Speaker 1: All right, and we are recording. Kenya, you can start whenever you're ready.

Kenya Bratton: OK. Thank you very much. Good Morning. My name is Kenya Bratton. I'm with Disability and Access Resource Center with Sweetwater Adult Education. One moment, please.

Ryan Burke: Did we lose Kenya?

Speaker 1: It looks like we might have lost Kenya, so apologies.

Ryan Burke: We'll keep it rolling.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Ryan Burke: My name is Ryan Burke. I'm the Adult Education Director with Sweetwater Adult Education. And I have one more colleague with me.

Margaret MacAbasco: Hi, good afternoon. My name is Margaret Macabasco, and I'm the Education Specialist with our Disability and Access Resource Center here at Sweetwater Adult Ed.

Ryan Burke: Yeah. Sweetwater Adult Ed, if you don't know, is located pretty much right on the border down South of San Diego. We extend from National City, which is the city just to the South of San Diego. And if you keep going another 10, 15 minutes, or so, you run into San Diego again. So we have another South San Diego, and we cover that area, and then we cover Chula Vista San Isidro, that whole area, the whole region by the border.

So we're happy to be here today. And we thank you all for coming.

Kenya Bratton: And Dr. Ryan Burke, as you already know now, is a director of Sweetwater Adult Education. As a systems-oriented director, he is a strong advocate of barrier removal. You were here many examples of barrier removals with our Disability and Access Resource Center.

Under his dynamic leadership, the DARC program was instituted. Sweetwater's IET program was identified as a promising practice by CASAS and CDE. And at the CDE 2022 CASAS Summer Institute, Dr. Burke was awarded the region 18 ACSA Administrator of the Year for Adult Education in 2020. And received the Gagliardi Award in 2021 for advancing application.

Kenya Bratton, which is myself, I've been an advocate for learners with disabilities for more than two decades. I am currently employed with Sweetwater Adult Education. And with administration support and the DARC team, we have been able to Institute innovative and research-based practices that have been proven successful for adult learners with disabilities.

My philosophy is that every person with a disability has a right to disclose or not. And then, whatever choice that individual makes, every interaction should make an impactful difference with the learner. Then we have our education specialist Margaret Macabasco who has passionately supported adult students with disabilities for eight years. Her role as an education specialist in the DARC program is the core of how effective services are delivered to adults with disabilities.

She attributes her success to her background in math, metacognitive strategies, and personal advocacy. Because her model is to ensure timely and high-quality services, she has developed systems that generate outcomes for the learner that can be replicated across adult programs. Information we are sharing today is structured as a panel presentation, and each panelist will share several indicators for high-impact programs for adults with disabilities.

This time, I'll turn the session over to Dr. Burke.

Ryan Burke: And I will say that I am inspired to see that we have 25 participants here with us. That means people are interested in expanding services or starting services and for meeting the community need, and that's what it's all about. So the purpose of our talk, the reason we wanted to come and share with you, is just for that reason.

Really, we want to address the equity needs of adults with disabilities. It's an area that does not get touched on very often or looked at deeply enough. It's just an area that we gloss over sometimes. As a director of a program, I know. I've experienced that. It's hard to think about, oh, my gosh, how are we going to start in adults with disabilities program. How are we going to provide services?

But it's time that we stop sidestepping this question. It's time that we take it head on and we do what we can to meet the needs of our community. So that's part of our purpose is to be here and talk about that. We also want to be here to talk about very specific things that you can do for indirect and direct services. I like how Kenya, who is a tremendous advocate for students and learners and all people, really, just the idea that they can disclose if they want to, but they don't have to.

So how can we make sure that we're providing direct services, indirect services, and just generally the programs that are going to meet students' needs if they have disabilities or not? And there's a lot of things that go into that. I know many of you may have heard of universal lessons design or execution, those types of things that we can do to provide service whether students are asking for it or not. And then also direct resources and services as needed and as identified.

