Industry sign banking california permission slip later
- Hello everyone, thank you for joining us for this one hour webinar. My name is Naomi Ondrasek
and I'm a senior researcher and a policy advisor with
Learning Policy Institute. A nonprofit nonpartisan organization that's committed to advancing
evidence-based policy that supports equitable
and empowering learning for every child. Today's webinar we're going
to explore the impacts of California's ongoing teacher shortages, as well as recruitment
and retention strategies that show promise in injecting the issue. We're also going to consider
the implications of COVID-19 for the teacher pipeline
and the educator workforce. I'd like to let the
audience know once again, that this webinar's being recorded, that a video recording
and also a video recording will be emailed to you in a few days, and the slides are currently available in the link in the chat box. I'd also like to take a
moment to thank and recognize our co-sponsors for their
support with (indistinct) our co-sponsors at the California Partnership
for the Future of Learning, the California Teacher Residency Lab, EdPrepLab, The Education Trust-West and (indistinct) has any questions,
please click (indistinct) at the bottom of your screen, and if you'd like to engage in discussion then click the (indistinct)
button and type a chat box at the lower right side of your screen. So with that, I'm going
to hand it over now to LPI (indistinct) and opening remarks. - Thank you, Naomi, and it's great to be
here with everyone today. This is such an important topic. I wanna also thank the entire LPI team who organized this briefing. It does take a village
and we appreciate everyone in the village. As we all know, today we're in the midst of
both a public health crisis and an economic crisis, driven
by the COVID 19 pandemic. Communities in California
and throughout the country are caught between a rock and a hard place really figuring out how to
mitigate the spread of the virus while also dealing with declining
revenues and in families that they serve rising unemployment. Woven throughout this crisis are long standing systemic inequalities that communities of color and low income communities
are hardest hit by. And these long-standing inequalities also show up in many other
corners of our society. Including students access to well-prepared diverse teacher workforce. Although California faces
a widespread shortage, you will hear later that these
shortages disproportionately affect students from low-income families. Closing the achievement
gap requires that we close the opportunity gap in access
to fully prepared teachers. Students need access to these teachers, always they needed it before the pandemic. They continue to need access
even more and will need to have the opportunity
to learn from people who are in a stable
well-prepared teaching force as we try to recover from the pandemic. You'll hear a discussion that will take us through some of these issues
beginning with the presentation of research on teacher shortages, but also potential solutions. And then we'll hear from
some amazing panelists about the situation that
districts are facing, the evidence-based strategies
like teacher residencies that may be helpful in
building a sustainable teacher pipeline. And most of the California
context is relevant to the nation as a whole. We're excited to reckon
our four panelists, and I'm gonna give you a brief preview of who you'll hear from. I'm thrilled that my friend and colleague superintendent Austin Beutner, who leads the Los Angeles
Unified School District has agreed to join us this
morning here as a civic leader, a philanthropist, a public
servant, extraordinary, and a business executive. Who has worked to make Los Angeles a stronger community during this pandemic, Austin has stepped up
around food for students in Los Angeles and their families around, opportunities for summer
school, for distance learning, for laptop access and connectivity, solving problem after
problem with collaboration of the educators in their district. And so we're grateful
to have you here to help share this important work and give us a real-time perspective on the workforce challenges
you're facing right now. We'll also hear from my
good friend, Mary Sandy, the executive director of the California Commission
on Teacher Credentialing. Mary is a leader with more
than 25 years of experience working in education and government. She did start very young. She currently oversees policy
related to teacher preparation and licensing to direct the
agency that awards over 250,000 authorizations, including
credentials each year accredits more than 250
colleges, universities, and local education agencies. Mary is a visionary leader. She'll be sharing the important work the commission has been doing to implement the recent
State investments aimed at the State's ongoing shortages. In addition, you'll
hear from Jeanna Perry, who is the manager of teacher development and the Fresno Unified School District, Jeanna has been working for
Fresno Unified for over 15 years as an elementary and secondary
teacher, instructional coach, a teacher on special assignment
who developed district-wide professional learning on
the common core curriculum. She's also been a coordinator for the Fresno Teacher Residency Program, and she supports that program in general student teacher programs in partnership with Fresno State, Fresno Pacific University
and National University. And last but not least, we'll hear from Jeraldy
Vega an instructional coach at Young Oak Kim Academy and LA Unified. Jeraldy is an alumni of the UCLA Impact
Teacher Residency Program. I worked in the classroom
as a math teacher and a residency mentor before
taking on her current role as an instructional coach. Once again, I wanna
thank all of our speakers for joining us today and
to those of you listening. And I'll now hand it over
to our wonderful researcher, Desiree Carver-Thomas, who is also a policy analyst with LPI. She will be sharing research
from two LPI reports, sharpening the divide, how California's teachers
shortages expand inequality and sustainable strategies for
funding teacher residencies lessons from California. Desiree take it away. - Thank you. And good morning. As Linda said today, I'll be briefly sharing some
key findings from two reports we've recently published. The first is sharpening the divide, which provides a district
and County level analysis on California teacher shortages
and the teacher workforce. And the second is a sustainable strategies for funding teacher residencies
written by my colleague, Cathy Dunn, and Karen DeMoss
have prepared to teach at Bank Street College of Education. Their report includes case
studies and teacher residencies here in California. And if you have any questions
about either of these reports, feel free to drop them in the Q and A box, and we'll try to get to
them later in the sessions. So today I'll talk about California deepening teacher shortage
and what causes shortages and how shortages expand inequality. And I'll touch on some
of the recent investments the State has made in
the teacher workforce and the role that high-quality
