[music playing]

Speaker: OTAN-- Outreach and Technical Assistance Network.

Cory Rayala: Nobody knows your students and your program better than you do. So really, you're the experts when it comes to the how. I'll tell you about the why and the what, and then we'll get to the how.

OK, before we do that, I would like to know a little bit about you. So I'm going to try to launch a poll here. So I just want to know about your familiarity with IELCE. So how familiar are you? Very, moderately familiar, a little, or not at all. So please go ahead and answer that and submit it.

OK, this is good, good to know. OK, so 10% are very familiar, 25% are moderately, 47 a little, and 18 not at all. OK, this is good for me to know. So well over half of you either only have a little bit of knowledge or are none at all. So that's good.

What I'll say for those of you who have just a little bit or not at all, this is going to be a lot of information. And if it's your first time hearing it, it can be a little overwhelming. So just take a breath and just make your way through it. Absorb as much as you can and realize that there are lots of resources out there for you to get your questions answered.

There are lots of resources on the web that I'll show you. There are lots of folks who would be happy to talk to you about it. So please don't feel overwhelmed if it's too much information at this point.

OK, here's the definition of IELCE that comes from the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act. I'm not going to read this whole definition to you, but I'll highlight a few items here.

So first of all, in that first line, it talks about English language learners. That's who this is developed for. I like the second line about professionals with degrees and credentials. That's an interesting addition they made there. That it's applicable to those folks.

In the fourth line about acquiring basic and more advanced skills, that's very important. Function effectively as parents, workers, citizens, the United States, literacy and English language acquisition, citizenship, civic participation, and may include workforce training.

So why does it say may, may include? Let's dive into that a little bit more. The reason it says may and not must or shall is that there are two ways to look at it. There's the activity, there's IELCE as an activity and as a program.

As an activity, in California, we call it English Literacy and Civics Education. You may have heard of this as EL Civics, and it's been around for over 20 years. This is an activity under Section 231, the base grant. And when you're doing it as an activity, when you're doing EL Civics as an activity under Section 231, it may include workforce training, but it doesn't need to.

The other way it's delivered is as a program. And that would be the Section 243 Integrated English Literacy and Civics Education program. And when you're implementing this as a program, then it must include workforce training. And the rest of this presentation is going to be talking about that second one as a program, Section 243. And we'll get into that workforce training requirement.

This may be the most important slide here because it really lays out the goal and the philosophy behind this. So an IELCE program is designed to prepare English language learners for and place them in unsubsidized employment in in-demand industries and occupations that lead to economic self-sufficiency.

So right there we see that this is a program that's getting people jobs. It's specifically mean to prepare them for a specific occupation and to put them in that occupation. So when we start talking about the difference between workforce training and workforce preparation, think about that. That workforce training really gets them a job or gets them the opportunity to have a job.

And then also, number two, integrate with the local workforce development system and its functions. And then down at the bottom, it says that IELCE program must be provided in combination with IET activities. OK, great. We have another acronym, IET. Let's talk about IET.

IET stands for Integrated Education and Training. And it's a service delivery model that provides adult education activities concurrently and contextually with workforce preparation activities and workforce training. So you've got three components. You've got the adult education and literacy. That's what you all do. Hopefully you know that one very well. Specifically for this program, for IELCE, that tends to be ESL.

You've got workforce training. In most cases, that might be what you would call career technical education, CTE. And you have workforce preparation, which could be soft skills or any intermediary skill that gets people ready for a workforce training program or gives them those soft skills that are useful.

We'll talk more about workforce preparation when we get to COAAPs. I know COAAP was something that Jay mentioned this morning. And COAAP is California's way of addressing that workforce preparation. So we'll talk about that.

And then in the heart of all that, if those three things are happening concurrently and contextually, then we have Integrated Education and Training. And if you have Integrated Education and Training, then you have a compliant IELCE program.

I'll just note briefly that IET doesn't have to be in IELCE, solely in IELCE. IET could be in many different program areas. Throughout the nation, ASE students are involved with IET programs, ABE students. Of course, for this program that we're talking about, IELCE is focused on English language learners. So for the most part, we'll be talking about ESL students.

OK, what is this currently and contextually mean? So it means that within the overall scope of the program, those three components, adult education, workforce prep, workforce training, must be of sufficient intensity and quality.

