PENNY PEARSON: So, again, my name is Penny Pearson, and I'm here, today, with a couple of my dear colleagues, Janice Fera from CASAS as well as Jay Wright. And I want to start off our presentation here with this little video that is actually a resource from one of our other subject matter experts, Stephanie Thomas, when she did her webinar, Move Your Class Online. So I'm going to just start this presentation. Here we go. 

[VIDEO PLAYBACK] 

- --is temporary remote teaching and learning. There are three general types of instruction in our system. On the one end of the spectrum is face-to-face teaching and learning, in which all instructor-to-student and student-to-student contact occurs face to face. On the other end of the spectrum is online teaching and learning. These are courses in which all instructor-to-student and student-to-student interactions occur fully online. Hybrid teaching and learning, which can include blended courses, is where teaching and learning occur partially face-to-face and partially online. 

And, now, we're introducing temporary remote teaching and learning, which allows for learning to continue when unexpected emergencies like the coronavirus occur. Let's consider a scenario for a moment. Let's say you're teaching a 16-week face-to-face course, and you learn that you'll need to transition your course to remote instruction beginning with week 11. 

Your first step is to assess the situation. In this scenario, you'll have six weeks left to complete your course. Your second step is to identify what's remaining in the course, what topics, assignments, and assessments are left for students to complete. Then move on to step three, create a module in Canvas for each remaining week, and organize your course content using pages, assignments, and quizzes. Step four is where you may schedule Tech Connect ConferZoom sessions during your regularly scheduled course times to deliver live lecture-based content and to interact with students. 

These four steps along, with a little planning, will give you a solid foundation for creating instructional continuity for your students during an emergency when regular face-to-face classroom meetings have been interrupted. Despite the feeling of urgency, both you and your students will benefit if you take the time to stop, think, and plan. 

[END PLAYBACK] 

PENNY PEARSON: So, hopefully, we got a little bit of information out of there. The only kind of caveat I would put is that they reference using Canvas, and that's something that some of you may have, others may not. But it is kind of a nice little overview of how to get started. 

Now, I realize that my video is still on. Y'all know what I look like, and it does take up a lot of bandwidth, so I'm going to go ahead and turn that off. And we'll be right here with our first slide about our strategies for delivering distance learning. 

And I've already briefly introduced Janice Fera. She's going to be helping with the Q&A as well as Jay Wright. He didn't get credit on my slide, but I will fix that, Jay, so you actually have that. And we're going to get started with what we're going to be doing today and for our together. 

And, basically, this is what we're going to tackle, a review of some definitions. We're going to look at some suggestions for working with, both for teachers and administrators, to talk about this 50% rule. And, don't worry, we'll be talking about that some more, and then spending some time really understanding how teachers can report and calculate their work and their teaching in this remote environment. And we'll do some-- a little work with some teaching scenarios about what you could or would do and then, as much as possible, during this time, trying to answer those questions that come up as well. 

And hopefully this gets us started for today, and we'll go ahead and just have a little history. I don't know about the rest of you, but distance learning has been around for a long time. I am both fortunate in being one of those people that was a product of this old way of distance, which is that mail packet that you see there on the right side. When I was in high school, high school and I didn't get along very well. And basically, when I quit, I was offered the option to finish via correspondence school is what they called it at that time. 

And now, that's shifted. We now have all these wonderful technology tools, and we can be like this young lady here and be sitting in front of a computer with multiple monitors doing several things and hopefully learning at the same time. So this learning at a distance is not new, but we need to have a good idea of what does that exactly mean. What does that look like? 

And that's what this definition does. Now, this comes straight out of the National Reporting Service Technical Assistance Guide. There is a link, here, on the page, so when you get the PowerPoint presentation, you can certainly open it up and take a peek and assess for yourself. But you can read on the slide, here, they're-- these are really broad terms. Think about it that way. 

We're talking about where it's a formal learning activity where they're separated by geography, time, or both for the majority of the instructional period. So these materials are delivered through all any multiple number of ways, media. Think about, what's media? Why, it's paper. It could be a videotape or it could be a video, it could be a DVD. So it's not limited in the sense of how those materials are delivered to your learners, OK. 