teacher residencies can play. We analyze the most recently
available data from 2017/18 on factors that reflect and
influence teacher shortages in California districts, such as the percentage
of beginning teachers or teacher turnover rates. These data are available
in an interactive map on our website, and what this map shows is
that shortages aren't uniform across the State. Some districts have a stable workforce of experienced educators
while others are contending with high turnover rates
and are relying on teachers who aren't fully credentialed. At the State level, we can see that California's
teacher shortage has continued to worsen. When districts can't find
a fully credential teacher, the State allows them to
hire under-prepared teachers to fill those positions. So this is the key indicator of shortages. This chart shows you
the significant increase in the number of substandard
credentials and permits issued over the past six years. These now total more than 13,000 and have tripled since 2012. If the pandemic increases
demand for additional teachers to accommodate physical
distancing requirements for example, this could further exacerbate shortages for districts already struggling to find fully credentialed teachers. Perhaps most concerning,
emergency style permits have increased about seven times. These permits require the
least teaching preparation and are growing at the fastest rate. Individuals don't need to
demonstrate subject matter competency and typically
are not yet even enrolled in a teacher prep program. Early indications suggest
that shortages could get worse in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic in which case districts may
continue to hire teachers on substandard credentials
at even higher rates. Many California districts
are interested in providing students with a teacher workforce that reflects the rich racial, ethnic and linguistic
diversity of the State, and a wide body of research
shows that being taught by a teacher of color is
associated with benefits to all students, with students of color, especially black students, experiencing boosts and
academic achievement, graduation rates and
aspirations to attend college among other benefits. Currently teachers of color make up 34% of California's teacher workforce, which exceeds the national average of 20%. However, 9% of districts
have no teachers of color and about six and 10 districts
have fewer than 20% teachers of color, again, the national average. So we've talked about
this deepening shortage. Now we'll talk about what
seems to be causing it. Based on our previous research, California shortages
are caused by a decline in teacher preparation enrollment, increased demand for teachers and most significantly,
teacher attrition and turnover. And I'll talk about each of these. Enrollment in teacher preparation programs has dropped precipitously
75% in recent years, and there's been a
slight uptick since 2013, reflecting in part some of
the significant investments the State has made to address
shortages, at this rate, however, it would take another 17 years to get back to the enrollment
levels we had in 2001. At the same time as teacher
prep enrollments have dropped demand for teachers is increasing. Each year, districts submit
a report to the State that estimates the number of
teachers they expect to hire. These estimates have
increased by more than 40% in the past few years. In part districts hire more teachers to reduce student teacher ratios and return to stacking levels
that we had before layoffs during the great recession, as
districts hire more teachers, as districts make decisions about how to reopen schools safely, they may in fact require
even more teachers and staff. The vast majority of demand is
driven by teacher attrition. Nine out of 10 teachers
hired, are hired to replace a teacher who has left public
school teaching in California. Our turnover rate in the State is 12%. That includes 9% of teachers
who leave public school teaching in the State and another 3% who moved to
teach in another district. Our attrition rate is a bit
higher than the national average and twice as high as some
high achieving school systems. These rates also vary considerably with some school districts
seeing turnover rates under 5% and others that lose more than a quarter of teachers each year. This is why it's important
to understand the nature of shortages in our State, not just because they put stress on this whole education system, but because they contribute
to already stark opportunity and achievement gaps for our students. District serving more students
from low-income families have higher turnover rates. They hire more new and beginning teachers. And these teachers can
certainly be an asset to a growing district, but we also know that
students benefit from a stable and experienced teacher workforce. These districts also hire more teachers on substandard credentials and permits. In some of our districts serving the most students from
low-income families, more than half of new hires
has substandard credentials or permits. And these conditions have
costs research points to cost of more than
$20,000 to replace a teacher who lives in urban district. Districts with the most new
hires had turnover rates twice as high as districts
with fewer new hires. Not only are teachers
without full preparation, generally worse for student outcomes, but research indicates
that these teachers leave at two to three times the rates
of fully prepared teachers, creating a revolving door of teachers that further contributes to shortages. All of these conditions
have significant impacts on student learning. In fact, LPI conducted a study
of districts in California where students of color
achieve at higher levels than their peers. And found that of the
school level factors, the two most important predictors were teacher qualifications
and experience. Specifically, the percent of
teachers holding substandard credentials is significantly
associated with achievement, especially for African-American
and Latino students. In recent years that they
have made several investments to address teacher shortages, though these were made on a
one-time basis and it takes time to see their effects. You'll get to hear from
Mary Sandy in a bit about some of these investments, but one that I wanted to flag for you is that California Teacher
Residency Grant Program, which the state created in 2018, in order to seed funding
to residency programs throughout the State. Residency's are model
that can help to address teacher shortages and
close opportunity gaps. They address shortages and targeted areas. Many residencies recruit
teachers into special education, STEM subjects and bilingual education. They reduce teacher turnover
by producing teachers who stay in the profession. And finally they increase
teacher diversity, by providing financially
feasible pathways for candidates. Nationally 45% of residents
in 2015 were people of color more than double the national
average of teachers of color. In order to achieve these outcomes, it's important that
residencies are high quality, high quality residencies
