All right, good morning, everyone. Hopefully, you are finding your way into the platform. We'll get going in just a minute or so, allowing a few more people to come in and join us. Good, I see the numbers are going up. People are finding their way in. Everybody's waking up on a Monday morning, including our platform.

All right. It's good to see everybody coming in. We're already at 60 participants on our way to 1,000. We have over 1,000 registered for this event. We have a team of people here at the technical assistance project office at Sacramento County Office of Education, making sure that all of you are getting on. We're glad to see you and have you with us this morning.

I'm seeing a message in the chat that says, I couldn't get into the plenary session. The plenary session has not occurred yet. We will be doing a welcoming session in just a couple of minutes. I appreciate everyone's patience as we're getting going this morning.

OK, this morning, we're going to have some welcomes from some of our state leaders. And then we will jump into the plenary session. So I'm seeing some chat that you've missed the plenary. That is not the case. Plenary will be coming up, and we'll be walking through that schedule pretty soon.

Please know that you can stay in this room for the plenary session. Everything is going to happen in the same room. So there is no need to go anywhere else. If you've had trouble getting in this morning or you're working with somebody who's having trouble getting in, you may ask them to refresh or to try logging in again. Try refreshing their browser.

If you're just joining us, thank you for being with us this morning. We're just about to pass the 100 mark on individuals joining us this morning. Everybody is up early.

Hopefully, everybody is ready for a week of learning and from your colleagues with over 70 sessions this week. I'm excited to do some learning with you.

OK, we're going to go ahead and start this morning. So good morning, and welcome to the California Adult Education Program Annual Summit. I am Renee Collins, the director of the CAEP Technical Assistance Project, the director of the Outreach and Technical Assistance Network, better known as OTAN, and a member of the Capitol Adult Education Regional Consortium. I will also be your emcee for this morning.

On behalf of our CAEP TAP team. I want to thank you for registering and joining us at the CAEP Summit 2020. We have over 100-- I'm sorry, 1,000 registrants, and close to 70 sessions, including our learn at lunch sessions with our exhibitors. This morning, as part of our welcoming session, we will hear from our CAEP office leadership, Dr. Carolyn Zachary and Javier Romero, who will also be welcomed by Deputy Superintendent of Communications Kindra Britt, and California Community Colleges Chancellor, Eloy Oakley. As well as our plenary speaker, Dr. Pedro Noguera.

Hopefully, you have had an opportunity to review the agenda and identify strands and sessions you are planning to participate in. I want to highlight that Tuesday afternoon, we will have a networking event starting at 2:30. Participants will have six networking topics to choose from and discussion will be facilitated by your adult education colleagues.

I now want to introduce Chancellor Eloy Ortiz Oakley. Chancellor Oakley as an American educator and a leading voice on improving equity in higher education. He is the first person in his family to attend and complete college. Growing up in the Mexican-American neighborhoods of Southeast Los Angeles, Oakley's experiences, which shaped his belief that quality education opportunities are a critical ingredient in achieving social and economic mobility. After high school, he became a member of the armed services, serving in the US Army 82nd Airborne Division, and as a member of the US Army Chemical Corps while stationed on Johnston island.

Oakley is a product of the California Community Colleges and the University of California. Oakley was appointed chancellor of the California Community Colleges in December 2016. He leads the nation's largest and most diverse system of higher education, consisting of 116 colleges, which serve more than 2.1 million students. Under his leadership, the California Community Colleges are positioned as a VitalSource for maintaining global competitiveness of the California workforce.

Through the implementation of innovative practices and policies, the California Community Colleges have begun to close educational attainment gaps, and have prepared more Californians for the 21st century economy. Oakley's work includes the establishment of the California College Promise, the design and implementation of the system's strategic vision, the vision for success, the elimination of standardized testing, the reform of remedial education, the adoption of a student-centered funding formula, and the launch of California's first publicly public fully online competency-based education college.

In 2014, Jerry Brown appointed Oakley to the University of California Board of Regents. In this role, he serves as a fiduciary for the nation's top public research university and a champion for opening up greater access to more underrepresented and low income students. He also takes a leadership role in dismantling policies and practices that perpetuate inequality in higher education, and create barriers for students. Oakley is a proud father of four, grandfather to two boys, and lives in Orange County with his fiancee, Terri. Chancellor Oakley, welcome.

