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Speaker 1: OTAN, Outreach and Technical Assistance Network.

Jennifer Gagliardi: Hi, welcome to Adult Education Online Forums. It's going to be a super informal thing. I'm going to show you some slides, talk about some of my favorite organizations, and then I'm going to go on to the online forums. I also have a couple more to share with you. So let's get started.

The question is is that we're so busy as teachers, why would we want to join another forum or another organization or do any volunteering? It's so difficult. So, and then it seems that many of the adult education organizations seem to overlap on their missions. So when we go to check out the forums, we get-- we want to learn more about the organizations but we get stopped by the paywalls.

So today I hope to be taking you behind the paywalls and showing you some of the forums. I'm going to be focusing mostly on LINCS, TESOL, and COABE, and their local affiliates. Please let me know if there's anything in particular that you want me to share with you. For instance, if you want to know more about TESOL or you want to know more about COABE, or those kind of things, I would really be happy to take you where you need to go.

Speaker 2: Jennifer, can you hear me?

Jennifer Gagliardi: Yes, I can barely hear you.

Speaker 2: Barely hear me, yeah.

Jennifer Gagliardi: OK, now I can hear you, yeah.

Speaker 2: OK, so--

Jennifer Gagliardi: Now I can hear you really well.

Speaker 2: Because I'm right here. OK, so yeah, so we're going to have the monitor move closer to you, so that way [ INAUDIBLE ] comes in I'll say, OK, you got a question. Did you hear me?

Jennifer Gagliardi: Yes, I did.

Speaker 2: So, if you get a question in Chat I'll say, OK, Jennifer, we got a question.

Jennifer Gagliardi: OK, great.

Speaker 2: All right.

Jennifer Gagliardi: Anybody-- is everybody OK for me to continue?

Speaker 2: Yes.

Jennifer Gagliardi: OK, great. So let's move ahead. Today I want to really talk about something that I just-- well, I have been a member for a while but I join in as a moderator. So that is the LINCS, Literacy Information and Communication System, maybe some of it better by its website, lincs.ed.gov.

And it's an initiative by the US Department of Education office and Career Technical and Adult Education, or you see you hear this word all the time, OCTAE, OCTAE. Not octopus, OCTAE. This is the branch of the Department, US Department of Education that takes care of adult education.

And they are responding a lot to WIOA Funding, and also to IECLE initiatives. So that's the source of our legislation, our initiatives, things that we do every day in adult education. It's coming out of OCTAE.

So the LINCS website provides high quality on-demand education opportunities to practitioners of adult education. So those practitioners can help adult learners and successfully transition to post-secondary education in 21st century jobs. So we want to get the students build up their literacies not only in English, but also in work skills in digital literacy, in cultural literacy, and then so they can move on and integrate into American society.

LINCS audiences include adult education instructors, program administrators, adult learners and more. This is the website here, lincs.ed.gov. And they have a YouTube channel where they post some, but not all of their forums. Where they invite speakers to come in and discuss topics of importance.

Another slide, so I want to talk a little bit more about the LINCS community. So there's 13 communities of practice. So this is where people meet and discuss things. They talk about the latest initiatives in their own fields. I want to do a shout out to the Civics Education the Citizenship forum. I'm the new moderator of this, it was just started, I guess we kicked it off in December.

Also we have a new one from diversity, equity, and inclusion. So that also is very much reflects the growing want and need and desire for more inclusive education and workforce initiatives. So we're going to-- I'm going to go in and I'm going to demonstrate some of the forums on LINCS. So let's click this.

So, here we are at-- well, let me go to the front page actually. This is the front page of LINCS. And so, at the top we have Community, Courses, Resource Collection, and State Resources. Down here they have basically welcoming information, some of the resources that we have.

And across on the topic again we have Community Courses which is professional development courses. I'm currently taking one in diversity and also about adult-- let's see, let me-- I want to get this one right. And maybe it will not come up. Oh, I'm taking one about English language acquisition. So of course, all these free-- these are free and self-paced. Resource collection these are--

Speaker 2: Jennifer.

Jennifer Gagliardi: Yes, please.

Speaker 2: From Chat we don't see the slide you're referring to. They don't see the slide you're referring to.

Jennifer Gagliardi: OK, one minute, please. I may have popped up-- or a little bit too quickly. OK, am I OK?

Speaker 2: Yeah, we can see.