There has to be enough of it. It has to be good. And based on the most rigorous research available, it has to use occupationally relevant instructional materials. And those three components have to occur simultaneously. The simultaneously-- people are always asking, so what does that mean exactly? Well, I mean, it kind of means what it says, happening at the same time.

One of the easiest ways to think about it is, what it's not. It's not sequential. Sequential would be the old model where perhaps a student would come to a school and they would be enrolled in an ESL class.

And maybe they would be in that ESL class for a year or two years or three years. And then finally, once they were ready, they would be able to get into a workforce training program, a CTE program that may have been their goal from day one.

This model turns that on its head and says, these students should be able to begin that contextualized instruction sooner. And by contextualizing the instruction, we accelerate the learning in both the English realm and also the career technical.

So to meet IET requirements, a program must have a single set of learning objectives and activities organized to function cooperatively. This single set of learning objectives comes from the regulations. And it really just means that the ESL teacher, in this case, and the CTE teacher and perhaps an administrator or coordinator has come together, sat down and developed a cohesive set of learning objectives.

It's not an ESL objectives and the CTE objectives, but they are integrated, truly integrated. And this is really just the first step. I mean, really, you should have a full syllabus, an integrated syllabus for the program or the course.

The second bullet, obviously, talks about aligning with the state's content standards for adult education. And then the last one, to be part of a career pathway. Very important. Maybe the most important to really start thinking about your program as part of a career pathway or several career pathways depending on how many programs you have.

And not only that, but the students should know what pathway they're on. If we come out to a school and we're talking to students, we'd like to know that they know what pathway they're involved in this program.

This is a list of training services that come from the WIOA statute. I'm not going to read all of these, but you can see that they happen in many different modalities or settings. They allow on-the-job training, incumbent worker training.

At the bottom there, upgrading and retraining. It goes on, entrepreneurial training, transitional jobs. So again, pretty wide menu of different types of training services that are allowed under WIOA.

In California, it's helped us to think about this training more as, what industry recognized credential does it lead to? And this is just a list, not necessarily exhaustive list, but some potential credential types that you might be using. And this might depend on the setting that you're in.

So for example, with the second bullet, if you work closely with your workforce board with Title I, for example, maybe you know providers who are on the employment training provider list, ETPL. Or maybe your school itself is on the ETPL and offers that. That would be fantastic.

Maybe if you're in a community college setting, the third and fourth bullets might look familiar to you. If you're a K-12 LEA, maybe the fifth and sixth, apprenticeships, pre-apprenticeship programs. So lots of different options.

And really, this comes down to you telling us what credential your training program leads to. We sort of put it on you as the provider to prove to us that you've got a great industry-recognized credential that you're training leads to.

OK, co-enrollment. This is an important slide. So remember, I mentioned at the beginning that IELCE when you're implementing it as a program under Section 243 has to include workforce training. In the overall program design, it has to have that and it has to occur somewhere in there.

However, when the feds were setting this program up, they recognized that not every student in the IELCE program would necessarily be taking advantage of that training. They may not be ready for it. They may not want to do the training at this moment.

And so what we say is that the English language learners. In this IELCE program have to have the opportunity to be enrolled in a class or a program that offers workforce training in their specific career pathway.

So not every student needs to be doing the career training, but a percentage greater than zero does. We need to see some students doing it. And certainly all students need to have the opportunity, need to have access to that training. I hope you understand that distinction because that's an important one.

Here are different types of co-enrollment. When we say co-enrollment, usually we're talking about ESL and CTE. So for example, in the first one, maybe you've got classes that are offered. I mentioned the ETPL earlier, the Eligible Training Provider List. Maybe you've got students who are co-enrolled in one of those courses.

The second might be about an in-house CTE program that you have at your school. Oftentimes, that's the easiest. If you actually have CTE programs, you can implement it more easily. If you don't, the third bullet acknowledges that sometimes you need to cobble together a partnership with one or more partners. Maybe through your consortium or through your title partners.

And then the fourth one acknowledging that you could also have this relationship directly with the employer who's providing pre-apprenticeship, apprenticeship, on-the-job training, et cetera.

When we talk about team teaching strategies, we break it down into basic two categories of co-teaching and alternating teaching. Co-teaching simply means that the teacher, the ESL teacher, the workforce training teacher are in the same classroom at the same time delivering instruction to a group of students.

