(DESCRIPTION) A slideshow appears, with a panel to the right showing a list of attendees and a chat window. Panels under the slideshow include links to resources and important information. Title, Empowering C.T.E. Students with A.B.E.. East Los Angeles Skills Center, L.A.U.S.D. D.A.C.E.. Photovoltaic Installer Program (SPEECH) Now 2:30 so we'll go ahead and get started. As I stated before, my name is Veronica Parker with the AEP technical assistance project. And on today we have a team from the East Los Angeles Skills Center, part of LAUSD, and they'll be presenting on their full photovoltaic installer program. And they're going to be talking about how they empower CTE students with ABE. Before we get started, I'd like to also let you know that in addition to the PowerPoint being available, this webinar is being recorded, and it will be available on the California Adult Education website. I'll be sure to post the URL for this website into the chat pod so if you have to leave for any reason or you'd like to listen to this again another time or send it to other colleagues for their viewing, you will be able to do so. And I'm not seeing anyone with any technical difficulties, so that's good. I'll also let you know that the PowerPoint is available to download. Just select the file and select download, and it'll open up into your browser. And everything looks to be going well so far. So I'll go ahead and turn it over to the East Los Angeles Skills Center, the team there, and they'll go ahead and get us started. Alma? Hi. Can everybody hear me? Right my name is Alma Alvarez, and I'm very honored to present to you our first webinar, Empowering CTE Students with ABE. We will also be sharing with you some updates in how we empower CTE students with ESL. I'm happy to present to you Mr. Ruiz. Mr. Ruiz has been teaching photovoltaic for 11 years. He is our DACE photovoltaic instructor. We also have Lawrence Calderon. Mr. Calderon has been teaching photovoltaic for 10 years. We also have Eneida Carbonell. She is our basic math instructor, and she has 15 years of experience. We also have Jenisha Hasselberger. She is our LAUSD-DACE academic advisor. And myself, Alma Alvarez. Thank you. And now I would like you to share with us your role at your current school. (DESCRIPTION) A poll appears under the slide with a list of roles, such as administrator, teacher, and advisor. To the right of the list of roles, percentages appear as the webinar attendees make their choices (SPEECH) OK, great. So we see that we have two teachers and one administrator. OK, great. So we can see that we have two teachers in the audience, and we also have one administrator. (DESCRIPTION) A new poll appears (SPEECH) And can you please share with us for those that voted on their role as a teacher, are you currently a photovoltaic instructor? (DESCRIPTION) Three answers appear, all indicating no (SPEECH) OK, great. Thank you for your responses. (DESCRIPTION) A new poll appears (SPEECH) Even though you, oh, and we have another question. Do you have a photovoltaic program at your school? (DESCRIPTION) Three answers appear, all indicating no (SPEECH) OK, so we have three responses, and the response is no. So we hope that at the end of this PowerPoint, it would help you and guide you in probably how to use or how to empower students with ABE and ESL. Thank you for your responses. (DESCRIPTION) Slide, Introduction (SPEECH) So for today's webinar we're going to be talking about, we're going to be going over Alternating and Teaching Model, our professional learning community, the challenges and the outcomes that we went through the program to make this happen, to empower our city's students. (DESCRIPTION) Slide, Alternating Teaching Model (SPEECH) So I'm going to start sharing with you our alternating teaching model. We currently have an instructor that provides vocational math assistance to our CTE students. And we call it alternating teaching model because she is in the classroom. And I'm going to share with you our schedule. She's there from 7:30 to 9:30, where she's going over vocational math related to the photovoltaic program. And if you're not familiar with the photovoltaic term, it simply means green energy and solar electricity. So we're teaching students how to do green energy and how to do installations. So the students are receiving vocational math in the morning. And they are using photovoltaic terms into their lessons. Then from there we have the CTE photovoltaic teacher that comes in about 9:30, 9:45, and the CTE photovoltaic, the lessons of the day, what he will do is based on the prior knowledge, the students will be, the students apply the vocational math into the assignments for that day. So teachers work hand in hand in preparing their lessons, in making sure that the lesson of the day goes along with the CTE lesson. So this is what is called the alternating teaching model, where one teacher comes in, he is in the classroom with the CTE students, and she provides the vocational VABE math. Then she leaves, and then we have the CTE photovoltaic instructor that comes in and follows up on the lesson of the day. And why are we doing the alternating teaching model. So I'm going to have Mr Ruiz share with you how did we come up with the alternating teaching model? (DESCRIPTION) Slide, Why the Alternating Teaching Model (SPEECH) Hello, my name is Edward Ruiz. I've been a PV design teacher at the East LA Skills Center for the last 11 years. And I noticed from the poll today that most of the people involved are not photovoltaic bound, so I am going to approach this today from the idea that we can develop a method here for getting ABE into basic education skills into people with the model we developed here for photovoltaics. So this would be usable for any CTE program, not just what we did in photovoltaic. Why we had to come up with this model