Sudie Whalen: Thank you so much. So we're going to jump in. We have a lot of conversation to have today. We want to hear from you, and then we also have some special guests on with us who are wonderful thought partners in terms of how data can be utilized, how you can better-- so how we can support each other, and just thinking about what our data mentorship needs and things like that are. So these are some of our people that we just like collaborating with and like hearing from, what they think, and things that might work, and things that would be wish list items.

So on with us today are your primary presenters, are myself, Sudie Whalen. I'm deputy director at CALPRO and a little bit of a data nerd. I also lead CALPRO's PLC Institute where we talk a lot about data utilization and collaboration. And also with me is Jay Wright, and I'll let him introduce himself.

Jay Wright: I'm Jay Wright. I'm the California Accountability Manager at CASAS, and we've done a lot of these trainings for a long while. Sudie and I got together a couple of years ago and kind of came up with a brainstorm, and it's taken a mind of its own. I think this is the fifth rendition of this we've done over the last couple of years.

Sudie Whalen: Yes. It's been awesome collaborating and just-- we're like the wonder twins, or we're like Captain Planet with our powers combined. [laughs] But we both just really like collaboration and data, and we get to collaborate together.

So we're going to talk about some collaboration resources; the types of data you can collaborate with and on; data mentorship-- what does that look like, and how can that be supported; the frequency of collaboration-- when is data collaboration useful, and how often is it helpful to check in; we'll also talk about the types of data to share and whom to share it with; and then lastly, we'll have some conversation about data collaboration and support, and future upcoming events and trainings that will be available to you.

We're hoping that by the end of the session, you'll be able to apply knowledge related to the resources for utilizing-- to utilize for data collaboration; we hope that you'll be able to relate common data collection issues and collaboration issues with the need for data collaboration and mentorship; and lastly, we're hoping you'll be able to articulate some ideas for overcoming challenges related to data collaboration because we know they exist. There are some that we've already thought of, but then we also want to hear from you.

I also want to mention that this is a collaboration session where we really want to welcome input and discussion from you all, so please feel free to join us in the chat at any time. You can also join us on camera-- we love seeing your faces. We don't have to be the only ones on camera, so if you decide you want to join us on camera-- or if you want to come back, Carla, please feel free to do so. [laughs] All righty.

So just a quick recap-- hi, Carla. [laughs] So just a quick recap, this is our fifth session doing this and we've kind of built upon it. It's not been a repeat each time. And so-- hello, Laura. Thank you for joining us on cam-- we did a CAEP Summit session last year, similar to this one, but thinking more about how do we break down some of these silos, and what are the needs. We kind of do what we call the reverse panel discussion, in which we ask you all a bunch of questions about what is it you need, what kind of support do you have, so Jay and I could get a better idea of the overall collaboration landscape on data.

Then we did a session on breaking down silos at TDLS, where we shared a bunch of resources for collaborating virtually as well as in person. Then we did a session back in April with best practices on collaboration.

CASAS Summer Institute was also pretty great, where we did an interactive face-to-face discussion where we got a chance to do some, what we call, speed dating, data collaboration speed dating, where everybody just got to go around in five minute increments and ask each other questions. I was a meanie with the alarm and making people break up their conversations and talk to someone new. But apparently, that session was a lot of fun and people really enjoyed getting to know each other.

Jay Wright: I'll be a little bit of a buttinsky on this one and I'll just add that that's where Lydia, Melissa, and Tom fit in as they were card-carrying participants of that speed dating activity. They're kind of the ones that Sudie and I remember because they followed up with some questions since then, so we kind of tapped them on the shoulder and asked them to share their experience, and dutifully here they are with us.

Sudie Whalen: Definitely. And just as a note, a lot of times when we want to collaborate with people in sessions like this, it's not that we're looking for the people who have mastered all data collaboration and things like that because I don't know that that unicorn actually exists yet, but we are looking at people who just ask really great questions and have been thinking about this for a while, or even might be relatively new and are like, this is what can help me, and so we really appreciate thought partnership in this process. And so we're pulling you into this conversation in hopes that you, like Lydia, Melissa? Is that-- Michele? Melissa. Was I right the first time?

Melissa Ochoa: Melissa.

