(DESCRIPTION)
Title slide. Logo, CALPRO. October 28, 2021. Katie Neginskiy.

(SPEECH)
KATIE NEGINSKIY: Thank you, Holly, and welcome everyone to our presentation on increasing engagement and student persistence through distance and blended learning models. Nice, succinct title.

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Slide, Introductions. Pictures of Katie, Consultant, CAL PRO/AIR; Doctor Thoibi N. Rublaitus, Principal, Corona-Norco Adult School; and Kristi Reyes, Noncredit E.S.L. Instructor, MiraCosta College.

(SPEECH)
So today, you have me facilitating this panel. And then we're joined by Thoibi, who's the Principal of Corona-Norco Adult School. And she'll fill you in a little more on her program as we move along. And Kristi Reyes, who is a Noncredit Instructor with MiraCosta College. And she'll also tell you more about her program shortly.

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Slide, CAL PRO Brief in Focus. For decades, California adult education has been developing tools to address how changes in technology in turn change society, and therefore, learning processes.

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So part of what we're going to talk about today is a research brief that CALPRO wrote and published in the spring. And the idea of the research brief was to really explore any previous research that had been done on distance learning and then really captured this moment in time as we were moving through the pandemic, and explore the barriers to distance learning, and then also any current best practices that were being employed and kind of unearthed by programs across California. And then to think about what we need as we move forward with the distance learning, because they're certainly not going to go back. So we're going to continue exploring distance learning and what do we still need to uncover.

So at the beginning of the brief, we really were thinking about what has California already done in the field of distance learning. And California really had been ahead of things in adult education, and been working in this area for decades. And there had been focused in three areas. So first being infrastructure, so resources and then access to those resources, both for students and for teachers. Also the uses for technology, so instructional uses and assessment and student informational systems, like Canvas or Blackboard. And then lastly, the approaches to creating learning environments. So distance learning, but also professional development for teachers who are using distance learning, and communication amongst teams of teachers.

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CAL PRO Brief in Focus continued. An image of Research Brief Number 15 titled, "Evidence to Action - Increasing Engagement and Student Persistence Through Distance and Blended-Learning Models: What the Research Says and Which Practices Work," April 2021.

(SPEECH)
So this is the brief. And I'm going to put the link into the chat shortly. But the purpose of writing the brief was to provide a contemporaneous account of how California adult education rose to meet the challenge of continuing to serve adult learners during the pandemic. And as I mentioned, what do we need as we move forward with distance learning in California?

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CAL PRO Brief in Focus continued.

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So there's a really limited body of research and evidence in regards to distance learning. We did look at some studies that had taken place in California and also one from Washington, DC, but there wasn't really a lot because as most of you know, distance learning wasn't really commonplace in adult education until the pandemic. So more will be understood over time but our work was, again, attempting to capture the snapshot of distance learning during the pandemic.

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Slide, What the Evidence Tells Us. The available research and evidence emerging from current practices provide insight into how adult education can prepare for the future of online learning. A quote from James and Theriault, 2020, page 131.

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And then we have a quote here that, "In spite of the global challenge of COVID-19, the adult learning sector, while facing particularly difficult financial conditions, continues to demonstrate its resilience by going above and beyond to provide flexible, learner-centered solutions to keep adults in education and reach the most vulnerable groups." And Kristi and Thoibi really epitomize this quote, which is why I'm excited that they're here with us today to share their best practices.

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What the Evidence Tells Us continued - Known barriers and challenges to distance learning with adult learners.

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So some of the barriers that we unearthed while working on this brief, but I'm sure you're all familiar with, the top five were a lack of access to reliable internet connection and functional devices. As I mentioned, this is an issue for students as well as instructors, so we're working from home. Second would be limited digital literacy.

AUDIENCE: I have trouble with this stuff, I really do.

KATIE NEGINSKIY: Again, whoops, somebody's unmuted. For students, again, as well as instructors. Third, those traditional barriers to adult education, they still remain even within distance learning. So having conflicts due to work schedules and child care and family obligations, health issues, all of those same things are still present and they still need to be addressed.

Fourth, remote recruitment, orientation, and assessment is a new challenge within distance learning. We're still figuring out how to do those pieces in the best way. And then offering and managing support services as we did before to address a lot of those things that I mentioned in number three.

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What the Evidence Tells Us continued - Practices that work to increase the effectiveness of distance learning with adult learners.

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And after talking to a lot of programs across California and interviewing them for the purpose of the brief, we did unearth some best practices. And again, Kristi and Thoibi are going to go into more detail. But some of those were lending computers and tablets and hotspots. That addresses this issue of access. Secondly, as far as onboarding students, we talked about creating videos for students that demonstrate how to navigate the platforms that are provided by the school.

Third, the students saw a lot of benefits to the flexibility of the schedule and location within distance learning. Fourth, program saw a lot of success in advertising on social media platforms. And fifth, we found that while orienting students proved to be a bit of a challenge that small groups tended to work best whereas large groups, students weren't able to really dig in and ask the questions regarding things they were having trouble with. And if orientations were scheduled individually, it was just too burdensome for staff.