for the adult basic education skills to be added is our populations we have. We have reentry students. Reentry being anti-recidivism, people that are re-entering from incarcerations. We have at risk youth. We have the non college bound high school students. And we have a lot of dropouts that make up our student body. And the thing they lack most in their skill sets, in trying to get effective job placements and further education, is their lack of math ability and critical thinking skills. In the early years of teaching this it was an overwhelming problem that they just didn't have the logic skills needed or the math skills needed to be successful in employment. So in listening to some industry response from employers and others we asked for math to be added on to our curriculum. Part of that was a project that LA Unified School District also brought forward about seven years ago. (DESCRIPTION) Slide, How to integrate A.B.E. into C.T.E (SPEECH) So we developed a method. The method is actually, in hindsight now it can be spelt out across 5 points. The first thing that we did with our administration was identify the courses we needed from ABE to supplement our work and get the results we needed to get job placements done. So the first thing we did was identify the need for a vocational math program. And we actually wrote a curriculum. The district and the administration around us was very supporting, and a team of CTE teachers, along with math teachers, developed a vocational math course that was all purpose So you could support electrical knowledge, home construction knowledge, but it also would be lined up to be able to teach things like mathematics for medical terminology, medical CNA assistance. It could be an all purpose vocational math course to basically help any of the CTE programs out. The second layer in development was actually creating a professional learning community so PLC from this point on. This was key. The fact that the four people in this room, our advisor Ms. Alvarez, the math teacher Ms. Carbonell, my mechanical assistant co-teacher Mr. Calderon, and I were on the same page at all times, being able to feed each other advice on what we should be teaching and the things that industry and job placements needed. I think I went over the developing of a course outline for the math and the math curriculum already. Then as we unrolled this plan of getting the math taught each day, how to adjust the curriculum. And one of the adjustments was to add a trade algebra course, another layer of math on on top of it. Then also tweaking what we were teaching in the curriculum, creating contextualization for the different jobs that would be out in front of the students. And the last but not least was consulting industry. As we produced results and needed more input, we contacted our solar employers, our other electrical employers, some trade unions, and got feedback on how we could adjust and move these things. All of this took a lot of time. It took a lot of lunches. And it took the cooperation of the teachers in the PLC and the support of the administration that through four different principals at this point, and I know that assistant principals and teacher advisors, they've all been on board with us and provided the help needed to get this done. (DESCRIPTION) Slide, Implementation of A.B.E. into C.T.E (SPEECH) We're going to move to the next slide now. The biggest part of the work with teachers and the administration was developing a coherent sequence and scheduling, that we could alternate between the two teachers. Setting up the skills to do that was still a challenge every year. To get an algebra course in, to get the vocational math course in, and for us to get our CTE jobs done requires quite a bit of work. I think it took a good 18 hours of planning this year to get the schedule set up and to get the sequencing set out for the year. So that's a constant challenge to get the matriculation cycles correctly done, and you get them out to the workforce. We at this point have done such a good job with it. It takes five months for a student to enter, go through all three PV levels, get the vocational math done, and get the algebra done. And by the time they leave here, they have stacked two ABE courses and up to four CTE courses. We also get an energy efficiency done. So that's the main idea in sequencing and coordination, is that it takes, going to take quite a bit of effort in the professional learning community to get those things done, a lot of planning. The other two elements to this would be assessing the data, collecting and analyzing the data. Lot of this is going to be done at the end where we talk about CASAS results and the funding implications for it. And then the last part, consulting industry. The easiest part for me to mention that now is simply in the job placement results, is that through the 11 years I've taught, we went from placing in the low 10% of people when we're done into much higher numbers. Last results were in the high 60s, low 70s. I'm not sure where the number sits now. So it's paid off in those particular results. (DESCRIPTION) Slide, Recipe for Success (SPEECH) The next slide we're going to take a look at is our recipe for success. I was hired back 11 years ago. I'm a career electrician. I'm an electrical contractor and a journeyman electrician. Our co-teacher, Mr. Calderon, was a large scale battery plant maintenance operator in solar thermal. So we came with the right backgrounds. Our math teacher's a long term career math teacher who has excellent credentials in teaching math. And the last part, providing the pre-apprenticeship opportunities and career pathways, we have aligned ourselves with two outside non-profits that in our industry sector to work on these things on a regular basis. Once again this required sacrificing a lot of lunches to achieve the next