Supporting Older Multilingual Learners: Equity-Focused On-Ramps for College and Careers

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Good afternoon, everyone.

Giving everyone just a few more seconds, I see the numbers still jumping a little bit in the

attendee chat when I make sure that you all get to trickle in before we get started.

But thank you all for joining us this afternoon.

You are here to learn about how we can support older multilingual learners

with equity focused on ramps for college and careers.

So if that's what you came to learn about today, then you are in the right place.

We'd also like to thank the sponsor of this webinar, which is Vista.

The K12 Division of Vista Hyal Learning sponsors this event and they're bringing us all together

today. And this does a trusted partner to schools and districts for world language and English

literacy instruction. Their solutions are based on a deep understanding of the needs,

challenges, and gifts of multilingual learners. So if there is anything that you need to support

those focused areas, then Vista would be very happy to hear from and speak with you.

So before we jump into our discussion, I want to go ahead and get us started with a poll,

so we can know who's in the room and how we can help you during our discussion today.

So I'm going to start with question number one.

And let us know what type of language or literacy instruction do you teach or support?

If you guys have a few seconds, try to get at least half of your room to respond.

Looks like most of you here. I do English literacy for multilingual learners.

We've got a little bit of dual language in the room. Awesome.

Okay, our next poll. We would also like to know, are you going to be considering any new

curriculum products in the next six months to support this audience? You or your district,

are you doing a curriculum needs analysis or looking for additional products to support your work

with multilingual learners?

A few more seconds. Some of you are, if you are, I'm sure Vista would love to hear from you all.

And then our last poll before we get into our discussion,

is are you a current or former customer of Vista?

And if you are, we'd love to hear in the chat about any of the products that you've used

with Vista and how they supported your work.

Awesome. Thank you all very much for those responses. That's going to be very helpful for us as we

analyze your engagement after today's webinar. I would like to first jump in and set the stage by

allowing our speakers to introduce themselves. We'd like to hear not only about yourself and the

work you do, but if you could share what sparked your passion for serving older multilingual learners,

and we're going to start with our first speaker, Soinja. Hello, everyone. My name is Sandra Bloner.

So nice to meet all of you. I see we have quite a few attendees on. And the work that I'm doing

currently in Baltimore County Schools is working with addressing the achievement challenges that we

may be seeing and making sure that we are seeing our multilingual learners and accessing and

supporting that their assets, their multilingualism, their multiculturalism, and making sure that we are

addressing that for our students. In our district, we have over 100,000 students of those students

about, oh, I think at this point we have about 13,500 or so students that are multilingual learners

in the district. And it's been a journey for me. I began as a teacher teaching Spanish and then

later on teaching English language development. We call it ELD in our district, some of you call it

ESOL. And just really making sure that we're thinking about the needs of our students. In my role

as a supervisor in my former district, I was supervising the work around parent engagement,

looking at interpretation language services, support and curriculum, professional development,

and just really making sure that we were looking at those wraparound supports for our students.

In my current role, I supervised the work around language services, so interpretation

services for our families, family engagement is a big area, curriculum, professional development,

K-12, and really just making sure that we're also supporting our families as they enter our district.

And we have what we call a welcome center, and so they come in, we do the enrollment process

and supporting them. And really what sparked my interest in this field is just understanding,

I always have valued culture language, understanding the various perspectives of our students,

and learning how to make sure that they are true citizens, and they see themselves being valued.

And where community, the school community that they're in, so that has been really important to me,

and I'm really thrilled to be here to be part of this session today.

Awesome, we're really excited to hear about your experiences a little more, and especially about

your work at the older MLs, and we'll get into that shortly. Yes, and then we will move on to Dr.

Karen Woodson, please let everyone know about your background, your interests, and what sparked your

passion for our older ML talent role learners. Sure, hello everyone, I'm Karen Woodson,

and I must share that over the past 35 years, I've worked across K-12 education as a teacher,

I too like Sanja started off as a Spanish teacher, because I had a very deep passion for language

and culture, so that was the big start for me, but I also served as a school leader and a district-wide

director. Today, I am leading, I am, I lead leading for school improvement, it's my consulting

company where I partner with districts to strengthen leadership and instructional systems

that support multilingual learners and students with diverse needs. My interest in working with

the older students who were English learners or who are multilingual English learners came from

my ability to understand that yes, we are program directors, but there there are heavy leadership

lessons that come along with programming well for multilingual English learners, there are lots

of leadership lessons involving being able to ensure improved outcomes for this population,

and understanding the intersection of leadership with this work enabled me to see, wow, we have

a set of students in our MEL population who have additional needs, who may not have time to

earn that high school degree prior to aging out at the end of the year in which they turn 21.

