CART PROVIDED BY: DAS, INC. 6900 WISCONSIN AVE, #31111 BETHESDA, MD 20824 www.deafaccess.com Start time: 1:45 PM ET End time: 3:15 PM ET 10:43:12 This is how the captions will look 11:00:17 Hello. 11:00:34 Hello. 11:00:36 Good morning. 11:00:46 Hi everybody, we are glad you are joining us today. 11:00:52 We will be getting started in just a moment. 11:00:54 Just you know, you have been muted upon entry. 11:00:57 If you choose to meet yourself will ask that you meet yourself again. 11:00:59 There are many people joining us today 11:01:03 so we need to make sure that in order for everybody to hear 11:01:07 and the presidents to present their information that everybody is muted 11:01:10 if you are not a presenter. 11:01:12 Give us about another minute and we will get started. 11:01:16 We are trying to admit people to the room as quickly as possible. 11:01:19 For a quick tip for those who are new to zoom 11:01:25 if you are running your video that typically does circle you to the top of the participant list. 11:01:29 If you don't want oodles and oodles of folks 11:01:32 register today sing your video, 11:01:37 you may want to stop sharing your video. 11:01:38 That's a simple thing to do, you go to stop video 11:01:40 at the bottom of your zoom panel. 11:02:12 Okay. 11:02:23 Hi everyone. 11:02:27 And welcome to our Thursday Thursday think tank. 11:02:31 We hope that you will grab a monk of coffee or tea 11:02:38 or your water bottle or any other beverage of choice and prepare to have BYOB 11:02:40 bring your own drink. 11:02:46 My name is DJ Ralston and I'm a senior associate for the center of research and education 11:02:50 was a partner of the workforce innovation technical assistance Center 11:02:58 better known as we intact. 11:02:58 I'm going today by Carol Pankow, Christine Johnson, Brenda Simmons 11:03:00 and the gang is all here. 11:03:03 Just a couple of quick housekeeping items for you. 11:03:06 Because we have a lot of people registered 11:03:10 and some of you may have heard me say this before we started, 11:03:13 we have placed everybody on mute upon entry. 11:03:17 If you choose to unmute your line know that we will likely try to mute you 11:03:21 as quickly as possible if you are not one of our slate of presenters. 11:03:26 If you have questions we encourage you to submit your questions through the chat function. 11:03:30 Those of us that are on the call today that are from the pre-ETS team 11:03:34 will be monitoring the chat throughout. 11:03:39 Our presentation while the presenters are talking, we will do our best to pull in your questions 11:03:44 as our presenters are sharing as well as answering your questions if we are able. 11:03:47 Today's webinar is closed caption. 11:03:50 If you would like to use the caption function you need to enable it. 11:03:53 In order to do so look at the bottom of your zoom window. 11:04:09 As a note 11:04:13 we are not providing CRCs or CEUs for today. 11:04:17 We are recording today's webinar and we will post a link to the recording 11:04:21 that will also be accompanied by the PowerPoint slide presentation 11:04:24 and the transcript to our website. 11:04:26 And hashtag spoiler, 11:04:31 if you stick around you might get to see where it's actually going to be posted by the end of the webinar. 11:04:34 With that 11:04:36 we hope that you 11:04:38 are ready. 11:04:42 To see and hear from four different agencies 11:04:47 about how they are providing the ETS during the pandemic. 11:04:49 And hey, one more thing you guys. 11:04:56 We will also be providing a few tips throughout the webinar. 11:04:56 So you have to stick around if you want to get all of the steps. 11:04:59 Carol, I will turn it over to you. 11:05:02 Thanks DJ. 11:05:07 So the first tip of the day -- DJ will advance our slides for us. 11:05:12 There's a little lag. 11:05:18 I know everybody is worried about how to document student participation in virtual sessions. 11:05:21 We have literally had probably 100 emails about this. 11:05:24 So we have a few ideas for you. 11:05:29 The first way is to create a survey the student can fill out at the beginning of the end 11:05:34 of a virtual session, you can use something like survey gizmo which is extremely accessible. 11:05:39 Also check the curriculum you are using to see if it generates a certificate of completion. 11:05:48 And there is some software that creates reports with people join in late. 11:05:49 GoToMeeting has that feature, 11:05:55 Microsoft teams can also alert you when callers join and leave. 11:05:56 And a big reminder because I think folks have got really hung up 11:06:00 about the video portion of this, it is not just about a student watching the video. 11:06:04 It is really about the other activities that you are wrapping around that video 11:06:06 that makes it a service. 11:06:11 Now we are onto our first presenter. 11:06:11 I welcome Sheila from Minnesota blind. 11:06:15 I had the good fortune of working with Sheila and she was the very first staff person 11:06:22 we hired at Minnesota blind that was focused on ETS, she was the transition and is the transition coordinator 11:06:27 I am not there anymore but Sheila still is. 11:06:27 Sheila over to you. 11:06:29 Thanks Carol, can you hear me? 11:06:32 I am going to assume you can hear me. 11:06:39 I am really excited to be here today to share some of the things that we are doing 11:06:42 in Minnesota and also to 11:06:46 gleaned from the collective wisdom 11:06:51 and creativity that I know is happening across the country. 11:06:54 So thank you very much. 11:06:54 Next slide DJ. 11:07:03 What we decided to create 11:07:05 is an eight week course 11:07:09 for workshop series called level up. 11:07:12 And it essentially is about learning 11:07:15 self advocacy using a foundation 11:07:22 of pop-culture. 11:07:26 So using movie clips, song lyrics, games, books 11:07:30 all of the things that are really motivating and interesting not only do students 11:07:33 but to us to bring them some instruction. 11:07:37 Just as an overview, this has really been 11:07:42 a team effort. It is the transition team, 11:07:46 the subset of a transition team that is creating this workshop series. 11:07:52 We have a rehab counselor, a rehab teacher, our work opportunities navigator 11:07:56 and an assistive technology specialist all working together 11:08:00 to create these. We are meeting several times a week 11:08:05 looking both long-term at where we are wanting to go with this series, 11:08:08 but also fine tuning based on the 11:08:12 students' needs. 11:08:17 I already mentioned it's an eight week series. 11:08:19 We meet Thursday for one hour in the evening. 11:08:22 It is provided by in-house staff to students 11:08:26 that we are currently serving as well as potentially eligible students. 11:08:31 And right now we are using a conference -- the state conference line 11:08:36 to deliver the service. Hopefully we will be able to move to zoom, 11:08:39 but until that happens it is the state conference line. 11:08:42 Next slide. 11:08:46 Some of the key areas that we are focusing on, 11:08:53 we looked at the subset of content in the instruction and self advocacy section 11:08:59 of W IOA. 11:08:59 A lot of them overlap with each other and really 11:09:04 we wanted to pull out those strands that we thought would help students must be ready for the future. 