Jennifer Gagliardi: OK, so now I popped over from my slide deck to the LINCS website.

Speaker 2: OK, can you guys see it now? Peg in Austin? Yes, thank you, we're good.

Jennifer Gagliardi: OK, great, thank you so much. Yeah, please tell me what I'm doing wrong. OK, help me. OK, so again this is the LINCS website, and across the top we're talking about community. So this is where people will come together and discuss different topics referring to those 13 forums I was talking about.

We have online courses for professional development. For instance, I just started two. And one of them is about diversity and also on English language acquisition. Let's see if I can actually do this. Oh, yes, I can start this. I'm really particularly interested in talking about the language needs of today's adult language learners.

So that's really important to me and it's important to me, especially because I teach citizenship and students come in, they say, teacher, I don't speak English but I have my interview is in one month, what do I do? And so because this has been a pattern, that could be very upsetting and very disruptive to classes. I'm trying to basically dig in a little bit deeper so we can prepare the students a little bit better.

Also we're very interested in seeing we've had a new group of people who are coming in that have very or non-existent digital literacy. So again, this is something that's going to be really helpful. And again, it's self paced and it's free. I want to go back to the Resource Collection. The Resource Collection is from the states or from the federal administration. And they're basically talking about here, let me take a look at this one.

This one, adult citizenship education, of course they have this curriculum guide. And they're talking about-- it's a PDF. They have things in there for math and we have a really, really good and very solid numeracy community on LINCS. Let me go back up to the top, State Resources. Again, this is other things specifically coming out of the state.

However, to gain access, to gain the fullest access to this information, you're going to really have to log on. So now I'm going to be taking you behind the membership wall. And the membership to LINCS is free. For instance, if you join some of our other organizations, TESOL, CATESOL, those kind of things, you're going to have to get to the meat of this, you're going to have to pay, here it's all free.

So I want to go to Community, I want to log in. You could create an account. Now, I've already created my own account but all it required-- all I required was an email address and my name. I'm logging in. So, this is my-- these are some of the groups that I belong to, but I want to show you all of them, OK?

So here's the community. Again, you're going to see this. You're going to see career pathways, some really great discussion in here. Let's take a look at some of the more recent ones. And the more recent ones I hope you can see that I'm going to make a little bit bigger. So we have some really recent discussion about financial aid for adult learners. And this has been a big stumbling block for some of our students who are trying to transition from adult education, which is normally free, into community-- [clears throat] excuse me, community colleges.

And even though community colleges have non-credit or they have very low costs, it still prohibits-- sometimes the costs are prohibitive for our students. So again, we have some interesting discussions here. This one, an online course to introduce workforce preparation activities.

Again, what they would do, a lot of times they are commenting on previous-- sorry, a previous post. But this one I guess it started in 2018 and people are still talking about it. So, I want to move on, Civics Education and Citizenship. This one is important to me, again, I'm the moderator. I'm the one who-- I have been posting most of the information. But the big topic of discussion right now in our group is about the upcoming or the proposed redesign of the citizenship test.

I posted a really pro-- a redesign article from Lynn Weintraub. We had a very positive comment on that. And then Bill Bliss basically posted a critique of the proposed redesign. And I added information here about the barrier or the natural test redesign that happened yesterday, that was one of the online webinars from USCIS.

So today after I'm done with TDLS I'm going to post an update to it. Plus I'm going to USCIS, is going to be sending out those slides. So I'm going to be posting that too.

Also we have information in here about Women's History Month, some of the resources that I posted for that. Some people have been coming to me offline, I would like them to comment online, but we had some for African-American History Month. I have-- I'm going to-- we have a really vibrant community on corrections.

And I want to do a shout-out just right this very second to COABE because COABE is really a leader in corrections education. I'm going to see-- I see there's some comments in the Chat. Oh, yes, can Peg Gould-- are you are you online? Do you have access to a microphone?

Peg Gould: Hi, Jennifer, it's Peg.

Jennifer Gagliardi: Peg, I'm going to flip over to the-- is it the Math Numeracy one that you couldn't--

Peg Gould: Mhm.

Jennifer Gagliardi: OK, so I hated math when I was in school. If my teachers had access to this, I would probably be much farther in my career and I'd be much more math-positive. They put up some amazing things, so what's the webinar you're going to be talking about?

Peg Gould: If you scroll back up because I'm actually working together with Brooke.

