Wonderful. Thank you, Veronica. And we will go ahead and get started in our webinar now that we've gotten all of the logistics down and everyone knows how to say hello to us and let us know if we're doing a good job or not. We appreciate that. Just a little bit of background about the AEBG TAP project. It is a project that is funded through the AEBG office. And the Sacramento County Office of Education is the current grant holder for this project. And AIR is one of three partners working toward making sure that the field is prepared and supported with the technical assistance that they need.

And specifically, our role within the AEBG TAP project, the Technical Assistance Project, is to make sure that we are offering effective instruction in the variety of program areas, supporting you in aligning your curriculum, and making sure that students have seamless transition. And then what you see bold today is our goal is to support learner college and career readiness, as well as develop exemplary leaders. And these are both critical and important to the work that we're doing around work-based learning.

So as I shared earlier, we have some phenomenal presenters. And they each gave me their bio, and I don't want to take up a great amount of time sharing all of the details, so I'll try and hit some highlights. As you hear them this afternoon, you'll see their expertise and their knowledge and skill set.

But I will start with my colleague Ellen Cushing, who also worked with the American Institute for Research. And she has been working as a provider of technical assistance at the national, state, and local level for over a decade. She is currently the deputy director of the College and Career Readiness and Success Center, which some of you might have heard of. And a part of the work that she's leading is focusing on education-to-workforce pipeline.

Let's see. Eric Pomeroy and Doug Criddle our picture there together in the next slide. And Eric is the director of College and Career Readiness for Sutter County Schools and oversees the Sutter County adult education and the stream California Career Pathways Trust Grant. He's a part of the Northern California Adult Education Consortium and has over 22 years of experience in education.

And his colleague is also from Sutter County Schools and the Northern California Adult Education Consortium. Doug Criddle has over 20 years of educational experience, but also a critical role in his perspective as a business owner, a filmmaker, and also member with over 30 businesses serving in either an advisory or board member capacity.

Then we have Frank Gerdeman. And Frank is coming to us as the director of ADVANCE, which is the Lake Tahoe Adult Education Consortium. There Frank has been working to serve the southern region of the Tahoe Basin. And Frank has about 18 years of experience in adult education. Prior to coming to South Lake Tahoe, he was the director of adult education for the State of Vermont. And in that capacity, he oversaw adult ed, CTE assessments, and Title III.

And then, finally Haden Springer. Haden served as a manager of the foundation for a California Community Colleges Workforce Development team. And she oversees a variety of workforce learning programs as well as support the strategic planning and partnership development efforts. Right now she's overseeing 32 work-based learning, planning, and tools pilot. And the goal of these pilots is to build the capacity so that we can help increase student access to quality work-based learning opportunities.

I know I went through those quickly, but I don't want to lay off getting right into this amazing content. And so with that, I'm going to turn it over to Ellen Cushing, who is going to get us started with "Setting the Context." Ellen.

And Ellen, if you have started, you are mute. We are not hearing you yet. There you go.

You hear me now?

Loud and clear.

All right, great. Well, thank you, Cherise. And thank you, everyone, for this opportunity to speak with you today. As Cherise mentioned, I have been working on a multi-state work-based learning initiative over the past year and a half. And I'm really excited to share some of the work that we're learning through this effort with you all today.

Before I get into that content, I just wanted to start the context a little. You've probably seen some version of this graphic somewhere in your work. This particular one comes from the Center on Education and the Workforce at Georgetown University.

And while the specific numbers may vary based on the state or the region within a state or even the industry that we're talking about, the general point, the overall point is really the same. And that's that increasingly, jobs of the future are requiring some form of post-secondary education, and we are currently predicting that we are going to be able to fill a good portion of those jobs. And just when we speak about post-secondary education, we really are talking about anything that happens after high school. So that can be a career or technology credential, associate's degree, an undergraduate four-year degree, or even an advanced degree.

So if we're thinking about what this new world of work is going to look like, we really need to ensure that all students have access to these opportunities. And one way that we can ensure that that access is available to all students is to appropriately align our education-to-workforce pipeline. So what does our current pipeline look like? The good news is that high school graduation rates, as I'm sure you're all aware of, are increasing and have been increasing over the past decade. And even though those rates are somewhat lower for specific populations of students, like English learners or those that might be economically disadvantaged, really the trajectory is that high school graduation rates are increasing over the years.

