Good morning. Thank you for joining us this morning. It is the fourth and final day of our summit. As you start to enter if you can hear me, that's fantastic. You will be muted. You will be muted through the entire presentation. So as people slowly start to come into the room, I'm going to start with our morning housekeeping.

So good morning, everyone. My name is Mandele Comstock with CAEP Technical Assistance Project. I wanted to go over a few things before we get underway. So this meeting is being recorded. All attendees are muted in the webinar platform. Your volume can be adjusted to turn volume up or down in your system settings.

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Thank you so much. Welcome. I'm so excited to be able to be a part of this and this webinar and to be able to tell you about our story. Again, I am Heather Maloy and I'm with Delta Cierra Adult Education and here we are to discuss our Student Engagement in the Time of COVID.

So I'm going to go ahead and I first would love for you guys to introduce yourself in the chat. Please share your name, organization, your school. Especially please let me know, do you have coffee in hand? I know it is bright and early, folks, 8:32, last day of a conference. And so please, it'd be great to hear from you. Go ahead and add in the chat.

So people are still trying to wake up. Hey, all right, Pauley. All right. Mark? Oh, look at this, the DSEA time. OK. Let's do this. This is awesome. I know we have more participants out there. I'm so excited.

All right, we'll give it a couple more seconds. OK, good. You're on your second cup. All right, yea, Trey! All right, awesome. Very cool. Ooh, fancy, Peet's Coffee. Hi, Carlene. Times two, I love it. Hi, Carrie.

Hi, Estella, thank you for joining us so early. So go ahead as you guys enter, or as you want, feel free to introduce yourself. Hi Pang. I'm going to go ahead and introduce my phenomenal team. So let's see here.

All right, so as I have said, I am Dr. Heather Maloy. I'm with San Joaquin Delta College as the Project Manager for Delta Sierra Adult education. Transitions. And go ahead, Cuong, if you'd like to introduce yourself.

Give me one second. My name is Cuong Nguyen. I am a counselor and transition specialist at Stockton Adult School. Leslie.

Leslie Dahlquist, Teacher and Transition Specialist at Lodi Adult School.

Shall we go ladies first or me?

Go for it, Eric. All right. Eric Kimball, Tracy Adult School.

And, go ahead, Marie.

Hi, Hi, I'm Marie Cris Conde. I am a Transition Specialist for Manteca Adult School. Happy to be here. Welcome, everybody.

Thank you so much. All right, so we're going to go ahead and-- hold on. We're just going to do a brief overview of just what we're going to be talking about today. And so again, just kind of give you an overview of who we are as a consortium, looking at our pandemic response, and how we really came together even stronger as a team more than ever.

And I know not only am I going to talk about that, I know my team members will also. We we're also going to be addressing the digital divide that's happening right now, especially since everyone is having to go to school virtually. Their kids are going virtually. I mean it's a huge equity issue that we really need to address and we have been working towards.

And then just looking ahead, looking at our future goals as a team and even as a consortium and even statewide, what are we doing for transitional support for our students? So that's where I really want-- throughout this whole presentation, I really want us to talk about it. This is not me presenting to you, but this is also me coming to you to hear what are you guys doing.

And so we'll get into that a little bit more for our presentation. So, I'm very, very big on interactive. I'm a teacher at heart. And so, we're going to move forward I'll just give you guys a little brief overview of who we are.

So as I said before, we have four major schools within our consortium that we really have been engaging with in regards to transitions, even though we have-- there are seven major-- excuse me, there are five major adult schools and two county offices that are involved. So we have Lodi Adult where we actually have Trang, who is actually on the webinar right now, who is specialized in CTE and high school diploma, as well as Kathy, who is our ESL transition specialist, Leslie, who is here on the webinar as well.

We also have Manteca, who not only is Marzie representing as a transition specialist, but also ESL. We have Larry, who is our counselor for high school diploma, ABE, ASC, and Ryan for CTE. Stockton Adult as well, there's Cuong, who has been taking on not only transitions but as well as GED.

