[MUSIC PLAYING] SPEAKER: OTAN, Outreach and Technical Assistance Network. 

NIKKI ROSS: All right. Hi, everybody. We're Grossmont Adult Ed or Grossmont Adult School. And we wanted to welcome you to our final report. We'll introduce our team. 

JENNIFER OWENS: My name is Jennifer Owens, and I am the director of the EL program. 

BARBARA VAN DYKEN: And I'm Barbara Van Dyke and I'm a follower of the EL program. I'm a teacher. 

JENNIFER HANSON: I'm Jennifer Hanson, and I am a distance learning teacher with our program. 

NIKKI ROSS: And I'm Nikki Ross, and I'm our program specialist. We wanted to start off today with just some big thank yous to everyone at OTAN. We want to thank Destiny for just the way to guide us and organize us with Ideal 101 and 102, Dr. Porter for all of the leadership training-- we learned so much about each other and how we could work together-- And Neda for support, coordination, professional growth, all of the things that you helped us with. 

Also to our wonderful DLAC coach, Cindy Wislofsky, and to our adult ed director, Kim Bellaart who really brought this program to us, let us know about it, gave us the opportunity and allowed us to be part of this project. And really, as a team, we're dedicated to establishing a culture of digital literacy in our EL program and that we hope will serve as a model across our programs. 

JENNIFER OWENS: A little bit about us. We are located in San Diego County, East San Diego county, about 20 miles East. We serve approximately 8,300 students. Those are our CAEP students. Mostly in academic CTE and our reentry program, we run all of the academic GED prep in our correctional facilities in San Diego county, along with CTE training. 

Our EL program serves close to 3,000 students. We have four levels in our EL program basic through English 4. We also have our English 5 and 6 is combined with our ABE program in a block of classes we call foundations. They are pathway based. And a large IET program supporting more than 10 CTE classes. As far as our student makeup, we have 37 languages in our EL program from 80 countries and a high refugee population. 

JENNIFER HANSON: OK, let me make sure. For Ideal 101 and 102 with Destiny, we want to give her major props. I know I learned so much. And also, it put me in a position as a teacher to be an asynchronous learner with Destiny, which was really cool being on the other side of that, especially before launching DL being on Canvas with Venture. So that was really cool to experience that before teaching it to our students. 

Also, we gained insight from colleagues. All of you guys, Folsom county-- Cordova, we visited them. That was amazing. Torrance with Northstar, and they're launching that. We learned a lot from that. Yeah, so all of you guys, thank you so much. We launched our professional learning plan, building our digital literacy foundation, and you guys helped with all of that. So thank you. 

BARBARA VAN DYKEN: All right. So adjusting our plan. Nothing ever goes exactly as you plan. You have to make adjustments along the way. And boy, did we learn that after many adjustments in year one, we came in with all kinds of oh, we're going to do this, we're going to do that, we're going to do everything. And by year two, we quickly realized that, no, we got to come up with a plan and that we need to pare it down to three. 

And the three that we decided to pare down and focus on were professional development and support for teachers to boost digital literacy, identification and integration of digital literacy objectives, or DLOs, and digital literacy and Canvas utilization guidelines for EL programs. So we're pleased to share with you that we've made significant progress on these goals in year two. And thanks to the models that were set here at DLAC, we were really able to embrace them and partner with other schools to not steal your ideas, but to share your best practices. So, OK. 

NIKKI ROSS: So our first goal really sets the stage for us to accomplish the other two. And so it's a focus on professional development and continuing support for teachers to increase their own digital literacy. Sorry. 

So we here at DLAC saw Torrance present on their North Star plan. And we didn't have exactly the same setup as them because several of our especially CTE classes were already using Canvas. So we were kind of like cart before the horse, but we really liked their organization of their plan. So we met with them and were able to learn from their model. And then we were able to offer first-- sorry, Jenna-- a small North Star breakout session during a professional learning day in October 2023 to test the waters with about 10 teachers from CTE, ESL, and also our academic programs. 

And that went well. And so it seemed like all of those teachers in different programs were interested. So that set the stage for a larger teacher, admin, and staff training session that we offered at the end of April, really leaning on what we learned from Torrance. And we had 50 participants with 30 completing at least one North Star assessment. And some of them completed three. 

