ISBE to host meetings about CTE Standards with professionals from across careers

Among educational leaders at all levels, the advancement of Career and Technical Education (CTE) is a high priority for students in middle school, high school, and in the full range of postsecondary institutions. As part of these efforts, the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) is developing Illinois’ first set of statewide student learning standards for CTE instruction. The CTE standards will provide broad targets on which school districts can develop their local CTE curriculum and which will provide a focus to teachers in creating student learning opportunities.

ISBE is planning regional meetings (north, central, and south) to gather feedback from professionals across a wide range of industries on the knowledge and skills that students need to be successful as they move into our current and future workplaces.

• April 15 – 9 AM – Mt. Vernon Airport
• April 18 – 1 PM – Heartland Community College
• April 19 – 10.30 AM – Elgin Community College
• April 22 – 9 AM – Online via Zoom
  (Zoom information will be sent to registered participants on April 21.)

Registration is free to these events, which are open to individuals from across all industries and professions. Please click here to register.

The results of these regional meetings will be used by educators from across Illinois in June to engage in similar activities around the CTE Standards. In partnership with ISBE, we hope to have a large turnout to support these efforts and ensure that our educational outcomes are on-target for our students, so please share this information with colleagues.

Dual Credit Think Tank Survey – Graduate coursework needs for dual credit teacher credentialing

The Illinois P-20 Network and ILACEP, the Illinois chapter of NACEP, know that there continue to be significant needs for secondary teachers to complete graduate coursework in order to be credentialed to teach dual credit classes in the high school setting. Both organizations also understand that it is critical that such graduate coursework is offered at times and in formats that work with teachers’ busy daily and annual schedules. This survey seeks to understand those areas which present the most pressing needs for additional graduate coursework in Illinois at this time. With a pair of redundant questions, we are asking for your five most critical areas for graduate coursework followed by a few quick, final questions about your school district.

Currently, graduate coursework in the content area is the key element necessary for most teachers to be credentialed to teach dual credit classes in line with the requirements on postsecondary institutions from the Higher Learning Commission.

This survey is designed to be completed at the school-district level by a district leader. Please share this survey widely with colleagues as data from across a wide range of school districts throughout Illinois will be critical to taking action to support teachers and school districts with the necessary coursework. This survey may be repeatedly regularly in the future.

Illinois Postsecondary Profiles Launches Equity Profiles

Last week, the Illinois Postsecondary Profiles (IPP) website launched its newest major component, Equity Profiles. The Equity Profiles will shine a light on the success of diverse populations in postsecondary institutions in Illinois. The Equity Profiles joins the site’s other major components: 

• Institutional Profiles, which allows users to discover the basics about postsecondary institutions, such as different types of schools, tuition, and what credentials are offered.
• Occupational Profiles, which lets users see the available majors, key employment data, and programs of study for the career pathways in which you are interested. 
• Regional Profiles, which presents metrics on a map by Illinois Community College district.

The IPP website is a joint effort of the Illinois Board of Higher Education, the Illinois Community College Board, and the Illinois Student Assistance Commission that presents a wide range of postsecondary data from multiple state agencies through a single interface.

Middle School and High School Social and Emotional Learning Programs Landscape Analysis Survey

Along with our partners at RTI and IWERC, the NIU P-20 Research & Data Collaborative is pursuing a grant from the U.S. Department of Education to do a rigorous study of SEL (Social and Emotional Learning) programs in middle schools and high schools in Illinois.

As the research team begins its work, having a strong understanding of the types of programs Illinois school districts are currently using will help guide our research. Voluntary responses from as many school districts as possible across Illinois will help the team gather this data. A summary of the results of this survey will be shared state-wide via the Illinois P-20 Network and other partner organizations.

This survey will remain open through February 10, 2022. Thank you for your participation.

Early Childhood Staff Simulation Health & Safety Trainings Needs Survey

Please pass this information along to Early Childhood program leaders in your communities, community colleges, and school districts!

An inter-disciplinary team at Northern Illinois University, including the Illinois P-20 Network, is working in collaboration with the University of Illinois at Chicago Rockford Medical School on a project to design and implement community-based simulation trainings on health, safety, and well-being for early childhood education teachers and staff. The goal is to support early childhood education professional development in maintaining healthy and safe environments for children.

The Gateways competencies model and ECE HSW (Health, Safety, and Well-Being) were used as a guide for this work.

2 Important Dual Credit Think Tank Surveys

The Illinois P-20 Network’s Dual Credit Think Tank is focused on collaborating with school districts and postsecondary to help continue refining practices to ensure that students across Illinois can access high-quality dual credit and dual enrollment offerings.

