have done some extensive equity training with our with our staff as well to see okay, reaching out only once might work for one population but not for all so don't give up keep on working. And that's what they are looking for here to support they have and just do a little bit of training on that as well. All right. So we're going to go to our next question which is, how do you get employers involved in the conversation of recruiting students and the non traditional careers. I can start. Yeah, I'm sorry, Nina. So what we have set up is we're actually having our professional networks come in so for each of our CTE courses or CTE programs we actually reached out to the community and asked them to be part of our panel. So once a year we're meeting with their minimum it depends on where we are and we just going to inform them the experts in our community of business. This is what we currently offer to our students. What do you think. So we have come some variations of things coming back for people who are actually within those careers and saying this is great this is bad. And it is very helpful for our teachers to hear that and it is very helpful for us to hear that and see where do we need to guide our curriculum our courses, our investments to get the students ready for the careers beyond high school. So we do that at least once once a year again at some courses differently we have usually about 20 to 30, which range which ranges from our assistant superintendent to the teacher from within our school we also have students involved. And then hopefully we can recruit up to 10 businesses or staff or people within the community coming in. So that really has helped and that builds the bridges with going out with our internships to go out into the workforce and work with the employers. Great. Thank you, Nina. Craig, what about you what are worry is Jefferson High School doing with employers. So we have a lot going on with with that and it is at all different levels within the school district so as part of our Academy model. In the district. We have a district level group of community members that have been recruited to be part of this team. And then at the individual high school building level, then those those businesses that are involved at the district level send some of their, you know, individual employees, your team members to the high schools. For usually now that, you know, we've just come off of, you know, some unusual years here with COVID but usually monthly meetings at the building level. So all the high schools, but again, I'm going to speak specifically to how Jefferson does it but I know it's district wide in general. So here at Jefferson, you know, we'll have each of the academies within the building will have a meeting with the community members that are part of the, the Academy support team. And the support team is made up of, you know, engineers, automotive specialists, aerospace, you know, specialists, manufacturing, and that's just, that's just in our one Academy and then if you look at the other academies you have, you have finance accounting, you have, you know, all the others, you know, and so. And this is really, really been a great model with it at the highest level within the district and then at the more building level because then what what we have is we have all these community members that, you know, understand what's at stake with our students and are coming out to our high schools and sitting down and meeting with the teachers and students, students are invited and so students can also attend. And, and with all that, with all that support it's really, really been, been significant. What do I mean? Well, for example, if we want to see, you know, an increase in attendance if we want to see an increase in grades, it's bringing the entire community together to brainstorm ideas and then let the community volunteer resources. And so, for example, there was an initiative that was discussed and funded by some of these community members where they said, hey, we can we'll donate toolboxes. We'll donate some tools. And then let's have that as a prize for one of the initiatives. And I forget if that one was attendance based or if it was one of the academic based ones but, you know, we have numerous, you know, things like this. And so the toolboxes were just one of many of these types of initiatives that come out of this community involvement. And then of course, planning some of these events where, you know, the women engineers and manufacturers coming out and having the panel discussion, you know, is supported by these types of monthly discussions that we have with our community support teams. So Craig, I think what you brought up was really important also is kind of celebrating students. And I know those conversations take place where it's not just the AP and higher level students. It's celebrating those students that are most improved or who are making an attempt to grow. And I think that's a key component when talking about recruitment for nontraditional students is some of them are just growing and need that extra push to get that opportunity and so rewarding them with, you know, tools or something that's going to get them looking at a special career that maybe they wouldn't consider. I think that's a really innovative technique. So we got one last question. And you kind of alluded to it, Craig. So we're going to start with you first is what discussion or activities are planned around parents, adults, parents and or adults talking to students about CT or nontraditional careers. So I talk with parents all the time. And I really enjoy talking with parents. I think, you know, sometimes that surprises the students, you know, they seem to always talking to parents and but I invite parents to all sorts of events that I have, you know, I've had, I've had parents, you know, that I said hey, you want to hop on the bus with us and come with us, you know, to, you know, to, to one of our robotics competitions. Well, you want to hop on the bus and, you know, and, you