You support, or teachers support, those learners through these different communication tools, and now we have many of them. These are very broad strokes about what can we do to help our learners at a distance. So, again, this is how we're looking at the definition of distance. 

And we have to be careful that when we're looking at how we create our courses and how we manage them and do our lessons, et cetera, that we abide by this one small little piece here that sometimes trips people up, which is this two words of "the majority" of the instructional period. Now, remember, the instructional period is the length of the class. Some of us, in adult schools, we have six-week courses, we have nine-week courses, we have 18-week courses. Sometimes, we have a full 36-weeks or the full year. That is your kind of the instructional period. 

And then when we want to deliver at a distance, it has to be the majority. So even though this rule doesn't say more than 50% of the time, the assumption goes to the majority is more than 50%. So this is-- makes it very key when we're looking at our classes that we're actually delivering instruction more than 50% of the time. 

So in order to do that, and because we don't have learners sitting in a classroom in a seat for a certain number of hours every week Monday and Wednesday from 10:00 to noon, now, all of the sudden, we have to figure out a way to capture the time that learners are learning. And we can only do that by using some models that are provided for us in the National Reporting System that allows us to define these proxy contact hours. 

Now, there's three different ways that you can do that, and you-- they have values depending on what you're doing. So you need to think about how you can work with these and apply them to that whole process of what that video is saying, kind of stepping back a second, taken a look at what you've got left to do. And then how do we figure out how much time our learner's spending with our materials? OK. 

So California is very fortunate-- or it depends on your point of view, I suppose-- in that they allow you to use any of these models. You are not restricted to one or the other because you have local control. You can decide what you want to do. 

So we're going to take a look at these three models, and we'll be repeating these often. So as things come up or the questions come along, we can always refer back to these. But we're going to look at each one of these models and see how it may apply to what you're doing. 

The first one is the clock time model. Now, for those of you that use commercial software of some kind for teaching your learners in different topics, sometimes, this is kind of the easiest way because this is based on the elapsed time a learner is connected to an online or standalone program that tracks time. It can also be the amount of time that you might be doing a live synchronous lecture, just what I'm doing right now. 

I'm using Zoom. I've gathered all my learners together in this remote space just like I've gathered all of you, and I can record this one hour as time spent with my learners. I can take attendance. I can have all of my learners turn on their cameras so I can verify it's them, and I have a way to use these tools to help me track the amount of time that I'm interacting with my learners. 

On the one hand, it's me face to face with the learner with a camera on a Zoom meaning synchronously, at the same time, versus I can be putting them on a vendor program that is tracking their time based on how much work that they do, how long they're logged in. And it typically has some way that it says, oh, Penny stopped working on the computer. She probably went in got a cup of coffee. So it shuts that time down and it says, no, she wasn't online for five hours. She was really only online for 45 minutes. 

So those are the features of typically your software programs that you may purchase that allows learners to be engaged. OK. And, a lot of times, some folks may not know whether or not the system does that, so always talk to your providers to see what is it that they're doing. When do they have completions? Do they have, you know, summative assessments at the end of every unit? And all of our teachers know this, but is a little different environment, so we need to make sure that our software is doing what we want it to do. 

So that's clock time. Let's move on to the next one, which is our teacher verification model. 

Now, this one has a little longer way of working, in my opinion, in that the teacher, using the materials that they have for their teaching-- what are they providing the learners-- assign some fixed number of hours of credit or hours that it will take that learner to get through this material. And they verify that, somehow, and this could be like with a paper packet. You mail it out to your learner, they're supposed to complete this work over the course of time of a week, a few days, whatever you have determined, and they send it back to you. 

And the teacher verifies by going through all these materials. They read the readings, and it's evidenced because they were able to write an essay, they were able to complete a worksheet or two or three, and maybe they even did some type of quiz that showed that they were actually engaged with the learning material. And the teacher is verifying, yep, the student did the work, OK. 

But it's the teacher verifying that work and ensuring that they did all of the things that were in that particular packet. And that teacher says, this is going to take my learners five hours to do this. Ideally, you work with all of your teachers to determine these hours and how much time should be assigned for a teacher verification model of saying, yes, they completed this work. OK. 

