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Speaker 1: OTAN, Outreach and Technical Assistance Network.

Nicole Lopez: Good morning, everyone. We are here from Long Beach, and we are going to share with you about how we are going to empower our students with digital confidence. But before we do that, you have a document to look at.

One side of the document is a summary of our site plan. The reverse is a resume of our school. So take one minute to look at that. It's going to give you a head start on who we are and what we're doing.

All right. So a little bit about Long Beach School for Adults. We enrolled 1,200 students in our program each year. We sit on about 800 students. We have been around since 1913. We offer two independent study programs, one in high school diploma, one in HiSET.

We also offer an ABE program for our students who don't meet that CASAS 239, to support them before they matriculate to high school diploma in HiSET. We have a robust ESL program of five levels. 45% of our enrollment is ESL. And then we have a CTE program with animal care, custodial services, and campus security assistant.

Our future, we are looking to increase our CTE courses at Long Beach School for Adults, and of course, because we are here in this space with all of you, increase the digital literacy for our students. And the cool part about being able to do this, that you'll see in a couple of slides down, is that we are moving.

So the place that you all visited a few months ago, Long Beach School for Adults, that's been on the Willow site across from the DMV for 30 years, we are packing up, putting everything in multiple moving trucks, and moving to a new beautiful site. And I'll show you a picture momentarily. So with that-- aren't we cute? So, Nicole Lopez, principal at Long Beach School for Adults.

Sara Nickles: Sarah Nickles, ESL Lead Teacher.

Betzy MacChia: Betzy Macchia, Chief Examiner for LBSA.

Lisa Busch: And I'm Lisa Busch. I'm the HiSET Lead Teacher.

[applause]

Nicole Lopez: Well, you can clap a little louder than that. Come on.

[applause]

So it's a little bit in advance, but I want to give some preface to why some of the things we struggle with are a struggle. You're going to pick up on what one of our struggles is because we have the same struggle as Jayden. Will they hear this through the speakers? Counting on you. Counting on you.

[video playback]

- Jaden has one dollar bill, one quarter, and two pennies. How much money-- how much money does he have? Jaden broke.

[end playback]

Nicole Lopez: And that is Long Beach School for Adults. So we are WIOA funded. We also receive CAEP apportionment like everybody else. But very unique to our consortium, which is Long Beach School for Adults and Long Beach City College, the college takes 50% of our $3 million apportionment, which we know is outside of the spirit of what the consortium is. We won't talk about the $8 million they have in carryover. I'm going to move to the next slide.

[laughter]

So with that, we take advantage of Long Beach Unified School District's VIP Program. So VIPs are volunteers. You are looking at four women here whose husbands legitimately VIP at the school or on the verge of VIPing.

We use National Board teachers at our schools, so our district supports the National Board credentialing program. And teachers have to earn hours to keep that credential, so they come to our school to help earn those hours.

We have six full time teachers, three standing next to me, which is pretty unusual for adult school. And like all of you, we have a multitude of part time and additional hourly teachers. One bonus from the college is we do have a full-time college counselor on our campus that helps with dual enrollment and, of course, matriculation into the college.

So here we are. The really great thing for us about IDEAL 101 is it's given us the time and the tools to be together in a space other than our home. We love Long Beach, but as we know, that pesky little thing called work gets in the way, and when you're trying to do extra things to support students, it's hard to find time.

So when we get on a plane and we come here and we spend 2 and 1/2 days. All we do is work towards our goal, which is really a wonderful gift, so we're appreciative. Additionally, because we've been participating in this program, we're looking at things a little bit differently. We see things in a way that we didn't see before because we're a little bit more focused on digital inclusion. So as for something like this.

So what you see in the short video, in our city, there is a program that offers reduced prices on internet and internet devices, computers. Our college offers free classes in computer technology, one of which we offer at our school and will continue to offer.

And our public library system is pretty fantastic in Long Beach. They come to our school once, sometimes twice a year, do presentations, and we do applications for our students for their library cards. Accomplishments to date. We're moving.

[applause]

This is actually a really great thing for us. If you remember our campus, well, very cute and welcoming. It's really small. There's no real grass and trees on the campus. We're kind of clumped all together. There's a high school on the other side, which can be a little problematic-- minors, adults and so forth.