1-Question Survey about Dual Credit Classes & Weighted GPA

The Dual Credit Think Tank is also seeking information on this 1-question survey regarding how dual credit classes are weighted in GPA calculations in school districts. Please pass this 1-question survey on dual credit and GPA weighting on to as many school districts as possible – It should take less than 30 seconds to complete, and we will share the results through both ILACEP and the Illinois P-20 Network.

Survey about Contract Language, Policies, and Practices to Support Dual Credit Teacher Licensure

The Illinois P-20 Network’s Dual Credit Think Tank identified teacher licensure as the most important of a number of significant areas for additional work to further enhance and expand dual credit and dual enrollment early college offerings in Illinois high schools. A number of school districts have inquired about example collective bargaining contract language, school district policies, and school district practices (including administrative procedures) that are in place in districts across Illinois that are designed to support and encourage teachers with completing the additional requirements to teach dual credit courses. The Illinois P-20 Network Dual Credit Think Tank has put together this survey to gather examples of contract language, policies, and practices that support dual credit teacher licensure.

If you are able to offer any examples, those will be most welcome to other school districts!

Fall Meeting 2021 Panels – Available Now on YouTube

The Illinois P-20 Network’s Fall Meeting in 2021 consisted of a series of individual panel discussions over a series of weeks addressing the following three topics:

Developing, Recruiting, and Retaining Diverse High-Quality Teachers – The shortage of teachers and other school staff continues to draw widespread attention, predating the start of the wider “Great Resignation” that is impacting the workforce. This diverse panel of educators representing school districts, community colleges, and universities discusses the innovative ways that they are seeking to address the teacher shortage with programs that engage potential future teachers beginning as early as high school. Panelists include:

• Brian Giovanini & Katie Popp, Indian Prairie School District 204
• Janis Jones, Sauk Valley Community College
• Ron McCord, Rock Falls Township High School District 301
• Jenny Johnson & Danielle Lauritzen, Northern Illinois University
• Stacy Thompson, Grow Your Own Illinois, Southern Illinois University

Equity in Practice: Connecting Learners with their Schools-Colleges-Universities – Illinois closely resembles the demographic composition of the United States as a whole, and communities across Illinois have become increasingly diverse in recent decades. Along with this diversity, schools, colleges, and universities across Illinois have prioritized the importance of equity and inclusion, both as a way of honoring all learners and staff members and as a way to ensure deeper and increased learning outcomes. This unique panel explores specific attitudes and actions that must be prevalent in learning organizations in order to most likely ensure strong interpersonal connections as the foundation for teaching and learning. Panelists include:

• Jocelyn Santana, Northern Illinois University
• Cherry G & Sam J, Palatine High School

Career Pathway Endorsements: A Strategy for Improving Learning School-Wide – In only its third year of state-wide implementation, the Illinois Career Pathway Endorsements provide great opportunities for students to learn, practice, and demonstrate both the Technical Competencies and the Essential Skills (Cross-Sector Essential Employability Competencies). The Career Pathway Endorsements, with their focus on Authentic Learning both in the classroom and beyond, also provide opportunities for schools to shift the nature of learning significantly in their schools. This session includes representatives from two school districts: Ridgewood High School, which has had students graduate with Career Pathway Endorsements in each of the first two years that they were able to be offered, and Lake Zurich High School, which is on-track to have its first students earn Career Pathway Endorsements at the conclusion of this academic year. Panelists include:

• Lisa Balata, Ridgewood High School
• Zach Gimm, Lake Zurich Community Unit School District 95
• Eric Lasky, Ridgewood High School
• Susie Wagner, Lake Zurich Community Unit School District 9

ISBE Partners with the Illinois P-20 Network & NIU STEAM to Support CTE

The Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) has recently signed a multi-year contract with Northern Illinois University that sees the Illinois P-20 Network and NIU STEAM partner withISBE’s Career & Technical Education (CTE) team to support efforts around:

• The implementation of CTE standards.
• Instructional resources aligned with the CTE standards.
• Professional learning opportunities aligned with the CTE standards and to make use of the instructional resources, including a statewide annual conference.
• Recruitment and retention of diverse, high-quality CTE teachers across Illinois.

Career & Technical Education has been closely aligned with the work of both the Illinois P-20 Network and NIU STEAM for many years. Instructionally, a critical core of this work is ensuring that all students benefit from authentic learning environments. Likewise, equity and inclusion for both working with students and in identifying and hiring CTE teachers will be embedded in all aspects of this collaborative effort.