11:09:09 So self-determination, goalsetting, intrinsic motivation, 11:09:13 assertiveness and problem-solving, positive self talk, 11:09:20 understanding disability, and specifically we are going to focus on the student's role in their IEP meetings. 11:09:26 And then initiative and leadership. We knew we wanted eight weeks, 11:09:30 we never did down and related to the seven areas 11:09:33 and added an introduction. 11:09:37 We had our first session last week, Thursday. 11:09:41 We had 18 students participating which was really exciting. 11:09:44 It will be fun to see how many come back tonight. 11:09:48 I think they are excited and that they will be there, 11:09:52 and we also had a few students asked to be added as well. 11:09:56 So just to go over the agenda for our first class, 11:09:59 I don't like calling it a class but for our first session 11:10:03 we started by asking students the question 11:10:08 what character in a movie, TV series, or book 11:10:11 do you most want to be like? 11:10:14 Or what character most inspires you? 11:10:17 We asked them at the beginning of the call 11:10:20 so they can think about it throughout the rest of the session. 11:10:22 It's kind of a hard question. 11:10:26 We started with that question and then our work opportunities navigator 11:10:29 has an assessment that he uses when determining 11:10:32 where to start with 11:10:36 directly providing pre-ETS to students. 11:10:40 He has a section about instruction in self advocacy. 11:10:44 It is a self-assessment and there are four statements 11:10:50 in that section, so we asked students the question. 11:10:51 One example of a question would be something like 11:10:57 I know adults with a vision loss were working and living independently. 11:11:01 And then they would rate themselves on the scale of 1 to 10. 11:11:06 They give us the numbers that they chose and then we will look back at those numbers 11:11:09 at the end of the eight week series to hopefully find some growth. 11:11:14 The next item that we did during the session 11:11:21 was a bit of -- it was -- they were guinea pigs. 11:11:25 They were guinea pigs and I think that kind of enjoyed that as well. 11:11:30 I taught ninth grade English before coming to work at state services for the blind, 11:11:33 and one of the things that we would do before each unit 11:11:36 something called agree or disagree. 11:11:41 And we would ask students -- we would make a statement 11:11:44 and then they would move to different areas of the classroom 11:11:51 depending on whether they agreed strongly, agreed, disagreed, or disagree strongly. 11:11:54 The way we did this by phone was to take out 11:11:58 the agreed strongly and the disagree strongly and just focus on 11:12:02 the agree and disagree. 11:12:04 So we would read a statement 11:12:09 like thinking positively will produce positive results. 11:12:17 At students, I asked them -- I would read it twice, first of all, to give them a little time to think. 11:12:21 Then read it again and say if you agree with the statement, say your name. 11:12:26 And of course many of them agreed, and it was kind of hard to distinguish 11:12:30 who was actually saying they agreed. 11:12:34 Then we flipped it and asked how many disagreed and that was much more clear. 11:12:37 There were three students are disagreed. 11:12:41 So we started the discussion on that end. 11:12:44 The goal of using the statements to create this conversation 11:12:48 was also to help students start billing connections with each other 11:12:51 because they had not met in this group before 11:12:54 and we wanted them to be able to start making connections 11:12:58 while at the same time seeing the broader picture 11:13:02 of self advocacy and some of the 11:13:05 places that we were going to go. 11:13:11 So we ask them -- we made the four statements that are up here. 11:13:14 We had some excellent discussion about that. 11:13:17 We gave them then the overview 11:13:21 of the eight weeks, kind of like we just talked about here. 11:13:25 And then circled back and had them share the character 11:13:29 that they chose as the characters who inspired them. 11:13:32 And that was a really cool opportunity, not only 11:13:35 to learn about the students, but also 11:13:40 to get ideas for future movie clips. 11:13:46 For example, one of the girls shared that she loved Rory from the Gilmore girls 11:13:51 because Rory is really independent, and several of the girls said to me too. 11:13:55 So we will actually be using clips from the Gilmore girls down the road. 11:13:59 Same things with frozen and Spider-Man. 11:14:02 So it was really fun to see which characters they chose 11:14:04 because it gave us some ideas. 11:14:08 The clip that we were planning to share last week 11:14:10 is from The Pursuit of Happyness. 11:14:14 We did not end up sharing it because it just did not work well 11:14:18 to share it from the computer into the phone conference line. 11:14:22 So what we did was we sent it out after the call. 11:14:31 But this clip, it's a really fun clip. 11:14:32 I encourage you to circle back and watch it especially if you were thinking about creating a workshop series like this. 11:14:35 Because of Will Smith essentially says to his son 11:14:39 at the end of the clip don't ever let anyone tell you 11:14:42 you can't do something, even mean. 11:14:47 So just really is a clip that inspires students 11:14:49 to be empowered. 11:14:52 So what we do between each session, 11:14:56 for example we have a session tonight, this past Tuesday afternoon 11:15:01 we sent out some clips that we suggest students watch 11:15:05 related to the area of self-direction 11:15:08 and being assertive. 11:15:12 So really we have been planning as we are going, 11:15:14 but it's been a lot of fun. 11:15:17 So thank you. Carol, back to you. 11:15:22 Thank you Sheila, that sounds really amazing! 11:15:28 So did you get any initial -- the kids like comment back and altering the weaker anything? 11:15:31 Did you hear from anybody after the session? 11:15:34 You know, a lot of them did text back 11:15:36 that it was super fun to be there. 11:15:40 And right before we hung up, they did say it just was so nice 11:15:43 to connect with other blind kids again. 11:15:51 So I think it does meet that need too to just connect with each other. 11:15:51 Awesome. And if people want to connect with you Sheila 11:15:57 I do have your email address on the header paid for this section, it is posted on our website 11:16:00 with the PowerPoint so they can contact you directly. 11:16:03 I am happy to share everything we have, 11:16:09 and you can take what works and tweak it as it fits you. 11:16:09 Awesome, thank you, appreciate it. 11:16:11 Thank you. 11:16:17 So now we are onto another colleague of mine, Renée Sansom. 11:16:21 She is the transfer coordinator at the Oklahoma Department of services and 11:16:25 she has been delivering some super creative programming and she will chat with you 11:16:29 about their virtual STEM, for the summer. 