We also need to talk about the importance of establishing infrastructure. As Kenya says, you can't just say, oh, tomorrow I want an adults with disabilities program, and you're going to roll out of bed tomorrow, and you're going to have it. It takes some work to get set up and to figure out and to provide support for and to create all the connections to the school sites and to the classrooms that you need.

It's an overlay because it can provide service to our citizenship program, ESOL, ABE, high school subjects CTE. We can be anywhere at any time supporting students. So to do that, you have to have the infrastructure and wherewithal to be able to do that. We also want to talk a little bit about-- we also have the purpose of being here to influence innovative practices.

We believe that California is a state of innovators, and we like to be part of that innovation. And what we want to do is spread that good word and see other innovative practices coming back our way. Maybe we'll spark something, and it'll start a fire somewhere else, and we'll learn something from them.

We want to see the state move forward. Our team is committed to not just Sweetwater. We're committed to seeing the entire state of California take steps forward in this area, so we want to be here with you today to talk about that. Anything you want to add to that, Kenya?

Kenya Bratton: I'm sure you all knew that this was coming. So we would like to take a quick poll. It's four questions. You get asked that you take about 60 seconds to answer the four questions related to adult education programs throughout the state. I think we are ready at this time.

Speaker 1: OK, and the poll is launched.

Kenya Bratton: Thank you. Our goal is to reach 28 participants to complete the poll. By now, we are at 25%.

Ryan Burke: It might be a little lower just because unless you want us to answer, but we would taint the data.

Kenya Bratton: All right. We'll give it some more seconds.

Speaker 1: We're at 18, 19 out of the 24 participants.

Kenya Bratton: OK.

Speaker 1: And then, if you'll be kindly to read the results to us, please. Sure, I'll go ahead and end this poll. Oh, someone just added it. OK. I'm going to end the poll now and sharing results. You should now see those.

Ryan Burke: All right. So that's actually encouraging to see that half of us in the room are connected to a program or division or provider that does have services. It's really exciting. So we have a little bit more than half. I think if you go back a couple of years, you're going to see that significantly lower. So that's a good that's good progress.

How would you rate the level of confidence in your instructors to provide the universal strategies? Varying levels of confidence, but overall 62%. That's good. But there is the request for more training, and that's understood too. It's important to look at that data when you're in your own system so that what people need and want as you begin building.

Does your education site provide learning disability testing? So is there any assessment going on? That is, if you're coming from the K-12 world and you're entering the adult world recently, or you have experience in K-12, you know that the assessment process is such a tremendous driver in the special education programs that they have and through idea.

It's not the case in Adult Ed, necessarily. And when you look at this, we see that less than one-third of our partners, even if they're providing services and have a program for students, doesn't mean they're necessarily identifying and assessing students. So I find that interesting too. And it's not problematic. It's just interesting data.

Do you have a specialist on campus to work with adults with disabilities? Yes. We have designated personnel, 43%. Again I would love to have this be data that was created over time because I think if you went back several years, you would find a much, much smaller number. So this is very good. And then you've got some people identifying the counselor and other people saying no, this is something that we do need.

So I think that wraps up the survey. That's good feedback good information for us to work from as we're going forward. And so what we're going to talk about a little bit right now before we get to the good part where Margaret and Kenya are talking is I will discuss some of the more overarching things that need to be thought about from a programmatic perspective. Because I said earlier, you can't just roll out of bed and say, oh, we've got this program.

It takes a number of things to make it happen and to get it started to the point before you get these wonderful people who are executing and making it happen. And I'll give them a kudos again, too, because Margaret and Kenya are so dedicated, and they're fabulous at what they do. But getting them into position and getting them an opening, a spot to go do what they're going to do, take some work before beforehand.

Knowing that many of our statewide Adult Ed providers don't have specific programs, we wanted to talk a little bit about what it takes to get it started and some of that administrative stuff. So if you're a teacher in the classroom, please know that this is an opportunity to listen and give this information to whatever director might be in your program to encourage them to start thinking along these lines.

If you're a director, just be thinking about how can you make this happen. What's it going to take? Number one we've got here is the vision. For vision as Kenya mentioned in the opening, we are the vision for Sweetwater is we want to be a land of no barriers, a land without barriers.