consist of strong partnerships between districts and universities. They tightly integrate coursework
with classroom practice. They require a full year working
alongside an accomplishment for teacher. They recruit diverse candidates
often in shortage areas. They provide financial
support often in exchange for a commitment to teach for
a certain number of years. They place cohort of
residents in teaching schools and many offer ongoing
support after residents enter the teaching workforce. One example of a residency
here in California is the North Coast Teacher
Residency Consortium in Humboldt County. Humboldt is a primarily rural County. In 2017, 17% of teachers were new hires and nearly one five of those was hired on a substandard
credential or permit through the California Teacher
Residency Grant Program that I mentioned earlier. Humboldt County office of ed
and Humboldt State partner to develop a special
education focused residency. They recruited special
education paraeducators already working in the County. These parents were able to
keep their jobs and salaries while gaining high-quality
clinical experience and taking aligned coursework. The inaugural cohort
had 10 residents in 2019 eight of whom were paraeducators,
nine 10 of those residents were hired full-time this past fall. And the 10th resident is still
working as a paraeducator. Funding through the teacher
residency grant program is already beginning to make a difference. And you'll hear more from our
panel about teacher residency programs, such as the programs
at Fresno Unified and LAUSD, which has several. You'll find more information
about the research I've shared and the full reports
available on our website. And I'll now hand it back
to Naomi who will facilitate our panel. Thank you. - All right. Thank you Desiree for giving
us grounding and the research on teacher shortages and
also on residency programs. Before we start, I wanna
take a minute to remind those of you in our audience, that if you have any questions, please continue clicking
on the Q and A button at the bottom of your screen. And if you'd like to engage in discussion, you can click the chat button
and type in the chat box in the lower right side of your screen. Before we jump into our panel, let's take a moment to
quickly reintroduce ourselves to our wonderful panelists. We have with us Austin Beutner, who is the superintendent of the Los Angeles
Unified School District, Mary Sandy, the executive director of the California Commission
on Teacher Credentialing, Jeanna Perry, who's the
manager of teacher development at the Fresno Unified School District and Jeraldy Vega, who is
an instructional coach at Young Oak Kim Academy and LA Unified. So thank you to all of our
panelists for joining us. And with that, let's go ahead and dive
into our first question. Our first question is for
superintendent Beutner, I'm hoping you can provide
us with some context that helps us visualize
what some of the strategies we've been hearing about.
Actually look like on the ground. LAUSD has taken a proactive
approach to building up its teacher pipeline with several
teacher residency programs, as well as other initiatives
designed to address key barriers to recruitment and retention. Can you describe these initiatives and how they address your
districts, local contexts and priorities. - Sure. And thank you Naomi, and thank you to the entire team at Learning Policy Institute
for your leadership on this topic. This the ballgame for us. This is the quality and
training and preparedness of teachers in the
classroom is what we build our whole enterprise on
making sure that students have that connection to their teachers. So this is the most
important thing we look to in the horizon. There's several things that we're doing. And I'll start with the
one you mentioned already, which is a teacher residency. So we have four programs now, Cal State Dominguez Hills,
Northridge, Cal State LA, UCLA, trying to create a fifth that USC, those would fall in the
traditional model of a stipend living expenses and other
support for students to enter these programs. And we've more than a hundred
students in those programs. The one that we're looking
to add with USC at the moment targets teachers of color
in particular black males. And so we acknowledging the
point that Desiree made earlier. We have to look to the
diversity of workforce as well, not just the quality and
capability of everybody who's in the classroom. The second thing that we're
doing is to try to grow our own where possible. So in compliment to what we do
with our university partners, that we have a couple of programs. We have an educators of
tomorrow program where we work with high school juniors and seniors to tutor and explore the career that they might find in teaching. And we help support them
if they wish to apply for TA positions post-graduation. Now we have a district intern program where we take a mid-career or
already working individuals who might want to transition
to this field in particular for recruiting hard to find credentials. I think of the math area, for instance, where people might realize that
working with young children, helping them grow and develop
is actually more rewarding career than what they might've
thought they originally, they went into out of a university. So we have that. The third, you mentioned
alternate strategies. So we're looking at
providing affordable housing. One of the things that we see
as a barrier to recruitment and retention is the sheer cost of living in Los Angeles area. And we have teachers who
can move more than two hours each way, in normal times
to the community they serve. So the ability to live
and work in the community and to think of that as
connecting the entire system of supports and creating whole communities where teachers can live
and work in the community that they serve. We have connected mentors
for young teachers. You mentioned attrition. So
it's not just into the pipeline. It's what are we doing to make
sure that first five-year gap where so much of the turnover occurs, that we're connecting
all of our young teachers with a mentor who can help them if they're struggling with
an issue who can help them benefit from their prior experience. And then lastly, and we'll talk later, I think in the discussion
about what the pandemic means for all of us, but we're seeing an opportunity
to create partnerships with employers in the
community because they've seen so much dislocation. So we have an ongoing partnership now with the Los Angeles
Chamber of Commerce where, we and they are working side
by side with some of the larger organizations in Los Angeles who may see their own businesses upside down. So think of the hospitality
industry for the moment. We're very experienced people
in those industries realize the future is not what they thought there and want to take a second or further look at what they might do in a classroom. And they're bringing experience, they're bringing a different
set of life experiences, and if we can connect them with
our district intern program or other residency
programs to help make them great teachers, it's a one-on-one