Alternating teaching means that those teachers are in different courses at different times, but it's coordinated. And even though it's at different times, it's still concurrent. Meaning it's not one semester they do this, and then the next semester they do this. It's happening at the same time. I see the question in the chat. I'll get to that one in just a moment.

OK, COAAPs, yet another acronym for you. Jay mentioned the COAAPs earlier, and I'll just talk a little bit about them here. So COAAP stands for Civic Objective and Additional Assessment Plan. It's a description of a performance-based assessment that you will give learners after 30 hours of instruction based on the civic objective that they're working under.

As I mentioned earlier, these COAAPs in California are designed to meet the workforce preparation requirement of IET. That doesn't mean you can't have other workforce preparation activities happening there, but specifically we believe that those COAAPs fulfill that.

In addition, when you're selecting a COAAP, you can either pick one that's already been created or you could propose new ones. If we have time, I'll show you on the website where you can find these. And there are around 30 or so of these civic objectives that are designated for Section 243.

And then that second bullet just another reminder that the COAAP should be part of a workforce preparation curriculum targeting in-demand occupation or cluster of occupations.

OK, just a couple more slides, and then we'll take a break for questions. So the program requirements. You do need to have-- a student needs assessment that you administer each year to find out what the students actually need. And this is a document or a series of surveys or assessments that we will ask to see if we come out to visit your school for federal program monitoring review.

Of course, as I mentioned, you'll be selecting the COAAPs, the Civic Objective and Additional Assessment Plans. You'll be creating the additional assessments. These additional assessments are created by the agency or borrowed from somebody else who's created them. That's OK too.

Of course, you'll plan and offer the instruction. We talk about 30 hours minimum of instruction here. You administer those additional assessments. Sometimes not every student passes the additional assessment, in which case, it is allowable to provide some additional instruction and offer the assessment again for them to pass.

Not necessarily in this order, but you'll see for six, you will need to administer pre- and post-CASAS testing. And then in the end of-- excuse me, at the end of April, you'll be completing an IELCE report. That report describes what your program did with IELCE. I'll talk a little bit more about that in just a moment.

Something that everybody's always curious about, the payment points. How does the money work for this? So here's a little table that illustrates the relative payment points for each of the types.

So if we start up at the top, the top is indicating a Section 243 program where you've got an IELCE student who takes and passes one of those additional assessments and is co-enrolled in workforce training. So if that student passes the additional assessment and is co-enrolled in training, then they get that highest payment point value indicated there by three dollar signs.

If you have students who pass 243 additional assessment, but they're not enrolled in workforce training, of course, they have the access to it, but they chose not to be enrolled in workforce training, then they still get a payment point, but it's at the lower level. And in fact, that lower level is the same level as an EL Civics student in Section 231 would get by passing a 231 additional assessment.

Currently in the current grant award, I believe the numbers for the one dollar sign was 104, $104, and I believe the higher one, the three dollar sign was 355. That can fluctuate each year depending on priorities that we have at the office.

OK, I think this is my last slide before we'll take some questions. Again, I mentioned the IELCE report that's due April 30. You're going to be submitting this at the same time that you submit your Continuous Improvement Plan. It's really just a way for you to tell us what you did with your IELCE program that year.

So you'll be describing all the components, describing how it's contextual and concurrent, describing who your training provider is, who's providing the training, talking about some of the hours that are involved. Of course, you'll tell us what COAAP you're using. And there is an outline of this available on the website that I will hopefully have time to show you.

OK, I know that was a lot of information and I see that we have some questions. So let's cover those. And if you have any others, I'd be happy to entertain those. OK, so Cheryl says, please clarify a little more on the IELCE workforce training being available. We're starting a medical assistant program that will be available to any of our ESL students of the appropriate NRS level, but only have one student interested.

OK, Cheryl, why don't you come off mute and tell me a little bit more about your question there because I'm not exactly sure what you're looking for.

Audience: Well, I just want to clarify if one student is enough.

Cory Rayala: Oh, I see. Well, I mean, it's not ideal. I'll tell you that. We're definitely moving toward having more students involved in this program. That said, you have to start somewhere. So technically, we say percentage greater than 0. So if you have one, that's greater than zero.

What I would say is if that's all you have, start with that and try to build it. Really, think about that needs assessment and really question why you only have one. Is this program really feasible for your students, or are there some support you can provide to students or?

Audience: Well, our ESL population is small and the majority of them are level 3 or below. So most of them aren't ready for an IET. We have a few students that are higher. So we're trying to-- and we're a new ESL program to less than a year and a half.