know, to or one of, you know, one of our local, you know, businesses that I'm taking students to, you know, what I guess I should say, and I know this would probably fall and I'm under one of the other topics, but you know, I just kind of came to mind. One of the other initiatives that I think is worth pointing out is the sophomore site visits. And this is a district wide initiative here where all sophomores who have already chosen because by the time you're sophomore you've chosen a pathway to follow here, at least in the Rockford schools. And so you already know whether you're going to focus on engineering or you're going to focus on business, you're going to focus on whatever computer science, et cetera. And so the sophomore site visits are a major initiative to, you know, once the students have chosen their career interest, now let's get them actually into the businesses. And so I'll take every year I'll take students to local software developing companies, you know, for my computer science students, I'll take my engineering students to local civil engineering and architecture and mechanical engineering and aerospace engineering companies and spend the entire day touring talking with the engineers, seeing what it's like to be in that environment. One of the things that I tell both parents and students is that the reason that students by and large choose to get jobs at McDonald's and Taco Bell and, you know, name any other fast food or Walmart, right. The reason that they're, they're getting those jobs is not because they're the best jobs. It's because they've all been to those places. They've stood in line, you know, at McDonald's waiting to order. And as, as they're waiting to order, they're looking at the other looking behind the person taking the orders and seeing oh yeah there's someone cooking out there's someone right the drive up window, and they're, they can picture themselves doing those things. But one of the things that I always put out to my students is that there's better jobs out there in all sorts of careers. And the only reason you guys aren't, you know, applying for those is because you don't know they exist. You can't picture yourself doing it because you've never, you've never seen it. And I'll point out I'll say, on this particular street in Rockford, you know, think about the businesses that you're familiar with. And, you know, again, they'll say oh yeah there's a McDonald's there there's a Taco Bell. And I say yeah but how close other buildings if you drive past you don't even take a second class at Glansat. Those are the best, those have better, better job opportunities, you know, by and large, but, but they have no idea what's behind those doors. And those, those sophomore site business are huge and so I invite parents to all all the events throughout the year. In fact, I even invite parents to come in and sit in the classroom. I say come come and take a look, see what we do. Come come after school to the clubs. And so I can say at least, you know, for myself, parents are always invited and they know that whenever I bump into parents, you know, I'm always you know if I see him at a basketball or at a track meet or right across country meter or whatever, you know, event, you know, show in the theater, you know, when I see those parents, I'll try to keep making those connections talking with them, letting them know how their students are doing, encouraging them and inviting them, inviting them to, you know, to anything and everything, you know, whatever's whatever's on my calendar, I'm letting those parents know I, I'll send out newsletters through various methods of Google Classroom or so now but you know it used to be more so in Edmodo. And, you know, I would I would send out messages to Edmodo, I don't know weekly, if not almost daily basis to parents, and you know, constantly inviting them, constantly keeping them informed of what's going on. And I know that, you know, I'm not getting 100% you know, the parents, you know, necessarily read, you know, when I send out or even following up, you know, or coming to the things I invited to. But that's not the point. The point is for me to at least reach out to them, you know, on a regular basis, and the ones that do show up, you know, you know, interact, you know, I interact with them as much as possible. And so that's been a huge success. I mean, I have on the wall, I have on the walls of my room and I'm kind of looking at it over there right now. I have, you know, pictures of for each of the clubs of different events, different things we've done. You know, our students, you know, soon only, you know, photos. But I'm looking right now and I see one where a parent and her daughter came out and they're in a inflatable raft in a pond, helping to retrieve and then data loggers, read the data off, and then redeploy it. And I told the parents, I said, Hey, you're invited. Come out here. You want to be part of citizen science? You know, we'll do that. I see another photo where I have a couple parents that are helping dig in the dirt with the students to do a prairie restoration. I see some underwater robotics photos where some photo on the bus where, you know, some of the parents are sitting there with some of the students. So parents kind of were clustered together and the students were clustered together. They weren't sitting necessarily with their son or daughter. But still, you know, it's these great opportunities that I tried to have as often as possible. So, you know, anywhere I can invite the parent, I do. And that has worked, you know, really quite well. Thank you, Craig. Certainly that brings up some questions about how to address the changes in what a traditional PTSD is and how there are changes going on in social media that and other things in society that maybe that traditional model doesn't work. Nina, what are some things that you guys are doing around addressing parents and including them in this talk about non-traditional careers? For all parents, we have those two big events, which is our freshman