The Fall Meeting – A Series of Learning Events

Each year, the Illinois P-20 Network hosts a Fall and a Spring Meeting for organizations throughout the Network. This year, our Fall Meeting is an online event using Zoom. Unlike previous meetings, this year’s Fall Meeting will offer learning events over four successive Fridays. You can participate in as few or as many of these as you would like (Note that you can register for the October 22, November 5 and November 12 events using one online registration form. The October 29 workshop has a standalone registration form.): 

• October 22 – 9-10 AM – Developing, Recruiting & Retaining Diverse High-Quality Teachers – Register 
• October 29 – 9 AM-Noon – Social & Emotional Learning Leads to College & Career Readiness Administrator Academy Workshop – Register 
• November 5 – 9-10 AM – Equity in Practice: Connecting Learners with their Schools & Colleges/Universities – Register 
• November 12 – 9-10 AM – Career Pathway Endorsements: A Strategy for Improving Learning School-Wide – Register  

In each of these events, educators from school districts and postsecondary institutions will be sharing their experiences and expertise.  While these sessions (other than the Administrator Academy Workshop) will be recorded and shared via the P-20 Network YouTube channel, participating live and in real-time will allow for questions, comments, and discussions. 

Join our team! 2 new positions!

In partnership with NIU STEAM, we are excited to announce two new positions:

• Career and Technical Education (CTE) Educator
• Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Educator

Both of these positions will provide leadership in work with teachers and administrators in school districts across Illinois on a range of topics focused on improving Career and Technical Education (CTE) across Illinois. Details regarding each of the above positions can be found by clicking on the links, which will redirect you to the official Northern Illinois University job posting.

In both cases, NIU STEAM and the Illinois P-20 Network are seeking dynamic, enthusiastic, and highly knowledgeable educators who are committed to collaboration and problem solving alongside educators ranging from local school districts to regional organizations such as Regional Offices of Education, Education for Employment system offices, and Area Career Centers to leaders at the Illinois State Board of Education.

For questions or more information about either position, please reach out to either Kristin Brynteson, Director of NIU STEAM, or Jason Klein, Director of P-20 Initiatives.

Administrator Academies – 2021-2022

We are pleased to announce dates and topics for our half-day, online Administrator Academies that will be offered during the 2021-2022 school year. These sessions are not only open to school administrators but also to teachers, counselors, postsecondary faculty and leaders, and anyone else who is interested in learning more. 

• October 29 – Career Pathways & Social and Emotional Learning 
• December 8 – PaCE Framework Overview 
• February 16 – Illinois Career Pathways 
• June 7 – Illinois Career Pathways 

Each workshop runs from 9 AM until noon, online via Zoom, and earns participants full Administrator Academy credit. Registration is only $124 per person. Additionally, when a school district registers 4 or more participants for a single workshop, we also offer 2 hours of free follow-up professional time that can be used for strategic planning with district leaders, for the facilitation of professional learning with teachers and administrators, or even for presentations to the school board and/or families. 

Additional Administrator Academies Coming…
Not only are we offering the Administrator Academies listed above, but we are currently in the process of developing new Administrator Academies, and we look forward to sharing more information on those this fall. 

Customized, Local Administrator Academies
Finally, any of these Administrator Academies can be delivered locally and customized to meet the needs of your Regional Office of Education, Education for Employment (EFE) region, school district, or other group. For more information, contact us at p20network@niu.edu. 

A New Resource for Teachers & Counselors – The Career Pathways Virtual Trailheads Essential Skills Guide

One of the most critical components of Illinois’ work around the College and Career Pathways are the Cross-Sector Essential Employability Skills (See page 6 of the Illinois CCPE Competencies Guide). Referred to as the “Essential Skills” in shorthand and commonly referred to as “soft skills” in the business community, these competencies are critical for all of our students across all Career Pathways. Additionally, through a year’s worth of Career Pathways Virtual Trailheads episodes, we’ve found that the Essential Skills are a consistent and detailed component of each interview. 

To help teachers, counselors, and others incorporate the Career Pathways Virtual Trailheads episodes as another instructional resource in their classrooms, we are in the process of developing The Career Pathways Virtual Trailheads Essential Skills Guide. While the content is up-to-date in this draft mapping of the Essential Skills across the Career Pathways Virtual Trailheads episodes, we are still working to develop a finalized web solution. Knowing that both school leaders and teachers will begin planning instruction for the 2021-2022 school year over the summer, we wanted to share this resource now, even in its current work-in-progress form. 

Announcing a New Partner – Illinois P-20 Network & Midwest Principals’ Center

For decades, Midwest Principals’ Center has brought together school leaders to learn with one another and from experts in topics ranging from curriculum and instruction to school law. Midwest Principals’ Center provides a wide range of learning opportunities each year, from bringing the most well-respected and in-demand speakers to local audiences to ongoing learning opportunities such as their Legal Breakfasts.