So we did clock time. We did teacher verification. Now, we're going to move on to the learner mastery model. This sounds very similar to Teacher Verification, but there is a key component in it that I personally find very valuable to ensure that our learners are successful. And, again, we're assigning a fixed number of hours based on the learner passing some type of assessment in the content of each unit, lesson, module, whatever the case may be. 

Now, this type of assessment, this is right within the National Reporting Service as saying that participants work with the curriculum and the materials. And when they feel they've mastered that material, they take a test. Percentage of correct answers is required, usually 70% to 80%. 

When I was teaching in career tech ed, my mastery level was at 95%. It was very high because my learners were going for a certification. Teachers have that option of deciding what is it, what what is it in this mastery model on that assessment that shows that the learner did the work? How you determine these times is the next part of what we're going to talk about. 

OK, so we have the three models, the clock time, teacher verification, and learner mastery. Right? So I'm not seeing any questions in the Q&A pod. Is that correct? Am I missing something, gang? 

JANICE FERA: All good. 

JAY WRIGHT: There hasn't been anything yet. 

PENNY PEARSON: OK. Thank you. 

So let's move on, here, to our one that kind of trips people up, this 50% rule. And it really does require that you, as an agency and a team, work together. You've probably been in Jay and Janice's previous sessions where they talk about, how do you want to move forward with your courses? Do you pick up where you left off, or you create new classes? Nobody is going to dictate to you. You have to do it one way over the other. 

Because, remember, California is allowing agencies to have local control. OK? You have the option, but any decisions you make need to be reflected in your local assessment policy. And basically, what this means is, you are simply telling the CDE or whoever is going to come along and look at your stuff that you have a good justification for what you did. And you can make adjustments to that time as we move forward. 

I mean, all of us are in this huge-- you know, this is so unsettling, everything so fast. It's moving so quick that we-- everyone understands that, and we know that we may have to step back later and look at, OK, you know what, I need to make some adjustments here. Will it be a little more work? Yes, it will. Everything we seem to be doing right now is a little more work, but you need to work together so you can lessen that load. 

You know, there's an old saying, work smarter, not harder. So you have to figure out that option of the materials that you have left, the timeframe you have left. Now, all of the sudden, everything you're offering from the date of our Stay in Place orders of March 19th was going to be all at a distance. Does that equal more than 50%? If yes, then you have to decide, are you going to pick up where you left off, or are you going to create new classes? OK. 

No matter what you decide, you're going to have to figure out, how are you going to record those instructional hours, that contact proxy hours over those three models we just talked about, clock time, teacher verification, or learner mastery, all right? Nobody's going to tell you, you have to do it this way, but you really should work together with your administration, your coordinators, and all those folks who are teaching in your same program area. What are we doing from this point forward? OK? 

It really comes down to this. How do you want to define your class instances? You're going to make those decisions, hopefully as a team, and then you're going to decide how you're going to report these proxy hours. OK. 

So, a lot of times, the terms instructional hours, in the remote learning, distance learning world, get mixed up with contact hours and proxy hours. Sometimes, they're just used interchangeably. Just try to remember that the intent is to record the time spent learning. Now, because we're not in front of our learners in a classroom anymore, we have to be very careful about how we do this, and that means the agency makes that decision. 

So, as we move forward and we look at counting live hours, that synchronous event-- and that could be just what I'm doing right now. We're all in here together. I've got x number of people in my room. I'm talking to you. I could even be asking you questions and you responding to those questions in the chat pod. 

But anything that you do via Zoom rooms like this, through telephone, maybe online communication through a learning management system, it could be like Canvas or Moodle, maybe you text your learners, OK, but this is where the participant and program staff interact together, and you know who they are. That's the key thing. It's not just blasting out a message and, you know, hopefully the people that receive it are your learners. 

You have some means of saying, yes, these are my learners. I know this from my attendance list. This is who I'm sending my messages out about my English level 1 course. This is who I'm sending my messages out, to my basic developmental math. So you know that these are the people that are in your class, and you have their contact information, whether you're texting them, whether you're messaging them through a learning management system, whether you're getting them online in a web conferencing system. These are contact hour times. 