But when we look at if students are ready to access the post-secondary content, we're seeing a slightly different story. So here you can see the post-secondary remediation rates for students that are going into post-secondary institutions. And those that might enter into a four-year institution, about 20%, require some form of remediation. And those that are entering into a two-year institution, just over 50% are actually requiring some remediation. They're not quite ready to access the coursework that's expected of them.

And then if we look sort of further down that pipeline at that graduation rates for post-secondary, you see that about 60% of students that enter into a four-year institution graduate within six years. And those numbers again are lower for specific populations of students, like African-American students graduating at about 41% and Hispanic students at 54%. So really, what you're seeing is that-- the trajectory being that students are having trouble accessing content when they enter into post-secondary, and they're not completing their post-secondary degrees.

But how does this pipeline sort of translate into our workforce needs? What you can see here is information that comes from the National Skills Coalition and shows sort of this disconnect between our education preparedness and our workforce needs. Here you can see that we are projecting to overproduce workers with low skills or those that might just have a high school diploma or less, and we're projecting to overproduce high skill workers. Those are the four-year degree or higher.

But where we see this opportunity, biggest opportunity, is really in these middle skilled jobs, which require some form of post-secondary education but not quite a full four-year degree. So this could include some sort of specialized training or job training or technical skills, again, but not a full four-year degree. So this is really where we're seeing some opportunities for the education-to-workforce alignment.

Now, if we want to create these opportunities for students, we really need to ensure that they're ready to access that labor market, the workforce requirements that is required for job readiness and preparedness. So one strategy that we're seeing states and districts and students engage in to be prepared for the workforce needs is work-based. And it's really-- work-based learning is really an opportunity for students to be provided authentic learning opportunities, to explore potential jobs, apply academic and technical knowledge in a real-world setting, and develop and demonstrate, really, these crucial employability skills or workplace skills that we know that workers need.

But if we want these opportunities to be truly meaningful, we need to ensure that they are actually quality work-based learning opportunities. And so the remainder of my presentation will sort of identify some key factors or indicators in how to ensure that the work-based learning opportunities are truly quality for students. Before I go into that content, though, I want to switch to our first polling question, which is just going to help us get some information from you all about where you are in your work-based learning journey.

So if you could just take a minute and answer this question here about where you currently are in implementing quality work-based learning opportunities for your students-- are you sort at the knowledge development stage, the planning stage, implementation, or sustaining? Let's take a minute and have you respond to this.

OK. I see that we have a good response rate so far. Maybe just 10 more seconds. And if you're in-- I see Estella, you're saying that you're in two stages at once. If you want to just pick a stage that you feel like you're in today, maybe, just feel free to respond to the poll that way.

Great. OK. Well, so it looks like there was a pretty even mix between those who are in the knowledge development stage and those that are in the implementation stage. And then we have one who is focusing on monitoring and continuously improving. So that's great. That's really helpful information for us just to sort of where you are in this process and helps us sort of tailor our comments moving forward, so thank you. Great.

So let's just kind of dive into this work a little bit deeper. So we want to discuss some of the key indicators for creating quality work-based learning experiences. So there's really four overarching indicators that I'm going to be talking about for the remainder of my part of the presentation. The first indicator is really ensuring that you have a common definition of what work-based learning is. The second is establishing measures of quality. The third is around ensuring that the needs of businesses are integrated into work-based learning. And the fourth is around creating specific supports that help educators provide and facilitate quality work-based learning.

And what I'll do is just sort of describe each of these indicators from a national context, provide some California-specific context, and then close out each of these indicators with some considerations that you might want to think about or plan for as you implement your own work-based learning opportunities. Let's begin with just the first one here, defining work-based learning.

So work-based learning really does require the coordination of a lot of different agencies and stakeholders. You can have the state education agencies or local education agencies, departments of workforce, the governors offices, departments of labor, local workforce investment boards, higher education, national organizations, the general public. There's sort of a lot of folks who need to be brought to the table where you're thinking about developing and implementing and providing work-based learning experiences for students.