And then we have Emelda for ESL and Ken Churchill, who is with the high school diploma. But not last but not least, we also have Tracy Adult, Eric Campbell, who's been rocking all positions. He's been doing all of it for HiSET, high school diploma, ABE, ASC, ESL.

And then with that, we all work together, they work with me in trying to support our students to transitioning over to whether it is Delta College or a career or within the community. And then along with that, we'll discuss a little bit later on, but we've been working on with Worknet case manager who has been designated as a EL navigator for our consortium as well.

And so, just to give you a really brief overview of who we serve, we have multiple different partners and agencies, and as you can see we really are kind of all over the map. I mean, we're all the way from Rio Vista all the way to the cuspid of Angels Camp. We do have the Calaveras County office online. Thank you, Jared, for participating. We really are serving a broad area and so really exciting. Even though it's a big area, big map, but we're doing it.

So along with that, so not only is Delta College at the table, but here are also our county offices Stockton, Delta, Manteca. We have Wind River. And that's the adult school on Rio Vista, Tracy Adult, Lodi Adult. And as well, who's a heavy participant is our workforce development board. We have probation involved, human services agencies, we have jail education, multiple different community-based organizations. And definitely, employers are at the table as well.

So here are some are basically an overview of our three-year plan strategies. So not only are we doing work-- our pathways or an allied health, transportation and logistics and advancement. We've also been a huge portion in immigrant integration and addressing parents of young children and then as well as we're developing English language learners pathways to career. We've been working very closely with Worknet and our workforce development board. And that is where our EL Navigator has come into place in working with us.

Obviously, we are in a transition. So we're working on students, again, like I said, the three C's-- College, Career, and Community goals. We're also constantly doing some education on continuous improvement and working with all of the adult school instructors and trying to work on curriculum alignment as well as service alignment. And that's through our community Pro Suites, so working with different community-based organizations. And that's a big part of our transitions team as well. And then we're constantly looking at capacity building within our transitions-- excuse me-- as within our consortium as well and making sure we deliver some high-quality programs to meet our community.

So I'm going to go ahead. I'm going to have Cuong go over some of the student demographics and who we serve. So go ahead, Cuong. Is Cuong there? Did he-- oh. I think we lost him.

He just disappeared right when his slide came on.

He went to get a cup of coffee. All right. So our student demographics, those that we serve, we have a huge immigrant population. It's very important to the work that we are doing and our consortium. Nearly half of our adults that we're serving aren't immigrants, but they are parents of young children.

And so we are serving more than 100,000 adults that are limited in English proficiency as well as nearly one third of DSAEA area's adults in the workforce are immigrants that are employed in low-skilled jobs. So as a transition specialist, as a consortium, we're working towards upskilling those students and providing them services to get them into those higher wage jobs.

And a majority of our students are immigrant workers. They are working in the fields. And they are essential workers. And they are constantly being exposed to this virus. And so as a team, we've been working towards how we can support our students in providing resources.

So moving forward, I'll go ahead. I'll have Leslie introduce just a brief overview of our data.

OK. Good morning, everybody. Ready for data? [laughs]

Yeah.

Yeah, always ready for data. [laughter] So this is just a quick overview of our numbers for '18-'19 and then '19-'20. As you can see, our ABE/ASE population took a pretty big dip last year. ESL population stayed about the same. And our CTE students actually increased a little bit. If anybody wants to share some of their own data in the chat, I think that would be awesome-- If you guys have noticed any trends as far as your enrollments for last year and even this year while I'm talking about some reasons I think that might be responsible for these numbers.

I know, at least that Lodi Adult School, at the end of '19-'20-- so right after spring break-- we didn't come back after that. And I think the majority of our ESL students had already been tested. They had done their poet test. So we were able to capture information for those students. But our ABE/ASE students, we never gave them that post test. So I think that might be partly responsible for that big drop there.

Another thought that we had that it could, perhaps, be due to the economy because before COVID hit, the economy was pretty strong. A lot of students were working. They were employed. So that was another thought as to why those numbers may have dropped off so significantly for '19-'20.

