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Speaker: OTAN, Outreach and Technical Assistance Network.

Amy Pattin: Hi, I'm Amy Patton. I am the principal at CSP Sacramento. CSP Sac is the most violent prison in the state, and we are the third most violent in the country. Often, if you see things-- incidents that happen in the newspaper, it says Folsom. It's actually not Folsom state prison, which is actually right next door to my prison, but it is my institution.

So we have THE bad of the bad throughout the state. We are considered what's called a level 4 institution, and we have a lot of incarcerated individuals that may never be released. And yet we still have a full academic program, and CTE program, and college, and, and, and. In our institution, we try and teach our students through to all of the things that are going on with us.

And sometimes they do get to go home and we want to support them better as they end up in your schools, hopefully and what we can do to encourage them to end up in your school. So that's really where Patrick and I came in with the idea. And Patrick formerly taught at CSP Sacramento, so we can commiserate with. That's like-- and I know some of you also are incarcerated fellows, so you know what we experienced over time as we go through.

PATRICK O'NEILL: But we're here from prison but we go home after. So you're in your office if you're happy with all adult school and Happyville, California, and you get a phone call. Hi, my name is Hope.

I just got out of the jail. I want to come to your school. Can I come talk to you? What are you thinking? You think to yourself, what? What is your expectation as this guy walks in the door? Share with your partners what you're thinking, your fears.

Amy Pattin: What does that look like for you all? What do you do? What do you say when somebody pulls up in that kind of situation?

PATRICK O'NEILL: What do you expect them to be like when they walk in your door?

Audience Member: Scary.

Lynee Ruvalcaba: Well, I was telling him that I do get that call and sometimes and I'm like, yeah, it's scary. But I feel like I changed the way I speak to them because I've become more aware of what am I trying to say because I don't want to upset them over the phone and the come in.

So my mind and the way I just started talking to them kind of changes once they call, yeah, I just got out of jail. I'm like, OK. How are you today? Like, let me make sure he understands I'm here to help, you know. But actually, physically in my mind, I'm just expecting but scary. Tough looking person coming into the room.

Amy Pattin: Do they ever show up?

Lynee Ruvalcaba: Yes Yes. I think we've reached out with Patrick a couple times trying to like, can you help us? I don't know what to do. He showed up and now I don't know-- how do I help him?

Amy Pattin: Anyone else?

AUDIENCE MEMBER CDCR Teacher: I think coming from teaching junior high and then going to work at Cal [muffled voice] another level four, where-- I work with both them, actually. You kind of-- you don't know you're scared at first, even though I knew where I was applying.

So when you ask that question, a lot of us are like, well, it's kind of hard to answer now because we've been in there for about eight years now and so you know what you're going to get. And a lot of them are-- they look scary, but they're not scary.

Amy Pattin: Yeah. We might be more afraid of them than they are of us. In fact, it's a huge thing to have them come in and say these things. Yeah. You were saying?

Lynee Ruvalcaba: We need to really have some empathy because you can imagine the different types of reactions they have to go through every day.

PATRICK O'NEILL: Especially if the person she described is walking down the street or to Nordstrom.

Lynee Ruvalcaba: Also for me, to elaborate on what she said is we have to be very mindful because remember, these individuals are coming back to our public school system, had a really bad experience in school already. So they were not successful students, right? And they might have that misconception or-- Oh, I hated that teacher or that subject area. So we have to be more empathetic and understanding and hopefully change that mindset to be more welcoming and more inclusive.

Amy Pattin: I want to add also, for folks who maybe are-- what do you expect to see. This might not be something you expect to see, but something you definitely will see. The person in front of you has, at a minimum, spent two years learning to live their life by what somebody else tells them to do.

Nothing that they do is unscripted. Nothing that they do is uncontrolled. They are looking at you. You are now the authority in their educational world. So you probably would not expect it, but you're definitely getting someone who is nervous. They're in a completely-- just for full transparency, I know someone who this past week, had a relative come home.

And she was unprepared and she reached out to me and she was unprepared for his need to look to her to tell him what to do and how to be a successful human being because he hasn't been able to do those things. And in education, that's a double edged sword, right? Here we are trying to set them up for success without understanding how they perceive everything we say as this is what I have to do and it's overwhelming. That could be a tipping point.

PATRICK O'NEILL: Very much so. So I want to give you an insider's look at what our folks look like. They're 18 to 80, sometimes older. They're mostly all male. Women do naughty things too. We have three or four places for them but mostly for male. Yes, they are tatted up.