is three types of things. So lots of things that we're trying, I don't think any one in
particular is the answer, but if we're not all leaning
in and thinking about this, we're not doing the
best we can for students because looking to the horizon, this is our greatest
challenge in public education. - Thank you for that
superintendent Beutner. I think, one of the things
that resonated with me from your response is talking
about not only the importance of identifying local drivers
of barriers to recruitment and retention, but also
looking to partnerships as a powerful way to help
address those issues. I'd like to take us now
over to our next panelists, Mary Sandy, we're gonna take
a zoom up perspective here up to the 30,000 foot view
and talk a little bit about what State level initiatives
have looked like. Mary, you always do such
a great job at painting the big picture of State efforts to build the teacher pipeline. Can you describe some of the
State's recent investments and teacher recruitment and retention, what the outcomes have been
and whether you've seen areas of promise? - Yes. Thank you, Naomi, and thank you to the
Learning Policy Institute for your continued really
careful work in this area. So California over the last
five years has invested more than $300 million in a bid to
build new preparation pathways and to incentivize teacher recruitment. So I, as you may or may not
know in the national audience, most of California teachers
complete their preparation post-baccalaureate after
they are in their BA degree. Either in a one-year student
teaching based program or in a one to two year
intern based program. So one of our earliest
investments was $10 million to develop undergraduate pathways, particularly focused on
recruitment of STEM teachers and special education teachers. This investment led to the
creation of more than 90 new pathways, distinct pathways
across our 80 institutions that prepare teachers. We had in our first
program year, last year, 400 candidates enrolled in these programs, and more than half of them
identified self identified as Hispanic or Latin X, about 25% white. So we're seeing a greater
diversity in the population of prospective teachers
coming through these pathways. Another $5 million was
set aside for the center for teaching careers. A center that has
provided many of supports for prospective teachers
who are seeking program, for graduates who are seeking jobs, for employers who are recruiting
(indistinct) teachers. They kind of are a
switchboard in California for resources, one-stop resources. They have a website, californiateach.org that you can take a
look at at your leisure. $50 million was set aside specifically for local Felician grants. This was for school districts
that needed to have different kinds of incentives that
they could fund to recruit already fully prepared teachers
up to $20,000 per teacher was set aside specifically for recruitment of special education and
STEM credential holders. The funding is available for
just over 3,600 participants, and most of the grants were
being used for loan repayment or service scholarships, those were the largest uses that districts put these funds to. They also had signing bonuses, stipends for special education teachers, professional learning, community
development, et cetera. So this was very much a
local response initiative. Another 45 million, we set aside for a very successful program targeting classified school employees. We were able to fund 44
local education agencies to support the preparation of 2200, a little over 2200 classified
staff as they made their way toward a teaching credential. So far 770 of them have done so, and they're more in the
pipeline and that continues to be a very productive local
program for recruitment. About a third of the
classified staff participating in the program, a self identify as Hispanic or Latin X and just over a quarter
self identify as white. So again, this is offering
some diversity opportunity. We've have the great opportunity this year or (indistinct) to expend $125
million for the development of teacher residencies. We had 38 grants that went out
to local education agencies to partner with institutions
of higher education in our region, the funds were split mostly
evenly across special education and STEM. 33 of these presents are brand new. Some of them were grants to
expand existing programs. Last year we had more than 200 residents enrolled in these programs just under half of them
in special education, the rest in STEM or seeking
bilingual certification. Again, almost half of these
participants self identify as Hispanic or Latin X, 25% white. Another opportunity to
recruit locally for diversity. Final program I wanna highlight here, was the Golden State Teacher Grant Program that was initially established last year with an investment of $90
million to provide up to $20,000 in financial aid to
candidates who were enrolled in teacher preparation and
agreed to serve for five years in schools experiencing chronic shortages. The funding was reduced
this year to 15 million and focusing specifically
on special education, but that's a new and important new part of our infrastructure. So takeaway here, these programs together
address both short term immediate needs for recruitment
and longterm infrastructure development for us. Between the classified and
local solutions grants alone, the State supported the
recruitment of 4,500 teachers. The Golden State Teacher Grant
will support an additional 700 special education teachers, and that program is available right now. The undergraduate and residency
programs are investing in, and growing our infrastructure
for the preparation of teachers. Residency programs in particular are significantly developing
local education agency capacity to partner with teacher
preparation programs. This turns out to be fairly critical. So with that, I just simply
like to say, this is, we were experiencing shortages
of funding at the moment. We were expecting this to more
than double those investments covered as interrupted that, but it's fairly certain
that we get these programs will continue to be available, and as we come out from
under the economic cloud of COVID, will have the
opportunity to expand them and continue to invest in bringing a more diverse teaching
force into our schools. So I'll turn it back to you Naomi. - Thank you Mary. I think what's really powerful
about what you're describing is just what can be and has
been done with the State's prior investments, in
addressing teacher shortages. And I think it's a really nice
leading to our next speaker, Jeanna Perry, who's gonna
help us do a deep dive into one of those strategies
and to teach her residencies. Jeanna, you've been deeply
invested as a program leader in Fresno Unified
Teacher Residency Program since its inception. Can you describe the
program, how it got started, how you've been able to grow
it and what it looks like now? - Absolutely. So the conversation
actually started way before our residency program started
between our superintendent and the dean at Fresno State University. And they had to have very
transparent conversations. And one of the things
that came forward is, when you stop blaming each