Thank you. Thank you, Renee, for that warm welcome. And good morning, everyone. It's a pleasure to be with you. Thank you for tuning in to this virtual Summit. And thank you all for inviting me to say a few words at today's California adult education program virtual Summit.

For those of you in Southern California, I hope you're staying safe. That wind is pretty crazy out there. If you're in Orange County, I hope you stay safe. I can see that there's already fires in Orange County, so I'm hoping everybody stay safe today.

So let me just kick off this Summit with a few thoughts. First of all, let me say thank you to all of you who put adult learners at the center of everything that you do. I can't tell you how important your work is right now in this moment in time. I know I'm speaking to the choir here when it comes to talking about adult learners, but you all know how much of a struggle it is for our working adults, particularly those who don't have much more than a high school education, and are out there in the front lines trying to make things work in this pandemic and the economic fallout that's followed.

And that's not the only challenge that they face. Prior to the pandemic, the economy was already rapidly changing after the last recession. Things continue to evolve in the workforce, and more and more employers are requiring some type of post-secondary credential. So your work is increasingly important not just to the lives of the students that you serve, but to the communities that they live in, the families that they care for, and the state of California.

So I'm glad to see that there's somewhere around 1,000 practitioners registered for today's event. That's a great sign. I'm impressed with the breadth and the depth of our adult education program and its partners, the K-12 adult schools, the county offices of education, and of course, our community college partners and programs.

Some of you may have heard me talk a little bit about the California Community Colleges vision for success. It's sort of our North Star. It's how we focus our time and attention, and keep ourselves grounded to the needs of our students.

And at the core of that vision for success is equity. Equity is the driving thought in everything that we do in terms of thinking about what kind of programs that we sponsor, what kind of legislation, what kind of practices, what kind of regulation that we generate. Equity is driving everything that we do. And that focus couldn't be more important than it is today.

You all see what's happening in your communities around you on the news throughout the country. Our adult learners, as many of you know, are primarily individuals who come from low income backgrounds. Individuals of color. Individuals who have not always had access to quality public education. And so the work that we're doing, grounded in equity together, is critically important to the future of California, and to the future of our country.

Some of you know, and I've said it many times, it's important that we understand our role, not just in California, but across the country. One out of every four community college students in the nation is here in the California Community College system. And of course, the adult learners that you all serve make up such a huge part of the American workforce.

So what you do today, what you do here, would you do for California sets the stage for the entire nation. Sets the stage for the recovery that we all need to pitch in to get us not only back to where we were prior to the pandemic, but much further along to ensure that the jobs that are being created, the opportunities to create wealth for families is open to as many people in California as possible. You all have served students of color, working parents, immigrants. These are the individuals that are at the center of the vision for success, and these are the individuals that are at the center of what we all do, and why they're so important to the future of California.

I don't have to tell you how devastating this crisis has been on the communities that you serve. You all are on the front line I. Am preaching to the choir here. So the recovery from this pandemic and the economic crisis that has stemmed from this pandemic is critical to the populations that we serve. So working together, we can begin to help these communities, these families, these individuals prepare themselves to recover from this crisis.

You know, I see evidence every day of the resilience of the kinds of students that we serve. Resilience gets them very far. You all show resilience every day in the work that you do. And I know that adult learners have not always been put at the front of the line in terms of resources, in terms of attention. Same is true in the California Community Colleges. But we have to turn our attention to our adult learners. We have to turn available resources to our adult learners, because they are critical-- critical to the recovery of this economy, the recovery of California as we move forward.

You know, we have a very interesting system of education, particularly when it comes to adult learners. We make distinctions amongst ourselves between credit and noncredit, career education or transfer. We really need to begin to rise above all those distinctions and definitions that all they do is separate our students. We begin to place value on one or the other.

And really, what we're really talking about is not education for a transfer student or education for an adult learner or education for a young person coming to a community college wanting to get into a career field. We're talking about providing opportunity to all Californians, regardless of how they access the education. Regardless of what age they access to education. We are about creating opportunity. So I hope that we can all work together to begin to break down those silos, break down those distinctions, bring everybody together.