11:16:31 Renée I will turn it over to you. 11:16:33 Awesome, can you hear me? 11:16:35 I can. 11:16:42 We have STEM, every year 11:16:45 and obviously looks a little different this year. 11:16:50 So we are going to be doing virtual STEM camp. 11:16:53 I don't have a PowerPoint but you can get in touch with me 11:16:58 and I can direct you to the person that can help out and get your juices flowing 11:17:00 as far as how that worked. 11:17:07 We had a contract with a place called tech now. 11:17:10 We will be offering online guidance and instruction with guided practice for students. 11:17:13 We will use a zoom platform. 11:17:18 Students will be able to design different things from their home. 11:17:22 They are going to be sent a kit and in that kit 11:17:24 there was going to be everything they need 11:17:30 from scissors, rulers, 11:17:34 paper, anything that they will 11:17:37 absolutely need to be successful with this kind of 11:17:40 camp. 11:17:44 And if they don't have accessibility 11:17:50 or access to a printer to be able to print themselves, 11:17:52 then these people are going to allow them to 11:17:57 email them and they will print it for them. 11:17:59 And then shoot it back to them. 11:18:01 So we have thought about those things. 11:18:06 We are also doing -- usually we do a survey monkey 11:18:09 to see how much people we would have signed up every year. 11:18:13 This year we have a little more detailed questions like 11:18:17 do you have access to a computer, do you have access to high-speed Internet. 11:18:20 You know, are you able to 11:18:30 be around [can't understand] 6000 glue because it has odor in it. 11:18:36 We are asking these kinds of questions so when they sign-up we know what we are dealing with when we go through that. 11:18:40 Every day we are going to be doing instruction time on zoom. 11:18:45 And our pre-ETS specialist that we have, that we have a contract with 11:18:48 through the University of Oklahoma, they will be available 11:18:52 for one-on-one zoom instruction to the students 11:18:56 if they are having difficulties or if they are having any problems. 11:19:02 Because the tech now structure is obviously going to be presenting the information, 11:19:05 so we will have different lines of communication because in zoom 11:19:11 you can have breakout sessions and all of that stuff. 11:19:12 So we will do those things to our pre-ETS specialists 11:19:15 will ensure that the students are getting what they need. 11:19:18 Been is going to be a Q&A session at the end of each day 11:19:22 and guidance and they will have homework for the rest of the afternoon 11:19:26 like from 3 o'clock to 5 o'clock I guess, they will have homework. 11:19:30 And then if they want to have a Q&A session they will allow them 11:19:33 to come back at night and zoom and see 11:19:38 what they might have problems with or if they can help in any way. 11:19:44 And again all of the materials are going to be provided ahead of time. 11:19:47 We currently have 11:19:52 -- we had nine schools that signed up this year. 11:19:56 So obviously were not having them at schools, 11:19:58 we're just having them in the general area. 11:20:01 So it is ages 14 through 19 11:20:08 and with this we will only allow -- it really only allows us to do 10 at a time 11:20:16 because things get overwhelming. We may extended to 11 or 12 but no more than that. 11:20:19 So it's super exciting about thinking outside the box 11:20:22 and in a short time span. 11:20:28 We talked about it and rather than stop education and limited experiences 11:20:32 we are being innovative and creative to develop and implement 11:20:35 the needs of the student for the summer. 11:20:40 So we are hoping, fingers crossed, that it goes well. 11:20:45 I was talking about materials that they are going to be using. 11:20:51 They are common household items and in conjunction with a specially developed project kit 11:20:54 that we will have for each student. 11:21:00 They will receive it through UPS or the US mail or FedEx, however. 11:21:04 They will receive a detailed checklist prior to the camp 11:21:07 to make sure the individual has whatever they will need to participate. 11:21:11 And we will also be able to -- I don't want to say interview, but 11:21:15 with the lack of a better word interview them 11:21:22 to ensure that they are capable of having everything they need 11:21:24 and to be able to do this. 11:21:31 And STEM is science, technology, engineering, and math, just throwing that out there. 11:21:36 Renée? There was a quick question in the chat 11:21:38 about how are you all paying for materials? 11:21:41 It sounds like in some instances some of these are probably 11:21:45 likely household items that the students may already have. 11:21:51 But if any of the students don't have them, and or the boxed kit, 11:21:53 how are those materials being paid for? 11:21:56 We have a contract with tech now. 11:22:00 It's actually the STEM camp contract. 11:22:04 And they are getting paid per camp to do this stuff. 11:22:09 And so they are paying for all of that to send to the students. 11:22:11 All right, great. 11:22:15 And then the name again, it's tech now? 11:22:17 Is that the name? 11:22:21 Yes, tech now is the name of the company. 11:22:24 And here in Oklahoma they are actually an elective 11:22:28 for our schools, for students with disabilities to have an elective 11:22:32 for STEM in some of our schools. 11:22:36 So a lot of our schools are already on board with tech now anyway. 11:22:39 So the STEM part of it is just something extra for students. 11:22:43 We have them scattered all over right now around the state. 11:22:46 Some rural areas, some not. 11:22:52 Students have the option of printing the projects on their home color printer if they have a home color printer. 11:22:54 If not I think I told you that 11:22:59 they are going to be shipping -- 11:23:02 they can email them their assignment to print 11:23:06 and they can ship it to them so they can have it. 11:23:12 Stem for pre-ETS? Okay, we will get to that in a minute. 11:23:15 High-speed Internet connection is required. 11:23:18 I know that some people have already asked are we providing 11:23:23 Internet, but we are not actually providing them to have Internet. 11:23:27 So that could limit people's abilities. 11:23:29 But we are hoping that 11:23:32 we can figure out something to help out. 11:23:38 I know some of the zoom -- some of the pre-ETS specialists 11:23:40 are working on different ways to 11:23:44 see about, you know, 11:23:49 there is DHS and all of these different [can't understand] helping to provide temporary services 11:23:58 and Internet is one of them. 11:23:58 So we're trying to figure out who was on my list, but they have, what we need, and how we can help them to be better able to do this. 11:24:02 Some of the activities they will do, they will make bracelets 11:24:06 and mousepads and to the list goes on and on. 11:24:11 The one that is most cool is they are making racecars out of paper, it's amazing. 