Lisa Le Fevre: Thank you very much, Holly. I really appreciate that great introduction. Welcome, everybody, to Asset Mapping. This is part 2 of 2, and this time, we're really going to take a look again at the community-engaged asset mapping for adult education planning and continuous improvement by diving a little bit deeper into one of the samples we gave on our first webinar.

Before I begin, I am going to do a quick introductions for those of you who don't know us, but many of you do. I'm Lisa Le Fevre. I'm a senior program associate at WestEd, and I'm joined by my colleagues today who are helping to facilitate. I am going to hand it over to both of them. Tran, just to say hello.

Tran Keys: Hi, everyone. For those of you who are returning, welcome and thank you for returning, and for those of you who are new, we're happy to have you. My name is Tran Keys, and I'm a senior research associate at WestEd.

Lisa Le Fevre: Greg.

Greg Hill: Hi, all. So great to see all of you. I am, of course, Greg Hill, Jr. I'm also a senior research associate at WestEd, where I focus on primarily adult ed, post-secondary-- and post-secondary and applied data science and visualization. Yeah.

Lisa Le Fevre: Thank you. And so I want to say a big thanks, but before I do, I want to give a big thanks to both Tran and Greg for everything they've been doing for these sessions. They've been giving wonderful support. They are part of a larger team who some of you also know and will be meeting throughout all our technical assistance so at WestEd that we are providing field support, so please feel free to contact us as we go along.

We also want to thank the Chancellor's Office for CAEP, Mayra Diaz and Rainey, and, of course, CDE, Dr. Carolyn Zachary, Neil Kelly, and Diana Battista. I always give them a quick second to say Hello either here in the chat, so feel free.

Neil Kelly: Hello.

Lisa Le Fevre: Hi, Neil. With pleasure, thank you.

[laughter]

All right. And then I think I will quickly also give a real, real hearty shout out to Haula and Mandary, who always help us facilitate these sessions. Without them, we couldn't make this happen. So thank you so much to both.

Now I'm going to be talking about our goals. Some of you have seen these today. It's a two-part series. So these goals thread through. It's really understanding the role of acid mapping in the way you can use it for your annual and three-year planning process.

We're looking at identifying the steps for conducting effective community-engaged acid mapping. We went over those in the first series, but we'll do a quick repeat for this one, and then familiarizing yourself with the approaches, resources, some of the tools that are out there, and then how you might analyze and visualize the acid mapping process.

And finally, learning strategies that translate acid mapping into both action so that you can do this for three-year planning, for annual planning, and continuous improvement.

Our agenda, the welcome which we're currently in, we're going to go over a little bit one question, then we're going to take a look at what is participatory or community-engaged asset mapping. That's a high-level review. The first webinar, which eventually will be posted, we went over really the approach and some of the steps in more detail.

Then we'll look at community-engaged asset mapping in the three-year planning, talk a little bit about the guidance that has been recently released, and some resources found in that guidance. And then we'll take a look and choose one of the sample templates that we previously talked about in the first webinar. We'll walk through it, we'll reintroduce it this time and walk through it. And then we'll launch into discussions and questions.

That said, we are looking for engagement, so we'll be opening. If you have a question, you can definitely put it into chat, but feel free to also come off mute, especially during discussion, and just make this an open, engaged time together.

Now, we're not going to get into this question just yet, but we just want you to think about how can you see community asset mapping serving as a resource for your adult education programming and planning? So keep this in mind as we go through the session, because we're going to come back to this prompt at the end to really get your feedback. With that said, I'm going to turn it over to Tran.

Tran Keys: OK. Thank you so much, Lisa. And this is my bad. I should have asked for a poll, but you know what, this is a small group, so it'll be easy to do. I'd love to see who attended our session, our part 1, two days ago. It will help me know how much to share out again.

Oh, thank you so much. I did just-- thank you. And it's absolutely OK if you didn't, but please let me know. It would really help Greg, myself, and Lisa know how much to repeat, and I always say repeating content is absolutely wonderful. I am not opposed to that at all. It helps us cement the learning.

So we will definitely-- you'll hear some same things. But it will help me know how much depth I should go into. So please continue putting that in the chat, whether you did attend or you did not.