So in-- how shall I say it? In reward for the work that we've been doing, the district is literally paying the cost to pack us up and move us to the north side of Long Beach. It is a 9-and-1/2-acre acre campus. We are leaving a 1-and-1/2-acre campus. We are moving from 14 classrooms to over 30 classrooms, which we full on have taken.

The picture you see is the quad with grass and trees and walkways and planters. When we were told that TDLS was going to be at our site-- and they didn't know, but I knew that we were moving here, and I thought, dang it, TDLS would have been great at the new site.

So I hope that we will host again in the future. Of course, you're more than welcome to visit us at our new site. So we will begin there in August of this year, and it will be our new permanent home.

[applause]

Sara Nickles: OK. So one of the accomplishments that we have reached this school year is implementing our technology and digital literacy workshops for our ESL population. So we started this with the conversation-- through IDEAL and DLAC, we started the conversation of this, and we actually were able to implement and hold these workshops at the beginning of the calendar year and the beginning of this current semester.

These digital workshops are meant to have our-- meant for beginning ESL students. However, we did have some intermediate students attend as well. But this is basically-- it was supposed to be like the ABCs of digital literacy.

So really just getting those students to understand the vocabulary of the computer, vocabulary of the keyboard, vocabulary of the internet. We started with that before they even touched the computer. Well, they were touching it, but they weren't using it yet. It was just like, OK everyone, find the trackpad, everyone find the screen and learn those words.

The intermediate students that we had joined the workshops. A lot of them had technology skills, but they did not know the English vocabulary. So they were very eager to come and take the workshops as well. And it was great because then they were able to also help the lower-level students.

Let's see. So these workshops, we offered two different ways. We had standalone workshops that were a four-part series. And you can see some of the worksheets that we used for this workshop series. Some of you guys attended our presentation at TDLS. Thank you guys for attending and supporting us. I'm sorry if this is a little bit of repetition.

But yeah, these we created these worksheets. The students, oh my goodness, we had highlighters out and they were marking up stuff, practicing their pronunciation, practicing their basic trackpad finger actions. And they were very successful.

The other option we had was-- oh, the standalone workshops were outside of class time. So the idea-- our teachers want to use more technology in the classroom, but it's a hindrance when it takes an hour to get an entire class of 30 students logged on to Chromebooks.

You have some students who log on right away. You have students that it might take three, four, five, six, seven tries to get onto a Chromebook. So this idea of these workshops was to take the burden off of the teacher and help support the instruction in the classroom by creating this outside of the classroom so the students would then go into the classroom with more knowledge and hopefully would streamline the experience in the classroom.

We also embedded some of the workshops into the ESL classes, and those were tailored for what the teacher needed. And if it was an intermediate class, we got to go a little quicker, which was nice. OK. So through our DLAC training here, we have learned so much, and we feel that we have taken what we have learned here and applied it into our school culture and community, and it really has positively impacted our school as a whole.

So through our work in our team building and learning how to communicate better and learning how to do conflict resolution, we have taken that back to our school and created better collaboration opportunities at our school with our staff.

A couple of things we have done is create a Google Slides-- I'm going to get the words wrong-- collaborative Google Slides for TDLS, where all of our teachers got to go, they each had their own slide and they dumped in their ideas and the resources and stuff that they learned at TDLS. So that's one way that we were able to share out to the whole school.

Our ESL department regularly gets together, and we always-- for this school year, have always had a tech section where everyone, share best practices, share the hiccups you've had, share the strategies you've used. That has been amazing. It's been priceless.

And in our newsletter-- we have a weekly newsletter-- Nicole has now included a DLAC section that includes tips that we've learned or things that we've learned, or what we're doing in our trainings here. So we've seen greater implementation of our digital tools in the classroom as a direct result of that, and of course, that has led to a stronger sense of community and shared purpose at our school.

Challenges, barriers and setbacks. So we've already mentioned the money. And I know that we're not unique to that. I know a lot of adult schools would love to have a lot more money. And of course, time. We all wish we had more time. And money and time lead to a lack of resources.

