Marcela Movit: Thank you for-- thanks to all of you for joining us today and for your interest in learning about how you can join this initiative, Supporting Immigrant Integration through Civics Education. We'll be talking a little bit about CALPRO's New Community of Practice in just a bit. So in today's session, to give you a sense of what we'll be doing, we'll start off with just some introductions, go over what the objectives are for today's session. I'm going to talk about the Immigrant Integration Framework [audio out] Some of you might already be familiar with it, so it might be more of a review for you.

And then we'll talk about teaching the skills that matter in Adult Education project, the EL Civics and the COAAP system, supporting immigrant integration in the classroom level through civics education. We'll talk about the New Community of Practice like I mentioned. And then we'll wrap up and start thinking about what your next steps in this area could be. All right.

So I saw that already, a couple of people beat me to it. Ryan, Ivan, I guess, you've been to this kind of session before and already knew to take a moment to share in the chat your name, your program, and what your role in the program is. So I'm going to pause, give you a second to do that. All right.

For those of you who haven't had a chance yet, I'm going to encourage you to continue to add that into the chat. It's great to meet those of you who've already shared; Ryan, Ivan, Margaret, Patricia, and Paul. It's great to meet all of you, albeit virtually. So as I said when I was going through the agenda, some of these things that we'll be covering today, you may or may not be familiar with already.

And so if we were doing this in a live room, I'd ask you to hold up your hand, give me the-- hold up your fingers 1 to 5, let me know how familiar you are with these topics. I see that nobody else is really on camera. So you could come on camera and hold up fingers. Otherwise, I'm going to ask you to put into the chat a number between 1 and 5 to let me know how familiar you are with each of these initiatives. So I would-- each of these items.

So first, how-- or you can put in the chat number 1 through 5. How familiar are you with the Immigrant Integration Framework? Margaret is at 5 so one. OK. And I said-- sorry. Before I start asking these questions, I should have been very clear that it's a no judgment zone. Please feel free to be honest. It's OK if you don't know. That's hopefully why you're here. And if you are here, I would love to hear from you a little bit more about what you already know, if you could share your knowledge. So we're kind of all over the board, it looks like, when it comes to Immigrant Integration Framework.

How about the teaching skills that matter in Adult Education project? Or as I like to call it, TSTM testing for short. OK. So it sounds like from what I'm seeing in the chat that perhaps this is a newer to you idea. No worries. So we'll be looking at that project in just a moment.

How about COAAPs? And based on who's in the room, I have a feeling that the numbers will be a little bit higher here. All right. So here I'm seeing, again, both fives and ones, which is great. That means that I still have some maybe new knowledge for some of you to share, which is always a good feeling when you're presenting.

Next up. How familiar are you with CALPRO's Communities of Practice? Wonderful. So I'm seeing a lot of familiarity there, which is great. All right. So let's take a moment. Before we really dig into the meat of this presentation, I'm going to ask you to pause and reflect. What is one need or challenge your students face when it comes to participating in the community, their schools, their own education, et cetera?

We're a fairly small group. So I do see that some of you typed it in the chat that I'm going to see. So Margaret shared confidence with English, language barriers, language skills, and cultural knowledge, time-- time and language. OK. So there are some recurring themes here. Would anybody like to come off, or unmute themselves, and talk a little bit more about the kinds of challenges? You've seen how this has really shown up for your students. Yeah, Margaret, that would be great if you want to unmute.

Margaret: Well, I don't want to be the only one. I mean, it's--

Marcela Movit: That's OK. You can get the ball rolling.

Margaret: It's been a couple of years. But I know when I was teaching that the students really were very worried about how they would come across like at a PTA meeting or something like that. They weren't sure who to talk to at their children's school, in the community. They just didn't know enough about the government area of the community, city government, so to speak.

Marcela Movit: Yeah. I think that that really resonates with the experience of a lot of teachers that I've heard from. Anybody else want to share your experience? Suzie shared in the chat that her experience was similar. All right. So unfortunately, Margaret, for now you're the only one who is sharing. But that's OK. I hope that others will share a little bit later instead then.