three steps. Selecting the staff, wording what the pre-apprenticeship opportunities are would vary for each CTE pathway, and then at that point exploring the local job employment market and future training market which requires us going to constant conferences and dealing with our employer advisors all the time. So lots of meetings, lots of sacrifice to get it done. (DESCRIPTION) Slide, C.T.E. Component (SPEECH) I'm going to introduce my co-teacher Mr. Calderon in the program who is the other photovoltaic teacher. And his conversation will be a lot about integrating all this. Mine was more about methodology of how we programmed it all. He's going to speak all about the individual needs of the photovoltaic program now. Mr. Calderon? Thank you. Good afternoon. My name is Larry Calderon. I am one of the PV instructors here at the East LA Skills Center. I'm briefly going to explain with a little more detail how we married our CTE class and our ABE math class together. So keep in mind as Mr. Ruiz said earlier, any CTE class can be inserted here and used. Now, this process is mainly going to be teacher driven. I just saw that there was a couple of teachers there. Because our administrators, my principal relies on us instructors to be the eyes and ears of our particular field or trade that we're teaching to our students. So there's going to be a couple of key notes that I'm going to mention, but I'll stress when they come up here. So I'm going to talk a little about how we actually went about this our PV class consists of three cohorts. One and two, which is an introductory class, teaching the students basic construction and safety requirements. Now we were doing OK on getting the students jobs as basic helpers slash installers. Over time we had students returning and saying that they were trying to go for a promotion in the field, which required a little more rope and equipment layout and basic Ohm's law. So as the industry excelled, it kept moving quickly so did the need for site surveyors, permit runners, design personnel, which requires a lot more advanced wiring, system sizing and troubleshooting skills that require more math, which our next speaker is actually going to talk about, but I'm going to keep moving from here. So here's a key, here's one of the key notes here. Trade advisory boards. This is something, us as instructors, we need to be a part of the trade advisory boards. After hearing what our students were lacking, Mr. Ruiz and myself met with people within the industry to confirm a set path. So key note is a trade advisory board. Another key note: when we took this back to what I call an inter-department PLC, so I call this our inter-department PLC here, and met with our administrators on how to implement the program. So we all sat down in the conference room and actually talked about this. As the implementation of the program moved forward, our students were now moving into the higher wage positions and moving on to higher education. Us here at the East LA Skills Center, that wasn't enough for us. So we wanted a little bit more we wanted another pathway for earning potential, which led us to our pre-apprenticeship opportunities within the local unions. So one union prerequisite would be algebra. So this also guided us into that direction here. So this is the perfect time to introduce our VABE math teacher, Miss Carbonell, and she can also refer to this. (DESCRIPTION) Slide, Vocational A.B.E. Component (SPEECH) Hello, can you hear me? So I have a bit of a bad cough today, but I hope you can hear me. I am Miss Carbonell. I am the main math and algebra teacher for the PV program here at East Los Angeles Skills Center. Oh, you want me to sit there? That might be better. OK, can you hear me now? Yes? All right. This is Miss Carbonell. I am the VABE math and algebra teacher here at East Los Angeles Skills Center. I'm very pleased to work with the PV students and to be able to empower them to become math qualified so that they can meet the job requirements of the energy and utilities industry sector requirements. To this end, I regularly meet with the two PV instructors, Mr. Calderon and Mr. Ruiz, regularly, and also with advisors and administrators, even though less often. But in such a way that we can incorporate and integrate PV concepts and formulas in the vocational ABE math and algebra 1a curriculum, thus bridging from basic math skills to higher skills for the students to be successful in the PV. For example, let me give you an example of how I do this. (DESCRIPTION) Slide, Compare and Contrast, A lesson in contextualization (SPEECH) Here we have, say, the next line where we do at home compare and contrast. Unless you need contextualization, where we have a basic math skill such as, for instance, we have five friends that are a social gathering and then we'd like to have, say, an extra large pizza. And the pizza is sliced into 12 equal pieces. And one of them eats four, leaving the remaining four to have only two. So what fractional part of the pizza did the hungry one receive as opposed to the other four? And did he really eat more than his four friends? Well obviously the answer is yes, yes he ate more. But fractionally speaking how do you show that? So what are the requirements in order to be able to answer this question from the fractional point of view? Well they have to know what four out of 12 is. They have to know what a common factor is, and then they have to know that that is equal to 1/3 when they talk about a path out of a whole concept. And then compare that to, say, two out of the eight remaining ones, which would be 1/4, so they have to know about the factors. So 1/3 as opposed to 1/4. 