other and really come together of like, how are we going to fix this? How are we going to better
our pre-service experience? So they're coming prepared to teach in the Fresno Unified context. And one of the things that
surfaced from that conversation that has shifted all
of our thinking is that where the university, they have the pre-service
candidates for 16 to 18 months, but for the district, we have
them for 30 year careers. That's our hope. And so we wanna make sure that
when we're preparing them, we're preparing them as a
district is the end user. Which then led to truly being
able to have collaborative conversations around
what a partnership is. And they started that by
having partnership walks and they calibrated on what
was expected of teachers within the Fresno Unified context, using our California standards
for the teaching profession and also rubrics from the university. And this happened across
multiple universities. Then what we like to call it
is it shifted even further when we got the Bechtel grant and the teacher quality partnership grant, which then built the
Fresno Teacher Residency. And that's where it began. We started with an emphasis in STEM, but when we acquired the CTC grant, we moved into special education
and bilingual teachers. And the three objectives for
all of these grants have been to recruit diverse teachers, to make sure that we are
training them and preparing them to work in Fresno Unified and
that we are retaining them and building them as teacher
leaders within our district. And so the residency was
apart of a larger picture, and that is our pipeline
programs that we offer in Fresno Unified. In Fresno Unified we
have the teacher academy, which starts at the high school level. Once those candidates graduate
at the high school level, they can move into a para
academy or grow to teach, and once they have their bachelor's, they can move into the residency program. And then we have the
teacher leader opportunities such as National Board Certification, which we currently have some
residents entering into that, we have induction, we have
full-time release coaches, and we have three current graduates that are induction coaches. So they're moving into
leadership positions. And really what the
residency has helped us do is recruit teachers of color. We have 86% is our average
for residency program with our retention rate
after more than three years of teaching, mean at 88% retention. Right now, currently through
our pipeline programs, we are hiring through
all of our (indistinct) 52% of our new hires come from our pipeline co-programs
and teacher development. And so we have to have
a very close partnership with our universities, but also with human resource
within the district, as well, to know who is it that
we need to have in spaces with students, what
are our shortage areas? And then how do we hire
strategically to ensure that students are getting the best
teachers in front of them. - Thank you Jeanna. What I'm hearing is that, Fresno is not only taking
an evidence-based approach to recruiting and retaining
teachers preparing them, but you're seeding it within
a much more broad spectrum of grow your own initiatives to tap into your existing human capital that you have in the district and take people who live
there who wanna be there and moving them into teaching positions, teaching preparation. I'd like to do a little bit
more digging into Fresno Unified before we move on to our
next set of questions. One of the things we lift
up about your program in our residency report, is the district's very intentional effort to weave its residency
program into its whole school improvement work. So can you tell us what the
rationale was behind that work and what the emerging outcomes have been? - Absolutely. So we start actually, before they even begin the
residency experience in early, in late may and early June, by introducing them to the
district where we work on, how do you engage with kids? What are the expectations of the district? What are our, we work with human resources
on how to engage with kids, professionalism, growth, mindset, all of those great traits that
we want our teachers to have. Then what we do is we
start with a, what we call, our speed dating event, where our mentors get
to meet their residents for the first time. And they actually have a hand
in choosing who they like to host in their classroom. And that gives our mentor
teachers ownership. Then at the end of July,
before our teachers start, because every school
starts at a different date, we wanna make sure that we introduce them. And that's how you meet your mentor night. And on that night, they get introduced to their resident who they're gonna host in their classroom. And it's always the university
and the district in space together talking about
expectations, norms, co-teaching, and the experience they're gonna have for the remainder of the year. With that, we move into
the school sites now, so that the residents start
before kids even start. So they're with their mentor
teacher at a school site. And what's important about
this experience is that we actually cluster our resonance. We cluster them in very large
groups to be at one site. And that came about when
we started our MGI grant, where we actually clustered 25
residents onto one elementary school site. And we did that intentionally
because we wanted to see the impact of what it would
mean to have one mentor all year long at one school site. And what we found from
that experience was that, students were growing
academically and both mathematics and in English language arts and in our district assessments, but also in state assessments. And this was over a two-year period. And so we saw great gains
from that academically, what we ended up doing after
the two years of saying, okay, now we've got to take this
on to other school sites. Now the (indistinct) at the
school site was not very happy with us for that move, but
what we did then was we said, okay, this doesn't just
have to live in residency because we also house student teachers. We can also do this with a
regular student teachers. And so now what we do
is we cluster at sites, both residencies and
regular student teachers coming through the general pathways. - That's great. Thank you. I'm hearing that, not only do you treat, your teacher candidates or residents, like they are key members of
staff and not just trainees, but that you also view them
as key players and efforts to improve outcomes for
students from day one when they enter your school. So I think that's really
nice preview or lead into the question for Jeraldy. Jeraldy, you were a resident
in UCLA impact program. You lived and breathed that experience. So what I'm hoping to hear from you is whether you can describe your path into the residency program, give us some information
on how it was structured and what you found most
impactful about your residency. - Okay. Yes. I were Naomi. So I'm gonna start with
my path to residency. I was an undergrad (indistinct), I'm finishing my second year. My course was starting to get
a little bit more difficult. I began really doubting my