We want students to have access to whatever they want, whatever program they want, at the time they want it. So if a student is a level ESL student who wants to get into the medical program for CTE and they have some disability or not, and we don't know. It's just an example of no barriers. We're going to enroll that student, and we're going to provide them supports to help them be successful.

It might take them a little longer, but we believe in if that's what the student wants, that's what the student goal is, we're going to get them and get them immersed in that class, and we're going to support it with an IET teacher, an integrated education teacher, or having dual role with the ESL program. We're going to provide them terminology classes to support them in that pathway.

So just an example of what I'm saying because I know a lot of divisions in the past have wanted students to complete the ESL before they move into the CTE or complete ADE before they get into working on some of the high school subject area. We don't believe that. In Sweetwater, we believe that it's a land, again, a land without barriers.

If you are ready and you want this, we are going to find a way to get you there, and we're going to provide the supports. The IET teacher, the special education specialists, or the Vav teacher who's going to be able to support you in that class and sometimes it's a combination of all three, whatever it takes to help people be successful and reach the dream and goals that they have.

Next, I just want to address that data and needs assessment. So looking at your community, how are we knowing who our students are even, number one, who the students in the classroom are because we don't have-- there's no warehouse or clearinghouse where you can pull the data for how many of your students had an IEP.

Many of them came from another country, or they didn't get an IEP along the way, but they maybe have been dealing with the disability, or they had an IEP, but they was in Texas, and they're not in contact with that school district, and it's irrelevant at this point, and they're not telling you because they're not self-identifying. Many students do not. So they're not letting you know.

So what is some of the background data telling us? Well, one of the things that I look at is the K-12 system. I am from the K-12 system. I apologize to all of you who are not. I made the wrong choice in the beginning, but now I'm in the right spot.

But I look at the K-12 system, and it tells me that 12 and 1/2 of students in California, as far as legislative analyst office says, 12 and 1/2 of the students in California have a learning disability or some type of disability that is impacting their ability to learn impacting them in class. So identified disability 12 and 1/2.

There's a National Education Statistics Bureau that now puts it-- that was pre-pandemic the 2017, 2018 from the legislative analyst. Now they're putting in it possibly 15% is what the National Clearinghouse for Education Statistics is identifying. Those are big numbers, man. That's almost one out of every seven students or so, one out of eight, one out of every seven. Those are huge numbers. That's K-12.

So I ask you to think about what is the likelihood that we are higher or lower than that number. The reality, if you really think about it, do you think we're higher and lower than that number? And when I ask myself that question, and I don't know your answer. Your answer may be different than mine. My answer is that hours is higher.

I feel confident that we have more students that have a disability, whether it's identified or not, because, again, many students come from countries with they don't have a system for this. They're not assessing every student that identifies as potentially having a need. So I think it's actually much higher. I think the likelihood that students in the K-12 system that we're having perhaps high rates of success and did not have a disability, not that those things always go hand in hand, we're more likely to move on to college and career.

So I think it is more likely that the students that are still in adult education it's a higher percentage a greater concentration level. So if it's one out of eight or seven students in the K-12, what is it in our classrooms, folks? It's not zero. So we can't pretend that it's zero, and we can't ignore the situation. We have to deal with the reality as it presents and provide the people the supports that they need. That's what makes us successful, and in the end, that's what makes us feel good.

Funding. Another thing on the data, too, I do want to say if you look at your census data and I'll put a link when somebody else is presenting. I'll put a link in the chat that gets you to what does it look like in your subregions. Like we can pull up our division, our school district Sweetwater down by the border and identify different zones with varying levels of disabilities.

So we found that at around Montgomery High School, we have a high level of students with disabilities. So what do we need to do? We need to think about the programming that's at that site, what are we providing, what are the opportunities, and are students accessing it. Again, I'll put that in the chat and let you know it's there when I do.

Funding is the next one. I want to talk briefly about funding. That's always a question with special education. Where are we going to get the money? And the first thing I need to tell you is you have the money. You have the money. That is what the state is paying us to do.

