Lisa Le Fevre: Thank you, Mandlee. And I'm not seeing a shared screen. So I'm not sure if you're going to be sharing, but I'm just going to welcome everybody to our webinar. Thank you so much. Designing and Implementing Evidence-Based Accelerated Learning, Program Design. This is part two of a webinar series that focuses on accelerated learning approaches. Last webinar addressed how programs identified the program, partners, and structure of the accelerated learning approach.

Today, we'll be exploring implementation aspects of these programs, such as curriculum design, how they work with partners to deliver programming, and other aspects. We hope that during each of these webinars, you will also be able to share your knowledge and expertise as we intend to build a community and knowledge through shared learning. Next slide, please.

So one thing we'd like to take a moment to do is just to do some introductions. I'm Lisa Le Fevre. I'm a senior program associate at WestEd. WestEd is an education research, development, technical assistance agency. I'm also here with my colleague Dr. Toso, who I'll give a moment to say hello. Dr. Toso.

Blaire Toso: All right, thank you. Welcome. Thanks for being here as an eclipse starts to move across the skies. We really appreciate your taking the time to join us. My name is Blaire Willson Toso. I'm a consultant with WestEd. I've done work with WestEd for a long time, was employed by them, and have recently just gone into consulting. I have a long background in adult education, working through a lot of the different aspects of it. And, really, I'm looking at career pathways and social mobility--

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--and be able to feature some of these great programs that are doing this work in the field. Turn it back to Lisa.

Lisa Le Fevre: Thanks, Blaire. OK, we also want to recognize and send many thanks to the COAAP team. So Mayra Diaz, and Cora Rainey, and the CDE team, Dr. Carolyn Zachry, Diana Batista, Neil Kelly who support this type of work and ensure quality adult education. I'm not sure if there's anybody from those teams on the call, but I can take a quick second or two for them to say hello?

Diana Batista: Good morning, this is Diana Batista. I'm so happy to be here with you, and excited to see what you're going to share with us today. Thank you.

Lisa Le Fevre: Thank you, Diana. And, of course, many thanks to the SCOE TAP team who've helped to make today's event possible. Without them, it wouldn't be an easy ride. They're amazing in their support. They organize all the big and small details so that everything runs smoothly. Thank you so much, Mandlee. Thank you so much, Holly. Dr. Toso, I'm turning it back over to you.

Blaire Toso: Go to our next slide, please. So I'm just going to give you a brief introduction to who we're going to hear from today. This is really the meat of the program that we're going to do. We're delighted that we can be joined by Sutter County Adult Education, Lorilee Niesen and Jacob Holmes, and their director of the Sutter County One Stop, Rinky Basi. They're going to talk to us a little bit more about the program they introduced in last week's webinar.

Then we also have Kirkwood Community College represented by Stephanie Hasakis Flaucher. And she is going to be presenting on a program that she has set up with women in pursuing education through a childhood education certificate and working with employers. And lastly, we'll have Dr. Bill Schaffer from Northampton Community College, who will be introducing his health workers program in which they have worked with employers and other organizations to offer this educational programming.

We'll hear more from them later. I just wanted to say up front that we welcome you and thank you greatly for the time that you're giving us today. Next slide, please. So our agendas are welcome, then we'll briefly look at some programming development considerations for accelerated learning approaches. These are really just going to set the stage.

As for you, as you listen to the presenters, be sure we're forwarding those best practices and key considerations. Then we'll move into Voices From the Field, which are with our guest presenters, as you can see. And then, lastly, we will have time for discussion with our presenters or asking questions of us. And then we'll move right into the closing. It'll be a very quick webinar. And hopefully, we'll learn from our presenters. Next slide, please.

Our goals are really to go back and review those models and approaches that support accelerated learning that we introduced last week, identify some key strategies, and then particularly learn strategies that other programs have used to identify and build a program that uses an accelerated learning approach. We're using this tactic because many of you already know the best practices and the key strategies.