So through your participation in today's session, I hope that you'll be able to describe the structure and substance of the Immigrant Integration Framework. I know that many of you said you're already familiar with it. Maybe you'll learn even more. Describe the purpose of TSTM, and how it supports implementation of the Immigrant Integration Framework in the classroom. I know that that was one of the four things that I asked about at the beginning. It was the one that you were the least familiar with. So I'm really excited to share that project with you.

Identify the connections between the TSTM Civics Education lesson plans, COAAPs, and the objectives of the Civic and Community Life Goal Area. And last but not least, list the goals, audience, and format of the new community. All right. So let's go ahead and jump in. Again, I know that some of you said that you're very familiar with this. So hopefully, my overview of the Immigrant Integration Framework will be just a review for those of you who know this already. But for those of you who are less familiar hopefully, we'll just make sure everybody is on the same page about what we mean when we say that Immigrant Integration Framework.

So before we jump into looking at the framework itself, I wanted to make sure that we all had also a common understanding about what immigrant integration is. So here on the screen, I have a quote that comes from the Immigrant Integration Framework white paper that was written by ALLIES. And there's a QR code there, if you're interested in accessing it. So the white paper provides a definition of immigrant integration that really framed the work that we did when we were developing the CALPRO Community of Practice. And it's really good to keep in mind in your own work as you're working in this area.

So it says, "A two-way process, immigrant integration is a two-way process in which immigrants and the receiving society work together to build secure, vibrant, and cohesive communities. Immigrant integration means people are able to succeed in American society your progress in three overall areas; linguistic integration, economic integration, and social integration." So I think when I read this, the first thing that really stood out to me and that isn't automatically thought of when we think about immigrant integration is the first phrase there, a two-way process. So it's not just putting the onus on the immigrants, but rather it's also on the community to try to welcome them and help the immigrants feel like they are part of the society. And so the idea is that they're going to grow together and support one another. So I really just wanted to highlight that one piece for you.

So in developing the framework of the Immigrant Integration Framework, there is this understanding that the future of America but definitely in California, it depends on immigrants. We need the immigrants to enter and grow the workforce, support economic development of the state, and participate, encourage the growth of social justice movements civics and community programs. So in other words, immigrants are critical for our continued growth and success as we move into the future.

So a lot of times we think of their success being directly tied to their ability to communicate effectively in English. I know that Margaret shared and Suzie shared. She had the same experience that language often was what was holding her students back. And that's, again, often what we think of. And that's definitely a component of it, but it's not the only skill that our immigrant students need to be successful and to successfully integrate into the community.

The framework helps to highlight some of the other critical skills that they need. It outlines a broad set of goals that they might have so, again, beyond just language acquisition. And so it can help us think about how we can understand in a more comprehensive way, what supports we can provide to our immigrants. The Immigrant Integration Framework was created with the understanding that not all immigrants have the same goals. And so that's why they have a variety there. And it's not meant to be something prescriptive. It's a framework. So it's supposed to be adaptable to the different needs that our students might have, and the different goals that they might have for themselves.

So here on the screen, you'll see-- it's the overview of the Immigrant Integration Framework in a really graphic model. And in the middle you'll see that there are three circles that represent those three key areas that I mentioned before that students want or that we want our students to really integrate into. So there's linguistic integration, economic integration, and social integration. And then on the outside are those goal areas that I mentioned to you earlier. The different areas in which our students might have different goals, and that we want to really help them succeed, and we want to support them.

And those are English proficiency, first language literacy, educational and career advancement, providing for children and family, economic security, health and well-being, credentials and residency, and participation in civics and community life. So the one thing I also wanted to highlight is that you'll see underneath that there has been an addition. So it was the first iteration of the framework. They developed it with the three key areas in the middle and then those eight goal areas on the outside. And they've also added more recently, self-efficacy and digital literacy. Because I think we've all seen just how important those two items are. And they also relate back to those domains of immigrant integration.

