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The OTAN logo appears, a human figure with one arm raised.

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OTAN, Outreach and Technical Assistance Network.

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Text, OTAN Outreach and Technical Assistance Network. To lead California adult education in the integration of technology into the educational process, ultimately empowering learners to meet their academic, employment, and civic goals. Face-to-Face and Online Training. News Articles. Teaching with Technology. Annual Technology and Distance Learning Symposium. Teachers' and Administrators' Digests. Online Resources for Adult Education. OTAN dot US. 916-228-2580. OTAN Online. Digital Leadership Academy (DLAC) 2023 Mid-Project Report: LA Unified School District. Bernadine Gonzalez, Principal. Prishay Wilson, CTE Teacher. Josh Eick, Teacher. May 19, 2023. Prishay stands behind a podium.

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PRISHAY WILSON: Good morning, everyone. We're LAUSDs Adult Education Virtual Academy, dubbed AEVA. And this is our project update. Our team members are Bernadine Gonzalez, who's on the Zoom right here, who's our principal. Myself, who I am a CTE instructor. And Josh Eick, who is a ESL teacher.

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In two photos on the slide, animated robots stand at the front of classrooms.

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And miss Gonzales, we're turning it over to you.

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A slide reads, Who are we and why do we exist?

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BERNADINE GONZALEZ: OK, So who are we and why do we exist? So AEVA is part of the Division of Adult and Career Education, LA Unified School District. And some people think that the pandemic is the reason for the opening of AEVA. But that's not the real inside story. Next slide, please.

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A slide with colorful shards emanating from a point of light reads, Warp Speed!

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The real inside story is that online options have been a part of course offerings since before the pandemic. But the spread of COVID-19 definitely drove focus on instructional strategies for online platforms and programs to the forefront. It accelerated the need for opening online classes. Next slide.

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The slide is entitled, The Superintendent's Strategic Plan. A poster with a boy in a graduate cap and gown reads, LA USD Unified. Ready for the World. Los Angeles Unified School District 2022 to 26 Plan.

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So in February of 2022, Superintendent Carvalho joined the ranks of LAUSD. And he introduced his strategic plan, which he called Ready for the World. And in his plan, he introduced the idea that his highest priority was eliminating opportunity gaps. And he wanted to highlight the fact that we needed to do better with providing credit recovery options, which is something that Adult Ed does very well. And to increase access to accelerated learning options for K-12 students.

So the Adult Ed Virtual Academy was designed to provide access to students with any time, anywhere access for accelerated learning and education. During the pandemic, towards the end of the pandemic, students were surveyed from all across the region as part of our lyric group. And what we learned was that more than 50% of the students not only in the region, but in our own division indicated that they were interested in online programming options. Next slide.

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The slide reads, AEVA: The construction of AEVA. An 11th Campus (August 2022). In photos on the slide, people pose in skeleton costumes and three skeletons sit side-by-side.

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So as a result, AEVA was born. And not August, but in July, I was hired on as the principal of AEVA. And then in August, we had a skeleton crew of three. Me, one ESL instructor and one academic instructor. And those instructors were providing asynchronous instruction to our students.

And then in October of 2022, we grew. We were able to open two more ESL classes and we hired a step teacher, which I believe Prishay's going to elaborate on a little bit. And basically, the step teacher is the person who on boards all of our ESL students. So it's been quite an interesting ride. Next slide.

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The slide is entitled, AEVA Enrollment.

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So going back to our strategic plan. Our blueprint in Adult Ed was designed and our goal was to target enrollment of 500 students by the end of June. So there we went on a wing and a prayer. And so next bullet. We hit our target in January of 2023.

[APPLAUSE]

And as Mr Eick would like to say, using fuzzy math, one can say we had a modest increase in enrollment from July to-- or from August to our Bay opening to now of 157,200%.

[LAUGHTER]

We went from zero students to 100. And let me see, where are we at.

JOSH EICK: 1,000-- 1,572.

BERNADINE GONZALEZ: What is it, Josh?

JOSH EICK: 1,572 students.

BERNADINE GONZALEZ: There you go. 1,500. So we did exceed our plan. It's been quite an interesting, as we said, a ride. Even with lack of resources and everybody pitching in left and right to help AEVA grow, putting in hours here and there, left and right, it's all come together and it's amazing what we've been able to accomplish on a wing and a prayer and also a partridge.

[LAUGHTER]

So I believe that is the end of my slides. And I think it is now turning it over to Prishay Wilson.

PRISHAY WILSON: All right.

BERNADINE GONZALEZ: Our extraordinary CTE.