Very often, they're not tatted up by choice. That's imposed on them by different policies. So you can't always say, [muffled voice] or read anything into it because they've been told. As Lynne has said, they're scared of living in freedom.

Think about the first time you went away from home and went to college, and then like what quadrillion triple that. It's that much more. It's terrifying. I was saying so to someone at lunch. I've dealt with guys who came to us at 13 and they're 46, 47 going home.

And you ask some questions like when you get dropped off at the station where you're going to, how are you going to call-- how are you going to notify your family that you're there? We'll, I'll just use the payphone. If it was the '70s called, they want their answer back. It's just not there. So they have so much to learn. They don't make good choices. Hello. Look where they're coming from. Clearly, they're not making good choices.

This has been hinted out already and this is nobody in this room, but they suffered in the hand of bad education and bad educators. The gentleman today really hit the nail on the head when he was talking about this, is that this is that group of people that you have to dance with differently to get them to feel confident and to feel heard and to feel comfortable.

I've done this. We didn't rehearse this, but I've done this a million times. Do like this for me. Everybody, please do like this for me. Now move your fingers over 1. How's that feel?

Audience Member: Different.

PATRICK O'NEILL: Different, strange, weird, uncomfortable. Is it wrong?

Audience Member: For me.

PATRICK O'NEILL: But it's not-- I wouldn't go to a child sitting if doing that moment. No, it's not wrong, but it's just uncomfortable. And that's what we're asking these guys to do, is be uncomfortable.

You're going to see-- this has already been alluded at. Crusty exteriors, but cream filled minerals. They are relational learners. They are screaming-- this is going to sound weird, they're screaming to be loved and appreciated and known. They're screaming out for it. It's probably the psychological thing that may have led them to their life.

And then lastly, there is the Specter game. We have to be aware of it, that they're calling you, they're committing to making a change. So they've taken a big step already, but it's still there. Gang involvement isn't always a choice. And you have to be aware of it and you have to give some thought about what you're going to maybe have to do if this gets drawn in your door.

It's a real thing. They have an inability to pay or buy supplies, so you have to be gentle there. I know that from what I've heard from my colleagues at the adult schools, this is an issue already in some areas, but you need to be hyper aware of it. Write down the same. If you need a binder, we can't help you with it but if you go to ABC store change-- you might need to help them that way, OK?

So I have a quick video for you. It's going to say 52.5 minutes or something down there. Ignore that. You're going to just watch the first minute or so of this video so you can see some faces and some environment.

Program Participant 1: Whether it was addiction, anger, violence, criminality, whatever these issues were internally for each of us, there was a safe place to address that, to explore that, to start getting the therapy, the help that we needed, that I needed to address those issues.

Program Participant 2: I really wasn't involved in school when I was on the street. I had really no intention of ever getting a GED or high school diploma. I'm one of five children, the oldest, and I'm the last one to receive either my GED or high school diploma. It took a while and took a lot of work, a lot of determination. It can be done. Anybody that wants it, you can get it. Don't ever give up.

Program Participant 3: It's really amazing how when I came in, I had a shell.

Amy Pattin: CDCR actually has their own YouTube.

Program Participant 3: People can approach--

Amy Pattin: I'm going to have to figure out how to escape.

PATRICK O'NEILL: CDCR does have its own YouTube. You can go there and watch the whole video if you are interested. CDCR, we really didn't say, so I'm going to back up a little bit, California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. We're the ones shining the light around the rehabilitation center. This is what we do. Any questions so far?

Audience Member: Can you spell the acronym one more time?

PATRICK O'NEILL: Sure. CDCR. California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. We're trying to get those two words switched, but it's not happening.

Audience Member: Sorry.

PATRICK O'NEILL: So, Amy, I'm going to go and you can pick up. One of the programs we have is called transitions. And oddly enough, both Amy and I came to the state of California, hired as new teachers, and taught this class called transitions. Within transitions, we prepare them with career and job readiness skills and financial literacy skills.

It was originally a five-week course, and now it's taking 10 weeks. And the people we enroll are at least two years from the house or less. We don't say home for a reason. Many more people don't have a home to go to.

