Jaemi Naish: And welcome, everybody. And I will say, a big Happy Friday to everybody. I don't know how you're feeling. Yeah, I saw Jeanie just put her hands up, but wow. These weeks are long, these last two years have been long. And so I look for the joy of the weekend as well, even though I love what I'm doing.

So my name is Jaemi Naish. I'm the-- I'm a OTAN subject matter expert, and I'm also the Director at Tamalpais Adult School in Marin County, which is a small adult school here north of San Francisco. And Sudie, how bout you?

Sudie Whalen: And I'm Sudie, I'm Deputy Director at CALPRO, formerly lead career tech ed teacher at Liberty Adult Ed CTE person. And I'm also part of the CIP team.

Jaemi Naish: So we're excited to get you guys here today to do a repeat of our presentation that we did at TDLS a couple of weeks ago. So I think there was a question in the chat. So if you attended our presentation for TDLS, this is actually a repeat. So we aren't going to be saying a whole lot new in this one. However, next week we're going to be doing a deeper dive with the CIP plan, and I believe Thoibi is on our call here as well today and she's going to be presenting with me, and I'm sure Sudie and Neda will be around as well.

So thank you, Thoibi, I know you're here somewhere in our group here and we're excited to have you as well. There she is, yeah. All right. So I'm just going to start off with-- well, the last slide that you just saw was just a precursor to really thinking about what you want to do with your CIP goal or goals. That this is the good time to reflect on the kind of impact that you want to make for your adult school, your adult school learners.

Again, like I said, we've all had a really tough year, and our students that we all serve have had even a tougher time than I imagine than most of us, at least. That's the case for the students that we serve at Tam Adult School. And so what are we going to do today that's going to have a good impact, a positive beneficial impact on our school and our students? And this CIP goal is one way in which we can make this positive impact. So, next slide, please.

So we're going to talk a little bit about-- what we want to get through today in this hour is creating a meaningful CIP goal. Really thinking about your student needs that you have at your site because what you-- the needs of your students at your site might be different than what I have versus what Sudie's are, Neda, Thoibi-- any of the people on the call. So really kind of centering your own students and their needs and creating a CIP goal around them and your school, of course.

We'll talk a little bit about the do's and don'ts of the CIP plan. We're going to look at what a SMART goal or SMART/IE goal creation is and talk a little bit about that. And I'm hoping we'll have a moment or two to look at the CIP guidelines and also the rubric, and then also to just mention some of the partners and activities.

And so we want to just encourage everybody in this journey to be on a growth mindset. It's what we ask of our students. And so it's important to approach this work and really the work that we do in adult schools with this kind of a mindset, with a growth mindset. Before we move on to the next slide, I would love to see if you could use one or your reactions-- maybe a thumbs up or thumbs down-- if you on this call will be in charge of your CIP plan or be a team member on your CIP. So can you just give me a thumbs up or thumbs down. OK, good.

Sudie Whalen: 16 thumbs up and a-- wow. We're up to 24.

Jaemi Naish: OK. Good. Great. Well that's great. That's exactly who we want on this call. One of our goals Sudie and I have is just-- we really want you to just put out a plan that you can feel good about, do it one time, have it be passed, and then have it be something that you feel has made a good impact on your school and your students. All right, so next slide.

So a quick couple of mythbusters just to go over real quick. With the CIP plan, they are definitely reviewed. There are two reviewers for each of your plans. So there isn't something that you type up and spend a lot of time on, press the button, and then no one looks at, they're actually being looked at.

And so the other piece to know is that they're scored on a rubric. And the rubric is shared with you in the CIP guidelines, and we'll get to that in a bit. What is most definitely required is that you create a SMART goal. If you don't create a SMART goal, your CIP goal won't pass. So that's really important, it's not optional.

And then it's a team. This is a team-- this is teamwork. This isn't one person comes up with it and presses the Go button, creates the plan, and it's done. It really needs to be-- you have to have buy-in from a team. A team can be a team of two, but it's important to have a team. All right. Sudie, is there anything you want to add to that?

Sudie Whalen: No, I think I'll get into the other points later.

Jaemi Naish: Perfect. All right, and then we'll go to the next slide. All right.

