Renee Collins: Thank you, Veronica, and welcome, everybody. I just wanted to start out by talking about how this project came about. And as you know, if you've been with us for the last couple of years, CAEP and CAEP Technical Assistance Project have been doing research and organizing projects around the state priorities and this particular project is really focused on learner transition-- how are we transitioning our students to college, how are we transitioning them to employment, and it's also about program development. so those are the two focuses for us today.

IET has also been around for-- especially WIOA II funded programs for the last several years. However, especially IET as it relates to ESL programs with the IELCE programs for ESL students. So our goal with this project and research was to build awareness in our non-WIOA CAEP programs about IET, and to hear from practitioners around the state about their successes and their challenges with developing and implementing IET programs. So that's what we've really captured today with the-- that's what we've really captured today with this webinar and the document that has been made public to you.

I want to take just a moment to thank our advisors who helped out with the project. We had several so it included advisors from CASAS, from Calco AIR, also the California Department of Education Adult Education Office, and the Chancellor's Office. And we also had three field practitioners who with experience delivering IET who sat on our advisory in the development of this report. So thank you so much.

I also wanted to extend a thank you to all of our practitioners that we were able to interview or Jennie and Peter were able to interview and to all of the participants in the listening sessions, the expertise and experience and knowledge that we were able to gain from those sessions was invaluable in the development of this report.

And then I would be remiss if I didn't thank Jennie and Peter for their work on this project. They have been with us for a couple of years, working on various projects and always easy to work with and very professional in what they do. So we just appreciate being able to work with them. With that, I want to thank you for joining us today and hope that you are able to benefit from hearing all of the voices of our practitioners in the field, of our students' voices, and I look forward to seeing how we use this moving forward. Passing over to Jennie, I think.

Peter Simon: Actually, I think I may open it up.

Renee Collins: Sorry, Peter.

Peter Simon: It's OK. Well, thank you both for Veronica and Renee for the great lead in for this webinar. I'll just say back that we've really enjoyed working with you for the last two years. We are, Jennie and I are High Road Alliance. We are consulting firm that as our moniker says, we really focus on equitable career pathways. And in that work we've worked a lot with the adult Ed system, but also with community colleges, with a number of unions lately and building apprenticeship and pre-apprenticeship on ramps to really good jobs, also workforce boards and community partners.

As Renee mentioned, we've really been very fortunate actually, to be able to approach this work by listening to many of you probably who are on this webinar, in terms of listening to practitioners talk about the great work you're doing there, our job is often to absorb that, and then put it out in these briefs and things like this webinar today. Maybe that's enough on HRA. Jen, if you want to talk about our agenda today?

Jennie Mollica: Sure. Thanks, Peter, thanks, Renee and Veronica. It's such an honor to be here today. As Peter said, thank you to all of you participating today who were part of this research project, and to others who come with your curiosity and your interest in this topic, welcome.

We're really delighted to share with you today what came out of this project which was, as Renee described, a chance to really listen to people who are involved in IET programs around the state. And our agenda today gives us a chance to say a little bit briefly about what is integrated education and training, just a very quick background, and then share with you some highlights of this brief that we worked on.

This came out of, as was mentioned, 13 different interviews. This was with consortium leads, program directors, instructors, also listening sessions, there were five of those that involved 47 people with different perspectives on IET coming to share and learn.

In all we talked to representatives of 27 different IET providers. That included 27-- I'm sorry, there were 21 providers that were adult schools, 13 that were community colleges, and then we actually talked to seven programs that involved those together. So thank you to all of those who we will see reflected in this.

And then a highlight today is going to be the panel discussion, and we're going to try to get to that, leave at least half hour time for that discussion and dialogue, which will really bring to life some of the things we learn through this research. And we're going to leave time at the end for questions, so please think of those questions.

If you have questions as we go, we also encourage you to put those in the chat box. We'd be very open to considering those and seeing if we can answer some as we go along.

Peter Simon: OK. Very briefly, our objectives for this webinar is, again, just to sort of have a collective definition of what is IET and its potential, what it can add to the field and particularly to our students, to share at a very high level sort of our findings and recommendation from our brief that we put together.