Sudie Whalen: Thank you. I don't know why I just spaced on your name. [laughs] --Lydia, Melissa, and Tom, and then asking those kind of great questions and just jumping into the conversation and not being afraid to engage with the five of us.

So let's talk about some resources that are out there for you. So I'm sure you've all visited the CASAS website and you've seen some of the different things that are out there, but there's a lot of curriculum management and instruction tools that are available to you. I'm going to give Jay a chance to just explain a little bit more about here, and then we'll get into some of the other resources that are available.

Jay Wright: OK. So what we have for-- this is a recap from what we brought up at TDLS. This is what I like to call the teacher section of our website, and it's also probably the most underutilized. A few who know it go there all the time, but that's just a very small minority. Most people don't realize it exists, but it has more information on things like college and career readiness, standards, CASAS' competencies, skill level descriptors. It's also the home of CASAS' quick search. So if you need help using the assessment results to inform instruction, there's all kinds of great resources here.

And then here's the Data Portal. This is one that more of you know. This is a little bit more for data managers. This has our NRS Fed tables data. We'll have the '21-'22 posted in January, but it basically goes all the way back to '04-'05, so if you want to compare your federal reporting results to the state averages and goals, you can do so here. I think there's maybe one more from CASAS.

And then of course, there's TOPSpro Enterprise. This is getting you some information-- I think we must have talked about functional roles at the last one, but here is a link to some of the TE help stuff that Lydia was mentioning at the beginning.

Sudie Whalen: Right. We'll share these slides with CAEP TAP so you can have access to this deck and all the links that are included in here as well.

So we also shared some technical tools because collaborating on data doesn't necessarily-- it's always nice to come together face to face and have an in-person meeting and discussion and put our-- and have our data reports with us to look at, but that's not always feasible, especially with our busy days that we have right now-- so many classes going-- and then especially for collaborating across consortia and trying to bring together multiple school schedules and things like that. So online collaboration works too, but it's also helpful, whether you're meeting in person or virtually, to be able to have online spaces to store the ongoing collaboration conversation relics that you're having-- so whether that's some project management in terms of things you want to fold in to your data collaboration processes, or if it's a matter of sharing files and that kind of stuff.

So we shared some tech tools-- that include Microsoft Office 365, various Google Apps, Slack, Asana, Trello, and Monday-- and those slides are still I think available on the TDLS website if you want more detail about what specifically each of those do, or I will happily send those to you, but there's a link to each of these apps available on the slide deck so you can visit that and check those different tools out.

They all have various pros and cons, some of them relating to costs, some of them relating to if you can do in real time collaboration within a document and just be editing mutually at the same time-- those kinds of technical things. I will not go to tech nerd on you with that right now, but just so you know, those tools are available to you.

So Jay is going to talk to us about some data collaboration, the what and which of data collaboration, and some kind of challenges we might run into.

Jay Wright: OK. If you can go next. OK. So this has come up quite a bit the last couple of months from all of you everywhere. A few of you were in the session I did, what, an hour or two ago on accountability. We sort of brought up the same issue. This is a little more opinion than fact, but lots of input here to generate the opinion, you might say.

We're on the federal reporting WIOA II side. Everybody's still been looking at Payment Points. People have come up with all kinds of crazy ways to get students pre and post-tested, even though we're in the middle of pandemic. I'm not sure everybody wants to advertise how they did it, but everybody mostly did get her done from that perspective, stuff like EL Civics-- also, I'd say, mostly kept running on all cylinders.

What's come up the last couple few months, however, is on the CAEP side, and last time I checked, this is the CAEP Summit. So on the CAEP side, that's where people are reporting difficulties-- a lot of the bubble boy stuff we talked about with CAEP outcomes, reporting short term services-- a lot of those kind of things that we talked about in the roadshow from 2016, '17, '18, '19-- those things.

People are kind of saying, yeah, that's been challenging. Some of the stuff, like occupational skills gain, is on the CTE side-- that's been difficult to track. Short term services, some of you are saying, well, hey, we're in a pandemic, so we're not offering all these community services like we used to. Others of you are still doing it but figuring out a way to record it and keep that accurate-- been really difficult.

So there has been some feeling on the CAEP side that we're back to square one. We've brought up a lot of things with, yeah, we're looking at some new things with reporting that are probably going to happen as well, so we are kind of resetting the deck. We've started getting back into the roadshow a couple of weeks ago-- more on that later.