night, where the freshmen are coming in in January and picking their electives. So that's definitely one where we invite all parents in and the students and showcase the course offerings we have, the clubs we have, those activities we have. So that's definitely one where we draw a lot of parents in. Due to COVID it has gone away a little bit, but now hopefully when, you know, January rolls around of 2023, we are back in person and can showcase all the wonderful programs we have. The other one where we draw parents is then in April was our showcase that is open to the public that's open to all and the majority of parents come who have their students showcase something. So they're already in the courses at that point. The other thing what we are doing is we have a family liaison, specifically for our underrepresented population, and they do a lot of one-on-one outreach, explaining, recruiting, and they have the time to be on the phone. And more talking about the courses, the course offerings in the language, often in Spanish as those phone conversations, explaining what those are. So those are the two big things which are more to a broader audience. When we are specifically looking at underrepresented students and involving their parents every time when we start our outreach in October, November, the parents also get a phone call and a letter saying congratulations. Your child has been selected to take one of these challenging classes. Again, we are considering any challenging class to be a class which is post high school experience and we are identifying the students as underrepresented who have exhibited one of those five skills. Grit, interest in the course, GPA, test scores, or teacher recommendation. So even if one teacher says, I believe this kid could take a post high school course, they are in my list as long as they meet those criteria and that's the automatic outreach that the parents receive and phone call and enter letter saying this is it. Feedback from the parents has been, oh, I didn't know we save money. This has been the most interesting one when the moment they hear it's a pathway they already get their certificate in high school. They receive college credit in high school they already have something in hand before leaving high school. They're right there you have the parents they're listening and they having those conversations at home to get the students interested. We're not only for underrepresented students we might be expanding that but we are usually targeting about 150 students out of close to 3000 who are getting the personalized attention, as well as apparent communication. Thank you Nina that that dollar savings for those families is key as well so we're going to move into the end of our presentation and just wanted to throw it out to all of our participants if you have questions feel free to share those, either in the chat or if you want to just hop right on and ask some questions. Please feel free to do so. I'm giving a little more wait time because of the the digital behind this so making sure that if people want to type some questions and. Alright, so we have one from Chris. When looking at community presentations we had some initial challenges with the thoughts that CTE would remove programming from our local community college. Initially folks did not see the partnerships. I think early on Chris a lot of communities went through that so under Luke and what resources would be helpful for your CTE student organizations to help them recruit. Craig I'm going to send that over to you first since you, you really focused on the CTSOs what resources would be helpful for your CTE student organizations to help them recruit. For the student organizations, the clubs. Yes. What resources. So, um, you know, I do a lot of grant writing. And so, I have an enormous amount of resources that have come through grants. And I cannot, you know, you know, thank the grant organizations enough for for all that they've, you know, allowed for my students. I mean, I mean, if I were to rotate my camera around which I guess maybe this opportunity to I have my classroom. You know, at least there's there's one of our drones that's made of custom carbon fiber, custom aluminum, you know, extrusions. There's one of our three printers. And I know it's hard to see me with the black monitors, but there's a bunch of black cases I have 123456 six drones that are actually ones out it's an orange one over there. I have two other drones over there. I have robo masters in the far back. The back cabinets are full of VEX robotics in the center of the room is parts for the most advanced robot that we're currently attempting or have ever attempted to build. This is a blue based on blue robotics parts. This is underwater robot that can go down 900 feet has underwater claws. It's using raspberry pies. On the other side of the room to see what's over there. Yeah. Oh, we've got. Well, hard to see here. There's a 3D printer made out of wood that we actually designed and built. We have a laser cutter in the back room. So, um, that back room back there that back door. So the point is, I mean, a $20,000 laser cutter. Um, five laser five 3D printers, plus a six one if you count the one that we actually laser cut ourselves and programmed all the drones, all the Robo master driving robots like robots, the underwater robot robotics parts. I mean, that's, that's, you know, tens of thousands of dollars. And that's all through grants. And so that's a lot of grant writing. I've, I've been told that I, you know, I, I've done some of the most grant writing, you know, you know, on average, you know, almost any other teacher. Not to say that, you know, some of the other teachers haven't got some big, large, large items of your auto shop is obviously has, you know, large grants for some really expensive equipment, but I'm just on a regular basis. I mean, I'm constantly writing grants for this. So that's one of the one of the biggest, the biggest things, you know, that has really helped, you know, our clubs is, you