And in case you prefer to see things visually as a list rather in a graphic all around-- although, I agree with both Ryan and Margaret that the graphic is really nice to look at. And it makes things very clear. So the eight areas are economic security as I said, English proficiency, credentials and residency, health and well-being, educational and career advancement, first language literacy, providing for children and family, and participation in civic and community life. Oh. And I apologize, I see here that the snapshot that I took of the goal areas and the matrix is overlapping with that bottom goal area.

But I wanted to pause here. And I know that we already talked for a moment briefly at the beginning about language, again, being one of the areas that our students really struggle with. I know Margaret also mentioned, knowing who the government officials are that we should talk to. And I was hoping that you could share with me-- I think we are able to annotate here. Yeah. Sorry. If you want to annotate-- if you're not familiar, you just let me know. Type into the chat that you don't know how to do it. Or you can just list it in the chat.

Which of these goal areas really resonates with you as a need for your students? While you're thinking about that and doing the annotation, Margaret, I saw that you had your hand up. If you want to unmute and share.

Margaret: I just wanted to ask the question if there are goals under digital literacy and self-efficacy as well.

Marcela Movit: So I think it's--

Margaret: Or they just threw out all of this?

Marcela Movit: Yeah. And that's why they're listed on the outside of the graphic. It's the nice circle--

Margaret: All right. That makes sense.

Marcela Movit: Yeah. So it goes into all of the areas. We'll talk a little bit about the teaching skills that matter project in just a little bit. So that was something that kept coming up. Although we had it as a discrete topic area that we look at, it's definitely interwoven. And digital literacy is everywhere. Great. So Suzie said 2, 6, and 5. 2, 3 and 5 for Ivan. Again, if you want to use annotation and you can check it like that.

Paul: Sorry, I'm going to need the education annotation-- well, actually, no. Sorry. I'm happy to get the education on annotation, if--

Marcela Movit: Sure thing.

Paul: --you could just show me how to do that. It's new to me.

Marcela Movit: Yeah, of course, Paul. Thanks for asking. So at the top, or sorry, it'll be at the bottom of-- no. I lied. Since I'm sharing my screen, do you see at the top a green bar that says that you're seeing my screen?

Paul: Yep.

Marcela Movit: To the right of that, I think that there is a dropdown menu that you can choose. I see you already got it, Paul.

Paul: Cool. Oh. There's all these different options to that, so--

Marcela Movit: I know, it's super fun. I'm excited that you got something out of the session that you weren't even expecting. So that's great. And I see Paul shared in the chat, providing for children and family is one important for his students. Our consortium has done some programming to support parents of young children, ESL at elementary school site that's great.

All sorts of fun annotations here. Let me close my annotation so I can see a little bit better. So providing for children and family has come up for a couple of you, English proficiency. And I think somebody else had already said in the chat that number 6 is also for them. So I just want to know--

Margaret: Marcela?

Marcela Movit: Yes.

Margaret: Marcela, first language literacy is not checked. And I wondered how that came to be part of the goals for integration.

Marcela Movit: That's a really good question. I was not part of the team that developed the these.

Margaret: Oh. OK. I thought you might have been.

Marcela Movit: Based on my background in bilingual education, my assumption is that-- the idea is that if they have literacy in their first language, it really gives them a really strong foundation only then building on the literacy in their second language. So that they're not doing to compete-- not competing. But trying to both learn literacy and a new language at the same time can be really challenging. And so if we provide them first language literacy, I think that helps them again...

Margaret: At a young age, yeah. OK. Got you. All right. Thank you.

Marcela Movit: Yeah, no, great question. I know that for a long time, first language literacy or first language use was not frowned upon, but definitely not something that we were supposed to focus on and encourage in the classroom. And I think that now, there's a greater understanding of the importance and the usefulness of sometimes using first language.