11:24:19 The STEM camp, just so you know, 11:24:23 we took V5 requirements from pre-ETS 11:24:27 and it's in the contract that they will also 11:24:30 coordinate those five required activities 11:24:34 into stem and the pre-ETS specialists 11:24:38 are going to tag along with the STEM camp a little 11:24:41 and kind of interject different 11:24:46 pieces of the required activities 11:24:49 throughout the camp that we half. 11:24:55 Renée, I would say that for folks who are asking the real nitty-gritty specifics, 11:25:00 part of the reason that all of those nitty-gritty specifics are not being said at this point 11:25:04 is because the contractor or the company at this point that has the contract 11:25:09 has deemed some of that proprietary. 11:25:10 So we would encourage you to maybe look at their website 11:25:14 and see what type of information they have out there if that is an interest of yours. 11:25:18 But that might kind of -- just to address those questions. 11:25:24 I knew we see these questions keep rolling in, just to give everybody a heads up. 11:25:28 Renée is doing the best you can to provide you the information in a context 11:25:34 with how it is being provided to her and how she can provide it. 11:25:40 Yes, I think that's pretty much it. 11:25:40 I just wanted to give a rundown of what we are doing and what it looks like. 11:25:45 You can email me and I can get you in touch with Rick [can't understand]. 11:25:50 I will not provide his email address because it's very long and I don't wanted to be misconstrued. 11:25:53 So just email me, my name is up here already. 11:25:55 Thank you. 11:25:58 Thanks Renée, that sounds really awesome. 11:26:02 Please do circle back at the end of summer and let us know how it worked out for you. 11:26:03 Will do. 11:26:08 That's very cool. 11:26:08 All right, we will have to 2. 11:26:10 My copilot DJ. Awesome. 11:26:14 I want people to not forget about explore work. 11:26:23 Explore work was a tool that was developed by our transition services team at GW. 11:26:27 It has been heavily used in this last four or five weeks. 11:26:30 Likely couldn't even believe it, actually the server crashed 11:26:35 so our provider had to upgrade the server to handle all of the traffic. 11:26:39 We get a lot of calls and emails, people are asking is there any application 11:26:44 that is mobile friendly. Explore work is mobile friendly. 11:26:48 It is good on your phone, you can download it and use it without Internet connection, 11:26:53 you can set it up so when the student completes the activity the counselor gets an email. 11:26:56 You can also print off a certificate of completion. 11:27:01 And it is available in Spanish so it is highly versatile. 11:27:06 I wanted you to know all of that. 11:27:06 Now I will turn it over to our third group for the day. 11:27:11 From the great state of North Carolina, we have Brittany Greer and Janelle shaver 11:27:15 that will share some neat things that have been up to. Ladies, over to you. 11:27:24 Hi, can you guys hear me and Cindy? 11:27:29 Hi, Janelle Anaya happy to have the opportunity to share 11:27:33 a method we have been using during the stay-at-home order in our area. 11:27:37 With doing this we really wanted to instill in the consumers we work with 11:27:42 the importance of continuing to move forward in a mindful and positive way. 11:27:45 And that is productive to their future. 11:27:47 Next slide please. 11:27:53 So we have created and sent out two monthly newsletters 11:28:00 and we have sent out five weekly activities that focus on developing self-care, and work readiness skills. 11:28:04 So far some of the skills we have focused on have been emotional intelligence, 11:28:09 self-awareness, positive mindsets, 11:28:13 resiliency and adaptability, time management, 11:28:18 creative problem-solving, verbal communication, 11:28:21 and organization. Next slide. 11:28:33 So these newsletters and activities can be found on Win tach abscess website under resources for distance service delivery. 11:28:38 North Carolina blind pre-ETS is listed at number 10 11:28:42 under how VR agencies are responding. 11:28:44 You can go on to the next slide. 11:28:51 So how are ideas turn into action? 11:28:56 We actually decided were thought about creating a newsletter to send to students 11:28:59 back in the last summer, 2019. 11:29:03 We wanted to be able to share resources that we learn of 11:29:07 that might be available to each individual we serve 11:29:11 and we want to do have a platform that can reach as many consumers as possible 11:29:14 and also to get the same consistent information out there. 11:29:20 And we chose the email as the preferred communication mode 11:29:28 because the individuals we work with do have low vision or are blind or Deaf blind. 11:29:33 So with the electronic format it would allow them to zoom in or use a screen reader. 11:29:36 To access the materials. 11:29:39 But unfortunately as we all do 11:29:43 other work kind of took precedent and we never actually got 11:29:48 to the newsletter when we really wanted to, but fast forwarding to today, 11:29:52 when we started to telework Janelle suggested 11:29:58 that we finish the first newsletter and send it out with the resources that are available to students 11:30:02 they can use well-being at home. 11:30:03 And with that we knew that considering 11:30:06 everything going on that this really was not the time to step back 11:30:10 and decrease our level of support until everything blew over. 11:30:16 And we also, as the transition counseling community implement specialists, 11:30:20 we also need to continue to model those behaviors and attitudes 11:30:23 that we always encourage our students to anybody. 11:30:27 We wanted to show them ways we can continue to be resilient 11:30:31 while also continuing to build our relationships 11:30:33 and level of trust with them by showing concern 11:30:36 and being involved. 11:30:39 And involved in the improvement of their well-being. 11:30:43 And then we have kind of tag teamed this 11:30:47 and we take turns so I take a week for the activity, 11:30:50 Janelle takes a week, and we flip-flop. 11:30:54 We did this because we both come from different backgrounds and we have different perspectives. 11:30:59 We thought this would be a really neat way to facilitate the merging of the emotional 11:31:04 and physical aspects of personal and professional development. Next slide. 11:31:09 The activities are really allowing us to assist 11:31:12 in building a foundation for each student career journey 11:31:15 and also for their personal life. 11:31:19 The activities are showing how everything is connected. 11:31:23 In this slide and the next two slides 11:31:27 we highlight parts from our most recent activity which addresses 11:31:30 procrastination and time management. 11:31:34 Generally in our activities we include links 11:31:38 to professional articles, TED Talks, and other videos, 11:31:42 podcasts and quotations from books. 11:31:45 I will just note that in our official documents 11:31:49 we do properly cite our references, but we did not include them 11:31:52 for today's presentation. 11:31:54 You can go onto the next slide. 11:32:00 So in this specific activity that we are showing today 11:32:05 which is our most recent, we referenced two TED Talks 11:32:09 and we also include questions we would like the students to answer 11:32:13 after listening to each video. But once they do that, 11:32:16 we ask them to take it a step further and apply it 11:32:19 to their daily lives and their activities. 