Now we're going to talk about, a little bit, about how you might be able to track some of this stuff because, in this situation, instead of talking one to many in a single classroom or a single Zoom Room like this, you might be doing a lot of individual support with learners through email, for example. You should count that as some of your time spent with your learners. You're helping them. You're helping them with teaching. You're helping them with learning. OK? 

So, now, once we get this figured out of how we're going to use these different methods. So let's go back to that clock time hours. Remember, they're based on an elapsed time a learner is connected to an online or standalone program that tracks time. Remember, it also can be used in situations like this when we're synchronously together. We are online all at the same time. 

So here's a little scenario. Now, this is where you need to read, so if you need to zoom in on the screen, remember you can do so up there at the top of the screen where that bar is, where it says Penny is sharing her screen. Under the little ellipsis, the More button, you can zoom in if you need to. But this is one scenario. 

Many of you probably use a software program. So the vendor has provided all the lessons, the curriculum materials, the assessments, and it's reporting learner activity every 15 minutes. So this is a good scenario for clock time. OK. 

Now, we went through-- I worked with Jay and with Janice about some of the questions from other webinars-- and this is an actual question that we picked up. And this is, well, I want you to just read it, and we'll just have a little chat here for a second to see how you would report this. 

What model would you use? Some of you probably use Burlington English. You know you can get those distance learning hours from that program. But you still have teacher interaction, yes. Teacher-- I think, in this particular case, because it says it's happening on a one-to-one basis by email and phone, yes, you try to capture that. 

Sometimes, where we get tripped up is, how do we capture that? How do we know? Because, yes, I would report both. You've got time going on in the class, in terms of on Burlington English, and now you have teacher time interacting with learners. OK. 

So we'll talk, a little bit later, about how do we capture that time correct. I see some of the chats going in here. Clock versus teacher, yeah. Your teachers and clock time are-- I think, both of it is-- in my opinion, this is really lends itself to clock time because you've got Burlington English just tracking the learner and you've got the teacher going, yes, I was on the phone with Penny today for 15 minutes. OK. 

All right, so now let's go on to the next one, our next model. We looked at Clock Time. Let's look at Teacher Verification. Here is just that same slide about, you know, this is what we're doing. We're assigning a fixed number. 

So here's a scenario. Let's just read this for a second. We know our teachers have lesson plans. Most of our teachers are very good at determining how long something is going to take a learner to do, those materials. 

So, in this case, I'm looking at this as this is more teacher verification. I'm not seeing anything in here that says that they're doing some time some type of cumulative test. But a teacher can look at the materials that were provided those learners and try to understand, yes, it took them five hours to do this packet, so I'm going to award that learner those five hours of this teacher verified contact time. They were interacting with this material for that amount of time. 

Now, somebody always says, well, I always have somebody that takes twice as long, or, oh, I have Johnny student, here, and he just whips through this stuff. Again, this is teacher verification. Teachers are verifying that the learner has gone through this material, and they've done something to verify that they've actually interacted with and have worked with this material. 

Most of time, that could be in the form of, in this case, they had to do some readings. Maybe they had to watch some videos. So what did the teacher do to ensure that they actually did that? Maybe they asked them some questions maybe they asked them to write a short essay. 

So these are things, this is all-- the teacher is, in this case, they're the all-knowing one. Right? They created the lesson plan. They assigned the materials. They are going to have a good idea of how long it takes the learner to get through this material. And, ideally, all of the teachers in the same program areas have gotten together and they have relatively evenly decided, OK, my units typically are going to take five hours. 

Where you might run into problems is if you have a teacher that's only one hour. Well, wait a minute. Maybe we need to beef that up a little bit. Maybe we need to give a little more materials in those packets. That's a team effort. That's where people have to talk together who have actually created these lesson plans and made some decisions about what goes in them. 