And what's really of interest is how one uses those within their own context to set up an accelerated learning program. Next slide, please. So really, what is an accelerated learning approach? As you all know--

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--well as workforce preparation skills. Along with that, there are also pieces that tie in, like civics, as well as other integration and social mobility pieces, such as building social capital and learning leadership skills. Next slide, please. So here we go. On the left-hand side is where the training adult education workforce preparation combined with the job moves that adult learner along a continuum that occurs simultaneously as opposed to having to take one step and another.

The other reason we're really wanting to-- sorry, I just got a message. I'm going to turn off my video. I must be having some unstable internet, so let me just turn that off. Apologies. But what we really want to do is focus on the accelerated learning approaches because they also combine with the WIOA goals and the vision goals from the Chancellor's Office.

So you can see those listed out on the right-hand side on those transitions to training, education, and employment, reduces time and costs for adult learners, creates access for underrepresented populations in particular, and it encourages the partnerships among WIOA partners and other organizations and stakeholders in your community. Next slide, please.

So we touched on these last time about some of those accelerated learning approaches. Integrated education and training, integrated English literacy and civics integration, as well as dual enrollment. Yes, the slides will be available. Co-enrollment with WIOA partners, pre-apprenticeships, work-based learning, contextualized bridge programs. Last time, somebody also added micro credentialing.

So if you have any additional models, approaches, strategies that you think should fit for examples of accelerated learning approaches, please put them in the chat and we'll move them over so that we can continue to grow our knowledge and be able to think more holistically about what these learning approaches are. Next slide, please.

So last webinar, we identified initial key steps for identifying and developing the accelerated learning program really by answering these questions. What does your community need? Who is your target population? Particularly looking at the data, and then aligning that data with the reality on the ground or the partner and learner needs. I think Bill will bring this up later on.

Then thinking about who are your partners? What are they willing to contribute? And will they commit and be a genuine stakeholder? Are they a name only, or are they actually providing support and working with you to meet the goals of your adult learners? And then truly looking at what exists and what you can build upon so that you're not just starting from scratch if you don't need to. And you can use other people's resources, program's resources to support your programming. Next slide, please.

So the steps for building your accelerated learning program design. Identify your program structure. What's your delivery model going to be? Who's on your design team? We highly recommend instructors, especially those occupational Adult Ed and ESL instructors. Employers provide crucial information. Career navigators can't stress it enough. They are crucial to the programming, how it's developed, and how your students get supported through the program and into transitions. As well as administrators need to be there because that buy-in has to be there.

And then as part of that, you want to ensure the understanding of the target occupation. Go in and experience it. And you will hear that from a couple of our presenters today. Identify your program goals. Each program should have three goals-- program, learner, and stakeholders, right? It's a program that is built for multiple audiences. And then you want to make sure that those goals align to your identified career pathway, as well as including measurable outcomes for each of those goals, and then communicating them out to your adult learners as well as to your stakeholders.

Fourth, establish approvals and communication processes to ensure alignment, compliance, and collaboration. Something that you all know, right? But when you get this many partners or you have this many goals, everybody needs to be on the same page. And you need to be able to meet each other's identified outcomes, any, compliance measures, and then, really, how you're collaborating. And then off to co-developing that curriculum. Next slide, please.

So we really want to talk about learner-centered design, right? That's who this is all about. And it's very easy when we're doing this complicated of a design to get enmeshed in all of the concrete details that need to take place. So in order to ensure your learner-centered design, these are some key considerations, right? What are your entry requirements? What are your learner needs and available supports? And this means that you really want to do a strong intake and orientation to your program.

Identifying those target competencies and skills to be included. And you'll notice that it's not just about training. It's not just about language and literacy. But you've got those digital skills. You've got the soft or durable skills. And you really want to strike those cultural competencies for the local community and workplace.

And I want to center the fact that while we always talk about training, and language and literacy, honestly, what we would like also is for people to be able to move through their communities and learn how to navigate them themselves. Those credentials, certificates, and assessments required need to be considered up front as that is content. We have heard about programs that create trainings and IETs, and then their are adult learners aren't able to pass the certificate exams required on the back side.

So that's really important. We can give them all the training, but if they can't qualify for the job or for the next step on the career pathway, then we have not really done them a service. And then there's that curriculum. All of you know, contextualized, integrated, hands-on, and really-- a plug-- some research I've been doing in the field is demonstrating the value of incorporating mentoring, volunteering, and leadership activities.