So we have to neutralize that and say they're two years from the house. We don't use the term release because they're not really being released from custody, 98% of them because parole is still custody. And then we have a segment of the population that they take a step outside the door and [muffled voice]

So we say they're so far from the house. And we work with them and ultimately, they walk away with what we call the portfolio. The portfolio is the things that all of us know to put together as we grow up. Things like our Social Security card, our driver's license number, our birth certificate, our home address, our vaccine cards. All those sorts of grown up papers, our guys don't know anything about and what to do with them.

Amy Pattin: I don't know. It's a little crazy. Transition.

PATRICK O'NEILL: We did like a few bars.

Amy Pattin: Like behind bars? Now, it's not going to make me go like this. It really just wanted to show you that whole video, so go to the CDCR YouTube website where You can see it. But life behind bars. For our incarcerated individuals, every minute is scheduled for them and scheduled in a way they're in their cell, when they eat, where they go, when they go.

Education within CDCR is compulsory if they need a high school diploma or a GED. So they're required to be in class. They don't get to choose what time they go to class. We tell them what time they're getting into class.

They get assigned to a job, a porter job, a janitor job. Go work in the laundry, go work in the kitchen. They get assigned to those jobs. They don't get wasted. So every minute of their day, every day is scheduled. They have a little bit of wiggle room, whether or not they want to go to yard, for example, which they have the opportunity to do every day. But they don't get a choice of what time that yard is offered for them.

PATRICK O'NEILL: Or who else is out there.

Amy Pattin: Correct. So they don't have those choices. So if they're coming to your adult school and they need a lot of classes still and you might say to them, well, you need these 10 classes, which ones do you want to work on right now?

They're not used to making their own choices. They're not used to getting to make their own choices. So some support is really important for them. Some support of-- like you would do with a little kid. Well, you can choose this or this. Give them two choices.

PATRICK O'NEILL: But now with that choice.

Amy Pattin: Right? Like as an adult, well, you need an English class, you need a math class, and you need an elective. And you're allowed to take two classes at the same time. I would suggest that you maybe do a difficult class, such as an English or a math, and then let's pick an elective, something fun that you might really enjoy. So helping them. They need that extra guidance, instead of just take 10 classes. Here's what you got to work on, you get to decide what you're going to do.

PATRICK O'NEILL: And this is very opposite of what we learned in andragogy, is that adult learners are supposed to have choice. So we're kind of telling you the opposite, but you start slow and get smarter because these are people who are going to make-- they don't have any auto choices at this point. They're having to make choices about every little thing. Sorry.

Audience Member: When you say that they don't have choices, is this only level 4 prisons or is it like all of them throughout the state?

Amy Pattin: As a level 4 institution, they have the least amount of it. So some of the lower level institutions, they do have more choices. But still, they're being directed. They're still in prison. They're still directed when they can do certain things.

At the lower level institutions such as Folsom state prison or San Quentin-- everybody knows San Quentin, yard is much more fluid, for example. When they can go out to exercise or hang out outside. Those opportunities are more fluid for them, but they're still getting patted down a lot of times when they're making that choice, they're leaving their cell or not having to ask to leave their cell.

Again, the choices are really minimal and they're taking [muffled voice]. That goes with the control. And as Patrick already said, sometimes they have been incarcerated since they were teens. So they went through the DJJ system, the county juvenile halls, all those kinds of things, and then came into our adult system at 18.

We have a lot of those folks that they were in trouble when they were children and they just continued into our system of adulthood. And so they have not been out on the streets for 20 years, 30 years, 40 years. At this point--

PATRICK O'NEILL: They've been inside more.

Amy Pattin: And especially of their adult life, but sometimes even of their entire life. Well, when I was at Folsom, we had family members, a father and a son, brothers, both housed together at the same institution. So it is a family situation-- a pattern that they're following.

PATRICK O'NEILL: Again, we're back to change.

Audience Member: Question. Tri-valley area has Santa Rita Jail. Probably, it's less severe and they're likely getting out at some point, unless they are like transferred to somewhere else. But how do we know, do they have this kind of education outlet to them? How do we know without searching from our work laptops? Do we just grab a phone and then we talk to them and then the Department?

Amy Pattin: That is coming.

PATRICK O'NEILL: That's coming.

Audience Member: I don't know how to link my school to those--

PATRICK O'NEILL: We're going to have that solution.

Audience Member: OK. Perfect.

PATRICK O'NEILL: Thank you for setting us up.

Audience Member: Yeah.

Amy Pattin: I think that's perfect.

Audience Member: For sure.