Sudie Whalen: So we want to do a quick exercise into the chat. So I'm going to pop a link in here that is to our Jamboard. We're going to do a Jamboard exercise to really get you thinking about your agency and your students that you specifically serve within your local community. And just thinking about that. I want you to head over to the Jamboard and think about what comes to mind. What do you need and what are the programs that can assist you?

Thinking about, who has voice? Who has agency? And who doesn't? Who doesn't have a voice within there? And yes, we're getting towards those equity things and thinking about those things. And Jaemi just mentioned the SMART goal requirement, and there's this new acronym that's not really new, but it's been talked about for about 10 years or so, but having SMART/IE goals, being inclusive of-- being that I for inclusion and E for equity. So thinking about who has a voice and who doesn't is a big piece of that.

And thinking about why is it important. How does having a CIP benefit your agency, your students served, those kinds of things. So we want you to really consider, how will what you're doing this year in your CIP plan impact you two years from now or even one year from now? Thinking about what that impact will be.

So what I want you to do is go ahead and head on over to your Jamboard-- to the Jamboard link if you're not there already. And then so what I want you to do first on that first Jamboard page, which looks like this-- and I see some of you already in here doing it. You can grab the Jamboard, and just grab yourself a sticky note and type whatever you want on there and click Save and it'll post it there.

They all seem to be at the top, so I'll just kind of grab and move them around as they're posting in those kinds of things. But our first question is here, it's centering the adult learners you serve at your agency. What do they need most for success to reach their goals? We're thinking about, how can we help our learners reach their goals?

Jaemi Naish: And I think another thing to think about, because this will help with the CIP goal, at least with the S of the SMART goal, is to really be specific. So when you're coming up with some of the needs of your students, try and be a little specific. So I see critical thinking skills. Well, what I would say to add on to that is critical thinking skills needed to transition to higher education or where you were going with that.

Soft skills, too, for mobility in a job. So be a little specific when you're putting those in. And you guys are doing great. So I am just going to call out some of what I see right now. I'm seeing learn English needed to be successful in the workforce, absolutely. Technology. Learn language skills and digital literacy skills. Yes, we all know in the last two years that that's been a lot.

Support, support, support. I always love that because my background is in counseling. I would just want to know a little bit more about which support services that are being posted up here. Is that transitioning to college? Is it getting a job? Is it child care? Is it bilingual support? Is it technology support? What?

Industry certificates, yes. And emotional support-- thank you for bringing that up. Yes. Flexibility and diversity of programs, yes. And I would imagine that means modalities in terms of how instruction is offered at your sites. Increased student persistence, absolutely. So these are wonderful. So you guys are getting it. So-- and resources. Oh, go ahead.

Sudie Whalen: And I just want to add, for those of you who are getting that too many people viewing in the file error, if you pop your comment into the chat, I'll go ahead and copy and paste it and put it in there for you.

Jaemi Naish: So these are wonderful, and these-- it sounds like you know your students well, and I'm glad that you're going to be the ones on your CIP team or hopefully leading the charge. Because this is what you're going to really need to think about when you create one or two goals. Or even three.

So the one thing I forgot to mention on the mythbusters is that the requirement is one good CIP goal. The requirement is not necessarily three. So if you created just one, that would be good, one good impactful goal. So all right.

Sudie Whalen: Thank you so much, Jaemi. So let's move on to our-- oh, we have another addition that I want to make sure gets added in here, technology access and skills and computer skills. I think those both might have already been captured. I know I saw technology, let me add computer skills. Thank you. All right, so we've got your goal in there.

So let's move on to some additional questions that we have here. So how can your agency partner with students to support their needs? How can your agency partner with students to support their needs? We're going to go to the next page on our Jamboard. So you might want to hit that little arrow up at the top.

And again, if you need-- if you're getting that error, pop your comment into the chat. I see someone added to the previous one, quiet time to study. Yes, that could be really helpful, thank you.

Jaemi Naish: I loved that quiet time to study, because we've absolutely experienced that as a pretty big need here. And one of the ways in which we've dealt with that is-- because we know a lot of our students are in shared housing, not in quiet spaces, and it's been very challenging. And so we've opened up our school to-- even if they're in a remote day, to come in and have a quiet space here.

