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

AREZOO MILLER: Good morning, everyone. My name is Arezoo Miller. I'm the transition specialist from Silicon Valley Adult Education. I'm joined here with my esteemed colleagues, Mr. Henry and Aruna from Silicon Valley, representing Silicon Valley Adult Education. 

Our school currently serves about 710 ESL students and about 210 ABE combined. GED HSD. And I have to say, the staff at our school are extremely passionate and dedicated to serving our adult learners and just being part of their journey. 

So a little bit of brief history about myself. I've been in the field of education for 18 years. 15 of those years, I've taught ESL, all levels, AB and GED. And for the past three years, I've been the transition specialist, serving our adult learners with their post-secondary education and also workforce transition. Additionally, I've been developing leadership skills for our students, through student leadership program that I run at our school. And we're just excited to be here. 

A couple of my strengths are building relationship and also, effective task execution. I know I'm going to pass this to my colleague, Henry, who's going to tell you a little bit about himself and also highlight some of his strengths. 

HENRY MULAK: Thanks, Arezoo. I teach the advanced ESL class at Silicon Valley Adult Education. Coming out of my Emmy award-winning work as a journalist, I'm in broadcasting. I'm a trained communicator. I pride myself on being inclusive. And I'm big on always learning most recently at Stanford, doing generative artificial intelligence. And administrators at SVAE thought it would be a natural for me here on DLAC. Aruna. 

ARUNA SUBRAMANIAM: Hello, everybody. This is my second year of teaching in SVAE. I have taught different levels, including alternate high school, high school, middle school. I ended up in adult school now. I promise, adult school is the one which I love the most. And I'm going to be retiring from high school whenever it is. 

Because I see so much enthusiasm in adult students willing to learn rather than other schools, they are forced to come to the school, but adults students, they are willing to come to school, and they are very eager to learn. So I'm very happy to be teaching there. And I'm very happy to be part of this DLAC team. 

AREZOO MILLER: Thank you. All right. Sorry. OK. A little bit of history about Silicon Valley Adult Education. Silicon Valley Adult Education has been serving adult students for a century, and with a remarkable history going back, spanning from 150 years ago from its inception in 1870. 

It, originally, was a night school. It was called a night school, and it only served young man prior to World War I. And so, unfortunately, though, we were unable to find a picture from that era. So that picture really does not accurately. It is you, Dr. Porter. 

[LAUGHTER] 

So yeah, but we tried our best. [CHUCKLES] 

And then moving on to 1968, that picture is actually a true representation. I found that picture. A student actually gave it to me one day, and I've been holding on to it dearly. However, in 1968, the name of the school transitioned from Night School to Metro Ed, which kept on to 2025, when it changed to Silicon Valley Adult Education. 

Now, one thing in the picture I'm not sure if he can really tell is that, sadly, well, in 1870, it was only a young man. And in 1968, they actually started including women. So it was serving women, adult female and male students, and then moving on to 2025. If you compare it to 1968, where absolutely, if you're able to look, there's zero evidence of diversity. 

In 2025, we are so proud to say that we have such a diverse school. We have such a diverse staff. And as you can tell, that diversity is reflected among our team. Henry is born and raised in the US. I'm from Iran. And Aruna is from India. 

So it is just really heartwarming to see that diversity in our school. And we celebrated every year at our International Day. As a matter of fact, we celebrated it on, I believe, May 8. That was when we celebrated at our school this year. So we really value every ethnicity at our school. And we're very excited to have them. 

OK. This is my class picture. I teach Beginning High. This is the picture, which was taken when our coach, Susan, came to our site for a site visit. And this is the first time we, teachers, got out from our classroom to see other teachers in action. And it was wonderful. And this is just because of DLAC. Thank you so much, DLAC. 

In my class, there are around 8 to 10 nationalities. And the age group is from 20 to 75-year-old. So different nationalities. And they are all eager to learn. And I have the maximum students, 33 on the waiting list also, so they are all very eager to learn. Thank you so much. OK, the next one. 

So we are doing IDEAL 101, as we all know. We use this IDEAL 101 as a great tool to organize and develop our curriculum. Thank you, Destiny, so much for this. We were reading all the chapters using our coach. And we were doing the site plan. And that book was so much great tool to organize our curriculum. 