1/3 for the person that ate more, and 1/4 for the person, the other four that ate less. Now, as a fraction, many studies are kind of bewildered when they see 1/4 and 1/3 or 1/3 and 1/4. What does it mean in terms of comparing? So that's where we come in and make sure that they understand how to transform a fraction to a decimal number and how do they do a cross product multiplication so they can know that 1/3 is more than 1/4. Or when they are able to find what is the least common denominator and do an equivalent fraction so they know that 1 over 3, in terms of the least common denominator of, say, four and three would be 12, it would be equivalent to 3 times 4 would be 12, and then they will have, let's see, it would be 4 over 12 greater than 3 over 12. So they can see, obviously, that yes, the fraction 1/3 is greater than 1/4. So here is they learned about comparing fractions, the concept of the least common denominator, and then also how to convert from fraction to decimals, that's another way of comparing fractions. Now from that basic skill mode we enter what they need in their jobs, like for instance, the bridge application package that I use for them created by, like Mr. Ruiz said, by the team of people that decided to create this program geared towards the PV math application problems. And there you have an example. Jose has 20 feet of coin conduit, and to wire a new room he needs 6 3 and 1/8 foot pieces. How much conduit will be left over? So the question is what is needed in order to solve this problem? As you can see, one needs to first know how to multiply 6 times 3 and 1/8, which means they have to know how to multiply whole numbers with mixed numbers. And then in order to do that, they have to know about how to do, convert a mixed number into an improper fraction and how to always consider a whole number as a fraction by putting a one under it. Like the 6 would be 6 over 1 times the 3 and 1/8. And then 3 and 1/8 would be as a mixed number, it will be 25 over 8. And then once they get the result of that, they will get an improper fraction answer and that they have to convert to a mixed number. So they will see that they will need 18 and 3/4 feet to wire this new room. And this is then, in order to answer the last question, how much conduit would be left over, they have to know how to translate that into a math operation like it would mean to subtract the 18 and 3/4 from the 20. And this is another concept that we go over. Like what does it mean to subtract a fraction or a mixed number from a whole number? And that's another issue that we, or basic math skills that we consider, and how to borrow from a whole number so that they can do the subtraction, and don't take the answer as, say, 20 minus 18 and 3/4 to be 2 and 3/4, but rather to be 1 and 1/4 when they do the borrowing. Next slide. (DESCRIPTION) Slide, Compare and Contrast (SPEECH) In the next example, we are considering what we do in the algebra program. Once they have all these basic skills, decimals, fractions, measurement conversion, ratios and proportion, et cetera, they need to know how to apply it to formulas that they use in the field. So one of them will be Ohm's law, and the other one will be the power formula. Ohm's law talks about the direct relationship that exists between the current and the voltage and the inverse relationship of the current with the resistance. So in order for them to understand the formula, they have to know how to evaluate the formula, how to do the substitution of the numbers to find the missing variable. In this case, the question is how to find the current. In the toaster that has 120 volts and a resistance of 12 ohms. So simply they will have to in this case, do a division of 120 volts by 12 and they will get 10 amps. And then I have to do that again with various resistances, like 10 ohms and 15 ohms instead, and keeping the 120 volts the same. So what happens is when you do the 120 by 10, you get 12 amps, and when you divide 120 by 15 you get 8 amps. So what relation can be drawn then between the current and the resistance? And this is the great concept of indirect variation, where they can see that as you increase the resistance, the current decreases, and as the resistance decreases, the current increases. So they learn how to relate to the formula in a more direct way, not just the math way by evaluating the numbers, but in a direct way and keep that in mind as they work in that field. And then they compare that to the power formula, that says that the power is equals to the current squared times the resistance. So for this problem they will need to know all the square numbers, which we go over beforehand. We do discuss the square numbers and also the order of operations. What is it that they have to do first? And then what to evaluate second, and so on using the PEMDAS technique. So they have had exposure to all of this. But again, this is a typical problem that they face in their field. What is the resistance of an electric drill rated R 400 watts that draws a current of 1.67 amps? And then what about if we keep the same power level, 400 watts, but the resistance now goes to 2 ohms and then to 2.5 amps. And here is where the algebra comes in because they have to put all these results in a table where they have to know about what is the input volume, what is the output volume. Because they're going to be graphing this relationship and learning to see whether it's a linear relationship or a non-linear relationship as the previous problem. So as we evaluate all of this, they learn how to do the table, how to do the graph, and they find out that this is, say, non-linear relationship because there is a square involved. But they also conclude that reducing the resistance increases the current and increasing the resistance reduces the current. So these are typical problems. And of course on a daily basis, on a weakly basis, I look at all the results of the students' class work and tests, and that tells me how to move on from one week to another. And Mr. Ruiz will talk more about