They're paying us as people, but they're also funding these divisions, these providers. And if you remember, there were seven different program areas that we could address to talk about and to teach instruct on citizenship, ESL, high school diploma, equivalency, those types of things. One of those seven program areas that we are charged with addressing his services to adults with disabilities. But you just don't really hear it or see it because it's one of those things it kind of fades into the background.

Half of our providers and guests here today don't have a program in place. I'm really thrilled that half do because I'm shocked by that. But the other half don't, and that's not abnormal. I think if you we are interested people, that's why I have the. People, I think if you pulled the entire state and took out, you know, watered down the interested people, you'd end up finding that, realistically, it's closer to 10% or something like that of programs.

I don't know of any many that are providing extensively, and we'll see. Maybe we'll hear from you when we get to the questions portion. So the funding is there. You have the funding. You're given the funding to do this work already. So how are we using the funding that we have?

And again, we can always say we need more. We can always say, oh, well, idea funds special education at this rate per student, and we need more. Well, that also comes with a lot of strings attached, and I'll get into that in a second. But idea comes with a lot of strings attached, and money comes with strings.

Our money is generalized. It goes into one pot. Here, serve your community based on what they need. And so, for us, we are recognizing that our students need help and support with their disabilities. And so we're using some of the funding in our program from our CAEP funds where we've repurposed some things. We've reorganized to have a little bit less, perhaps ESL, in satellite campuses.

That stinks. I love ESL. That's my favorite program. I would put it everywhere. But we can't have it everywhere we want to be. You have to make tough choices when you're in a situation, and the money will go as far as the money goes.

So we make those choices. We're not going to go into satellites. We're going to make sure that our students have the support they need to be successful. And then we're going to, side note, we're providing the ability to check into class from a distance using Owls, Hi flex, and things like that. We're trying to be everywhere at the same time providing all the sports we can. But just know that funding is there.

Now if you see that there is a need for additional funding, the funding that you have in your division and district won't work. There is other resources. There's grants that you can apply for. One that we have worked with in the past and hopefully we'll work again with in the future is the Department of Rehabilitation. They have a program called workability. It comes with a lot of rules and strings.

That's the problem with money. It comes with rules, strings, and reporting and all this stuff that you have to do. But if that is there, if you need money, identify and contact your local Department of Rehabilitation and start talking about what would it look like if we had a workability 2 contract.

Workability is a program that runs at three levels. At the K-12 level, it's workability 1. Adult Ed level is workability 2. And when you get into the college and Higher Ed, it's workability 3. So just know that we're workability 2 at our level if you're an Adult Ed provider and that it's there. There is the opportunity there, and they're looking for people to partner with in different areas. So it's possible that you can find some funding there.

Last but not least, some of the big-picture personnel agreements. If you try to start an adults with disabilities program that's formalized in your school district, a lot of antenna are going to go up. People are going to be kind of freaked out, like, wait a minute, what are they trying to do? Because there are fears around supports for students that have special education needs.

Because, and I'll say this to my Adult Ed colleagues, the system in K-12 is tough, man. It's rough. If any of you have ever worked in K-12 in special education, you know it's a meat grinder. It will beat you up and whittle you down to a nub. It's tough. There's so much paperwork. There's so much-- so many meetings. It's just a really, really difficult thing.

So if you're a director or a teacher advocating for the needs of students with disabilities, you will be raising some red flags with people that their first thought is I'm afraid of. This is fearful. This could lead to lawsuits. This could lead to that. Are we going to-- well, I think all of that aside, you need to work through those issues.

Sometimes it takes a little personal bravery that you have to work through those people. Work through those issues, and actually quite frankly, work through those people because it's people that are putting up roadblocks and barriers and work through that and help people understand the need. Those statistics that I gave you in the beginning that alone should open up people's eyes.

Oh, yeah, who has not moved on to college or career at the end of school? Maybe it is a higher percentage. Maybe we should be doing something. That alone might cause somebody to think and pause and say, hey.