So that's kind of one of the kind of details that I'm asking you guys-- or Sudie and I are asking you guys to think about. So when you center your learner needs, what concrete good examples can you think of or start brainstorming that will help them meet that goal that you listed?

Sudie Whalen: I'm liking some of these support services I'm seeing in here. Child care, things-- thinking about asking students what they need. Survey committees. Case management. So the case management one I think is helpful, but you want to be more specific when you're talking about case management. What specifically would you want to include in that case management piece and when you're articulating that on your CIP. You want to make sure you're really specific and that it's really clear what you're asked-- what you're referring to when you're doing that.

And thank you for those who are popping your comments into the chat. I am putting them in there. And thank you for whoever is helping me keep these organize, I appreciate you so much.

Jaemi Naish: And I'm going to just highlight a comment that I just saw coming in the chat, which is ability to offer online classes, yes. Absolutely, we all know how important that has been over the last couple of years. It hasn't been easy for every single agency and/or student involved in taking online classes, but we know it's a need, it's not going to go away when COVID goes away. And man, can we just make COVID go away like immediately? Let's just be done with it, I'll just say that. And just saying again, Happy Friday.

Sudie Whalen: I really like how we're-- we're getting a lot of input in here about just asking students, serving students, gathering data from students. But as you're doing that-- and maybe this is because of the research nerd in me, make sure you're thinking about the specific type of information you're wanting to gather and being really explicit with that.

For multiple reasons, one, you don't want to confuse students about what you're asking. And then you also want to make sure that you're not going to end up with some form of survey fatigue and students are no longer willing to do your surveys. So make sure you're thinking about, what am I asking? How can I capture as much as I need in one survey, in one or two focus groups so that we're not wearing people out? And then when you're planning for this within your CIP thinking about how to clearly articulate the information you're hoping to gather.

Jaemi Naish: I'm just going to-- go ahead, Sudie.

Sudie Whalen: I was going to say, someone just said in the chat, build strong positive relationships with students. That is awesome, that is fantastic. But remember, when we're thinking about our CIP-- and I'm not discounting the importance of doing that, that is super important. But when writing our CIP, we want to think about how that impacts student outcomes.

And so how does building those strong positive relationships with students, how does that help us improve their learning and improve their learning outcomes? And it does, it definitely does. I just want to make sure you're being explicit with that connection.

Jaemi Naish: I'm going to call out a couple that I just can relate to right off the bat in how can your school partner with students to meet their goals? And one of them I see is provide access to technology. And again, these past couple of years, we've seen the importance of surveying students and knowing if they have a computer at home or not, using that data to inform what our next best steps.

And then at our school, we've been able to purchase more Chromebooks and loan those to students. And at our school, we decided to start with our beginning English language learners, our basic ESL class, because we knew that they were the highest impact group and we saw that they didn't have that access, so they weren't able to get into our online classes.

So these are just some of the things to think about as you're coming up with what will be the highest-impact area for your CIP plan. And I just-- I really appreciate the thought that's going into what you're posting on the Jamboard.

Sudie Whalen: Agreed. I think some of these I would probably marry together. That access to technology and then additional hardware, software, and loaner programs, like those-- where saying we want you to have access and this is what I want to do to give that access. And that's-- like put those two things together and you've got it.

Someone else just put in, build in technology training into student orientation. Yes, that training support is huge. We can't just give them the software and then not tell them how to use it or give them support if they have a hard time. So really great thinking there. Thank you.

Jaemi Naish: And I'll just say, talking about connecting them and building them together, that nice pink student lounge can go right in there with that. Yeah.

Sudie Whalen: Yeah. I like that.

Jaemi Naish: OK.

Sudie Whalen: All righty. So let's move into our next slide. I'm going to pass it over to you, Jaemi.

Jaemi Naish: All right. So I think one of the things that I want to just be really transparent about with the CIP plan is that it doesn't have to be some crazy complicated plan that's 10 pages long. And we're not striving for perfection, we're striving for high impact. So keep it simple. You've just done two great Jamboards on centering your students and the needs of your students in your school environment and community so that's great.