11:32:23 And we also, it's good to know that we also like to include 11:32:27 a part that invites students to reach out to us if they need assistance 11:32:32 in completing the activities because we want to continue to build self advocacy skills 11:32:35 during this time. Next slide. 11:32:39 So in our previous activities, 11:32:43 we have included self-care to facilitate emotional well-being. 11:32:47 Before we can contribute to society and give back to others, 11:32:52 the focus really needs to be taking care of ourselves and meeting our basic needs. 11:32:56 Growing and developing is a lifelong process. 11:33:00 It does not start when you leave high school, graduate from college, 11:33:04 Orlando our first job. And we really want to instill that idea 11:33:08 and work ethic in our students, but it's always important 11:33:13 to be present, reflect, and dedicate and carveout that time 11:33:16 to work on self-improvement. So we will continue 11:33:20 to incorporate self-care into our activities and newsletters. 11:33:23 You can go onto the next slide. 11:33:30 Things to consider, things that we considered, 11:33:34 aptitudes of students. We are aware 11:33:37 that this is not necessarily a one-size-fits-all approach. 11:33:40 So to combat that we are making contact 11:33:45 with the students we work with to ensure that everybody does have any will access. 11:33:49 But also in those connections and contacts 11:33:53 it's opened up the opportunity to discuss 11:33:59 time management and how to structure their days with schoolwork, 11:34:02 family being around all the time, and also 11:34:05 the isolation from peers. 11:34:08 But at the same time, 11:34:12 as far as that goes we want to make sure 11:34:15 that we prepare students for the world of work 11:34:19 and we think it's really important to have eye expectations 11:34:22 and to keep expectations the same across the board 11:34:27 just as an employer would set performance standards or expectations for all employees. 11:34:32 And we know that some students will need modification in accommodations, 11:34:35 which is part of our position and what we are here to do. 11:34:39 But everybody's participation and engagement is important 11:34:43 as these are valuable skills for anyone to develop. 11:34:48 Brittany and Janelle, before I slipped to the next slide for you guys, 11:34:53 there were a couple of questions that came in. Can you clarify for the TED Talks, 11:34:58 are they traditional TED Talks or are they the TED Talk Ed. 11:35:02 I have seen the TED Talk Ed and I might use some of those in the future. 11:35:06 So far we have just use the traditional TED Talks. 11:35:14 And other videos that are likely too. 11:35:14 Awesome and one of the other questions that came in ladies is what is the average response rate 11:35:18 to the activities/newsletters. 11:35:20 I see big smiles. 11:35:23 That's a good question. 11:35:24 In the beginning was a slow start. 11:35:27 Everybody was getting used to this whole new normal. 11:35:31 But as we have made connections with people and handles conversations 11:35:34 and helped break down assignments over the phone, 11:35:37 it's been like a domino effect. 11:35:40 We have got more and more response and that's good. 11:35:44 In the last one that came in that kind of applies to right now is 11:35:49 optimal lessons, how are you typically communicating with the students that have participated? 11:35:53 So we generally will respond to the emails 11:35:57 and create some type of dialogue so it can be a back and forth 11:36:01 because we want this to be a continual learning experience because 11:36:06 this is a lifelong journey and this is just another way to facilitate that growth. 11:36:11 Awesome. And you know they keep slipping and good ones here. 11:36:13 Here comes another one. 11:36:17 There was a question about what system you are using to monitor progress of the students. 11:36:22 Like do you have them email in the responses are due you use a Google form? 11:36:24 It sounds like email. 11:36:27 It is email responses. 11:36:32 For the students who are not turning those in and we are having to kind of stay on them 11:36:35 about time management and things like that, 11:36:42 we will do it over the phone but we do ask that they create some type of Word documenter something 11:36:45 so we can see where they are in their growth. 11:36:48 Awesome, all right I will stop now 11:36:51 because I think we are good and I will forward your slide. 11:36:55 This a little bit more but it's okay. 11:36:58 I can leave it there. 11:37:00 Okay. 11:37:05 So the other consideration we had, our school workload. 11:37:09 I have heard from some students that instructors are ramping up 11:37:16 some other school materials and assignments they are doing. 11:37:16 And some of our students are even homeschooling their siblings 11:37:20 to help their parents out. So we keep that in mind. 11:37:23 But we do like to reiterate the importance of self-care 11:37:28 and taking that time, 20 or 30 minutes a day, a couple of times a week 11:37:33 to continue improving the personal and professional development. 11:37:38 Also motivation which is something Sheila talks about 11:37:43 and her slide which we really liked. Some students do like that intrinsic motivation 11:37:45 to get up and go and get started. 11:37:49 So again everything kind of goes back to reaching out to the students 11:37:52 and finding ways to empower them to take ownership 11:37:57 into that development, that career journey that they are on. 11:38:00 You can go to the next line please. 11:38:06 So as far as documentation goes, 11:38:10 what we have been doing is we enter case notes 11:38:15 for the actual activity that we lay out for them 11:38:22 and then we will enter another case note once they have responded to our activities 11:38:25 to show that growth and that communication. 11:38:29 And then for the students who are pre-ETS eligible 11:38:36 and are in pre-ETS we have a pre-ETS information form 11:38:41 where we can document and the progress notes the activity and the time we spent on that 11:38:45 and communicating with the students to get that pre-ETS credit form. 11:38:47 Next slide, sorry. 11:38:52 So please check out our resources on the website. 11:38:55 And feel free to use our format or design your own. 11:38:59 We have created our format to best support our students 11:39:02 you have visual impairments or blindness. 11:39:08 So we purposely chose not to add in a lot of colors, background images and designs, 11:39:12 or intricate font as we really wanted it to be accessible to them. 11:39:16 But depending on the needs of the individuals that you support, 11:39:21 you may find that a different format or delivery will work better to increase their engagement 11:39:27 Please feel free to reach out to us with any additional feedback you have for us 11:39:31 or additional questions, but thank you so much for listening and to learn about our approach. 11:39:36 And Carol, I will turn it over to you. 11:39:40 Carol, before we let these two ladies sneak off 11:39:42 we have a couple more questions. 