Then there's other things that you could talk about around adult Ed in terms of it's not compulsory that we have services. What we do-- and Kenya and Margaret would do a much better job at talking about this, and I will is try to provide try to meet people's needs with and being less formal. We don't need an IEP meeting to meet somebody needs. We don't need a written 504.

I know there's a lot of talk out there about 504s now, and this is what works for adults. No, I mean, fine. If that's what you're doing, that's fine. But again, that's extra process, extra paperwork, extra grinding. Why not just try to provide the services and try to help people be successful where they are?

Again, I think 504 is an IEPs are there to hold people accountable to doing the job. Well, if we're already doing the job and we're doing everything we can to do the job within reason, then why do we need the paperwork to follow that up? So that's my personal thing. But the personnel agreement, there's also you're going to have to work with your bargaining units. You're going to have to have conversations.

You might not need to negotiate something or come up with a memorandum of understanding or change your contract, but your district might be a very union-based district, and you might need to do some of those things. And that's part of the process. You get through the hoops, over the barriers around the barriers, whatever it takes to get yourself to people like these that we have here in Sweetwater Margaret and Kenya. So I'll pass it over to them now unless there's anything else I need to address, Kenya.

Kenya Bratton: OK, thank you. Thank you, Dr. Burke. Mags, so I will give a brief overview of our model framework for our stability program. First, we begin with the belief. That belief is that you can have a learning difference, learning challenge, learning disability, or just curious to know if you have a disability. So that's our basic philosophy in our Disability and Access Research Center which I would say as DARC.

So that's our first belief. And then our first belief as a team is that we really believe in adults with disabilities. And so what we are very conscientious of is making sure our terminology is adults with disabilities, not special education. Many of our adults have children who have been part of special education, and they don't have the same positive experience. However, once an adult transitions out of the seven 12 or K-12, it is an adult learner with disability.

So just to clarify for purposes, we provide services for adults with disabilities. Although sometimes people are still kind of working with as special education or not. So that's just the lens I kind of want to share. We also believe in communicating with each other about any of the needs of our adult learners within our DARC team.

In our DARC team, we have four people, so our roles and responsibilities are very specific. Many do not really cross over because we wanted to make sure that we were efficient in how we provide services. So we have a program manager, a counselor, education specialist, and a paraprofessional.

Our education specialist, we strategically did not say special education teacher or teacher with disabilities, et cetera, because her role is she teaches a personal development class as well as provides consultation to instructors and students about how to approach learners with or without a disability a learning difference or how to structure a classroom or universal design for learning.

Also, noted is that because the role of a teacher in adult education is very specific, we did not want a lot of questions about, well, why isn't that person teaching for 8 hours? She does work 8 hours a day, but why isn't she teaching a very structured class a very structured time at a specific site? She provides support at all four of our adults.

Every DARC team member provides support all DARC schools. We have four adult schools within Sweetwater Adult Education. So we use the term education specialist. So this was a thought-out process by our team members. We talked about that role and responsibility. She does not do everything right now in this moment, but how do we roll out the different types of duties? So I just wanted to help with that clarification.

Then we started with professional development. Our professional development included workshops from CAEP. And because three of the team members have previously worked in K through 12 systems, we have over maybe like 40 years experience specifically working with special education. we knew how to access professional development for our team. So we just had to make transitional type of learning for adult learners and what that meant. So we did a lot of workshops, a lot of trainings related to learners.

Also under professional development is how do we provide support for our teachers. Many teachers have children who are in special education. So their lens was, let me give you an adult. I'm going to bring an adult to you. You need to work with this adult. We're going to pull the adult out. They identify-- how do you say it.

They would identify a learner who may learn differently. Hey, I know this person has a disability. So we also have to provide professional development for our teachers, which is ongoing. And that was not just based on us coming up with the idea in terms of the DARC team but the type of professional development that the teachers wanted.

We do spend a lot of time shifting language and also understanding that the services do look different, but the adult who walks through our doors will be served. Also, our promising practices. We do stay well trained up to date on promising practices that are happening in adult education, not just from the state of California but what we also see happening across the nation.