And again, as Jennie mentioned, to have a lively discussion with our panelists and hopefully, have time for you also to interact with them at the end of this webinar. We want this to be live action and of value to all of you who are listening. Next slide.

Jennie Mollica: So this is going to be a quick, quick little intro. For those who might need the quick definition, we're going to fly through this part a little bit. But just to give you a taste, IET is defined in the workforce opportunity and Innovation Act, which was signed in 2014.

And California has been operating IET program since then, really delivering on the vision of WIOA which is to offer adult education and literacy concurrently and contextually with workforce preparation, workforce training in a specific occupation or occupational cluster, and with these goals of educational and career advancement.

So in California we use our WIOA Title II funds. These are integrated English literacy and civics education dollars that are specifically set aside for programs that are combined with IET with integrated education and training. And this is a current priority of the California Department of Education and of the Chancellor's Office, so it's an opportunity for collaboration across our major systems providing this kind of education to adults.

And now there are many programs receiving these IELCE funds who participated in our interviews. So we hear a lot of their perspectives as we share findings with you today. It's worth noting that IELCE is one of multiple funding sources that many of these programs use.

So WIOA Title II has really lifted up IET for our adult education field, and those who are using other funds are sometimes finding ways to deliver on the IELCE vision, but doing it in different ways, a whole variety of different ways.

California promotes a model that meets the requirements of ELT and so we'll see examples of strong programs that meet these kind of quality criteria for IELCE. You will see we talked to some programs that are not IELCE-funded and the kind of take other creative approaches. But it is important to note that California has defined a model based on the ELT definition, which really is a quality IET model.

We point you here to just one of many resources that are out there. We're not going to give you an exhaustive overview of IET. There are some great resources that have been produced. This one by the Center for Law and Social Policy, they really break down the WIAO regulations, give examples, help us to understand how to deliver on that WIOA vision.

Peter Simon: So again, very briefly, sort of key elements that are present in different variations in all of these IET programs. At the core of it, is collaboration. And the classic model is two teachers teaching together, but we really want to note that it's not just the teachers who are working together, which is, of course, very important, but also student services, counselors, administration, and even workforce partners.

It's really a team effort with different variations and how that looks. IET programs that are successful really are responsive to both the student needs and also to employer hiring needs. So there really is a demand on the other end of these programs.

All of these programs focus a lot on building career quality curriculum that it's about integration and making it, of course, relevant to the students. And I think one thing that sets IET programs apart is that even though you may have a CTE program and an ESL or GED that you have a single set of learning objectives, and that's a lot what the teachers work out together.

And in California, there's really two models of integrated teaching, which is either co-teaching or having two teachers in the classroom, or alternating teaching where you may have not together but sequential or at different times, but the content is integrated. Next.

Jennie Mollica: So this is just a summary of IET in California today. The data that we have shows that the $15 million in these WIOA Title II section 243 funds that are allocated for IELCE programs are going to 112 different educational agencies. And we were just talking with one of our students who's here today to present saying, you're part of a program that has all these fancy acronyms and it's all over the state.

And many of our students don't realize that this is part of what they're sitting in the classroom appreciating is part of a quite large statewide effort. There are over 14,000 learners that are enrolled in IELCE programs in California. 2000 of them are specifically in complete IET programs. Others are enrolled in a piece of those, or one of the elements of them might not be fully enrolled.

But we have many of these students receiving COOAPs, which are Civic Objective and Additional Assessment Plans. This is California's means of assessing and tracking student progress in these programs.

And as you see in the last bullet here, these programs are using a diversity of different funding streams to support the instruction and student services, and that includes CAEP dollars and community college apportionment. WIOA Title I is our other public workforce funds. So these are all going to support the growth of IET.

Peter Simon: And I'm not going to read this whole slide to you, but I think fundamentally, particularly, I think in this sort of post-pandemic period where there's an incredible number of people who have been dislocated or have left jobs and need to get back into the workforce but do not have a lot of time to be in long training programs, that IET both is an equity strategy in terms of really dealing with a lot of barriers, but simultaneously, an acceleration strategy, meaning people can get to occupationally-related training much faster with the IET approach.