As far as this year so far, I don't have the numbers up, but just looking at our number of students that we have on our roster at Lodi Adult for our ABE/ASE students, we are right in line with where we were at the beginning of last year. So it's looking pretty good as far as ABE/ASE.

Our ESL population, it's been a bit challenging. And I think maybe some of the other adult schools have been having the same sort of challenges as far as the return of our ESL students. So that's something that we're continuing to watch and something that we're continuing to work on, is how do we engage those students and get them back into class and back to school?

So if anybody has any ideas or thoughts that they want to share in the chat, that'd be fantastic. We're all about learning from everybody today. That was our hope for our presentation, is that we can share a little bit about what we've been doing. But we really want to hear from everybody else as far as what have you guys been doing and what has been working for you or even learning from each other or thoughts and suggestions that you might have.

So if you have anything great, please feel free to send it over in the chat. And it looks like Cuong's back. So do we want to go back to his slides while we're digesting all that fantastic data?

Why not? I apologise. I lost my internet connection.

That's OK. I think we've covered it. I think we're good.

Did you?

Will a few moments, I guess. You could, in the chat, just like Leslie said, put in the comments. Just let us know. Have you noticed a shift in your data?

Are you all getting your second cup of coffee?

It takes a lot takes a little while to type.

It does. It is. That's something that I think I'm trying to get used to. I'm used to seeing people's faces and just interjecting. But it's all good. But it sounds like--

And maybe as far as our group for Eric, and Marzie, and Cuong, what have you guys noticed for your enrollment numbers for this year?

I'll start. For our enrollment, I think our ESL population dropped off by about 150. So that was a big significant. And those are estimates. There could be more than that. Our diploma students have stayed pretty steady. We're at 116 right now. I think we had 140 or something before. So they're staying pretty steady. So they turn it on strong during this time. And our ESL population, you know, we just lost so many. So that's kind of from here.

Yeah. Seems to be a common theme that we're all struggling with is serving those ESL students.

Correct, yeah. Jared just put in the chat, he said, yes, we weren't able to do post testing, of course. And our ESL numbers were halved by Zoom classes. Wow.

And then Marzie at Manteca, I know as having your background in ESL, what has the trend been?

So for Manteca Adult School, we did have the same problem. But you know what, a lot of people want to come back. So we have an open enrollment, and they keep coming in one at a time, two at a time. So there is an interest in ESL. And I am glad to say that they're coping with Zoom and all the technology barriers that they didn't have to deal with before. So I think it's a great sign that despite COVID, there's still an interest in learning.

And diploma, we have a few. The numbers aren't great. But CTE interest is still there. So in our area, we have a lot of Amazon warehouses. So there has been an interest in the warehousing jobs, like forklift. But of course, we have to deal with the limitations of those courses, like depending on the school district if they allow people to come in. But I think right now, we're getting better in terms of our COVID numbers. So we're opening up our doors to CTE and even ESL-- some classes, like computers.

Yeah, and that's a really good point, Marzie because I know later on in this webinar, we will address, like I said, technology and the digital divide and how we're working towards bridging that gap for specifically even our ESL students. So I mean, that's a whole new world that we're in. Not only has it been an adjustment for us but especially for our population.

Heather, can I add something to that?

Yeah, please, absolutely.

I was just curious because Marzie was saying their students were wanting to come back. We had done an informal survey with our teachers putting it out to the students that have actually maintained that connection. And they were really hesitant. I would say a majority did not want to come back. And I think some of that is because they have children at home. So that could change when students go back but. But they were really hesitant.

And I wasn't sure how they were until we did that survey. And it was it was interesting to hear. They were just like, why do I need to come back if I can access it through the safety of my home? So that was surprising to me. But just thought I'd add.

Let's ask the participants. I think that's a really good point you-- and I love that you shared a survey with your students, especially your ESL population. It's like, what are your students saying, folks? I mean, are they in the same place, where we have two different adult schools here. We have one where students are very hesitant.