They allow people to grow their social capital and their networks, as well as self-confidence and learn more about the community in which they're living. Next slide, please. So these are your key considerations, right? I'm not going to read them. These slides will be left behind. You will be able to access these and then go back and go through them. Moving quickly because we really want to be able to give time to our presenters, but these are all questions that you really want to look at.

And I'd like to highlight a couple, which is, can learners gain credit for prior learning or experience? It was a question that came up last time. It's really something to think about and needs to be learned and incorporated into both your intake or your entrance requirement, or how you might be able to exit the program with some of those pieces.

And lastly, how will learners demonstrate proficiency? Is it through competency, assessments, practice or licensure exams, or maybe all three? So being sure that you look at these key considerations as you build that curriculum. Next slide, please. Lastly-- and we'll talk a little bit more in the third webinar that will come up on May 1 about gathering data for continuous improvement and evaluation. But you need to gather that student feedback, stakeholder input and data, employer input and data, as well as your staff using all of these.

And the reason why it's in this webinar is you talk about designing the program. They need to be considered as an upfront component as you design your program so you can really gather the data as you go along, and not as an afterthought. All right, that is the whirlwind orientation to designing your accelerated approach. Any questions or anything anybody wants to add before we move to the next part of the program?

All right, then it's my pleasure to move into Voices From the Field. Next slide, please. And I'll first hand it over to Lorilee Niesen with the Sutter County Adult Education, who is talking about programs that they have built by partnering with their One Stop. Lorilee.

Lorilee Niesen: Thank you so much, Blaire. And thank you for having us on this second webinar. Previously, Jake and I talked about how Sutter County came to be with the One Stop on the same site, or under the purview of the county office. And we talked about how that happened in the '80s, way before Jake was born, way before Rinky and I were here at Sutter County Superintendent of Schools.

But even though that model was built, it's up to us as the leads of the programs to continue that culture. And here at Sutter County, we really try to have a culture of inclusion. And how we do that, Blaire talked about the design team, right? And so our culture of inclusion and making sure that we have all parties represented-- we have Jake who represents our adult education program.

We have Rinky that represents our One Stop. We also have on our team Bob Eckert. He's the director of our CTE and ROP program that we have. We have Joanna, who is our coordinator of our Career Training Center. We include our data manager and coordinator, Carrie, as part of our meetings. We also have our coordinator at the One Stop. And then another key person that we have on our team is our director of communication here at Sutter County Superintendent of Schools.

And so as Jake mentioned last time, we meet weekly to talk about grants that are coming up, programs, any challenges that we're facing. We give updates on large events. Jake will talk later about a huge career fair that we have-- that we just had. One thing that's on the radar is our Adult Ed open house tomorrow because it's National Adult Education Week. So we have this open house.

And it's not just to highlight our adult ed programs, but students that come here will have the opportunity to tour the One Stop and understand the process of how students literally walk across the street and can receive services. So we're very blessed in that respect. Also, the adult education and the One Stop, we share contracts.

We braid funding, which we had talked to-- we talked about a little bit last time. But we share contracts, such as our behavioral health contract. Rinky and I oversee those contracts. And she has some of her personnel from the One Stop, as well as I have personnel from Adult Ed that serve at behavioral health. Also, with the jail program and at probation, we have Sutter County staff there representing One Stop and Adult Ed.

We also share CalWORKs clients. So when that CalWORKs reporting comes up, Rinky and I get together and report our outcomes in order to write that grant. And then probably what really helps tie us all together is our student information system. And so many staff members at the One Stop also have access to the same student information system that we have here at Adult Ed. So I think really making sure that we have these opportunities for our managers to get together to iron out any wrinkles that we have in the fabric of adult education, or the One Stop, or Career Training Center, et cetera, we can do that on a weekly basis.

And so with that, I'm going to pass to Rinky, who is going to talk a little bit about the referral process and any challenges that we see. Rinky.