Simple. Student-centered. Make it relevant. There wasn't one thing on either of those Jamboards that weren't relevant, so that's a no-brainer. And then how do you look and use data available at your school site to create your plan and to monitor the plan that you come up with? In some ways, this feels-- I don't want to compare it to WASC because it's not as intense. But you need to use data in the same way that you use data when you're creating a WASC school or a WASC plan or an action plan. Yeah.

All right, so let's go to the next page. So next slide. There we go. So I want to talk a little bit about the partners, the state leadership projects and partners that we all work with in adult schools. There's many more than just the ones that are here, but these are our state-contracted partners and they deserve a place on your plans.

So OTAN, computer tech-- we've heard a lot from in the last couple of years. CASAS, most of us work explicitly with CASAS for assessments pre and post-testing and reporting and quite a few other things. And then CALPRO, which does an amazing job of getting us research-based practices in the adult education field across a variety of subjects.

So I think-- whether you're using these or not or whether you're intentionally using these guys as partners, I think it's just important to note and consider including on your CIP plans. Sudie, do you want to say anything else about--

Sudie Whalen: Yeah, I was going to add that as you're doing your CIP and you're thinking through the action steps for meeting your SMART goal and things like that, if professional development additional learning or additional resources are something that you need, then you want to check out what does CALPRO, OTAN, or CASAS have that can help us with this?

So if you're thinking, we need more PD on how to evaluate our data and use it effectively, CASAS has a training for that. We need to do something to help our students become-- or teachers become more adept at using the technology, OTAN has a training for that. Or we need to work on our effective teaching practices or teaching adults to read and things like that, CALPRO has a training for that.

And so there's-- and I could go on and on and on. But the point is, as you're writing out your SMART steps and things like that about how are you going to meet that goal, think about, what training is actually available so I can be explicit about what I want my educators, my teachers, my classified staff, anybody involved in your school running successfully and as part of your CIP, what can I provide to them in order for us to do that? So yeah.

Yeah, Sachi. CALPRO currently is. If you request an in-person training, CALPRO will do it in-person as long as we have a facilitator available. I can't speak to OTAN or CASAS because that's not my project. But CALPRO is doing that in-person if you ask us.

Speaker: OTAN is as well. So yeah, send those requests in.

Jaemi Naish: That's great news. Thank you for asking that question. Before we go to the next slide, I just would love people to put in the chat some of your prominent partners in adult education that belong in your CIP plan just for the rest of us to see. So if you could just type in a couple of your partners outside of OTAN, CALPRO, and CASAS, that would be great.

Sudie Whalen: And to answer your question, Karen, for CALPRO and I believe OTN also, no, you may have to pay your staff to attend PD, but we don't charge you for the training, to host the training, to do anything. We provide the training materials, content, and the facilitator for you, you don't have to pay anything for that.

So I'm looking for some of these answers in here. AXA, CCAE-- yes, absolutely.

Jaemi Naish: The One Stops.

Sudie Whalen: Yeah, One Stops. Your CAEP partners. Yes. I love that that was said. Workforce development partners, AJCCs, local community colleges, all of that, yes. Chamber of Commerce, great. LARRC the Consortium. Probation department if you're working with corrections and re-entry, good partner to have and reach out with. Youth foundations, COAED, Consortium, Community College Articulations, more consortium of colleges. Workforce investment boards, thank you, Karen.

Jaemi Naish: Yeah.

Sudie Whalen: Misty, I love hearing Misty. The United Way, yes.

Jaemi Naish: Thank you, guys. And then there's a lot of local nonprofits that you probably work with like we do that are absolutely our partners and are part of what makes-- it's the support services that we can even provide at the school available.

Sudie Whalen: And Jaemi, if I can just add, I know we're talking about CIP today, but as you're doing your CIP or your IELC plans or Section 243, remember that when we're planning these things, the requirement is not that everything is happening in-house. You're partnering with people to make this happen effectively.

So yeah, I'd love to see local libraries, city government, all these different avenues that we're using to partner and meet the needs of our students and provide wraparound services to our students. So awesome.

Jaemi Naish: All right. I think we're ready to go on to SMART goal creation.