And again, it's a chance along with adult dual enrollment, which we also were looking at the same time. It's an opportunity to really get into college level and career training at the college level from the adult education level much quicker. And of course, all we hear from employers is, we're desperate for workers.

And I'll just add that a lot of the workforce where people have bilingual skills, and a lot of our immigrant students actually are a big plus for a lot of the employers out there. Next.

Jennie Mollica: All right. In our last slide before we get into a quick summary of the research brief is just to point out that not all IET programs look alike. Like Peter mentioned, there are different models of teaching in ways that integrate the basic skills and the career education, either co-teaching or alternating teaching.

We saw very different roles assigned to adult schools in community colleges and in collaboration, or roles being taken on solely by adult schools or solely by community colleges. There's a lot of variation there.

We saw IET programs really across industries and occupations, and the report includes an interesting table that sort of maps out all the different industries and occupations of just those programs that we talked to. And then as mentioned, just a huge number of different ways of creatively funding the many elements of IET.

Peter Simon: So we are going to jump into a very, very brief overview of some of what we heard in all these many listening sessions and interviews, and from our advisory committee as well. I'll just say that number one, of course, we encourage you to read the brief because in the brief has a sort of a more substantial discussion of each one of these elements, and we also give concrete examples.

I'll just say that in terms of these different topics, Jennie and I are very lucky to hear all these incredibly creative solutions that all of you out in the field have come up with to make all of this work. And again we'll hear more that will make this all come alive from our panelists in a few minutes.

These are the six areas that are in the brief. We'll go over these briefly, and again we want to not just talk to you at as we go through this, if you either have questions or even examples you'd like to share, please put them in the chat. I guess I have this slide as well.

I mean, one thing one thing that was clear obviously when we're talking to all these different people is that these partnerships are really consortium-wide partnerships, and what we mean, obviously, and I probably don't have to explain that to this audience that the consortium really involves the community college and the adult education programs, and some even involve other community partners.

It's about integrating basic skills and CTE instruction, and in many cases linking adult education and post-secondary community college. And again, we can't emphasize enough the core element of partnership in terms of just building trust, really establishing the roles, and as a dean who used to pay for this, you have to build in staff time not just to plan the program, but as you go as the ongoing collaboration.

And as we heard over and over again, there's many technical challenges that come up, and it's the partnership that really is the way in which you address all of these challenges as they arise,

Jennie Mollica: I see we have one question already in the chat. And this is, we've started to organize student visits to local employers. Our challenge is getting the students to sign up and attend. Do you have any ideas for incentives? I think that might be a good question to pose to our panel a little bit later.

We're going to touch on student recruitment and retention, which was a huge theme in the interviews, and maybe there will be some thoughts there. And so hopefully that will be addressed as we go along. Thanks for the question though. We encourage you. Send those our way at any time.

Teacher recruitment and training was definitely another theme, a topic often brought up by programs both in terms of the challenges it posed, but also the creative solutions that programs have been able to find. Many cited the challenges of recruiting IET teachers, and were able to articulate some of the reasons why it's hard.

In addition to just the regular challenges of finding strong teachers, there were challenges named related to IET because it takes sometimes extra time, certainly extra time for teacher collaboration. Often class times and locations have to be very carefully coordinated so that the different elements of an IET program can sync up, and that can pose challenges for teachers adjusting their own schedules.

Just the activity of co-teaching is not for everyone. Some people were very clear that they didn't enjoy that as much as it might take to really effectively co-teach. It takes some giving up of control in the classroom. And as a teacher myself, I can say that could be hard, and so that's not for everyone. It's not every personality that enjoys IET.

There were also just very practical reasons given around the adult Ed CTE credential requirement for a CTE teacher, or lower wages paid for adult Ed instructors as compared to community college, and some of the sort of practical details that come up when trying to design these programs.

The creative approaches were inspiring though. There were examples of basic skills teachers going in, getting CTE credentials so that they could essentially co-teach in their own classroom. There were also examples of blending funding. IELCE has very specific requirements, and some were able to blend funding in ways that brought in the CTE piece in what would have otherwise been more of a basic skills environment.