the outcomes that we notice out of these weekly review, daily review, weekly review of their tests, classwork, and of course the CASAS and the NABCEP and so on. Thank you. Before I let Mr. Ruiz continue, I shared with you, I'm not sure, well we have two computer teachers in the audience. Thank you for joining us. So I just wanted to briefly go over and ask you, do you see now the need of having a VABE math class as part of the photovoltaic program? Were you guys able to figure out those problems on your screen? If you did, great. Because I was the CTE advisor at East Los Angeles Skills Center and every time I walk into that classroom and I see those long formulas with explanations and student work, I, up to now I still do not know what they are doing or how they're able to come up with the answer. Because the math presented in this photovoltaic program is very technical, is very advanced. So that's why the VABE math was brought in into the program, to make sure that we empower students by giving them what they need. Students who come in with basic math knowledge, some students come in with some prior knowledge in algebra if they took the algebra class at their high school, but pretty much our adult learners are students that are coming back to be retrained, and they probably were not in school for quite some time. So they need that assistance, and what we wanted to do is we wanted to create multiple entry and exit points where students can come in and work on the basic skills in math in conjunction with their career goals, which is the photovoltaic. So now Mr. Ruiz is going to continue. Thanks. (DESCRIPTION) Slide, Outcomes (SPEECH) The next slide it says outcomes, but I'm also going to take a moment to segue here. We see that there are computer applications teachers here. So the idea with our presentation today is not so much about the photovoltaic aspect or renewable energy. It's about how to get your CTE program to line with ABE goals, and to use the two teaching cores, the crew tech ed and the basic skills course to improve outcomes for the students. So the idea about methodology here, that this is as a team of people, teachers and administrators, that in what we have discovered is that by planning what we do, developing what we do, sequencing, scheduling, that we were able to meet our industry goals, our students' needs, and basically produce a program that has a great deal of outcomes we're very proud of. And so at the end of this, we're going to do a recap of the methodology and it's not so much about photovoltaics. It's going to be about how to achieve these outcomes I'm going to go down right now. So what are, in integrating our math skills along with our photovoltaic program, here's what we've been able to achieve. Our student retention has been quite good. 95% of the people that started the program finish the program, which once again is three CTE courses, two math courses in and occasionally an energy audit class to finish. Our overall CASAS gains in CASAS scores in math have gained significant numbers. We have a National certification in solar installation, known as the North American Board of Certified Energy Practitioners Exam. Our pass rate when we started was at the 30%, 40% level. We're nearing about 70% passing on that test now, through the last eight years. Our job placements have gone up, and we're also fulfilling higher level jobs, not just entry level jobs, but we able to develop the math skills needed for the students to promote to mid-level jobs in more engineering style jobs. The ABE and CTE have definitely helped with our trade advisory boards and employers to give them what they want. And the last but not least we haven't mentioned enough is that the union requires algebra. That is the electrical union which services the solar industry. And they need algebra as a requirement to enter the union. So by developing their math skills, we, I think, put nine people in the local union last year, which is up from no one eight, nine years ago. So, it's achieved what we wanted to in all kinds of ways. This is what the success has been for us. (DESCRIPTION) Slide, Outcomes continued (SPEECH) As a continuation of these ideas, that also our industry advisors, our employers, wanted the ability just for our candidates to be able to think, not even just on math levels, just to figure out construction problems, sequencing, planning, organizing their daily task, and leading crews. All of this training, especially the math, has led to increased critical thinking by the students in situations that are not math based. The key part, and this is asked a lot to do with the administration's help through several administrations here, is that in less than six months of time, we're able to stack their resumes with our certification process here. That they can get three levels of photovoltaic training, vocabulary, mechanical, and design. They are taught energy efficiency. They can work on their third party national exam certifications to help with their employment and promotion. When they get an OSHA 10 certification for safety training. It's led us to be in position to expand our program. We're going to add higher degrees of energy efficiency training now. We've won a Prop 39 grant with our success, and we're able to adopt a learning pattern called LEED now, leadership and excellence in engineering and design, and be able to teach that to our students in the energy audit program. We also have developed a methodology here that's allowed us to integrate the integrated training across ESL boundaries now. We have brought in four students from our integrated education program this summer into our photovoltaic program. So the organizational process, the method of creating a PLC, working with the administrators, creating the scheduling and sequences has flowed over to the ESL program and is bringing ESL