PATRICK O'NEILL: I'm going to take a sidewalk and come here. You bring up a good point. This is very touchy and if they get offended very easily, if you say, Oh, you're coming from jail. Well, no, jail is the peanuts. That's just County. They've been to prison. And then if somebody coming from the bed, say they're from the penitentiary.

So you don't say, Oh, you're coming from prison. No, that was in the penitentiary. So that's just a little vocabulary thing. Michael Santos is a former felon who was in penitentiary. Served 26 of a 49 year sentence for running drugs.

He pretty much fully rehabilitated. He's out, last march. He celebrated complete freedom. He was off parole. He's written many books. And he uses some-- I use some of his curriculum in the program I manage. I went with he and a director and some folks to visit San Quentin last year sometimes, and he was addressing a room full of inmates.

And one of them asked, what was different for you on the streets after 26 years? And he said three things, I'm just not used to the freedoms. It's just-- it was so weird that my wife-- I wanted my wife to tell me when to go to the bathroom, when to eat, when to go to bed.

He said the other thing is the bed was too comfortable. I had to sleep on the floor for like years because it didn't feel right. And the last thing was he couldn't eat with metal utensils. It tasted weird to him. He kept eating with plastic. Imagine. That sounds so small, but that's their life. Thank you, [muffled name]

Amy Pattin: There we are.

PATRICK O'NEILL: This is where you all need to be involved a little bit. We're going to talk a little bit about our school, and then we want to know about your school. Our schools are a full school within a prison. They have a coach. We have a special Ed teacher. We have the principal. We have the vice principal.

We have all the teachers. Everything you can imagine. We do kindergarten through PhD. We don't to PhD, we partner, but that's another whole-- that's another presentation. We have a full CTE program. Now, you can't take every possible CTE area at every prison. We do have one prison that used to be a women's prison and they had a cosmetology program.

When it turned into a male prison, they left the cosmetology program for the men. So there's a variety across the state. We are all-- we have all credentialed teachers, though due to a hiccup politically, when this happen, we have to hire K-12 credential, single subject or multiple subject and we can't use an adult print credential.

Say it with me now, let's do it. It just is what it is. It's what we've inherited. We're fully accredited. Many of our schools-- not all, the chairs and the walls are bolted to the floor. So I said this a million times.

I doubt anyone in here could learn effectively in the environment we expect our students to learn in. They're loud. They're acting out, extremely loud. It's very difficult. The wall on the back where the kids can go and where you can still see them? That's where we work. In level 4.

Not comfortable for teachers like her. Me neither. These are grown men. And the media want the security panels. Level one, non-violent pretty much. A little bit more freedom. You expect more things from them. Level four, scary. And that's what we do. So tell me about-- tell me about school. What's an adult school like? Push button. No? OK. What's an adult school like?

Audience Member: Mobile furniture.

PATRICK O'NEILL: OK. Read it. Mobile furniture.

Audience Member: They have independent studies too.

PATRICK O'NEILL: Independent study.

Audience Member: Access to technology.

PATRICK O'NEILL: They haven't even gotten there yet. Too much for them. Can use-- can I use the word normal school?

Audience Member: No.

PATRICK O'NEILL: No?

Audience Member: Not too much.

Amy Pattin: So what is the day look like for students at your school? Daytime, nighttime, flexible hours, flexibility, a lot of choices.

PATRICK O'NEILL: Do you have-- in the adult schools on the street of the school-- like when I was a principal of an elementary and high school, I was on the campus at 6:30 or seven o'clock in the morning. Same. And then the campus, when I was lucky, was close by 10:00 at night. Same, right?

Amy Pattin: They don't have officers everywhere either.

Audience Member: Right.

PATRICK O'NEILL: We don't. So don't think that I have a room full of 18 murderers with a cop standing in them.

Audience Member: No, I'm saying the adult schools don't even have an officer.

PATRICK O'NEILL: Oh, yeah [overlapping voices] officer [overlapping voices] Maybe they do.

Audience Member: But it's mostly truancy.

PATRICK O'NEILL: Your students go home at night?

Audience Member: Yes.

PATRICK O'NEILL: Right. I like to say that I teach it in an away school in a gated community. That's what these people do. OK. All right. OK. We did that. Well, I have to go back?

Audience Member: Yeah.

PATRICK O'NEILL: I'm sorry. I shouldn't do this. We want to know this.

Amy Pattin: So a few of the things, as we are preparing because Patrick talked about with our transition class that we both used to teach and just trying to prepare our students for release or to the gate. We try and help them get a California ID as best we can, a Social Security number, making sure that they know it. And to be honest, a lot of them don't.