Margaret: It's really hard for ESL classes to focus on because there are so many mixed language groups.

Marcela Movit: It is. It's a challenge. But the first language definitely does bring some benefits that we can draw on. All right I'm going to-- oh. Sorry. One more thing? All right. I'm going to move us-- I'm going to need to stop annotating to be able to do that. All right. Let's see here. Sorry. I'm trying to check my notes.

So there are lots of different ways that we can use the framework insight in adult education. So in the classroom, we can use it to help us think about how to help our students as we're identifying and building our curriculum, helping them work on their digital literacy, using instructional strategies that really promote and help them to develop in these different goal areas. And when we're thinking about how to integrate it into our program outside of the classroom, we can support our students by helping them to navigate the new systems that they're working through, providing counseling, helping with advising.

We can also support our students by providing them with support services. And sometimes we have to rely on our partners. So community partners that we can build relationships with and help our students receive not just the education that they need but also contacts for how to receive other services that will help them. Sort of like Paul's idea of working with other partners to provide services at the elementary school.

Also we can use data collection and reporting. So we can try to figure out how to measure-- it's a little abstract, measuring immigrant integration. And it's an interesting idea that the framework can help us figure out what we are already measuring and what we might want to measure in the future to quantify it a little bit more than we already are and how well we're doing that.

So I just want to pause. I know, again, some of you were more or less familiar with the Immigrant Integration Framework. So if you could reflect, and either type into the chat, or if you want to unmute yourself and share out loud. What role has the Immigrant Integration Framework played in your work already? Or if perhaps you weren't really familiar with it before, what role do you see it perhaps playing in the future?

Casey: So, Marcela, I can speak for Margaret and I as a part of the CASAS team. We've been working to align the EL Civics-COAAPs with the Immigrant Integration Framework and introduce as much content as we can so that they help agencies who use those COAPPs with immigrant integration.

Marcela Movit: Yes. You've done an absolutely fantastic job, which I was so impressed. For those of you who are not familiar with the work that CASAS has done in this area, I'm going to ask you to check in with Portia and Margaret after the session. They've done so much. But they have a really lovely and easy to read document that shows the alignment of the different goal areas and the COAPPs. And it's just so incredibly useful, I think. So thank you for your hard work in that area.

And I haven't shared-- I can share some of the process of developing an immigrant integration plan. We're in the very early stages of this work. And that's fantastic. And I'm so excited to hear that you're starting to do work on this. And I would encourage you to perhaps reach out to CALPRO. And I'll share the contact information at the end. I think our module on this topic would be really helpful to those in your consortium.

Margaret and Portia, I'm not sure if you easily have it accessible, the document that shows the alignment. No. We'll talk about the EL Civics exchange at the end. Thank you so much for sharing that link, Portia. All right. Well, I'll encourage you to continue to think about how the Immigrant Integration Framework could really support your work in helping your students as we move forward to talking about the teaching skills that matter in Adult Education project and the TST.

So I just wanted to start with an overview of the teaching skills that matter in Adult Education project. "It was a training and technical assistance project funded by the Office of Career, Technical, and Adult Education from the Department of Ed." It was a three-year project initially. But the Department of Education just saw so much value and the teachers were getting so much out of it that they have funded an additional three cohorts over two years. So we're in the process of offering those trainings.

"The focus of the teaching skills that matter project is really on the critical content for adult learners and supporting teachers to improve their instruction." And I think that what's really key here. And something that sometimes gets overlooked is that we know that teachers are doing a really fantastic job already. And believe it or not, most teachers are already teaching the skills that matter.

The project is more about being thoughtful and intentional about teaching those skills, and thoughtful and intentional about teaching in the topic areas that are really important for adults. So I'll talk about it in just a little bit and using approaches that have been shown to be successful with adult learners. So it's helping them in school and workforce, preparing them for what they need for the future. And again, it's focused on the central skills that adult learners-- not all adult learners but definitely, immigrants need for success in all domains of their lives.