So contract education was used to allow involving employers trainers to participate in some way in a program, or to fund professional experts from the field to participate. The topic of teacher training was really an important one, and many, many cited the immense value we have in California of the offering of the CalPRO IET implementation clinics. So we encourage everyone who can to participate with your teams in that deep work session.

There were also many programs that designed their own training, either in supplement to or on their own, apart from the CalPRO training. And we're often supporting cross training that was really allowing a kind of home grown training of teachers. And most certainly, they emphasize the importance of paying for teacher collaboration time.

Peter Simon: Just on that last slide, I would just add for all the community college people out there, there's some great examples of using strong workforce money to pay for some of this development because that's a fund that you can tap for this activity.

As was noted by our audience member who brought up the issue about student recruitment, it was a theme that we heard over and over again from all the people we spoke with that in some way, and we really look forward to hearing again from the participants on the panel, particularly students, why it's a bigger commitment of time. What do you mean you're going to have to take two classes instead of one?

So it's really important the marketing and the messaging of what's the value add for the participants. And the marketing can be through the adult school, the college employers, and I think to really educate your own staff, the people who the students first encounter, whether it's intake people, counselors, transition specialists, for people to really understand what's the value of this so they can explain that then to students.

Again, the student support staff play an incredibly important role in terms of addressing barriers, navigating-- figuring out schedules. And also, there's been a real emphasis on ESL and IET, but there's also some terrific examples of linking CTE and high school diploma or high school equivalent classes since a lot of the jobs we're talking about, particularly apprenticeship, you need a high school diploma to be able to get those jobs. So this again is a chance to link those and accelerate people's access to those opportunities. Next.

Jennie Mollica: I see a little dialogue going on in the chat in response to the question about incentivizing students to participate in employer activities. Thank you, Amy, for being there. Amy has such a wealth of experience. The CalPRO IET clinic is a chance to interact with Amy and get a lot of her wisdom. There are some good tips showing up in the chat box, so thank you for that.

I want to note on this next slide, the importance of retention support for IET students, and this was brought up repeatedly by our interviewees in our listening sessions. These are often challenging classes for students. Typically, they attract students who are very work-oriented and maybe already working, already supporting family and juggling school at the same time.

And often they demand an extra amount of time to cover both the basic skills that ESL and also the career content. So they're demanding in a number of different ways.

And here's where we heard a real focus on models that are very student-centered, very responsive to what the program can learn about what will work for students in terms of length of the class, blending, what might be more flexible if it's online, but also with the support needed and the in-person time needed to really be as strong educational programs or the proper blending of online and hybrid options.

Stipending, recognizing the financial barriers that can be posed for some students, and really emphasizing the knowledge, the wisdom that comes in the adult education world around what is high quality instruction for working adults. And we heard a lot about the benefits of teaching basic skills in ways that are contextualized and hands on, and that are presenting really practical language.

Also around retention support, we can't overlook the importance of support services, and many, many programs are really integrating strong student supports to help students with transitions, but also just kind of support, make sure barriers don't come up along the way.

Peter Simon: Also another thing was really what are the necessary student support services to connect students to work? And I just wanted to emphasize the last bullet first, which is many of our students, at least those who have right to work documentation are eligible for the workforce system.

We are a Title I funds, which are also particularly for people who are low income or dislocated or unemployed can help with childcare, transportation, and career counseling. But for all, it's really important to number one have the employer relationships in place that make sure that the curriculum that's being put together is relevant to the demand.

And that goes sometimes beyond the teacher partnerships. That's where the other staff at the school or the college can help with the connections they might have to the workforce world. And maybe that's enough. I don't want to go on and on about this. But it's really important that we help the students, and it may well be some transition specialists in certain consortia are also connected to this workforce side and help people with the workforce connection as well.

Jennie Mollica: I think the first bullet on this slide is really just acknowledging a challenge that we heard quite a bit that many people who are themselves venturing into running IET programs are acknowledging that they have limited resources or expertise around the connections to work.

And often these aren't the first pieces to fall into place when an IET program is planned or launched. And yet we really heard across the board a lot of commitment to making that connection to work. It really is the kind of driving motivation behind IET programs. So an area that definitely merits attention.