Now, the Illinois P-20 Network is proud to partner with Midwest Principals’ Center. As part of this partnership, Midwest Principals’ Center will promote the Illinois P-20 Network’s College and Career Readiness series of Administrator Academy workshops, which will allow even more school leaders to learn about these critical topics. Additionally, like the aforementioned Legal Breakfasts, the Illinois P-20 Network will offer a series of online introductory presentations on key College and Career Readiness topics for school leaders of all levels. These presentations will be free to all Midwest Principals’ Center members.

If your organization is not already a member of the Midwest Principals’ Center (MPC), learn more about MPC organizational or individual membership. 

Recap of the Spring 2021 Network Meeting

The Illinois P-20 Network hosted its Spring 2021 Meeting online on Thursday, April 29, 2021. The Spring 2021 Meeting, Lessons for our journey forward: Putting lessons from COVID-19 into practice for all students, was free and open to educators across Illinois. The purpose of this year’s Spring 2021 Illinois P-20 Network Meeting was to bring educational leaders together from all levels of education across Illinois and to identify the most effective practices and strategies that have been implemented over the past year.

While this was the third consecutive Illinois P-20 Network Meeting that was held online, this was the first meeting that was held live (synchronously) rather than as an asynchronous series of videos posted as a YouTube Playlist (Check out the Fall 2020 Meeting Playlist and the Spring 2020 Meeting Playlist). Taking advantage of the meeting’s online format, a wide range of attendees participated, stretching geographically across Illinois from north to south and from east to west, and representing the full range of organizations that make-up the Illinois P-20 Network.

Following introductions and remarks from Northern Illinois University President Lisa Freeman and Dean of the NIU College of Education Laurie Elish-Piper, the Spring Meeting featured a keynote presentation from Stephanie Malia Krauss, who has authored the newly published book, Making It: What Today’s Kids Need for Tomorrow’s World. Stephanie has served as a Senior Advisor at JFF as well as a former teacher and school leader. Today, she is also the parent of school-age children. Learn more about Stephanie, including being able to purchase her book, on her website. In her keynote presentation, Stephanie describes the environment in which today’s school-age learners have lived throughout their lives, including everything from current events to modern technology, and how these factors have influenced students’ lives and learning. Stephanie also discusses the changing nature of the workplace and careers, and Stephanie challenges schools to consider specific changes that must take place in order to meet these different realities than those on which modern schools were originally built.

One key feature of the Spring 2021 Illinois P-20 Network Meeting was our Student Panel, which included students ranging from middle school through undergraduates and from one end of Illinois to the other. The students on the panel shared their reflections about their experiences during this unique 2020-2021 school year and what suggestions they have for schools and learning moving forward. As is always the case with listening to our students, nothing can replace watching the full video below, but key elements highlighted by students included:

• Remote learning had key benefits including increased participation among a wider range of students and a greater ability to focus on learning rather than the performative social aspects of schooling
• Flexible approaches to scheduling are important
• Relationships between and among students and teachers remain important regardless of the format of the learning environment

Following the Student Panel, participants had the opportunity to engage in two different Breakout Room discussions from among five different categorical topics:

• Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
• Learning & Time & Space
• Teacher Workforce
• Assessment & Data
• Community Engagement

Each of these was facilitated by a leader in the particular space, and discussion focused around the following questions:

• What were the lessons we’ve learned over the past year during COVID-19 related to (The Breakout Room Topic)?
• Based on this year’s experiences, what practices and/or structures should we implement to improve learning for all students moving forward?
• What resources and policies do we need to be in place in order to make these changes effective, lasting, and sustainable?

During each Breakout Room discussion, NIU STEAM team members assisted by taking detailed notes. These notes are currently being coded and analyzed and will be used in conjunction with the exit slip survey data in order to determine priority areas of focus for the Illinois P-20 Network and for us collectively as a state in order to further improve learning for all students and for each student across Illinois from early childhood through ongoing adult education. The results of this work will, of course, be shared broadly with the Illinois P-20 Network, the state agencies, and beyond.

Career Pathways Virtual Trailheads – GCAMP Manufacturing Panel

Since students cannot be engaging in face-to-face or on-site work-based learning experiences, we’re bringing people from a wide range of occupations to students remotely. These videos will allow students to learn about their work, the skills that are most important in their work, and to benefit from the advice that these professionals have to offer students.

In this Career Pathways Virtual Trailheads episode, we meet with a panel of manufacturing experts from GCAMP, an organization in Chicago’s Northwest Suburbs that seeks to promote careers in manufacturing and connections between schools and manufacturing companies. In this episode, our panelists discuss their own careers, the work that their companies do, the different roles in which they have served, and the type of skills necessary for success in the manufacturing industry.