So the project as I said, it focuses on the skills, critical areas, and approaches. And there are nine skills that matter, five critical topic areas, and three approaches that work. So the nine skills that we identified are here on the screen. I'm going to pause for a moment, give you a second to read those.

And actually, sorry, before I do I just wanted to share with you a little bit about where these skills came from. It's not that they were just pulled out of the air or that we conducted an extensive survey of all employers across the country. But rather, they came out of research that was already existing and then the experience of our subject matter experts. So those of you who maybe have been in the field for quite a bit, you might be familiar with the SCANS report that came out, I think, as in 1992.

That was the first time that people-- that there were questions asked of employers, what skills do you think your employees need to be successful? And so they created a list. And they identified the top skills. And then more recently, there has been the employability skills framework that also has skills. And so there have been four different reports over the last 30 or so years that have identified the different skills that are necessary. And these are the ones that keep coming up. So adaptability and willingness to learn, communication, critical thinking, interpersonal skills, navigating systems, problem-solving, processing and analyzing information, respecting differences and diversity, and self-awareness.

So now that you're all experts in annotating, I'm going to pause for a moment and give you a chance to reflect and think, which of these skills do you think are the most important? Or which one of these skills do you think are the most important for your students to be successful? And if you're still not comfortable with annotation, no worries. You can feel free to share this in the chat.

So interpersonal skills is taking an early lead. And don't worry, I mean, if annotation doesn't work. For you, adaptability, respecting differences, navigating systems. Great. And Margaret noted in the chat that several of these skills overlap. And I think that's 100% true. That there are a lot of similarities in learning how to improve. One helps you with the other.

So I think that that's-- I think one of the great things that sometimes, especially when you present it in boxes like I am here, we have a tendency to think of it as this discrete thing. You know, adaptability and willingness to learn is separate from communication, and separate from critical thinking, for example. But it's not. They all require you to have similar skills. So especially in the ESL-- not on ESL, in the adult learner classroom, this is incredibly important for-- that our students don't have a lot of time. So by building on one, we can help them with another as well. So that's one of the great things here. All right.

Let's move on now and we'll look at the topic areas. So as I mentioned, there are five topic areas that are the focus of this project. And these came out of the legislation. And so for example, WRI Title 2 defines, "Civics education as education services provided to English learners who are adults, including professionals with degrees and credentials in their native countries that enables such adults to achieve competency in the English language, and acquire the basic and more advanced skills needed to function effectively as parents, workers, and citizens in the United States." So that then very clearly, is relevant for our immigrant students.

But also the project focuses on digital literacy. And the definition here comes from the Museum and Library Services Act of 2010. "Digital literacy skills mean the skills associated with using technology to enable users to find, evaluate, organize, create, and communicate information, and developing digital citizenship, and the responsible use of technology." So in 2022, having digital literacy skills are incredibly important for our immigrant students as they try to figure out how to navigate those new systems that I mentioned earlier.

Financial literacy skills are also incredibly important. And when I say financial literacy skills, I mean, "Having the knowledge and skills needed to make financial decisions that promote financial self-sufficiency, stability, and well-being. These skills include the ability to effectively locate, evaluate, and use information, resources, and services. And to make informed decisions about financial obligations, budgeting, credit, debt, and planning for the future. So as our students come to us, as they begin integrating into our communities, this is one of the areas that sometimes our students have some challenges with. Our systems might be a little bit different than those that they're familiar with at home. But we need to work on those areas, so that they can become self-sufficient.

Health literacy skills means, "Having the knowledge, skills, and ability to ask relevant questions to obtain and apply information, evaluate information for credibility and quality, communicate effectively, and make critical decisions to promote one's own health and well-being, and that of one's family, and community." So again, I think you'll see here that there's the overlap. Although we often think about civics education as the key area for helping our immigrant students integrate into our society, health literacy is really critical for them as well so that they can take care of themselves, they can take care of the community.