So here's another question, and I found this question very interesting because I looked at that part that said, "no remote instruction," and I think, in this case-- and I'm making some assumptions, so just take it as my assumptions-- when the teacher says, here, no remote instruction, I think they're thinking that they're not standing in front of a class in a brick and mortar classroom or they're not in a web conferencing system like this. And they're like, do we need to enter any of attendance versus contact hours? And this is, your measuring did your learners interact with your learning materials? OK. 

In this case, the teacher knows what's in those packets, and they know that that learner finished them or not. And if they did, then they record those hours. If they didn't, then they don't. 

So here is, now, we've gone through clock time. We've gone through teacher verification. Now, let's take a look at learner mastery. And, again, this is just the definition again to remind you. And if you remember that the key part of this one is this whole assessment piece. OK. 

And I happen to be a fan of learner mastery, and even in the CASAS assessment models and-- I'm probably going to get the name wrong, but I can give you those resources-- they really feel that this is a good model to use because it not only is allowing the teacher to create materials and pass them along to the learners, but it's also instilling that sense of mastery. The learner does something to ensure that they've learned this material. You're setting up your learners for success. 

So take the read of this one. So, as you read this, do you see that there are not that many differences in terms of packets? But the teacher has added this unit test. And, you know, I didn't put in here how they had-- how much they had to pass it by. But, again, it should be a high passing rate above 70%, at least. 

As I said, when I was teaching in career tech ed, it was 95%. They had to know this stuff. OK. 

So with this cumulative test, I determined how much time it's going to-- as a teacher, I determine how much time this material will take. And I can verify that they went through that material because the learners have passed that cumulative assessment. 

Now, somebody says, well, here again, we have a learner that can get through this really, really fast. Fine. If they get through it really, really fast, I really, as a teacher, don't care. I have determined that the materials that I have prepared should take a learner an average amount of time of 10 hours to complete this packet. I will award that learner 10 hours. 

They pass the exam. They know their stuff. They can move forward to the next lesson. Another learner may need more support and more help. It may take them 20 hours to get through this material. I'm not counting 20 hours. I'm only counting the hours that I have determined the average learner will take to get through those materials to earn that high assessment score, and they are now awarded that 10 hours of credit. So they have mastered that material, and they can move forward. 

So here's another question. This will take a little longer to read, so I'm going to just give you a second read it. So number one is this particular question, is this something that they could record those 10 hours per unit for learners? They're recording the amount of time that the learners are using these free sites where they can get the time the learner spent in the program. 

And the teacher is using a learning management system, may or may not track time on task, but this teacher has said, I know these materials are extensive. I've ask my students to tell me how long it takes them to do these materials. They're logging their time for me. I see that, over the course of several weeks, these units are taking about 10 hours per unit. They have to receive a score of 80% or higher before they can get to the next unit. 

Can I record that 10 hours of unit-- 10 hours per unit for learners? Yes. You can because you have proof, now, as well when you want to write this into your assessment plan, that you have taken the time with your learners and hopefully with your teachers to ask learners to give you an average amount of time they spend on these units. You're averaging them out. Some of them will get it done very quickly. Some of it will take a lot more time. 

But, as an agency, you're all-- or a group of teachers in a program area, you are all deciding what this time should be. And, again, by doing this type of process with your curriculum that the teachers create, that you have a unified stand of how you're presenting your capturing of these contact proxy hours. 

So I have won the bonus scenario, here. I'm going to let you read it, and I want you to tell me what we should be doing, here. So in the chat pod, put in what are your proxy contact hour methods you would use, or method. Clock time, learner mastery, learner mastery, learner mastery. 

And I would say you're on track, except it's actually, in my opinion, it would be two methods. Because the teacher has a synchronous meeting Mondays and Wednesdays from 10 to 11. That's clock time. You would be marking that down because you were providing direct instruction via Zoom or some other web conferencing program. So that's-- those two hours need to be recorded, who was there, who attended. 

Secondarily the learner mastery system is in employment in his learning management system. So he requires an assessment every week that determines whether or not he has completed that material. So you guys are getting it. I see it coming through the system here. 