And the tricky part with all of these different stakeholders is that they all sort of have a different terminology, different jargon, different objectives. And so making sure that these different stakeholders sort of have a common understanding of what work-based learning is not only helps you communicate amongst each other as you're trying to coordinate and provide support, but also so that as students are talking about their work-based learning experiences, there's this sort of common understanding of what that experience actually means for future employers or for future collaboration.

So recently, the College and Career Readiness and Success Center, which is a federally-funded technical assistance center, conducted a national scan of what the state-- what different states-- or how different states are defining work-based learning. And they looked not only at the education agencies, but also at departments of labor, departments of workforce, to sort of see how these different definitions do or do not align even within states.

And so what was found is that there are about 28 formal definitions of work-based learning that states have adopted. Of those, 22 require that there is workplace experience by the student. Nine specifically require that the experience focuses on developing professional skills. 16 focus on developing knowledge or technical skills. Four are required to be connected to a career pathway. And four include payment requirements.

And one of the things that was really interesting about this analysis is that oftentimes-- which might not be surprising-- but the department of education and the department of labor and workforce would have two very different definitions of what work-based learning might be. So this is really sort of one of the reasons that we wanted to highlight sort of this first indicator of quality, which is creating this common definition.

And I want to just take a quick segue for those on the phone, because I know that oftentimes we, even in this field, folks who are very familiar sort of use the terms of work-based learning and pre-apprenticeships and apprenticeships sort of interchangeably. And so I thought it might be helpful just to have a quick slide that sort of breaks these three down so that we are, at least on this phone, sort of practicing what we're preaching and creating this common definition.

But for work-based learning, what we're really talking about is sort of this sequence, set of activities, this continuum of experiences that really expose students to the world of work but does not necessarily pigeonhole them or focus them within a specific career trajectory. It also focuses on developing key knowledge and skills. And oftentimes, actually what we're talking about is sort of the end of the continuum, really, around the career training piece, so the learning for work.

Related but slightly different is the concept of pre-apprenticeships. So this is obviously a concept that is very closely tied to registered apprenticeship programs. It's much more focused on a particular pathway or a particular industry or particular job that the student is going to be exploring or already has committed to. And there's this dual focus on both industry trading and classroom instruction.

And then finally there's this concept of apprenticeship. So this is a very highly structured employer-led system that, again, connects classroom education with hands-on job training. And a key component of that is that you are earning while you're learning in this particular industry. So I just wanted to sort of have that quick segue, because I think that it's helpful to sort of have this common definition of work-based learning, particularly as we're going through the rest of these indicators.

So in California, there's actually a couple of different definitions that we were able to find. And you probably have other definitions that you are working with from your own perspectives or have seen other definitions. So this is not meant to be exhaustive, but is really just, again, to show you that there are some differences in how different agencies and different departments might define work-based learning, and so sort of reinforcing the need to make sure that there is this common definition that you all are using.

So here you can see in the exploratory work experience that this really focuses on observations and sort of exploring opportunities for work. It's non-paid. But there is some related classroom instruction. Here there's the general work experience education. Again, it's supervised, it's paid. It's thinking about the purposeful application of skills. And then the Department of Industrial Relations also has another definition, which is very closely tied to the apprenticeship definition, which is being driven by industry and focuses on instruction and developing skills.

So the good news is that, as I mentioned, there's a lot of definitions out there, both within California and elsewhere. And so there's no need to sort of reinvent the wheel and develop your own from scratch. But rather, think about what are other agencies and departments and stakeholder groups using, and think about how they not only could be leveraged to develop your own definition but also help to develop an understanding amongst yourselves about how different stakeholders might interpret the term "work-based learning," and create some opportunities for creating common language amongst your stakeholders.

Another consideration is just thinking about how business and industry in particular, how they define work-based learning, and some of what their expectations are for a work-based learning experience that, as you develop your definition, you can sort of fold that and integrate that into your definition. And then finally, once you have your definition, being very purposeful and thoughtful about how you communicate that with other stakeholders, including students, educators, guardians, parents, business leaders, et cetera.