Cory Rayala: I see.

Audience: Yeah, I just want to make sure that one is enough because that's all we've got at this point.

Cory Rayala: Yeah, yeah. I mean, like I said, you got to start somewhere. The one recommendation I would give you is to really think about that pathway idea. Maybe in your medical assistant pathway or your health pathway or whatever you're going to call it, there are earlier courses in that that students could be enrolled in that get them to the actual training course.

Sometimes these are referred to as bridge courses. A bridge course itself probably wouldn't rise to workforce training, but it's certainly helpful to get these type of students ready for that, the true workforce training. So you might just want to develop the pathway even further and think about, could students be involved-- could these English language learners be involved with some of the earlier courses as well?

Audience: Oh, that's an excellent idea. We do have a bridge medical terminology course. So that would be-- maybe I could get them interested in that.

Cory Rayala: Exactly .

Audience: OK, thank you very much. Appreciate it.

Cory Rayala: Yeah, no, thank you for the question. Michael is asking, do there have to be two teachers if the instructor is qualified to teach both? No. If that teacher actually has those necessary credentials, we've seen that happen. I think that's fairly rare, but it's possible. And it's perhaps not ideal.

Also, there's just a great benefit to co-teaching that we see in the research. And so I would encourage that. But on the face of it, if they are qualified, they're qualified. That might be something you want to talk to your consultant about and just talk about the details.

Let's see. Molly's asking, thanks for the info. What are the timelines to apply for the program? Is it a yearly process? Oh, that's a good question. It's built into the RFA that we just completed.

So when you wrote the RFA, you completed-- I believe it was consideration 12 in that that spoke to IELCE. And based on those responses, you were let into the grant, let into this section of the grant. And so in terms of adding it again, it's probably not going to be available again until the next grant cycle, which would be four years from now.

And if you're in it, if you're already in it, which I'm assuming you are since you're here, then as long as you stay in good standing and you keep up the program, you can stay in it for the duration of the grant cycle.

Last year, we did not sign up for 243. When do we have another chance to opt in on the 243 options? Yeah, so as I just said, it is part of the grant application. So it'd be the next grant cycle. Did I miss, Colleen? If we have a teacher with an ESL credential and a CT credential, can they be the sole teacher of an IET? Yes.

Sally, the bridge training could qualify then as a career prep course. Yeah, yeah. If you mean by the workforce preparation, it could definitely fall under that. Yeah, for sure.

In the earlier example, medical terminology would be a great example of something that doesn't necessarily get somebody a job. You're not going to get an industry recognized credential from medical terminology course, but certainly a useful course to prepare somebody for a workforce training course. So yeah, for sure.

Latisha asked, can workforce training be integrated with the adult education literacy course that covers the IELCE, or does it have to be a separate course? So integrated with the course that covers the IELCE, or does it have to be a separate course?

So let me try to answer that. And if I don't answer it correctly, you can unmute and tell me what you meant. But it's certainly OK for them to be separate courses. It could be a separate course, a CTE course that you offer at your school, it could be offered at a different location.

But to the first part of your question, it does also have to be integrated. This is Integrated English Literacy and Civics Education. So it definitely has to be integrated, that separate course. The teacher there and the ESL teacher should collaborate, should get together, should sit down and work out an integrated syllabus. The objectives and the goals of the course should be aligned.

So I would say, yes, and both of those could be correct. Definitely needs to be integrated, and it could also be a separate course. Let me know if that does not answer your question.

Audience: So I'm making reference to the Venn diagram where you have adult education literacy, and then workforce training in a separate bubble. And so can workforce training be incorporated into the ESL class is what I'm referring to.

Cory Rayala: Yeah, there are lots of different program designs that we see and we're not especially prescriptive when it comes to program design. So long as those three components are there and as mentioned earlier, it's sufficient, intensity, and quality, and it leads to an industry-recognized credential, that model could certainly work.

What I would recommend is send an email to your regional consultant and tell them what you're thinking about and we can give you more details. I'll also put a plug-in right now, I was going to mention this later, but Lori Howard has monthly EL Civics network meetings, which are amazing opportunities to get more information and to kind of bounce these ideas off of other folks. So the quick answer to your question is, yes, that's possible. It just needs to be designed with all the IET requirements in mind.

Audience: Cory, will we talk about the IELCE plan if we have time?