11:39:46 [CROSSTALK] 11:39:49 we are not letting you off. 11:39:53 A question around student participation rates. 11:39:55 In general I think this time. 11:39:59 This may be a question more generally for 11:40:06 the participant who asked this question, we will try to get to some of these more general questions at the end when all the panelists 11:40:12 might have an opportunity respond but about participation rate and whether or not you are in trouble engaging kids 11:40:16 or keeping them engaged, like how are you all overcoming that? 11:40:23 So the ones who were originally not responding back to us via email, 11:40:26 we made that contact with them and we ask them 11:40:31 what was going on, like have you gotten our emails and why aren't you responding? 11:40:34 Just to try to get a sense of what they are dealing with. 11:40:42 We got a range of different answers and most of them revolved around time management. 11:40:42 Like I have so much going on right now and so much has changed -- 11:40:47 they are in that frenzy mode still, so we are like okay, take a step back 11:40:50 and think about where you can fit these into your schedule. 11:40:55 We are not requiring a lot of time. 11:40:55 The TED Talks or maybe 10 or 15 minutes 11:40:59 and some additional activities and there may be another 15 11:41:03 so really 30 minutes is about probably the average time 11:41:07 I would say each one would take. 11:41:10 Obviously if you wanted to spend more time you could spend more time thought processing with that. 11:41:12 But yet. 11:41:15 And as far as the rate, 11:41:19 it probably was maybe 20 percent in the beginning 11:41:23 and then it is kind of gone up from there gradually, but we are getting there. 11:41:26 And another way to try to motivate them, 11:41:30 since we are trying to model behaviors and attitudes 11:41:35 we also are doing the activities that we are creating 11:41:38 so that we can have a really nice conversation and show that 11:41:43 we also do these things, and it's really -- 11:41:47 we did a passions list one time, we both did it 11:41:51 and we found something that we forgot we are passionate about and that was really neat. 11:41:56 And hopefully that will also empower and motivate them to be a part of that conversation. 11:41:58 And then one last question. 11:42:02 Actually there is two, but there's a question around 11:42:06 how do you know how much time students are spending on the activities 11:42:09 or how are you all accounting for that? 11:42:15 So what we have counted or what I counted with the activity, the actual time, 11:42:20 the actual time we spent creating the activity because that is part of the whole curriculum. 11:42:23 We don't know how much time the students are spending, 11:42:26 so we are careful with how we document that. 11:42:32 You know, it's -- we are learning, it's a learning curve. 11:42:39 I would say how we document -- we don't document their time as much as much as our time. 11:42:42 And then we start that dialogue with them, that one-on-one conversation 11:42:45 for those back and forth emails, 11:42:50 that's when a document more that time because that's when the engagement is happening back and forth. 11:42:54 Great. I know there's a couple of other questions and I'm trying to take note of those folks 11:42:59 but in the interest of time we will move on and I will catalog doesn't get to them at the end 11:43:04 and give the panelists an opportunity. 11:43:04 For now Brittany and Janelle, thank you so much. 11:43:08 We really appreciate it and stick around because more questions are coming. 11:43:11 Awesome, so thank you. 11:43:14 Last but not least, I am super excited. 11:43:16 Missy and I had a chance to go to Georgia 11:43:21 in the beginning of March before everything shut down, was the last trip we took 11:43:26 and we had a chance to visit the Georgia vocational rehab agency 11:43:30 and Megan Steele is with the agency there and doing amazing work. 11:43:32 Megan, I will turn it over to you. 11:43:34 Hello, can you all hear me? 11:43:37 Yes. 11:43:44 All right, our work is at Roosevelt Warm Springs and we are a vocational rehabilitation program. 11:43:47 If you want to flip onto that next slide. 11:43:49 Just to give you a little bit of a background. 11:43:53 My department is the vocational assessment services department 11:43:59 and I have a lot of my staff, I see Theresa saying hello, I have a lot of my staff on here. 11:44:04 They been working really hard the last few weeks to bring what we have usually been doing 11:44:07 to our students while they are at home now. 11:44:13 And so the first sort of motivation we had to do this 11:44:19 was to make sure that our students new we had not forgotten about them, 11:44:25 you know they wait a long time to get to Warm Springs. 11:44:27 Then we started thinking about how can we give them something meaningful to do while they are stuck at home. 11:44:31 In my department be due our program called jumpstart. 11:44:41 It's the first sort of leg of coming to Warm Springs. 11:44:41 In that program we really hammer down through a comprehensive array 11:44:45 of assessment and authentic observations of our students 11:44:49 what will be the best job fit for them and how can they 11:44:53 set some really good goals for their time that Warm Springs, 11:44:58 or maybe the time back in their community if we find out that Warm Springs is not the best fit. 11:45:03 So thinking through how we could create some activities for them at home 11:45:10 we really ended up focusing on the areas that fall into PTS as job exploration, 11:45:16 postsecondary options exploration, and then goalsetting and self advocacy. 11:45:21 What we came up with was sort of a cycle 11:45:25 of releasing some topics by email to our students 11:45:28 and in those email blasts we will have links 11:45:32 to some YouTube videos and then 11:45:34 follow-up activities each week. 11:45:39 And we designed it to go over the course of about eight weeks' time. 11:45:42 Each week we will have a different topic that we touch on. 11:45:47 Those will go through just sort of an intro that first week, 11:45:51 getting to know you a little bit, and then we launch into 11:45:56 identifying your strengths, looking at your needs or your conditions for success, 11:45:59 and then identifying your interests. 11:46:04 When we got to identifying interests lesson which is coming up next week, 11:46:08 that will be our third week so far, we are going to start incorporating 11:46:12 the platform of virtual job shadow. 11:46:17 I don't know if you all of her of that but you can find it at virtual job shadow dot com. 11:46:22 And that platform will allow you to create flex lessons 11:46:26 which are lessons that you can come up with out of thin air 11:46:31 and use either career exploration tools that are on that website, 11:46:35 or assessments that are on that website 11:46:42 that are like linked to the [can't understand] interest profiler and things like that. 11:46:46 And then to follow it up with all of the job exploration tools 11:46:52 that around there which are just amazing. 