So that's the first consideration-- I'm sorry, that's the first indicator of quality around creating a common definition. What I'm going to do now is just move in to the second, which is really focused on sort of, once you have your measures of work-- I'm sorry, your definitions of work-based learning, what are some measures that you might consider to ensure that what you're doing through your work-based learning efforts are actually having the impact and the outcomes that you would expect work-based learning to have?

And so what we do here, or what I'm going to do here, is sort of break it down into three different buckets. And this is really three buckets that are-- what we consider sort of decision points that you should all be discussing or considering as you're thinking about what measures are appropriate for your particular work-based learning system. There is a lot of different options out there and a lot of different strategies that we're seeing different entities use. So it's hard to say this is the measure to use for work-based learning. But really, your measures should reflect what your overall objectives are for your work-based learning system.

And the first question to determine what the measures that would be appropriate are is to first figure out what you want to measure. So you can think about it from the lens of the student or the quality of the students. So this would be a measure of what they've done through their program, such as the development of some personal characteristics.

Are they able to accomplish certain job tasks that you would expect them to be able to accomplish? Maybe the student, or a student with a mentor, or a student with a leader in their program has identified some goals that they might want to develop over time. They might have accomplished those mutually identified goals. Or it might be if they're able to apply specific academic content and technical content into a workplace setting.

So you can either think about it from sort of what the student has been able to demonstrate, or you could also think about it from the quality of the experience-- you know, more from the lens of the employer or the work-based setting that that experience is taking place in. So this-- examples of this could be, does the employer give tasks that are really helping the student apply that academic and technical content? Are they providing some development support for the student to really help them make this a meaningful opportunity? Or are they just sort of hiring someone for a work-based learning experience but really just putting them on the phone but not really allowing them to develop that academic, technical, and employability skills that we know are so necessary?

So you can think about it from a couple of different angles. They don't have to be mutually exclusive. But just being sure that you sort of have an understanding of what you want to measure is sort of the first step in determining what measures are most appropriate.

Once you've sort of articulated what you want to measure, you can sort of move to how you want to measure it. And there's a whole, like I said, host of measures that are out there and available that you can beg, borrow, and steal from. But some include employer evaluations. So employers complete evaluations of students that are in the program. It could be a rubric. It could be a student self-assessment or some self-reflection opportunities. It could be sort of a portfolio of different artifacts that a student has collected over a period of time that are scored and ranked. There's some other options that we're seeing.

But sort of think about how that-- once you determine what you want to measure, how it's best measured, and then who will do the measuring. So is it, again, something that students will do themselves? Is there an employer expectation that they'll do the measuring or the assessing of the activities of students? Is it teachers or even intermediary organizations? So sort of working through these three types of questions can really help you identify what's going to be the most appropriate measure for your work-based learning experience.

And similar to the definitions analysis that the CCR-- the College and Career Readiness Center did previously, they've also recently done an analysis of what different measures are out there, and so looked at about 109 different resources that are currently being used, and saw that the majority of them are using employer completed evaluations. There is a lot of districts and states using rubrics and self-assessment self-reflection items. But sort of there's a lot of different resources, again, that are already out there that can be modified or at least used to begin to develop your own measures.

And even in California, there are some existing resources available. So here is an example pulled from the Work Experience Education Guide, which is a resource from the Colorado-- sorry, the California Department of Education. And this first resource is, as you can see, sort of a rubric that would be completed by an employer or some work-based learning observer. And there's a series of indicators or characteristics that the student would be evaluated on sort of on a 3-point scale. Pretty standard, pretty easily available.

Another resource that could be part of, perhaps, a portfolio would be-- there's an example in this guide for a student log so students can sort of track the different-- the amount of time that they've been in their work-based learning experience. And then the third is, again, another resource that could be adopted or adapted to be more of a rubric or a portfolio. But it's a series of commitments that different stakeholders must agree to as part of their work-based learning experience.

And so here, as you can see in the tiny print, there are some expectations for students. There's expectations for guardians, for employers, for the work experience coordinator. So each of these stakeholders have a different set of obligations that they must fulfill as part of their work-based learning experience. And so again, it's just another piece that could be used that's already out there for thinking through what are some of the expectations for around a quality work-based learning experience.