So in our school, the teachers are our students. So we are going to teach other teachers, the Canvas, so that teachers can teach the students. So we took a survey. And using the survey, we found out the teachers need some professional development. So we are going to use that survey. We are going to do professional development and give it to the teachers during this fall. 

All right. So in order to build a cohesive team, the first thing we had to do in our team was literally address the initial communication challenge that was visible. Very shortly, we noticed that among our team. 

And so what we had to do was, we wanted to make sure we addressed that. And how we addressed address that was obviously, by what Dr. Porter said, connection before connectivity. We realize that because we had different roles, for instance, Aruna and Henry are both ESL teachers, and I'm a transition specialist. 

So we have different roles, different work schedule. And I barely would see them just maybe at all staff, once a month, all staff. So we really first needed to dedicate some time, weekly meetings, where we really got to know each other at a deeper level and learn about, what is our communication style? What are our strengths? And so that really helped us with our team. 

We also had to establish clear goals and meeting agendas, so that every team member knew exactly what our meeting was going to entail, and how much time we had, and what we needed to do to get things done, because, again, we couldn't meet two hours a week or something. 

And for that implementation to take place, as a team leader, I really needed to listen to our team and see what they had identified that it was going to be helpful to them. And some of the things that they identified was, they needed to have us have a group text and email more often, send more invites, reminders. And so those are things that I had to keep in mind to make sure that our team was cohesive and moving forward in a positive direction. 

HENRY MULAK: And here we are, working as a team. You all here will recall this yesterday. We're building our marshmallow tower. Thank you, Dr. Porter, for this. You don't see the actual marshmallow there yet, but for those online, Dr. Porter had us break out into our teams and then put a competition, where we built a tower out of spaghetti string and tape with a marshmallow on top. And we've obviously learned to work well as a team. We didn't throw the marshmallows at each other. 

[LAUGHTER] 

AREZOO MILLER: Thanks, Henry. 

HENRY MULAK: Yeah. And we've overcome our challenges, our barriers to working with each other, and setbacks that those resulted in. Thank you. 

ARUNA SUBRAMANIAM: Thank you very much. OK. These are some of the progress highlights we have done so far. We all have completed IDEAL 101. And yay. 

[APPLAUSE] 

We have developed a site plan that is done, completed. And using the site plan, we made a teacher survey. Before we go to the teacher survey, we are going to do Canvas, one lead to our ESL teachers. We initially thought we are going to do for the whole school, but then it was so complicated. So we want to do it ESL, and then we want to take it one step at a time. 

So we did a teacher survey for all just the ESL teachers. And we got the results. And the teacher said, some of them are comfortable with whatever they are doing in Canvas. So some of them, they said, oh, I need some professional development. So we are using that as a tool. And we are going to do a PD during fall of this year. Thank you. 

HENRY MULAK: All right. Upcoming, coming up. Now that we have surveyed our teachers, we'll develop curriculum for Canvas, integrating it into our classroom. We'll implement what we learned from last week's Canvas regional summit that we put on here in Sacramento. And then over the coming summer and fall, the training resources are to be developed. And then we'll move on to professional development of our teachers with OTAN support. 

All right. Thank you. As I mentioned before, these are some of the initial obstacles that we have. So one of the obstacles was actually different work schedules. Aruna is part-time. She works in the morning only. Henry works morning and evening. And there's different days that I work-- eight hours a day, all from 8:00 to 4:30, and then two nights that I work. 

So our schedule was very different. And we really had to communicate and find what works with all of our schedules. And we ended up with meeting on Tuesdays, 12:00 to 1:00, right after their class, with Coach Susan. And since we have a very supportive admin, we met with them on Wednesdays when necessary. So that's how we resolve this obstacle. 

And again, as I mentioned before, we had to listen to each other very attentively and find out, what are the modes of communication that is going to work for everybody and makes our life journey much nicer for all of us, which was, again, group text, email, more invites, and reminders, or just walking to each other from my offices or classrooms? There was, at some point, one of the obstacle was lack of clarity. So some of our members were not really clear when the assignments were due or what we needed to do. And again, that was resolved with just communicating with one another, giving each other feedback. 

So all of these were addressed by more regular check ins. And just learning about our strengths, that really I think helped, because that also allowed me, as a leader of the team, to delegate the assignments and the due dates. So that, I think, clarified things. Thank you very much. 

HENRY MULAK: OK. We have anticipated a number of needs moving forward-- Canvas training through OTAN for our DLAC team. And then for all our teachers, we'll not be able to do this without the admin at Silicon Valley Adult Ed. They'll stress the need for integrating Canvas into our program for all the teachers. 