Jennifer Gagliardi: OK, great.

Peg Gould: So, we will be leading, co-leading a discussion. I forget the exact date in April. I want to say April 16 but I could be off a little bit--

Jennifer Gagliardi: OK.

Peg Gould: --about financial literacy in adult education math programs.

Jennifer Gagliardi: Oh, my god, that's going to be so good. Oh, we need that so much and that's so appropriate for people, think about financial literacy, especially around tax time.

Peg Gould: Exactly.

Jennifer Gagliardi: Exactly.

Peg Gould: And it's relevant for English language learners as well as for ABE/HSE students too. So it will be really great. And we would love big participation, Jennifer. So if you have a chance and log on it that week, I would appreciate it. And I personally invite anyone who is on this session to log on to LINCS Financial Literacy mid-April, and please engage in our discussion.

Jennifer Gagliardi: OK, so I want to point out to something-- like there's the major groups, like there's the major numeracy-- sorry, there's the major Math and Numeracy, but there's also micro groups. And I just want to flip over to those micro groups for a second, OK? If I can, where is my profile? I'm in the wrong place. OK, here I am.

So they have these-- you know what? This is too big for people to see accurately. So I'm going to make it smaller, try to find where I'm trying to go and then try to make it bigger. OK, so is it going to be in the Math Numeracy form or is it going to be in one of the micro groups about-- let's see if I can find the micro groups.

Peg Gould: I'm not sure, Jennifer, so give me a second and let me just double check.

Jennifer Gagliardi: OK, great.

Peg Gould: If I even have that drilled down information.

Jennifer Gagliardi: Yeah, so that is a really-- because they do have a-- OK, and now I'm going to be clicking over to All Events. I'm not seeing-- they haven't posted-- oh, it might be in Career Pathways. See understanding financial literacy for adult learners?

Peg Gould: That might be it.

Jennifer Gagliardi: OK. But you would think--

Peg Gould: Yeah, because I don't recognize Chrissie as the moderator.

Jennifer Gagliardi: Right.

Peg Gould: Brooke and I are moderators.

Jennifer Gagliardi: OK, and then here are some of the micro groups. And the financial literacy one is right here.

Peg Gould: Mhm.

Jennifer Gagliardi: This is the one right here. But it seems to be an all groups so I bet you're right. And they're going to be doing it in the Numeracy one.

Peg Gould: Yeah.

Jennifer Gagliardi: In the Math Numeracy one.

Peg Gould: Give me another second, I'm going to turn my camera off and my microphone, I'll come back on. I won't interrupt but I'll come back on.

Jennifer Gagliardi: No, please, please come back on and tell me what's going on, OK?

Peg Gould: OK.

Jennifer Gagliardi: Yeah. OTAN has presented a lot in the integrating technology group. And so, they've had-- this group has sponsored several talks by OTAN, subject matter experts. Here's a really interesting discussion about 21st century math. And I believe they're using this one is about related to using specific devices to-- oh, the Desmos Classroom Activities.

So anyway, enough about that. I would love to come back to LINCS. Oh, I do want to show this new form. This one is diversity, equity, and inclusion. Again, they're talking about intersectionality. So intersectionality people think about, oh, it's personal, we don't want to talk about it. But the thing is that personal is political, political is personal. It does relate to how we can see. We can see problems, we can basically address them, and we can basically make this our classrooms a community of welcome for everyone.

So anyway, this is really interesting in the discussion of intersectionality, is the understanding that it's not enough to view parts of identity but to see all the ways that they interact. So I'm really expecting some really major exciting things out of this group from the diverse-- sorry, from the diversity, equity, and inclusion group. Let me see. Anything else? Anybody else want to see any of the questions? OK. Also--

Peg Gould: Jennifer.

Jennifer Gagliardi: Yes, please, go ahead.

Peg Gould: Excuse me. Just--

Jennifer Gagliardi: Yeah.

Peg Gould: --before you leave here, I found the email. Specifically it says, two day asynchronous discussion, April 17 and 18, Financial Literacy. That's all the more drill down that I have, whether it's under Math and Numeracy, or whether it's under Career Pathways. I really think it's under Math and Numeracy because it's part of the adult numeracy network which is a subcommittee of COABE.

Jennifer Gagliardi: Oh, excellent.

Peg Gould: And since Brooke is there as a moderator for that Math and Literacy strand overall, I imagine that's where this will be too.