students into our program now. So there's a long term payoff that allows us to expand what we've done here in our method. (DESCRIPTION) Slide, CASAS Outcomes (SPEECH) I'm going to hand it back over to Miss Alvarez. This is for the administration end on some levels for the people that are administrators, that all these gains turn into other administrative goals that are beyond most teachers. So I'm going to hand it back over to Miss Alvarez. OK, so on this slide, what we have is CASAS outcomes from last year. 91 students, we had 91 students and 60 paired tests. So last year we had 21 payment points. And when Mr. Ruiz refers to, this is the admin part or the slide, it simply means about money. You know, we always want to make sure that our program is reviewed constantly and that we go back and look at the completers. We also look at the benchmarks in the VABE math class. So this is a slide that shows you that as we go along with the program, we also capture data, and we review data, and we analyze data. So here we have the scores between 215 and 260. So we have an increase. We also had an increase on the CASAS Score, and that was 8.5. So this has, last year at our highest point it was 39 points. So for those of you that do CASAS, you probably know what I'm referring to, and this is based on the VABE math class. OK? For those computer application instructors, it might be foreign to you, because for computers we go on pretty much on completions. If you're student completes a class, then that's an outcome for you. So this is what I wanted to share with you about CASAS. (DESCRIPTION) Slide, Recap (SPEECH) And then, how do we empower our students, our CTE students with ABE? So what we really wanted to share with you today is the process of, from the beginning of how this came about, how you can establish a program at your school and everything that you're going to need from meeting with the industry, meeting with teachers. So for example, if you're thinking about empowering your students with computers, if you're open in probably having ESL students in your class, we also want to show you that this can be possible. In July, we had an IT class where we were working with a CTE teacher, which was Mr Ruiz, and then we also have an IT instructor. And he's going to be able to share with us a little bit of how his experience went in working with ESL students. I also want to share with you that it's not only identify the correct courses that can go hand-in-hand, but it's also being able to create multiple entry points, not only from ABE to CTE, but also letting ESL students know that they can also be able to join a CTE class while they're improving their English skills. And going back to building a professional learning community, That's in referred to learning the community within your school, with your teachers that are interested in having an IT class in also getting the support from your administrators, making sure to present the idea to your administrators and getting approval. And again I already said, identify the correct ABE course for each of the CTE program. (DESCRIPTION) Slide, Recap continued (SPEECH) Being flexible as well. Mr. Ruiz keeps mentioning lunch because that is true. Sometimes I will reach out to them and ask, can we meet? And they are very dedicated teachers that will not sometimes be flexible in the sense where they do not want to loose lecture time with their students. So they were very open and willing to meet with me during lunchtime or 15 minutes or 10 minutes, you know. So being flexible to make this happen, it's a big plus. And also you know, from the advisor point of view, be understanding that we can't just meet whenever. It has to be planned. It has to be scheduled. You know, it has to go through administration to make sure that teachers can release or teachers can meet with me during their lunch time. I see a question on the chat. I'll get to it in a few minutes. Review schedule and course sequences. So this is where I would come in as Mr. Ruiz shared with you, we have photovoltaic program number one, number two, number three. So we have a series of classes, so we have to make sure to align the start date of PV 1 and PV 2 to make sure that it aligns with the PV 3. Mr Calderon teaches photovoltaic 1 and 2, so by the time his students are done with those two classes, we have to make sure that Mr. Ruiz' schedule would align so that students can continue and moving on to the Photovoltaic 3 class. My next line, assess, assess, and more assessment. That is referring to making sure as an advisor or whoever is at your site that will be assisting you is to make sure that they assess the students. If it's an ESL student, make sure that they're a candidate for this type of program. I think the ESL student that we had was level 4, and Mr. Ruiz was going to show his experience. Schedule trade advisories. You also want to make sure that you meet with the industry. And why is it important? It's important because we want to make sure that we are training students and keeping them up to date, make sure that the students are marketable, so that the more certificates they have, the more opportunities they'll have when they go out to the real world and apply for jobs. And this leads to increase their education, their training, and career advancement. We have a question. It says, from our Marcellus, how do you assess your students before they enroll in the class? So let me go back to the assessment, assessment, and more assessment. So if we have a student at the counter, and they express interest in the photovoltaic program, as an advisor I would, we have some questions. So we would ask the student, why are you interested in the program? If it's an English speaker student, we provide the reading and the math assessment. Now surely you're familiar with the TABE exam. So we give them the TABE reading and