11:46:52 You can see videos of people who are actually doing those jobs. 11:46:58 It talks about requirements of those jobs, there's all kinds of stuff you can explore with the virtual job shadow. 11:47:06 We will also be able to through virtual job shadow after they look at their interests 11:47:11 to assign the student assignments on virtual job shadow 11:47:15 where they actually explore specific jobs to their interests. 11:47:18 So we can kind of control 11:47:24 viewing, giving the results on that platform, 11:47:30 and then what sort of -- steering them toward specific groupings of jobs 11:47:37 that we want them to look at that it looks like they would be the most interested in and well-suited for. 11:47:41 And then after that we have developed weeks where they are going 11:47:44 to look at how to prepare for postsecondary options. 11:47:47 So things like maybe coming to Warm Springs 11:47:50 or going to college or 11:47:53 maybe going to live somewhere besides home. 11:47:56 What other things you need to be able to do 11:48:00 when you finally get out on your own or leave home. 11:48:04 And from that, from those activities, 11:48:11 it's probably going to generate -- we assume -- that it will generate 11:48:16 some areas where the student sees that no, I am not doing this that I need to be doing. 11:48:20 Maybe I'm not, you know, getting up on time 11:48:23 are I am not cooking for myself for making my bed 11:48:28 or not cleaning my room or taking care of self-care activities. 11:48:33 Those are going to be good areas for the next week's lesson when we talk about goalsetting. 11:48:37 And we are going to round it out in the last week 11:48:40 taking the goalsetting a step further 11:48:48 and going into the maps process, the person centered planning process of maps. 11:48:52 And thinking about, you know, a lot of our students 11:48:56 live in very rural areas so Internet is an issue. 11:48:59 It has been an issue for my staff while we have been away 11:49:01 from our campus, and 11:49:05 we decided to develop a hard copy 11:49:08 of the activities that we are doing as well. 11:49:12 So since I on video, if you all can see me, 11:49:18 we also made a booklet for them. 11:49:20 At Warm Springs this course would've been called picking my path, we deliver that a lot. 11:49:23 So we did not try to reinvent the wheel, 11:49:27 we just try to get it the same objective through different means. 11:49:29 So we kept the same name. 11:49:35 And we have put the same types of weekly activities into a book. 11:49:43 I believe Melissa has linked this on the win tax site 11:49:53 and everybody is free to use this, we like to have these materials help somebody. 11:49:53 You can see little snippets of the booklet at the bottom of the screen. 11:49:57 And when we have sent out the email 11:50:02 and the student has completed whatever activity we have for that week, 11:50:04 we are following up with coaching calls. 11:50:08 During the coaching calls we are talking 11:50:11 to students about whatever activity they did 11:50:14 like for instance yesterday, they got 11:50:21 the emails on Monday about identifying your strengths. 11:50:25 It led them to a video about identifying your strengths. 11:50:27 And then we talked to them. 11:50:31 Yesterday I had a phone call with one guy and just like it is 11:50:35 when we have the student right in front of us and we start talking about what they are good at, 11:50:39 they can name 50 things that they are not good at. 11:50:42 But it's so hard for them to tell you what they can do. 11:50:46 So we started to systematically asking questions 11:50:50 and talking to them about well, what do other people 11:50:54 tell you you are good at, what do other people complement you on, 11:50:56 what I think people ask you to do? 11:51:00 One of the things we encourage them to do in the email 11:51:04 and in the video was to grab whoever is at your house 11:51:09 because just about all of a sudden quarantine with somebody, 11:51:13 and it's probably a parent or sibling or somebody. 11:51:16 And ask them these questions about you. 11:51:19 You know, what is it that you think I'm good at. 11:51:22 What is it that you ask me to do. 11:51:24 What do you see in me? 11:51:27 Kanso getting some outside external feedback as well. 11:51:32 And yesterday when I called, one guy, 11:51:36 it was that classic I don't know type of conversation and 11:51:40 as I started asking him these questions I found out 11:51:45 he was like -- he raises bearded dragons. 11:51:50 He has to go through this system of keeping certain foods 11:51:54 for it, crickets and all kinds of things, 11:52:02 and I mean he's got this down to a science. 11:52:02 And I like that is a strength, you are taking care of something it has not died. 11:52:07 That's a good job, let's talk about that further, what kind of skills does that take? 11:52:12 So using what they are doing now in helping them identify what they are good at, 11:52:15 it was really interesting to me yesterday doing that over the phone. 11:52:18 We have been very careful about asking them 11:52:24 when it's good for you. 11:52:29 Everybody has pretty flexible schedules right now, my staff at least. 11:52:33 So we have been asking them when is good for you and planning our calls 11:52:37 around those times and days that they tell us. 11:52:42 As far as the materials that we have developed, 11:52:50 the YouTube videos, one of my staff is on here now who is sort of the star of our YouTube videos, Miss Regina. 11:52:56 It was fun yesterday, when I called one of the guys he said I saw Miss Regina's video this week. 11:52:59 So they are getting to know some of the staff by name. 11:53:03 But we started looking through TED Talks and things like that. 11:53:07 But we have a lot of students who have intellectual disabilities. 11:53:15 Attention issues, receptive language issues. 11:53:25 So we made everything we are doing with the students on about 1/3 or fourth grade comprehension level. 11:53:30 The book is written at that level, Regina's videos are at that level, 11:53:40 and we made the videos extremely short for the purpose of not losing a student's attention. 11:53:41 The longest one is seven minutes and I don't see anything going longer than that. 11:53:44 We just need something quick to get the point across and we will follow up with them 11:53:48 with a longer conversation that is more interactive to get at 11:53:52 what we want to know from the student. So that has worked out well so far. 11:53:56 I'm very interested to see how the one goes next week 11:54:00 about needs to see how well they grasp the concept of identifying 11:54:04 conditions for success and understanding all of that. 11:54:07 Can you move to the next slide for me? 11:54:12 This is just a couple of links to the videos. 11:54:19 The first one that we made, the first one is just sort of an intro, it's really quick, maybe four or five minutes. 11:54:24 The next one, where do your strengths lie is maybe around five minutes. 11:54:28 Is actually another when I consent to be linked up here too 11:54:32 that is about needs and it's around seven minutes long. 11:54:37 We will do a couple more of those, a few more of those over the next few weeks. 11:54:42 And we will keep sending those in for folks if anybody is interested in them. 11:54:45 But they are super simplified. 