Rinky Basi: Thank you, Lorilee. Thank you, everybody for this opportunity. Yeah, so just like Lorilee mentioned, we look at our systems to make sure that whenever we build any new opportunities, we look at our business services folks. When we're meeting with employers or any partnership in the community that we are creating, we are looking at all of our students. We're looking at all of our community that is able to benefit from those services.

So we really focus on our systems, our referrals as to how do our students move? How do our customers move from one program to the next? When we work with our businesses, when we work with a new employer, and my business services team has an opportunity to sell what our workforce looks like, who is in our workforce, we are always-- we consider each of our customers, our ESL students, our high school diploma students, our students who may be going into pre-apprenticeships.

So that is part of our fabric. One of the biggest employers that came to our community a couple of years ago was a casino-- Hard Rock Casino here in Marysville. And we had the opportunity to directly work with their HR. We were able to really talk to them about how their leadership team needs to look like if they're going to be recruiting individuals who may be limited in English, their English is a second language.

So having those team members that were bilingual so they could have access to this workforce that lived in our community. So I think that's something that we really focus on anytime we're building a new opportunity, a training opportunity to really look to see, who should we design this for? And in each one of our projects that we take on with the workforce board, we talk about-- at those weekly meetings that Lorilee brought up earlier, we talk about where are we lacking, where's our gaps, how should there-- how could we use this proposal to close those gaps for our students?

And with that, our opportunity as our staff, Lorilee and Jake, shared last time, we really look at braiding our funding. We really look to see, how can we make sure that customer doesn't have to go back and forth? How do we make sure that when staff from our Adult Ed folks refer them to the One Stop, how do we make sure we could use the data? How could we use the testing? How could we use any of the information that is not-- the client does not have to repeat.

So I think that is some of the things that we continue to focus on system-wide. I kind of grew up in this system. I really have a hard time not including making sure that we are not missing out on somebody who may not be able to benefit. So I think anytime we look at the resource room, if we're redesigning a resource room, we are going to make sure that there's information available.

The staffing. How we staff our lobby. How we staff our resource room. So when these individuals are individuals from Adult Ed or from the community are coming that may need a language that-- they may feel comfortable with staff who may speak Punjabi or Spanish that they have access to that. So I think those are some of the things that we continually work on on our testing, on our training, on our presentations when we're partnering with our community, when we're partnering with our CalWORKs pervasion that we are presenting all of our programs, not just a single program.

And in our small community, we really bank on that. We really bank on our partnerships. Resources are limited. And we really try to make sure if the One Stop has an opportunity to train and to create those opportunities with employers, how do we make sure that everybody's at the table, that we can have all voices as part of this project?

As a One Stop, we have to offer all programs. We offer individual choices. So as presenting to our individuals when they're coming in, we provide information on everything that's available in the community so our customers are able to make an informed choice. So there's some of those things that we are working on. And we continually work on this. This is not something we do, and we put it on the shelf, and we visit it once in a while.

It's an ongoing effort that we look to see when an individual gets referred to maybe our workshop that's on work readiness, maybe it's on mock interviews, how do we make sure the information they already prepared in the class, with our navigator maybe, with one of the teachers-- how does that get passed on? And how do our staff communicate back to our teachers to give that information feedback?

We recruit for all of our programs here as we are making sure our MAs get to our MA programs, our dental assistants get to our dental program. And along with that, we have the opportunity when we don't have enough staffing and we need to push date, our staff are all on the same page. How do we communicate that information back to our customers so we don't lose customers, so they continually stay informed about their choices and about what opportunities they have available with us and throughout our organization? So Lorilee did cover some of that information. And I will pass it on to Jake.

Jacob Holmes: Good morning. Thank you for having me. I'm going to speak about partnerships in real time with One Stop and how that creates opportunities for some of our students here in Sutter County and the surrounding counties, along with how we collaborate with the One Stop throughout the year. So the first real-time example I'm going to give you Lorilee just touched on.

We just had our first large career fair. It was held at our fairgrounds here. It was for juniors and seniors. It encompassed three counties. Almost every high school in all three counties participated. We had 530 students and 80 industry partners. And it was a huge success. It was our first large one that we have had. We're looking to expand it to have two next year and try to keep that momentum rolling for the years to come.