Jennifer Gagliardi: OK, Peg, just a couple more questions for you. I'm really glad that you are-- what kind of-- OK, what do you teach now?

Peg Gould: Now I am not in the classroom anymore, I direct an entire department.

Jennifer Gagliardi: Yay! What do you do?

Peg Gould: I direct adult education programs free and non-credit title to a lot of others, ABE, HSE, ESL, IET, IELCE, other career training programs, which is to employment success for out of school, foster youth.

Jennifer Gagliardi: Wow.

Peg Gould: They are mostly my programs. And then it kind of slides a little bit depending on what available funding is.

Jennifer Gagliardi: OK, so what institution do you do this for?

Peg Gould: I work for Mercer County Community College in Trenton, New Jersey.

Jennifer Gagliardi: OK, excellent. Thank you, welcome. It might be warmer there than it is here now. [laughs]

Peg Gould: It probably is but not by much.

Jennifer Gagliardi: OK, great.

Peg Gould: It's maybe 46 today but I know you all have some snow on the ground.

Jennifer Gagliardi: Yes.

Peg Gould: You took our snow.

Speaker 2: Just a little bit.

Jennifer Gagliardi: We'll send it back, it's not a problem.

Peg Gould: No, no thank you. [laughs]

Jennifer Gagliardi: OK, so anyway, I'm really excited, really looking forward to hear that. And please, COABE, I think my COABE slide is coming up really quick. So let me go back. And I would love it if you would like to share about COABE. So, one second. OK, it might be the next one.

Oh, TESOL is next and then COABE is coming up in like two slides. Teaching English-- OK, TESOL, TESOL International Association, formerly the Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages. So there they had the resources to advance expertise in English language teaching. They have a new initiative six principles for excellence in English and language teaching that I'm going to demonstrate.

This is their website, tesol.org. And of course, there's the YouTube channel, tesolinc, which they do put post many of their webinars up there. So let's take a look at tesol.org. Again, I need to do a new share.

And where are we? OK, exactly. So here I mean I have not basically stepped in behind the paywall. It's asking me to join TESOL but I just want to show you what's available right now before I actually start going into some of the forums. So, we have Welcome to the New TESOL Website, and they really, really did update it.

They usually have a really good-- what is that called? Oh, great, now I've lost my English. A new slide that basically shows the latest stories up here. So they're basically talking about the new TESOL convention that's coming up just in a week or two up in Portland. And I hope I was thinking to go to that, but I don't think I'm going to travel to Portland this year. But they also-- TESOL also has an option where they're doing an online forum, I think two weekends like the April the 3 and April the 4.

So, some of the presentations will be repeated and I could enjoy it from the comfort of my own home. Of course, they have the press. Going down they have information about other world wide events. So, you can keep on scrolling and there's the information at the very bottom.

So, you're looking at this. Oh, wait a minute, did I just see a picture of Susan Gaer from CATESOL? Yay! So, she is really gone and done some great things. So anyway, hi, Susan. I think she presented on Winklet for TDLS today. They have information here about careers and a lot of people come to TESOL or adult education after jobs in K-12.

Or maybe for instance, I came to TESOL after working in Silicon Valley for 20 years. Fortunate I was able to basically leverage my tech experience to go into adult education. They have information in there about professional development and advocacy. And last year I was able to travel to Washington DC to participate in the TESOL Leg Day, where we went to meet our legislators and talk about certain legislation that we wanted to pass.

However, when I got there, my senators and my representatives were involved with the January 6 committee hearings. And a lot of people, especially from California were not doing in-person meetings. They wanted to do meetings by Zoom. So when people were going up to Capitol Hill, I was-- and it was raining so terribly I went to a bookstore instead. And then I met with my representatives, and when I went back to California online, and it was a very fruitful discussion.

However, one of the really great things about going to TESOL advocacy day is I was able to meet Dominic from OCTAE. So I was able to meet Mr. OCTAE in person and talk about adult education and English, and also where we're trying to-- we were thinking about the USCIS revision that was coming up.

I want to take you now behind the paywall. So-- oh, if you want to join TESOL, if you want to become a member there's different levels of being a member. The professional membership is $105. They do have things for lower levels, for new professionals, et cetera, et cetera. So they really try to give people an opportunity to come in and participate at the level they feel comfortable in.