Because this is not about one set of students going on to college and another set preparing themselves for a career. We're talking about college and career together. So I hope the Summit provides a much needed opportunity to learn and to share strategies to keep students engaged, keeping them learning, particularly in this environment. And keeping them moving forward through these difficult times. Strategies like dual enrollment, pre-apprenticeships, immigrant integration, and building welcoming campus climates are crucial to our student success.

So I really hope that you enjoy your time together. I hope that you're able to connect with each other, even in this virtual format. It's unfortunate that I couldn't be with you in person, that we cannot meet in person to talk about this equity agenda. But this just means it's even more important, that we have to give even more energy to this because of the situation that we find ourselves in. Serving the needs of adults remains critical to serving the needs of the state of California.

So I want to thank you for your commitment, for your persistence, for your resilience, for hanging in there through this crisis, and for however long it's going to take for us to get this behind us. Thank you on behalf of all of the students that you serve.

And let me just end with a message, again, to the choir. We have eight days left before this next election. This next election has a lot to do with the future of our adult learners. There's a lot on the California ballot, the national ballot. So please take the time to vote, talk to your friends and family, talk to your students about the importance of voting. It's critical to their future.

So again, thank you for inviting me. I hope you have a great day. Please stay safe, stay committed. And thank you for all the work that you're doing. I'll turn it back over to Renee.

Thank you, Chancellor Oakley, for being with us this morning and providing that warm welcome to our adult education practitioners. We appreciate you being with us.

Yeah.

So next, I am going to welcome Kindra Britt. Kindra currently serves as a member of state superintendent of public instruction, Tony Thurmond's executive team, as the deputy superintendent for the access for all branch. She oversees the Career and College Division, which includes statewide programs for adult education, workforce development, career and technical education, alternative education, independent study, and some of the largest state and federal funding grants. Her branch also includes state special schools and diagnostic centers, CDE press publications, and the technology services division.

Kindra previously served as community affairs director for the Placer County Office of Education. Additionally, she spent nearly 12 years starting as a career technical education instructor for high school juniors and seniors. One of her last projects before leaving to come work at CDE was to help implement the new adult education school at the county office. Over the last few years, she has served on a statewide board for the California School public Relations Association, and serves on various committees as an appointee on behalf of superintendent Thurmond and CDE. She is a strong supporter of access and equity for all, and strives to keep this lens on with her approach in all of her work. So I am going to turn it over to Kindra Britt.

Renee, Kindra came and she got booted off. Not sure where she's at. So we can go to the next speaker and just trade her off. Sorry about that.

OK, thank you, Melinda. Thanks for letting us know. So then let me go ahead and introduce Dr. Carolyn Zachary and Javier Romero, who are CAEP leadership co-administration. And then if Kindra Britt is able to jump on with us, then we'll pass it back to her. So let me introduce Dr. Carolyn Zachary.

Dr. Carolyn Zachary is currently the state director and education administrator for the adult Education Office and the Career and College Transition Division at the California Department of Education. Her office is responsible for administration and management of the federal Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act Title II grant, as well as co-administration of the state-funded California Adult Education Program.

Prior to her time in the adult Education Office, Dr. Zachary was the administrator for the office with the federal Perkins and state CTE incentive grants. She was on the team responsible for the revisions to and professional development for the California Career Technical Education Standards. She is the past president of the executive committee for the National Association for Partnerships and Equity, NAPE.

Prior to joining the CDE team, Dr. Zachary was a county office program coordinator, where she started a county-administered adult education program. Within her 33 years in education, she has also served as a site principal and teacher. Outside of education, Carolyn is on the executive board of the California State Chapter PEO, Providing Educational Opportunities for Women.

And Javier Romero is a Dean in the California Community Colleges Chancellor's Office Workforce and Economic Development division, as well as co-administrator of the California Adult Education Program. He oversees staff who process 450 or more grants per year and 700 million in program dollars. He is the division lead for the coordination of Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act implementation, involving seven state agencies.

He came to the Chancellor's Office after 14 years with the California Workforce Investment Board, where he shepherded sector strategies and regional planning initiatives, and played a key role in informing the roll out of the 500 million California career pathway trust fund, administered by the California Department of Education. OK, so I see that Kindra is back on with us. Kindra, I'm going to pass the microphone to you.