So from a leadership perspective, it means that we have to build systems for this particular

group of students that enable them to get meaningful career-based education prior to leaving

the school system at the end of the year in which they turn 21. So again, for me, it's understanding

at a deep level, oh, there's leadership lessons here that we really have to apply to make sure

that not only this particular group of students excel, but all students that we're responsible for

as MEL directors and leaders have an opportunity to excel. So that's what brings me here today.

I'm looking forward to the conversation. I'm very excited about it. So again, I'd love to share

some practical strategies and leadership strategies with the group. Thank you very much.

Yes, thank you. I am super excited for this conversation as I hear more about your background.

But before we get into our first question, just a very quick background about myself. I'm just

your moderator, so you don't need my whole bio, but I'm Dr. Kia Johnson with Center for Applied

Linguistics, where I'm currently our senior director of our pre-K12 professional development

and evaluations unit. I will share just a really brief part of my start in the field with

multilingual learners, because I found it interesting that you both started as Spanish teachers,

and I got into this work. I was a Spanish major. I graduated with my undergrad degree in Spanish

from an HBCU, which then translated to working at ESL, starting at a high school with our older MELs.

So I think we have the common drill there, which I'd love to see.

And I worked at the Virginia Department of Education for five years, and in that work,

for older MELs, I was a really strong advocate for work-based learning, for our older MEL students

to help them reach on-time graduation rates, especially in our districts where there was a

low incidence or small number of MELs students in the district, making sure that they were

invisible and that they were still labeled to reach their potential and graduate on-time.

So just letting them know what the state had available for earning credits,

even as later arriving students to make sure that they could graduate within the four or five

years, if necessary, was a big part of that work. So I'm really excited to moderate this

discussion. So with that, we're going to go ahead and jump in, and we're going to start first by

just getting a closer look at the students we're here to talk about today.

So, Sanjay, I know that you're now in Baltimore County, and you guys have a little over 3,000

high school multi-lingual learners, about 3,200. Can you help us understand the diversity within

that population and why a one-size-fits-all approach doesn't work with them?

Yes, I often think about our multilingual learners at this level, and that we're

they're not a monolith, right? So we have multi-lingual learners that have come to us who speak

various languages, the most spoken language in our district is Spanish, followed by Arabic,

French, and Urdu. And so we have a variety of students that are coming from various cultural

backgrounds. So in that way, they are diverse. But we also look at their diversity around their

academic backgrounds. Some of our students come to us, and they have very strong academic backgrounds

where they're able to transfer in a lot of credits into the district. So they may come in,

we know that it takes 22.5 credits to graduate in the district. I know it varies from district to

district, but they might come in with 10 credits, 15 credits or more depending on how they enter

the United States and how much they've completed in their country. So that's definitely something

that we look at. We also have students that might be able to enter based on their backgrounds to

take an AP Spanish course. And so we look at what is their academic background and how does that

help them to enter the district and enter pathways both to for college readiness. But then also,

how can we make sure that they have access to pathways such as career technical education?

So that's something we look at. We also have some of our students that come to us with special needs.

And so we want to make, we have to partner with our special education department to make sure that

their needs are being met, their learning needs, as well as addressing their language needs with us.

So that's something that we definitely look at. And as we think about this older population,

and as we've done collected qualitative data from our students, run focus groups and we did surveys,

they've told us that they really want to learn English. They want to get their high school diploma,

but they also want to work. Some of our students come to us and they have to work to take care of

themselves. They're with a guardian. And so just really making sure that we're considering all of

the aspects of what our students need is important. So we're looking at their academic backgrounds.

We're looking at the characteristics and what they bring to the district with them. We're looking

at what they've experienced. But then we're also looking at how can we make sure that we're addressing

the interests that they have. And they want to be able to come in, and come because they want to be

able to work. And so how can we support that? Excellent. Thank you. That actually really helps paint

the picture of that diversity that you can have in just one district. And I'd love to have Karen

come in. And if you could expand on that from your work in Montgomery County, what were some of

the barriers that this diversity among these older males when they had interrupted education?