abilities to be at university. I was even considering
dropping out at some point and only because I just was
getting overwhelmed with not being the top
student that I used to be back in high school. They have left me that summer, I took a course called
Mexican American schooling, and I felt like that was my story. I learned about how
students of color struggle and not because of their abilities, but because of the bigger
systemic issues we have. And that began my hunger to learn more. I couldn't believe that
was barely stumbling across kind of courses, which is on a final. I'm still thankful that
now at six studies required in high school, because I had to wait till
college to kinda get to hear my story. And so I can treat, can you switching for
these types of courses, which led me to the
education studies minor. And then that's how I learned about the UCLA Impact Urban Residency Program, which became my goal. After that, I knew I wanted
to pursue that program. My program, the way it was structured. It's an Impact Teacher Residency Program, which is steam itself, it's titled to teaching in urban schools and the also have a
commitment to social justice. So that really like resonated with me. And this program in particular
is a residency program that a year and a half long. And you get your preliminary
teaching credential and a master's in education. And I was paired with my
mentor a few weeks before the LAUSD school year started. So I met up with my mentor, we planned the class, we
organized the classroom, we decorate it. So I really got to see
everything that it takes from day one. If you don't just come into a classroom and it's already bad for you, like there's a lot of work
that goes into that intentional about how you put your desk,
where you put certain things, all that I think it was amazing
to see for me like, wow, this is like, what you really do is you
don't want this come in. And then I got to see the
whole year I was there working with her. I took over two classes at some point I was in charge the lead teacher
in charge of two classes. And just like Jeanna
had mentioned with her, what they do with Fresno, I too was introduced as
a teacher from day one. I really own that. My mentor introduced me to
the entire school stuff. I was welcomed by everyone
by our principal there. And one of the things that
helped me be successful during my first year of
teaching was everything that I learned that I
thought being there everyday with the students, with
the faculty, everything, I took all those into place to be when I started the school year. I introduced myself to everyone. I knew the things that I needed to do to get me a good start in
my first year of teaching. One of the things about this
residence program as well is that I did receive a grant. It was about $10,000 for
my to cover tuition costs. And that was huge for me. I was already in debt from my undergrad. And so the fact that
this was gonna cover most of my masters, I was like
really thankful for that. And I probably would have
reconsidered had I not received that much financial aid because
I wouldn't want it to go into more than, after that. And also, it does require
a commitment like as like a three-year commitment
to teaching in an urban school. And that's was really important. And also keeping the team here in LAUSD, because I'm from Santa Ana,
which is in orange County. So I could have most
likely maybe gone back to, my community where I grew up, but LAUSD ended up
becoming my second home. Being there I did my undergrad in LA and then I started this
bachelor's program again in LA. So I ended up staying because of that three-year requirement, and I just wanted to keep calling it home. So that was like really important. One of the most impactful
things about this residency program, like I mentioned, it really gives you an
insight of what it takes to create a safe learning environment. From the beginning, it's
not just a great lesson. Teaching is a lot more than that. And I think that some of the numbers that Desiree mentioned
earlier, why we don't have any, we have two big dropout
rates, just because like, if teachers are only seeing, observing a teacher for three weeks, observing is nothing like
being in live in action. And the day-to-day like, you
get to be in the classroom, you might make mistakes, but then you have your mentor
right there supporting you and you adjust immediately
for the next class that you teach. So you get to make
adjustments within your day. You don't have to wait an
entire year to learn and grow and do better. So those things were the
most impactful because as a new teacher, I knew that when I started my
first year and I struggled, I knew that I can be
persistent, be patient because with dedication, hard work and not giving up adjusting, eventually things are
working out in lining up. And then that's what gives me hope. Like I knew that it could
be done because I did it with my mentor. So I'm just going to keep working at it, asking questions, seeking
for help and not give up. And those little things like
that that you wouldn't get to see otherwise is what
really helped me, I think, be successful in my years of teaching. - Jeraldy, thank you for that description of what your residency program was like and what I'm hearing are there
sort of two big categories of things that were really helpful in your residency program. Both the depth and breadth
of your preparation in that close mentorship
and clinical experience, all the professional
learning stuff that you got, but also the, just the financial support, which opened the door for you to get into that professional learning space and into the teaching profession. Next question is for you. Now instead of talking about sort of what your prep was like, I'd like to hear more about
what you're doing now. So after several years in the
classroom, as a math teacher, you became a teacher leader
first as a residency mentor while you were teaching, and then most recently
stepped into becoming an instructional coach. So what motivated and prepared
you to take on those roles? - So, while I was teaching, I got to work during my seven
and a half years teaching I had to work with three student
teachers during that time. I began mentoring during
my fourth year of teaching, which if you come of think about that, it was pretty cool for me
because my perception of how long you needed to be a mentor was
maybe 10 plus years, 15 years. And that's great. But the fact that like
I was asked to come in as a fourth year teacher was
really awesome because like, you could start building your alliance, alumni cohort very early on. And then after that, I still have three more during
my seven years of teaching. And one of the reasons I'm
motivated to be a mentor was because I wanted to
give back to my program. I had such a great experience there. The residency program really, I felt supported me in
my years of teaching that I wanted to be able
to do, to that fact. I was nervous to taking
on I wasn't right away like, I'm excited to be
a mentor because again, I didn't feel like I was ready, but because it wasn't a program
asked me for me, I said, you know what could do? I could do it, I'm gonna do my best. I'm just gonna have