And then as Marzie said, they have those that are very anxious to come back. And they're actually sister cities. I mean, I would love to hear from what you guys what is your experience? You know, I'll give you guys at least a minute to respond if you like. And then while we wait for those if they want an ad in the chat, I don't know, Cuong do you want to share? I know you work pretty closely with Amelda.

Yeah, of course.

Are you happy width distance learning once over the digital challenge? All right. Thank you, Carrie.

So voicing my concerns across the board regarding our enrollment, our ESL population, obviously, has steadily gone down. We're trying to find ways to get the students back or improve our attendance, our enrollment within the ESL population. Similar concerns regarding what Marzie has said.

Some people are just afraid to come back until a possible vaccine comes out in the near future. Or their children might be going back to school. Now they have the time to go back to school for themselves. There's so many of those issues, the things that they have to figure out before I even consider going back to school. And we understand that. We understand that as a school that these teachers are coming up.

But on the flip side, our enrollment numbers on the CT side--

[phone rings]

I apologize-- on our CT side is actually exploding. It's booming. I'm good friends with one of our CT teachers. And her enrollment has steadily gone up to a point that they have a wait list for all her classes that she's offering, her integrated accounting, her basic Microsoft Office, her MA program, the administration medical assistance program.

Those numbers are going up steadily to the point that we have a wait list, which is great. I feel that may be probably because a lot of our students are coming back to school to upskill in regards to try to find a different job after this pandemic hits or epidemic is over with. So in that flip side, it's nice to have that enrollment go up steadily throughout the last eight or so months.

Thank you, Cuong. Yeah, that would be interesting to even do a survey across the state just to see where is everybody standing. Because I know, Sherry, you just shared that enrollment is down in ESL everywhere. So thank you Sherry for sharing that. And I know we'll continue this conversation as we go. This is a huge thing. And then I know we have a lot to say about how can we support our students. And so I'm going to have to go ahead and have Eric introduce just how did we respond as a team to COVID-19 to get more into the work that we actually put in? So go ahead, Eric.

OK. A couple of things-- on, I think, to start-- first, I noticed I dressed to match my slides.

Oh, I like it.

So they're color-coordinated. I didn't plan that. It just happened. [laughter] But for those of you that are out there, one of the things, I mean, there's surprises at every turn. And even when this slide came up, there was something that stood out to me. And I think I pointed it out to Leslie and some of the people on the team. Like, I didn't know anything about COVID toe. You know? And the just leapt off the page. And I was like, COVID toe? I had to research it.

And I looked at it again last night. It's real. And it's something that we're always learning about. There's always something around the next turn. So you know, we, right now, at Tracy Adult School, now we're testing for COVID toe. When you come in, when the thermom-- I'm kidding. When the thermometer doesn't work, you break out your sandals. No. I'm teasing. I'm teasing.

But when you look at this, the other thing that's missing from that diagram is fever. I mean, so there's so many symptoms and so much out there-- so much information. And I think that when I was looking back at what we did, I remembered the information overload. Everybody had information going out. You can get resources here. You can get resources there. Everybody had a page that was-- information was changing all the time.

And it was overwhelming. And that was just from my perspective. And I was a brand-new transition specialist last year. I came out of middle school for 23 years. I worked with a ton of adults over that time. But to be in this environment, where I was just figuring out the new lingo, what's going on, what is Adult School, and then COVID hits, I was blown away. So I was I was overwhelmed too.

So the vision of Heather and Paul to get this information consolidated in one spot, that was the goal. Let's get it in a simple format to our students. A lot of our students are struggling with English, even on our diploma side. So reading to get information is a struggle. So we tried to come up with just a local source of information. So there's a couple of things, and we'll go over that in a little bit.

But so basically, Paul and Heather put together a team. And I know when I asked the other day when we were in this meeting, how do we get picked? You know, we were like the short-straw team. We came back from vacation, and all of a sudden everybody said we're on a COVID team. That was surprising to me. And so I questioned in my mind, how'd I get on this team?