So as you are thinking about some measures for work-based learning from your perspective, there are some things, in addition to those sort of three decision points that I went through, some other considerations that might be helpful to think through as you're thinking about measures. So the first is thinking through the purpose of assessing work-based learning. So if you have high stakes accountability, for example, for your work-based learning experience, the measures that you would choose would obviously be different than if you were thinking about it from more of a formative type of perspective.

You know, it's also important to think about how you balance the measurement piece without overburdening key stakeholders. So again, if you're thinking about employers, for example, being the one to conduct the evaluation, how can you use an evaluation that wouldn't be overly burdensome so that they wouldn't want to be that partner?

And then thinking through-- again, if there is-- if this is being used from a high stakes perspective, you know, what type of training or support would be necessary to ensure that there is some calibration or interrater reliability amongst these measures so that there is some sort of equity amongst the scores that would be produced from work-based learning? So just thinking through sort of what's the overall purpose, and how that purpose might effect different decisions as well.

So with that, I'd love to launch our second polling question which, again, would just be really helpful for us to get a better sense of what's happening in the field with you all specifically. So if you can just take a minute and write in your response. It's not a multiple choice questions like the first one.

But just take a minute and share [audio out] sort of how you're doing some of this coordination across key stakeholders.

All right. Thank you, Carrie, for sharing a link to some of the standards and definitions that you've already developed. I think that's a great resource for others who are either beginning to think through that process-- that would be a great resource to use. So thank you.

Maybe just a couple more minutes, if you-- I see there's a couple folks that are still typing. I don't want to cut this off, but-- Thanks, Carrie. OK.

All right. Janet's sharing that they have an extensive CTE program, an advisory board that provides input. And students are evaluated by their supervisor. Great. Well, it sounds like there is a good mix of some examples that are already out there, but also some opportunities for other folks who might not be engaged in these conversations just yet to maybe think about how they could initiate or start some of these conversations to really get to this work in a more collaborative and potentially common terminology, common definition perspective. So thank you, everyone, for sharing.

So now I just want to move to the third of the four indicators. So this one is really around ensuring that the needs of businesses are reflected in the work-based learning experience. So you might remember from my intro side that we had sort of this-- we call it internally this "trifecta of skills" that students are going to need for future readiness, for future workplace readiness. This the sort of combination of academic, technical, and employability skills. And work-based learning is really this great opportunity to think about how students can have authentic opportunities to develop and demonstrate these skills, these academic, technical, and employability skills.

But when we think about what's happening nationally, we really have a good both breadth of research but also just-- it's one of the things that's most striking to me as I do this work around the country that employers are consistently citing this need for employability skills specifically in workers. And so this idea that-- we hear it a lot, that we'll train them on the content. We know that the technology and the work is really changing so quickly over time that we just need people who are adaptable, who sort of have these critical thinking skills, these collaboration skills, the digital literacy, and that as long as they sort of come to us with these more employability skills at the ready, then we can really help them with the academic or the technical knowledge that they need for their jobs.

And it's really underscored by the research that's coming out of the Hart Associates and ManpowerGroup, which are saying that these employability skills are really the most important skill for them, and that the lack of these employability skills are contributing to a talent shortage within these industries. And so really thinking about how-- oh, I'm sorry. I forgot about that slide.

Again, trying to practice what I preach here, when I say "employability skills," they go buy a whole bunch of different names. They go by "21st century skills" or "soft skills." There's a whole bunch of different terms that are used. And I always say, everyone has a different term and no one likes that actual term. But it's really this idea of the general skills and knowledge that workers need in any profession and at any level.

And so this framework here is the employability skills framework that comes from the Office of Career Technical and Adult Education, OCTAE. And it sort of has these three domains of applied knowledge, effective relationships, and workplace skills, and then sort of branching off of each of those three domains, these specific skills that you would expect worker-students to be able to apply in a workplace setting, these employability skills. So that's what I mean when I say "employability skills."