Sudie Whalen: So yeah. So we're thinking about SMART goals, everybody-- most of us are pretty familiar with SMART goals. But I can tell you, as someone who reviewed CIP plans previously, not all of us are super strong and writing SMART goals. So we want to make sure we're being really clear again this year about what the SMART goals are, because you don't want a poorly articulated SMART goal for a really great idea to be the reason your plan gets rejected.

So when we think about SMART goals, we think about the S being Specific-- it's specific, it's attainable, and it's easily identifiable. I can read your goal and I clearly understand what you mean, and that's what we're talking about when we're saying be explicit about what it is you're hoping to accomplish.

That M, that's that Measurement, that data piece that Jaemi was talking about, being measurable and data-driven. Whatever your goal is, how will you measure the success of that goal? R is Relevant, inclusive, and student-centered-- or student-centered. Remember, I said earlier, you want to make sure, whatever goal we write for our CIP is leading to improve student learning and outcomes.

That doesn't mean everything is about I'm going to look at my CASAS data and I'm going to make sure the data is clean. No, but what practices are you doing to improve student outcomes? Then we have that R, which is also the Relevant piece. Following with T, Timeline and time-bound. Are we identifying exactly when we're going to do this, when it's going to happen by? And it's really clear to the reviewer what's in there.

And then I mentioned that I and that E previously also. Are we being inclusive and equitable? If one of your goals last year was to do an equity audit to identify your equity gaps, then your goal this year should piggyback off of that and thinking about how do I close those gaps? Are those gaps related to literacy and numeracy? Is the gap related to, am I serving the community that-- the people within my community? Are there gaps in terms of some demographics not being met and things like that?

Do we have a lot of returning citizens that are in our programs that we need to make sure are getting into the correct career pathways that they can get jobs in? These kinds of things. So as you're looking through your data and you're identifying your gaps that you want to make sure your goals are reaching, you want to make sure you're being inclusive and equitable in that process. That's all I have to say about that. Jaemi, do you want to add anything?

Jaemi Naish: Yeah. I just-- I wanted just to follow up with a couple of the examples that I saw people post on the Jamboard. One of them was the ability to have online classes and then one was the ability to make sure that students had technology to access those classes. And that's what we're talking about and Sudie just explained, that's the I and the E.

If-- I know personally that when we were online only like many of you in 2020, '21, I had a whole student voice that was not present. Their voice was not present in our school data, because they could not access online learning. And that was really-- I knew they-- we had about 100 students missing. I knew it was that beginning ESL-level student.

And so it was important for us at our school to ensure that the following year we did better. We did better for that exact population. And so we made sure that we had computers, as I said, for students at the beginning level. Training, Wi-Fi access, and on-site access one day a week and more if they needed it. So that was an example of how to do the I and the E piece. And I saw a lot of other really good examples that could actually be part of inclusive and equity-minded goal.

And I just will always say, because I say this a lot in adult education, I think adult educators are some of the most amazing people, in addition to the fact that we've been doing equity work for many, many years. That's what we do in adult education. So we were doing that work before it was labeled that. So I will just say, we in this room, in this webinar know what that work is.

Sudie Whalen: We were doing it before it was cool.

Jaemi Naish: Exactly. Before it was-- yeah, exactly.

Sudie Whalen: So are there any other examples that you can think of and you can put it into the chat that would be an area of focus that's equity-minded or inclusive as you're thinking about it? I know some of you already mentioned technology, Jaemi talked about that, too. But what other things can you think of that could help you with your goal being a goal that would be equitable and inclusive? And you don't have to articulate a whole goal, you can just make a topical if you like. Schedules of class offerings.

Jaemi Naish: Go Kristie, that's right.

Sudie Whalen: The crowd goes wild! Yes, exactly! One of the best places to look for inequities is in your class scheduling and attendance policies. Are students penalized because they have to work and they can't make it to class? Those kinds of things. So I see Teresita is like, yes, exactly. So yes, scheduling, really great one.

IELCE, yes. Integrated education and training is an equitable model for accelerated learning. So I love that that's being mentioned. IET and et cetera. Thank you, Wendy. Improving translation services, yes, Cathy. Dana said having both strict classes and free time offerings where students are hesitant for a full class commitment, they can come in and still get help. Love that. We used to have lab hours and things like that, but there was nothing really lab about it. It's just time for you to get some homework help and complete some assignments.