What were the barriers that they were facing and that you had to really work hard to understand

in Montgomery County? Sure. Well, I believe one of these significant barriers we have to overcome

would be those that relate to empowering the students to access all of the resources we have

for them. And so based on some of the previous experiences of our students, we know that there

may be layers of trauma involved through no fault of their own given their journey to the US.

They may have experienced trauma in a variety of ways. We know that once they get here,

they are typical barriers that students may encounter, such as being able to access medical

resources, being able to access food resources, being able to adjust to living in a new culture,

being able to access clothing. There are many barriers that prevent students from accessing

that beautiful education that we have planned for them. And so one of the strategies was always to

use the expertise of what we call that the time our Esau transition counselors in the county. We

had a tremendous group of professionals. I would dare say they're professional, they're

tops in the country in terms of what they do, because they do provide that trauma informed

counseling with an eye toward removing barriers for the students. And during my work in that district,

we were fortunate enough to have counselors that were bilingual and spoke the languages that

the students had. And so they were able to provide counseling support, trauma informed,

counseling support directly in the languages of the students. And that was a blessing. So

yes, it's one thing to be able to offer, you know, fabulous programming for students within

to ruptured formal education. But we need the counseling supports that go with it in order to

mitigate the barriers that are very common with this particular population. I would also add that

we had a strong parent engagement component. So yes, we were working with the counseling needs

of the students, while simultaneously working with the families to address similar barriers.

That was a great way to actually make these students present for the learning that we had,

that we had planned for them. So I would definitely recommend not to overlook those two components

being able to work from a trauma informed way with the students. And also meeting the needs of

the families at the same time. That was huge. From there, we did identify a subset of students,

as Sanja said, they're not a monolith. There is a tiny subset of students who may not have,

may not have time to get that high school diploma prior to aging out at the end of the year,

which they were 21. And so we said, you know what, while we have them, why don't we create,

as best as we can, career opportunities for this student, for the students, by partnering with our

high school that provides pathways in, for example, restaurant management and hospitality. They

provide pathways for students in HVAC, electricity, building foundations of construction,

automotive technology. We already had a high school doing all of these things. What would it look

like then? If we could partner with these expert teachers from these industries that I just mentioned,

what would it look like then if we partnered with them and created a curriculum that would allow

this small subset of multilingual English learners to access those career areas. And as Sanja said,

that's what they want. They want to learn the language, got it. But we want to show them the

language of these areas, the language of these industries, if we will, English for specific purposes,

technically, if you will. But how do we do that? And then how do we do it in a way that allow

the students to leave with a credential of some sort, a certification of some sort, so that when

they leave us, prior to aging out at the end of the year in which they turn 21, they have something

to really get going, to get that first job, to get that entry level position in these

various industries. I would also say a big part of that was also thinking about, well, what does the

GED track look like? How do we make sure that they're also, while we are teaching them the English

in these industry areas, right? These career areas. But how are we getting them ready for the GED

at the same time? Why? Because we never lost the commitment to making sure that they can get this

high school degree in some way or another. Hey, if you're going to age out before you leave us,

I mean, yes, you're going to age out before you can get it in the district, but we're going to put

you on that GED track. And we're going to partner with this community college to see what that may

look like for you. So it is an unrelenting commitment to the student to give them what they're asking

for while also thinking about what that high school degree might look like for them.

Oh, that is absolutely awesome. I love that you were able to take the complexity of the diverse

nature of those students, find the niche that applied to each one, and then you were really

innovative about how you could create these partnership models to support all of the little

subsets of students that you have. And I think that's a great way to kind of also have Sonja come in,

I know that you guys have a GED partnership program in Baltimore County as well,

working with the community college. And can you kind of walk us through your model and let us know

why it's different from some other traditional approaches? Absolutely. So as we, and we're still in the

beginning phases of establishing this program, but one of the things that we realize as we first

had to think about the needs of our students. So just want to layer it for you. First we said

to address what Karen mentioned, that first we need a solid core ELD program in place that's

aligned to both the WIDA and the English language art standards. Once that was in place for all of our

3,200 high school students, and we knew that was in place, we then said, now we need to drill

down into the subsets. You mentioned earlier, Kia and Karen, about students with interupted education.

For those students that are still able to graduate, because we want to maximize graduation for as

many students as possible. So for those students, what we decided to do was to say what support

classes can we put in place in addition to the 22.5 or part of the 22.5 to help support them

towards graduation. So that meant that we put a literacy course in place. We put a map, a transition

math course in place to get them ready for algebra one. So that was something that was put in place.