Many programs though are also supporting students to connect not only to work, but to further training. And I think the evaluations of IET programs nationally show that not high numbers typically do take that path to college, higher, more advanced certificates and degrees, although they may get a certificate through an IET program.

And we heard some wonderful examples of programs that are supporting those transitions to continue training if that's a goal of the student. So there are programs that are linking their IET program to a college pathway in a really intentional way, often with ongoing ESL support, acknowledging that a student may need that continued support even after they exit the Bridge Program.

There were examples of IET programs as the first college course on a CTE pathway, so involving the college already at that step, and sometimes awarding a certification already, and that can be a real win at the end of an IET program.

Credit by exam was another way that the programs were supporting that transition to a credit bearing college work, and again, the important role of transition specialists we like to always remember.

Peter Simon: OK well we hit our target of getting here before 12:40. Thank you Mandilee. She put the link to the brief in the chat. We'll just close that sort of didactic session with just saying please take a look at the brief, and we would welcome your ongoing feedback, and this is clearly a hot topic that we're going to be discussing for a number of years in California.

I'm happy to then transition to our panel discussion, and people can introduce themselves more fully. But I'll just say we have Paige Endo from the Mt. Diablo Adult Education Program, Francisco Narciso from LA Unified Adult Ed.

And then we're very fortunate to have two students who are actively involved as IET students Jhenny Juarez from LA Child Development, and Natalia Barnes who's with in the Mt. Diablo Adult Education, the IET Health Careers. So on that note, what Jennie?

Jennie Mollica: Well, I was going to say we can have people introduce themselves just briefly here. I think that would be great if we could please start with Paige.

Paige Endo: Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Paige Endo, a longtime ESL teacher, ESL coordinator, and an administrator now at the Mt. Diablo Adult Ed, and we've been working on IELEC programs since the 243 Objectives were first rolled out, and it's been a journey, and I'm happy to share some parts of that as we go along. Thank you.

Jennie Mollica: Thanks Paige. Francisco.

Francisco Narciso: Hello, everyone. My name is Francisco Narciso. I'm with LA Unified Adult, part of LAUSD. I'm the IET teacher advisor, and I'm very excited to be here to share our experiences with IET with our district and our division. We've been doing IET for a while now, and I'd like to share some of my experiences and our experiences. So I'm happy to be here, and I'm happy that Jhenny from our program is here too.

Jennie Mollica: Yes. Thanks, Francisco. And Jhenny, would you like to introduce yourself?

Jhennyjuarez: Hi, everybody. My name is Jhenny Juarez, and it's a pleasure to be part of this webner, and I could share my experience with how was Child Development with IET.

Jennie Mollica: Great. Thank you so much. And Natalia, I see you've joined us.

Natalia Barnes: Yes, I'm here. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Natalia Barnes, and I am currently doing dental sustainment in Mt. Diablo, and I'm really happy to be here and share my experience.

Peter Simon: Welcome.

Jennie Mollica: Wonderful. Thank you. Welcome. Peter, you want take this one? Great.

Peter Simon: Yes. We wanted to start out by posing a question to the two students on the panel, which is, can you please tell us just about your career goals and what are your next steps after taking your IET classes? Please, either if you like to jump in.

Natalia Barnes: I can start, if you want.

Peter Simon: Sure. Sure.

Natalia Barnes: Last year, I took Introduction to Health Care Careers for ESL students, and right now I'm starting to become a dental assistant. I am planning to graduate in April next year and start working at dental office after that.

Peter Simon: Great. Thank you. And Jennie.

Jhennyjuarez: I graduated from Child Development, and right now I'm working with my HiSET which is as well in Maxine Water. I have already applied for jobs in school. I'm waiting for an interview for school, starting as not as a substitute teacher, but yes, related with helping in school with parents. So I'm excited of that, and this, it really helped me to have the confidence to say I could do this, and I'm sure they might hire me.

Peter Simon: Great. Thank you so much. And for the two program leads. A question related to that, what opportunities do you find that IET provides for your students? Who would like to jump in on that one? Either if you.