So all of these methods, there's no one that is better than the other. It requires you to spend some time with your learners, with your administrators, with your fellow teachers, your coordinators because, whatever you use, you need to be able to document it in your local assessment plan. You need to tell the CDE, if they come knocking on your door, that this is how you are choosing to record those proxy hours, whether it's the clock time model, the teacher verification model, or the learner mastery. 

Ideally, you're really-- the focus should be supporting learners to be successful to get where they're trying to go. You need to have a way to define how you are assigning that time to whatever learning materials that you are providing the learners remotely. You also need to be aware if you're doing things via email or via web conferencing. 

So, generally speaking, my bias is always leaning toward learner mastery. Because even though, as a teacher or as a team, I may decide this unit takes 10 hours, it really doesn't matter how long the learner takes to get through the material because I'm going to see the validation and proof of their success through the mastery of that assessment. Remember, this is-- you know, all of this is new. This is brand-new to many of us, and we're just getting started with this. 

So, earlier, we were talking about, well, you know, I communicate with my learners. I'm talking to them on the phone. I'm sending them email. I might be texting them through a remind and doing things like that. That's all time that you should be tracking. But how do we do that? OK. 

So I'm going to provide you some time management kind of boundaries, and I'm going to provide you some ways of tracking how you work with your learners and being able to track the time that you spend. 

This is a brand-new world we're all in, right now, this whole remote teaching. Many of us had to turn on a dime. We were in face-to-face classroom on Thursday and, on Monday, we were supposed to be doing the same thing, but teaching it remotely. So the best thing you can do to help you and your learners is really set those expectations. OK. 

We've done that before in a face-to-face classroom. We're doing goal settings, right? We have always done that. Now, we're just shifting it to the environment to work for us as we're teaching in this remote environment. 

You need to determine when and how you will communicate with learners. Some of the most difficult things for a new online or remote teaching teachers is that they have a tendency to think there's this super sense of urgency whenever a student texts them or emails them, and they have to respond right away. The problem is that many of our learners will text you and email you at midnight or 2:00 AM, and you are not required to respond at that time, unless you so choose. 

So set the time. Tell your learners when to expect an answer from you, and stick to it. Don't be one of those teachers that says you have to answer them within 20 minutes, every time they send a message. Give yourself some time, and stay within that timeframe. 

So you need to develop some kind of tools to track interactions with learners on this one-to-one basis. Again, this is providing that evidence that you want to put into your assessment plan, that you are connecting with learners, you are communicating with them. And there's all different kinds of tools that you can use. Many of you are learning about the-- you could use a document or some type of sheet, like an Excel worksheet, and something that allows you to log your time with those learners. 

And I had some teachers who were like, well, you know, I might be doing an email to five learners that are working on the same type of problem or project or something like that. How do I log that time? Well, that time is for five learners. You're just being efficient and using one email to explain the rules or help with the problem or whatever the case may be. And you have to decide, well, how much time is that email actually worth? 

If you're just sending back an email that says, great job, well, that's probably not worth a whole lot of time. But if you had to spend some time to compose the necessary steps or to provide those learners that are working on a project with, again, the outlines of what the assignment was, that takes time to compose and put together. 

So you may decide, well, this email was worth 15 minutes because I did 15 minutes with these learners. You just have to have a way to say, this is why I chose this method of keeping track. You do not want to be one of those people that inflates these numbers like crazy. So just because you wrote an email does not count for one hour of time. We all know that. 

The idea of using these tools is speed and efficiency. You want to be those people that work smarter, not harder. So you are providing, in those emails, and that may be 15 minutes of time. And then as they come back to you and you have to follow up, then you have to record that time as well. Because you know these are your learners. You're verifying that they are your learners. You've got their email address, or you've got their cell phone to send them texts, something, that helps you to keep track of how you work with your learners, so. 

I just-- I missed my other slide, here. So here's ways that you can connect with learners. It doesn't all have to be about texting or email. You may have ways that you can figure out, where can I get access to get information on how to connect with my learners? Do I have their email addresses? Can I get their mobile number? 

Can I bake chocolate chip cookies for my data clerk or registrar that can pull that information for me in my hour of need? And sometimes, that works really well. Sometimes, you may have access yourself. And it depends entirely upon where those portals may be and how you have access to it. 