Good morning.

Good morning.

Hi, I'm Kindra Britt, the deputy superintendent from the Access for All branch at the California Department of Education. And on behalf of the California State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Tony Thurmond, I welcome you to the California Education Program Summit 2020.

I know that due to COVID-19, adult education programs in California have had to shift instructional delivery to ensure that adult learners are able to continue in or start a program to improve their skills to acquire a job, learn English, gain skills, earn a high school diploma or high school equivalency certificate, and even help their own children to be successful in school. To prove that, you might actually hear my little one in the background right now. I'm sorry about that. He's going to make an appearance here as well.

But due to the current state of our economy, this pandemic has pivoted adult education programs into uncharted territory. But California adult educators have an incredible opportunity to continue to rise to the challenge. Your programs will help our economy recover by continuing to be resilient and acclimating your delivery method of instruction to this current digital environment, allowing your programs to keep feeding prepared students into the workforce, and help our state recover from a challenging year.

CDE is proud to continue supporting adult education as a vital pipeline for the workforce in this state by supporting programs with the resources needed for adult education students to be successful in their career pathway goals. The Summit program is packed with sessions focused on relevant and timely topics, such as shifting to online instruction, remote testing, integrated education and training, equity, and economic recovery.

I hope you will be actively involved in the sessions that you select, and find ways to virtually network with your colleagues. Thank you for all that you do, you have done, and will continue to do to meet our adult students wherever they are in their educational journey to help them have a better career and a better life. Thank you, enjoy your Summit.

Thank you so much, Kindra. We appreciate you being with us this morning and providing that wonderful welcome. Thank you. I'm going to pass it off to Dr. Carolyn Zachary.

Well, good morning, everyone. And thank you for being here. And I hope that you are all staying safe. I am greeting you from my dining room, because we have no power. So I am trying to reserve computer battery with no virtual background that Kindra had designed for me. And so I just really want to welcome you to this Summit. It truly is, as Kindra said, packed with many wonderful sessions. And I know that I'm having a hard time picking some of the sessions I want to go to, because they're competing against each other on the schedule.

Adult education in California truly pivoted this year to move to online. Whether it was in community college noncredit programs or in our K-12 adult education schools, you all stepped up to the challenge that COVID-19 presented us when you shifted to online learning or some type of distance learning for your students to enable them to continue their goal of learning English, receiving a high school diploma, passing a high school equivalency test, earning a CTE short term credential, moving on to a better job in the workforce, or just helping their children to navigate their own online learning.

So I know that on behalf of myself, the Adult Education Office, we truly appreciate everything that you've done for the students in California. Our adult learners have had some wonderful opportunities because of the instructors that they've had in the classroom. As well as those of you who are administrators and had to really move everything that you were doing to make sure that your teachers had professional development opportunities and had the right equipment that they needed to continue instruction for students. So please take advantage of all of the wonderful opportunities. Find time to network tomorrow at the networking session, and enjoy the Summit. Javier.

Good morning. And thank you. Thank you for everything you've done for our students, as our theme is these unprecedented times. I know it probably sounds overused, but it's the term that always comes to mind with every day and every change. And it's going to continue. And we're going into uncharted waters. But how you've pivoted and helped our students adapted is just a lot of confidence that we will embrace the next term, the next challenge, and for the sake of our students.

And as we know, those hardest impacted by these times are the demographics that fit perfectly into the students we serve. It's those that are with the lower educational attainment levels. Those that already have academic barriers. There are immigrant workforce, retail, hospitality. These people need new paths into family-sustaining jobs. And I know you're already there, you're already doing it. And we will continue to find ways to support you any way we can.

And we hope that you find in the space in the Summit that we created for you that you'll hear from national and international thought leaders. You'll hear from a national perspective on policies that are going to help our students attain the resources they need to overcome barriers, not only in the classroom, but outside the classroom. Policies such as dual enrollment. And you'll hear from your peers on leadership and innovation and things they've done.

And I hope we come out of this with coalescing with some themes around some things. And one of those is there will be an economic recovery. But we're going to be in the forefront of saying we want an equitable economic recovery. We want an economic recovery that gives those with most barriers, those that have already been suffering under the changes of the economy as the Chancellor referenced before the pandemic.