But now I'm going to log in, hopefully. Please remember me. So, now when we take a look at this, we're going to be seeing something a little bit different. I'm going to go to-- I'm going to want to go into-- sorry. Think I want to go to the Advocacy Action. Actually I want to go to My TESOL, what am I talking about?

Anyway, so, sorry, let me step back. So, here TESOL provides some really great resources about advocacy. Again, oh, they just put up this date that they're going to have the summit again, the Advocacy Summit again. They always have information here about taking action. Not only for teachers, but also how to make your-- how to get your students involved in it.

So, let me-- I'm trying to find My TESOL. And of course, when I want it-- when I was doing it today-- oh, here we go. TESOL Global community, that's where I wanted to go. So, this is where I would basically get involved with information like, OK, I know about the conferences that are coming up. This was what was really interesting here about-- this one, was a webinar about 60 second recording audio and video.

And so, people now don't think anything of it, they're uploading things from TikTok or to YouTube. But this person was doing this, this is-- actually you can play this webinar. And this person is doing it to look at student responses. So it was a really, really interesting video, I was glad that I watched it.

Also here is somebody who is very, very, very active on LINCS, Susan Finn Miller, she's basically working in the English acquisition forum. And she's basically cross posting some information about the webinar that we had LINCS about doing writing and teach your learners paragraphs.

And already in adult education we're seeing things that have been written by chat bots that are coming through and trying to be passed off as student work. So how do we encourage our students to basically pursue the information that they want to learn how to write? They want to have that skills they can't simply rely on a chat bot or Google Translate.

So, what I always tell my students is the person who does the writing about the project is the person who is the most identified with the project, and the person who usually gets the promotion at work. So, there's all sorts of TESOL events that are not available unless you're a member. So again, a really, really, really rich place to go to events.

Again, here's more information about events that are coming up. Again, they have a great calendar. Communities, I belong to all sorts of communities. Again, here's adult education. I did a lot with COVID-19 resources because I was doing a lot with online learning. I'm very interested in immigration, immigration and refugees concerns, and social responsibility, and TESOL advocacy.

This is where I was pulling out a lot of information about the upcoming citizenship test provision. And of course, there's Working Groups and eGroups and all sorts of things. And you can post messages in the different forums and things like that. I'm going to step back into my-- step back into my slide. Oh, does anybody have any questions about TESOL before I continue? No.

One thing that I wanted to share from TESOL that is very new, and I'm not-- I just learned about it the other day and I really need to dig in to it, but I think it will be helpful for adult educators to bring rigor to our profession is the six principals. And this is about the Foundation for Excellence in English Language Learning.

So, this one is, of course, we got to know our learners. So especially if you're able to make personal connections, informed personal connections with students and their cultures, you're going to have a much more successful classroom.

Number two, again, let's see, we're going to basically trying to talk about expectations. So one of the things when I-- as I started getting past five years, especially teaching literacy, I basically started to lower my expectations for some of my students to feel, make them feel more comfortable. That did not help them, that basically fostered ossification of their language skills.

So, saying that you need to-- you have to have some expectations for success is really, really super important. So, talking about high quality lessons for language development. So I cannot tell you how many times people I've seen, especially substitutes come in and basically pass off K-12 material like for first or second graders onto a literacy level classroom.

It's inappropriate, do they really need to know about baby animal names? I don't think so. But you need to basically attach information to that information to that are language appropriate, language literacy appropriate, but also appropriate to adult life skills and the adult responsibilities.

Let's continue on. We're going to go on to number 4. And we need to adapt lesson delivery as needed. It was really interesting to move from classroom, the next day you were teaching online in Zoom. It was difficult for students to take that information on. There was a real steep level of adaptation.

But just handing out worksheets or the teacher doing the worksheet themselves and demonstrating it to the students, it really created a lot of passivity. So the thing is that we had to basically actually teach our students how to use some of those Zoom tools or some of the loom tools or record videos on themselves on their cell phones to give them active response.

So, again, this is really-- that was really, really important. And I saw this particularly in my citizenship class where instead of basically asking students to ask and answer things like a-- showing them scripts and actually having them read off the script, we actually had to-- a lot of times we were not using scripts and it became a much more authentic interview experience because we had to do a lot of things off script and without paper. So that was really helpful and that informed my subsequent teaching when we came back into the classroom.