PRISHAY WILSON: [CHUCKLE]

So for AEVAs current statistics, our enrollment, we've exceeded our enrollment target by over 1,000 students. We hit our goal in March, despite the lack of adequate resources. Thanks to the extraordinary hard work of our principal, advisors and a few teachers, AEVA has been able to expand the staff, schedule and enrollment numbers exponentially in a very short time.

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A slide has the title. AEVA Programs.

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Some of the programs that AEVA currently has, we offer 22 classes in the morning and the evening. We have STEP, Student Tools for Educational Pathways, ESL, distance learning, citizenship, ABE, ASE, reading, math, AIS labs, and of course CTE Computer Essentials teacher, OK?

[LAUGHTER]

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The next slide is headed, AEVA Staff.

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Our staff consists of one principal, 18 teachers, two advisors and one school administrative assistant and a partridge in a pear tree.

[LAUGHTER]

So now I'll turn it over to Josh.

JOSH EICK: Actually, I think this is still you.

PRISHAY WILSON: So some of our challenges and setbacks are accountability.

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In an illustration, a woman with four arms holds a coffee, phone, pen, and book.

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Accountability is difficult to maintain with only one person. The principal, who is responsible for operations, staffing, student recruitment and services, AEVA currently has no additional administrators to carry on some of the incredible weight put upon the principal. And she didn't pay me for that.

[LAUGHTER]

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A slide reads, A big challenge. Persistence. On a track, a runner lays on their back, another hunches over, and one stands.

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One of our biggest challenges is that we enroll lots of students, but many students don't stay in the program over the 12 hour threshold, which we refer to as persistence.

JOSH EICK: Oh, wait. [ INAUDIBLE ] Bernadine is going to say something.

PRISHAY WILSON: Oh. Go ahead. Go ahead, Ms Gonzalez.

JOSH EICK: Bernadine, were you going to say something about persistence?

BERNADINE GONZALEZ: Yes, I was. I was just so engrossed in the presentation. I forgot. So one of the things that we learned from doing a dive into our data is that the persistence of, we took a look at it and before from the time of, I want to say, August when we started enrolling students to about December, when I did not have any advisors on staff, persistence was a problem.

We didn't have, other than me and a couple of people working extra hours, we weren't able to go out and pick up those students who missed an orientation. It was all emails, hit and miss. Once we hired two advisors, one for ESL and one for academic, we were able to provide a little bit of a safety net to ensure that students are able to attend.

And if we can't, we're trying to pick them up as quickly as we can. So the issue with persistence has been help. We went from 200 and some odd zero hour students, down to 70 when we hired two advisors. So it made a significant difference in our ability to keep students beyond the 12 hours persistence level.

PRISHAY WILSON: OK.

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A slide is entitled, AEVA Recruitment.

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So for recruitment, currently, we have a small budget for marketing, but our hope is that we will increase it soon. We need to hire more advisors, as well as outreach and navigator. Our goal is to be able to market via social media, communication with other schools, mass messaging, increased distribution of flyers, mailers, marketing materials, and our own website. All right, Josh.

JOSH EICK: So I'm going to quickly discuss some changes since we began in the program last October. And I think we've already discussed a lot of these changes.

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A slide reads, Changes. AEVA's student body and staff have grown exponentially. AEVA's curricular program has expanded considerably since its inception with one ESL and one ASE class in October, 2022. AEVA has exceeded its initial target goal of enrolling 500 students in the 2022-2023 school year. 157,200%

(SPEECH)
Our student body and staff have grown exponentially. Our curricular program has expanded considerably. We discussed that earlier. And we exceeded our initial target goal of 500 students, just in case you forgot. Just wanted to remind you of the fuzzy math.

So part of the progress report that DLAC asked us to talk about were next steps, but this is a little difficult for us because our ambition is quite big. Our goal is to become a model of an online school for schools and districts all around the world, really. And we've got some big challenges blocking us from doing that. So instead of talking about next steps, we thought would be better to talk about our vision for what we'd like to see happen moving forward.

So part of that vision includes expansion. And we would like to expand all of our current programs and schedules. And that would include opening afternoon and Saturday classes, more CTE classes and also collaborating with other in-person schools to partner with them on CTE classes and programs, HiSET Prep and Testing, high school recovery, parenting classes and of course, CASAS in EL Civics testing, which of course, is a challenge when you're fully online.

But we're hoping to make some progress in that area very soon.

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The current slide has the title, Expansion, Part 2. In photos on the slide, a laptop sits against a white background, and two people sit across from each other at a table, each emerging from a laptop screen. A man holds a tablet, and people make faces in costumes.