math assessment, I believe is number nine. Once the student takes the assessment, then we go over the assessment with them. So the assessment scores will let us know if the student needs a math class or if they need a reading class. In this case math is a big component in the photovoltaic program, so we will talk to the student about a math class that is not just a regular math class. It's the VABE photovoltaic class for the program. So we explain to the students, you're going to start your class Monday through Friday very early at 7:30. At 7:30 is where you're going to come in and take your math class that is going to help you with the CTE program. So that's how we do the assessment for an English speaking student. Now if we have an ESL student, we provide them with the ESL assessment test. It's a writing section, and it's also a reading section, and it's an oral assessment. We want to make sure that the student will be able to communicate with the teacher, understand, listening, comprehension, and be able to read and write. And we open up the ESL level to ESL 3. So if a student is on level 3 and they're interested in the photovoltaic program, we bring them in into the program. And I'm going to now pass it to Mr. Ruiz so he can share with us his experience in the photovoltaic IT program. This summer for the first time, LA Unified experimented with a co-teaching model, having a CTE instructor and an ESL instructor in the same room at the same time. For me the outcomes of that were incredible. I learned a lot about teaching ESL because I'm a CTE teacher. But the incredible part was actually dealing with the students. This helped on several different levels. The ESL students were given contextualization. How are they going to use their English? As we're doing a method here for CTE teachers and ABE teachers, I think this is a key point, is that, what skills are your students missing? Most of our skills, we're missing math skills, but some of our students are missing English skills, and I see from the computer application teachers, maybe computer jargon classes, IET training in English skills that would apply to computers, so that ESL students could join the computer application classes with more effectiveness. The students, so we had one before all this named Alejandro. Alejandro was in process of getting a citizenship, and he made it to employment. But some of his barriers were his lack of English skill and his lack of technical ability. And the course works were able, the course, the courses were able to overcome those challenges for him. Presently we have for integrated education students in our PV program that just entered this semester, and they're all working on their ESL skills at the same time their CTE skills and their math skills. So it's created a triple challenge for them. So a lot of the development of the proper sequencing, advisors, checking their skill levels through assessments. With those students it's different in some ways. The ESL students are highly motivated. They want to be here and learn their language skills, but they also want to seek employment. So we've found a way to help in recruiting for CTE. We have a stronger group of students this semester we've had in a long time, that it's diverse. They're the people that really need these experiences to gain employment. So it's a great use of what we put together over the last decade to actually matriculate it into other students and to achieve outcomes with a broader population. The present moment we have a Ukrainian. That's a little bit different in dealing with because most of our ESL is Spanish based speakers trying to learn English. But it's worked out really nicely here. They're actually picking up skills, and they'll be done with our program in about three months and hopefully moved on to an employment. So it's really paid off. I want to recap one last time since we actually done with the slide show. (DESCRIPTION) Slide, Q and A. The slide shows a picture of people in hard hats standing next to a photovoltaic panel (SPEECH) That what you can take out of this for most people won't be the photovoltaic parts. It'll be the idea of creating a method. That the teachers really have to understand their challenges in teaching their curriculum, what their students from their surrounding areas need to improve in skills, then consulting with the trade advisories around them, which all takes extra time. What skills are your candidates lacking when they're seeking employment, and getting really good advice and listening to the trade advisors and employers. Then implementing that. Getting the administration to develop curriculums. Allowing that to happen. Over the computer application teachers, it might be more about language skills, but it could also see math skills and how to write a curriculum that would allow for ABE or bridging curriculums to meet these needs to make your computer applications or other students and other CTE programs more successful. Then working with administration to sequence and develop the schedule of alternating models. It is a challenge. I work four days a week. And on the very first day of the week our VABE math teacher teaches algebra. In our PV 1 and 2 class, the VABE math teacher starts the day off, and then the PV1 and 2 teacher finishes the day. So creating that sequence has been difficult. It's required a lot of work of the administrators. That would be the next tier. The last is meeting again after you've implemented these things. How well did they work? So going back to the treaty advisory. People, the employers, and with the administration. Then also seeking out other help. We are able to land grant money. We are able to work with other NPOs. They were able to align with our mission goals and actually help bring more students and also help bring better employment opportunities. Then the last part we're