OK, Lisa, I'm ready for the next slide. Thank you. So what is community asset mapping? Two days ago we talked about it. It's called different things, and it's really to me just this-- just different terminology, but I like actually adding the community to asset mapping, which really all asset mapping should be community-based. That's what you get most out of.

And so we say community asset mapping is a systematic process for identifying, for cataloging, and mapping the assets of a community. And I think a key word for me here is systematic. It's really getting it on paper and a structured way, and so that's why you see the word systematic.

It is a process for assessing and mobilizing existing strengths, while at the same time really building or strengthening relationships among the various groups or organizations within a particular community. And we set that very generally, and today will be specific to adult education.

Other names I mentioned, we say participatory asset mapping, or we just say asset mapping, but I like community asset mapping. It's something I really push for, so it's very informative to say it that way.

So the next slide, we'll go into a little bit of a review about when we say asset mapping, the key word is assets. What are assets? And we said that assets are things-- things that are important to members of the community. So we have a list here and I won't read this to you. You will have the slides.

This is also from the first webinar where we list what assets are, categories for you to consider as you build your-- as you work with your teams in building an asset map.

So we bucket them in individual assets, institutional assets, organizational assets, there are governmental assets which can be local, state, or federal. That's a key one for a lot of the work we do. Of course, physical and land assets, and finally, cultural assets.

And I bet you if we had more time, we could sit here and come up with a few more buckets, and they might come out when we do our thinking together in the discussion section of adult education, but here are just some standard ones we want you to consider. So those are assets, stuff that are important to us in the community.

And last time we talked about, we went through the who, what, when, where, and how of asset mapping. So I won't say everything again, but just to give you a sense of flavor for what it really is, it's a strengths-based approach to community development, emphasizing on deepening and building relationships and identifying successes and opportunities.

We often compare this, contrast this with the deficits types of looking at data, or when we talk about needs assessment, saying what are the needs of the community, which is really important to unearth as well, we just find that approaching the work in terms of initially talking about strengths helps with the process and helps with engagement of your community.

The benefits includes identifying assets which are available, which can be used immediately, that have often been overlooked because there hasn't been kind of a comprehensive way of looking at it, and it really is a starting point for asking folks to make change, is knowing what the current state is, and what the assets are.

It's very much a collaborative process because it has-- when we talked about this last time, we talked about who are involved. We don't want to asset map on our own. We can start off maybe thinking-- good thinking because we all come with a lens, but a true, powerful organizational asset map really would involve multiple members of your organization, and also, quite frankly, partners, especially in adult ed that know Greg and Lisa can talk a lot more about.

You have a lot of partners, and so it's really important that they're a part of the asset mapping team as well because you get to work on identifying your common, your shared goals in the process. Again, because we come at it with different roles and responsibilities, that's what makes it a really powerful asset map.

You conduct the asset map when you need to identify to mobilize or build on assets. And finally, we talked about, people often ask, what's the best way of doing it? Do I have-- I'll have to bring together people together in a room?

I would say from experience, in-person is truly the most powerful. However, we have done it in all sorts of ways, in-person, for sure, virtually because of just the way we've had to do it. Unfortunately, with COVID and learning how to switch over to a virtual setting, it can be done quite powerfully.

And finally, using a hybrid approach. And a hybrid just means a combination of folks that-- a bigger group in a room together because that's where they are, plus, a handful of colleagues who couldn't be in the room but want to and need to be engaged in the process. So that's the hybrid approach.

That one is the most complex and complicated because you have to manage both spaces. Completely doable. So if you'd like to learn more about that, just let us know.

I will also say that last time we mentioned it's super critical to have a facilitator to help with the asset mapping conversation, which is kind of what we're going to do here with you later on in our webinar.

And I say that, and as you do your own, I do not mean you need to have an external person necessarily. You absolutely can. That's what I do a lot with organizations, school districts, for example, particular offices in the district like CTE or the English learner department, whatever it is.

You don't need to do that. You can do that within your own organization. Someone who has facilitation skills, who know what your goals are, but don't necessarily need to be the one talking about the sharing out what the assets are.

They're just helping moving along the conversation, and we highly recommend that because oftentimes what we'll see is we'll see someone within the team tagged as a facilitator, and then they just don't get to engage as much because they're having to be like splitting their brain, facilitating, making sure it moves along, but really they have a contribution to the conversation. So try to have it where someone else outside of the group.