But as Nicole has already mentioned a little bit, we are very resilient. We are creative. We look for ways of leveraging what we do have, the resources and the people that we do have for how so we can continue to reach our student population and help them increase their digital confidence. All right. Oh.

Lisa Busch: OK. So what are we going to do now to promote change to and support our digital literacy? As mentioned, Sarah has already implemented the workshops, which have been fantastic. We've been rewarded with a new, larger site so we can expand as needed.

And the plan is to have maybe a dedicated lab. Northstar lab is our idea for students to utilize with, of course, a free volunteer to help facilitate. That would likely be my husband. He is going to retire in June. And so yesterday was perfect, Dr. Porter. A few of those power moves I might be able to use.

And honestly, he's kind of tired of being asked, so what are you going to do with all that time when you retire? At least he has one answer now. I'm going to go work in the Northstar lab at LBSA.

Audience: Whatever my wife says.

Lisa Busch: There you go. There you go. OK. So our next steps, the first one, to roll out the Northstar digital literacy program, help assess and build those digital skills from the workshops and ongoing. Basic computer use, internet, typing, Microsoft, Google. They offer so much through Northstar, as we have learned.

We'll provide orientations during classes, set goals and track progress. A lot of options there for our students in this new lab. Also, our LBSA website, which is pretty good, will have a digital support hub that we will launch. Easy access, essential digital guidance for our students.

Just reminders maybe about email and Google Classroom, how to use Northstar, maybe troubleshooting, quick links, tutorials, things like that. And then providing also video versions so that students can have both visual and auditory supports when needed.

Use any of the videos that are already out there. No need to reinvent the wheel for those. And then create videos as needed for our students and their needs, whether it's navigating through Northstar modules and assessments, or even other types of digital resources.

And then we've talked a lot about the multilingual registration and orientation videos. Currently, we have them, I think, just in English, right? And when students come in for those events or those appointments, notice there can be some struggles there, some barriers.

So to promote the equitable access, having them in multiple languages. We thought English, Spanish and Khmer to start, but just yesterday, learned that there are tools out there that can help translate videos into more than 100 languages, if I remember.

So those will be used to assist in enrollment, help students gain access to computers and Chromebooks, and provide any of the digital support service. And of course, include those on our website through social media, those types of things so that the public can see what we have to offer.

Nicole Lopez: We're going to ignore that Susan showed the threminute sign. We're going to pretend it's five.

Betzy MacChia: OK. So I'll be quick, which is perfect. Money, money, money, money. That's our problem because unlike all these schools, we're a unique unicorn. We are contracted, full-time teachers. We do have the time, and if we don't, we make the time.

So when we come here, we learn, we go home and we do it. We do it on the airplane because of this lady. We don't get a break. But we're lucky with that. OTAN, how can you help us? Ongoing support that you're doing is amazing, the professional workshops. I know that. We're going home and doing it. We saw it, we're doing it next week. We don't wait. We just get on it.

Dr. Porter, thank you, Destiny and our Coach for all of your help with all of this. It wouldn't be possible because you offer-- if we're lacking one thing or another thing, go to the OTAN website, go to the OTAN website, they might have a workshop on that. Sign yourself up. Who's going to do it? We'll just do it right away.

And then other important areas here, because of this, we've gotten closer. We are close, like you can noticeably see. We're always-- we have the ability to-- if I need something from Lisa-- you saw our campus. Lisa's on the last bungalow.

Sarah's the next bungalow over. High school diploma teachers are right there. I'm in the test center and in the front. If we need something, we run in, we go talk to each other. That's a good thing. We've already worked on our skills with all of our strengths and weaknesses. It's just only gotten us stronger. It's made us stronger. And with a stronger bond, you get more things done.

Nicole Lopez: So with that, you have a bag in front of you. And I'm going to combine two activities. So in summary-- go ahead and open up that bag at your table. Put everything out on the table. This is a group activity. Open it up. Take it out. Let's go. Rock and roll. Come on. I've got less than a minute over here. Susan's going to be jumping up.

There is a bunch of items in there. Spread them out on your table. There's a little paper clip that has nine cards. Pair it up. Pair it up. So what matches? What word matches with the item there? This is a summary of our presentation of what our major goals are. You got 30 seconds because Susan's-- oh, 20 she says.