Or what they thought they knew their Social Security number as, that's not really their Social Security Number. I went through that trying to help a student with Pell Grant when we started our RBA program when I was at Folsom state prison. Everywhere in his record had a certain number and he believed that was his number. And he had been incarcerated for 20 plus years. And his parents thought that was his number. Yes.

And yet the federal government said, no, that's not your number. You don't get Pell grant money, and he was going to get kicked out of our RBA program that we were just starting. I was on the phone with him in my office on speaker, talking to social security, trying to work out what his number was. And we got a blessing on the phone who actually then worked it out that we could get his number for him.

But that's something really difficult that we take for granted. We call up, we go down to an office or something. Those steps are really difficult for our students. Multi-step, multi-tasks are really difficult for them. But we try as best we can to make sure that they have that information and know that they need that information when they're getting ready to go out.

We have a resume. When we talk transition, we gave them resumes. My students, luckily, I was able to work out that they could get on a computer, type it, and then we were able to print it. A lot of hurdles when I was doing that. Patrick students were using newsprint. So--

PATRICK O'NEILL: Or construction paper.

Amy Pattin: I was going to say kindergarten. Yes, think back to that old school newsprint and handwritten.

PATRICK O'NEILL: With a golf pencil.

Amy Pattin: We were setting them up as best we could. And think about what are they-- why would they even need a resume if they've been incarcerated for a long time? What kind of skills would they have? Well, they were maybe a porter, as we call them, in corrections. They were a porter, which is a janitor. Well, [muffled] Who do they work for, Patrick?

PATRICK O'NEILL: I trained mine that you work for the state of California. That's who paid you. $0.90 an hour. 90? Well, I heard good ones.

Amy Pattin: Janitor, $0.80 an hour. 0.13 I think would have [muffled]

PATRICK O'NEILL: OK. So you don't want to say, I work at San Juan Oh, you're a CEO? No. You were a janitor for the state of California. We now have a law that's called ban the box. Employers, except employers in certain categories can't ask that question.

I would challenge you. And you don't need to know this. If they are restricted from being at a school or their restrictions, they won't go near you. So you don't need to know. But if they volunteer, you need to be prepared to support them.

Amy Pattin: They might have their rap sheet. So what do they do while they were incarcerated? I would encourage you not to look at it. If they happen to come to you and they're like, here's my papers and you're going through them [muffled voices]. I almost never look up what our students are in for because I don't want to know.

CDCR, the R was added about 15 years ago, which is rehabilitation. And all of us, I believe, are here for rehabilitation. So I don't even know what they did on the worst day of their life. And then we have our transcripts.

A transcript or a record of achievement that says what they did, what class they were assigned to. So ADE. We all know what ADEs are. So what tests they took, what scores they received. We're trying to set them up so they have that. OK.

PATRICK O'NEILL: So what are your requirements? In the perfect world, what are they going to show up with for you?

Audience Member: Transcripts.

Amy Pattin: You need the transcripts.

Audience Member: Yeah, those records.

PATRICK O'NEILL: So the adult schools on the street, what do you want them to show up with?

Audience Member: An ID.

PATRICK O'NEILL: An ID. California ID?

Audience Member: Any ID.

PATRICK O'NEILL: OK. Prison ID?

Amy Pattin: You want the Social Security number.

PATRICK O'NEILL: OK. That's all you need? Gosh, that's easy.

Audience Member: The didn't ask for an ID, and if they say, I don't have it, then we just take the information and still provide it.

PATRICK O'NEILL: Yeah.

Amy Pattin: You do?

Audience Member: Yeah.

Amy Pattin: So they don't have to have a picture ID.

Audience Member: No. Or Social Security number, or immigration status.

PATRICK O'NEILL: Well, now we're done with our presentation. We are. Ask the question and move on to the REA.

Amy Pattin: So our question here, is there any sort of universal as adults school applications?

Audience Member: We all have different applications. Yeah.

PATRICK O'NEILL: In the different districts. Yeah.

Audience Member: What do you mean application? Like to apply for the school units?

Amy Pattin: No, private school. To go to your school.

PATRICK O'NEILL: They might not even need an application.

Audience Member: No.

Amy Pattin: There's not?

Audience Member: No. We have an enrollment application.

Amy Pattin: Oh, OK.