It'll be important then to observe our teachers to see how they're doing. This is very apparent when our OTAN coach, Susan Gayer, visited our site. And we got that chance, as Aruna was saying, to go in to each of our classrooms. Our admin gave us the support needed so that we could take time off from our classes and go in and see what was happening. It was a real eye opener for us all. And that was really a big deal. So a lot to do moving forward. 

And with that, let's wrap it up with a big thank you to all those here and all the support staff, starting with Dr. Porter. Dr. Paul Porter, thank you very much. Your team building has been a big deal for us, and moving us forward, and helping us to become a cohesive team. And then of course, Destiny Simpson, with your just wonderful guidance, kind, calm, but yet, firm, much appreciated. 

ANNOUNCER: All right. Thank you, Henry. What a great team member. Additionally, I want to extend a thank you to our amazing, amazing coach, Susan Ger. Yes, please. 

[APPLAUSE] 

For her incredible support, dedication, and just believing in us, believing in our team and helping us to succeed in our DLAC journey. Additionally, I want to thank her for her guidance, for her insight and calm influence. That was the key to keep our team focused on our ultimate goal. So thank you so much. We're absolutely, truly grateful to you, Susan. Thank you. 

And we couldn't have done this journey without our OTAN team. Thank you so much, Neda. We really appreciate you. It's been a wonderful thing. I told Henry I had been waiting for three years to be part of the DLAC team, so it is absolutely an honor to be part of this group with you all. And I also want to thank all the OTAN team for all their unwavering support. Thank you very much. 

ARUNA SUBRAMANIAM: So we always meet with a coach once a week, on Tuesdays, from noon to 1:00. And with the admin, at least twice a month, we used to meet based on need purpose. So I would like to thank our admin, Ms. Kiran, who is the assistant superintendent. She was very supportive. She's very supportive. She listens to our PowerPoints, make some corrections, and always, always helpful. 

She comes to the meetings also. She was a key point in the PDLS presentation also. And I want to thank Kiran. And I want to thank our director, Dr. Molly. She not only comes for the Wednesday meetings, she comes for the Tuesday meetings also. She is always helping with a lot of good ideas and all. 

And I want to thank our backbone, who is Lars, who is the assistant principal. Without him, we won't be here. He was a former DLAC student and now, an admin in our school. So he wanted to do it. And he was the one who started it. So thank you so much, Lars. And thank you, everybody, to make this happen, so we are all here. Thank you. We are all looking forward for a wonderful next year together. Thank you. 

NEDA ANASSERI: Thank you very much. 

[APPLAUSE] 

We're actually going to hold for just questions for a little bit. Let me see. So I'll start with Amanda. Then I'll go to Anthony and then Jake. 

AMANDA SIMONS: Thank you so much. My name is Amanda Simons. I am coming from San Diego College of Continuing Education. And I can confirm with you that Susan is an absolutely amazing coach. So thank you. 

But my question was, it sounds like you're going to be teaching the teachers, and that's fantastic. What challenges do you anticipate with students and getting them used to Canvas? Or is that going to be part of the training as well? Or is that, yeah, that's DLAC 6 or DLAC cohort 6 getting the students on board? 

AREZOO MILLER: So a great question. Thank you so much for that. So yes, originally, we are planning to train our teachers. However, I just foresee it as being a teacher before, that we will make a curriculum, where I think our teachers then need to maybe spend the first two weeks with their students, as they're getting to know them, onboard them on how to use Canvas. 

So what they've learned, they need to transfer it to their students. But that's something that obviously, we have to keep in mind as we move forward. It is absolutely very important. Yes, we want our students to feel comfortable. The whole point is to have the teachers learn, so that they can help their students. And that certainly is going to help with classroom engagement, classroom retention. So all of those are really good. Thank you very much. 

HENRY MULAK: I would just stress that Silicon Valley, you're thinking of the tech sector and everything. They've got a really, how would we say, educated student body. Actually, we've got doctors all the way down to some preliterate people. 

So the challenge here will be, as we get going, is to build that, so that all those people feel like they're moving forward. And then with Canvas, there's enough resources there that those who are doctors and computer programs, programmers and stuff learning English are challenged enough, just as the preliterate people are. So that will be the biggest thing for us, I think. 