know, and the classes. And there's a synergy between it. You know, I may write a grant for something that I specifically want to use with my, with my clubs. But then I can go and introduce it a little bit, you know, in a class period, and it may be, you know, connected with something, you know, a topic that we're discussing, or vice versa. It could be something that, you know, I've written a grant for, for the classroom. But then it's something that we can then roll over and pull back out after school and work with our clubs. And so that's been huge. The other thing that's really been a huge help with our clubs is that, and again, even with what I'm going to say, this is both with our after school clubs and within the classroom, you know, both benefit from this. And that is, you know, staying connected with our community members and, you know, being aware of, you know, events, being aware of competitions. And so for, for example, I mean, I'll take, you know, my architecture students, again, primarily the club students, but again, I don't, I'm not going to go and tell someone, you know, well, gee, you're in my architecture class, you're not invited. You know, just because you're not regularly attending our club. And so, again, this is benefiting our classroom students as well as our club students to go to an evening, you know, AI, local AI, you know, American Institute of Architects event that is being hosted where they'll invite our local high school chapter of the AIS, American Institute of Architecture students will invite them. And of course, I extend that invitation a little bit further and say, Well, hey, if you're in my class, come and join us. And I'll even go one step further. I'll even take that opportunity to invite students that are not in my class that are not in my clubs and I'll say hey, why don't you come to this event and kind of see, you know, see the professional women, you know, the president of the who, who is a woman, and you know, see her, you know, present tonight at this event, and you know, see some of the other architects, you know, and civil engineers, and, and what other, whatever other community members, you know, maybe at some of these events and so that's, that's been huge. And so I've taken students to the National AIS conference, American Institute of Architecture students conference. Now, my high school is one of only nine high schools in the nation that have chapter in the AIS. All of our other peer groups other than those nine are, you know, the Harvard University chapter, the University of Illinois chapter, or Banish and Payne the UIC chapter, the IIT chapter, the Iowa State chapter. You know, so our peer group is actually at the university level. And so that has been, you know, incredible for my students, because when we go to those national events, which they're, they come around to Chicago on a fairly regular basis, I mean, it moves around the country, but you know, whenever they're coming back to Chicago, you know, we'll spend that, you know, that week, a little less than a week, you know, four or five days, I think, at that conference and I've taken students in the high school, you know, we'll stay there overnight. And, you know, they'll tell me that that's, you know, that one event was one of the most incredible events ever. And again, we're there with thousands of students from across the country, and they're all college students. And so they're able to talk to my high schoolers and, you know, and let them know, hey, here's what it's like when you get to college, here's what to expect. And obviously what I mean, you know, you know, having my students meet with the AI, you know, chapter, the professional chapter here in Rockford. Now they're hearing, you know, hearing from the actual professionals, so they're here from the college level, professional level. You know, that's, that's huge. So, so yeah, so grants. It's just that staying connected and meaningful connections with the community. It's not enough to just say, well, we've checked something, you know, checked off a box, you know, okay, we've done this. It's having those meaningful connections. You know, it's not just making a phone call, it's not just having a quick conversation. It's having those constant, you know, conversations. Greg, real quick. It sounds like the two main focus on that question is the money issue, whether it's grants or getting support from your district, but also that community issue of developing those relationships, getting them to participate and getting them to advocate for your group is key. So I want to make sure that we have time for Nenia to answer some questions. So one for Nenia was do you use Perkins funds that targeted outreach to parents? My counterpart oversees the Perkins funds, so no one that one, you need to use the Perkins funds a lot of for the equipment was in the classrooms. So that's where it goes in. Once the students are in the classroom, they see the amazing things happening from the Perkins grants outreach really takes passionate time. I have a bunch of passionate people who are there and seeing inequities in the building and who want to do something about it and that group grew from a group of two to a group of 25. So when you have 25 passionate people about outreach, that's definitely helping. And when you're an administrator, it would be great to have the time compensated in any way. For example, if you have those parent meetings after school, if you have those evenings, so anything like that would be wonderful but we're using either our extra duty pay, or in some cases I also work with our title funded. We are title one school so we use title grants as well to get our at risk and underrepresented students in there. But just finding the right people is really key. Thank you, Nina. One that kind of sticks out from Jodi, she says, how do you get students with disabilities engage in CTE and I think that's one of the key questions that we we've kind of almost gone around but I'm curious to hear, Nina, what are some things that