And it was in a closing session where we had offered breakouts. And then we all came together and did this. It was really exciting. I mean, our teachers were enthusiastic, everybody was engaged. We got a lot of great feedback. So it was really interesting. And that's become the model for the first of three professional learning days that we'll offer. So we have two more that we're planning to offer in June and in August to try and get through these first four modules so that we can then take it into the classroom. 

Like I said, it was exciting and it felt like a fresh start. We have some new work coming up with our consortium. And I think all of us have seen that we have now a technology based CIP goal as part of our CIP goals. So we were able to build that in. And I thought about that yesterday when we talked about institutionalizing, so making this part of something that's required for us. And then it also became that day and these days coming up will be evidence for us of collaborative efforts as we work towards meeting our WOSC recommendations. 

BARBARA VAN DYKEN: Goal 2-- a key result from our participation in the Digital Leadership Academy was the digital literacy objectives, the DLOs. And these guide our digital skills for our students as well as our teachers. Or actually, yeah, for what the teachers need to be teaching at each level of ESL, digital literacy skill that needs to be taught at each step of the way. The DLOs follow North Star standards and they match different English learning levels and aligned with the COSA scores. 

This ensures that they're relevant across all of the programs and like foundations, vessel vape, and IET addressing the various digital skills of our teachers and students. And updating course outlines can be very challenging. But we've shared these DLOs with our professional learning groups, our PLCs, those leaders, and they have been very receptive with positive feedback. We aim to make DLOs a regular part of our course upgrades and maintaining high standards and advancing digital learning that kind of a culture. 

JENNIFER HANSON: For goal number 3, our digital literacy and Canvas utilization guideline, this is a clip from our site plan and our goals, our Canvas utilization guideline goals through our EL 0 through 5 and distance learning and IET. Part of our WOSC accreditation plan was also to have alignment. So we aligned our competencies and our DL program and also introduce a new tech buddy and Canvas coach program, which, like Michael was saying, we found that teachers did better working in small groups or one on one rather than in big groups like this. 

And I've been a part of those smaller groups too, and we learn so much from each other that way. So that was a huge accomplishment for us and our teachers and myself. And I'll highlight some of the distance learning goals because they do kind of match the other goals too. Align course-- sorry, I'm trying to look over here and then talk on the mic-- Align courses with in-person classes, transferring it to Canvas, which we accomplished, published the course shell to use curriculum. 

So part of that was getting everything on Canvas and using that for DL. So if our students need to take a break from in-person classes for a while, they can do that seamlessly by doing distance learning and then going back into the in-person class and be right on the same page. We have different levels on the distance learning Canvas shell as well, so we can serve more students that way. And it's really working out really well. 

And then teachers know that I'm kind of on the same page as their in-person classes. So the way we divide up the units and everything else on Canvas is the same. So it's really cool. And part of our DLAC plan was this initially. So to see it happen is very exciting. I think that's it. 

NIKKI ROSS: So in addition to our professional development-- in addition to our professional development events that we've been able to hold and just identifying what needs to be included with our curriculum as far as digital literacy, so goals 1 and 2, we have seen incredible growth related to goal 3. So that's our digital literacy and Canvas utilization. So Jenna talked about it a little bit. And our original plan for joining DLAC was really to align our distance learning program and also have something that was asynchronous or independent for students that mirrored what they would do in the class so that they could move in and out. We had a pretty heavy waitlist when we first joined DLAC, and we still do. 

So we saw again here at DLAC East side talked about how they had imported ventures modules. And we knew that we had access to those, but I guess we just needed to hear somebody else say it and think about the logistics that way. So we were able to import those modules into Canvas. There's three sections of distance learning. There's about 200 DL students across six learning levels. 

So Jenna's efforts have aligned now the DL program with the in-person class curriculum. So that's pretty cool. And then another huge gain related to goal 3 was incorporating EL Civics into Canvas modules and instituting completely electronic based assessments over the course of the last year. So that's been a big paradigm shift for our EL program. And EL Civics was really kind of a hook. So you have to do EL Civics. 

So really, we went from four teachers to 15 ESL teachers that are using Canvas. And it was actually pretty neat. And I think we saw that shift at the professional learning day in April because we had teachers come that literally never come. And it's because they actually care about their students passing EL Civics, they care about the funding for our program, and this was a way that they could do it. So pretty cool. 