And I hope we come out of this coalescing around some things. I hope you're able to step back a little bit from your daily challenges, your daily toils, and be able to embrace a vision, a large system of, I think, the largest adult education system in the country. And hopefully, you're able to see yourselves in that vision, in that large system. I'll leave it with that. I'll turn it back to Renee. And look forward to networking later. Bye bye.

All right, thank you so much, Dr. Zachary, and Javier. We appreciate you being with us and offering that welcome this morning. So at this point, I am going to turn over the microphone to our coordinator of CAEP Technical Assistance Project or CAEP TAP to Veronica Parker. She is going to help us walk through the vFAIRS platform as it's new to all of us, and show you it's the unique features that will help make it easier for you to navigate this week's conference. So Veronica.

Thank you, Renee. And thank you to all of you who have joined us this morning. Even through a pivot, we are still moving steadfast. So I'm going to show you a video that was recorded to show you the different components of the vFAIRS platform. And we know that you all have not had a chance to explore it, since we experienced technical difficulties. But hopefully, this video will provide some context as to how to navigate the virtual platform. So I'm going to share my screen now and play this video.

Veronica, you didn't share audio.

OK, let me know if you can hear it now.

No, there's still no sound.

--coordinator with the CDE TAP Project and member of the CDE Summit 2020 planning team. We are extremely excited to host this virtual conference focused on supporting adult learners through unprecedented change. And the conference is hosted by vFAIRS. If you are joining me during this video, you have successfully logged onto the virtual platform and joining one of the opening sessions. Congratulations to you.

Now after logging in, you have entered our gorgeous lobby. The lobby is your first point of access to some very important sections of the virtual platform. Our first stop will be the information desk. So I'm going to scroll down here to the information desk where I see individuals who are enthusiastically awaiting my request for information and/or support.

So I'm going to click on the information desk. And when I click on the information desk, I will be taking you to one of the chat rooms for request and support. So the two types of support, if you scroll down here on this menubar, you can receive support from the technical assistance team provided by vFAIRS and/or the SCOE TAP, Technical Assistance Project.

So here, I'm going to click on Technical Support. And technical support is provided if you are experiencing any technical issues related to the virtual platform itself, such as the agenda will not allow loading your device or when you click on a resource, and add it to your swag bag, you receive an error message. So those are the types of support provided by the technical support team with vFAIRS.

The other type of support is related to general conference information and that's provided by the technical assistance project. And so if you have general questions such as, when is the CAEP Summit update general session or panel discussion, or if you would like to know how many sessions are included in the equity program strand, you can click on the SCOE CAEP Technical Assistance Project support line, and we will be able to provide support to you.

Now all requests for CAEP support will be answered as soon as possible, but up to an hour depending on the volume of support requests we are receiving at this time. So you get to either the SCOE support button or the tech support button, and you type in the general chat what your question is or what you need support of. You can also scan this chat if there are other messages here to see what other people are experiencing. And maybe there's already an answer to your question provided.

Now up top, you can see the booth reps who are available, so I am online at this time, so you hover over my name, you can chat with me directly. And when you click on my name or if you go over to direct messages and see another rep's name, you can click on this person's name, and you will be able to voice chat, video chat. Or if you'd like to differentiate your communication to our rep by changing the color, you can do so by clicking this button, and you can set your color to any of these colors. So if there is a lot of communication going in here, and you want to differentiate yourself, you can change the color here. Or you can exit out of direct message with this particular rep.

All available users will be listed here. You can send direct messages to anybody whether it be a colleague, or it be a representative from one of our supporters or anyone else. So that's how you obtain general request and information. So by requesting information from either the SCOE CAEP Technical Assistance Project or our technical assistance team provided by the vFAIRS platform.

So now I'm going to exit out of the chat room and go back to the main lobby to explore some other areas provided within the platform. So here you see our beautiful logo. you. See a beautiful image of our plenary speaker, Dr. Pedro Nogeura. And now you're walking over to the auditorium.

Now the auditorium is going to be your primary access point to participate in any of the sessions provided at the CAEP Summit 2020. So I'm clicking on the auditorium, and here, I see a lovely auditorium full of people who are anxiously awaiting a session of some sort. You can click anywhere in the auditorium to be able to access any part of the agenda. So I'm going to click on the auditorium here and then the agenda appears.