Number 5, we have to monitor and assess student language adult development. Our students in California have to take courses test, they're really eager to see how they did on those tests. And you think, oh, they really don't need to know, it doesn't-- this is not a high stakes test. Again, it's a way to set expectations and to show students how they can progress, and that the goals that they ultimately have are accessible.

And number 6, we're talking about-- whoops, our number 6. Oh, this is going to be coming up. OK, so, let's see. And here-- oh, here's number 6. Oh, this is numbered, engagement and collaboration with the community of practice. So that's really, really important.

There's some products that support this. I will leave you to-- so there's some books and everything like that. So I will step away and now I'm going to go take you into the CATESOL, the CATESOL form. So, any questions about TESOL before I continue on? OK, does anybody belong to TESOL or is anybody planning to go to the TESOL conference?

Speaker 2: I'm thinking about going in there online.

Jennifer Gagliardi: Yeah.

Speaker 2: I'd love to go but I'm a little leery about traveling on airplanes right now.

Jennifer Gagliardi: Every one of our teachers who have traveled recently when they've come back they've had COVID. So even though--

Speaker 2: Wow.

Jennifer Gagliardi: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. That was-- that's hard to hear, that's hard to hear. So--

Speaker 2: I remember CATESOL and which I love, it's a great organization in California.

Jennifer Gagliardi: Yeah, I do love CATESOL and I do love their conventions, it was really nice in Pasadena.

Speaker 2: Yeah, that was great.

Jennifer Gagliardi: But I came back with-- I came back with COVID.

Speaker 2: Oh.

Jennifer Gagliardi: I was fully inoculated, so I don't know how that happened but I know I was wearing a mask most of the time. Anyway, CATESOL. We had-- it was founded in 1969, one of the oldest affiliates of TESOL. And they have a great YouTube channel. I'm going to-- and no, I want to say that they have a lot of regional chapters, I think about 10.

But the problem is with the regional chapters they maintain independent websites or Facebook sites. And one of the problems is it's like, I wish they would post a page at least on CATESOL where you can basically click those and see what's happening. But because it's an organization that runs on volunteers, sometimes people maintain the website, some people maintain the Facebook page, et cetera, et cetera, so you have that kind of thing. Love to see if that we could be standardized a little bit.

So, anyway, let's go on to CATESOL. Let's see, new share. So I hope we're all-- are we all members of CATESOL? Everybody? Have you joined or not? [laughs]

Speaker 2: The majority of the people in here are.

Jennifer Gagliardi: OK. Well, let me convince you why you should join, OK? So, again, I always say to the people who run the CATESOL website, it's like, hey, you go to this website, you have no idea what it's about. I want to see adult-- I want to see adult teachers with adult students doing English activities.

So anyway, so on the front of course, there's a lot of events that are coming up. Usually you do need to be a member to join some of these events. So, this is the basic paywall in the front. They have information about membership or join or renew, let's see how much it is. $75 for a year, $130 for two years, I think that also includes your membership to your regional group. They have blogs and newsletters.

Again, if you want to get access to some of the later journals, you're going to have to join. But there are some really-- oh, let's see. Oh, they do have some of the PDFs of the newer things, OK, that's good. Take a look at some of the journal articles that have, been very, very interesting.

So, this one, I'm going to-- it looks like they have some DEI and stuff that's coming on. Resources we have advocacy, and so the racial and social injustice during the Black Lives Matters movement. So, I'm going to log in, and here not going to spend that much time on it because a lot of us it seems that we're on and we're already members.

But here one of the most important things are-- is we have the message boards. And on the message boards, message boards update, update, update, update. Could be that my connection is a little bit slow. OK, here we go. So here are some updates here, we're going to talk-- oh, here we have a lot of the updates from the chapter, so that's really good to hear, to see what's going to happen.

So that's going to take away some of the concerns that I had about the regional boards. This is a very, very-- we have the pronunciation in the material writers interest group is really good. Also the technology group is good. I have to get involved with the refugee interest group. Bill Bliss, I believe, posted information about his concerns about the test revision.

And also there's things in here about refugee crisis. So anyway, the boards are really, really interesting. I find a lot of stuff that I bring back to my own teachers about that. But I have forgotten about the chapter stuff.

The job bank is really good in case you-- because a lot of our jobs in for ESL and adult education, you look at Ed Join or you can look at CC registry, but the thing is that if you want to find other jobs, the job board here at CATESOL is really, really good. So they have as you can see that they have information in there from outside the United States. Oh, and also they carry things about from nonprofits, so that's really, really good to hear.