JENNIFER OWENS: And on the perky topic of challenges, as in work and in life, sometimes things don't always go to plan. And that's one of the beautiful things about DLAC. And our site plan is the ability to be fluid and move and change with need. So when we started DLAC, I had just started as the admin for the program. And I had, of course, overly big lofty dreams for facility improvements and changes. 

And most of those happened, a few didn't. One that we wanted to have was like a DL hybrid hub where those teachers would be housed. That didn't really work out. But out of that came actually a better option where we have carved out a space that, starting in summer school, will be a student center where our transition specialists will be housed, our academic counselor will be housed, and also students will have access to technology and a place to build community. 

Another major shift that we kind of pivoted on is we have nine classrooms in our campus that's primarily all ESL. As Nikki mentioned, we have quite a large demand for students, students wanting classes. So what I opted to do was I moved our level 5, 6. When we incorporated those with the ABE students, we moved those to our main campus where the academic and CTE classes are held so that it would be a seamless transition for those higher level students. 

Sometimes they're a little nervous to leave ESL, but this kind of provided that safe space where they were already going to school in their foundations class, their high level ESL class. And then the next steps were right there in the same building. So just to make for a more seamless transition. Also, by doing our facility shift, our transition specialists and our counselor are available at both locations, at actually at all of our locations, but primarily these are two locations for ESL and academics. And so students have access to those resources. 

JENNIFER HANSON: For next steps, we have several next steps planned as we carry on our DLAC goals into next year. One of those is continuing the North Star training sessions and expanding those across our PLCs with planned events in June and August. And the teachers are super excited about that. And we had a good turnout, like Nicki said. So that's really cool. 

Meet with our PLC leads to monitor the review of the digital literacy objectives, the DLOs, and gather data regarding their delivery in the classroom, document best practices, and recommend revisions. Goal 3's continued success will rely heavily on our tech buddies and Canvas coaches, which is going really well as well. So I don't see that losing any steam, probably just getting bigger and better. 

EL Civics will continue as a launching pad for teachers using technology in the classroom, on Canvas, and teacher training offered to incorporate discussions, videos, and mini oral presentations into the curriculum. We hope to fully realize our DLAC goals by utilizing and sharing the support OTAN offers, continuing to collaborate with our network of DLAC colleagues. We already have some plans to visit some other schools, hopefully, working to establish a school-wide culture that understands the value of educational technology. 

BARBARA VAN DYKEN: And DLAC inspired some creativity and the DLAC inspired technology projects with H5P and Learning Upgrade. In the first two terms of 23-24, this school year, we piloted Learning Upgrade, an online interactive program in my level 3-4 hybrid class. It didn't actually start out as a hybrid. But when the students showed up for class, you get your roster and they can-- the whole class was filled to the brim. There wasn't an empty seat in the house. 

And as a teacher, teaching language, it can be a little overwhelming to have that many students. So what we did is I got a pilot for Learning Upgrade and asked the students do you want to come two days a week and the other two is live classroom. And they all jumped on board and we had some great results in we achieved an NRS growth of 1.9, meaning the students advanced nearly two levels in 16 weeks. 

The learners averaged 112 days of active learning. That means that they were on and actively working on Learning Upgrade modules. And if sustained over the year, it would result in 6.4 educational level gains. And these outcomes highlight the program's exceptional effectiveness in accelerating growth. And I would be remiss if I did not share that with you. 

Building on the success, we implemented H5P tools for our digital interactive EL Civics curriculum just this spring and established a job lab using H5P content, which is a highly interactive content on the English language center's website. And we integrated these tools into Canvas, was quite easily integrated. This initiative advanced our digital literacy goals and created a valuable resource for the teachers to take advantage of. 

NIKKI ROSS: All right. So in closing, we really want to share a special thank you to our wonderful coach, Cindy Wislofsky. She's retiring. She's been incredibly insightful with us, I would say consistently constructive. And just the way that she coaches us, let us grow as a team. She gives us plenty of room to grow and struggle and increase our leadership talents, abilities, all the things that we want. 

And so we wanted to give her just a little gift and just bring her up and thank her for all her work. And we're excited to just keep in touch with her as she has her own new next steps. And we want to share this, too, on behalf of our partner school, Folsom Cordova, that isn't here with us anymore. But we grew a lot from our relationship with them too. 

[APPLAUSE]