And lastly, creating a digital platform to share those wraparound services that we mentioned. So things that teachers would normally share with students, we found ways to share them even at a distance. So if it was information about food pantries or being protected from eviction or domestic violence resources, we still found ways to share that information with students.

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Slide, California Practitioner Panel. California Program Panelists will share details of how they as educators and their programs contended with these challenges and address them. Q1. How did your program address a lack of access to a reliable internet connection and functional devices, for students as well as instructors?

(SPEECH)
That's a little recap of the brief. And of course, I will put the link into the chat and y'all can read more in depth. But now I'm going to invite Kristi and Thoibi to tell us a little more about each of their programs, but they'll also answer some questions about what best practices they came across in regards to distance learning. So we're going to start with Thoibi, and she's going to answer how her program addressed a lack of resources to reliable internet connection and functional devices for students and instructors after she tells us a little bit about her program.

THOIBI N. RUBLAITUS: Thank you. Thank you, Katie. And good evening or good afternoon, everybody. Thank you for joining us. We know that this is the last session of the day, but you're here with us and we appreciate that for you for that.

And I serve the community of Corona Norco as the adult education principal. And as I always tell my community here, for me my job is to support the students and the teachers and their needs. And we serve about 3,000 students pre-pandemic. So that is duplicated, not unduplicated. And right now during the pandemic, we still are at the tail end of it hopefully, we serve right now our enrollment is about 1,400. So half of them still haven't come back. So as much as we try, enrollment is a challenge.

But going back to the question here, how did our program address the lack of access? When the pandemic started, of course, we were very fortunate to be part of the DLAC Academy. So three of my staff members were in the DLAC. And so they were already quite savvy with technology and learning all that they could from OTAN. And so when the pandemic hit, we were very lucky to be able to collaborate with our community partners, basically the city of Corona's library. And so with them we discussed that they would provide the devices. We will provide the teachers. And so we could have some more students continue to learn online.

Then again I am part of the About Students Consortium in Riverside. And so our consortium lead was a board member in the workforce investments workforce board at the city of Riverside. And she was able to-- my director's name is JoDee Slyter. And she was able to get the board to agree to share some of their CARES Act for our adult education students. So we got about $1 million for not just our school but all the schools at Riverside. And so we each depending on the enrollment numbers were then divvied up the amount. And so our school was able to get 240 Chromebooks with hotspots. And that's how we were able to-- oh yeah, I do have some pictures to share about it.

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Slide, CARES Act Funds. Pictures of two people putting up a "Take Care" sign, and a table covered in a blue CARE tablecloth next to a row of blue outdoor canopies.

(SPEECH)
So this one is Kristi's. So Kristi, it's all yours.

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Slide, Collaborations and Partnerships. Pictures of two men unloading boxes and a masked woman sitting in front of a laptop, along with an illustrated hand pointing to a link to request a device on a website, and a Spanish-language course flyer. Text, Corona-Norco Adult School thanks the Riverside County Board of Supervisors and Workforce Development Board for CARES Act Funds to provide digital devices for students.

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KRISTI REYES: OK. So hi, everybody. My name is Kristi Reyes, and I'm an ESL instructor in the non-credit ESL program at MiraCosta college.

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Returns to previous pictures.

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My college has a pretty large non-credit program. It's under the umbrella of what we call continuing ed. And we have everything from ESL to adults with disabilities program, adult high school GED. We have a really popular and large program with classes for older adults. And in my particular program, non-credit ESL, we saw a drop in our enrollment when we went remote from about 1,700 students to about 1,100 students. And we're kind of holding steady there.

We're a pretty large district. We're skinny along the coast. So we are coastal North San Diego County from two of the richest cities in San Diego, Del Mar and Carmel Valley in the north, up here to where I am in Oceanside. And so we have wide demographics in our student body. I have in my ESL class folks who perhaps never went to school in their home countries to people who have masters and PhDs from their home countries. And so that's a little bit about our district.

And in a moment, I'm going to talk about some of the silver linings. While we saw that pretty significant drop in enrollment, we saw a lot of new students come into our program that never had been able to before. And I'm sure some of you experienced that as well.

So about addressing the lack of access to reliable internet and functional devices for our students and instructors, the pandemic hit coincidentally right on the Friday before our college's spring break. So it looked like it was going to be chaos. But what we didn't know is behind the scenes, there was a lot of work going on. So while a lot of us teachers at the ground level, we're thinking, what's going to happen? What's going on? There was work happening that we didn't see.

So in the beginning while it was getting set up, some students would drive to campus to get their Wi-Fi and maybe use their phones. There is a McDonald's close to our school and we have the luxury of having instructional aides. And if they didn't have reliable access to internet at their homes, they would drive to the McDonald's parking lot to get their Wi-Fi.

But the college got busy right away checking out every single computer and laptop, whether it was in the library, the computer labs. My program has a few off sites where we had class sets of iPads or laptops and things like that. We checked out everything that existed that we had. And we were fortunate being part of a community college. Perhaps you're familiar with the CARES Act. That was from the federal government handed out to the state. And California was lucky to receive $200 million for the community colleges. And so my college got a little piece of that that we were able to buy more technology.