We have also the advocacy. Oh, no, we already have that. There was one other thing I wanted to show. This one is interesting to see who our members are, and considered if people might consider running for membership themselves and some of these interest boards. Does anybody-- sorry, does anybody have anything they want to add about the CATESOL, about CATESOL?

Speaker 2: Yeah. I love CATESOL because they're on it. When they send us home during the pandemic, what was it, March 15 2020?

Jennifer Gagliardi: Yeah.

Speaker 2: March 23 2020 they had Zoom trainings on how to teach on Zoom.

Jennifer Gagliardi: Yeah.

Speaker 2: You know, that whole weekend I was spreading for my students, how are they going to learn? I'm going to lose them. And then CATESOL was right there picking it up and I am just-- I have so much appreciation for that organization.

Jennifer Gagliardi: Yeah, and especially they brought-- CATESOL brought over a lot of people from OTAN, a lot of people who are involved with OTAN, subject matter experts. They're also involved with CATESOL, so there was-- in fact, the current president is an employee of OTAN.

But there was a lot of cross-pollinization where I think TESOL really-- or CATESOL really shines is that they bring in those special interest groups. So for instance, Marsha Chan has done so much on pronunciation, so there's been so much on the materials writers and things like that. So really, really great information informed by Civics content on CATESOL, so I cannot-- I love them, absolutely love them.

Speaker 2: I mean, I need it so much, I signed up for the maximum amount of years to be a member because I realized that this, they really care about my students and they care about me as a teacher. And I just-- that's something, it's worth its weight in gold.

Jennifer Gagliardi: Yeah, and they're really interested in fostering the profession too. So one second, can we do a quick time check? Where are we on the time?

Speaker 2: It's 10 minutes to noon, 11:50.

Jennifer Gagliardi: And then when does this stop?

Speaker 2: 12:00.

Jennifer Gagliardi: 12:00, OK, great.

Speaker 2: And that's what I have. Is it [ INAUDIBLE ] OK.

Jennifer Gagliardi: OK, great. So I'm moving on to COABE. Love COABE, their webinars are awesome. So CATESOL they don't post everything to their YouTube channel, they keep-- oh, that's what I want to show you. One second on the CATESOL stuff.

Speaker 2: No, COABE.

Jennifer Gagliardi: No, I need to go back to CATESOL. Let's see. I want to go back to CATESOL because their webinars they don't post all their webinars online. But they do-- oh, no, I'm not going to be able to find it. Engagement, is this a-- Engagement, Project Committees, Resources, File Archive, maybe that's it.

OK, sorry, I'm not going to be able to find it in time. But they post recordings of their webinars internally. They do not post everything externally. So please, sorry I got flustered and I can't show you the recording, where they make recordings of their webinars, very, very important.

Marsha Chan does pose some of the pronunciation webinars on her own YouTube channel, Pronunciation Doctor. If you want to see the other information from the CATESOL webinars, please go in and dig a little bit deeper into the resources than I just did.

Let's go to COABE, COABE is an absolutely wonderful group, especially they really address ABE, ASE, ESL family literacy skills development workforce development. And they do a tremendous job on corrections where not many people want to touch corrections, but they do a lot of things in the corrections system around literacy and workforce.

And then also adult basic skills have helped many people get their high school equivalency degrees. So please, take a look at COABE and especially some of their webinars on that. And their convention is coming up, and it's going to be in Georgia.

So, I want to do a quick look over to COABE, one second. Let me go share. coabe.org, here we are, they're going to do their higher level, they have a really good news resource. Their Advocast, their new podcast is really, really good. And then behind every employer, because they're talking about a lot of times you're thinking like, hey, I want a job, what is the employer thinking? How can I get access to that?

So getting into the mind of the employer is really going to help some of our adult learners get that job that they want and truly deserve to have. So take a look at that. Lots of things in there about digital equity. Again, the correction seminar symposium is coming up. They don't really have a paywall per se like they do at CATESOL, but they do have a lot of initiatives that you really need to dig down on.

The COABE journal has a lot of the free PDF, so if you dig into their COABE journal, you can see some of their old PDFs of some of their older issues. They are at the forefront of basically setting the pattern for our legislative days and basically taking action. And so, I can't recommend them enough, I really need to-- I think I really need to move on to our next one. And I hate to give COABE a short shift. Peg, did you want to say anything more about COABE?