But it ended up being such the biggest blessing because of the collaboration. It was something that as the sole transition specialist in charge of my whole school with limited-- I mean, I know my resources, but I didn't know the world's resources. And so being able to plug into these guys with Leslie, and Cuong, and Marzie, and everybody, being part of that team was huge. The relationships that we formed that was huge too. So I mean, getting voluntold to be on this team was a blessing. [laughter] I think, Cuong, you can say the same thing, right, and Leslie, and Marzie? You know, it's been really good. It's been fun.

Yeah.

So when we look at-- I think picking a team is important. So moving forward in that process of collaboration, you need to pick wisely. I don't know if it was random or not. Heather, you said maybe it wasn't. I trust you on that.

You just drew the short straw, Eric.

I know.

[laughs] No.

But who you have in the boat matters. You know, it really does. And that struck me too because I've been on teams before where it's not very rewarding. And this was very rewarding. So that's what I wanted to say about that. But when we looked, we started meeting regularly. We met two times a week and sometimes more.

And the advantage, I think, for me was-- like I said, I've work with a lot of adults, a lot of crisis situations. I have my toolbox. I have my tools that are my go-to in the community. I know where my therapists are. I know where my homeless shelters, things like that in my little area, in my little region. But I only know a handful.

And so I think that when we became part of a team, Heather and Paul were like, OK, let's give you guys tasks. We were assigned a certain category. I had to find out where all the food banks were. I had to find out in detail do they need ID? Do they don't need ID? Can you drive in? Is that not allowed? So we each researched our own area for support to our students. And then we'd report goes back.

And so each week, as we were reporting back, my toolbox was getting bigger because I'd hear it from them. And then we'd go put it in print. We put it on the website. So all of that stuff reinforced that where all the resources were in the community. So to me, that was really important.

I equate it to-- I'm not a mechanic, but I started Messing with cars recently. And I had my little tool set. It's a little Craftsman tool set. I thought it was pretty cool. But then when I go to the auto shop at Tracy High, you get to use Snap-on tools.

And when you had a little tool set, and then you jump in, and you get really quality tools, your experience changes. And you know that you've just upgraded. And I think being a part of this team, that's what that was. I realized I just upgraded. I wasn't alone. All of a sudden, I got more resources. But the biggest thing we did was we laugh a lot. We have a lot of fun. So that was that.

Eric, I want to just piggyback on what you were saying that you didn't feel alone. You know what I mean? And that was something as a team we came together saying, look, we all know how we feel right now individually. It's kind of, really, with this COVID, and we're like, we're going to do something for our students because how-- we really had to put ourselves in their shoes and say, look, these students have a lot of barriers against them.

And for them to just add COVID right on top of it, we're like, no. We've got to be the ones to come together and to help remove those barriers for our students. And so that's where, really, our core team has come together. And Eric, I love your analogy about the tool kit. We had the tools. We had the kit. We didn't have the Snap-on tools, like you said.

No, no, we didn't. But everybody had their one really good tool or two really good tools. And then we combined it and made a pretty quality toolbox.

Yeah. I don't know if Marzie or Leslie-- go ahead, Leslie.

No, go ahead.

I wanted to just add that we are part of a larger group that meets once a month.

That's correct.

And when we started doing those meetings on Zoom, it's hard to have conversations and talk in those large Zoom meetings because you tend to just want to have your microphone off because you don't want to start talking at the same time as somebody else is talking. And it's kind of awkward.

So I think it was really important that we really downsized our group to the five or six of us because it was a lot easier to have conversations. It was a lot easier to talk to each other and learn from each other when we were in a smaller group. And it kept me on track just personally meeting once a week.

When I was working from home March through June, having these weekly meetings was really important because I knew-- we would assign little tasks or homework for us to do, like, OK, I need to research this because I'm going to meet with my team next week, and I got to be ready to go. We're putting this thing together. We gave ourselves deadlines.

So that was really helpful for me to keep myself on track and to keep myself going during that time when I was at home and really not having much engagement with other teachers or administrators. So that was really helpful, those two things. And it really strengthened our relationships.

I had somebody to go to ask, you know, what are you guys doing? Sometimes, our conversations would stray into other areas, like, are you guys offering high set testing? Or when is your GED testing coming back? And how do you do this at your school? And so I thought it was really important to have a smaller group because it was a lot easier to have those conversations.