And as well with some of our department and other funds, we were able to get some more laptops and some hot spots so students could if they went through the registration and they indicated that they didn't have technology, we were able to get those loaned out. We've been able to satisfy the majority of students. Not all, because we ran out pretty fast. But most students have been able to get that access. So our instructors as well. So it really worked out pretty well, thank goodness, that we had these funds available.

KATIE NEGINSKIY: OK, great. Thank you both.

(DESCRIPTION)
Slide, California Practitioner Panel continued. Q2.

(SPEECH)
And our second question. How did your program address and build students' digital literacy skills so they could be successful in online learning environments? Thoibi is going to answer first.

THOIBI N. RUBLAITUS: Would you advance the slide, please?

KATIE NEGINSKIY: Mm-hmm.

(DESCRIPTION)
Digital Leadership Academy (D LAC). A picture of a four-person tech team on a computer screen, and an infographic poster titled, "Corona-Norco Adult School - The Impact of our Practice."

(SPEECH)
THOIBI N. RUBLAITUS: So as I shared earlier, we had a team that was already in the Digital Leadership Academy organized by OTAN. So we had people who were ready to roll. Because this team, you see the tech team there, this team was almost going to graduate from DLAC when March 2020 hit. So they already were talking in their classes there how do we advance? What do we do from here?

So this team already before I had any ideas, they came to tell me we can do this and we can do this and we are prepared for this and how are we going to handle this. In fact, one of my team members here, Kevin, is no longer my team member, because he's now CALPRO AIR. He was one of those graduates from the DLAC team that came up with the idea of creating those menus, digital learning menus for ESL, what are the different things that they can do. So I wish I had remembered to post that menu.

So basically, using the idea of getting a menu at a restaurant, this team, he along with some of the experts at OTAN got together to create those repertoire of different digital apps and resources that were out there and putting them in terms of appetizers, entrees, and desserts. So if you were in an ESL class, an ESL teacher, or if you were an AB teacher, a list of those and so on. So that team really, really helped our school to be able to just pivot without much difficulty.

The amount of things that this team built is just mind boggling because the four of them divided the work and they all chose their expertise and they started-- one person will be the zoom expert. The other one would be the expert on CTE related stuff. Another one on anything related to teacher professional development and so on. And so the four of them divided-- we divided the teachers that we have, about 35 to 40 teachers, and each of them took on four people or five people depending on what their expertise were. And they were helping the teachers as much as possible in anything they needed to convert to a distance learning model.

The other fortunate thing that we had was two of the team members there were already piloting Canvas. And they took on the whole Canvas thing and started getting some teachers who were willing to work with Canvas. And we already had licenses, since we were piloting it. So it was easier for us to convert to digital learning. And based on that, our school was able to have some impact on the students.

So as you can see, the right hand side picture is a compilation of all that we have achieved during the pandemic because the team got support for students, support for teachers. They got into the whole idea of how do we get our devices distributed. And we have an excellent system of device distribution and accountability because this team put together using all kinds of Google Forms and Calendly invites and all that kind of stuff. So I feel like we are so fortunate. It was so well timed. We didn't plan it, but yes, we were prepared to do that. And that's how we got to where we did.

(DESCRIPTION)
Slide, NOTE - Noncredit Online Teaching Excellence. Teachers: Optional program for faculty to learn about high-quality online Teaching (video link). Facilitated cohorts and self-paced Course in Canvas this Fall. 2020-21 school year: One pilot cohort followed by two cohorts with assistance of two P.T. faculty; 15 completers. Facilitated course includes weekly assignments with feedback based on O.E.l. Rubric.

(SPEECH)
KRISTI REYES: Thank you. So I'll just say in my department, non-credit ESL at MiraCosta College, we made students' digital literacy a priority long before the pandemic as well as technology integration training for our teachers. A couple of our teachers, this was before DLAC, which Thoibi mentioned. It's a mentorship kind of thing that OTAN offers. Before that was something called TMAC. And I was in the very second cohort and another teacher in my program was also involved in that. And we all tried to be very active with OTAN Tech and Distance Learning Symposium. We have a small group of us that are very interested in tech integration that we formed our own informal personal learning community that we're always texting each other and sharing ideas.

But also at our higher levels of instruction, since our college transitioned from Blackboard to Canvas, like most of the community colleges in California did back around 2015, '16, it depended on your college, we asked all of our higher level instructors to use Canvas in their classes to support student learning, to offer supplemental resources. And so it wasn't a horrible transition, honestly, for some of our students who had been continuing students in our program. So they didn't have such a hard time. Of course, new students, that was a bit of a learning transition for them.

And no students had used Zoom before, obviously. But some of our teachers had. We had experimented with having some informal department meetings through Zoom so we didn't have to get up on a Friday, wash our hair, and put on our makeup and show up on campus. And so we saw this has got some potential. So some of us were experienced and we kind of without direction or anyone telling us, we kind of got together and let's try this out in Zoom. Hey, how do you make a breakout room? We kind of did that during that week where we had a couple of weeks to learn and so forth.

But if you can go ahead, oh, you have it advanced there. Our college, as I said, the pandemic started right at the beginning of our spring break. So our college decided to give us an extended spring break, an extra week, and what they did is they offered training for all of our faculty. Credit, non-credit. And it was online. It was learning Zoom and Canvas for a whole week.