Cory Rayala: Yeah, I can definitely show that.

Audience: Because it may come into play there. Thank you.

Cory Rayala: Mm-hmm. OK, I see one more from Michael. How is a program blessed as a proper IET with all the necessary elements included? I can propose that particular program that I offer meets all the check marks. But at what point in the process does someone take a look at it and say, yes, that's an IET? I like this question. This speaks a little bit to what Diana just mentioned.

We do have what you might call kind of an annual checkup, which is called the IELCE report. And as I mentioned, that's due at the end of April. And there you will give us a rundown of exactly what you're offering. And that's reviewed by staff. They're mostly CASAS staff at this point who review those.

And if there are issues with that, they may ask for clarification. And if the program is deemed inadequate, then sometimes the consultants get involved and then we have to look at, is it actually a compliant program? In some of those cases, if it's not a compliant program, we have to move payment points around and things like that.

So when we first started this program six years ago, we did have a process where we said, OK, propose what you want to do and we will approve it, and then you move forward. Now that we're six years into this, we're moving away from that a little bit.

In the same way that we don't ask for you to submit plans for all your other courses and we have to stamp approvals on them, we're trusting a little bit more that folks know how this works. But we do have at least an annual check-in, which is the IELCE report.

And then, of course, there's the FPM process. We really hope it doesn't come to that. But certainly when we review your school through federal program monitoring, we'll be looking closely at this program. And again, if it ever comes into a compliance issue, we may have to take some steps there.

Again, hopefully it never comes to that. The most important thing is communication. So please send an email to your consultant with the ideas that you're working with. Involve your CASAS program specialist in this. They are all experts in this program as well at this point. And even though it may not be like a rubber stamp, yes, this is blessed, at least you'll know you're on the right track and that you're in compliance. I hope that answers the question.

Audience: Thank you, Cory. I really appreciate it. Thank you.

Cory Rayala: Of course. OK, let me glance at my clock here too. So we started at 2:10. OK, so we're doing fine here. If you have other questions, please drop them in the chat. I'd be happy to answer those.

And like I said, the rest of this presentation is much less the regulations and more about the how. And in all honesty, I don't have all the answers when it comes to the how because I don't know your schools, I don't know your students the way you do.

So what I'm going to do is share some of these kind of models and structures that Lori developed, some guiding questions, and then we're going to have a discussion about them. And at one point, I'm going to put you into a breakout room even. So be prepared for that. Just what you want at the end of the day, a nice breakout room.

So here's the basic improvement cycle. You're going to review and evaluate what's done before by nature of being in this grant. That means that all of you should have a compliant program. I'll just leave it at that.

Plan for changes in the current or the future programs. Obviously, you're going to try to improve the program, you implement that program, you fill out the IELCE report, turn that in by the end of April. You'll get feedback on that based on the feedback you go back and iterate the process.

Here are a few steps that I think are very helpful and some questions to think about as you're developing this. So needs assessment, as we mentioned before, thinking about the true needs of your students and the opportunities in your area.

So what are the priority jobs and training needs that exist in your area? How do you interact with your workforce development board, with the American Job Center of California, with your other title? We have title partners, advisory groups, I could go on and on, community college, consortium, employers, et cetera, et cetera. How do you interact with those folks to answer that question?

The next bullet, what training opportunities exist at your agency or with your partners? So once you've sort of decided what the need is in the community, then you think about what your capabilities are as a school. If you don't have those capabilities, maybe you go to partners.

And then very, very important, these are not necessarily in order, what do your English learners want? What do they need? Hopefully, these three things can align and you can find something that fits your resources and also the needs of your students and the needs of your community. But having an intentional process where you identify these needs and opportunities is really a crucial first step.

Next up I mentioned this earlier about support services. This is not an easy program for many of your students. I'm sure you know this already. And so the more support we can give to them the better.

So what kind of support services do your English language learners need so they can access and succeed in the training? Do you provide orientations, counseling, navigation? Are you doing everything you can to eliminate barriers, like child care and transportation, time constraints, et cetera?

And then importantly, that last bullet, what mechanisms do you have in place to gather this data? Again, getting back to the needs assessment a little bit. So again, very important step.

And then the last step we're going to look at in this section is actually facilitating that program coordination. How will you continue to involve all of the stakeholders, the CTE teacher, the ESL teacher, all the counselors, the navigators, the support staff, other partners in your area, to work together to improve the IELCE program?