But the whole issue with CAEP reporting, we're almost feeling like we're starting over and presenting basic level information, somewhat because of what I'm talking about-- somewhat because of also, a lot of you are saying, yeah, the data person is new. Everything is new. We forgot all about this. We need to learn from square one-- sorry, next slide.

So one thing-- and if you have some issues, in the chat, we would really love to hear examples-- but we use this CAEP outcome slide. Some of you recognize it, know it, and love it to death times 1,000. Some of you maybe haven't been in these, so you haven't seen it. I dare say most of you have seen this a million times, though. That is those six areas of CAEP outcomes based on AB 104.

The issue here, you know, some of you just forgot these existed, some of you knew good and well it was around but recording it was difficult, some of you had CTE and workforce prep kind of time out because it was COVID. What's also come up a lot more that we were really talking a lot about in 2019, but it is the sort of stuff easy to forget, are what are those situations when you want to record these different outcomes? What people are really wanting are more student-driven scenarios when we're recording workforce prep milestone. What is it out there that the student is actually doing that's actually warning this outcome-- that's what people are really looking for.

We're sort of sorting it out with the roadshow, but that's something we're really interested in hearing from anybody who has good examples for this. If you don't have examples, I'll just say in sum lots of people are bringing this up as a big issue.

And to be clear, the people bringing it up are not the ones that have their head in the sand all this time. They're the ones that in 2018, '19 I considered to be the greatest of the greatest CAEP data collection superstars. It's the superstars that are saying, hey, we're having trouble, we need to kind of reset button because we kind of need to relearn this. You can go to the next slide. I'll use this as a transition to my last point.

Sudie Whalen: Well, do we want to take a moment to actually have the discussion?

Jay Wright: OK. If people have some issues, I was going to let them bring it up in the chat. Get more into this.

Sudie Whalen: And the question here is, what are some situations you're having trouble figuring out?

Jay Wright: Right. And does anybody have any examples?

Sudie Whalen: And you can put it in the chat, or you can unmute and just briefly share your thoughts.

Melissa Ochoa: I have an example.

Jay Wright: OK.

Melissa Ochoa: It's just the item definitions, or like the translation as it applies in real-life scenarios like Jay mentioned, and also what classifies classes to belong into these programs, like workforce preparation. What is the criteria for workforce prep, and what is the criteria for a CTE class? Just like those.

Jay Wright: OK. That's a good example. That is another thing people are bringing up. Maybe the good news here is that in the accountability training, we actually have semi answers for that question. Some of these other things we're still kind of fact finding before we really have answers.

But I'll use your comment, Melissa, to bring up the last point that I'm hearing a lot about, which is, in a nutshell, when Neal and I were doing those trainings there three, four, five years ago, people would ask questions like Melissa and say, gee, you know, we kind of think we're doing it the right way but we're not sure. If we're not, are we in trouble? We'd laugh, we'd shrug, and say, yeah, you know those CAEP data police are going to come and get you. You know, it's the one person, CAEP data police to suggest that yeah, the data police ain't going to get you, so as long as you're deliberate and systematic and have it well thought out, you're probably going to be fine.

What people are bringing up is, gee, we don't want to hear that anymore. We want you to give a specific answer, and we really want you to be more our way or the highway, with the long story short being, if I'm looking at my data report and I'm in Bakersfield, I want those outcomes and services on that report to mean exactly the same thing as it does in Fresno, or in San Diego, or in Sacramento, or whatever-- that is, if we're using all the CAEP data police jokes, that allows you to record what you have to, but it does kind of mean what's happening in Bakersfield may or may not be the same thing as San Diego because you're kind of applying your own standards. People are looking at more precise definitions. I'll just say we're not really there yet, but that's another issue that we're trying to find, figure out-- get more examples so we can figure out what the right answers are. Carla?

Carla: Yeah, Hi. And I kind of bring this question up a lot, primarily because I get asked it a lot, is the whole thing transitioned to ASE, and you've kind of given an answer that it's under the hood and it happens later, but we have people in our consortium that asked recently at a meeting-- right, Lydia-- how do we keep track of them? Do we just Excel sheet? Because we've got students coming out of one program midyear going into another program in January-- you know, your advanced ESL students-- and again, to emphasize, they're our largest population of students, and we should be tracking this group of students as they move into secondary, and then obviously post-secondary-- so what are some ways to keep track of them other than just having a list?