And what we found is it didn't really work for some of the non-credit teachers, for some of us working in the adult ed side. Some of the things they were talking about didn't really apply to us. So we discussed with our Dean and we decided, well, here's something that we should offer to all of our teachers in continuing ed as an option. And what we put together, I along with another teacher in our adult high school program, both of us had been graduates of the Chancellor's Office at one online teaching program, we put together something called NOTE, Non-credit Online Teaching Excellence. That was our dean's idea for the name. And it was a cohort.

First we did a pilot with some of our full time faculty and some teachers from some of the different classes that were not always well represented. And then as you can see there, after that, we asked anyone who was interested and we had two courses in Canvas. So while we were teaching them Canvas, we also had this bigger goal thinking of the future of teaching them good practices for online teaching. Because that's obvious how we're going to be going in the future. I don't think we'll ever go back to fully on ground all program 12 hour classes. Our students, I don't think they want to sit in our classrooms for 12 hours. Some of them do, but not a lot of them.

So it turned out really well. And right now we have two facilitated-- well, actually one facilitated course that has weekly assignments and one self-paced course. So we're offering that for our instructors to keep building their skills. You can go ahead and advance the slide. Thank you.

(DESCRIPTION)
Preparing Students for the Transition to Online Study. Students: Much previous work with tech integration; Hybrid and a few fully online courses previously offered; Digital Literacy and Computer Classes; Onboarding video tutorials and print instructions (with translations for beginning E.S.L. students) for our online enrollment system, Zoom, Canvas. A table with links to Google documents, Canvas login instructions, and YouTube videos for Persian, Portuguese, and Russian students.

(SPEECH)
And for our students, well, as I said those, students who'd been in our program, especially the higher levels, their transition was not so hard. But those lower level beginning literacy students, it was a struggle for them. And we really had to do the hand holding, high touch work. And so one of our wonderful instructors, she loves creating video and she took on this project. And she looked at first we said, could you just make some video about how to get into Zoom, how to get into Canvas for our top three languages spoken by our ESL students, which are Farsi and Chinese and, of course, Spanish.

And so she went beyond that. She created these videos that are translated into all of the languages that all of our immigrant students speak. And we sent them out and it was her first time to ever use Canvas. And she's one of my buddies and we're texting over the weekend. It was a few days before the class was going to begin and she said, oh my gosh, I'm so excited. Some students already went into Canvas before the class had begun.

So it did take a lot of hand holding, and it wasn't easy. But now these students, like 1,000 students know how to do this. It's just these new students now and there are not a ton of them. We're still reaching out, trying to get them to come, because we know they're out there. But it does take that extra work. But once they learn it, they're gaining this other skill that's going to serve them very well in the future. Because as I said, online learning is here to stay.

(DESCRIPTION)
Slide, California Practitioner Panel continued. Q3.

(SPEECH)
KATIE NEGINSKIY: Perfect. Thank you. And our next question. How did your program address the traditional barriers to education for adults? For example, work schedules, child care, family obligations. Thoibi, what did your program do?

THOIBI N. RUBLAITUS: So as we were waiting for the session to begin, we were all chatting about how we include our family members in our classes nowadays, knowingly or unknowingly. So using Zoom as a way for getting our students to work. Work schedules, there's no worries about work schedules anymore. They can learn on their own. So at our school right now, we have online model or the in person model. So even the in person model students still have everything on Canvas. So even if they miss a class or two, they can still continue working from home by logging in to Canvas.

And as far as work schedules are concerned, some of you are not going to be surprised to know that most of our students who are doing Canvas work between 10:00 PM to 1:00 AM. And adult schools cannot hold our classes open during that time. But they are doing their work. And if they want to learn, if they are motivated, then they can still continue to work through those barriers.

Child care. Our teachers are sharing with us that they have the kids sitting right next to them and the parents unmute themselves and then we can unmute. So Zoom has made it easier for parents to continue to learn from home. And if they want to come to campus, we still have the campus open as well. And the same with family obligations. Like I said, people are learning late at night. So those are some ways we have been able to continue to provide adult education. And like Kristi said, distance learning is here to stay. And this is just the right thing for adult schools, adult students.

KRISTI REYES: Thank you, Thoibi. So as far as addressing traditional barriers, we know that adult ed students come with so many barriers. And over the years, we have done a really great job in the state of California at addressing those barriers. Well, first finding out what they are and then addressing them. I think that is something that we're so good at in this state. And at my college, of course, we have all the credit support services. But something I'm really proud of that we have equal support services for our non-credit students. We have a wealth of support.

When I start telling my students about this, I just shake my head thinking about there's so much it could be overwhelming, actually. We have a tutoring center. We have a writing center. We have a career center. We have academic counselors. And not at our non-credit campus. We're a college with three campuses and we have one dedicated campus to the non-credit courses. But if our students pay a $12 health fee, they have access to mental health counselors. And some of our students have taken advantage of that. So this is all the support is there.