11:54:51 And of the activity book, think I saw question about that, 11:55:01 I believe it is linked to the WINTAC site as well. 11:55:02 And we have mail those out, we started out just emailing them. 11:55:06 When we called to find out what is the best contact for you, 11:55:10 what's the email address you want us to email these two, 11:55:15 we give every student the option of online engagement, 11:55:18 the coaching calls, or a booklet. 11:55:22 What we found is that we ended up sending the booklet to everybody 11:55:26 whether or not they could do the online stuff. 11:55:31 I think they ended up wanting that hard copy as well. 11:55:35 Just to follow along with and jot down their answers. 11:55:40 So I think that's about it. 11:55:43 Ms. Carol? 11:55:47 Thank you Megan, that was amazing and I super excited. 11:55:52 We do have everything posted and we are going to show you that in just a minute. 11:55:56 So we are going to have our third and final tip for the day. 11:56:00 And of course you can never answer anything with a yes or no. 11:56:04 Everybody is like what about curriculum and what is the cost, 11:56:08 and so I'm going to answer that question with two questions for you to consider. 11:56:14 You want to think about is your curriculum only going to be used for students with disabilities? 11:56:18 Sometimes a curriculum could pertain to other customers you are serving. 11:56:22 So people can use it kind of all over in the organization. 11:56:26 If that's the case you want to cost allocate that appropriately. 11:56:30 And then does the curriculum align with one or more of the five required activities? 11:56:34 We know many of the curriculum that are out there open source, 11:56:39 they will have the five required but then they always add some extra special things 11:56:44 that maybe don't align with the five required that you would like to use, 11:56:48 and if that is the case as well you will want to cost allocate those. 11:56:51 We will take just a minute now and DJ will drive for me 11:56:57 and we are going to take a look at the website because we keep telling you go to the website, go to the website 11:57:01 and we know thousands of you are going to our website. 11:57:04 So DJ is going to open that up for us. 11:57:09 But there were two pages that were developed by us in response 11:57:12 to you and the needs that you have for 11:57:16 accessing materials and resources, especially during this time. 11:57:21 But I think it's going to be a great repository for the future going forward. 11:57:26 We have two main pages and one has to do with COVID-19 resources. 11:57:30 And that has more of the general information, things like 11:57:35 -- I'm just watching Dee they drive -- 11:57:42 things like your CDC resources, different announcements from the federal agencies, 11:57:48 and it does have under the COVID-19 resources some very specific pieces 11:57:50 for individuals with disabilities. 11:57:57 And there's some nice resources for Deaf and hard of hearing folks and who are blind and visually impaired on that page. 11:58:02 The second page that I really want to focus on his resources on distance service delivery. 11:58:05 Under here you will see a variety of different buckets 11:58:13 but the first bucket I want to turn your attention to is how VRE agencies are responding to effective practices. 11:58:16 Under that we broken into different sections and these are all things 11:58:22 that have been shared by you. We have information about electronic signatures people wondered about. 11:58:26 Is a nice section on service provision vendors and staff. 11:58:29 If you can click on that DJ we can show them 11:58:33 we do have the information that was talked about today. 11:58:38 So you can see number 10 has all of the information North Carolina shared with us 11:58:42 and they keep sending me the new examples and I put them up as they come in. 11:58:46 We do have George's information, so somebody asked 11:58:51 where can I get that handbook, you can download it and copy it right from here. 11:58:54 And I do have links to the two YouTube videos and Megan 11:58:57 will give me the other one and I will put that up there. 11:59:04 But you will find a lot of different resources here. 11:59:04 Is a number of different pre-ETS resources states have developed. 11:59:09 Not all of them were talked about today but I really encourage you to look through this section. 11:59:12 DJ Wiedemann scrolling down a little bit 11:59:16 I want to look at the section of remote delivery of services by topic area. 11:59:21 This is where we have lots of information. 11:59:26 I'm trying to figure out a way to maybe reorganize it to make it a little easier for you to find. 11:59:30 This is where all the pre-ETS things live. 11:59:36 We have links to explore work, the [can't understand] that we talked about a month ago now, 11:59:40 many many resources in here and we do have the webinars posted. 11:59:43 The webinars we did earlier in the month, 11:59:48 as well as the lungs we did with the end tach in cooperation with them. 11:59:51 So I just encourage you to take a look through here. 11:59:56 I know for folks looking for work-based learning ideas there's a lot of stuff on here. 11:59:59 So definitely do pay attention to that. 12:00:09 We did add a new tool, it's the last one there, it's called teach from home. 12:00:10 It's a temporary hub of information that was developed doubly by Google 12:00:14 to help teachers during COVID-19, but somebody sent it to me 12:00:19 and I think there's a really good examples and then that would be totally transferable to you 12:00:24 and your providers and ways you are interacting with the students with and without video calls. 12:00:26 About there were some cool applications. 12:00:28 They give you tutorials and it's very nice. 12:00:33 So definitely take a look at those two pages. 12:00:38 DJ I don't know if we have time for any last questions do we want to wrap it up? 12:00:41 I think at this point we are ready to wrap it up. 12:00:44 And I didn't see any additional questions come to the chat. 12:00:48 I know there were a couple of questions that folks had 12:00:51 and we will definitely capture those and send those out. 12:00:54 Just some basic information for folks, 12:01:02 anybody and everybody that was on the webinar today will receive an email following the webinar 12:01:08 once the information is proposed is the website which includes the reporting actually being available from the cloud. 12:01:12 We will be sending that out and we do know that there may have been folks today 12:01:18 that tried to get in and could not because our registration was overcapacity. 12:01:24 So with that, Carol, is the Reading else we wanted to say? 12:01:27 Thanks to our awesome presenters. 12:01:30 Was so great to hear from you from across the country. 12:01:32 Please do share your information with us. 12:01:35 It so helpful and you see our email addresses. 12:01:42 I put things up on the website twice a day. 12:01:42 Please, please send to us, and really helps other people. 12:01:43 So thanks for participating. 12:01:47 And with that, thank you everybody, and be well.