And then we realized they needed to learn about the American culture. So we put that a high school

American culture course to get them ready for US history. So that was something that we did

for first layer, making sure that everyone has access. Second layer, making sure we're building

supports and bridges for students. And then we looked at what additional partnerships could be in

place. We reached out to the Maryland State Department of Education. We reached out and they had

a partnership in place with the Department of Labor. And that is, I think, what Montgomery County

built on for the SAEPA program that was mentioned in Korea, where we were looking at putting in place

a program where students could get that GED. As I've been doing my legwork to understand how we

can bring that into Baltimore County, I found out that when students complete the four modules

and the GED, that can count towards them having the equivalency of a high school diploma.

That's exciting news for our students. We also looked at those students and what options do they

have. So we knew that some of them again will graduate following the traditional pathway,

but what other options are there. And so as we looked at the GED option that allows us to

partner with CCBC, get an instructor to come into our high schools and we've identified four

high schools currently. Right now, Dundalk High School has a CCBC or Community College that's

closed by. And so we can partner with them to support our students. We have another school Kenwood

is another school that's closed by in the Essex area. We have Owing, Smills, and Patentsville. So

really working with those principals to identify schools that can work with that Community College

in the area and make sure that we're able to support students as they move along the pathway

to get their GED. The power of this option for students is they will have the equivalency of a

high school diploma. They will also be able to take that assessment in English or Spanish,

which was recently added in and available to our students in Maryland. And as a result,

what we're excited about and we're working with the Department of Labor and the Maryland State

Primary Education to see if that will count towards our graduation rate as well. So we're working

on that as we're still in the process of getting an MOU signed, but we're really excited about

what it can do for our students. As Karen mentioned, students say they want to learn English.

They want to have equivalency of a high school diploma, but what we've noticed when for some of

our older students, when they realize this 22.5 credits and they're 19 and they need to somehow

figure out how to configure summer programs after school programs during the day programs that

to know that they have an option where they could sit for four exams and receive that diploma

is really exciting to them. Now the other thing that we're excited about in Baltimore County is

that option to work closely with Katen'sville community with the community college,

that Katen'sville, but there are four different branches, but we can work closely with them to

really make sure that we're looking at their workforce development options for students. They

have automotive, they have restaurant, they have attendance, and they have medical working and

medical offices. And so how can we help our students develop the skills that they need so that

they can be able to enter the workforce, have the language, have their diploma, and be able to

enter the workforce. So that's definitely something that we're excited about because it gives our

students some options. And for those students who are 19, 2021, it gives them some hope on how they

can have that trajectory into a career and learn the language that they need so they can be able to

actively engage in their career. I love the common threads about between both of your

all systems there, and I will make sure that it's really explicit for our audience about what you

do. I've seen happen or making happen and are doing, and so I'd like for you to just go a little

bit further and talking about how these partnerships that you've cultivated really are able to be

successful. I'm talking about what really needed to be in place to make these things happen,

either funding personnel, how do you get buy-in, community support, like what did you really need

to have to make these programs successful and grow for these populations? And either if you start,

I'm not even whoever wants to go first. Well, I would say you have to have first, you need the

vision. And I just want to back up just a teeny tiny bit because something Sanja said was

extremely important for school-based leaders. And Sanja, you talked about something that made me

think about the graduation rate and how schools report cards. They're standing in many instances,

has that metric on there. And it made principles reluctant to take in students who they knew would not

graduate and would count against them. And so it is indeed refreshing Sanja to hear that there's

some advocacy going on to make sure that schools are not dinged for helping the most vulnerable

of our students. And I thought I heard you say that and I really wanted to with my leadership

hat, put that out there. That's huge because in the other days of creating this program,

this program that we're talking about that exists in Montgomery County called Krayar,

Career Readiness Education Academy. It was created while I was leading in Montgomery County

Public Schools. And I do remember that being a significant concern for principals. It's like,

wow, you're going to send me all of the students who are going to bring my graduation

way down. If I can be so honest, they're not going to graduate. And I'm going to get dinged

for helping kids. So that is a significant piece of that. Now relative to Kia's question,

in terms of what had to be in place, the vision, the vision is the most important thing

with getting the partners that we need to lift this work to the table and to be able to say,

hey, this is what the benefit is going to be for our students. But also this is how you're going

to benefit from being able to support this program, to support what we envision for the students.

So the sort of a mutual benefit, fleshing that out is huge when you begin to partner with

entities that want to help our students get this done. Memoranda of understanding is huge,

you know, being able to flesh out all of the details and enter into a memorandum of understanding

with the entity that you're trying to partner with. But I would say the win-win strategy is good.