So you can look apps. You know that OTAN's been doing all kinds of different webinars on using these different tools. Most popular, right now, is Remind and WhatsApp. You may be using something else that you connect with your learners. We have some teachers that create a Facebook group that is for their learners only. And, of course, I have other teachers that are-- they just use a telephone, that good old-fashioned telephone. 

And so just for, real quick, this is kind of like my little survey-- would you use the chat pod, please, and just tell me, how are you connecting with your learners, right now? What are you doing? Remind, and email. Thank you. Texting. Perfect. Telephone. Oh, man, this is going so fast. I'm going to have to go back and read it. 

Remind, texts, using Canvas. OK, a learning management system? Google Docs, Zoom, so I'm seeing kind of a theme. So everybody is using these great tools to connect with their learners. Oh, this is great. 

Oh, Padlet. Yes! We just did some great sessions on Padlet. Using Google Drive, working in a shared folder. Somebody using a Schoology, which is another learning management system. Telephone and emails, looking at using an LMS . 

We can help you with that. Come to OTAN office hours. We can talk about that, using which LMS should you use. Which one do you have access to? Private Facebook group. 

See, and I think that we're-- you know, remember, our learners, even though we sometimes don't like to admit it, almost all of them have a smartphone or at least a mobile phone. And sometimes, we forget that they have the skills to use that, maybe not in English, but they have people around them that can help them. So using those tools can be very, very supportive. 

So thank you for adding that into the chat. I really like to see kind of how our teachers are finding to connect with learners because it's very difficult, especially if you're a traditional face-to-face teacher in a classroom. I'm sorry, but us teachers that teach in a classroom, we feed off of that non-verbal communication of our learners sitting in that room, interacting with us. We respond to smiles and shrugs and frowns, and we don't have that any longer in this remote teaching as easily. 

Now, we certainly can do that in Zoom or using a web conferencing tool, but we all know it's just not the same. So we have to figure out these other ways to connect with our learners and it's really heartening to see all of the different ways that you guys are listing in the chat pod. So get out and work with your other teachers. Work with your administrators to decide how are you going to be tracking this interaction of materials and learners and hours and reporting them accurately and with good faith. 

That's, I think, the biggest thing. Do your best to make sure that you provide good justification for how you are recording these hours. Have the necessary documentation in some way, whether it's by each teacher, each program area, so it's reflected correctly in your assessment plan, and you'll be good, and you can all just breathe easy. 

I think that's one of the things that is really kind of difficult at this time, is that we're also frantically pedaling that we need to, you know, coast for a while and just breathe. And think a few minutes, and look at your program from a very high bird's eye view of what are you trying to accomplish to get things done for this particular academic year. We're going to finish out May and June, and then we're going to be able to kind of sit back and figure out, OK, what comes next? 

We really don't know what comes next, and that's the hardest thing, I think, for all of us. It's like, what is this going to look like in the summer or in the fall? So we just need to be planning and thinking and having some of those contingency plans in place that allow us to be able to do what we need to do. We need to teach. 

We need to get our learners successful. We need to help them move on from where they are to the next place they want to be, and to do it quickly and successfully and with a mindfulness toward all of this stress we're all going through, right now. And just, we will get through this, and we'll be better for it at the other end, but it's a little painful as we walk this walk right now. 

So I'm hoping that this session was able to provide you with some information about how you can approach working with your administration, your other teachers, your program areas to understand how you can define and track these contact proxy hours for your instructional pieces, no matter what form they may take. Just be mindful of how you put that together, and provide a means to say to whoever may be coming in and looking at your process, this is what we did and this is why we did it, and I think you're going to be in good shape. 

So thank you. I've put resources on this page. If you haven't seen the OTAN Field Support page, I'm more than happy to demonstrate it for you after we kind of end the session. CASAS is amazing. You can send them information or request at techsupport@casas.org. They will help you to understand how you can take that decision of, do I continue the way I am or do I start a whole new class? We do have other sessions to support that. 

For now, I'll go ahead and say thank you, and we'll end it. And thank you for being here.