Now the agenda is designed or categorized, I should say, by program strands. So up top in this bar, you see all of the programs that provided for the CAEP Summit 2020. Now here, we are participating in the opening session, so if you click on this button, which you would have clicked on in order to access this particular section, you click on all of our sections that are coming up. So you're already in the Welcome to the CAEP 2020 scoring session.

The next, a welcome from the CAEP Office with Dr. Carolyn Zachary and Javier Romero. Next up is welcome from Deputy Superintendent Kindra Britt, as well as a welcome from Chancellor Oakley from the California Community College Chancellor's Office. And our plenary address from Dr. Pedro Noguera, who is the dean at the USC Rossier School of Education.

For any of these sessions, you can click join. So let's say you started here, but you didn't. You had a take off for a second from the welcome, but you can click back on the join button to join the welcome from Deputy Superintendent Kindra Brett from the California Department of Education. So that's how you generally access the sessions. So remember, sessions are categorized by program strand. And when you click on the program strand, the session will appear.

So I'm going to go to the leadership program strand, and I would like to participate in the dual enrollment and co-enrollment session provided by Judy Mortrude. So here, we see the title, Judy's name, as well as a description of her special. And underneath there, you see the session evaluation, which we hope you will complete upon each session, as well as access to the PowerPoint presentation for this particular session. So I click on the PowerPoint presentation and I'm able to view her PowerPoint presentation.

Now if I click out of here, then I will be able to join her session. Now I am joining her session, and I see that I would like to have a copy of her PowerPoint presentation. So I will scroll up to the resources section. In the resources section, I can click the dropdown arrow, and go to the program strand for her particular. session. So we know that it's the leadership program.

So I click on leadership programs, and I see her PowerPoint is listed first in PDF format. And I want to add this resource to my swag bag by clicking swag bag. Now I click out of the resource section, go to my swag bag, and I see that her enrollment and co-enrollment PowerPoint is in my swag bag. And now, I want to leave it in here, but then I also want to give a copy to myself. So I click on email and I enter in my email address.

And if I want to send it to other colleagues who can benefit from this particular PowerPoint, I would enter their email address as well, and separate by a comma. And then I'll be able to send the PowerPoint to more than one person, including myself, who will all have access to the PowerPoint to use at a later time.

So I'm going to click out of here. And then now, I want to go back to the lobby. I'm going to click on the lobby. And so I've explored the information desk, I've explored the auditorium, And now I want to go to the exhibit hall. Or I would like to go to the exhibit booth for any of these particular exhibitors by clicking on their particular logo. But I'm going to go to the exhibit hall and just see what's in there.

So in this lovely exhibit hall, I see the names of all of the exhibitors who are participating in the CAEP Summit 2020. And I can click on any of their booths to access their actual booth. So I'm going to visit my friends over at OTAN. And when I click on their booth, the beautiful layout of their youth appears. And then underneath here, I see all of the resources-- the videos, documents, links to websites, et cetera, that are available for me to access. So you can visit their website, their training page, resources, et cetera.

But I want to chat with someone from OTAN. So I'm going to click on their chat button. And when I click on their chat button, I am going to be taken directly to their chat room in just a second. Here is their chat room. So as you can see, it's the Outreach Technical Assistance Network chat room. I can go back to the booth if I so desire.

But here is their chat room. So if they were online at this time, I would see a list of all of the representatives for the OTAN booth listed here below. And I would know that is an OTAN representative, because their name will be listed as OTAN rep, and then the first name of an individual who is online at this time. So for example, I know that Anthony Puric is an OTAN representative, who will be available for me to speak with at some point in time. So his name will be listed as OTAN Rep Anthony. And then I'll be able to click, and then chat with him in the general chat.

His name could also be listed here, where I can direct message him. So I would click on his name, and at the top, I can video chat with him, I can voice chat with him, or send a general chat either directly to him. Or chat within the OTAN booth.

So that's how you can communicate with all of the exhibitors as well as individuals. So definitely utilize the chat room to ask one of the primary sources for networking with everyone who is participating in the CAEP Summit 2020.