Yeah, no. I'm glad you added that because I 100% felt that. Perhaps, didn't put it into words, but I 100% felt that.

And I want to add something too, guys, to the discussion.

Yeah, please.

If you look at the previous slide--

Go ahead. I can go back.

On the breakdown of the people, colleagues.

This one?

A little bit earlier. That's fine. You don't have to go back too far.

Oh, OK. Excuse me.

Just to make a point regarding having-- we started to have a mini team. Here at Stockton, we have three counselors that deal with three different parts of the school. I call us the three-legged stool, myself, dealing with the GED and college to transition, my other colleague, Ken, doing high school diploma, and my other colleague, Amelda, do ESL.

And you look at the slide where Eric's by himself. He's taking care of high set, and high school diploma, and things like that. And so it was great when I heard Eric say, you know, it's nice to be part of a team that we can share our resources, pool our resources together. He may not know what's going on here in Stockton. I might not know what's going on in Tracy. But we can pool these resources together so that we can help each other through this difficult time.

I know at some point in the last eight months, you felt alone. You felt like you're by yourself. What can I do to help? My mental state, things like that, mental health-- we talked about that a little bit too regarding what our students are feeling at that moment. And so it's important to come together. And it's great that, quote, unquote, we've been voluntold to be part of this rapid response team and to be able to share the information to help our students. So that after this pandemic is over, they can thrive and in this new environment that's going to come up.

Absolutely. Thank you guys so much. I see a question and answer. Let's see. So a question from Kelly, can you talk more about readiness interest to return surveys or check-ins done with the past students who have not returned, how formal-- you know what, Kelly? We'll be happy to answer that at the end. We might be addressing that. I'm pretty sure we'll be addressing that. So that's a great question, Kelly. We'll get back to that real quick.

So what we're going to do is I'm going to now-- we have some questions for you guys. So our next question, so basically, I think this is for Leslie and Cuong. Go ahead. [laughs] I'm jumping the gun. Sorry, guys. Go ahead.

Sorry, guys. I'm unmuted. So the first question, I was thinking about aha moments. Like, what are are some of them being that jumped out in your mind during this last eight months as a pandemic hit our country? My biggest aha moment, so I could start this off for this discussion, is that I didn't know that many of our students did not have the technology to continue on with their classes. And we're going to talk about the digital divide and how we try to close that gap later on in our presentation.

But that was the one thing that I saw was that at our school, at our site, every single student that walks through our door will have an opportunity to have either a Chromebook or a computer in front of them to help them with their classes as they pursue high school diploma, and GED, CT classes. As a district here in Stockton Unified, we are providing access to one-on-one-- so one Chromebook for every single student that walks through our door.

And then I realized that after when we shut down a school in March, a lot of our students could not come to our classes, obviously. And they didn't have the technology at their hands to help them or to guide them along the way to passing these classes. And so it was important that as a school and myself to bridge that gap, to make sure that we have the technology for them so that they can continue to pursue their education.

And so that was my biggest aha moment. I didn't realize there were so many students that did not have the technology. We have our phones. We have all our other stuff, our Apple Watch with this and that. But then we realize that maybe the simple fact of having a computer or laptop what makes the biggest difference in the world for them.

And another question that we have is, what are the biggest student services challenges? I think we probably all are facing the same sort of challenges as far as serving our students. What I've noticed is that students tend to be hesitant to reach out and ask for help or to express a need. So I've had to be more invasive and doing those check-ins. So I use Remind. And I'm going to talk a little bit more about that later.

But I'll just survey the students, hey, how are you doing today? How are things going? I just want to hear from you. I just want to reach out to you. And I've found that the more I reach out to them, the more they respond. But I can't expect them to always be reaching out to me. I had a student the other day, because we are telling students when they come in to enroll that their teacher is available. Their teacher is available remotely.