But if we're really thinking about how we can integrate employers' needs into these work-based learning experiences, what we need to do is just think about how we can be sure that the experiences that we are providing for students are really aligned to what the labor market is asking of them. So not only these opportunities to develop these critical skills, but they're actually getting opportunities to work in industries that are emerging or priority industries, industries that are going to still be around in the next three to five years so that they are employable and that they have an opportunity to have a meaningful work experience once they leave the post-secondary institution. So really thinking about state and regional labor market needs an understanding what industry projections are, what labor markets are saying, and what employers are asking for should all these key information that sort of collected and shared, or used to inform work-based learning systems.

And here is just a quick slide that I put together that sort of highlights some of the emerging and priority industries within California specifically. So again as institutions, yourselves on the phone, as you're thinking through how to create quality work-based learning systems, thinking about what are the emerging and priority industries within your regions and within your state is really important, because it will help sort of inform what types of relationships you might want to establish with different industries and thinking through sort of that trifecta of academic, technical, and employability skills that would be really crucial for these different industries.

And then, you know, again, closing out this section of the third indicator of quality, what we have here are just some considerations for how you might consider reflecting business needs within your work-based learning systems. So again, thinking about the specific industries within your region or the region that you serve or that your students tend to go back to; understanding what those industries are looking for specifically in the talent that they recruit; considering how you might integrate some of the knowledge and skills into coursework or work-based learning experiences; and then also thinking about, from the student's perspective, where are they interested in pursuing industry opportunities, and how can you think about creating relationships with those industries that students have identified as areas of interest?

And now let's go into the fourth and final indicator of quality for work-based learning. And this is really all about that human capital talent, that human capital management piece. This is-- we can have the best policies, and the best programs, and the best guidebooks, and all of that developed and delivered. But if we don't have the staff on the ground who are really prepared and supported to do this work well, then really, we're not going to have the impact that we're hoping to have through work-based learning. So really equally acknowledging and investing in the support for educators and staff is really critical to ensuring that the work-based learning experiences are high quality for everyone.

So there's a whole bunch of research out there about what makes professional learning effective for educators. We know that it needs to be focused on something specific. It needs to be active so that there's opportunities to sort of learn but also apply and adapt. It needs to be collaborative and not just done by an individual, but rather in a group, or opportunities to learn and collaborate amongst different colleagues.

We also know that it needs to be ongoing. Just one time is not going to really change practice or help people apply new knowledge into their context. It needs to be ongoing, job-embedded, and differentiated for the stakeholders that are attending. So there's a whole bunch of research out there about what effective professional learning means.

And what that sort of translates to-- it's a very rudimentary slide that I put together, which is sort of how I think about it. But it's really this continuum of experiences where you have on sort of one end of the continuum, the far left end, you sort of have these professional learning opportunities that are lower effort to put together. It's more generalized content but really has sort of a lower impact on changing practice.

And then at the other end of that continuum, you have sort of the higher effort types of professional learning to organize and coordinate and to deliver. It's much more personalized, but it also has the potential for a much higher impact in changing practice and supporting practice. So you sort of have this continuum of support for educators in work-based learning, and then along that continuum, sort of different activities that might fall.

This is not, obviously, an exhaustive list of different professional learning opportunities that exist. So I don't mean to imply that it is. But it's sort of just an idea to think about what types of professional learning activities do you currently offer your educators, and maybe think about, really, where they fall on this continuum, and how you might really think through opportunities that exist on both ends. So there could be some opportunities for a guidebook or some virtual training, and coupling that with more intensive higher effort, higher impact types of activities as well. So just sort of thinking about where your professional learning falls on this continuum will be helpful in sort of ensuring that you are at least considering some of those higher impact activities.

And just to sort of close out with this section, and related to that, is thinking through some considerations for educators. How might you think about leveraging multiple modes of technical assistance to support educators? So similar to what I was just saying, there might be a great opportunity for a webinar that's about full content, and you just sort of want to get information out there. But that can be coupled with something that's maybe more in-person, where participants have an opportunity to really apply what they're learning in a collaborative environment. So knowledge delivery, but also coupled with more intensive, high impact technical assistance and professional learning support.

There's also a need to ensure that teachers really understand what employers are looking for-- so sort of coupled with the third indicator of quality around business needs, ensuring that educators know what businesses are looking for. And maybe there's opportunities for teacher externships. Maybe there's some opportunities for bringing professionals into the classroom or interprofessional development opportunities. But thinking through sort of these different considerations really help ensure that the quality of the work-- of the professional learning for educators can really help change and impact the types of work-based learning experiences you're hoping to have.