The thing is even when we had in person instruction, the teacher can stand up there and tell them. We can hand out flyers. We can point in the direction. But they won't go. We need to bring those representatives to our classroom. And so that became the challenge, because all of these support services would send the teachers, hey, here's our flyer. Here's where the students can come and meet with us in Zoom at these hours, these days. I send those out to the students. I don't think they go.

So what I did is one term we were really working on writing. And I asked the writing center representative, can you come into my Zoom room? And it made the world of difference, that personal connection. They can see a face. It's non-threatening. And so replicating what I did when we were in person, making that person that the student needed to see less threatening, showing them that it's a real human being, and knowing that when I go there, this is who I'm going to talk to, it makes a big difference for adult students. We think, oh, I'll send this flyer. They'll go. No they won't. We need to do that extra step.

So we have just such a great wealth of services available. I'm sure you have many. One thing that we had that was really wonderful at our college is a one time $1,500 whatever you need it for payment. So some of our students were suffering from food insecurity. We know that college students, there's a high rate of homelessness. And I can give you the silver lining of all of this, first of all, is that our student persistence in our program went up. We have really good persistence actually in my ESL program.

How we actually judge persistence is a little bit differently than maybe the WIOA reports because we have instructional aides. And of course, WIOA says a pre and post CASAS test score is how you measure persistence. But how we are kind of measuring it is for our in-house to help our teachers feel good is we say a student who starts and finishes a term. So for almost more than 15 years, we've averaged about 80% in our managed enrollment classes.

Well, first of all, we had to change managed enrollment. That doesn't work in a pandemic. That doesn't work. We want to go back to that, let me tell you, but that didn't work. We had to let students come in when they could. But we went up. We went up to an average of 91% in the 2021 school year. We went up almost 11% persistence. Because as Thoibi mentioned, if students couldn't make it because of a work schedule problem to the Zoom meeting, class meeting, we could record it and put it in Canvas and students could then watch it and keep up with the class. They didn't need to drop out of the class completely.

Well, all the numbers are great. And I know you're an administrator, you want data. But if you're an administrator, I don't know how many of you are, and if you're a teacher, I'm preaching to the choir. You know these things.

AUDIENCE: Are you saying that she's contacting your school?

KRISTI REYES: Hi Todd. If you can mute yourself, Todd.

AUDIENCE: My apologies. I am so sorry.

KRISTI REYES: No, that's OK. I understand. Numbers are great. Thoibi, you need numbers. You're an administrator. But I want to give you just a few stories, because I'm ground level. And teachers, you've had students like these. And for each one of these students, there are probably 100 more in our program. I'm going to tell you about three students. One I'll call Rosie.

Rosie was in my class last spring. And after class, she asked me to if she could stay and talk to me after the Zoom class. So I made sure everybody was out. I stopped the recording. And she broke down crying. And she said, I'm so stressed. I have so much stress. I'm falling behind in the class. My hair is falling out. I don't know what to do. My husband lost his job. And I had to get a job last week and I'm working in a warehouse all night.

Well, Rosie came to this country with her husband 20 years ago for her sons. They're both at the college. She doesn't want them to know about their financial situation. They were $5,000 behind in their rent. They were on the verge of eviction. They had no idea that the County of San Diego was giving rent help. So we were able to connect her with the resource at our college to get her that one time $1,500.

She was taking advantage of, if you can advance the slide there, Katie, our farmer's market. We live in an area where there are local farmers and they donate food and we have a farmer's market on campus every couple of weeks. They were taking advantage of that.

(DESCRIPTION)
Slide, Support Services. Flyers advertising MiraCosta's One Stop Support Hours, the Drive-Thru Farmer's Market, and pictures of masked volunteers distributing food outside.

(SPEECH)
And she was able to lose that stress, go back to her class, and focus. Because we know when you have stress, you cannot learn and you cannot focus. So that's one student.

Another student has started and stopped out of our program so many times. I remember more than 10 years ago, she was in my class in a different level when I was teaching a more intermediate level. And there she showed up in my advanced class in Zoom. And I'll call her Susan. And she expressed to me that she was so happy. This was really a silver lining. Because she had her child there next to her.

The reason she had started and stopped out of our program so many times is because paying for child care can be very expensive, as you probably know if you have kids. And when you're making minimum wage, that money just comes in your pocket and out the other pocket to the babysitter. She was able to finally complete the ESL program and now she is finally on her way to realizing her goal of achieving her high school diploma.

Well, I just recently found out we've been able to continue some of the wonderful events that we always have in person at our school. We always have a reading festival where we choose a book and we bring an author. And so we've been able to continue that. We have a student publication of artwork, poetry, short stories, and nonfiction essays. And we also have a diversity day. Well, she submitted something to our non-credit publication. And I've known her all these years.

And I did not know why her child was so important to her. It was because she lost both of her parents crossing the border. They drowned in the river when she was coming to America. So this pandemic was a silver lining for her. The opportunity to continue her education, because she could still keep studying with her child next to her. This is why we need to figure out something else for these students so that they can reach their goals and they don't have to give up something else.

Finally, I want to tell you about John. John came to this country as a young man from Mexico. John is not his real name. And he had no skills whatsoever. And he started working in a sushi restaurant. And the woman who owned the restaurant, she just so appreciated what a great worker he was. He was so positive. He had all the soft skills that you need. So he she took him under her wing, and she said, I'm going to teach you everything about the restaurant business. Well now he owns two successful sushi restaurants here in our town.