All right. Thank you for those great examples, I appreciate it. So we talked a little about those kind of examples and things that we talk about, but some things to think about when you're doing your SMART goal is being specific, that precise and clear as you're making your statement or issuing any type of instructions. That's what specific literally means.

So we want to make sure you're doing that when you're writing your goal. So you want to make sure that you do create one really good, really impactful goal. Yes, you can have up to three goals, but you don't have to have three goals. Having one really strong goal is better than having three terribly articulated and really weak goals. So just think about it that way.

Make sure you're using precise language that clearly identifies your goal. So whatever it is you're doing, you're clearly identifying what it is and how it's going to impact student learning and how it's going to help. You want to also make sure you're not hiding your goal in a really long paragraph. It's just mean to the reviewers. But also, because it makes it hard to follow exactly what it is you're trying to accomplish.

So don't try to bury your goal in a long paragraph or anything like that. This is not a college research paper that you have to make it really fluffy so you meet the word count. I've written those, too. But just a really clear-- and clear, precise, and direct. And then make sure you utilize a team approach. There are multiple people that are going to be involved in achieving your goal. So you want to make sure they're involved in setting that goal.

For two reasons. One, because you get to hear voices other than your own to understand the full scope and the depth and breadth of what the needs are. But also, two, because then people take ownership of that goal and they're more inclined to help you reach that goal because they understand what it is, they were involved in making it, and they're really, really involved. And they're really-- they own it, they want it.

And so also, don't forget to review your CIP later, too. Make sure that you're keeping in mind that your CIP is a living document. It's a reminder of what it is we said that we're going to do. And so you want to refer back to that when you have the opportunity and remember-- and see where you are with your goal-setting process.

So lots of comments coming up in the chat. Should the goals be the last plan-- the last plan to be referenced in the new plan? Yeah. Well, yes. If I understand what you're asking is, when I'm writing my new plan, should the goal be the thing that I reference into the new plan? Yes. If whatever your goal was last year, you want to make sure you're identifying what it is that you did to meet that goal. But that doesn't mean your goal this year has to mirror that goal.

If you met that goal, you might have something new that you want to completely focus on. But if you didn't meet your goal, maybe your SMART goal this year is a more concrete way to help you get there. But there's no requirement that you have to mirror the goal that you had the year before. And I see that Jaemi commented on that, too. And can you use the same goal as last year? Jaemi said yes you can, and I concur, yes you can.

If you didn't meet your goal yet, then yeah, you want to-- probably use the same goal. But in your action steps, you want to maybe differentiate your articulation of how you intend to meet it if how you set it up last year did not actually get you there. Now there are sometimes outside influences that prevents us from being able to meet our goals. We've been in pandemic land for like two years and we're finally coming into the new normal.

So there might have been things outside of your control that prevented you from meeting your goal, but that might be something that you want to think about, some kind of risk mitigation and management in the event that something comes up, how will we keep the ship on track so we don't lose track of our goal? That kind of thing.

Jeff is asking about maintenance goals. Can you speak a little bit more to that, Jeff, when you're meaning maintenance goals? Are you talking about building in maintenance goals?

Audience: No, I mean like you've got a goal, you've met the goal, but you want to keep meeting the goal so you don't backslide.

Sudie Whalen: Oh, I love that suggestion. So in that situation, because you already met the goal, that might be something where there is a justifiable reason to have more than one goal. I have this new goal that I want to reach, but I also want to have another maintenance goal to make sure that we're keeping track of where we were and we're looking at that data and keeping that on track. So yeah, you can totally have a maintenance goal.

I wouldn't necessarily make that my primary goal. If you already met it you want to start-- we're looking for continuous improvement. So if you've done that, then let's look at what else we can do to further improve while still maintaining what you already met. Really good question.

Jaemi Naish: And I'm going to say I'm glad that he brought that up, because I think what we know in adult ed is that we're working on like seven different goals, 10 different goals-- we like a million different goals. We're just asking you to select between one and three that you want to highlight and that you really want to focus on, even though we know you're going to be focusing on several others, including maintenance goals and/or brand new goals that you didn't even know you needed to have midway through the year.