So that's a little bit of an overview. I hope we captured that. Lisa, Greg, anything else I'm missing here that you want to stress from what we did in the first session?

Lisa Le Fevre: I think it's great, Tran. One thing to just keep in mind that we stress during the first session is this isn't-- and you mentioned it, it's an iterative process. So it is a process. It does take time. It is not a one-stop-shop and you're done. We really stress that it is, because of the community aspect something and the collaborative aspect, something that you do periodically.

You come back to, you reflect on it. It might take actually days to complete, not all at once, but perhaps this becomes an event or perhaps this becomes something that if you only have a short amount of time to do it, you pick up the phone and you continue those conversations until you feel that, OK, now we have our map, if you will. So it's a process.

Tran Keys: Thank you, Lisa. My bad. I'm so glad you brought that up. It truly is an iterative process, and you'll see that here. We'll do our best to come up with-- got good thinking going on here. Later on, we'll dive into it, but it will not, absolutely not be the final product.

And also, we know each of you have different contexts. So the things will come up together will feel maybe generic, but generic to adult education. So it's a great starting point, and then you move forward and make it your own for your own context. So thank you, Lisa, for reminding folks about how iterative it is.

So next, I'm going to throw this to Greg. Greg, if you can engage us and start us off with how we-- community-engaged asset mapping and in keeping in mind the three-year planning that folks have to engage in.

Greg Hill: Absolutely. Thanks Tran and Lisa. So let's go to the next slide, where we actually talk about the three-year plan. So if you're here, you are unquestionably aware that this year you'll be putting together with your other consortium interest holders your next three-year plan. And as part of the three-year plan, you have to do a needs assessment, and this is one of the tools that you can use to help inform that.

And so we've itemized a few of the opportunities that this three-year plan affords relative to this planning effort before it's relative to asset mapping, and you can see them on screen, so it gives you an opportunity to assess services, identify successes, needs, pinpoint defined strategies, and again, an asset mapping process can help to inform that.

There is the link here at the bottom to the updated guidance. My understanding is that it hasn't changed dramatically from the previous three-year plan cycle, but actually if Holly or somebody has that handy, I actually got it. Here we go. Hold on. Actually, I'll put it in chat just in case folks want to have it open or make reference to it as we're going through.

All right. So let's see here. Next slide, please. Sorry, I'm just grabbing my notes. So, as we were saying, process encourages conducting needs assessments, and that will, of course, include an evaluation of current levels and types of services gaps, et cetera.

And those of you who are involved in some of the early efforts will remember the levels and types aspect, and so what that actually means is, well, who's providing? What kinds of programs are being provided, where, and by whom? And what is their level, meaning, is it sort of introductory English language learning, is it more advanced? Is it short-term CTE that is a matter of weeks? Is it short-term CTE that is a year or so?

And yeah, as you can see in the bottom here, needs assessment called for, which is section 2 can be informed by a process like this. And there are also some resources there that provide additional information on asset mapping.

I think there's a link in there to a previous webinar that delivered by, I think in 2018, delivered by Cherise Moore of AIR, and a few other folks who you might recognize from your work in this area. All right. And then, Lisa, I don't know if you want to put links to resources or at that point yet, but--

Lisa Le Fevre: We will definitely have the links at the end that we can put up, and I think right now we're going to get into the implementing the elements and walking through a sample, but I wanted to just pause and see if there was any questions before we get to that point, and then I'll switch over my screen.

Any questions in the chat? Or come off mute. Please do. Whoops. Let's do the steps, and then I will-- I think Tran is doing this one, and then I will move over.

Tran Keys: All right. Thanks, Lisa. Thanks, Greg. So this also you attended last. I kept wanting to say last month, but it's actually was just two days ago. We talked about steps for a community-engaged asset mapping. And please do refer back to the first webinar when you're able to because we do go deeper.

But here's just a list of the different approaches-- that there are different approaches to asset mapping that folks take, and here are just some general steps which is first, you have to define your community. Community can mean different things to different people. You have to bound it so that when you do get together to ask the map, everyone's on the same page as to what you are defining as your community.