And if they have any questions, just give your teacher a call, or send your teacher an email. And that seems like a very easy thing when I say it. But I had a student that giggled and said, I don't want to call my teacher. I can't call my teacher. And so that was just a reminder to me that it's not always easy for students to do the reaching out and to be the ones that are asking for help or asking for questions.

So they're very hesitant to do that and also hesitant to say, I have a need, or I need food for my family or I don't I don't have anywhere to live, or to express those really big things. They sometimes tend not to want to share those. So I think the more conversations that I can have with students, whether they're over the phone, or through text, or email, the more contact I have, the more check-ins I do with them, that stuff seems to come out a little bit more naturally through those points of contact.

All right. So go ahead and take some-- I mean, if you guys want to, we're all about interacting again. So I mean, tell me one thing that was your guys' biggest aha moment. I mean, go ahead and put it in the chat if you'd like. Maybe even think-- I'll even throw out a different question.

This is, I think, one that Eric might even, or Cuong I know, it's what is a good thing that came out of COVID? We're trying to talk about the positive, I guess. One thing the good thing that came out, like, Eric was addressing is, as a team, we've come together and become even more stronger than ever and on relying on each other. So I don't know. What's a positive thing we can look at?

[interposing voices]

I have a few things. Actually there are several really good things that have come out in the way that we've adjusted, the way that we do things to be more accessible to students. So we started doing an online registration form. The students used to always have to come onto our campus to do registration. And we moved that to an online form, which is working out great.

At the beginning of the school year, we contacted all of the students that were here at the end of last year. We sent them emails. We did phone calls. We did text messages. And we could just either text them or email them the registration link. And all they had to do was click on it and fill out a form. So that worked out really well.

And then orientation-- we've adjusted the way we do orientation. I recorded a short orientation instead of the in-person orientation that I used to do. We opened up a testing center, where we're doing one-on-one testing for CASAS.

We can do same-day enrollment. So we used to have a pretty lengthy enrollment process, where we only did orientations once a month, one morning and one day time per month. And so students sometimes had to wait a very long time to get to their orientation. And then if they missed it, oh, gosh, they would have to wait another month for that orientation.

So we've been able to really streamline that process so that students can do more of that over the phone and through online. And they're able to even-- they could do that all in the same day, really. They could come in and come into the testing center and get their CASAS test done in a very short amount of time. Instead of that lengthy process. We also switched our counselor and maybe she wants to add a little if she's listening, Trang, she moved her counseling appointments from in-person appointments to phone appointments.

And I know that that has been working out really well as far as students keeping that appointment. It used to be very challenging when you would set in-person appointments. I'm sure all of us have experienced similar things. You set the appointment, and something comes up. The student doesn't show up. So you might have 10 appointments that day, and maybe half of them show up or so. I think she's had a lot of success with the phone appointments, a very higher success rate for students actually keeping those appointments, which is fantastic.

Leslie, I see our chat. People are agreeing like--

It's blowing up. [laughs]

It's blowing up. So Kelly, she was agreeing with you. Sorry. I didn't mean to stop you.

That's OK.

But I just want to recognize that our participants are feeling what we're saying and that what Leslie was saying, you know, it wasn't really an aha moment. But it was more much if we didn't have an easy, accessible, onboarding process, like what we're talking about now. We have shifted gears to this online registration.

Same thing with Jared. It looks like our capacity for one-on-one high school students have increased with distance learning. We're saving lots of time by not driving. I know you know that Jared because you used to drive all the way down here for meetings. So that is a huge shift.

Rich, it looks like he's setting a positive-- the use of technology, which we're going to talk a little bit more about, and the different ways we connect. I mean, just like Leslie was saying how she's connecting with her students using her Remind app, we can share that. We actually have some links. We'll share with you some different products and different videos we've done or they have done-- my transitions team has done. So I'm loving all this.

Heather, can I share something real quick?

Yeah, please.

For Tracy, we were old-school, and we still are a little bit as far as brick-and-mortar textbook and seat time. That's on the diploma side and even for ESL. So when COVID hit, we have opened up. And our students, especially on the diploma side, have been very, very productive with that because they no longer have to come in.