Francisco Narciso: I could jump in. Just as you guys discuss earlier, we see IET as an equity driven program. And the benefits and opportunities for students are a lot, but most importantly, it gives our English learners access to the career classes. I mean, everyone here imagine how long does it take for your ESL students to get access to career classes?

And if the answer is a long time, then IET can shorten that time and give students access to career classes faster. And so students like our Jhenny here who took Child Development, she can learn English and Child Development content at the same time, and this advances her towards her career goal to become a teacher. So it's really an equity driven program.

Peter Simon: Thank you. Paige.

Paige Endo: I agree with everything Francisco just said. And he was talking about access, and I was thinking of the word connects. I feel like having an IET program connects students to pathways and programs beyond ESL if they're ESL students.

It also, like you were saying earlier, Peter, connects them to resources because maybe the ESL teachers and program are not familiar with some of the resources that are out there for students who are in our CTE programs for example. And so if they're in this pathway and they get into the CTE program, now suddenly they're connected with more resources.

They might have always been accessible to them or available, I should say, but they might not have known that they could access them, and there might not have been people around them to direct them in that direction.

I think it provides support for them to be successful in that class, and as Jhenny was just saying, it gives them confidence. We hear over and over from our students that after going through a program, which is hard even with support, they have confidence now to do the next thing and the next thing. And so I think enough said, but definitely there are some good opportunities, and I'm sure there are more.

Jennie Mollica: Thanks. Here's a question. So should I take this, Peter?

Peter Simon: Yeah.

Jennie Mollica: We can just go back and forth. Here's a question again for Francisco and Paige. What would you say have been factors in the success of your IET programs? And maybe we'll go back to Francisco first on this one.

Francisco Narciso: Thank you, Jennie. And you mentioned it before, and I want to reiterate it because it's so important. It's the partnership, and Paige identified resources also, and these resources sometimes are linked with the partnership.

So factors to our success with our IET program is to find partnerships that can add on to our resources as a division, and as a district. We have resources but together with partners, we have more resources.

And so if we're partnering internally within our division, we have these certain district resources. But as we move outside of our district and partner with outside agencies, they provide resources that maybe we don't have. And so our students, our teachers, our classes have access to these resources. So the factor to success is resources to partnerships.

Peter Simon: Excellent.

Jennie Mollica: Great.

Paige Endo: Well said, Francisco. I would also like to add that the WIAO funding itself has been helpful. We don't have the pressure-- we're in this situation anyway now that we're no longer ADA-driven, but we don't have the pressure to have huge classes right away and continue, so that gives us a little bit of time. So that WIAO funding has been helpful.

I think another thing is just our persistence. We just keep trying and coming back and keep trying and plugging along to make them be successful. And then as Francisco is saying, the collaboration among programs, whether they're internal programs, for example ESL and CTE, or external, for example Mt. Diablo Adult Ed and our local community college or our local day labor center, we have some partnerships with them as well.

So that collaboration, and not just the collaboration but the ownership, that's one of the things that I saw when we first started this. It was looked at as an ESL program. And it took a while for-- and I wouldn't say we're really 100% there yet, but it's taken a while for the other programs that are partnering with the ESL program on this to take ownership of the program as well.

A couple of other factors, and these also were challenges, I'll just say, but they're factors in the success, and that is getting teachers that are willing to co-teach, and willing to try. And then finding the right match, the right pairing of those teachers. It kind of really boils down to the students experience in the class with the teachers, and so that is really, really important.

And then I'll reiterate something that's been mentioned, but just the ongoing paid staff collaboration time to co-teach, I think it's just really important. It just needs to be built in and continue. So those are my thoughts.

Peter Simon: That's great.

Jennie Mollica: Yeah, I so appreciate you sharing your experiences on this. And Paige, when you talk about persistence, it makes me think of a number of comments that were shared with Peter and with me about just how much time it took for these programs to evolve and kind of come into their own and take shape, and often through quite a bit of trial and error.

Sometimes programs that have been going for a few years would still talk to us with that sort of sense of it being new and fresh, and I think it's just it doesn't always click in that very first semester. It sometimes takes a little time to form. I appreciate your pointing that out.

Peter Simon: I just have also one follow up question for Francisco. When you mentioned about resources from other partners, could you give a couple examples of how that really helped your program?