someone else to reflect. So that was one of the
reasons that motivated me. And then after that, I just really loved it
because you get to work with another person who's
just as passionate as you. It's another adult in the classroom. My students only benefit. And the fact that they
will see the entire year, that's why my students can benefit. If I only had someone
for like a week or two, I don't know how much impact
that would really have on my students. I really love this model of a
whole year that I get to work with someone, help them
develop, see them grow, and then they help me as well
because they're bringing in the latest from their program,
their education program. So I'm getting to hear everything. And then as a mentor, we all, we have like monthly
meetings where we all met up with our student teachers and we have professional development. So I felt like during
these like three years of me being a mentor is someone
that I was still continuing an education program. Because I was still still
embedded and reflecting and learning and applying
new strategies and growing. So that was like one of the
things that really motivated me to continue being a mentor. And then, one of the other
things I wanted to mention was that, as an instructional coach, the reason I decided to
be an instructional coach, I didn't wanna leave the classroom. I love the classroom and I love
working with other teachers, but I think I realized that
maybe I could impact more teachers and more students
at the same time if I took on this role of being an instructional coach. And so far, my second semester of being
an instructional coach, and it's been such a
great learning experience. And I have pushed myself
to work at teachers most recently at our PD,
just this past Monday, I got a group of eight, mainly teachers and my seemly group, we presented to our faculty,
our digital citizenship plan. And just the feeling that
after this presentation that we had after this PD, my group of teachers were
saying they felt so empowered that it felt so great to like present this to their colleagues. The feedback we got from our survey, it was just like such a great plan PD. I love hearing teacher voices. It was amazing. So the fact that this was still, I was able to do this online with them. It kind of validated the point
that I'm in the right place, I wanna continue doing that and that way impact even more students. They're working with
the group of teachers. - Jeraldy, thank you. It sounds like the preparation you got when you were a teacher candidate prepped you not just to work
in the classroom effectively with students, but also later on to work with
teachers as a teacher leader. So I appreciate that perspective. I wanna take a little bit of a turn now. We heard from our
registrant's those of you in our audience, that
you wanted to learn more about the pandemics implications
for the educator workforce and school staffing. So the next couple of
questions are gonna create some space for us to explore those issues. This question's for you, Mary. The impacts of COVID-19
have been felt far and wide across families, communities
and institutions. What are you seeing in terms
of the pandemic's effects on teacher preparation? And what do you think the
key challenges might be in the months ahead? - Well, as we all know, well, in our own practice COVID-19 has had, it has overturned everybody's applecart. Every educator at every sector
is working on their pivot. How do we keep our operation going? How do we keep contact with students? And these are very big questions. So in the teacher preparation space, the biggest challenge
we're seeing right now is finding placements
for student teachers. And we just, the commission just
released a letter signed by our State superintendent,
our State board president, Linda Darling-Hammond and our chair, really underscoring the
need for partnerships and the need to keep a
pipeline of teachers coming in. This was clinical work. Teachers have to be prepared to some kind of clinical exposure
to young children. They can't, or do that, to the
students they're gonna teach. They can't get there without that. So while districts are
very absorbed right now, and just making sure that
all of their systems are go, finding a space for the
teaching force in training is critical. It turns out, I think that residencies
as a structured model are ideal for this moment. Just as Jeraldy has been saying, that, the opportunity to spend
this time for a whole year reinventing practice with a
whole new set of assumptions is just critically important. In addition, these student
teachers come in as an extra set of hands, teachers who are
doing their work in Zoom with breakout groups, et cetera, to have student teachers with
their skillsets coming in, to work with you, synchronously
or asynchronously, huge opportunities. But we do understand that
there've been some challenges. Some student teaching programs
are telling me that they have to make 40 phone calls
to get one placement. But bottom line, however, is that the stronger the
partnership between an LEA and their preparation
partners, the easier, the smoother this pathway is. And that really is an
important think takeaway from this conversation. That, if we have good strong partnerships, we're gonna be able to maintain this work. And, and this is really
a critical time for them. - Thanks, Mary. I think once again, partnerships come up as being
something really critically important that came up
in superintendent Beutner in your opening remarks
to the first question. And I think it just continues
to show your response, Mary, that partnerships continue
to be really deeply important right now in the current moment. This final panelists questions for you, superintendent Beutner. As someone who leads the
second largest district in the country. Can you talk a bit more
about key staffing challenges that districts may encounter
in the coming months because of the pandemic, and
what you think might be needed to mitigate those challenges? - Sure. I'll start with
the most important, which is we have to make
sure whatever we're doing at the school, it's safe and
appropriate. Safety first. And I've made a pledge
to all of our educators. I wouldn't ask them to
do anything that I myself wouldn't do. And that includes being in a
safe environment at a school. So we've adopted a set of practices, which I think helps set the best possible standard in schools. It's not just the cleaning
and the sanitizing and the social distancing and the masks. But it's a system of testing for COVID and being able to follow
up to identify quickly and isolate those who
may have tested positive, to keep them from spreading
the virus to others. And partnerships are an
important part of that. As you mentioned, Naomi, we brought in three great
universities, Stanford, Johns Hopkins, UCLA,
two biotech companies, two health insurers, one tech giant, and a Partridge (indistinct). It's taking all we can find
to bring that because it's not what schools normally
do, but in a pandemic, it's our responsibility to
make sure first and foremost, that everybody's kept safe. The second is training,