Yes, what's in it for us as a district wanting to help these students and what's in it for you

as a partner coming on board to support this? I think those are huge and we'll do well in getting

the ball rolling with your partners. So we have had a partnership with our community college

for quite some time and I think one driver that helped us support that was the work around the

blueprint, the Maryland blueprint for the future of education. And so they had already partnered

with the dual enrollment in the district as well as in the community college taking some college

courses. So that helped. And so because that partnership was in place in the current navigators

and all of the things that were in place, we were able to set meetings up with our community college

and talk through what the options were. I know that they had grants that were in place that

could help to support some of our students and so we talked about when some of our students

unfortunately had dropped out how they were able to step in and support them. So making sure that

we better understood their system and then we looked at those opportunities for us to be able to

work together. So one example that you know as we were partnering and beginning to get this out

block the ground as we kind of look into this coming year is we realize well if we have this

GED option that's going to be in English and Spanish and many of our students speak Spanish,

we actually need bilingual instructors. So the those instructors can support the students as

they're learning what they need to know about the language arts, the math, the science, the social

studies. But if they can take it in their native language to students might have a better chance of

being able to be successful and complete that assessment and and be able to complete all four

and earn their high school diploma. So making sure that that partnership was in place, we also

needed to work with our career and technical education where I sit in the district as a department

of academic programs and services. So I'm in that same office with our advanced academics with

our CTE programs, career technical education. But and so with that in place just making sure that

we met with them to say let's talk about the way we can ensure that our MLS are accessing those

programs. I was really impressed when I analyzed the data with our with the coordinator over multiple

programs and we saw that 66% of our MLS at the high school level are accessing our career technical

education programs. But we noticed that they're not all completing the programs, they're not getting

completers. And so anything that we can do to help build the capacity of educators that serve them in

these programs is going to be critical because we know that many of our educators in the programs

come from industry. So they're still learning the education side of things and now we're adding

another layer with how do you support a multilingual learner. So professional development was critical,

making sure that we revisit programs, understanding the difference between the magnet programs versus

those programs that are in our comprehensive high schools and how can we kind of create those

entry ways for our students. So all of those pieces I think have been really

and critical. And then also working with our community partners. So who are out there because

one of the things that we know, especially when we think about the blueprint, there are apprenticeships.

There are how can we make sure students can access and get into various

employers who's willing to mentor some of our students. And then considering

this very sensitive topic of documented versus undocumented, that's another thing that we're

kind of navigating around. So what does that mean for students? Who can receive payment

and who might need to receive credit? And so being very strategic and the way we support our

students is important. Awesome. I want to kind of add on to that or have you add, oh, you

Dr. Watson, you got something to add on to that? You know, right? Yes, I want to, in terms of

keeping the community informed. Remember, this kind of program is going to cost money. There is

a budget impact. I believe one of the best strategies we had when I was serving as a director

in Montgomery County was that I had an advisory group, a community advisory group that met with me

on a monthly basis. And that advisory group, we really did the real work of the program with this

advisory group and we solicited their feedback. The, at the time, we called it the ESOL by

Language Advisory Committee, all community members representing the diversity that I had in the EL

program at that time. And we were able to get them behind the program to the point where they

delivered budget testimony in support of this particular program because there is a price tag

with it. And so bringing the community along through an advisory committee, if you are fortunate

enough to be able to create one, an advisory committee of your English learner population is a

brilliant strategy. If you can also get them to get in the habit of testing buying before the

Board of Education, when it's time to support that budget, that would go far in getting the program

off the ground. I wanted to make sure I put that in there. Oh, no, to add on one other thing is

we think about budget is, you know, a program like this can be supported with grant funding. So

as we think about where, what are all of the different funding structures that can support this?

We're thinking about the professional development needs to happen, the resources, and we talked about

bilingual supports, so bilingual resources potentially that you might purchase. Thinking about

hiring bilingual staff, you heard Karen speak to the counseling supports. So we're thinking trauma

informed. We're thinking the parent engagement. We've got to make sure that the families understand

what they're signing up for, or the students are because some of these students are emancipated,

right? So really making sure that we're very clear on all of the pieces. And as far as the

funding is concerned, I'm just looking at and being creative with what part of it can be funded

from your operational budget, and which part of it can be funded via grant funding. Title three

is something that you might look at. Title four, as another one looks at innovative Perkins,

Title three, for multilingual learners, Title four, innovative programs. So really being creative,

if knowing that this is also career education. So Perkins might be another source to consider.