Francisco Narciso: Yeah. So the program in particular that I want to highlight is our Child Development Program. So we're in partnership with Mayor Garcetti's office. And so what was nice was that Mayor Garcetti had a vision that aligned with our vision, and so the shared resources that the mayor's office have really helped us. And so these resources are relationship driven.

So the mayor's office has connections with a lot of agencies, a lot of CBOs, and so for example, just recently, they connected us with LACOE, LA County Office of Education. And so now we're in partnership with LACOE in developing pathways for students as they move towards a community college and pursuing their teaching permit.

Peter Simon: Great. Thank you.

Jennie Mollica: That's a great example.

Peter Simon: We'd like to pivot a little bit back to asking this question to the two students. The question is you've had two teachers, how do you teachers support you, and just how was that? I mean, in more general terms, how was it? It's unusual at first probably to have two teachers working together, right? Who would either of you like to jump in? Jhenny?

Jhennyjuarez: Yes.

Peter Simon: Go ahead.

Jhennyjuarez: Yeah, it was first experience of having two teachers. At the beginning, I was like, maybe he's going to be here for just a certain-- and then it's not going to happen, and then I realized, Oh, no he's staying. It was something new, and it's good because you learn because every teacher gives a class different way. Every teacher has their own way to impart the class.

So you learn. At the same time, you're learning two types of ways how to impart class. You learn how to dissolve an issue, like if a teacher is not there, how the other teacher is going to do both by himself. So that's an experience that you can learn for you as a future teacher. You will learn how to do that.

And also it helps a lot when you're there to make sure that you are getting the right learning, double check. You have one too here, let's go and verify that. And yeah, that helps a lot. And both of them have their own way to teach and help. One will help me with my writing or verify if my writing it's right, the other one will help me to see if I have the structure the right way.

And it's good because you don't have to waste time searching for another help or backup outside. So you have it in there, you can resolve it at the same moment. And they also help us to make sure that you have understanding everything, and both work at the same way. For me was a nice experience having two teachers in there, and I learned a lot. This program was awesome.

Jennie Mollica: And Jhenny, we have a question in the little chat box here. Were your two teachers in the classroom together or did you have two separate classes with them? Were they in the room together all the time?

Jhennyjuarez: They were in the room together all the time. Yes. That was cool. Yeah like I'm telling you, we all, both of them, students are on the same page.

Peter Simon: Fantastic. And Natalia, how is it for you having two teachers?

Natalia Barnes: Yeah, absolutely, was different at the beginning, but I have to say that it was a wonderful experience having both them for me. They were very helpful. They were very encouraged me of continue and pursuing a health care career.

And what I like the most and I found very helpful was having one teacher helping me with pronunciation, grandma, things related to English because we were learning vocabulary that was not like we use every day, and our teacher was showing us images, videos, and make the class more interesting.

And they also helped me because when I started the ESL class, I wanted to study something, then I can work right away. But I was lost. I didn't know where to go, what can I do to enroll at the school since I am from a different country if I can do something like that.

So they both help me, they took me to the office, show me all the documents and things that I can do. And so that was very, very helpful. And they gave me a lot of confidence because I was very scared to go and study something that was not related to English because I was not feeling-- maybe it's because I had an accent, then I won't be able to study something else besides English. But they helped me a lot, and then that's why I made the decision to become a dental assistant.

Peter Simon: Very cool.

Jennie Mollica: That's a great story, and confidence has a lot to do with it, I know. And Jhenny, it's so interesting that you pointed out that as someone studying to become a teacher, it helps you to see teachers collaborating. I hadn't thought about just how relevant that is in early childhood education because teachers do co-teach in early childhood education.

In a preschool classroom, they're co-teaching. But so often in our work environments, we're collaborating in different ways, and to see that happening in a classroom, it seems like a great model. I really appreciate you pointing that out, so interesting.

Our next question here. Here we have a version for staff and a version for students, but both of these are around challenges. So for staff, and I think I'll ask Paige this first, what has been challenging about launching or implementing IET?