Audience Member: Yeah, we have an enrollment application. It's just from what I've seen. I actually work with the publisher firm, so I see all of the schools all around California. And for the most part, we walk in with your ID and you sign up there at the front desk and that's pretty much it. They'll fill it in with you. Yeah.

PATRICK O'NEILL: That's the best news all day. Let's go on.

Amy Pattin: That is definitely great news.

PATRICK O'NEILL: So this REA or record of educational achievement is a part of the student record that we accumulate through our database. Here is an example of it. Names are blocked to protect the guilty, but it's going to show you everything that they've done. This is just two little segments. So we'll show you all the certificates, all the achievements, all the things they've attempted, all their standardized testing scores, everything, everything, everything.

If we have captured their Social Security number, it may be here. Up here, it's going to give their date of birth, as far as we know. Language. It is going to be from the CDC mark, OK? But this is an extra-- actually a very good source. If you Google CDCR student records, it gives you a phone number that they can call to request one of these to be mailed. Yeah.

Audience Member: If a student is or an adult is assessed for learning disability for that, would they be able to call that number and then get access to that record?

PATRICK O'NEILL: The student disability is protected. They can call and gain their records and send it, but it's not automatically produced on the REA.

AUDIENCE MEMBER CDCR Teacher: CDCR doesn't assess for those disabilities.

Audience Member: Oh, they don't.

AUDIENCE MEMBER CDCR Teacher: No, they only-- if they have a learning disability, it'll be done at the lower levels and a lot of times, CDCR doesn't even have that information.

Audience Member: [overlapping voices] their scanning through song. Yeah.

Audience Member: Yeah. My students used to ask for the records from wherever they had an IP or whatnot, and then it's in psalms. Right.

Lynee Ruvalcaba: You have a comment in the chat from Oscar.

Amy Pattin: Oscar said that primary language can be incorrect as custody is only concerned with preferred language of communication.

AUDIENCE MEMBER CDCR Teacher: That's very true and convenient.

Amy Pattin: Yeah. We are working on it. And IEPs are very few. And my eight years with the state, I've only actually seen a handful of true IEPs when we've gotten a student record. Very small. Yeah. And then--

PATRICK O'NEILL: OK. So go ahead. Do that.

Amy Pattin: We are all-- every institution has their own school, and we are what's accredited. So that K-12 school accredited--

PATRICK O'NEILL: We appreciate it and want to pass it back.

Amy Pattin: And note, these are all the names of our schools.

Audience Member: In California or just your area?

PATRICK O'NEILL: Just in the state of California.

Amy Pattin: In the state of California. Correct. Notice, we didn't put the institution names on here because we are a school. We're a school within a larger institution. And I'll point out that at the bottom there is the phone number that Patrick was referring to call, the 916 number. If you get a student who says, I was incarcerated in state prison within California, you can call that number.

The person will pick up the phone and you can say, I'm looking for records for this person. So we hope that will be helpful for you. If you need more information, if the student says, I was in a high school diploma program while I was incarcerated, yes, we do kind of have a credit recovery in a way to-- really credit recovery, but that's the closest reference I can make for you.

You could call that. We can work on getting actual transcripts so you could see what high school classes they were working on and what we show that they have completed while they were incarcerated with us. And I say the collective us.

PATRICK O'NEILL: And then on the back of this sheet, thanks to Oscar Medina, who is with us virtually today and his team, here's a chart that we use to translate scores--

Amy Pattin: Put it on the slide.

PATRICK O'NEILL: Between Casas, and Tave, and Lexile, and scale scores. So that'll help you if you get an REA and you're like, what's that? It'll help you translate that. OK.

Audience Member: So can I ask a question about that REA. Everybody who's been in any an educational program has one?

PATRICK O'NEILL: An REI? Yes.

Audience Member: And anybody can call that number and ask for it?

PATRICK O'NEILL: No. So the person that answers that phone will identify that person. I don't want to talk about how, but they will, and then it's mailed off to the address we have on file.

Audience Member: So the prospective student has--

PATRICK O'NEILL: The perspective student needs to request it, just like a prospective student needs to request a transcript. Thank you for that. Thank you. OK. So let's talk about-- where the adult school digital literacy. That's the new name, right? OK.

Our students have very little internet experience and almost no netiquette. OK. Our students don't have laptops or laptop adjacent on good days. When she starts to weep, it's not a good day. When things are up and functioning, it's semi good, but we're still existing in the 20th century.