Peg Gould: Sorry, I couldn't unmute for a minute. But I mean, COABE like you said, Jennifer, it's the it's the premier organization for adult education in the country. And it offers a lot of free webinars, professional developments. And I'm not just talking about the annual conference either, but Jeff Abramowitz who does-- I think he chairs the Correction section.

Jennifer Gagliardi: Yes, he does, yes.

Peg Gould: He is outstanding. Aaron is doing the Advocast, Anson and Jeffrey are doing the Every Employer podcast on there. I was in the inaugural group of the state adult education advocates, we're currently I think going on our fourth cohort of state advocates now.

So it's a big group, it's a cohesive group. It is extremely, extremely professionally run. They offer the most outstanding webinars, speakers, everything. They work tirelessly to bring together the leading voices of adult education. And those other stakeholders who are important to our field.

Jennifer Gagliardi: Yeah, a lot of nonprofits. What I appreciate about COABE as opposed to CATESOL, CATESOL is really oriented a lot of times to university or higher education, or K-12 people. So constantly I'm looking-- when I'm looking at CATESOL stuff I'm basically doing the translation in my head for adult education. I feel so much more comfortable at COABE conferences because I know we are only talking-- there are adults in the room, there are adults in our minds and adults in our hearts.

And the reason why is because we really take seriously the adult as a responsible person taking care of the family. So if the adult is successful, the children will be successful too.

Speaker 2: That's a great point, Jennifer. We have a question here in the-- actually it's not a question, Jennifer, I want to also reinforce COABE's work as well. For everybody to remember, anybody who's in California if you're a member of CCAE you're automatically a member of COABE. So it's-- we understand that they're the national organization, they do things across the United States. So that's an important thing to remember as well, just wanted to share that.

Jennifer Gagliardi: Oh, yes, thank you so much. And in fact, wait a minute, hopefully I'm in the right-- I hope I'm in my-- oh, wait a minute, CATESOL. OK, CCAE, so let me-- oops, sorry, I need to--

Speaker 2: Share?

Jennifer Gagliardi: OK, share. Yes, sorry. Share again.

Speaker 2: [ INAUDIBLE ] slide.

Jennifer Gagliardi: There we are, there we are. OK, so CCAE, our conference is coming up April 14, 15, I just to put into proposals. I was looking everywhere about Leg Day for 2023, I haven't seen it that's why I'm going to the conference, I'm really interested in it. But COABE-- sorry, CCAE is the COABE affiliate, and they are basically doing our leadership in California for adult education.

And they also have another associate group for administration's adult education administrators. So really looking forward to this conference. Does anybody want to say anything about the conference?

Speaker 2: Where is it going to be? Oakland.

Jennifer Gagliardi: Oakland.

Speaker 2: Yeah, Oakland. And actually Leg Day is going to be a virtual, it's going to be on March 21.

Jennifer Gagliardi: OK, thank you so much.

Speaker 2: [ INAUDIBLE ]

Jennifer Gagliardi: I think I saw that they had a training for that on February the 24. But the video is up on Vimeo and it hasn't-- I haven't been able to access it yet but when I do, I'll put out information about that.

Also Peg Gould just said something that adult learners can join COABE free. And CCAE really encourages adult programs or adult teachers to bring their adult learners to the CCAE conference. And the reason why that's important is because, hey, here are we going to recruit the next generation of adult educators? It should be from our students. It would be really, really great to see that.

So, anyway, looking forward to that. I think I have maybe a minute left. I want to talk about some other initiatives. ALL In is-- they've just put together a consortium of-- it's like a supergroup of adult literacy groups. They're basically trying to respond to the Barbara Bush National Action Plan for Literacy.

So that's really good to see American English at State is a massive website full of information. It was initially oriented towards teachers of English outside the United States but they have some really good information about teaching adult learners inside the United States. Take a look at their YouTube channel.

And then California Adult Training they basically hold the-- they have the training schedule for CALPRO, CASAS, OTAN, and CAEP. CUE is Computer Using Educators. And Neda, the head of OTAN talked about how CUE is normally associated with K-12 computer users. She says, hey, adult education needs a foot in that door. And ISTE is the International Society for Technology in Education. They have a really, really good conference too, if you want to take a little bit deeper. And thank you so much.