And that usually involves reading literature, seeing if we have the resources to do it. And I want to make it clear. We don't come from a poverty model where, oh, we can't do that because we don't have the money. But we do when we talk as a team. Is it something that's needed and required? Is it beneficial for the entire population of all adult schools? And what would that look like for implementation?

And then once we design that, then we speak with the admin team, and then there's a different we have a different discussion about how that can be supported. And then communication. We make sure that we provide communication to all levels of staffing from the our campus assistant or a professional IET, et cetera. We work with the CTE Division, our IET.

We constantly are communicating on how to meet the needs of students. We don't like to have silos, so we do our best to work in a collaborative framework as much as possible. And we are successful at that. But we also know that some services do have to be differentiated with a learner with a disability, learning difference, learning challenge, or an adult who thinks they have a disability.

So within that communication, we are very clear about privacy and equity. Whatever service is provided in that classroom is also available to the adult learner with disability if they disclose or not disclose. We're very clear about access with our entire teams and what that may look like. So access could be a certain chair.

We've had been able to if a student request a certain chair because of a back condition, we get the chair. If a student needs to have a certain computer in the classroom that's designated for that student, we make that happen. So and when I mean "we," I'm seeing DARCs with the teacher. Our teachers are very flexible at all sites, so it makes it much more easier for us to really get that student's need met.

And then there's always continuous improvement where we meet weekly. So in terms of a structure, we do meet weekly as a team. We talk about students programmatic needs. We're working on creating, updating protocols and procedures. We don't want our knowledge to be given--

If I leave today, I don't want all the knowledge to be with me. So we're very clear about what is the process and how is that followed. And then, we use a database management, the Trello Digital Filing Card System. So we don't have to keep saying, hey, what do Kenya?

We don't have to talk to four or five different people because it's an ongoing digital communication system, and it also informs each other what's the next step with that particular student. We believe in streamlining and systems management.

Out of many of these processes and procedures, we have our DARC infographic. This particular infographic is shared with all of the teachers, all of the students, anyone who walks through our doors. When our community resource facilitators are doing presentations, they also provide it to the community.

And if anyone calls us and say, hey, what is it that you do rather than in our presentation, we'll send them the infographic, and then we'll schedule an appointment to talk to them specifically about their particular area of need or questions or broadening the explanation. So I'll just give you all about 60 seconds just to look at this quite quick rather than be reading every statement. And then, of course, you'll have a copy of the slide just for your records.

But in terms of the structure, we did meet as a team to design what our logo would be. Everything on here is a team effort. And we wanted to make sure that students had access to QR codes because they were familiar with that. Even those who are not the most technologically advanced they're very familiar with the QR code.

The QR code goes directly to this particular infographic as well as to our DARC interest form. When students receive our services, we want them to complete the DARC interest form. The goal is avoiding a whole bunch of emails, and then the email might be in my box or the education specialist box or the counselor's box.

We have had some changes in our personnel, and one of the benefits we have because we use that centralized database system, we didn't have to repeat any services or conversations with our learners. So the DARC interest form was also developed. How we develop that form, we look at with community how students would be referred to community colleges and also universities.

So we took a combination of different forms and questions and adapted it for adult education.

At this time, I would move the session to Margaret. But before I transition her that way, she's going to focus today. So our services include academic services specifically and then also Employment Development services. We are a two-pronged approach in terms of our services for adult learners with disabilities. Margaret.

Margaret MacAbasco: Thank you, Kenya. So I teach the Academic Development course. It's a personal development course for students. It was created based on a number of things, actually.

So we looked at courses that were available at our local community colleges through their disability service offices. We spoke with teachers, we received some feedback about their observations, and then we talked to some students as well. And then, we also threw in a little bit of our student learner outcomes, and our academic development course was launched.

So we cover four units per semester. We start with digital literacy. This is where students learn about Google Workspace apps such as Docs feeds, drawings. And you will see here a student used Google Draw to incorporate a vision board or create a vision board that goes with their SMART goal.