Well, he really wants to improve his English, but every time he starts a class, the restaurant business takes him away from class. Finally, he was able to finish our ESL program. How? He would go to the restaurant, set up his phone, and listen in on Zoom while he was cutting fish.

So I think those little stories show us that we need to rethink how we're doing this. We need to offer our students lots of options, because we know they face lots of barriers and we need to break down those barriers. A barrier to attending class should be the last thing on their mind. So thank you. That's what I wanted to share.

KATIE NEGINSKIY: Thank you so much, Kristi.

(DESCRIPTION)
Slide, California Practitioner Panel continued. Q4.

(SPEECH)
And then our next question. How did your program conduct remote recruitment orientation and assessment at a distance?

THOIBI N. RUBLAITUS: So I'll get to that. But before that, I wanted to also tag on to what Kristi said. Kristi, I have been an admin for three years. Before that I was a teacher for 24 years. So my heart is still what the teachers and the students need. And that's why I speak up whenever I have a chance. I want to share this and thank you for sharing those stories.

I just got a call two weeks ago on Monday from a student who was with us a while ago who says, I just wanted to call you and share this story, because you have given me freedom. And what is that freedom? She had been struggling with a difficult marriage for a long time. She never had a chance to wonder or to have the confidence to go and talk to anybody about it. But one of our teachers in a writing poetry in class had her start digging deep into her feelings and wrote it out.

And once she began reciting that poem everywhere, she was, in fact, invited by our school district to also recite it at a arts festival, she recited that poem and then she started living her thoughts of getting out of a difficult situation. So after being in trouble for three years, she was actually she shared with me for three years, she was in hiding. But then she got out and now she can have her own kids and her life and have a freedom and has custody of her kids.

OK, that has nothing to do with online learning. But still, those are the kind of students we serve. And that's why when she was still in hiding, if we had an online course that she could attend, she could still attend classes online.

So going back to this question about conducting remote recruitment, orientation, and assessment at distance, assessment at distance. Again, we were able to because of the savviness of the teachers who were involved in the tech team, we were able to have all of our recruitment converted to remote model. Just very simple. The Outlook Forms, or the Google Forms. And when students have filled that out, then we can then reach out to them and there is a feature in Microsoft Forms that allows you to automate all your responses. So you get automated responses.

When students are responding saying, I am interested in CTE, it goes straight to the CTE department. I'm interested in HSE, it goes straight to the person that deals with HSE. Then this person then calls the student to conduct the orientation online in Zoom five people at a time, six people at a time. And then even this assessment, we were part of the pilot program of CASAS that did the piloting of the remote assessment. So we got to still continue to assess students online remotely.

And sometimes being creative, like some of attending as educators and as administrators, what really helps is being part of other groups that also are doing the same thing. So by being a member of the ACSA group or the WIOA networking group, I hear from other schools what they're doing. We learn from that.

So for me the take away from all this is that professional development, it seems like we are just going away to meetings and meetings, but it is just not just meeting. It is a community of practitioners, the community of practitioners. So we're learning from each other, and that's what we bring. Being a school that has always been very focused on professional development for teachers had helped us out. You know how? Because we invested in those three or four tech leads ahead. We were lucky. It happened to be a good time.

But just like Kristi said, I was also a member of TMAC a long time ago. Just because we know that when we go and get those professional developments, then we can cascade that training to the rest of the team here. And when the time comes, the need comes, there is somebody who's always an expert that can lead the rest of us. So leadership in all ways, not just one way.

The other thing I wanted to also share is in a distance model.

(DESCRIPTION)
Slide, Support for Students and Teachers. Screenshots of informational links to courses and programs for students in the Resources section of the website, a weekly Tech Support Newsletter, and a Distance Learning Support page with links to a weekly survey, Newsletter from the Principal, details about the Distance Learning Attendance System. and Attendance Management Tool Google Sheets.

(SPEECH)
Yeah, thank you for that little cue to say OK. Support services for students and teachers were so important, like Kristi shared earlier too. Consistently giving those support. It's not just we're going to have a meeting once a semester. That didn't work. By having a systematic monthly meeting or little groups of people who are interested in different aspects of technology helped us to be able to do what we did.

So earlier I shared that Kevin was part of the one that created the menu. That's the one. It looks a little bit like that, the menu in the middle there, this week's tech support where students can at a click get to the support they need. So students click here, CTE click here. And once they click, it gets to the link where they get their support.

We also as educators have to be concerned about teaching our students to learn to learn. Because just giving everything, spoon feeding everything will not help them for life. It will help them only for today. But if we start giving them, OK, this is how you get there. Once you get there, there are Q&As and answer the Q&As. Your question will be in there somewhere. Then there would be a video link somewhere. Or getting students to share what they are learning with the rest of them. So teaching them about hyperlinks. How hyperlinks work.