training, training. And it was great to hear
Jeraldy mentioned training and the new tools and technologies. I find every time I visit a classroom, if it was just two weeks ago, the world's changed about every two weeks. And I'd love to have that conversation. But we took three different
opportunities to try to give every educator a chance to
be trained about how to use the tools and technologies,
how to engage students online, starting with in March, while students continued
to learn all 35,000 of our credentialed educators
participated in learning about the tools and technologies. We did it again in the
summer where we not only gave an opportunity for students
to learn, but we learned, and we piloted some very different things. For instance, for middle school students, we created a class together with Fender where a thousand students
received a free guitar and our teachers led instruction online and they continue to participate by the time January rolls around, we'll have a total about
5,000 students enrolled. And someday when we're back together, we're gonna bring those
students in their teachers to the Hollywood bowl,
and it'll be a magic. But we're finding ways to use the tools and technologies differently. We in Snapchat created a
partnership with Alicia Keys where students can be met where they are. So Alicia Keys talks about a book. The students can download it for free with the technology we
provided and some funding that we've raised from philanthropy. And I might start a book club, but I got to admit for our
high schoolers, Alicia Keys, talking about something
she's read and connecting it to the lives of students, I think is a little more
authentic to our students. So we try to be proactive and
make sure that the conditions are right and the people are trained, but we're also mindful
that in this environment, we don't know what the next
month or the next six months look like. Whether there are more retirements, whether people can't put
themselves or choose not to put themselves in risk, as we might have a number
of early retirements, we might not. We don't know that. We have to plan for that. And as we think about the
pipeline therefore going forward, we need as much flexibility
as we've ever had to make sure that we have substitutes who can support teachers. As we think about what hybrid
return to schools might mean that needs more expertise, more people to help the breakout rooms. Helping students who
might be in a classroom and helping students who might
be online at the same time. So the complexity of what
is happening in a classroom has grown enormously just in six months. And so we're finding if
we can do any weekend and keep it safe, keep
training and sharing ideas and practice. We created a YouTube channel of our own just to help classroom
educators share practice with each other. Because in this time,
it can't wait for some of the traditional approaches,
bring it back, refine it, think about the next school
year as a time for training. And again, to pick up
under all of these points, this is a real-time exercise
so we can provide real-time feedback of what's working
or where the challenges are. Each one of our classroom
educators will be better positioned to help their students. - Thank you for that
superintendent Beutner. I think, my colleagues at
LPI and I have been working really hard in the
background to answer many of your questions to the Q and A box, but we'd like to turn
now to panelists Q and A. We probably only have
one time for one question because the discussion has been so rich. And thank you to our panelists for that. This question is for,
Mary, Jeanna and Jeraldy. If you wanna comment on this. Superintendent Beutner spoke to how COVID is impacting LAUSD. I wonder if any of you
might be able to speak to this question as well as it's come up in our Q and A. What impact has COVID
had on teacher retention and some of the pipeline
programs that you're working on. Maybe Jeanna, you could take
a first stab at that question. - Yeah, for us, the
planning started in April. Like once we were going to
shut down, it was like, okay, we don't know if we're coming back or not. What are we going to do. Because what we had was immediately, we had people dropping out of the program who had applied, had been
interviewed, been accepted, and now they've lost their
jobs and they can't continue in residence. So we went into, we've got to be prepared
to be in this space for the long haul. And so we started to
recruit our mentor teachers. And the selling was,
like Mary said earlier, it's a second set of hands, but we knew it had to be more than that. And so we started recreating
our co-teaching handbook and this is sort of in
the weeds of the work, but it was important because
they needed to have concrete examples of what that virtual
space was gonna look like with those second pair of hands. And so we went in and I'll
just give you a brief example. What does parallel
teaching look like online? That's a co-teaching strategy. You'll have one-on-one
room teaching one thing, and then you'll have the
resident in the other room teaching the same thing. So there had to be a lot
of co-planning happiness as well too. So we had these definite
and concrete examples. We recreated our entire handbook. And at that meet your mentor
night that we talked about earlier, that was where we introduced
everything to everyone. We did have to do a lot of recruiting at the very end, because we
did have residents dropping. And then we also had to regroup
mentor teachers that said, this is too much for me. I'm in a space that I don't
even know what I'm doing, I can't teach others how to do it. And we used it as a
space where that's great, cause that means you're gonna
have a lot of think a loud and new teachers need to hear
that it's not just magic. There's a lot of work that goes into it and they need to know what that is. - Thank you Jeanna. At this point, I wanna acknowledge that
this very rich discussion has taken us to the full hour. That's allotted for this webinar. So unfortunately we
don't have any more time for other questions, but to those of you who asked questions that we weren't able to
get to during the webinar, I hope that you will follow up with us and we'll do our best
to follow up with you in the coming days. Thank you again to our presenters, to everybody who shared
your time and your expertise and your energy with us. So before we close out, I'd like to, again, thank all of our speakers, those of you who have
joined us for this webinar, I'd also like to extend
our gratitude once again, to our co-sponsors the California Partnership
for the Future of Learning, the California Teacher Residency Lab, EdPrepLab, The Education Trust-West and Bank Street's Prepared to Teach and recording of this webinar, as well as all the
resources we shared today will be sent out to everyone via email. You can also access the
slides for this webinar at the link in the chat box. And finally, I'd like to mention that when
you exit a survey will appear in your window and we'd
appreciate your feedback. And with that, thank
you again to everyone. And we hope you all have a wonderful day.