Paige Endo: When I was thinking of this question, I thought I could start with how do I love the-- let me count the ways, you know that. And I was thinking, what are the challenges? Let me count the ways. But actually, it's not all challenge and it's not all success. It's a combination of both as you're going along.

I think one of the challenging things is one of the things that's successful also is trying to find the teacher. One, you're looking for two teachers, and as you know these days, staffing is hard to come by anyway. We're definitely short on staff, teachers and instructional assistants.

And even in the last few years before, there was a staffing challenge. Trying to find someone who was willing to do it, who had the right credential and all of that can be challenging about implementing.

I think it's also challenging when-- so I mentioned last time about how the programs are beginning to take more ownership of these this IET class that's a collaboration between more than one program area.

But getting that commitment, getting them-- sometimes the programs for example have different priorities, and so if one of the teachers, if we're sharing a teacher, for example, and the need is strong and the priority of that program is strong and they say we need this teacher, then suddenly we're without the teacher that we were counting on for the program.

So sometimes the competing priorities of programs, neither one is more important or wrong, but it's just competing priorities. And then early on when we were first gaining traction with this particular IET program which is the intro to health careers, we had the ASL term start date, end date, and length.

We're different from the term for the other program area, and that's also been true actually of our collaboration with our local community college. But getting the two teachers and the classes and the timing to work for the students so that if the students finish one thing and they're ready to start the next program, to get into that IELCE class and then that class already started two weeks ago because of the timing, so just working out calendar differences was one thing.

And then one other thing. This is just not so much about launching it or implementing it, it's a part of the implementation, I guess, or down the road implementation. So we finally had this class going, we were so thrilled. It was a small class. It was the first one before Natalia. It started on Zoom and we get to the point where you guys are finished and now you can transition.

And then we realize that even the teachers didn't know how to follow the transition steps to get into the next program even though it's our own agency, and the students were struggling. So the teachers tried to help, and then the teachers couldn't understand it.

So that actually led to some good things though. We realized we need to simplify and organize the steps of transition, which we didn't realize was a problem before. So something that was challenging actually turned in to be a good growth thing for us. So those are a few ideas, anyway.

Peter Simon: Thank you. That's fabulous.

Jennie Mollica: Yeah, well, and Francisco, any challenges to share?

Francisco Narciso: There are a lot of challenges, but I'm just going to limit it to two ideas. And the first idea I'm going to agree with Paige that finding the right teachers are a challenge. And the principal over at Maxine Waters where our student Jhenny is at, she calls it the marriage of teachers.

And she says that she's like the Cupid. She finds the right teacher to match together. And if we don't find that right match, then the students see it. And I know, Jhenny, when you learn from a Mr Johnson and Mr David that you could see the collaboration between the two teachers as they help you and the other students, that was a good match.

But so the challenge is finding that good match with the limited number of teachers that we have available. Right we have a teacher shortage. So we don't have very many choices. And so we cross our fingers and hope that the limited teachers that we have available are going to be a good match.

Now talking about good match is the other challenge. When we work with other agencies, we have a vision, and we have a mission that really aligns to who we are and how we do things. And when we partner with other agencies, especially if they're outside of our district, sometimes they do things a little differently.

They have different norms, sometimes they move a little faster or sometimes they move a little slower. And so the challenge is how could we partner together with these differences? And so what's helped us a lot is immediately when we find a partner, creating a shared vision.

And the shared vision is always around students and student-centered and trying to get the students along a pathway to work. And that usually helps when we have some challenges or conflicts in norms and the way we do things.

Peter Simon: Can I just ask you a quick follow up question, which is, following your analogy, Francisco, about this being a marriage, do you find as program administrators or maybe other staff that you have some kind of ongoing marriage counseling when issues arise? Have you had that experience?

Francisco Narciso: I've had that experience, and because with LAUSD I'm the trainer of IET teachers, so whenever a teacher gets assigned an IET class or program, they come to me first. And so I'm sort of like the trainer, the counselor, the marriage.

And so a lot of times they'll come to me, or even the administrator will come to me and say, hey Francisco, we need some help. And so I do become sometimes a marriage counselor between teachers, which is fine because my approach has always been when counseling or helping out teachers, it's always been around that shared vision.