Match up the words with the items in the bag. Match up the words with the items in the bag. This is a summary of what we are doing for our site plan at Long Beach School for Adults. I know you do not have enough time, but Susan's making sure her phone keeps making the noise to prove her point. As you're finishing, you can look on the screen to see if your journey along the way has met up with what we're working on.

So there's your answers on the screen. I know you did not have enough time. These are the major points of our site plan of what we are working on. I'm going to click this in 20 seconds because I'm over by two minutes into the question time. It means you don't get to ask very many questions.

Not yet. Hold on. I got one more slide. OK. I'm going to click it forward. You will have access to the slideshow, so you can always check to see the pictures and so forth. So while I'm doing the next slide, when you're done looking at the items and still matching, if you can put them back in the bags because we're taking those back to Long Beach, and we'll do the same presentation in front of our staff.

But we want to say thank you to our friends at OTAN, and we want to say thank you to all of you. Betsy and Lisa and Sarah are walking around with a little bag of Lifesavers because this program has been a lifesaver. All of you will be our lifesavers moving forward.

We also want to recognize our coach, Ms. Yesenia. Yesenia, if you noticed the little unicorn sitting here, we believe that we have the unicorn of coaches with Ms. Yese. And with that, there's one minute for questions because Susan's going to say it's time for the next group. So off you go.

Susan: OK. I am going to hand it over to Johanna, who has a question.

Johanna Gleason: I'm Joanna Gleason and I'm from the San Diego College of Continuing Education. And I want to say, first of all, kudos for an amazing presentation. You guys did fantastic. I love your unified presentation. And our project is very similar to yours. And my question is, do you have students who resist learning the technology? And if so, what do you do about that?

Sara Nickles: We have a student who is a beginning student, and he has-- he's been with us for about three years and he's still a beginning student. You guys know some of those students that get stuck in that fossilization. He refused. For two years, I will not touch computers, I will not touch computers.

Our teacher, Colleen, who is his teacher, was someone who was really resistant to technology prior to COVID and was thrown in the deep end during COVID and has since then just embraced COVID. And she was very patient with him, and he now is doing stuff on the computer as of this semester.

We're all kind of jaws dropped to the floor because he was like, I will not do anything on the computer. He was just so-- I think it's just a matter of patience and being willing to help those students feel more comfortable and being leaders as teachers, showing that we're willing to be uncomfortable in our learning as well.

Betzy MacChia: I want to add. I think it also has to do that we're in person for everything. So it's like, oh, you're not comfortable with the computer? This is what you can do. They're not distance or hybrid, HyFlex. I don't know yet the terms but I think that helps. And I don't think we have that many besides a couple here and there. But everybody seems to be on board because we have so many options for them to just not say no to us.

Marian Thatcher: OK. Hi. Marian Thatcher. I'm the coach for Graystone Adult School. I'm curious about your volunteers, your VIPers. How many do you have and how do you manage that?

Nicole Lopez: One of them is my husband. And as Dr. Porter says, he will do as he is told. Yes, I know. We have seven VIPs that are certified in Long Beach Unified School District. They come and they help tutor in our high school diploma program.

They help tutor in our HiSET program. We have a VIP in our ABE program that does pull out programs. We have a VIP in our testing center that helps with testing. We'll have a VIP in our Northstar lab. So they work directly with students.

Audience: [ INAUDIBLE ]

Nicole Lopez: Honestly, they don't really need management, so to speak. My husband shows up at 4:00 and goes to the high school diploma lab and they put him to work. No. But generally speaking, there's no management needed. They have a set space that they're working in. They have a set time and a schedule. We develop that. I guess I developed that in the beginning, and off they go.

Sara Nickles: A set criteria of what to do as well. It's not like, come in and we'll figure out where we're going to put you today. It's like, they know before they're coming, this is what you're going to be working with and who you're going to be working with.

Susan: We got a couple of requests to share resources. And I know that the Long Beach School for Adults staff have always been very gracious to share all their resources. Thank you for an amazing presentation. I know there are more questions.

Please, please, I encourage you to go to the Long Beach staff and ask questions. We do have to move the program along, so I apologize if I didn't get to your questions. Thank you so much, Long Beach. Yes!