We also during that unit, we work on metacognitive activities so students learn just how to learn, how to follow along with the Google Applied Digital Skills website, so be able to follow with the tutorials and then complete a task as they go along as well. The second unit is our strength-based learning unit. Here, we do a deep dive and explore each student VARK learning preference. And you, we'll get into that a little bit as well.

And then, once they learn more about their self-awareness, they learn about their strengths, their needs, their rights. Then they practice self-advocacy. And we practice a method, a three-step method of how to advocate for themselves and communicate their needs to their teachers, to their employers, as well as in social settings as well. And so here we hear from one of our students who learned about the importance of knowing her learning style.

Speaker 5: I always thought, especially with math, it was hard for me to understand it or maybe that something was wrong with me because I was like, why is everybody understanding but not me but it was more the way I was being taught. I learned that everybody learns differently and that it is important to teach the student depending on how they learn.

So when you start to apply by learning which was kinesthetic, that's when I actually started to understand math. It wasn't that I didn't understood it. It was more of how they were teaching me.

Margaret MacAbasco: So this student actually just passed her last HiSET exam this past summer.

Speaker 1: Looks like Margaret has froze.

Kenya Bratton: I can help her there. Where she was going, that student recently passed their last part of the GEP and has now transitioned to southwestern community college. Another benefit that we found with the metacognitive strategies is that many of our students sometimes feel insecure or they had a challenge with learning for a long time in their returning, and sometimes that may lead to them feeling embarrassed or not as confident.

Or sometimes, a common message we hear with students is when they're comparing themselves even to their own children in their own children's learning. So our self-determination focuses on not just growth mindset. It begins with the unit of growth mindset by how that growth mindset transitions into self-determination as well as SMART goal setting. Is she back in? No, OK.

Speaker 1: Not yet.

Kenya Bratton: OK, let me pull up the slide deck. I'm sorry.

Ryan Burke: To that, I will highlight too that some of the things that they're talking about are not direct supports to the learning. So that those are key factors. It's not all just about how can you make sure student a student is struggling with a specific question or topic, or standard and intervening there. It's more than that.

What Kenya and Margaret are sharing is how much it is about giving students the tools that they need to be self-educators to learn how to navigate the waters that they are in because, let's face it, they're adults and everywhere else that they go other than school is a place that does not have designations for adults or students or workers or employees or customers with disabilities.

So what Kenya and Margaret do that I really appreciate, and they always have to remind me to because I might start going to narrow and start thinking about my traditional hang-ups and perceptions on what special education is. They remind me that these are adults that need to be able to develop the skills and tool kit that they need to go out and be successful in the workplace, and that can be a lot of that stuff is self-advocacy and knowing your strengths and what your learning styles are and things like that. So we'll get back to the program.

Kenya Bratton: Thank you.

Margaret MacAbasco: Sorry, all. OK, I'm back. So let me go back one slide. So as I was saying--

Kenya Bratton: I got through this slide for you.

Margaret MacAbasco: Oh, you got it already? OK. And then this one, too, Kenya?

Kenya Bratton: I didn't start.

Margaret MacAbasco: OK, thank you. So the next half of what we cover in the semester this one is our executive functions. So here, students learn about planning, organization, time management. I have the students take a survey to figure out where their strengths and their areas of need are. And then the ones that need the most support, that's what we cover over the next couple of weeks.

During this time, we also go back and monitor their progress on their SMART goals. Here at Sweetwater Adult Ed, all of our sites and teachers are working with our students to create SMART goals, and so throughout the semester, we do review them with the students to see if they've met them if anything needs to be adjusted. So we definitely do that during that unit as well.

And then our last unit is our test prep. And while that focus is heavily on students who are taking the GED or the HiSET, they do learn test-taking strategies and practice strategies that can be applicable to their diploma exams and quizzes, as well as their career pathway tests. During this time, we also speak about accommodations, how to request them, how to look into different accommodations that would meet their needs as well.

This little audio here is about a student who learned some test-taking strategies that helped her and her own children as well. I might have to share this out again. Yes.

Speaker 6: Well, it's been helping me because we've been doing one-on-one, and I've been getting help with new techniques on my class, my writing. And another thing is that, like right now, we did the breaking it into parts the essays and the questions.