They no longer have to sit, you know, because we basically didn't even check out textbooks for a majority of our students before. And so now, people have textbooks. They're getting their work. They're going, and they're getting it done. So for us, we've seen a real opening up of our services. So it's been nice on that side.

The challenge, on the other hand, are second language learners, right, ESL with the technology. We have online registration, which Leslie mentioned. We started that this year, which was nice for some of our students. I honestly believe we've lost a bunch of students just in that first-- I mean, it became a hurdle that we didn't realize. So that would be an aha moment.

That's right.

In the advent of trying to help, we probably put up a hurdle that we didn't really anticipate. So I mean, those were just some of the things that were bouncing around in my head.

And can I also add something too, Heather?

Yeah, go ahead. I was just going to make sure we addressed-- go ahead, and go for it.

I just want to piggyback off one of our participants, Rich, when we talks about making the positive use of technology. I think in the last eight months or so, I know I had to expand my toolkit, my tool set. And one of the things I was struggling was with the use of technology. And I had to go back and relearn some of the things that I didn't I didn't know.

And one of the things was to video editing. I had posted a couple of videos regarding certain topics and career development that I'll show later in the presentation. And just using the tool, the Screen-O-Matic, Screencastify, and recording myself on these workshops, and editing, making sure it was right perfectly so that I can post it on our web page, so that our students can see it.

And that's something that I never thought I was going to do as a counselor. Like, why would I ever ever pull something or video editing or anything of that nature? But I have to go back and say, you know what, I need to expand my tool set because in this day and age, if we can't see students face to face, how can we reach our student population again?

And one of the thing is with the use of technology. Look at what we're doing here. We're doing a Zoom call on a webinar at a conference that we should have been together in one spot, getting to know each other, and sharing our resources with each other. But in this case, we have to start with our times and continue on with that.

Thank you, Cuong. I was just going to say, I love what, I think it's D. Sorino had stated that we need to think outside the bubble. I totally agree. We also have Trang Do. In response to what Leslie had said about Trang, she's at our Lodi site. Her phone calls that she has made, her phone appointments, she's had a 95% success rate of students attending and showing up for those counseling appointments. So that's definitely a huge thing, huge benefit. Daniel-- all right, Daniel, all right. Thank you, Daniel. Again, thank you guys for parti-- I just love everything that you guys have brought. I mean, I can see where you guys are at. And you guys feel us.

And so what we're going to do is we're going to just shift to show some of the products that have come out of our response to COVID. So go ahead, Leslie, if you'd like to share.

OK. So I use the Remind app. And I actually was using it prior to COVID. So it worked out really well because it was already set up, and I already had the majority of our students on it. Remind app is-- it's not-- well, it is an app. But you don't have to actually download the app. [laughs]

So I use Remind. I try to get all students when they come in. I tell them the benefits of using the Remind app and hope that they will sign up for it. And so when you use Remind, it's a way to text students anonymously. So students don't see your real phone number, and you don't see the student's real phone number. So you can use your personal cell phone, and your students will not see your phone number.

I also use it in combination with Google Voice. And there's a reason I do both. [laughs] So I'll talk about that. But sorry-- I just lost my train of thought. The Remind app-- Google Voice will also give you an anonymous phone number. But what Google Voice doesn't do, at least that I know of, and I did a little bit of research, but you cannot send blasts out to students.

So that's the great thing about Remind is that I can just send out one message, and it goes out as a text message to everybody. So I have found that that is an extremely effective way to communicate with my students. I am texting students, and they're texting me all the time. I have found that students love texting. I mean, who doesn't? I love texting. I think we all love texting.

We text. We all have our little group quarantine texts.

It's so much easier. I mean, I could sit at my desk and make dozens of phone calls, and I will get either voicemail, or sorry, the voicemail is full, or the person is not accepting messages, or people not answering. But when I send out text messages, I tend to get a better response. So I use that almost exclusively with students because it works. So what I do is I have a Google Voice phone number. The onboarding process from Remind-- in the past, I used the method where they give you a code and a number. And so my code was @ldahlq.