So those are sort of the four overarching indicators of quality. I could talk about any of them for all day. And there's others to also consider. But sort of based on what we think are sort of the most important to think about to start, these are the four that we wanted to highlight.

I do want to give us a chance to go to our last polling question, which is really an opportunity for us to see if there is specific areas that you'd like to learn more about, or if there's some more information that you'd like to be shared about-- either any of these indicators of quality that I just talked through or anything that we didn't have a chance to talk through today. So please just take a minute and share that with us so that we have a better sense of where we might be able to support you most.

All right. So Ellen, I want to thank you for this great presentation. It's a great preparation for what we're about to look at in terms of some of the lessons learned from local programs. I see some folks are typing in the chat pod. And you can continue typing.

We will start to move to our first program that we're going to hear from in terms of their lessons learned from the field. It will be Eric Pomeroy and Doug Criddle. And they are from the Northern California Adult Education Consortia. Here I see that you are still typing in there are some things that you want us to continue to explore more and that you want to learn more about.

Now that-- you can go ahead and change that, Veronica. Now that pod has been removed, if you have any other requests, we'll have you type those in the general chat pod here. Ellen, there was one question on where the data that you were sharing can be found. And if you want to provide us with a link to that, we can share that in the chat pod later. You can email us that-- or, sorry, type that in in the presenter's chat, and then Veronica or I will get it over to the general chat so that participants can see where to access the great data that you shared.

So again, thank you, Ellen. That was great. And with that, I'm going to turn it over to Eric Pomeroy and Doug Criddle. And Eric, I believe you're starting. So here's to you, Eric, and thank you very much.

That is correct. This is Eric. Thank you again, Cherise, for giving us the opportunity today. And thank you, Ellen, for sharing some of the wonderful resources, many of which we actually use and will be talking about today. I want to preface our discussion by sharing some information about our program. Cherise said Sutter County Adult Education is a member of the Northern California Adult Education Consortium. And we, similar to other programs, provide adult education, including adult secondary education and adult basic education, ESL and CTE to students in Sutter and Yuba County.

We partner directly with the Sutter County One Stop. This is what really makes our program unique, is these partnerships, because we actually oversee the CTE portion or educational portion of Sutter County One Stop. So we're directly partnered with WIOA Title I, III, and IV, as well as II, which we oversee. And then we oversee the Tri-County Regional Occupational Program, which is a three-county ROP, and the California Career Pathways Trust Grant, which is a four-county consortium.

And so through these partnerships, we are very well positioned to partner with employers. We have well over 800 employers in our network that help us really focus on providing career-based education to all of our students in adults ed and high school. Our program really is in Yuba City, located about 40 miles North of Sacramento. We're a very rural, agricultural-based community. So statistically speaking, we have a challenging population-- high unemployment rate, migrant population, because a lot of our work in the area is farm work.

A large EL population, larger than average high school dropout rate. So probably our biggest challenge here is keeping students in school. And one of the ways we do this is through targeted-- and I stress targeted work-based learning. And it's targeted in the sense that we engage students through work-based learning that is tied to their career goals and interests.

Our orientation process is pretty thorough. Like many other programs, students will take the diagnostic and CASAS pre-assessment. Since we're connected to One Stop, they immediately will enroll in CalJOBS and with a WIOA resource specialist to identify needs and resources, and also a counselor to review transcripts.

On the career side of our intake, all of our students take career-based assessments. We use VirtualJobShadow as one of our career-based assessments, which Doug will be talking about. And then also, we use the California Career Resource Network, which is free. Great resource if you're not familiar with it.

After this, all of our students meet with a navigator. We have a Navigator here-- it's a regional navigator-- to discuss potential career interests, work history. And we formulate an initial career plan from there. Students are then enrolled in our required Career Planning and Management course, where they research careers through exploratory learning and work-based learning. Students also in this class develop a portfolio towards the end of the course. And then all of our students actually enroll in a pathway at that point and participate in an unpaid internship.