And in honest, I have never done this before, not even in high school. That I remember. Not like this. And I know for my kids in middle school they're doing this right now. So for me knowing this right now, it helps me a lot too for myself and my economic class and also for my kids.

Margaret MacAbasco: So then we move on to the next slide. This slide just covers additional metacognitive strategies. But I'm going to go ahead and skip over to Kenya's so she can go into this.

Kenya Bratton: DARC also provides direct services for Employment Development services. Services are covered by each of our staff members. We each have a specific role in how we support our students to seek employment, be successful employment. So this is just a quick infographic of what that looks like student journey.

Every student who comes to our pathway, about 98%, go through our counselor first, and then our counselor triages that student services either to one of the other DARC team members. We find students, it's just a fascinating experience, to be honest, to work with adults. And let me be clear. The adults that come to our door may or might not have a disability. They may have a learning difference, a learning challenge or disability, or they're just curious, and we serve everyone.

So we don't even go through like a whole question about, do you have a disability or not. If they say oh, I heard that you help with this, we say yes. Eventually, they may or may not disclose a disability, but we do service many, many students. In '21, during the pandemic, we service maybe about 80 students. That was completely virtual. And then our first year, '21, '22, we provided direct services for 387 students.

And right now, in '22, '23, well, '22, to this month now, we are already up at about 50 to 70 students that range. We go to classrooms to do presentations. We schedule meetings with teachers to ask them if we could pop in to talk about what we do.

We are on the campaign to have as many students as possible, not just who currently are enrolled but in the entire community. That's our goal. I want to sometime to address how do we address the testing in 504 because we want to make sure we have time for questions and answers.

One of the main pieces of how we address 504 testing and strategies in the classroom is we begin with VARK. If you're not familiar, it's Visual, Oral, Reading Variety Kinesthetic learning inventory. It is no cost the one online, but then they also have a web-based version, which is a very, very minimum cost to adult education.

What we do is we find that students who have been out of the loop of learning in terms of structured education way, we find their learning style or learning preference. We work with them to create a strategy in how they can access the education in the classroom. They practice it in the class, and then they touch base with the education specialist to see if that strategy worked or did not work.

But what happens is they learn how to self-advocate. Hey, teacher, can you show me this way because I'm an oral learner? Or, hey, teacher, you know, I think I could get it if I could kind of practice it in another strategy. So what eventually happens is that teacher then begins to incorporate different types of strategies in their class.

One of the benefits that we've seen is that when the teacher has their Excel spreadsheet of the different type of learners they have, they'll see it may have been three visual learners but 12 kinesthetic learners. This is a thing. And so then we help them with here are some strategies that are more flexible with kinesthetic and visual learners.

Most of us teach in the way that we learn, and then most of us assume that everyone's visual. So kinesthetic learning requires very specific strategies for that learner or in teaching practice. So that's how the consultation comes in with our education specialists. So when students start to see that they're learning more based on their learning preference and accessing the education, they're less likely to say, oh, I need a 504.

Of course, we do review the 504 plan. But if it is something that we can implement without it being directly on paper, we make it happen. And that happens with not just the DARC team but with our administration. Some students who have disabilities but not quite sure on how-- we have learning disabilities with our vision-impaired students. We link them to DLR. So we do provide some intermittent type of strategies for that student to access the learning, and then we process the application with them for DLR.

So we have a learning assistance plan which is if the student does want something in writing and we want to meet with the instructor, we do a learning assistance plan. That was created by our DARC team. So it's not really a 504, but it's kind of framed that way but enough for that student to access the resources in that classroom. Our teachers are very flexible beyond any 504 accommodation, and that's at every site that's on every campus.

So we are very, very fortunate in that way. And we don't really hit too many roadblocks to say to an instructor, hey, are you flexible to do x, y, and z? Sure. Show me how, or yeah, I'll be more mindful of that. So the best way for me to say is VARK begins the conversation. And then if it leads to a learning disability testing, then that leads to an intake with myself, the program manager.