You want to define what you want to do with the information that you end up collecting to build your asset map. I say this because we often have this thing we say in not just adult ed, just pretty much any area that I work in and support, which is we engage in something and then we're finished, and it doesn't get really shared out.

So it's really important to talk about what it is that you will do when you collect the information. You want to select what assets. You want to identify. Again, this is bounding your work because you can keep going and go-- and keep going and going, and at some point, you want to make sure you have a stopping point so that things are actionable.

And number four is, and especially in a large organization, you actually want to know if-- has asset mapping been done? I chuckle here because, again, work with large organizations where we say this a lot. Unfortunately, we often work in silos because everyone has different responsibilities. And really, another adjacent office, adjacent group might have engaged in asset mapping, and you want to know that. If they have, you want to ask how they did it. If there's opportunities to build off of it, collaborate.

So it really is just a simple asking around of, hey, did we ever engage in this before? And another thing we recommend-- develop your data collection plan. So you're looking at the West Ed team, and we're a bunch of researchers. We're technical assistance providers and researchers. So we definitely engage in thinking about the plan, the data collection plan.

We defined it asset mapping. Remember, the keyword was systematic. Well, things can't be systematic, unless you come up with an actual plan, and engaging in asset mapping can involve many different ways of collecting. So we often do interviews one on one, sitting with folks, getting them to share, that's part of asset mapping, can be a part of asset mapping.

Then there's focus groups, which is similar. However, now instead of one person interviewing you, interviewing one person, you're interviewing a group. A group of I would say 5 to 10, for example, which is a nice size, small group where you get to throw out questions and you someone starts off and answers and then you make sure everyone has a chance to chime in, agree or disagree. Such rich conversations come from focus groups, so highly recommended.

Then there's surveys. So another thing that I do quite a bit is I develop, I design surveys for folks. I help them. Usually it's code development because they know the content, I know the survey components, and so we work together to come up with survey questions, short survey that really captures the data that you want to capture. So that's another way to collect data.

And absolutely, this is critical because it's called artifact review or document review, and it's something we engage in quite a bit. And it's mostly because folks have developed so many things that really are considered assets and they don't think about it, so we make it really general and say, share with us your artifacts, your documents, things you've used to do this work. And from that, we can often figure out how to categorize the assets. So just a few things for your data collection.

And then the next collect data. You're collecting data. So you're developing the plan, now you're collecting your data on your assets. Seven, you map your organization, your community assets.

Now all the stuff above, now you're getting to the mapping part. And you see here in the bottom I have a note that says outcome, a map, quote unquote "map," put that in quotes. A map of assets is produced. And what it is asset maps are quite different. It can look quite different. It can be a truly what people think about maps, a geographic map. I know Greg can say a lot more about this with his expertise.

There's sometimes, an asset chart or graphic of what the assets are or a simple list of assets. It really is dependent on what it is you're wanting out of it, what you're going to do with it, how you're going to share it out. It determines what the map looks like, the asset map looks like.

And then don't want to forget the last two, which is, first, number eight is evaluate your process and your results of doing the asset map. Not just your results, also the process. And by process we mean all the things you talked about above the number eight, it really should be documented.

And I say this because Lisa mentioned this-- it's an iterative process for asset mapping. At some point, your organization, your group will want to redo it, and no need to reinvent the wheel. If you wrote down your process. You can tweak your process. You can make it better. Continuous improvement. You don't want to start over again. That's the key here in terms of evaluating your process, and also, of course, the results of your asset mapping.

And then we don't create asset maps just to create asset maps. We're doing something with it. And so that's the number nine, is determining your next steps. What are your next steps now that you have this asset map? So those are some general guidance for engaging in asset mapping for your group, for your team.

All right, Lisa, I think we're ready for the live. It's always scary to do the live thing, but Greg, Lisa, and I thought this would be most helpful for you for us to help facilitate some conversations around this. So I'm going to throw it to Greg to just/ start us off and-- Greg, how do you want to-- how should we move forward with this? We have some ideas.

Greg Hill: So I was thinking about this, and I think probably the best thing to do is jump in and just go. But I did want to add just a couple considerations, so some of the steps, Tran, you were sharing are the steps and they're absolutely spot on, of course.