Jay Wright: So this is my master answer that's supposed to be forthcoming from this, I guess. I mean, we can look at maybe having this broadcast on a report, I guess. I think the rationale originally was just that's all what you have in your database, with things like college, or what college or CTE-- that's frequently outside of your domain and not anything that TE or other data systems can capture, whereas your typical transition to ASE is all kind of internal or something that can kind of be done internally. I think that was probably the rationale.

Carla: But don't we have in-- I'm sorry. In ASAP, there is a checkbox where we can say enrolled in secondary.

Sudie Whalen: Right. I think Lydia was going to speak to that. Go ahead.

Carla: Lydia, go. Go.

Lydia Jones: And then also not only in ASAP, but that correlates then right into TE. There is that option to mark on the update record enrolled in secondary. So it is markable, it's just making sure that we have the education and the collaboration to make sure that when our students in the EL program are ready to make that transition into academics, into the ASE program, they are instructors. If they're the ones who are filling out the update records, like they are at Grossmont, then they know and they are aware that, hey, this is a transition, this is something that's going to be on our outcomes, and they are empowered then to mark that-- and so then that's growth.

And not only that, then at the student level and in the classroom level, they are celebrated. They are moving on. They're continuing their education. And so then, moving then out into our academic program, when they're ready to move on into either college or CTE, we're marking it that way into post-secondary.

So there are things within the update record, whether you're using ASAP, whether you're using TE, to make that clarification that these are the transitions to be selected. It's just making sure that whoever is making those selections, whether it's in the classroom with the teacher, whether it's someone in the office doing an interview exit with the students, they are aware and they are empowered with that knowledge to ask those questions.

Sudie Whalen: Yes. Thank you so much for sharing that, Lydia, and joining your insight. And I just want to also piggyback on something else Lydia just said. She mentioned that as part of the collaboration process-- and we'll talk about that a little bit more later, but this is another reason why it's important to have cross collaboration within a consortium, especially if you have curriculum alignment or feeder programs. Because when you're having those collaboration sessions, you get the chance to ask those questions-- is so-and-so, did they enroll in your program? How many of our students have you received? And so you can get that update record data.

We have a question in the chat. Paul asked, how many of these transitions are automated versus locally tracked?

Jay Wright: The short answer is the transition to ASE is automated because that's all in your TE database. The ones that are transitioned to CTE and transition to college are the ones that are based on self report. Some of those potentially could be automatically tracked, but obviously a lot of them can't, so that was one where it was decided to make that more of a self report, so those we've got a couple of bubbles assigned to each of those transitions, whether it be CTE or college.

Lydia Jones: I have a follow-up question for that.

Paul Rosenbloom: Sorry. Just to build on it, Jay, I think that would be really helpful when I'm working with members to be able to say this is manual. We really need to capture this one. The other pieces are going to be automated, so we want to track that, but don't stress. If a student moves from one class to the next and that's considered a transition, that'll get tracked and we can follow up and look at that data to see our numbers, but we don't need to stress the internal process so much. But when we have the ones that rely on local data practices, it's going to be able to focus with people then.

Jay Wright: OK. Thank you for that. I know Connie and Laura have a hand up, but I wanted to-- one more thing for Carla's question is, this is a little bit deep in the weeds reporting, but if you look at that Hours By Program report, there's actually a grid on the last page that gives you a table of students that are in more than one program. It's really there more to help you with duplicated, unduplicated of hours, but it does give you a pretty good reckoning of the number of students that are in more than one program. And in particular, you can use the table-- here's the exact number of ABE and workforce prep. Here's the exact number of CTE and ESL. It's basically like a 7 by 7 or a 9 by 9 grid that gives you the number of overlap across all seven, eight, nine programs.

I better-- Connie has had-- Connie and Laura have had their hand up forever, so we probably ought to give them a chance to--

Sudie Whalen: Laura asked her question in the chat. I was about to ask you. She said that they use both ASAP and TE. Which is better to update after a student has moved on? ASAP or TE? Lydia, I see you about to talk. Do you want to jump in that one?