And last of these is workforce preparation, which refers to, "Having the knowledge, skills, and competencies that when developed and demonstrated, prepare individuals to obtain and retain employment, or advance in the workforce." So I think that although all of these are commonly taught and we commonly work on these with our immigrant students, some of them definitely are less common in our classrooms.

Though I'm curious if you can, again, annotate, share in the chat, or unmute yourselves. And let me know, which of these do you teach the least often? Maybe not at all in your classrooms. Lots of votes for financial literacy. And I want to let you know that this reflects the experience that we've had working with lots of teachers. In this work, financial literacy is definitely the least commonly taught. Yep, financial literacy.

And through the teaching skills that matter project, we do have some fantastic resources. Some lesson plans that are ready to go that you can use to teach financial literacy to your students. I think often, the challenge is that teachers don't know how to address it. Or they're not really sure that they have the ability to teach that accurately. And Margaret shared that a lot of banks do have bilingual staff. And I think that that's true. We want our students to-- that gives them access to the banks. But we want them to know what to do then once they have that access. Great.

And let's see. So last but not least, the third part of our little Venn diagram that I shared are the three approaches that work. And these are problem-based learning, project-based learning, and integrated and contextualized instruction. So again, if I could just get you to quickly annotate, or mark, or share in the chat, or unmute. Which of these you're the most familiar with? Or which of these at all are you familiar with? Have you ever used problem-based learning, or project-based learning in your classroom, or integrated and contextualized instruction?

Great. It seems like fewer people are familiar with problem-based learning. And problem-based learning is a fantastic approach. All of these really draw on what we know about adult learners and how adult learners learn all the great things that they bring to the classroom. With problem-based learning you, pose a problem for your students. And you ask them to come up with solutions, think about the pros and the cons for solving those problems. And they present them. They finally identify a solution that they want to follow.

With project-based learning, for those of you who are less familiar with it. It's very similar to problem-based learning. But the final product is a project where it can be like a video, a poster, something like that rather than a solution. And integrated and contextualized learning is a fantastic way to teach your students with the vocabulary that they need and the content that they need. It's really a time saving way to work with your students.

Great. So let me clear that. Oops. So again, you've heard me mention many times already, this project that has developed different resources that are available to you. So again, we have lessons that model and promote teacher instructional practices that will support your work in this area. They're all students-centered. They really help to build community. You can use them inside the classroom or outside of the classroom. And what your students learn there, it really identifies what skills you're helping them to build as you work through these lessons.

I have on this page a QR code, if you want to go check out the tool kit and see what it has there for you. You'll see it has the seven different tabs. It was originally put into a binder before it was put online. And so that's why we think about it still as tabs. But there's an overview with all the definitions. There's a lesson in there, again, ready to pick up and teach in your classroom of course, with semantic adaptations based on your context about how to teach your students what the skills are that they need.

And there's a whole tab, again, with five lessons in there about civics education. There's also a case study that has some best practices and shows you like in real life what this can look like in the classroom. You'll also find there a fantastic video that brings it even more to life. So you can see civics education being taught in the classroom. Great.

So moving on, some of you said that you were very familiar with EL Civics and the COAPP system. So this will just be a review. I do, again, encourage you to reach out to our experts that we have with us today, Portia and Margaret, if you have further questions about the system. But just really quickly, I wanted to go over this since it ties in so closely.

Sometimes you'll hear about COAAPs. It's the term that you hear a lot. And we'll also hear about civics objectives. And so I wanted to clarify for you what the difference is. "So EL Civics objective is a general competency that helps students access their community." It's really important. And here I have on the screen, an example. So you could say that your objective is to, "Identify and access employment and training resources to keep a job." That's true.

And then the COAPP explains how you know whether or not your students have met the objective. So it's a whole plan for performance. If you're not familiar with it, I do encourage you to take a look at it. It's very useful in knowing at different levels. How do you know that your students are achieving these goals? So I can say, "Complete a job application and demonstrate successful job interview techniques." That's how you know they've met the objective of identifying and accessing employment and training resources to obtain and keep a job."