I think sometimes when we think about engaging in these or planning processes, what we imagine is something like, OK, here's our group of people who are going to write this thing, and they're going to do these things, and that's how we're going to get it done. So it's a project. And, yeah, that is a thing that has to occur.

But it is also a great opportunity to build deeper relationships within the community, which will then further buttress the work that you plan to do and add nuance to that plan. And so it's really additive in a lot of ways.

And what I really want to emphasize here is that the beautiful thing about an asset mapping process is that not only are you sort of seeing forks in the community or community assets as something to be mined or taken and aggregated, and of itemized, I guess.

But this is also a really great opportunity to engage your students, for example, in a process. So take, for example, if you have students like Tran mentioned a literal map, well, if you've got students who are in digital literacy courses or are developing some competency in those areas, you could teach them, engage them as part of an assignment where-- actually engage them in this process to make a Google map or something.

You can also train them to go out into the world and their churches, their other community centers, and have them identify people who they think actually, really represent the groups that they feel that they belong in, and gather their input there. And so it also-- so it's-- really, I would just encourage folks to think about that inclusivity piece. If you treat it like a project, it'll be a project. If you treat it like an opportunity to grow, then it'll be a much more rewarding experience, I think.

Lisa Le Fevre: Greg, I have to echo that. That was beautifully said. It is an opportunity. And something that I was thinking about listening to this, that opportunity to build relationships and then the idea of a map, it is a living process. It is a living document.

We've all experienced turnover in an institution or a team. You can always go back to this and say, here are the relationships that will help keep this going, here are the processes we used, and then let's keep growing with it. So I really appreciate how you mentioned this is an opportunity.

So I think what I'm-- oops. I'm going to do here is switch over and bring up so that everybody can see. Can you all see this? All right. I'll be on mute taking notes for you all.

Tran Keys: Yeah.

Greg Hill: All right. So I think what we want to try to do is map this out both a little bit generically, but I encourage all of you, be as specific as you like, but let's hop in. So we've got a few buckets here. So associations, individuals, physical spaces, institutions, stories.

And by the way, just echoing back that stories piece, students can both be a source of that information, but they can also be the ones telling those stories. Think about your high school diploma students, and how that might factor in as-- or you could incorporate that in the work that they're doing. And I would say the same thing for ESL students, where there's an opportunity there to make sure that the voices are really diverse and representative. But anyway, so let's go ahead and see if we can just throw some things out there.

Tran Keys: Yeah, Greg, could I just since-- I mean I just love the example you gave about the student success under stories. Lisa, let's add that. That's actually one that I think is just fantastic. I would call it something like student success stories, right Greg? And then from the different groups you mentioned.

I'm thinking back, Greg, when you said this, it totally brought back my time back when I was an administrator at a school district, K-12, and we actually asked folks who-- students, adult. We partnered with the county for adult ed, and there are some critical, amazing stories that were-- we weren't being systematic about it, unfortunately. It was more anecdotal, but can you imagine, Greg, if we had done that and made it systematic and is part of our asset map. So thank you. That's really a fantastic one.

Lisa Le Fevre: I think also you had mentioned interviews, focus groups. This is a place where those can fit in. If you want to reach out to us for ideas for any of these, please do. One idea that comes to mind is an approach called empathy interviews. It's a very specific approach that's been used, but it really looks at capturing the stories or experiences that people undergo. And this is particularly important for our adult ed populations. The variety of life successes that stem from overcoming life barriers are things to understand, too.

Greg Hill: Absolutely. So I guess-- so since we're in this stories area, what other sources of information that might fall under that bucket can folks think of and say, go ahead and come off mute if you'd like, or you can put it in chat? Who else in your world has a story that is a story to tell? Teachers, thank you, [inaudible]. I was thinking that, teachers. Yes, teachers, other administrators. Who else might have a story to tell?

Tran Keys: Greg, what about employers?

Greg Hill: I was just going there.

Tran Keys: Oh, you want to go.

Greg Hill: I was totally like, going to throw that out there. That's exactly. Employers. So if you've got CTE programs, right, how valuable is it to talk with individuals who have needs and have employed your students? Social service programs. Thank you. Exactly. I mean a lot of these, by the way, are going to-- there's going to be some crossovers. State initiatives, goals, targets, and your role. Can you say more about that, Diana?