Lydia Jones: So for that one, if you're doing your update records, if ASAP is your third party system, if you're-- it all moves into TE. So if that's a way that your organization is moving data, as long as you're doing it in a systematic fashion, then it's the same thing.

So if you're doing it in ASAP and in TE, you're just duplicating your work. So as long as-- and I don't know if you went to Cindy's presentation on this very topic yesterday-- hopefully it'll be posted on the-- afterwards-- but this-- as long as you are exporting in a systematic fashion and keeping logs, then it makes no difference.

Sudie Whalen: OK. And Connie said never mind for her.

Jay Wright: She's waving the white flag, I think.

Sudie Whalen: But if you have a question, you want to chime in or put it in the chat, let us know. So we're going to go ahead and move on. Ryan, we'll get to your question in one second.

Jay Wright: OK--

Sudie Whalen: So the next-- go ahead, Jay.

Jay Wright: OK, so we've got-- this is just another part of this I'll just bring up this as another common concern. I think it fits in with the other slide, but this is one that's also had a groundswell of concern. I think this is one that was probably at way less or emphasized when we had this discussion-- when we had these trainings three, four years ago, but has really risen up the concern totem pole, so to speak, because a lot of you were doing this, having trouble recording. Others of you might have stopped doing this, and now you're looking to pick up the pieces and resume. There's all kinds of issues where this has been difficult to record.

People are noticing that this is another area where the guidance was always pretty loose. I've got to say the interest in tightening up this specific piece, probably the most popular one to tighten up. So if you have any specifics with this, I'd be interested. I'll say in the accountability we did a couple hours ago, there were some slides where we didn't cover them all of course, but I'll just say in the regional trainings, we will have a few slides with some gory details, kind of taking the first crack at some common services we might do and how that might relate to some of the bubbles and checkboxes we have in TE. And Sudie asked a posing question for some of you.

Sudie Whalen: Yeah, on the table already. And then there's-- Melissa had a question that she put into the chat also while you guys are thinking about the question we have open to the group. Would it be possible to have students placed in ASE based on test scores? Melissa, did you want to expand on that? Like, which specific test scores? I know some agencies do definitely do that.

Melissa Ochoa: Like the CASAS?

Sudie Whalen: I think so.

Jay Wright: I see what you're saying. Sorry, hard to do a short answer here. But for the federal tables, if they get an ASE level score, they'll automatically show up as an ASE student. It doesn't really matter whether they're in ASE or ABE.

When you're looking at actual class placement for the student, that might vary. I mean, if the student really is interested in doing the GED or high school diploma, then sure, that would be a really good way to guide that decision. It really depends, though. Sometimes the student is interested in that. Other times the student really just wants to brush up on the reading or math skills to where ABE placement really would be the only appropriate area.

It goes the other way too. If they're clearly there because the K-12 transferred them because they need to finish their diploma, you probably want to put them in an instructional program high school diploma, no matter how low they score, with that being, yeah, they'll get to show up as ABE for federal reporting, but there might be a specific reason why they really need to be in high school diploma. So I got to say that exact decision really varies depending on the student and the agency.

Sudie Whalen: Thank you, Jay. And Tom, for a second, you looked like you were about to say something. Did you want to jump in? No? OK. Connie, I see your hand up. Go ahead.

Jay Wright: Do you remember your question?

Connie: No, this isn't a question, this is a comment. We do use the CASAS scores to determine ABE or HSD skill levels, or for us GED skill levels. And so we counsel the students once they've taken the CASAS scores to which program would best serve them and then enroll them in that appropriate program. So that's one way that we use CASAS, and we do take a look at what skill levels.

And I use the report that shows the CCR connections, and I show the grade level for that. I click the little box that says Show Grade Level for Reading and Math and then counsel the students based on how they score on those grade levels.

Sudie Whalen: Thank you so much, Connie. And I really love that you're leaning into the standards and into the grade level alignment and into the scores and all of these different aspects and ways to better serve students. Thank you so much.

Jay Wright: I'll note that Lydia and Larianne have put some similar but slightly different input in the chat to your question to Melissa.

Sudie Whalen: Right. Larianne was saying that they have put students in HSD or HSC if they have 236 or above, and others who score below that get put in ABE. And then Lydia said they use the individual skills profiles. Thank you so much for sharing.