So on this first slide, notice the picture at the bottom of the slide. We actually forgot within the frame of the picture to add the word "college and career readiness," to illustrate that everything we do in our program revolves around college and career readiness. Ellen talked extensively about employability skills. So really, we tie all of the programs that we do into this-- the standards for career-ready practice, if you're not familiar with those, defined by the California Department of Education are foundational to our program.

Within this framework of career readiness, we actually have four components that we focus on to make our program successful here at Sutter County. These include relevant technical curriculum. And we stay "relevant," because it has to be relevant to industry, up-to-date. It also has to be relevant to students. So our teachers use a lot of real-life scenarios with that updated curriculum.

We stay "rigorous academics," because we really there are reinforcing the technical reading and writing, as well as the math, to make sure we address the skill gaps. Work-based learning is really at the heart of our program, because it truly engages students. And it reinforces the relevancy, it helps students learn by doing, really.

And then the fourth thing is the personalized support system, which really gives the students the resources to be successful and stay in school. And I know Ellen talked about this extensively as well. So resources could be from financial to even mentoring. So we have mentoring here at Sutter County. So all of these components, again, are working together to ensure that our students are prepared to successfully transition to career, college, and work.

So Ellen also talked about quality work-based learning. And again, these are things that we really ensure are in place to make sure our work-based learning program is successful. Our program-- again, we talked about it in the last slide-- focuses on college and career readiness. We want all of our students to be prepared to transition to a career, which really requires much more education and training, as you know. So work-based learning is more focused on learning broader and ultimately higher level skills, especially in our capstone CTE programs.

Our WBL, or Work-Based-Learning, as we talk about in the next slide, is never a standalone experience. It's really coordinated in a way that builds on prior knowledge and experience. And also through our workplace training, we prepare our students to participate, especially in internship experiences, employers and teachers really work together to define those student learning outcomes. And students are interviewed and prepared for this experience. It's not just-- we just don't send them out to participate.

We have certificates, actually, that we developed quite some time ago through our ROP program. So all of our programs have certificates. We define those student learning outcomes, as I said, with employers. Ellen also talked about evaluations. We have those as well. So employers have the opportunity to evaluate students. Students have the opportunity to evaluate the experience so we have feedback.

Ultimately, we really start with employers. Because really, they are the end game in this. And as I said, I think partnerships are the key to making this work. Without partnerships and partnerships across the community employers, school districts, this is a very difficult task to make work well.

On this next slide-- I'm not sure if you can see this very well, because I can't see it very well. But I'm half blind here. So there is a handout, I believe, that we included in this. Really, this is another continuum that Ellen had presented. It's a continuum, again, that we will use to explain this work-based learning process to our stakeholders and partners.

It's something that we develop through partnership with the CTE incentive grant, support providers, and our California Career Pathways Press Consortium members. Ellen used a similar continuum, so I don't want to really go into detail. But to reiterate the important part of the slide it's important that you begin with students learning about work and preparing students for work.

Before they participate in internship, we really need to know what students are interested in before we send them out. So one of my favorite exercises that I do, primarily when we're talking to students, especially ones that there are new to our program, is actually have them sit down, give them about two or three minutes just to write up as many careers as they can come up with. And I think you'd be surprised. Even with actually adults, usually the average is probably about maybe 20, maybe 30 if you're lucky.

But the thing is really that students aren't aware of all the careers that are out there. So we really emphasize this awareness, this exploration, this research, to make sure our students really know what they want to pursue. And so from that point, we actually really focus on the prep work. Again, we work with employers. Guest speakers would be in the first segment, but then that would transition to job shadowing, and actually I'm going to turn things over to Doug Criddle here in a little bit.

He'll talk about some of the things we do in class not just outside of class that reinforce some work-based learning across the board. So with that, Doug, would you like to take over, talk about some of the things we're doing in our program, some of the tools we're using and some of the resources? Doug, you there?

We currently use many integrated platform tools for work-based learning One of the programs that we use is Nepris. Nepris is a visual platform that connects teachers and students with the right industry experts, virtually without having to spend a lot of planning time or having to leave the classroom while they're providing an effective way for a company to extend their educational outreach and and create an equity of access.