Diana Battista: Well, what I'm thinking is that we're talking about student success, maybe new strategies that teachers are trying and maybe include-- I'm not sure if it would fit in some other section, how you're working towards meeting those targets and goals maybe with the earnings and employee surveys at the end or other-- what are they called? Measurable skill gains, something new that you're trying.

Greg Hill: I see what you mean. Yeah, I think going into a process like this, having-- yeah, of course, that sort of context, that required context that helps shape those engagements is really important.

Diana Battista: It could go in another square. I can't see the full template anymore.

Tran Keys: Yeah.

Greg Hill: Yeah, no, that's a great point. And so it's-- the way that I would factor that in myself would be-- this is one of the reasons, for example, talking to employers in particular. So what's the point of talking with them if one of the outcomes isn't transition? And so I think that's absolutely-- there is an aspect of that that would undergird a process like this.

Lisa Le Fevre: And one thing just to piggyback off that, Diana, that comes to mind is oftentimes when there are initiatives and you're looking at goals, successes, attainment, you're also looking at lessons learned. So I think it's wonderful if those lessons learned can be part of the stories too.

Diana Battista: And it leads to the [audio out] success. And I'm sorry, I have a gardener in my ear that's interrupting my train of thought. But let's say that you get a new refugee recruitment, whatever they're called, center in your area that's totally new that you haven't addressed before, you might want to put some of the steps in there of what you plan to do, and who your new audience is, and then be able to follow and track it. Think of it in the asset map, you're more likely to follow up, just off the top of my head thought.

Greg Hill: Very thoughtful. And I see some great things folks are putting in chat, and I'm actually wondering if some of that we wouldn't-- we might consider putting in to some of the other buckets too.

Tran Keys: Yeah.

Greg Hill: But we have social service programs, and I really like the sort of foster youth piece. I think that is a specific group that is-- well, yeah, I really like the focus there. Likewise and suggests transition specialists, transition liaisons. I think that is great. In fact, those are two very good examples of roles that who can be in positions where they can have conversations with students.

It's like 100% engage them too and train them to gather some of this information. They are the ones engaging regularly with students, and they can speak knowledgeably themselves. But it's unlikely that those individuals have actually gone through a more structured process to gather information from students, and I would suspect it would be very enlightening for them as well. So that's really good. Thank you, Anne.

So what other-- actually so we've got a few of those folks. We have folks youth individuals, but DCFS under-- it's not like it's-- thank you, Marianne. And it's going to be a little amorphous here, and I think you do both. The exercise is meant to clarify the directions to go. It's not-- and yeah, mutually exclusive is lovely for classification, but it's not necessary. [inaudible].

Tran Keys: Yeah, great. If I could share, this might help folks. We mentioned the different ways-- settings for asset mapping, so if it was in-person, Greg, one in any, whether it's in person, virtual, or hybrid, we say at this point it's quantity. You want people to share. And so I'm so appreciating all the share outs in the chat. And as Greg said, it's not-- at this point, it definitely is not mutually exclusive.

You do that later on when you have enough on your asset mapping, I say V1, version 1, right, Greg? So that's the goal here, is just to get you all to share out when you see these categories, what comes to mind? And then when there's a lot on there, if you were in person, I would give you little dots to go up and say, yes, yeah, you basically vote in terms of you're a large group. So please don't be shy about just throwing things out. Help us though in the chat. If you think if you go into particular space, we'll put it there.

Greg Hill: Exactly. Yeah. Thank you. I think all of us of have consortium members.

Tran Keys: Yes.

Greg Hill: Very good. Yes, they are both a source for and a resource. A source and resource. That's good.

Tran Keys: Yeah, and Greg, because Shannon said consortium members, I would actually put under association. I would put California Adult Ed Program. I would put that because that is a key-- that is a key organization. Yeah, that's perfect. Yes.

Greg Hill: And actually I might add here, there remember-- it feels like dozens of consortia. Every initiative is a consortium initiative. So you've got your larger strong workforce. You've got K-16 because all of those, endeavors feed in different ways to the work that you're doing. Yes, absolutely. Workforce development boards and GI GI.

Tran Keys: Excellent.