So there are lots of different ways to look at it. So it's really, say, taking the funding that

you have and saying of all of the things we're doing, what is going to get us that impact? And so

how can we make sure that we're putting programs in place that fit together with other programs?

And I guess, no, I really like how everything that you all are doing, no, we're in here,

we're talking about gaps, filling in gaps. This is all about maximizing what our older

emails are bringing and making sure that they can achieve. And there's no deficit thinking to it

at all. And I think that's extremely important. And I'd like, Sandra, for you to kind of take

that asset-based thinking that you're doing and kind of let us know how you're applying that to

handling, like transferring to credits, maximizing them, bringing their biliteracy with them and how

you've turned that into granting seals of biliteracy and what that type of work is looking like for

these students as well. Absolutely. So again, thinking about when students come into our Welcome

Center, we have a student information system where we're looking at, we work closely with Massa,

which is the Mid-Atlantic Federation that really looks at credits from other countries and how we

transfer them into the United States and what that means as far as seat time and Carnegie Units and

all of that. And so we really have worked very closely to say, when we're looking at mathematics,

which courses that have been completed in Ghana or in Mongolia or in China, which courses might

transfer into which math credits that has been really important science, social studies. The most

challenging one has been English-language arts to figure that piece out, but working to make sure

that we are in that central office since all of our students come to the Welcome Center and they

go from there into a high school to really standardize that process and really ensure that we are

maximizing the number of credits that transfer. To make sure that we're not kind of doing it by

ourselves and figuring out we actually are working with a vendor to help us support that process

and then we're creating a database so that we can be very consistent for students as they come in.

So that was critical to have that in place first. We also work closely with our math team to build

a placement test that aligns his standards. So that was another piece that was critical. That helped

us really say, okay, so when a student comes in, if we're going to, at that time, it was an

ESOL math and then later became algebraic topics for our multilingual learners and just making

sure we're saying if you have this particular credit that you've complete, we know which is the

best placement of where you need to go next. So that has been critical. As far as the seal of

literacy in our district, we have an assessment that we're able to use to assess our students

and that allows them to, when they have a certain percentage of completion, I guess, on their

English language arts and their math, McCap assessment, Maryland, comprehensive assessment,

sorry, for all of the acronyms everyone and just make sure that they're performing at a certain

level, but if they take that assessment, that first language assessment and they score at a

certain level, they're able to show that they have a certain competency in that first language.

So that allows our students without even taking an advanced placement course to be able to show

that we are valuing the multilingualism they are already bringing to us and therefore they are

being given credit for that and that helps to move them towards that seal of literacy.

So those are just some of the things that we've done in Baltimore County that is making a huge

difference for our students. I love that so much and if you're honoring their bilingualism as

an asset and I'm going to push that over to Dr. Woods in the Karen and I would love to hear

how we can continue to push these students forward not just with intervention thinking because

again, we're trying to move from that deficit based thinking, but we really want to make sure

we're addressing the full spectrum of learners and so you're going to have some older multilingual

learners who are going to be gifted as well and they're going to have access to advanced coursework

and I'd love to know like what type of on-ramps and things you've seen put in place.

It's also support this population of older MLs. Well, I think the key is to be able to envision

them. Again, I don't want to overuse that word monolith, but we have to understand that there are

within this particular population of students, you do have giftedness. You do have students

who also may have special education needs and so being able to work with stakeholders to flesh out

what that programming looks like so that we're able to meet those needs while the student is in

their neighborhood high school. So let me back up just a little bit. The career program,

at least as we had it in Montgomery County, was not all day. It was you're in your neighborhood

high school, you're assigned high school and then in the evening you take your career readiness

classes and so if, for example, you are gifted, that is a programming decision that has to occur

in your assigned high school and we should be working with the counseling department being able

to schedule students who have, I'm just going to say giftedness, who have giftedness. They need

a pathway for them and that has to take place at the student's home high school. Having said that,

once you identify it, we have to build staff capacity to make it happen. So there is a huge

professional learning curve that has to make it happen with the home high school staff and there may

and that professional learning given this example of giftedness has to be able to

help the high school teachers understand how they create those conditions within that giftedness

curriculum to support the student learning that curriculum and the language that goes with it as

at the same time. It's a big ask which is why the professional learning has to be very purposeful