Amy Pattin: With that limited access to technology, they do not have the troubleshooting skills. They don't know, check the power, check your cables, check-- log off and back on, close the window out, open it back up. All those things that I just went through, right? They do not have any of those skills because they haven't had the exposure that we usually would walk through with those things.

Lynee Ruvalcaba: But I think one thing that we're not saying is the students strong desire to learn within CDCR. And right now, I really-- like my boss, Oscar, he had all these smartboards now going to all the prisons.

And so they're being exposed to more and more and more technology than when I started at CDCR eight years ago. And so it's a big, big difference that you see in students right now, especially like with the Achieve 3,000 and their Lexile levels. That program is amazing.

And so students are now-- even though they're 80 years old, they're now on the computer, they're typing, they have laptops that they never thought they were going to use a laptop. And it's been slow but right now, if you walk into classrooms, you see a lot of technology in there right now.

PATRICK O'NEILL: And I don't want to paint too bleak of a picture. What she's saying is exactly true. But again, it goes back to their time. Everything's controlled. So they don't have the same sort of experiences that others have but thank you for that. That was great. Well said.

Amy Pattin: And that goes back to they don't have the time with the technology either. So we get a new laptop, a new tablet, a new whatever, we're like glued to it, right? They get to use that laptop in their classroom for a couple of hours.

AUDIENCE MEMBER CDCR Teacher: Not only that, but what they have access to internet wise is extremely limited. For example, they have laptops in the transitions class, but they can't do anything as far as like-- they can type out a resume. There's no way for the transition teachers to print it for them. So we're still that way even though we got brand new technology. We should be able to do this and they can't. There's no way to even transfer the files.

Lynee Ruvalcaba: They have tablets now too, right? That they do video streaming on and email that they never had before. So that's also something that's really new. And in those tablets, they have a lot of access to different education programs.

PATRICK O'NEILL: They have more choice.

Amy Pattin: They have a lot more choice. That is true. Tablets seems to [muffled] in tablet outside of education about a year, two years ago. So--

PATRICK O'NEILL: Not fully developed yet.

Amy Pattin: Yeah. But you're talking about level 4. Perhaps there are degrees of the level.

PATRICK O'NEILL: So I don't want to minimize the growth we're going through at this point, but one of the things that we discovered with our laptop deployment is that we had anticipated a higher knowledge base than they really had.

And it's in the nitty gritty. So they can get in and use things that are set up for them but when it comes to things like filing systems-- that's one of our biggest issues, is that students are always losing their files, especially in Canvas and other LLMs systems.

Lynee Ruvalcaba: You have a comment from Oscar about the Lexile, Would you like me to open it or?

Amy Pattin: Oh, he gave an updated one. Yeah, there's an updated version of the version table that Patrick just handed out. OK. So we'll make sure- we--

PATRICK O'NEILL: We'll make that available to you.

Lynee Ruvalcaba: Sure.

Amy Pattin: They can be like a little kid with a new toy, just like all of us are. So they're going to check it out in a way, and maybe only want to do that. So every day that they come to class, they're only going to be wanting to be on the computer, not do any of the other tasks educationally that you have set for them.

PATRICK O'NEILL: Oftentimes, they don't have the vocabulary. So think about the time when you had to fix the engineer car or fix the plumbing in your house and you went to a hardware and said-- and you said, I want one of those salmon jiggers that go into the sink over in the corner. That's the reality. I come to something like this, and I'm always picking up new words. So now I know what I can ask for that I didn't have before.

Amy Pattin: They can be really easily frustrated. For example, logging in. I was in a session this morning talking about how to help support students remember their password. Oh just take out your phone and make a new contact and enter your password, which was genius, I thought, thank you very much. But they don't have a cell phone, right?

Well, don't write it down on a piece of paper because then somebody else is going to find it and log in as you, right? Not that they could get very far. But that process, did you type it correctly? I dealt with a student last week trying to get them logged in for an hour. An hour because what they thought are temporary password of their birthday was not these things.

It's one thing, but they said their birthday was something different. So easily frustrated. I was amazed that this man had enough patience to sit there for an hour and try and work through that problem with us. Most of the time, they will get up, they will slam it, they will walk away. I'm done with this. This is stupid.

PATRICK O'NEILL: They need clear and enforced expected use and they need a document. This is their reality. If you have a system where they're on a laptop and they sign it electronically, it's probably not going to get the same amount of attention as if they have that piece of paper.