So now I'm going to click out of here, and I'm going to go back to the lobby. I'm going to click on the lobby here. So we have explored the exhibit hall. We've talked about networking. We had a chat. We visited the auditorium, the information desk, and so on. So now that I have participated in all of these activities, I would like to check to see how I'm doing on the leaderboard.

So here on the leaderboard are descriptions of the activities that I can participate in for the opportunity drawing, where I have a chance of winning some of the fabulous prizes that the CAEP Technical Assistance Project have available. So here are all of the opportunities to participate in an opportunity drawing just by clicking join for any of these sessions, as well as completing the evaluations, the general session evaluations, networking breaks, et cetera. Your points will automatically be calculated and they will appear here on the leaderboard.

So let's say this has already been launched. Every individual who is participating, their names will appear and the number of points that they have accrued thus far will be listed, with the top person on top. At the end of the Summit, this CAEP Technical Assistance Project planning team will get together and draw names for some of the fabulous prizes that we have available to you that we're graciously donated from our exhibitors. So definitely participate in all of the activities that we have designed so that you have a chance to win some of our fabulous prizes.

At the conclusion of the CAEP Summit 2020, please fill out our overall evaluation to let us know what you thought about this virtual conference experience. This is our first time ever putting this together, and so your feedback will be greatly appreciated as we evaluate the feedback and use it for information for planning next year's CAEP Summit, which will be 2021. So in addition to the overall evaluation, please complete the session evaluation after each session you attend, so that we can let our presenters know what you thought about their session, and again, use that as an opportunity for future planning and professional development.

So that is all that I have for you. I hope that you all find our virtual platform easy to navigate. Again, if you have any questions or need support, feel free to reach out to us via the information desk, and either a member of a technical assistance team as well as the SCOE CAEP Technical Assistance Project will be able to provide assistance to you. So thank you all so much and enjoy the CAEP Summit 2020.

Thank you so much, Veronica. And now, we are going to shift to our plenary speaker for the day, and I will read a short bio for Dr. Pedro Noguera. And then we'll turn over the microphone to him, where he will speak, and then we will have a moderated question and answer session following his speech.

So Dr. Pedro Noguera is the Emery Stoops and Joyce King Stoops Dean of the USC Rossier School of Education. A sociologist, Noguera's research focuses on the ways in which schools are influenced by social and economic conditions as well as by demographic trends in local, regional, and global contexts. He is the author, co-author, and editor of 13 books. His most recent books are the Crisis of Connection-- Roots, Consequences, and Solutions with Niobe Way, Carol Gilligan, and Alisha Ali with the New York University Press, 2018. and Race, Equity, and Education-- 60 Years from Brown with Jill Pierce, and Roey Arham, Springer in 2015.

He has published over 250 research articles in academic journals, book chapters, and edited volumes, research reports, and editorials in major newspapers. He serves on the boards of numerous national and local organizations, including the Economic Policy Institute, the National Equity Project, and the nation. Noguera appears as a regular commentator on educational issues on several national media outlets, and his editorials on educational issues have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Dallas Morning News, and Los Angeles Times.

Prior to being appointed dean of the USC Rossier School of Education, Noguera served as a distinguished professor of education at the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at the University of California at Los Angeles. Before joining the faculty at UCLA, he served as a tenured professor and holder of endowed chairs at New York University from 2004 to 2015, Harvard University from 2000 to 2003, and the University of California, Berkeley from 1990 to 2000.

Noguera was recently appointed to serve as a special advisor to the governor of New Mexico on education policy. He also advises the state departments of education at Washington, Oregon, and Nevada. From 2009 to 2012, he served as a trustee for the State University of New York as an appointee of the governor. In 2014, he was elected to the National Academy of Education and Phi Delta Kappa Honor Society. And in 2020, Noguera was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Noguera has received seven honorary doctorate from American universities, and he recently received awards from the Center for the Advanced Study in the behavioral sciences at Stanford University, from the National Association of Secondary School Principals, and from the McSilver Institute for Poverty Policy and Research at NYU for his research and advocacy efforts aimed at fighting poverty. And with that, I want to welcome and turn this over to Dr. Pedro Noguera. Welcome.