So for example, last night I went visiting classrooms. Our computer basics teacher was teaching them Zoom and the different things in Zoom that we can use. Because we put them in breakout rooms, they need to learn to share and how they can share. So this teacher was teaching in Spanish, but she was teaching them about the different features of the Zoom sharing options. How to use the whiteboard and how to upload something. So those little things.

And these are parents in the community. And these parents have to attend the parent teacher meetings by Zoom right now because they're not allowed to go on campus. So if they don't know how to do that, they're not attending the sessions. But if we are teaching them to learn to learn and to grow in their learning, that's the kind of long term teaching as educators that we can do and we try to do.

(DESCRIPTION)
Returns to Q4 slide.

(SPEECH)
KRISTI REYES: As far as remote recruitment, orientation, and assessment. OK, for recruitment, we don't have as beautiful social networking as Corona Norco Adult School. I tell you there they have such excellent posts. But we do have Facebook, Instagram, and we mail out more than 100,000 postcards. We also send out our continuing ed schedule to households in our district.

But I have to be honest. I've asked my students, we ask them, how they mostly learn about our classes in non-credit ESL is word of mouth. Right now I'm teaching a class that just started on Monday and I'm teaching the same course morning and evening. And I have probably in each course in the morning and evening about five students in each that are au pairs. There are students mostly from Columbia, some from Brazil, maybe one or two from Mexico. And they have their own Instagram group and they are talking to each other and they tell each other to come to our school. So that's how that kind of works. But this is something I think we need to all look into. There's got to be some good way.

One of you out there, next year tell us what's working best for recruitment. How can we all do this in a way that reaches our students? Because it's so strange. I had a student once that she lived like two blocks away from our school. You know that she drives by there every day. And she said, I didn't even know the school was here. You're kidding me. How not?

As far as orientation, well, we are a college that receives non-credit SSSP funds. Student Success and Skills I believe it stands for a program. And so before the pandemic, we had a beautiful orientation that we did in person. But the pandemic happened to coincide with remodeling of our main site. So when we go back, and we have started to trickle back a little bit here and there. We have a few classes now that are in person. We have a couple of high flex options. We have a beautiful renovated site.

But in the meantime, what we've been doing is all of that information is provided in a Canvas course. So when students come in and they take that CASAS e-test placement mechanism, then they're sent to this Canvas course where they're directed to go through these modules. So there's an orientation module. There's a short quiz at the end, and then there's a link if they want to make an appointment and talk to a counselor. So that's how that works for orientation.

For assessment, before the pandemic, we were a little bit slow in our department to do the e-testing. So we had just started a little bit the e-testing for placement. And because we just, we didn't have the computer lab time available for all of the classes. But then we got devices for classroom assessment and things like that. So like CASAS told us we had to, we have been doing the placement at a distance with one to one. And for those students who do not have the device, the internet, or they're only on a phone, guess who's been doing the placement? Moi.

So what I have to do is we have a phone appointment and I call them. And let me tell you, my Spanish has improved, because they tend to be-- there seems to be a real correlation between low level literacy and low access. You know this, I'm sure. We probably don't need to do a study to know this, that the lower level literacy, the lower level computer skills and access.

So anyway, that's what we've been doing. With our renovation of our new site, it's going to be awesome though, because we will have a dedicated testing center. So we'll be able to do orientation and testing kind of on demand, which a lot of schools already do, I know. So pretty excited about that.

Oh, as far as assessment of CASAS too, like the post testing, it hasn't worked stupendously because students don't always check emails. So we send out an email. Our adult ed office sends out an email to students who need to get that post test in. And they click a link where they need to make an appointment. A lot of them don't trust it. They don't click it. They delete it. They ignore it. Or they just don't even check email. So we're not getting the numbers yet that we need. Hopefully we can work on that and get that going a little bit better.

KATIE NEGINSKIY: Perfect. Thank you.

(DESCRIPTION)
Slide, California Practitioner Panel continued. Q5.

(SPEECH)
And the last question is how to offer support services. And Kristi touched on this already, but is there anything, Thoibi, you'd like to add?

THOIBI N. RUBLAITUS: I think we've already talked about that. I'll let the last five minutes be yours to wrap up everything.

KATIE NEGINSKIY: OK, great. So want to use the remaining time for some questions. If anyone has a question, feel free to pop it into the chat. Or if you want to unmute and ask, feel free if you have any questions for Kristi or Thoibi. There was one question in the chat about the Google Form that Thoibi mentioned, and she did put something in the chat about how to do that if y'all want to check that out.

THOIBI N. RUBLAITUS: And sorry, that was not the form that says how to do that. I'll have to post that one.

KATIE NEGINSKIY: Here's a sample.

THOIBI N. RUBLAITUS: This one is our Google site that has everything that we do in it. Maybe the question you are asking is also answered in there. But the question is specifically how do you do the form to do the automate? So it's Microsoft automate. And I don't think I have instructions on how to do that. It's a little complicated. But if you write to me, I'll be able to send something from our tech support team, tech team.

KATIE NEGINSKIY: Fantastic. And Maggie's mentioning in the chat just a comment and not a question but that her district was able to distribute hotspots. Did you both do that as well in addition to laptops?