This wide-ranging Career Pathways Virtual Trailheads panel conversation provides countless examples of the importance of ensuring that all students have strongly developed the essential skills by the time that they graduate from high school. With high needs for employees in the manufacturing sector in locations across Illinois, manufacturing companies are confident that they can provide quality on-the-job training to new employees provided that those employees already exhibit strengths with each of the cross-sector essential employability skills.

Watch this special edition, panel discussion Career Pathways Virtual Trailheads video focused on manufacturing featuring Kathleen Burley (GCAMP Executive Director), Chris Kaiser from Big Kaiser, and Paul Rimington from The Diemasters.

To keep up-to-date as new Career Pathways Virtual Trailheads videos are released:

• Follow the P-20 Network on Twitter
• Subscribe to the P-20 Network YouTube Channel

Information about applying for Career Pathway Endorsements for the 2021-2022 school year!

The ISBE College & Career Pathways Endorsement website has been updated and includes a variety of resources that will assist those with their plans to implement/offer pathway endorsements to students. Included among these resources are an updated ISBE College and Career Pathway Endorsement Framework and the ISBE Pathway Endorsement Infographic.

Should schools wish to begin building plans within the online web tool, they would need to contact Heather Strom at the Illinois State Board of Education so that she can provide the school district with a link to the web tool (Email: pathwayendorsements@isbe.net​). Please note that first, the school district would want to gather the necessary information using the Excel spreadsheet. This will make data entry easier and more accurate.

Also, if you are planning on issuing any Career Pathway Endorsements for FY21, you will need to complete the FY21 application and district projections that are found on the ISBE CCPE website.

In corresponding about this important announcement, Heather said, “I’m very excited to be working with schools and applaud their efforts to offer pathway endorsements to their students!” Obviously, the Illinois P-20 Network echoes this sentiment. If you have questions, please reach out to Heather at the email address included above, but please feel free to contact us as well as the team at Education Systems Center as we can continue to work collaboratively to support both ISBE and all of you working in school districts.

Career Pathways Virtual Trailheads – Trishna Singh and Octave Rouege – Business Analysts

Since students cannot be engaging in face-to-face or on-site work-based learning experiences, we’re bringing people from a wide range of occupations to students remotely. These videos will allow students to learn about their work, the skills that are most important in their work, and to benefit from the advice that these professionals have to offer students.

In this Career Pathways Virtual Trailheads episode, Trishna Singh and Octave Rouege, both Senior Contract Analysts at Premier Inc, a healthcare technology company, share information about their careers and the workplace. With Trishna’s background in Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology, and Octave’s background in Marketing and Accounting, they provide great examples of the very different paths one can follow into this career as well as providing insightful examples of the essential skills necessary for success. Trishna studied at Emory University, and Octave earned degrees at the University of Southern Mississippi and Lakeland University.

In their roles as Business Analysts, they combine both clinical and purchasing data to help health systems make the best choices both in terms of medical purchases and general maintenance of the facility. While Trishna and Octave have very different academic backgrounds, the fact that they are doing the same job is proof that the essential skills are the foundation for landing any type of job and excelling at the position.  

Trishna and Octave’s work as Business Analysts is part of both the Health Sciences and Technology Career Pathway and the Finance and Business Services Career Pathway.  

In this video, Octave and Trishna share how their interest in health care and helping communities around them has contributed to making them successful in this role. They also talk about the importance of being willing to learn and understanding what a job entails before taking up a position. Both guests emphasize that being detail-oriented, having the ability to delegate when necessary, being able to communicate effectively with others, and adapting to a wide variety of different situations are critical to having a successful career in data analysis. Trishna stresses the need to be able to advocate for yourself and having basic knowledge of Microsoft Excel as crucial for getting an internship position in the world of data analysis. She also encourages students who are interested in working in a role like theirs to explore learning about data tools such as spreadsheets, to apply for internships, and to volunteer in hospitals or healthcare systems around their communities. Octave encourages students to shadow a professional in the position they aspire to hold as this will help paint a clear picture of what the role entails and what one will need to do in order to be successful.

Watch this Career Pathways Virtual Trailheads video with Business Analysts Trishna Singh and Octave Rouege.

To keep up-to-date as new Career Pathways Virtual Trailheads videos are released:

• Follow the P-20 Network on Twitter
• Subscribe to the P-20 Network YouTube Channel

More Draft Model Programs of Study Guides Released

This week, drafts of four new Model Programs of Study Guides were released in the following areas: 

• Agriculture, Food, and Natural Resources 
• Architecture, Construction, and Energy 
• Arts and Communication 
• Finance and Business Services 

Public comments are encouraged and should be made through this Public Comment Form through June 5, 2021. There will also be an introductory webinar held on April 16, 2021 at 11 AM. Click here to register for the webinar. 