Greg Hill: AJCCs. So these are in a lot of ways what we're hearing here, and I love that, Jane. What we're grabbing-- these are some of the communities and the organizations that often you are engaged with on a semi-regular basis, but obviously we're adding some nuance here.

I'm actually really curious, actually, Lisa, if you could scroll up just a little bit. So there is a spot for physical space. And I would love to hear some folks throw out assets that are in a physical space. Like, what kinds of assets would you say--

Lisa Le Fevre: I've got one.

Greg Hill: Right there. Yeah. Well, actually, let's see if they can provide some here. But also, Shannon, I see your COE, and absolutely you're right. Did you already type it? All right, sorry. Community--

Lisa Le Fevre: So I live in a rural environment, and we have community halls, community--

Greg Hill: Oh, like town halls kind of thing, right?

Lisa Le Fevre: Well, sort of--

Greg Hill: But it's not. It's not. That's right, sorry.

Lisa Le Fevre: It's an actual space, a building where we can rent or go to or do things and meet and--

Greg Hill: Yeah, that makes sense. So what other-- I mean, what other kinds of physical resources could your physical assets, as it were, and I'm thinking spatially, might you want to factor into your thinking? Thank you, Tischel, absolutely. Elementary school classrooms. Elementary are absolutely-- I mean, let's face it, I think it's fairly common knowledge that the idea that one of the things that makes adult schools so appealing is their proximity and association with the schools where their children attend.

And so church meeting halls, absolutely, churches are so important, especially if your community has ethnic enclaves. Absolutely. And this is also another way to engage different populations in an effort like this. But that's really a community centers, absolutely. What else here? Tischel's killing it here. Can we get someone who isn't? There we go. There we go. Yeah, AJCC. Yeah, OK. I like that. That's exactly right, man.

So just to say this. So Marianne points out that partnerships co-located at AJCC. So that is both an association, but it's also a location because they can be spread out, and that is a resource where you can put good courses, good programs, and mentions that her district is very urban, and they want to make sure that physical spaces are in the right geographic locations. Absolutely.

So some of the considerations for those we've identified, but in some ways, then how would you go about making those decisions? and so to that, how do you-- what do you need to know about a physical space geographically? What would, I guess in-- what criteria, I suppose, what would inform that? What proximity to what? I realize that's a lot. Community college is absolutely--

Tran Keys: Excellent.

Greg Hill: Yeah, absolutely.

Lisa Le Fevre: Well, I have a thought too. We're talking physical space in the sense of what we know of being physical, but there's also the space, as we learn post COVID, of the online, the virtual space that we meet virtually, but still using it as a physical thing.

Greg Hill: I think that's great. I would put that under physical space too. A couple other-- so thinking more about what Anne had in here, I might also suggest this-- so, I mean, transportation is a huge challenge for adult learners, and so physical assets might be bus stops, subway stops. It could also be childcare is another one. Proximity to childcare centers. And that would be both childcare as such, and other sorts of Child Support Services, proximity to those social service providers.

All of those can inform that geographic placement or context within which you will be serving the community. So we've got about 15 minutes here. Did we get something and everything?

Lisa Le Fevre: No, we didn't talk about local economy, although we pointed out that these can cross categories, and this is why it's a we'll hear from my community. These cross categories, so we mentioned employers here, and the importance of that, what we mentioned workforce development boards.

Greg Hill: And one of the things I want to mention here is we're talking about this in broad strokes, but for you, this could actually be a lot more concrete right off the bat. So it's like local economy. If you know who-- unions, if you know the union, then they would be a direct-- you could put them straight in there. And I would also strongly recommend engaging with unions.

Any of you who are considering pre-apprenticeships or apprenticeships, you have to talk to the unions, and I wouldn't even endeavor starting a new one unless you've engaged with folks who've done it on the union side because they're good at it. And they also have deep insight into what the regional needs are for some of the occupations adult schools trained for.

So yeah, there we go. And so we've got advisory committees. Absolutely. Advisory committees are a wonderful source. In fact, they're wildly underutilized. All of you no doubt experienced this thing where it's like we have curriculum, we need people to tell us it's OK. You invite them, you give them snacks, they sign off, and then you try to be as light touch as humanly possible so as to keep them engaged and all of that.

But in reality, some of the most effective regional advisory-type board, city advisory boards that I've seen actually require quite a lot from those participants. And this is a way to expand their engagement, but also their level of influence and investment.