And Portia shared in the chat that Lori Howard is the expert. And she absolutely is. And thank you for sharing in there the email address for reaching out if you have more questions on this. So just, again, as an overview, "There are 59 civic objectives that you can select. 29 of those have been designated for 243 funding." So you might want to keep that in mind. "There are many COAPPs for each civic objective." So it's not just-- it's not prescriptive, this is what you have to teach. But rather this is how you know, again, this is how you know that your students have met that objective, that they're succeeding, that they're moving towards your goal.

"As of December 2021, there were 170 COAPPs." But I know that Lori is always looking to add to that list. And again, before we move on, I did want to add just one more plug that you reach out to Casey, Lori Howard, or using that email address that Portia shared in the chat if you have any other questions about that.

And so how are we supporting immigrant integration in the classroom through civics education? So all of these three things that I mentioned, that I talked to-- that we talked about and looked at; the Immigrant Integration Framework goals, TSTM, and the EL Civics, and COAPP system really are helping us to improve our teaching and the learning that happens in our classrooms so that we can better serve our students. That we can help them work through the process. We can do this two-way system, and support, and approach for our immigrant integration.

So I'm going to pause there. Sorry. Let me go back to this. I know I've been talking a lot. Are there any questions I can answer for you at this point?

Paul: Hi, Marcela.

Marcela Movit: Hi.

Paul: So yeah, a question with the 243 and the 231. Are those for WRI agencies, only WRI-funded agencies? Or are those-- is that a funding stream that's available for a non-WRI-funded agency?

Marcela Movit: And that's a great question.

Portia: Marcela, would you like me to address that?

Marcela Movit: Yeah. If you don't mind, Portia, that would be fantastic.

Portia: The COAPPs are a funding source for 231 and 243 WRI-agencies. However, they are accessible to paid agencies and all of your agencies as a way of logging outcomes. So there's no funding connected to them in Cape. But you do you do get outcomes. And if you look at Cape's summary, it shows you exactly where those show up. And they are outcomes for all students, whether they're high school diploma, ABE, ESL, or CTE. Whereas in WRI, there are outcomes only for ESL students.

Paul: That's great. Thank you. That's helpful. And I just understand in speaking with some agencies that there's a big financial motivation or carrot for those 243 and 231. But to understand that the curriculum and all that great content is available, regardless of WRI or not.

Portia: And also in WRI, you have all of these requirements about pre, post-tests, et cetera, hours of instruction. There are none of those requirements for Cape. Anybody can participate. Anybody can log to learn outcomes regardless of pre, post-testing status, et cetera.

Paul: Great. Thank you.

Marcela Movit: And Margaret noted the curriculum is now available in the repository elcivics.otm.us. All right. Well, I'm not seeing any other questions. Oh. Great.

So with that, I wanted to just let you know about the New Community of Practice that was released, I think, July 1st was when it first became available to request. "So our New Community of Practice is intended to help you and instructors across the state understand the California immigrant integration context. So a lot of work is done around understanding why this is important and planning instruction that supports immigrant integration. Because it's aligned with the objectives from the Immigrant Integration Framework specifically, the Civics and Community Life Goal Area. And it uses the TSTM lessons, and tools, and approved EL Civics metrics."

"So although we often think that most of our immigrants are in our ESL classroom, this is open to all the instructors who touch or who interact with adult English language learners." So if you're an ABE teacher and you have students in your classroom that you want to learn how to support, we think and we encourage you to participate in this Community of Practice as well. "And although many of our participants have been from programs that have IELCE funding, it's definitely not a requirement." It is open to all CAEP-funded agencies.

So if you're familiar with our CALPRO module format-- I think many of you said that you already were. It generally follows the same kind of format. We start off with a pre-session where we do an overview and an introduction of the topic. There's a lot of getting to know you, and community building, and a lot of reading, and activities that introduce you to the topic.