on is actually, since we've done this now for quite some time, it's going on about seven years since it's been implemented for us, or we started, that how to expand out. Most people are probably not in an expansion moment. We reached a moment to where the administration is on board. We have all this developed. How do we expand into new fields of knowledge and new CTE careers? Once again, our PowerPoint, the recap's in there. It's not comprehensive, but it will give a planning guide for anyone trying to achieve what we've been able to do here. I would like to thank everyone for listening. I think we're going to open it up for a question and answer for anyone that has any more questions for us. And I'm going to turn back over to Alma Alvarez. And I'd like to thank everyone for listening today for the others in the room. Miss Carbonell, our VABE math and algebra teacher, Mr. Lawrence Calderon, who's our mechanical PV 1 and 2 teacher, and myself, Edward Ruiz, who I teach the PV 3 design course here. Anyway this is Alma to conclude it off, and hopefully we have some answers for the questions you may have. I also want to thank Mr. Ruiz, Mr. Calderon, and Miss Carbonell for joining me in presenting this webinar. I also want to thank Andrea Rodriguez, principal at East Los Angeles Skills Center for her support and for allowing me to present this webinar for you. As I mentioned earlier, I was the CTE advisor at East Los Angeles Skills Center, and over the summer I received a promotion, so I'm now at Harvard professional center. So you will have access to the PowerPoint, and if you have any other questions later on, please feel free to reach out to East Los Angeles Skills Center team. They will be more than happy to answer any questions, or if you have any questions that are not going to be asked at the moment. So for now we're going to leave it open to look at your questions, or if you would like to jump in and use the microphone. As someone's typing a question here, Alma could you type in my email address? esr5340, esr, 340. 5340. (DESCRIPTION) e.s.r. 5 3 4 0 at l.a.u.s.d dot net (SPEECH) And then if anyone has any questions for myself because I've been here through the entire program, I'd be willing to help, especially if you're administrators in particular about developing electrical photovoltaic programs or energy efficiency. It might take me a couple of days, but I will return emails to help if need be. And I think Alma's going to take over answering the questions at this point. (DESCRIPTION) Veronica Parker types in the chat box. Webinar recording and Power Point will be available on this web page, HTTP colon slash slash c.a.l. adult ed dot org slash Educators slash 300 (SPEECH) And Marcellus is asking, "What type of tools did you use to identify the industry needs in order to create this training?" I'm going to answer that. One would actually be the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, the IBEW, which is one of our main guidelines around here for upper level and high end employment. They have a set of parameters that requires algebra, some critical thinking skills to be able to enter the union. So we said that as a goal, that in six months or less they spend with us that they reach a level of pre-apprenticeship, that they would be able to enter the union fully qualified and be able to get into the union. That was one level. The rest would be from the solar regular installation world. Tesla Solar, which used to be Solar City gave us a lot of input from former alumni, people that graduated our program, they began to work for solar city which is now Tesla Solar, gave us a lot of feedback on what they wanted out of students. We have an NPO called Grid Alternatives, which is a state run non-profit, state funded non-profit. Which, they deal with a lot of employers in the lack of troubleshooting and math skills. So they fed us a lot of information about what the industry would need. And not necessarily a tool, but the student, the student is pretty much what we use to identify the industry needs. And also as doing this, we want to make sure that we provide them with multiple pathways through our ABE program, through our ESL program, to make sure that we assist them to accelerate their learning. You're welcome Marcellus. Any other questions? Marcellus, can you share with us, where do you teach computers applications? (DESCRIPTION) Mercedes Strong types in the chat box. At Mira Costa College in Oceanside (SPEECH) Great. Thank you for sharing with us. Thank you all for joining us. All right, thank you Alma and the rest of the team for this wonderful presentation. And thank you to all of our participants who were on the line today. I'm about to close this webinar, but before I do so I have posted the URL to where the webinar recording and PowerPoint will be located. Please be sure to share this link with any colleagues who may have wanted to attend today's webinar but was unable to or anyone else that you think would find this information valuable. We want to make sure that we share this webinar as well as the PowerPoint with as many people as possible who would find this information beneficial. Next week, in continuation with our webinar miniseries on program areas, next week we will host a webinar on pathways to successful employment outcomes for adults with disabilities. I've also posted the URL there as well. So please be sure to register for that webinar and any of our other offerings if you have not done so already. When I close this webinar an evaluation will appear on your screen. Please be sure to let the team know, the presenters know what you thought about today's webinar and if there are any additional technical assistance or professional development needs you may have at this time. Thanks again for your time and your participation and I hope everyone have a great afternoon. Goodbye.