And I also noticed a couple of answers to the question that, yes, you have been able to record short term services. So we'll move on and have Jay finish up this section before we move on.

Jay Wright: And I feel like this is basically the questions. I think for now, let's-- if you have ideas, put it in the chat. I think we probably want to move on here or we'll never make it. But if you've got some more ideas on this, this kind of reiterates the questions of the last couple of slides.

Again, I feel like WIOA II, quite frankly, we didn't miss a beat, but some of these things for CAEP stalled in a lot of places. So if you have any examples of where it did, or perhaps where you persevered and everything went hunky dory, all stories, grisly and not so grisly are warmly welcomed here.

OK. A little bit-- we're doing a lot here, but that was kind of table setting. These are kind of areas where we know they're open ended. We know a lot of times you might need assistance. Sometimes we CALPRO folks and CASAS peeps can come up with answers, but not always. Sometimes there's better answers from all of you guys than the CASAS or CALPRO or CDE folks, so we wanted to use that as table setting.

Now we're going to hone in more. We did use mentorship in the title, so we wanted to bring a little bit of that forward here. So here's some mentorship 101.

I think we touched on this but not to this level of detail at CASAS SI. So that is the mentor provides the guided autonomy, encourages protégé to develop goals and ideas-- it's not necessarily formal, but providing more teaching and learning opportunities for both the mentor him or herself and the protégé for which they're assigned.

Here is the dictionary definition in the red box-- you know, a wise and trusted counselor whose primary purpose is to teach and serve as a guide. It sounds like there ought to be some music with that one, of course. But again, just to provide what the mentor is versus what the protégé is. What we did it-- we kind of bring this up too because we can't really do speed dating virtually, so we at least wanted to give people a little taste here-- a little bit by definition and a little bit, even, better from experiences, and so I'll move through this.

The protégé -- again, it's not the mentor is up here and the protégé is down here. They're definitely side by side, but the protégé is the one who's kind of driving the ship because the protégé is the one who has clear goals that she or he wants to achieve in this relationship. The protégé , therefore, whose goals are helped getting met, is also the one who assumes the lion's share of responsibility to note progress, note accomplishments, kind of keep up on whether things are a success or not, and then watching what the mentor does and what the mentor suggests, learns from that mentor's behavior.

Again, dictionary definition here in the red box-- one whose well being, training, or career is promoted by an influential person. So yes, if you're a mentor, you're definitely an influential person. But again, just to give the basic definition there, that's what we've said for a long time. Next slide, please.

So some advantages for mentors. Sometimes, the sales for this can be difficult. It feels like the mentor is there on charity and the protégé is getting all the benefits, but the mentor also gets benefits too. A good way to sharpen skills because you're teaching others-- it's kind of keeping you current on what folks are really kind of thinking out there and needing to know. You know, what's a good way to boost confidence? You can kind of start achieving your own goals, and then leave a positive legacy to your agency, your consortium, to adult education, and so on. Next slide.

On the protégé side, it tends to be a little more obvious-- I thought I weeded some of these out. I guess I didn't weed them all out. But anyway, a good way to receive encouragement, acquire more knowledge-- again, your goals are kind of driving the ship-- learning best practices. The mentor isn't going to necessarily tell you all the answers, but the mentor is going to know where to go to find more information--

Hey, you can talk to Sudie Whalen. She knows everything. If you get a chance to talk to her, you'll know everything you want to know about professional development and more. Hey, that crazy Jay Wright, he's a little bit out there, but hey, you can learn a few goofy things about those TE reports, et cetera. Those mentors can really provide help with that. Next slide.

This is the one I like the best, is, again, in talking about mentors and protégé s, we always try to emphasize it's not mentor up here, protégé down there. It's a side by side issue. It's totally OK if the protégé has been around longer than the mentor. It's totally OK if the mentor is in profession x and the protégé is in profession y. It can overlap. It really can be apples and oranges.

Quite frankly, apples and oranges sometimes works really well because hey, if you're an orange, now you have to be a little careful because you're with an apple. You don't want to say the same thing that upset the apple cart and so on. You know, you're kind of on your toes. That puts you in more of a position to learn, puts you in a more disciplined position.