THOIBI N. RUBLAITUS: Yeah, hotspots came with the devices from the CARES Act. And I think if I-- no, I remember clearly that we had some WIOA funds also left over to be used, because it was March and we're waiting to use this up. And so we ended up buying a lot more of the hotspots and the Chromebooks with the leftover WIOA funds. And so that's why we had more. Because the CARES Act brought in only 250. But we serve a lot more students.

KATIE NEGINSKIY: And Maggie continued and she brings up a good point is after the pandemic, this funding may not continue. So we did have this emergency funding to buy the technology that we needed to support the students, but it will be interesting to see if that continues to be the case as we need to continue to purchase more equipment for students or as the equipment we purchased becomes outdated. It will be interesting to see if there's funding for that sort of support, because it's certainly not inexpensive.

THOIBI N. RUBLAITUS: Yeah, as an administrator, that's what I worry. Because they were one time funds. And it's like every three years, IT team says every three years you have to get new devices or at least update your technology. So those are some worries we have as administrators. How do we sustain this? But we will cross the bridge when we get to the bridge.

KRISTI REYES: As a teacher, it's going to be hard to go back to teaching in a classroom where we don't have one to one every student having their own device. I'm trying to visualize that where we're going back to paper. It's just going to be a transition backwards in a way.

KATIE NEGINSKIY: Yeah, absolutely.

THOIBI N. RUBLAITUS: But carrying on that conversation, I was going to say that we are having some in person classes. So it's very interesting to see that our in person teachers do not want to use technology. They are happier going back to the paper pencil. So that's another challenge. How can we get a good balance between the technology and the paper pencil? Because different learners have different ways of learning as well. They're better off doing paper pencil.

But the way that I am working with our staff is, hey, something like the pandemic may happen any time. We have to be prepared for it again. So it's better to prepare the students for the technology world than not to. So those are some challenges we face as we go ahead.

KATIE NEGINSKIY: Sure. Absolutely. It could be pandemic, could be weather. It could just be something personal with the student that that student needs to only continue in distance learning whereas they didn't anticipate it. So it's good to be prepared. We've got two minutes left if anyone else has a question. For Kristi or Thoibi, if there was anything else you wanted to add about any best practices or anything to learn.

THOIBI N. RUBLAITUS: One thing that I think I haven't mentioned but it's really critical and important is the social emotional support for students and the resources that students need, the stories that Kristi shared about students not knowing how to pay their rent or buy groceries. The pandemic has shown us that we as adult educators are not just educators. We are here to share the awareness and partner with our communities to be able to give our students what they need so that they can continue with their studies. Because overall, that's what's going to help the community and all of us to grow.

So we have now become social support services centers as well, like it or not. Maybe we're not doing it in a big way by putting in a lot of funds, but we now have a consistent person spending at least three hours a week updating the latest information in our community. Where do we get free COVID testing? Where food services are available? Where is the food bank? If there is any kind of family resources for children as well as housing. So that's something that we did not do it at a very vast scale before, but now that is a part of what we do. We cannot ignore that.

And then a calming room for people or a calming place for somebody to call and talk. So our district, we have been very lucky to get something called the Care Solace So anybody has any issues or mental struggles, we refer them to this group and they take it on. We're working with our food bank here to every month upload some kind of links where they can get free food or jobs.

Jobs have become a big-- wherever jobs are open, we have a center where people can go and say, OK, these kind of jobs are available. What am I qualified for? Or our college and career center is now dedicated to helping students get on and join. And this is something I learned from our social member. Riverside Adult School has been very successful doing job skills programs. So we learn from them and adapted it to the way we can provide support for our district to have more substitute employees right now when there is such a huge need.

KRISTI REYES: I'll just to say thank you for all your efforts to keep the learning going. I think it's a testament to how much our students value what you're providing. So thank you, everybody.

KATIE NEGINSKIY: Thank you all for joining us this afternoon.

THOIBI N. RUBLAITUS: Thank you, everybody.

HOLLY CLARK: Yes. And thank you. I have dropped a couple of links in the chat box. Please take a moment to fill out not only an evaluation for Katie and Thoibi and Kristi but also for the summit overall. This is the final session of the CAPE Summit 2021. We would love for your feedback. Hopefully next year we're back in person. But I didn't think that COVID would have happened and that we'd all be working remotely. So in the event that we were to do it online again if we were forced to, share with us some ideas of how we can improve for your benefit.

Tell us what you liked, what you would like to see in the future, and please do give us specific feedback for this presentation. This team put a lot of time and effort into their presentation to share this. Truly inspirational. I mean, I had tears in my eyes. I was so grateful my camera was not on. Very hard not to cry during this presentation. So please give them some feedback. They've worked hard for it.

Thank you Katie, Thoibi, Kristi for all you guys have done for this whole conference. I know that you guys are in multiple presentations and charging up and submitting multiple proposals. We appreciate you. Could not do the summit without you guys. So everyone, enjoy the rest of your week. This is the final hurrah. So we will be in touch and see you guys soon, and this recording will be online hopefully next week. Thank you.

THOIBI N. RUBLAITUS: Thank you, Holly. Thank you Katie and Kristi. See you again soon.

HOLLY CLARK: Yes. Bye bye, guys.

THOIBI N. RUBLAITUS: Bye bye.