Sudie Whalen: Great. Thank you. Thank you all so much. All right, so the last piece I want to talk about-- not last piece. The next thing I want to talk about a little bit here is just the thinking about data and how you're going to measure your data and just being very intentional with that data focus.

So it's really easy to really think about, well, as long as I do this and it gets done, it's done. But when we think about if we did something, we really need to identify, did we do it well and did it have an impact? And that's what part of the thing that we're thinking about with the CIP is. So when you're thinking about it, you only want to think about that one great goal that can make an impact. We're not saying don't write more than one goal if you really want to, but make sure you have that one really strong goal that can make an impact.

You want to make sure that you discuss strategies for collecting data, because you're not going to be-- the person who writes the plan is almost always not necessarily the person who's entering in or collecting that data. So we need to make sure we have shared understanding of what that data is that we need to be looking at and that we have shared understanding of collecting it.

You also want to make sure you include talking points throughout the plan about exactly how this is going to be met. What does success look like? What does it mean for us to say that the data shows that this was successful? And identifying what that is. And remember that while we always have CASAS data and things like that, it can go beyond just your CASAS data and other things. Maybe we're looking at student job placement. Maybe we're looking at transitions. There's a lot of different things that you could be looking at. So you want to take that into account.

Please make sure that you do identify your key players, partners and activities that they're expected to complete and do. So make sure you have in your mind and in your plan what that is. So you don't want to write a plan that's contingent on a partner that's within your CAEP consortium that you haven't even spoken with, and then you go to implement your plan and they're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, we're doing something else, we're not going be able to help you with that. And now you're trying to figure out how to meet your goal.

So make sure you're talking with your partners. Educators, staff members, counselors, data clerks, anybody involved in this-- your classified staff, anybody that has to be involved in that data collection piece and achieving your goal. And again, I can't say enough, don't forget to collaborate. The collaboration is key. You should not be writing your CIP plan in a bubble, locked in an office somewhere with the lights dimmed and just hunched over your keyboard.

You want to make sure that you're collaboratively doing this and talking to people and working together to get it done. This is not something you have to go do in a dark room by yourself, and it's much easier to accomplish and complete when you do it collaboratively because you're not trying to think through the whole thing all by yourself.

And again, just a friendly service reminder, don't forget the data. I don't know if I could say that enough, but don't forget your data. Jaemi, do you want to add anything in here?

Jaemi Naish: No.

Sudie Whalen: All righty--

Jaemi Naish: --got it.

Sudie Whalen: OK. So my, I think, last slide-- or the second or maybe-- is thinking about the A and the R here, the Achievable and Realistic piece. Again, the goal has to make an impact, and it can't make an impact if you can't achieve it and if it's not realistic and it's too pie in the sky. So you want to make sure you consider the relevancy and impact on your students when you're writing this goal and that it's something that you can do.

You also want to make sure you're adjusting your goal parameters for attainability. So if your goal is I'm going to improve student learning outcomes by 100% within three months, OK, that's not realistic, but maybe we can dial that back a little bit and say, we're going to see a 10% increase in student learning outcomes, or maybe we'll see a 15% increase in job placement rates, or those kinds of things. Just being realistic about what's actually feasible and can be accomplished.

Jaemi Naish: And can I just say-- I'm going to just interject here real quick. Because last year when I was creating the goal with my team, I started with a pie in the sky, as Sudie said. I started with, let's increase enrollment with learners with 12 hours or more by 30%. And like several of my teammates, their eyes just went big and they're like, are you nuts?

And I was like, no, that's what I want to do, I think it's great. And the whole team was like, no, that's not going to work. And it didn't work. When I was-- and we didn't actually start with that goal, we brought it down to I think 15% or 20%, which was doable. But one of the things to think about, is it doable by April 30 when you're presenting on it? Maybe not.