So sometimes, throwing opposites really is the best sort of relationship that can happen. So you may not have a lot in common, you may be peers-- not hierarchical-- and again, don't look for anything that specific. If you have specific skills that you want to build and you're relying on that mentor to build them, you're probably barking up the wrong tree. The mentor can provide resources and improve your personal demeanor and behavior to make you in a better position to learn said skills, but generally speaking, should never really be the one called upon for specific skill development. Next slide, please.

Competencies-- this is kind of a laundry list. Obviously listen carefully, share experiences, openness and accessibility-- I think all of these things are pretty self explanatory, but the mentor needs to be open, allow the protégé to talk, and again, share things rather than dictate. Next slide.

For protégé s, again, you're kind of the driving the ship as the protégé . You're setting SMART goals. Again, a lot of the initiative is on you because, again, it's your goals, so thereby the initiative necessarily will be on you. No strings attached-- again, no specific skills. You're looking to generally improve your ability to obtain information, to know where you stand, to be able to make that progression, not necessarily to achieve skill x, y, or z.

If you're feeling up or down, definitely communicate whatever necessary to that mentor. Be ready for feedback, be ready to look at your own behaviors. Have the courage to try new behaviors-- all of those things, of course, are very important. Next.

Sudie Whalen: Before we move into the next slide--

Jay Wright: OK, that's the last one.

Sudie Whalen: --I just want to acknowledge a couple of really great comments that are coming up in the chat right now.

So Carla mentioned that they support a consortium data and accountability workgroup. They have many mentors in this group and it's a trusted group, and I think that's really important when it comes to collaboration, that building that trust.

Connie also mentioned that they have a workgroup. They work together and then mentor new staff who comes in. It's been helpful since literally the beginning of the consortium for them. And they said they make sure that their data and accounting workgroup are provided with PD that's needed so that they can support people across the consortium with their data needs. And she said the PD is also mentioned in their consortium annual plan-- I love that planning for that collaboration.

Meredith said they have collaborating buddies in pairs, which is great. And then Carlos saying same with Carla, the data accountability is in their third year end-- the three year annual plan is what I was trying to say. Three year end annual plan. I don't know why end annual was hard for me. But anyway, thank you all so much for sharing some of the ways you're collaborating and engraining mentorship into your process.

So now we want to join-- welcome Melissa, Lydia, and Tom to share kind of some of their thoughts and things like this-- like that. We're going to ask them a couple of guided questions just to get the thought partnership brewing here, but if there's anything that pops into your minds or that's percolating for you all that you would like to ask, please do share that information in the chat, or raise your hand and we'll invite you to speak.

So to Tom, Lydia, and Melissa, I would like to hear some of the successes and supports that you've had, and what are the other additional things in terms of success and support that you wish you'd had as well. So what's worked well in terms of support, and what did you also feel like would have been nice if we're thinking of our wish list items?

And I'm going to-- go ahead, Melissa. Thank you. I was going to call on somebody. That's the teacher in me.

Melissa Ochoa: [laughs] Well thankfully, I actually have our data queen, Ms. Terry, who still mentors me through just this whole process of coming into this data position. So I couldn't imagine someone not knowing anything and just being thrown and expected to do the work, just where to find-- where to find the links or all that in the websites, and just the whole-- or the powerpoints that are very helpful when it comes to the core performance because that entails a lot of other little tasks that go with it, and when to do them, where to find our deadlines for WIOA and CAEP-- just things like that.

Sudie Whalen: So I'm glad that you actually had that support from Terry, and I love-- I liked but cringed at the same time when you mentioned that it would be horrible for someone to come in without having a Terry to support them because we do know that that happens sometimes, which is where the cringe part comes in because it's good when there's that support, but we know sometimes people come in and they're like, here's the number to CASAS and here's the phone number to TE-- ask them and good luck. And I see Lydia laughing and smiling because we know that this happens, right? So thank you so much for highlighting the necessity of having a mentor to help out with Ms. Terry.

Tom, I saw you unmute. Go ahead and share. And then Lydia, you can go next.

Tom Reid: Yeah. Just, I'm grateful that in our adult schools, we have this longstanding culture of collaborating and helping each other out because the people above us in our districts don't understand us, so we've always taken care of us from school-to-school neighbors.

So I'm principal of Berkeley Adult School. On screen right next to my box is Connie. She happens to be next door, at the district next door in West Contra Costa, and so we-- our people have contacted Connie, and I've contacted Connie for clarification. Other people in our consortium and other-- well, others in Alameda County have been super helpful to us.