We heard this morning, we take students from where they are to where you need them to be, and that's where they are in the moment. You can get them there but if you're a real big goal is that you're following these rules, if they haven't signed it, it doesn't really mean something to our guys and gals.

Amy Pattin: They need the expectations set for them. What they can do, what they cannot do. It needs to be spelled out. Click here to go there. You can do this and how to manage that. And then also, when you're talking about an assignment, like there's a due date on that, but more like communication things. It's OK to email me as an instructor, you might say that. Don't email me 20 times in an hour. Or-- which has happened.

Or on the flip side of that, if you respond to them with a question, maybe they didn't know that you're having that communication back and forth, that the expectation is they respond to you within 24 hours or something.

And further with that, maybe if you're going to have some expectations of not using textspeak or slang, or curse words in emails or anything like that. So setting some of those clear expectations. They are really used to having it spelled out for them. Clear boundaries.

PATRICK O'NEILL: So they need maximum support at the beginning. And just don't assume anything. Just support them. So what do they need to feel succeed? They need to feel comfortable and welcome.

My heart felt good when I was hearing that sort of language 50 minutes ago from you all, is that there's welcoming. They really need that. Somebody said they're more afraid of us than we are of them. It's true. You need to really draw them in. Not that anybody in this room would do this, but none of this is going to happen. They have to feel good.

Amy Pattin: I think you've already said that. They need shorter, smaller, chunking it as you see that they're ready to make more decisions. And you can open it up.

PATRICK O'NEILL: We have Oscar Medina. This is for you. We have four primary things we work on. Goals. And one of them is the use of academic language. Our students really within English, have two languages. They have their state language and they have their academic language and we expect them to speak with an academic register. And you should expect the same.

Lynee Ruvalcaba: Oscar said, yay.

Amy Pattin: Time management. We all could probably work on this. That structured you have an assignment that's going to take you this much time. Plan backwards how-- when to start it, what pieces you need. They just need that extra scaffolding of life in general that they haven't had in the past while they were with us.

PATRICK O'NEILL: I think this is just good practice. But be mindful when assigning mentors or pairing people up, OK? Our guys in the classroom have this rule that yard politics don't come in the room.

But like we said in the beginning, the gang stuff is real. So while we may put guys together from different ethnicities-- within a single ethnicity, if you're trying to put two guys together that are in rival gangs, there's at very least, it's probably not going to be much, but there's going to be friction and difficulty.

And we want them to get beyond that, but you need to think about your timing. Brand new person in your school, you want to get them ensconced and rooted. Let them have the easy path and then take on these other challenges. That's a recommendation.

Amy Pattin: We already talked about supplies and where to purchase. They need those extra directions. Go to x, y, z store to buy folders, buy pencil, pens, all those sorts of things. Anything extra, talking about that, a mouse and a dongle. So we're talking about some specific language there with a dongle. They're certainly not going to know where to go find it, so those extra steps.

PATRICK O'NEILL: I know you are already thinking about this, but exemplars are important. And it's back to assume nothing. You can't really say, write a five paragraph essay. OK, what's a paragraph? You're going to have to. And I know you know that already.

Amy Pattin: They may have housing insecurity, along with food, shelter, clothing, all those things. And they may not know how to prioritize what things they need to do. Well, they need food. They need a new coat. They need some other things.

And then telling them, well, they need some folders, and they need paper, and they need this book. And all these things, they're not going to know how to prioritize it, but they're going to show you their new cell phone, right? The best iPhone whatever. They're going to need some help with some of those other things. And I'm just curious, for my own information, I guess, as an adult school, do you help in those situations too? I can't imagine when--

Audience Member: With housing?

Amy Pattin: Yeah.

Audience Member: We do. In a sense that we have a resource navigator. So we have her-- when you need food, go here. Our district has a food pantry. Go here on Friday at this time and they get food. Housing. OK, this is your contact. Go here. Tell them you've been referred by the adult school.

So, Molina, she's our resource navigator. One of the things she does is to make sure that list is always updated, that she makes sure she has a contact person there. That way, we're doing what we call a warm handoff. It's not like, go there and someone in the office will help you. We like to make sure that they know who they can talk to and [muffled voice]

PATRICK O'NEILL: Thank you for using that term because that is exactly what we're trying to create right now, is that warm handoff. And we have another session tomorrow that's similar but different. And that's-- again, bottom line purpose is we want to create a warm hand off. I see these issues all over the place. But there are ways. So we're down to four minutes. Amy.