you're doing with students with disabilities. So right now we have we got very, very lucky and we passed a referendum for multiple multiple millions of dollars to really outfit all of our learning spaces to be real chair says accessible that includes our theater where they can go up into the lights down to our wood's room. So we're really spending money to make it all accessible for one so I think the first thing I would just say other rooms and equipment accessible to all students. And if the answer is no you need to start there and make it accessible for students. Otherwise you're recruiting and the student comes up to all the wonderful equipment which is out there but they can't access it. So we have not necessarily made special equipment they just fall into our pocket we just reach out to all of our students which meets the requirements for underrepresented. And I'm going to look further into that because that is really an interesting question if we are putting up barriers for our students so thank you for making us aware of it. Craig maybe you have a better or different strategy. Yeah, well so what one thing I'll say and and as I was kind of showing my classroom, you might be wondering boy why is all that you know equipment out well. I have a summer engineering camp that I've been having my classroom every summer for the past over 10 years now. And you know one of the things and I'm going to use use this as sort of you know my talking point but this this kind of goes throughout the rest of my classes and clubs as well but Whenever I have these engineering camps and I always, you know, tell you know tell the district you know as they're setting out the you know the sign ups, you know, I'm willing to have every level of student and I hope that that's who will sign up for this. And, um, you know, and I've had people over there say, Well, how was that possible. What do you mean. And I said, Well, you know, the district likes to have, you know, my summer can be a high school only, but I say you know what, let's have it be middle school through high school, you know, I've even said what if there's any elementary school students that want to join us. Let them come to my robotics team. The competition that we competed is there is elementary school, Latino teams, there's middle school teams, there's high school teams, there's college teams, you know, my team from Jefferson is unique in a couple of ways. First of all, it's the district team. So yes, it's, it's housed here in my class from at Jefferson, but it is officially also the RPS 205 team is the only team I've tried to promote getting other teams at the other high schools and I said no, you've got the district team, you know, it's, it's, it's in good hands, keep it going. And one of the things that's unique about that team, just like the summer is here in camps, is that I say I want everyone to be there so I had a parent call call the school district and say, I have a kindergarten or over at this elementary school, and he wants, you know, he seems to be, you know, in the end to take, you know, hands on opportunities, you know, that's what he's looking for. Is there anything that he can participate in. And fortunately, the person who answered the phone downtown, you know, was well versed in what was available in the district and they said hey, why don't why don't I put you in contact with with Craig Stenberg over at Jefferson. And he's got multiple opportunities for your elementary school students. And what ended up happening, he came to our after school clubs, worked with our underwater robotics team who came to our summer engineering camp. And again, you might be saying well how is this how is this related to our special needs students. Well, I look at this way. If I can create a program that challenges high school students at the level there challenges middle school students at the same time at the level there challenges elementary school students at the level there at, and not to mention, you know, all the numerous special needs. You know, students that that that are also, you know, involved, you know, I look at this way. You know, if a student can do the engineering calculations calculus. Great. I told, I'll teach you, I'll teach you a kind of space students that can only handle trigonometry because that's their their experience level. Okay, I'll teach you how to calculate. The engineering calculations using your trigonometry based calculations. Students that are close to that count, you know, that level of math. I say no problem. I can give you some general rules of thumb that don't require that that kind of calculations that are more of just approximations that will get you in the ballpark. So here's some charts. Let me teach you how to use those. And those can give you some some ways of being able to work through that. So, so at least, you know, on an individual level. That's personal. That's what I do for my students. And I have students. Oh, another thing. And this is really important. I'll have students, again, after school clubs during the class time, or during my summer engineering camp. And, you know, they'll say, I don't know if I can do this. You know, I'm reluctant, right. I'm not sure I want to do this. And, you know, I had a student that was really autistic. I had a student that, you know, had had some other hands some fine motor skill issues. And I said, hey, that's okay. I want you to try it. Try to fly the drone. Okay, try to, you know, okay, maybe you can't take the smallest screws and screw those in. But I bet you can take those really large bolts over there and get those right. And so I find I look for opportunities for success rather than, you know, rather than saying, well, everyone has to be at this level, regardless of where they're at. What are the opportunities that every student actually can succeed in? And that's what that's what I find. Those personal relationships are key, Craig. And thank you for sharing those. We got a few more questions we got to get through. This one's for Nenia. Do any