and very intense or making sure that there's a pathway for our students in their neighborhood

school to get access to that gifted education. I don't want to oversimplify but again the professional

learning for the staff and also the ability to create a curriculum or to create learning experiences

for the students so they can access the curriculum. We have to present avenues for access and along

with that comes the professional learning that has to be in place. In title two, if it still exists,

that's a great way to get at that also. We can't put all of these needs on the EL Department

or on title three. It is across the board. So it's understanding that hey if you have career

and tech add in here, if you have professional learning funding, whatever it is, there has to be

an allocation to support this need as well. The worst thing I think we can do is to say well every

single need of students with interrupted form of education no matter what's going on is on the EL

budget. That is not the case at all. It's across the board. And again to conclude, it's about

creating the conditions in those classrooms, whatever those classrooms may be, whether they're gifted,

whether they're in the career areas, whatever the classroom is, we must create conditions

for the students to learn the language and that content that goes with it at the same time.

The answer to that question looks a variety of ways depending on the context.

Awesome. Thank you. This conversation has been so rich that we only have time for one more

question and then we're going to jump into the Q&A and see if we can answer some audience questions.

So I'm going to pose the question first to you, Sanjum. For all of the leaders who are listening and

are wanting some actionable next steps, what do you recommend to start this work if they were to

start anywhere? So to start this work, they really need to know their students. So I would say

it's sitting down with a core team, including your EL director. You would need to have a school

improvement person involved. You would need to have your professional development person involved,

your chief academic officer. You really need to engage at that top level and really peel back

some of the data. So I would say having those stakeholders starting to look at some data to

identify what are the needs that you have in your district around achievement, around the older

learners. Who are they? How many are they? Where are they distributed? What are their learning needs

and just defining that? You then need to figure out, okay, based on that and I'm going to just kind

of hone in right now since our focus is on our older learners. Who are those partners in the

community? Who that would be willing to work partner alongside you to really make sure that you

can make some career opportunities for students? What is your relationship with the community,

college? And what are those opportunities? Workforce development? What's in place there? Do they have

that option or the pathway for the GED? Is what is their language piece look like? How can you take

what you're doing in your district and look at the components with some of these partners and create

a pathway for students to really make it seamless so you know what work you'll do in your district

and what is the timeline look like to roll that out, laying out your project plan? What would that

partnership look like and then making sure that you can kind of define that very clearly and

eventually to help guide your MOU? But the other piece that I think is critical is to really

understand what the students are telling you they want. So that means that you've got to get in

front of some of those students with your parent engagement team to say whether they're focus groups

surveys. What are they telling you that they're interested in? You heard Karen mentioned in the

evening program, but I can tell you from when we did our multilingual surveys, they said no,

we want to do it during the day. So you really need to understand what are they interested in both

the time of day? What might be the best thing that works with them? What will keep them in your

school? What programs? What career technical education programs are really going to keep them excited

about coming to school every day? I can tell you from past experience that sometimes what students

will do is they'll come and they'll go to their career technical education class and then they

skip some of the other classes. So what can you do to make sure that they're there for all the

aspects of what they need and help them understand the incentives and help them feel supported?

You also need to be thinking about and you heard this mentioned earlier that the fact that

trauma is a real thing, especially right now in the current climate, what's happening with

immigration? That is a very real thing to consider. So what supports, what wrap around support

will you put in place to make sure that they're not coming to school hungry and that they have

something? If some of our kids don't have transportation, so are you going to do tokens? Are you

going to do bus passes? What can you do to get the students to the programs wherever they are in

the district? So really thinking strategically about the human resources, the curriculum resources,

if you have the bilingual resources, what will you use to help them get ready to take that assessment?

And then what, as you heard specific-based English, what will that English program look like

to really make sure that you're building the language skills that they need so they can be

successful and career? So it's really thinking through all of those components and so the way I think

about it is a project plan and laying out the different aspects of what that will look like.

The other thing I'll tell you from- and just as what we're tackling right now is start small.

It's sometimes better to start small and then iterate and go bigger, but that allows you to work

out things so for us, it means even though we have over 20 high schools, we're going to start with four.

We're going to work out the kinks with that program. We're going to work closely with the

principals in those buildings. We're going to make sure that we're in there providing supports

to a providing professional development, like all of those pieces are important to make sure

that the school feels supported, the students are getting what they need and that our partnerships

are working and we're able to work out the kinks in the partnership. So all of those pieces is

really kind of thinking their holistic piece, start with the data, then think about all the

components that are going to work, starting small and then looking at how you can scale it.