Actually, Sudie, I was so grateful that you-- introducing us, you didn't say that we were all experts and we were the best in the world at this stuff. Actually, in my school's most recent accreditation, back throughout the visit in 2018, this was a finding for us, a growth area for us, at that point was data, and it still is using information more effectively. That, in our plan coming from the accreditation process, was to add a data manager. We had been able to do enough reporting to report, right? But not enough to actually use to improve our practices. So in bringing this new staff person on, we're so grateful to have colleagues in Castro Valley, colleagues in people like Connie as well, just available and ready to help get oriented.

Our consortium has a data task force that includes some of the schools that have data managers and some administrators. We're still working together to try to get things in accord that the adult schools and colleges be reporting the same kinds of things, but we're working together, and largely it's a culture that we want to work together.

Sudie Whalen: Thank you so much for sharing that, Tom. And I also really appreciate that honesty. Sometimes we're not brave enough to just say we had an area of growth and this is what we did, and I also think it's really awesome that you're speaking to having Connie as someone who you can collaborate with, who can be kind of a bit of a mentor in terms of people that are learning this within your area. So thank you, Connie, for being that person for them. Lydia, go ahead.

Lydia Jones: Yeah. I can speak to being pushed into the deep end of the swimming pool with no life jacket or ring or anything. That is the worst. [laughs]

It was way back in the day before TOPSpro Enterprise-- there was TOPSpro Visual-- and it was just me and my boss and Patricia McBean with tech support, and I am grateful that she was patient with me. And it was looking up all of the available materials on the CASAS website that they had at the time, and it wasn't as extensive as it is now because this is pre-WIOA, obviously, and so really taking advantage of the tech support. And there were only two people manning the phones then.

And so every time there's an opportunity to network, back then I did. And so grabbing into and leaning into the TE networking meetings in the Southern region, and getting to know Fabbie, and getting to know people at Vista and at Poway, it's making sure that having those relationships with other data managers was incredibly important. So for me, for my sanity, it was making sure that I had a support system because when you don't, it gets a little cuckoo ca-choo.

And so now when I'm in a position to support a newer data manager, I know what that feels like, to feel like you don't-- there's nowhere to go, and that is the last thing I want anyone to feel like. So having that level of empathy is-- yeah, I don't want anyone to ever go through that.

Sudie Whalen: Thank you so much for sharing that--

Lydia Jones: That's the worst.

Sudie Whalen: Yeah, I know. I know what you mean. I remember when we adopted ASAP and we in the CTE program didn't use CASAS assessments at the time, and so we were trying to figure out what are we putting in here, what data are we using, are we going to start doing assessments in order for entry, which we thought we should be doing so we know where they are and things like that? And it was a huge learning curve because we were a really small program and there is nobody who really knew what to do either, and being CTE and brand new to CASAS on top of that, I was like, what is this?

So yeah, it's terrifying. It feels like you're swimming in the deep end-- I think what you just said, without a floatie or anything, It's really hard. And so thankfully, there have been-- CASAS does have a lot more support and a lot more things that are available, as well as ASAP and TE. And Iris even said in the chat that she really-- that they really appreciate Jay being kind of their unofficial mentor with all of the webinars and things like that that Jay does. So thank you for that, Jay.

That actually kind of lends itself to my next question, and this'll be my last question before we have to move on. For Melissa, Lydia, and Tom, what are some suggestions that you have? If you're thinking again about your perfect world, about your wish list, how can agencies consortia foster a culture of data collaboration growth that is sustainable, that it's not just the one off that sort of happens? How can we do-- how can we foster a data collaboration culture that's sustainable?

Melissa Ochoa: Our wonderful director, Ms. Jasmine, she just held a professional development for our consortia. It was a great event. Plenty of our partners showed up, and we had gains of just what outcomes mean and just going further into what pertains to participation or employment, the different aspects of the CAEP outcomes. So that was very helpful. Everybody was able to-- we got into groups as well. I was of course in the data group, and I'm actually going to be meeting with one of our partners-- that's the data manager for Lake Elsinore, Martina-- to just share our ideas in how we're-- just our practices, I guess, streamline. So they're a little more-- we're working towards making them more unified, our procedures.