But without that partnership with One Stop to be able to bring industry partners to the table, we wouldn't be able to create this for our community. It was a huge success. Another partnership example, Sutter County Superintendent of Schools was just awarded a California Apprenticeship Initiative grant. And we at Sutter County Adult Ed partnered with an industry partner in the area to create a cybersecurity and information technology pre-apprenticeship program.

And we can get the students. We can work with the program. But without the One Stop, who provides resume building, career readiness workshops for these students, and then they are able to help place them in the work environment-- they have a great partnership with Sunsweet, who picked up a lot of these students that went through this program. We wouldn't be able to complete the cycle without them. So those are two real-time examples of how our partnership benefits students in our area, as well as the industry partners in the area.

Throughout the year, we conduct professional development. We have two large professional development meetings with the One Stop. The first one of the year is held at our outdoor school, Shady Creek. Sutter County Superintendent of Schools owns that. And during this time, we conduct team building activities. We review both individual and department goals for the year. We break up into three groups-- student services, support staff, and instructors. And both the One Stop and the Adult Ed staff participate in those groups.

We blend into those three groups, and we go over the goals for next year or for the current year. And we talk about what's working well, what processes we need to change, are there any barriers that are stopping us from serving our students and clients to the best of our ability? So at the end of the year, we hold another PD right at the end of the program year. We go over a lot of those same things, but at the same time, we also tour our entire organization.

So we go through each department, answer basic questions, make sure that we know if there are any new employees, new processes. And we're able to keep everybody connected. So those are our two big PDs for the year. And then throughout the year, our data manager holds weekly-- or monthly, I'm sorry, support staff meetings. And Lorilee holds weekly managers meetings. So we're always in contact with the One Stop. And without them, we could not provide the services that we do for our students.

And then vice versa for One Stop. If they didn't have us, they would have a very difficult time providing for their clients. So it's a great partnership that we have. I'm going to turn it back over to Lorilee.

Lorilee Niesen: Thank you. Thank you, Jake. I know our time is almost up for our portion, but what's nice about having so many people on our team is we can continue to pivot, to reflect the needs of our community as well as our staff. Blaire mentioned surveys. After each professional development event, we do surveys. We survey our students. We survey our staff to see how can we improve, how can we make it better?

So as long as we continue this continuous improvement cycle in trying to maintain this positive relationship that we have with our One Stop, then I think we'll continue to do good things for our community and our students. So with that, I'm going to pass back to Blaire.

Blaire Toso: Super. Thank you. I love this image of all of you working together to identify the needs of your community, additional training that really centers the students and their needs, and then that seamless transition. And thank you for mentioning professional development because I think that's really important and a key component of these programs. Thank you very much. I'm going to move quickly through this so we make sure we get everyone on. I would like to move the slides forward and bring Stephanie on camera. So take it away, Stephanie.

Stephanie Flaucher: Hi, everyone. I'm thrilled to be here today. Thank you for having me. My name is Stephanie Hasakis Flaucher. I'm the associate director of secondary programs at Kirkwood Community College in East Central Iowa. So I bet you didn't think you were going to hear from somebody in Iowa today, but here we are. I have just a little slideshow presentation that I put together based on a child care IET IELCE program that we piloted last spring. Next slide, please.

So just to contextualize a little bit what the outlook looks like in Iowa right now, we have very, very low unemployment rates. So unemployment rates across the country, obviously, are very low. And in Iowa, especially in our region, they're even lower. So we're looking at 2.8% unemployment in our seven-county service area in our workforce region.

In the county that we piloted the program that I'm about to talk about it-- the county in which the program that I'm about to talk about was in, the unemployment rate is at 2.3%. So we're talking about a lot of jobs out there, and not a lot of people to fill them because a lot of folks are already working. Next slide, please.

My slide got a little wonky here. But before I jump too far in, I just wanted to remind everyone of something I remind myself and my team frequently is that we all exist within a complex ecosystem that supports workforce. So that means your core partner agencies, your Title I, III, and IV agencies, your local workforce board, your school or your organization, and then your greater community. There are always opportunities to partner and to find spaces that you can collaborate.