That single set of learning objectives, again, that's essential. That at the very minimum, you've got this set of objectives that are integrated. And again, as I've mentioned a couple of times, I would take that even a step further and have a syllabus that's created that students can read and that you go over with students so they understand the benefits of this program and how it's integrated.

Curriculum, including COAAPs and additional assessments. Of course, you're always going to think about those. You're going to talk about your instruction, support services, the schedule of classes, the recruitment, and others.

OK, so these are just guiding questions to get you thinking about this. Again, I really view you as the expert in this area. And so we're going to take just 10 minutes here to have a quick breakout where you can begin talking about these.

Those 30% or 40% of you who said that you were a little more advanced with IELCE, maybe you could help those of us who aren't as advanced in the implementation phase as you're meeting with the group.

So we're going to put you in a breakout group. And what I want you to do is talk about these first three steps. And we'll give you the questions to use. But here's the basic rules. Introduce yourself very briefly because we don't have a lot of time, perhaps identify somebody who's going to help facilitate the conversation. Maybe you have somebody who's recording and reporting. We're going to have a pretty short reporting session, but I'd love for that.

You're going to get three questions. They'll be in the chat. Oh, they're already in the chat. And also put them on the slide I hope. And then when we come back, I'm going to ask you to put some answers in the chat or unmute and talk about what you found.

Before we move to the activities, does anybody have any questions about the activity? You know what I should do, I should show you the questions. So here are the three questions. These align directly with those steps I just talked to you about.

What opportunities for training and employment exist in your area? How do those match with the needs of your students? What kind of support do your learners need? And how will you continue to involve everybody in the development and the implementation of your program? So three kind of essential questions that I'd love to give you some time to talk about.

OK, welcome back, everybody. Let's see. So we're running out of time a little bit, but I would love to hear how your discussion went. So feel free to put stuff in the chat. But I would love it even more If somebody would volunteer to unmute and just tell us a little bit about your discussion. Janice, are you waving to speak?

Audience: I'm waving.

Cory Rayala: OK, go ahead.

Audience: Hi, I'm Janice Fera. I'm new to my role at Solano as the new consortium manager. And so that's why I'm enjoying the NAR training this week. I was joined in my breakout room by Denise from Porterville, Rosa from Riverside Community College, and Mona from Oxnard.

And what we talked about a little bit was the transition specialist role, whether it's handled by a faculty member or by a specialized counselor, and the importance of being able to reach out to the students. And one of the girls mentioned that they do it with surveys or maybe they actually do it one-on-one, like face-to-face setting between the faculty and the ESL student to learn more about what their needs are.

They looked at different ways to-- let me see what else she talked about, a job developer working with the students to-- they find the right person, then they can commit with the students and figure out how they can pick industries so that they can offer COAAPs that meet the student's needs. And that whole process was really interesting to share.

We talked about the livable wage because it's one thing to train a student for a job, but other consortium managers that I've talked to have said that they actually put a stake in the ground and said 70 grand.

We want our students to come out of here on track for making that much money because there are lots of jobs out there, but we want them to have that living wage that gives them the security and the confidence to go forward. So those are some of the things that we discussed.

Cory Rayala: Excellent. Thank you so much. I love those. Yeah, the idea of getting data from our students in terms of what their needs are. So powerful. So thank you. Anybody else? We have maybe time for just one more if somebody else wants to weigh in on what you discussed. Elsa, I see you have come on camera.

Audience: Yeah, sure.

Cory Rayala: Go ahead.

Audience: So at Moonee Valley Community School, last spring we participated with the IET program and with pharmacy. And so this year, we've implemented a co-teacher that goes in the last two hours of the course.

And so she provides support not only to the English ESL students or EL students, to the whole class really. And then we provide tutoring for the students in math because they do have a-- pharmacy technician does require a higher math and sometimes the students struggle with that.

Another thing that we do is we do give them a pre-assessment to see what level of math they're at. Because if they don't have the basic skills in math, then we provide tutoring for them to get their basic skills so that they can be successful in the pharmacy.

Also, with the IELCE program, this year to improve it, to make it a little bit, well, improvement, we added-- in the past-- because I'm fairly new to principal at this school. And so in the past, they would come three days for the ESL. And then two of those days, they would come back for the computer portion of it.