AREZOO MILLER: Thank you. 

ANTHONY BURIK: Hi, everyone. Anthony from OTAN. So I thought Amanda was going to ask my question, but I have a related question. And this is not actually just for your team, but actually, I think the DLAC teams in the room, we heard about the Graystone folks who are planning to do a teacher or a Canvas implementation program with their teachers, which is, I think, what you're proposing here as well. 

So I wonder if you've started to think about some of the challenges you might face in that implementation program. Teachers who might get frustrated easily with not understanding how to work Canvas correctly, teachers who don't have enough time to do the things that you're asking them to do. Some teachers who feel like they're not very tech savvy themselves. And so how are they going to do this big project that you're asking them to do? So I'm wondering if you've started to think about some of those challenges and how you might overcome those challenges if and when they arise. 

AREZOO MILLER: Thank you so much. Again, great questions. So yes, we have thought about it, because as I said, I'm working with two teachers, who are in communication with our teachers. And beside the fact that we did a survey for digital literacy. So that gave us an idea of how many of our teachers really need a lot help. And we also found out that we have a couple of teachers, who are very much advanced in Canvas already. 

So our way of thinking was, well, beside the fact that we're going to make our PDs to be, really, we're going to give them like small chunks at a time, especially with those members who are not really confident with Canvas, and try to have our team members who are really advanced and feel good to maybe come and show their best practice. And yes, Joann. Oh, yeah. I'm sorry. 

So yes, we are thinking about it. I am concerned. I know for instance, we have one teacher who is absolutely very much resistance to change. And I think that's going to be something that I feel like, maybe between three of us, we'll find a way to sit with her, and talk with her, and make sure she understands that as teachers, what do we want? We want the best for our students. We want our student to be able to transition from our adult school to college or workforce. 

And I think when you mention that to any teacher and any educator, and you put that we're here to serve our students, and this is going to help our students to have an easier time in their next journey, I'm sure that we can motivate her to come on board. 

ARUNA SUBRAMANIAM: I want to add on to this. Yes, there are going to be going to be challenges, saying, teachers, hey, why do I need to do this? I'm happy with what I'm doing. Yes, that is what I'm hearing from you. 

So we are going to have the professional development once. It is a mandatory. So they have to come there. And then if they don't come for the other sessions, they are going to get paid or something. We are going to give them some allowance. Otherwise, there are teachers who don't want to come. Yes, we are anticipating those things. 

So we are trying to pave them and make it as a mandatory the first PD, so those kind of things. And still, if they are little hesitant, we have to go to mentor teachering. That's what we are thinking. 

SPEAKER: [ INAUDIBLE ] 

JAKE BALDWIN: Yeah. Yeah, Jake Baldwin, Burbank Adult School. I think you touched on the main question that I had. Because at our school, we have this split shift as well. So it's really hard to find a time, where even if it's a mandatory meeting, for a lot of people, it's their second or third job. So it's like, oh, come in on a Friday. They're like, well, I teach here on Fridays or come in on a Saturday. 

So I guess, how do you manage that in terms of schedule conflicts and people not being able to make the PD? And then also, once everyone is comfortable with it, but you have new instructors, making sure that they're up to speed and things like that. 

ARUNA SUBRAMANIAM: So we have talked a lot about it. It's still a thought going process. We have a break during 15 minutes, 10:00 to 10:15. So we might take 15 minutes this way and that way. Hey, students can have 30 minutes break. And we can just go and talk with the teachers. That's what we are thinking, talking of. So it's on the thinking stages. 

HENRY MULAK: Jake, your questions are ours too. And we wouldn't be able to do it with our admin support, because we got some work in front of us. 

AREZOO MILLER: I was going to add that I had actually thought about that question, because I know our staff have different schedules. I was thinking. And of course, we're going to discuss this in our team, as we work on building our curriculum is that I would suggest that we make videos for our teachers and maybe even flyers, so that people that are not able to attend those PDs, they can go on Canvas. And we have a video, step by step, showing them, this is how you're going to build your classroom. This is how you're going to build your modules and whatnot. 

So I think that's what I'm thinking. How we can come around that obstacle, hopefully. 

NEDA ANASSERI: Great. Fantastic job. Thank you so much, Silicon Valley team. 

ARUNA SUBRAMANIAM: Thank you, everyone. 

NEDA ANASSERI: Excellent work. 

ARUNA SUBRAMANIAM: Thank you.