These Model Programs of Study Guides were developed through a process that was sponsored by the Illinois Community College Board and implemented in collaboration with the Illinois State Board of Education. Education Systems Center led this process. The first four Model Programs of Study Guides were published during the Summer of 2020, and they are: 

• Education 
• Health Sciences and Technology 
• Information Technology 
• Manufacturing and Engineering 

P-20 Network Spring Meeting Keynote – Making It Author Stephanie Malia Krauss

The Illinois P-20 Network is hosting its Spring 2021 Meeting online on Thursday, April 29th at 9 AM. The Spring 2021 Meeting, Lessons for our journey forward: Putting lessons from COVID-19 into practice for all students, is free and open to educators across Illinois. To join us, complete this short online Spring 2021 Meeting registration form.

Today, we are excited to announce that the Spring Meeting will feature a keynote presentation from Stephanie Malia Krauss, who has authored the newly published book, Making It: What Today’s Kids Need for Tomorrow’s World. Stephanie is a Senior Advisor at JFF. Stephanie is also a former teacher, school leader, and a Metro East parent of children who are in school today on the Illinois side of the Mississippi River in the St. Louis area. Learn more about Stephanie on her website, stephaniemaliakrauss.com.

The purpose of this year’s Spring 2021 Illinois P-20 Network Meeting is to bring educational leaders together from all levels of education across Illinois and to identify the most effective practices and strategies that have been implemented over the past year.

Then, together, the Illinois P-20 Network will answer these questions, among others:

• Which of these strategies have demonstrated new ways of serving students and/or collaborating as educators to have a greater impact than what we have traditionally done?
• How has what we have learned this year broadened our vision of what the possible range of approaches to nurturing and supporting all learners?
• What policies and resources are necessary to move these practices into sustainable components of our educational structures and systems?

Stephanie’s book and keynote address will provide the perfect foundation on which we can collectively imagine schools that maximize learning for all students. To join us at the Illinois P-20 Network Spring 2021 Meeting, complete this short online Spring 2021 Meeting registration form.

Announcing the Live Online Spring 2021 P-20 Network Meeting

We are excited to announce plans for our Spring 2021 P-20 Network Meeting, which is titled Lessons for our journey forward: Putting lessons from COVID-19 into practice for all students.

The meeting will be held online on Thursday, April 29, 2021 at 9 AM. There is no cost to participate in the meeting. To sign-up, simply complete this P-20 Network Spring 2021 Meeting Registration Form.

At the Spring 2021 Meeting, the P-20 Network will facilitate an opportunity for educational leaders at all levels to come together to share, listen, and plan to innovate for all students moving forward based on the lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic. It is crucial that this time is used to identify the specific supports and obstacles that face educators at all levels in implementing these innovations in order for the P-20 Network to actively lead in addressing those issues moving forward.

To gain access to the meeting, please complete this short registration form. We do ask that the form is completed for each individual attending.

Occupational Profiles launch on Illinois Postsecondary Profiles website

The Illinois Postsecondary Profiles (IPP) website originally launched in October 2019 with the first of three major elements available to the public at the time of its launch – Institutional Profiles. Learn more about the original phase of the IPP website from October 2019.

Today, the Illinois Postsecondary Profiles website rolls out a number of major features as the second major phase of the site’s development.

• Occupational Profiles, which provides users with opportunities to explore occupations and/or postsecondary areas of study (i.e., topics in which students major in college) by the 7 Illinois Career Pathways or by a keyword search or area of interest. Data about occupations is linked with both data regarding related areas of study and the postsecondary institutions in Illinois that offer these areas of study. Together, this provides a rich set of easy-to-access data that is unique among tools of this kind.

• Regional Profiles, which utilizes an interactive map (also known as a choropleth) that is currently organized by Illinois’ community college district boundaries, to display completion, enrollment, and population data. In the future, additional data sets and geographic boundary regions will be available for website visitors.

• IPP Data Center – A centerpiece of the IPP website since its debut has been the ability to download data presented on the website in its entirety. Given that this data comes directly from Illinois’ state agencies responsible for postsecondary education, being able to easily access these complete data sets is a great benefit to researchers in Illinois and around the world. With this release, the IPP Data Center has been significantly expanded with additional data available for download.

In a future release, the final major originally planned component of the Illinois Postsecondary Profiles will launch – Equity Profiles, which will support the exploration of data from postsecondary education across Illinois based on student demographic information.