One of those collaborative spaces came out of actually a community meeting that I was in. Gosh, it started a few years ago even prior to the pandemic where I was on a task force in Johnson County, Iowa that had a goal of addressing the myriad child care issues that we were seeing in our region. So we know that it's a multifaceted challenge. It's not going to be fixed by one problem.

But I was able to go to that meeting with a pretty handy elevator pitch-- next slide, please-- that I could share with stakeholders at that meeting and get our name out there and put something together. So we create customized contextualized English language programming to directly support local workforce needs. That's what we share when we're meeting with businesses, when we're meeting with community members.

And it's meaningful, right? It's very meaningful for all of the folks who are not only engaged in workforce, in the greater workforce area or in education, but it's meaningful for business owners, too. So I'm going to talk briefly about a little program that we put together. If any of you were at COABE a couple of weeks ago and came to my session, I've lifted some of these slides from that session. So it might look familiar if you were there. Next slide, please.

We put together a seven-step process for developing customized and contextualized programming-- thanks, Diana-- for putting together customized contextualized programming within our programming, and really with a focus on partnering with businesses for what we call Earn And Learn programs. So I'm just going to share a couple of slides from that bigger presentation.

The first is our curriculum outline and development. So once we've identified a business we know that we're going to work with them and everyone agrees that we're going to move forward, we conduct a job shadow. And that is a very important piece of our process. So in the example I'm about to show you with our child care center, we actually shadowed at three different child care centers. We went around and just took notes, and made sure that we really understood what kind of language those students would need to be able to use to be successful in that workforce setting.

We worked with the employer to identify any employment milestones or potential measurable skill gains that we could use in this and write into this program. And we came up with quite a few, as you'll see in a couple slides. We synthesized all the materials. So any realia that we were able to gather from these child care centers, including reports, injury reports that they give to parents, or if the kids were getting in a fight about something, one of the centers had a little form that they had to fill out. That kind of stuff.

So we synthesize all of those materials, and then we plan for how we're going to collect our data at the end. What are we looking for? How are we going to collect it? We develop a curriculum outline that basically is a high-level zoomed out look at the course. We try to see, week-by-week, what we would like to cover within the constraints of maybe four hour a week, six hour a week class. We determine scope and sequence of the course.

We have weekly themes, daily objectives, all that kind of stuff. We identify our target CASAS levels, and then make sure that we're always thinking about the civics, the employability, and workplace culture. With our child care example, we did have an on the job training, OJT, component, which was very, very meaningful as well. Next slide, please.

Once we finish the course outline, we would share that with the business and then kind of go back and forth and negotiate what we felt is important, what the business felt is important, and make any adjustments as necessary. We develop a recruitment plan if they need it. So this business might be hiring. In the case of our child care centers, they were hiring. They didn't have enough workers, and they were needing some folks to bring in.

And so we helped with a recruitment plan where they actually recruited out of our leveled ESL classes. And then we do some supplemental training for their incumbent, their native-speaking employees as well because we find that that helps improve retention for the non-native English speaking folks who are coming into a workforce as kind of a minority group. Then, finally, we get all the nitty-gritty ironed out. Next slide, please.

We identify our instructor. We make sure that we have all of the logistics set up. And then the instructor gets to work on the lesson plan development. And then, of course, any internal operations staff that you need to let know about new classes that start, you want to make sure that you're doing that as well. Next slide, please.

So at the end of all of these steps, after several years and a pandemic, we came out with a pilot program that we called Child Care Foundations. So this was a 140-hour course that ran over the course of 18 weeks for students in that low-intermediate ESL level or above. And they attained five credentials, five individual credentials, within the scope of the course, which each count as a measurable skill gain.

Of course, each student only gets one measurable skill gain, but we had a supported plan for them to complete their essentials child care pre-service certificate, their passport to early childhood education, universal precautions, mandatory reporter training, and then heart saver pediatric first aid, CPR, and AED. The students all are still employed at their respective child care centers.

So the way that this course was actually set up and our gold standard for courses that we are running with businesses is that the students are hired day one as regular employees. They move into the program as part of their onboarding, but they should be paid-- ideally, they're paid for their time in class. So this is really part of the onboarding process, and they are treated as regular employees from the time that they start.