And so this year they come to the class, it's like two hours ESL, and then an hour of computer. So it's all integrated. They don't have to go and come back, and it's not separated. So the students are really liking it because it's like, OK, we're going to do two hours of English. And then, OK, grab your computers, let's do the computer portion of it.

And then we partnered with AUMT to bring in EKG phlebotomy and medical assistant classes. And if those students need assistance, they can come and participate with the tutoring with us also. They're not enrolled with us. They're enrolled with AUMT. But they're welcome to come and participate with our tutoring.

Cory Rayala: That's fantastic. Thank you, thank you for sharing that. Your earlier comments about the support, the support teacher remind me of Suzanne's comment in the chat that I should remember to address.

So Suzanne was asking about having a partnership with the local community college and providing career pathways for students. We have support teachers for each pathway who attends class with students, who provide support classes each week to help students access the curriculum. Is this IELCE even if not all students are ESL?

So it definitely can be. I think as Elsa was saying, it's definitely a model that can work. It really comes down to the details and it comes down to, again, the intensity and quality. So I get a little worried when I hear support teacher. Like, what does that mean? Are they are they ESL students? Are they getting ESL instruction?

If you can make the case for the fact that there's enough intensity and quality in the instruction that they're getting, and that they are ESL students, then something like that can absolutely work. Elsa, did you have a follow up? Oh, OK. Sorry.

So I hope that answers your question, Suzanne. And then Matt also said, IET is really the best model developed in Washington years back. That is true. However, this model is difficult to enact in California community colleges because of funding issues. I'd love to hear from community college folks on how they are doing IET.

Absolutely. And again, I put another pitch in addition to what Diane was saying about the resources from CALPRO. I'll put a pitch in for Lori Howard's monthly network meetings where you can hear from folks directly who are making it work. But great comment there.

OK, well, I wish we could just keep the conversation going, but we do need to wrap up. So let me just go to the last section here very quickly. And I've got a lot of things on my screen here.

So step 4 is evaluating the program. How do you get feedback about the success of your program, use the IELCE report review? How do you define success? What went well? What would you change? How will you plan for continuous improvement? How will you document progress, plan next steps, share success, and future plans?

So we only have a couple of minutes here. So what I'd love you to do is in the chat with regard to this last idea of evaluating the program, just pick one of these, just pick one of these questions that kind of speaks to you.

And when you put in the chat, put the number by your answer. So if you're going to answer 1, put a 1, if you're going to answer 4, put a 4, et cetera. So for example, how will you get feedback about your IELCE program? How you document progress? How will you define success? How will you share the story?

Thank you, Maria. Start the ball rolling here, surveys. Good. I'm assuming that's for number 1. Get feedback through surveys. Thank you, Paul saying, he defined success by defining the number of students completing the program and gaining employment. Love it. Absolutely.

I'm glad you added the gaining employment. That's really crucial there. Also says, the number of students making learning gains. Yes. Brian adds, any chance to hear from the student is great. Yes. Learning gains, yes.

OK, well, in the interest of time, thank you for that feedback. But let's just jump ahead to our last slide. So again, this is just reminding you about that cycle. Remember to keep it iterative. We talk about continuous improvement. And same thing here. We want to continuously improve.

OK, exit poll. I do want to know how you feel after this session if the needle has moved at all. So just very quickly-- I'm not going to have this open for very long, but how ready do you feel to work on this cycle? More than ready, ready, getting there, thinking about it, need to learn more. This is helpful information for us. So thank you for completing this.

Getting there is-- good. I'm going to share the results. I think most everybody's in there. All right, so getting there is 55%. Ready-- wow, we've got ready and more than ready almost 1/4 of you. Excellent. And then 20% thinking about it and you'd learn more. That is absolutely OK.

The last slide I have for you is talking about how you can learn more. Lots of resources. There's a whole document in the Canvas or on OER that will give you links to all of these. If I had more time, I would take you to the course's website because there's just a wealth of information there.

So I encourage you to go to the IELCE page on the CASAS website where you'll find webinars and documents and YouTube channel. There's a whole YouTube channel dedicated to this with trainings. So lots and lots of information. As Diana mentioned, there's training from OTAN and CALPRO as well. So please take advantage of those.

And then here's my information and I included Lori's too just because she's so integral to this work. She's the specialist at CASAS on this program. So if you have questions, feel free to reach out to me or to her. And as we've said multiple times, reach out to your CDE consultant and your CASAS specialist because they always want to know what you're working on and would love to talk it through.