When we were thinking about our goal last year, did we think COVID was still going to be with us in this intensive way? Not really. I mean, maybe I was in denial or our team was in denial. But those are all things to think about with your CIP plan. Sorry, Sudie. I just wanted to make sure I gave some real-life examples of maybe what not to do based on--

Sudie Whalen: I totally agree. And if any of you been to our CAPOS Professional Learning Communities Institute, we talk about this very in-depth. And a lot of times, there's nothing wrong with your goal, it's just you're asking yourself to do too much all at once. Put in-- think about it this way.

You're writing a goal that you can't accomplish in bite-sized chunks. It's not something that-- I'm not going to try to eat the whole meal all at once. I just want to taste this and see if I can get into some improvement here, and then let's move forward and keep pushing forward after we get that done. That's where those maintenance goals that Jeff talked about earlier are really relevant.

So you want to make sure as you're doing this that you're forecasting your goal for student success and impact on student learning. Remember, that's the reason why we do all of this, is for our students. That's what matters the most in this whole process. And so as you're writing your goal, just think about that piece. Make sure that intentional connection to student learning is included.

And again, don't overshoot your goals. Sometimes less is more. That's why we keep talking about one really strong goal instead of writing a lot of not great goals. If you have three really strong goals, you are a rock star and you are awesome. But we're not pushing for that. We're asking for at least one really strong goal.

You can only eat an elephant one bite at a time. So true. And Jody, I see the frowning face and I hope we didn't make you sad. We want everybody to have an enjoyable experience. I know, [inaudible], when think about CIP planning, it doesn't always sound like fun. But the collaboration part and getting to really hear from your students and hearing from your faculty and those in your community about what's really matters to them, to me, that part is really fun, and I like doing those kinds of things. Jaemi, do you want to add anything else in?

Jaemi Naish: No.

Sudie Whalen: All righty. So-- I think this is actually my last slide. In this segment anyway. Is the other piece is thinking about your timeline for measuring your data. Remember, we have to keep it time-bound. So you want to make sure you're creating a really thoughtful timeline for evaluating your plan and your goal, thinking about-- and one of the things I like to do is just time it out.

Like if I'm trying to see something that's improved by 15%, at what point do I want to see different-- at different stages. Is my SMART goal going to be my long-term goal for the next two years? What are my smaller incremental goals and things that I need to meet before-- in-between time? So if I'm saying I want to hit a 15% increase, then I'm looking at 5% here and see at what point do I think I can get to 5%, when do I think it'll get to 10%, and when do I think I can actually get to 15%? So just doing it that way.

Make sure you, again, identify those players, partners, and activities. Make sure you're thinking about evaluating your success in an ongoing way. Don't wait until the very end right before it's time to do your next CIP goal to be like, oh, that's why we have this goal. Maybe I need to go check and see if we met that goal or not.

I mean, you want to make sure you're looking at that in-between time and looking to see if it's successful. And adjusting your planning as needed to help you meet your goal. If you're a year in and you're like, we're still not any closer to meeting this goal, what do we need to do differently so we can, you know what I mean?

And so that's why me when I say think of your CIP as a living document that you're referring back to and checking up on and checking in on, and that's seeing is, is our success where we thought it would be? Do we need to do something different so we can meet that? Do we need additional staff? Do we need additional PD? Do we need more student support? Do we need more technology support? All the different things that you could be asking yourself.

So if you're not hitting your goal, that doesn't mean abandon it. It means. Think about what do we need to do differently so we can do it? So make sure you're reevaluating that and thinking about what does the evaluation mean, how do we evaluate that success? And then consider those external, extraneous factors, things that you can't control-- remember, we talked about that a moment ago. These things will come up.

So as that comes up, you want to think about, as you're planning, what happens if we have to lock down again? What happens if we have to pivot instruction again? What happens if we lose staff or we end up with high turnover? What happens if there's a natural disaster and some of our students can access the classroom, do we have to do this a different way? All these things. What happens if our books become obsolete or a new set of standards comes out?

Just these kinds of little things, all kinds of mitigating factors can come up that impacts your plan, but thinking through, what will be my contingency plan, in the event that something happens, that prevents us from doing what we plan on doing? Is there more than one way that we can achieve this goal? And just thinking through that. I'm not saying you need to plan for every possible natural disaster. I'm just saying think about, if something stalls your plan what's your plan to move forward past that?