of your schools get any employer organizations involved in the panel discussions or student recruitment? Employer organizations. Give me more info before I give you the wrong answer. I think just employers might be the intention. Michael, do you want to? Sure. I'm thinking like the Illinois Manufacturing Association or anything like that. I'm looking because we had all those different professional network committees where we invited. We might have invited and not for all have necessarily shown up. So I was at the ones because I'm teaching the education classes for the education ones. So we did not necessarily invite the Board of Education from ISP or anything like that. We had, for our business courses, we had reached out, but the way we did, and I think we can keep on improving, but just ask the people we know who do you know who would be on it. So I think that's something room for improvement. I am not aware that we have reached out to those professional organizations at this point. We might have for some. Our horticulture had a big meeting. Luke, you were there. Do you remember if we reached out to? Yeah, and the when we started that advisory committee for Barrington's horticulture and urban agriculture food production and environmental science program. There were quite a few employers and nonprofits from the community there who did contribute ideas for recruitment. So I'm going to hand this one over to Jason, but Myra Tim said I'm a small business owner with my own CTE program and curriculum mentorship, specifically focusing on careers and trade and apprenticeship. How, who and where can small business owners, employers and networks with schools, districts and leaders for recruitment. So I'm going to hand that one off to Jason Clyde. Yeah, so I think this one does go with the with the last question and and the truth is typically at the local level, a regionally or specifically at a school district I wouldn't expect statewide organizations to be involved I mean statewide organizations like the Illinois Manufacturers Association, for example, are are made up of local businesses, right, and in local communities. And so that is their membership and so that is the level at which we really want to encourage school districts and their partners, community and business partners locally to work together. So how does a business, someone in business get involved well. One way is to is to simply pick up the phone and call a school district office or or a high school specifically. And again, we very much want these and we've heard, we've heard from both Rockford and Barrington today from both Craig and Nina about not this not just being an initiative for ninth through 12th graders but but extending down through middle school and into elementary school and and that that's wonderful and increasingly the State Board of Ed CTE team wants to support that focus in schools. So, but picking up the phone calling school district, it still does remain primarily high school focus in many places and so you can pick up the phone and call local high school and say hey I want to talk to somebody about getting involved and hopefully that's a way to get handed off to the right person now who that person is Illinois has 852 school districts. We have by far the most complex local setup in in the United States. I for example have worked in three school districts in my career and I've never worked in what's called a unit district which is what both Rockford and Barrington are. I've worked in two elementary districts with students from early childhood through eighth grade and one high school district with students in ninth through 12th grade and so that kind of complexity does make it hard for people outside the system. But but simply picking up the phone and and calling that place and saying hey, who can I talk to about getting involved. I want to support career and technical education or more broadly I want to support students move towards careers and what their post secondary learning will be like and I hope that in many cases that leads to the right place now in a specific instance like this question. I'm happy to stay on and have us connect and and look at what what might work in your community I mean one of the great great joys for me about about this job is getting to roll up my sleeves and and learn about communities across the state that I might have had some knowledge of or in some cases no knowledge of and start to really understand what what works in those communities from the people who are there. So that would be our answer broadly and again to piggyback on the previous question. Again, it's great where there can be statewide associations involved locally but really those statewide associations are made up of of local people of local member organizations and that's where we can work locally. Thanks bill. Thanks Jason for sharing that we are at the end of our presentation and I just want to sincerely thank Nina and Craig for sharing both of their experiences with all of us. I think that there's probably a lot of questions still going on in our heads of around. What can each district do around these initiatives and and so Craig and Nina, if you want to share your email in the chat or share some contact information I think, you know, having some resources for our attendees, if they have questions about some of the things you're doing. And Craig around your CTSOs I think that's important. Nina, your programs at Barrington around social emotional and the surveys you're putting on in the, the community outreach just top notch so again, we want to thank you for presenting with us and answering those questions. And, and thank all of our participants for coming and learning a little bit more about outreach with special populations and non traditional careers so with that said, thank you all for attending and if you have not signed in Rodrigo put a sign in there at the end. So please make sure you sign in but thank you again for attending and we hope to see you again at some of these follow up trainings.