Dual Credit Think Tank – Update

We are pleased to announce that, in collaboration with ILACEP, we are restarting the Dual Credit Think Tank. We are currently working to identify meeting dates and times, and we will be emailing specific information to everyone who was involved with the Dual Credit Think Tank last spring as well as those who have already reached out to express interest in participating in the Dual Credit Think Tank moving forward. 

If you or someone in your organization is interested in participating in the Dual Credit Think Tank, please email us at: p20network@niu.edu 

Continue reading below to learn more about the next steps for the Illinois P-20 Network Dual Credit Think Tank.

Plans for the Dual Credit Think Tank moving forward over the remainder of 2021 include:

• Focus on one sub-committee at a time – The Teacher Credentialing Sub-Committee remains critical and is identified as a key area in the ILACEP Illinois Dual Credit Report under the header, Instructor Capacity. This group will begin meeting in the coming weeks and will meet monthly through June. Then, beginning during the summer, attention will shift to the Communications Sub-Committee, which will meet through much of the fall. At the moment, we will hold off on restarting the Finance Sub-Committee, but if conversations in either Springfield or Washington, D.C. necessitate that Sub-Committees work, we will quickly spring into action and potentially pause the work of the other Sub-Committees.
• Co-Facilitators – As we re-launch each Sub-Committee, we will seek two co-facilitators within each group to partner with Jason Klein in leading the Sub-Committee.
• Consistent Meeting Times – While this is always difficult and complex with the busy schedules of educational leaders across institutions, as each Sub-Committee re-starts, it will lay out a schedule of monthly meetings for the anticipated period of its work.

Transitional Math ISBE SIS & Portability Code Information

The Illinois P-20 Network is pleased to share the following information on behalf of the Illinois State Board of Education and the Illinois Community College Board.

In order for students to receive the full benefits of Transitional Math, the correct Illinois State Board of Education Student Information System (SIS) course code and Illinois portability codes must be utilized.  The Transitional Math SIS codes can be found below and are also within the provided portability document templates as well as the policies document, which can be found on the Illinois Transitional Math website.

Please note that there are different ISBE SIS course codes and portability codes for each of the distinct Transitional Math courses that are offered.

As always, school districts should ensure that they are uploading the correct course codes in ISBE SIS to accurately report students’ course completions.

Additionally, portability codes should be placed on the high school transcripts of students who have successfully completed a Transitional Math course. Community Colleges across Illinois utilize the portability code from the high school transcript to identify students who should be correctly placed in college credit-bearing mathematics courses.

• STEM Pathway
  ISBE SIS Code – 02055A001
  Portability Code – TM001
• Quantitative Literacy and Statistics Pathway
  ISBE SIS Code – 02201A001
  Portability Code – TM002
• Tech Pathway
  ISBE SIS Code – 02153A001
  Portability Code – TM003

Implementation of Transitional Math is now entering the second semester of the second year of implementation.  We currently have over 200 approved courses across the state of Illinois.  We are excited to see the progress that school districts and students are making with the implementation of Transitional Math. Approved courses can be found on the Illinois Transitional Math website.

As a reminder, the next opportunity for Transitional Math portability submission is due on March 1, 2021, and those submissions will be considered at the Spring Portability Panel meeting on April 14, 2021.

If you have any questions regarding transitional courses, please e-mail TRInstruction@isbe.net.

Career Pathways Virtual Trailheads – Yvonne Boose – Radio Journalist

Since students cannot be engaging in face-to-face or on-site work-based learning experiences, we’re bringing people from a wide range of occupations to students remotely. These videos will allow students to learn about their work, the skills that are most important in their work, and to benefit from the advice that these professionals have to offer students.

In this Career Pathways Virtual Trailheads episode, we interview Yvonne Boose, who today is a radio journalist at WNIJ, a public radio station that is based at Northern Illinois University. During her senior year at Bogan High School, Yvonne took her grandfather’s advice. She went on to study Speech Communication at Chicago State University, where she learned radio and television production.

After graduating with her Bachelor’s Degree, Yvonne began working in customer service for Ameritech, a large telecommunications company in the Midwest at that time that was formerly part of AT&T and remain connected to AT&T in a number of ways. While Yvonne continued to earn promotions for her work, she also continued to desire a career in journalism. During this time period, she was able to begin an internship with AT&T Cable where she covered local stories on a television show called Hometown Edition. This internship confirmed for Yvonne that she did want to pursue journalism, so she went to Roosevelt University and earned a Master’s Degree in journalism. With her Master’s Degree, she obtained another internship at Beacon News in Aurora before moving into her current role at WNIJ.

Yvonne’s work as a journalist is part of the Arts & Communication Career Pathway.