Then we come together. There's a synchronous session that looks at supporting immigrants through teaching skills that matter. And I believe that that is available both virtually and in-person. After we've had our three-hour session together, thinking about how we can really support immigrants in our classrooms, there's the interim session where you have an opportunity to put into practice what you've learned. And you get to teach a civics education lesson from the TSTM toolkit.

The reason that we do this is that it's sometimes challenging to go back and apply the next day what you learned. You have a ready-made lesson that makes it a little bit easier for you. It also helps to break the ice a bit because you have something ready to go. It's not all coming up with it on your own.

And then we come back together. You have an opportunity to reflect on how that went. And then we take the next step, which is supporting immigrants through the development of our civics education lesson. So we're going to the next step, applying what you've learned and developing your own lesson. And in the post-session, after those three hours together, you have the post-session where you get to teach your own lesson. You get feedback from other members of the community on your lesson. You have an opportunity to reflect on how it went and think about what you would like to do to improve it in the future.

If you are interested in requesting that your agency participate in that Community of Practice, or if you're interested in learning more, I encourage you to contact calpro@air.org to request that. And we can make that happen for you. All right. Take a deep breath. And let's move on to wrapping up our session today.

Paul: Sorry, Marcela, can I just jump in a real quick--

Marcela Movit: Yeah, of course.

Paul: --question? And I'll just blame myself for multitasking. But with the Community of Practice, is that a rolling opportunity? Or is there a cohort that starts and stops at a specific time?

Marcela Movit: No. So that's a great question, Paul. I apologize if you can hear my dog. But I did not answer that, so it was not you multitasking. So you can put in the request, and we will work with you to arrange-- to offer that to your program or to your agency rather. And it's available to-- we'll open it up to other agencies that are local to you as well so that we have a larger group. And so that you can learn from one another as well. But, yeah, you just put-- it's rolling, I guess, long answer to your question.

Paul: That's great. And it also sounds like it could be tailored to an agency's or a consortium's needs based on what they're working on.

Marcela Movit: Yeah. I think, a little bit there is in that flexibility.

Margaret: How many are required to do it?

Marcela Movit: I know that we try to have a minimum of 12 participants.

Margaret: OK.

Marcela Movit: We'd like to have at least 15 just, again, to have a lot of really good conversation.

Paul: And that could be teachers, administrators, whoever--

Marcela Movit: Yes.

Paul: --if someone wants to participate? OK. That's great. Thank you so much.

Marcela Movit: The one caveat for that is that one of the-- or the assignment is to teach a lesson. But that's with instructional leaders or with administrators, you can-- where sometimes you don't have students because it's winter break or whatever, depending on the scheduling. You are able to model it by teaching the lesson, or working with a couple of your friends, or us as your colleagues. That can act as your class.

So as you can tell, I'm really big on reflection. So I'm going to ask you to pause, think, and share with us in the chat your response to any of these prompts. So your uh-huh moment, the most interesting, or useful thing I've learned today, a change I will make based on what I learned, or I'm excited about or excited to.

Great. So I'm excited to see some of the things that you're all excited about. Suzie wants to explore problem-based learning. And, Suzie, you'll find in the TSTM toolkit both more information and more extensive definition than the one that I provided today in the overview section. And then each of the topic areas, we have one lesson that's specifically problem-based learning. So I hope that will be useful to you.

Margaret appreciated learning more about the specific areas within TSTM. Or is it like, connecting the dots with TSTM, Immigration Integration Framework, EL Civics, et cetera. One of you is excited to try some of the concepts. I was excited to share these resources. Wonderful. I'm excited to see that you're going to be adding financial literacy in your curriculum. OK. Ivan says, I appreciate your tips on specific ways to measure immigrant integration related goals. All right.

Are there any final questions while we're together? I realize that for some of you, I'm standing between you and your lunch. We're trying to get some final work done before you head to lunch.

Portia: Marcela, If it's OK, I'm going to stop the recording.

Marcela Movit: Yeah. No worries. That sounds great. All right.