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In addition, as we expand, there will be some issues that come up that we would like to partner with our district on. And that is things like devices, which is a little bit of a challenge because our students are fully online and they're spread out all over the place. So we have to partner with our district and other schools to really streamline that process. We need to get appropriate staffing to really hit those big goals that we're looking to hit.

And you can see what we did with the skeleton crew. Just imagine what we can do with a fully staffed school. And that includes more advisors, more office staff, more administrators and of course, more teachers. And then PDs as well. Our district does a fantastic job on professional development. However, our school has unique needs since we are online. And our needs are different from the in-person schools.

So we would like the ability to do some hyper-focused PDs just for our school on things such as summative assessments, which again, is a challenge when you're fully online. Testing is something that we need to discuss and unify. And it's just an example.

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The next slide reads, Expansion, Part 3. Virtual Fair. An AI-generated presentation board sits over an AI-generated photo of a school fair.

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And the last thing I will talk about is this idea that I came up with, which really encapsulates the vision that we're trying to achieve.

And I would just like to mention that we'd like to thank Susan and DLAC for really helping us to focus that vision. This idea for a virtual fair is that the school votes on a theme once or twice a year. Let's imagine the theme is careers. So every class in the school decides on a project that they are going to do for this virtual fair, which is like a science fair that schools do, but it's fully virtual. It's online completely.

And each class can do whatever they want. They could do a whole class project. They can do group projects. They could do individual projects. And when those projects are finished, they're digitized if they're not already digital. And they're uploaded onto our virtual fair website. And then the fair opens and it's open to literally anybody in the world to come and visit to see what the students are doing.

And the idea of this fulfills a lot of the goals that we have. First, it promotes pride in our students, which is in line with the idea of growth mindset that our district is really focused on. We want our students to see that they're making progress and feel good about what they're doing. And that really helps with retention and to get our students further toward their goal.

It serves as an intra program marketing tool so that, for example, the ESL students see what the CTE students and the high school students are doing and they get excited about continuing into those programs, vice versa, high school can see what the CTE students are doing. It builds those important tech skills that we want our students to build, which is in line with those 20th century skills that matter.

And it also serves to lessen that digital divide that we've been talking about in the last couple of days. It builds school spirit, which we're a fully online school. We don't have a building. So we can't have those holiday dances that those other schools have. We don't have those end-of-year parties. So this is a way to build a sense of community within our school and get people proud to be part of that school, which again, helps with retention, helps with recruitment, all of that good stuff.

It promotes new andragogy to our teachers, which this is a really good way for our teachers to be able to do a hands-on project, which uses project-based learning, differentiated learning, all these things that our district is pushing. And some teachers have been a little resistant, but as we all know, if you actually go ahead and do use some kind of new methodologies in your classrooms, you tend to get excited about it. And there's a lot of buy-in there.

It serves as a progress gauge for teachers and their students, as well as showing outcomes to our administrators. We know how much you administrators love to see those outcomes. It's a marketing tool. Our students are going to invite their family, their friends, their coworkers, their neighbors to come and see what they've been doing in our school. So it's pretty much free marketing, right?

So people will come. They'll see what's happening at our school. They'll think, oh, I want to take a class here. Oh, I know somebody who wants to take a class. And it's a great publicity tool. We can reach out to media, and also social media. They might be interested in covering this because this is, I think, sort of a unique idea that hasn't really been done before, as far as I know.

And that, again, serves as free marketing for us. And that'll boost the number of people who register in our school. So all of this will aid in our pursuit to really become, I guess, you can call it an industry leader. That's our hope. And maybe open some doors to be able to collaborate with other schools and other districts who come and see this.

And they go, wow, this is really interesting. I have some ideas that you could use, or can we work together to really push education further into the 21st century. And if this goes well, if we're able to do this, I think we would like to present this at TDLS next year. So we'll see. And that's it. We're early. Look at that.

[APPLAUSE]

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OTAN Online. Digital Leadership Academy (DLAC) 2023 Mid-Project Report: LA Unified School District. Bernadine Gonzalez, Principal. Prishay Wilson, CTE Teacher. Josh Eick, Teacher. May 19, 2023. Face-to-face and online training. News articles. Teaching with technology. Teachers' and administrators' digests. Annual technology and distance learning symposium. Online resources for adult education. OTAN dot US. 916-228-2580. Subscribe. Youtube slash OTAN Serves Adult Education. Like us. Facebook slash OTAN Serves Adult Education. Follow us. Twitter slash OTAN.