So we had to put our heads together on this because we have a rule that we won't run a class with fewer than five students just in an effort to be good stewards of our funding. So in these communications with the child care centers and the child care workforce task force, we determined that there weren't really a lot of centers that needed a lot of employees, but there were tons of centers who needed one or two.

So for our pilot model, we collaborated with three different child care centers, and each of them hired a couple folks to come on and take this course. We wrapped up about a year ago with our first cohort. We're running two more right now. Everybody is still employed, so that's really cool. Then for those students who maybe aren't looking for work right now, but are interested in child care as a career, we do have a bridge pathway to pre-certificate programs for students who are interested in getting their child care development certificate, their CDA. Next slide, please.

So this is our first cohort. Very happy, all smiles on their last day of class. I just always like to include this type of thing because it's a reminder of who we're working for, right? Who's really benefiting from this? With their lovely instructor, of course. And then next slide. Sorry it's blurry. This is actually a Front Page Sunday story that ran in our local newspaper about this program and how it had really affected some of the folks who had participated in it, as well as the business owners who now are not desperately searching for workers.

That is all. Oh, next slide. I have one more slide for you. That's all. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out. I do have that QR code there if you are interested in the more robust toolkit from the presentation that I did at COABE. So thank you very much. Back to Blaire.

Blaire Toso: Thanks, Stephanie. That is great. And, yes, you didn't say too much about the fact that you created a toolkit. She has some really wonderful resources that she is willing to share, which is always a boon to us in adult education who don't necessarily have a lot of time. Also, thank you for providing an example about centering students, collaborating, giving them the opportunity to gain employment. Congratulations on those employment outcomes.

And also, thinking about MSGs as well as really understanding the content that your adult learners are going to have to engage with on the job. That makes success higher, right? Thank you. And I'm going to quickly move over to Bill, who is going to talk to us a little bit about his community health care worker.

Bill Shaffer: Thanks, Blaire. My name is Bill Schaffer. I'm with Northampton Community College as the director for the Center for College and Career Readiness out of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Our first venture into our IET and health care was our community health worker. The community health worker is a liaison between a doctor, and the health care system, and the patient, and the idea that the community health worker would provide or link the patient to resources within the community.

We've actually gone beyond that and involved CBOs, Community-Based Organizations, and placing community health workers there. Initially, the Community Health Worker program started in 2009. It was created through the East Central Pennsylvania Area Health Education Center using stimulus funds. They gathered health care agencies, community-based organizations, and Career Link to develop 23 different modules for approximately 75 hours of training.

So in the spirit of not recreating the wheel, we adopted their curriculum and subcontracted the area Health Education Center to teach the occupational training portion of the IET. With that being said, we actually added 25 hours to their curriculum to bring a more robust educational experience to our ESL students. So our current program, like I said, runs 100 hours at 10 hours per week for occupational training. And the other 10 hours, students are getting adult education or workplace prep activities.

So students are engaged with us for 20 hours per week for 10 weeks. What they also students need to do is achieve a reading life and work score of 225 or greater. And we also use informal assessments for listening, and writing, and speaking, as well as digital literacy. The students have to complete an interview process before coming into the program, as they would for applying for a job.

Once they're in that program, they move through these modules that contain either classroom observation, quizzes, competency checklist, which have all been vetted by employers prior to that. And I should take a step back. When this was created, we used the health care systems to vet the curriculum. And what our students are learning is the same content that they are sending incumbent workers back to Northampton to get trained on. So they know exactly what that curriculum content is.

When students complete the program, they're leaving with a community health worker certification, mandated reporter certification, CPR, AED, mental health first aid, and crisis prevention intervention. Those four certificates that I mentioned are the add-ons to the original 75-hour curriculum.

In addition to that, we have partnered with health care systems to provide an informal interviewing and a meet-and-greet process with our students, where students can present their capstone project on one of the needs that they found in their community regarding health care. So during that informal interview process, students will present on diabetes, cancer, other, again, health topics relevant to their area of concern or those of the community.