One of the things I recommend around that always is, you know what, everybody on your advisory committee should have an opportunity to meet the students. You need to get them on your campus. And the instant you do that, you will find that they are so keen on doing more, that just a world of possibilities opens up.

Tran Keys: Greg, I'm sorry, may I interject for something that was in the chat that I would love to unpack a little bit more?

Greg Hill: Yeah, of course. Yes.

Tran Keys: OK. So it's what we were just talking about with Anne asking where might advisory groups fit. It's a great question like what we talked about, city advisory committees. I wrote in the chat that I would actually put them under individuals and would name them. I would actually name them.

Just to Greg's point, it's underutilized, and I find that once you finalize an asset map, you really should be sharing it widely with your partners. And how powerful is it for them that they see their name as an asset to the work you do? It is truly-- don't put it on there unless it is something that you know you can tap into, but it is powerful, not just to say our advisory committee. It's like who? It's like the list of folks that-- you list the advisory committee in particular, so CTE advisory committee, and then you list the members by name.

Greg Hill: I love that. Yeah, that's. That's really helpful. All right. So we've got about 10 minutes here.

Lisa Le Fevre: I'm going to go back to the PowerPoint because we had a discussion time, so give me one second. Please bear with me. I'm going to-- I'll close this. Yes, and here, and I'm going to do this. OK. Here we are.

All right. But first of all, do we have any other questions before we get into the general discussion? Because I wanted to get us back to our main question that we had at the start of this, but pausing because I can't see the chat trend, Greg. Are there any other questions?

Greg Hill: There was one thing I wanted to highlight that Tischel asked. So she asked, will the document we worked on will be made available? And so I guess that is a question to answer. Alternatively, or both maybe, I know that there are some examples of completed ones that could help, but yeah, so just wanted to let you know she raised that and defer to you on how best to answer it.

Lisa Le Fevre: Great. And, Dishell, we'll figure out a way to do something. Maybe we're going to summarize it. The actual template itself is available in the resources. It's part of a guide that we chose and we can talk about maybe with CAEP about creating perhaps something in the future.

All right. So let's revisit this one question that we had here. How can you see community asset mapping serving as a resource for your adult education programming and planning? We really want to open this up, but I want to add to it. It's not only how can you see it, but we're here to learn from each other. So if you have done it, how have you done it so that we can learn together? And don't be shy. Just come right off me.

Greg Hill: Emma, you've been awfully quiet, and I know that you're not quiet. What about you? What's your experience been? Are you there?

Emma: I'm here. It's just that I'm plugged into a docking station at work, so I don't know how good my sound quality will be.

Greg Hill: Sound great.

Emma: Sound good. I don't have picture, though. I'm going to say I really like the template. I think it starts a great conversation, especially because there's always a lot of agencies and a lot of organizations that are constantly in flux anywhere. So this is a great opportunity to do that, like, snapshot of who is there now, who are we in the sandbox with playing nice with and who's the ones we still need to connect with.

So I really like the template. I did some screenshots of it, but I hope you do share that with us. I think that will definitely use something like that to get the dialogue going. I know Diana is giving me a thumbs up because Diana has come to some of our planning sessions and at our-- even at our annual plan, we had the libraries come in and we tried to reach out to as many different individuals in the community that are offering services to adults and how do we support them and then transition them between the different services that they need.

So I really like the template. I feel it's a great start, and once you put it down on paper, then it shows you who are we already 100% working well with, but who's the ones that were not working well with. And not because they don't want to or we don't want to, it's just sometimes we haven't found that commonality.

So the three-year plan is, I think, always a great opportunity to be able to revisit those partnerships you do have, but the ones you don't have are the ones that really stand out and we say, how do we work better with them? What do we need to do?

Greg Hill: Absolutely. And so now all of why I asked Emma to speak to this, because she killed it. Thank you so much, Emma.

Emma: You're welcome. And I love listening to your webinars. I learn a lot. Maybe that's why I'm quiet because I'm taking it all in going, how do I fit this into when we start our planning sessions? How do we work this part into it? Because I really like, like I said, your template. I think it makes a lot of sense, and it really helps a structured approach to how to partner better in the community.