Before I throw it to you, Karen, I'm going to pull up a question from the Q&A that might help.

You answered the question, but can you give some recommendations for how to build trust with

students who have had negative schooling experiences during that interrupted education?

Okay, so to answer that question directly, I think one of the best

ways to address that is to have a strong counseling component to whatever you're doing.

And again, I know we have counselors who are school counselors. I know we have counselors who

are more trauma informed in their approach to serving students. Both counselors can indeed

improve trust with students, but I would say do not overlook or underestimate the impact of

really good trauma informed counseling and also the parent outreach piece to build relationships

with the students to build trust. And I say that because the counselors are so incredibly skilled

at addressing barriers, removing barriers, and in that work, the students are beginning to trust you.

The families are beginning to trust you because you're able to meet their needs.

I know it has been said adnosium, you've got a maslow before you can bloom, right? But it's true.

If we can address those immediate needs, not only does it make the student more available for

learning, it's building trust and it's building a relationship with the school system.

I also want to add, Sandra did a great explanation of the pieces to consider when getting started.

The one thing that I would add is to say, you really need to tell a compelling data story.

And so Sandra talked about dealing with the data, right? In any system that you're trying to improve,

you have to have that data story at the ready, a compelling data story that talks about the students

and how we are not currently meeting that need. And that data story gets a lot of my lives when you're

sharing it with your community group, when you're sharing it with principals, when you're sharing

it with families, you need a really compelling data story. And once you have that, that is primarily

based on your performance results, you know how the students are performing, this particular group

of students are performing. And that will take you far in terms of once you have your data story,

well, that's going to inform your vision, that's going to inform your strategic planning,

it's going to inform your process management. There are a lot of processes that undergird such

a program that should not be overlooked. I'm sounding to do a great job talking about student

voice. What do they want? What are they saying to us? Okay. And then the staff focus in terms of

the professional learning that has to happen. So there are a lot of leadership lessons that go

along with this, the first starting with a compelling data story. Absolutely. One more question

and then we will be done. Audience wants to know, how can you provide language support for these

older, for our older MLs without sacrificing their access to your electives like music and art

in other areas? I'm sorry, how do you provide language? Can you say that again? How can you like

provide the language support? How are you helping meet these academic needs for the older MLs

and trying to get them the graduation without sacrificing their access to like the arts and

music and other electives that they would be interested in? So one of the things that we've tried

to do is we look at the four-year plan for students and we say, okay, so if a student comes to us

and they're level one, what courses, what will the pathway look like to get them through graduation?

So we outline that plan and depending on where they enter, whether they enter as a level two or

three or four, we outline the pathway. So that's what I would say. When we think about students,

we've got to make sure that we're saying, okay, so we know they need language and typically

a day if you do a block schedule, we'll talk about four to five courses in a day or if you do the

seven-period day, then you've got all seven periods. So we're looking very strategically to ensure

that students have access to their ELD courses and they also have access to and for the most part

if you look over the course of the four years, whatever courses they need. One thing that I would

say that I know we do here in Baltimore County, for those ELD courses, we also examine,

are there any courses that we have that could substitute for, let's say, a world language credit?

Are there any courses that we have that might meet the demand of an ELA credit? And we look at

putting some of those pieces in place so that the student is able to access the language they need,

the content they need, and then we're not limiting them from accessing career technical

education, electives, P-E-R. So what we do and we make sure that we have these sessions with our

counselors to make sure we provide professional development, that we go over, this is the plan

that we have for our scheduling, so that they have that to consider as they're making that schedule

for students to get them on that four-year plan. And I can tell you that most of our students

are able to meet that demand. Awesome, awesome. We are at our time for today, and I know this

conversation has just been full of so much great information, but I know in the chat they've dropped

the ways that you can reach both of our speakers, so if you want to reach out to them, if your

question didn't get answered, or if you have any feedback for us on the survey, that would be great.

But we would love to thank both of our speaker Asanja and Dr. Woodson for your leadership and

sharing such great actionable strategies today. I'm sure everybody got at least a tidbit of

something that they can take away and either go share with the leader or start new selves.

And we want to thank everyone for joining us today and just listening in on this very important

conversation. And with that, we hope you all have a great rest of your day and please look for

the survey link in the chat. We always love to know how you felt about our webinars.

But thank you, ladies, so much for your time this afternoon and everyone else you all take care.

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