Upon completion of that presentation, the HR department usually meets with students after the fact and explains to them what the hiring process looks like, what different departments within those health care settings are hiring, and then not only to submit to the global HR portal, but to also email the HR supervisor so that they know they've applied. So that was a nice thing being able to create this curriculum with the employer is that they're already walking in with those other certifications they're currently retraining folks on, which I think is huge.

In addition to that, what our college does is award three college credits that they can move into other health care or social work-related areas. And our students are also invited to college commencement with our other graduates, which I think is a wonderful incentive. And the feedback that we have gotten from our students is the knowledge that they've gained by guest speakers that come into our program and talk about different topics is that they've been able to address some of their barriers to education.

They've been able to present what they've learned, those resources to family members and other community members. Even though they're not employed as a community health worker yet, they've been able to utilize these resources for the benefit of themselves, their family, and the community. And I think that's one more of the life-changing things that we have seen throughout our program. And I'm certainly glad that we can make that engaging, and relevant, and, again, a life-changing situation for our folks.

I know what was mentioned, Blaire, in a previous slide about recognizing prior learning experiences of our students. If students choose to go on to classes at Northampton or another higher education institution, we sit down with students and we have a meeting with our director of prior learning assessment where they will look and evaluate their transcript, and they will recommend awarding college credits based on their lived experiences or education outside from their home country.

And I think that's a very pivotal piece for us. And for some students, we were able to award up to 10 college credits in addition to the three that our students get for completing the program. So that has been an accelerated pathway for individuals. And we just wanted to create a program in respect to folks that are coming from their home country that have a certification or professional credential in health care and social work, and give folks an opportunity so that they don't have to start over. And this is one of those vehicles that we're using to do that.

So I know everybody short on time. I want to recognize that, but I thank you very much. Certainly, my contact information is there. If you have any questions or you would like me to share our resources or our content, we would be more than happy to do so. And certainly, without our partnerships with our area health education centers, and Career Links, and our health care systems, this would not be possible. So I appreciate your time and attention. And I'll turn it back to Blaire.

Blaire Toso: Thanks, Bill. Thanks. That's a fabulous project that you have put together. And I really appreciate that your adult learners are being centered within the community of the community college every student is, as well as the micro credentialing and the pathway that you've built in, particularly that piece about prior learning and then leaving with additional credits that they can transfer on. I know we have a couple questions in the chat, and then I also had a question for you, Bill.

But let's start with what's in the chat and open up to anybody else who has questions. So the first one I think is directed to Stephanie, but I think it's a really interesting question for all of you about, how do you address the challenges around technology accessibility or digital literacy in the vocational ESL or ESL programs that utilize a software or digital component?

Stephanie Flaucher: That is such a good question. So as far as accessing technology, we actually have a technology lending library that we use for any of our secondary program students, where they can check out either a laptop or an iPad for a period of an entire session. So that's how we address the access piece.

And then with regard to their digital literacy skills, we incorporate that into every single class that we build. And part of the partnership with a business is that if there is a digital component that their employees are expected to be able to do, we actually use that specific tool in our classes. So in a manufacturing example for a course that we just completed, they have something called Red Zone, which is where they do all of their internal communication.

And it's instant messaging as well as emailing. And we had a whole section of writing an instant message versus writing an email, and what that kind of communication looks like and how it differs. So we really do try to incorporate all of that into all of the classes that we're building. And in addition to that, we also use North Star Digital Literacy for those very basic students who are just getting their feet wet with technology.

Blaire Toso: Bill or Lorilee and team, do you have anything you'd like to add to that about the embedding the digital literacy and access into your training courses?

Bill Shaffer: Yeah, we do the same thing. We have a loaner library for tablets and such. We also, as students progress through the ESL levels, we have a digital literacy checklist that we can document student competencies and make sure that they are prepared before they enter occupational training, that they have the skills needed to be able to be successful and complete the program. Jake,

Lorilee Niesen: Do you want to talk about the apps that we use in our ESL programs for our students?

Jacob Holmes: So we have co-apps. And we partnered with our technology instructor for the digital literacy side. She teaches for us two days a week within our adult program, but then we had her for two weeks with all of our ESL cohorts. So that's our digital literacy side. We have a loaner program as well here at Sutter County Superintendent of Schools that our students are then able to access technology if they need it.