Thank you, Renee. And good morning, everyone out there. Good to have a chance to speak with you. I'm going to share my screen so I can show my slides. And we'll get started.

As I said, it's a real pleasure. I got a chance to listen in early and to hear Chancellor Oakley. And I'm going to reinforce at the beginning some of the points he was raising with you, because I think adult education is often not given the attention it needs and deserves. Those of you who are adult educators know it's important. And so I'm going to just start there-- why? Why is it so important?

And I want to point out that although we live in a country where education is mandatory and free-- that is, that parents are required by law to send their children to school, all children, even the undocumented, even the homeless-- all children get to go to school-- we still end up with millions of undereducated adults, many of whom are functionally illiterate. That is, they don't they can't read enough to vote. Because as anybody who's voted recently knows, the propositions are quite complex. And knowing how to make sense of them is a challenge.

And this means that many of them cannot adequately support themselves or their family, which is how we end up with millions of structurally disenfranchised Americans. That is, people who are not working, who are not in school, who are often unable to support themselves, a burden on their families because they just lack the skills, they lack the education. In communities where there are many people like this, the entire economy suffers, because you can't attract industry when you have lots of people who are unskilled and uneducated. And so this is a huge economic problem that we have not really addressed as a nation, despite leading efforts here, and there and despite the presence of many community colleges.

We know, too, that this has an impact on our democracy. As I said already, you can't really vote intelligently if you can't read well. You can't serve on a jury if you can't make sense of jury instructions and out the cases materials that you'll have to become familiar with. But beyond that, you are much more likely to be manipulated on social media by fake news, by crazy conspiracy theories if you are not well-educated.

Think about the people right now who are subscribing to all kinds of misinformation on social media, because they lack the ability to even think about what's the source that I'm getting. And to make intelligent decisions. So Thomas Jefferson had it right many years ago when he said, anyone who believes you can have a democracy without an educated citizenry is nuts. It never will happen. And we see the results of it right there with so many Americans who are being manipulated through social media, both by our own actors, but also by foreign entities from across the world.

So this is a huge problem. To address the problem-- and I know many of you have been on the front lines trying to do this work for a long time-- there are some very important questions that we need to be able to address. And it starts with, how do you use education to break the cycle of poverty? I want you think about that question for a moment, because as important it is that our students have the mechanics of literacy-- that is, know how to read and write, know how to do some basic arithmetic-- those are essential skills.

Literacy is actually more than that. It also includes things like media literacy, critical literacy, which I was alluding to just a moment ago. The reason why that's important is because when you acquire that frame of mind, you become empowered to change your circumstances. And that's why education is so clearly linked with gains in income and in status. Because if we can't explain to adult educators that by educating themselves, they can actually improve their circumstances. Many will question whether or not it's important, whether or not it's worth it.

How do we motivate adult learners, which is just as relevant, isn't it? Because if they're not motivated, they're not going to stick with it. They become discouraged. And especially now during this pandemic, there's a lot to be discouraged about. And so motivation. Getting students excited about learning, and recognizing that it's very different to do that with adults than it is with children.

And then third, how can our students use education to improve their lives, their communities, and play a role in creating a more just and equitable society? Again, an important question. Because as I'll show in a moment, when we see what we're doing as part of a larger project of transforming our society, often, this is the key to change.

So I actually have had experience working in adult education very early in my career. I spent time in the Caribbean working on the small island nation of Grenada in an adult literacy campaign, a successful campaign. And what I saw struck me. I saw people, farmers, some of them in their 70s and 80s, who had never gone to school past the third grade after work studying. Learning to read and write for the first time. And I was curious about that. I wanted to know why, what was motivating them.

And over and over again, what they said to me is this is my chance to participate in my society. There were changes occurring around them. And what we've seen in other countries that have experienced dramatic social and economic change, people are more willing to participate. If they don't believe that they can change their lives, it's very difficult to convince an adult to invest the time and energy and work into their education.

So adults have to believe their lives will change. This is the lesson we've got from around the world. There have been several efforts, international efforts to reduce illiteracy that have failed, and it's largely because nothing would change in the societies where they lived. And so education's also got to have some practical utility. People need to see how we can relate to their personal goals of a better job, of supporting their families and their households. So these are things I want you to think about in your work.