In this video, Yvonne shares how her customer service skills have helped her make connections as a journalist with sources that are critical to telling honest and complete stories. She also talks about the need for students to be willing to take up volunteer and internship positions in order to build their experiences. Yvonne emphasizes that the following skills are critical to have success as a journalist: integrity, the ability to build honest and positive relationships with others, strong listening skills, robust organizational skills, the ability to accept feedback with a positive attitude, and having a hunger for new knowledge.

Watch this Career Pathways Virtual Trailheads episode with journalist Yvonne Boose.

To keep up-to-date as new Career Pathways Virtual Trailheads videos are released:

• Follow the P-20 Network on Twitter
• Subscribe to the P-20 Network YouTube Channel

The Essential Skills – A Brief Overview + An Activity

NIU STEAM continues to provide leadership and resources with regards to providing students with learning opportunities related to the Cross-Sector Essential Employability Skills, also known as the Essential Skills.

The Essential Skills and career exploration are increasingly being built into a wide range of NIU STEAM activities. As more and more students also benefit from these type of College and Career Readiness activities in Illinois schools, the alignment between enrichment activities through NIU STEAM and their regular work in school will further deepen and enhance students’ essential skillset.

For this activity, students begin by watching this short introduction to the Essential Skills that is on YouTube and is less than 10 minutes in length.

Finally, in small groups or as a class, students should analyze the results of their survey of the Essential Skills across the Career Pathways Virtual Trailheads videos, identifying the frequency with which different Essential Skills appear as well as any patterns that they may discover between highlighted Essential Skills and different Career Pathways.

Career Pathways Student Conversations – Geneseo High School

Earlier in December, Travis Mackey, the principal at Geneseo (IL) High School, presented to the Illinois P-20 Network’s Career Pathways User Group about the development and use of the Alumni Career Connections feature of the Geneseo H.S. website.

As a follow-up, we met with four high school seniors from Geneseo High School to learn from them about their plans for postsecondary education and careers and to gain a better understanding of how they use their Alumni Career Connections tool. As is essentially always the case when listening to students speak about their experiences, there are a wide range of lessons shared by these students for educators to consider when planning in their own schools.

At the time of the publication of this video and blog post in December 2020, three of the four high school seniors were still in the process of finalizing their postsecondary plans. In each case, these students are planning on attending four-year universities, though these students recognized the importance of career exploration for all students and the important role that a wide range of postsecondary education options play in serving all students today.

Looking to the future, ultimately, all four of these high school seniors were steadfast in their commitment to prioritizing a love for one’s work and the need to make a difference for others as the ultimate considerations in selecting their careers and courses of study to prepare them for success in these careers.

Career Pathways Virtual Trailheads – Cora Pauli – Electrical Engineer

Since students cannot be engaging in face-to-face or on-site work-based learning experiences, we’re bringing people from a wide range of occupations to students remotely. These videos will allow students to learn about their work, the skills that are most important in their work, and to benefit from the advice that these professionals have to offer students.

In this Career Pathways Virtual Trailheads episode, we interview Cora Pauli, who is an electrical engineer at HBK Engineering. HBK Engineering is regarded as one of COMED’s three most preferred companies to work with for project design. At an early age, Cora realized her love for mathematics and science and took the advice of her high school swimming coach at Amos Alonzo Stagg High School to study engineering in college. While in college, she interned with an engineering company where she learned about designing electrical distribution systems as well as learning AutoCAD. This experience contributed to her career choice as an electrical engineer.  In her current role at HBK Engineering, Cora works in the power sector and handles projects that focus on the design of electrical distribution systems, specifically Cora’s work focuses on what takes place between the electrical substation and the customer’s business or home.

The work that Cora does on a daily basis is a part of the Manufacturing, Engineering, Technology, and Trades Career Pathway.

In this video, Cora shares with us some interesting facts about being a woman in the STEM field. She also talks about the need for young graduates who are interested in this field to love numbers and understand the basics of electrical engineering but to also possess a strong willingness to learn and ask questions. In addition to being forthcoming with questions, other essential skills for new electrical engineers to have include strong problem solving and communication skills. From crawling through manhole covers under streets in Downtown Chicago to projects that take place in Illinois’ corn and soybean fields, Cora is pleased to help provide people with consistent, reliable electricity using modern tools, like connected gear.

Watch this Career Pathways Virtual Trailheads video with electrical engineer Cora Pauli.

To keep up-to-date as new Career Pathways Virtual Trailheads videos are released:

• Follow the P-20 Network on Twitter
• Subscribe to the P-20 Network YouTube Channel

Alumni as Career Exploration Resources

Illinois’ Geneseo High School launched a website for both current students and alumni called Geneseo High School Alumni Career Connections that serves as a key component of the school’s career exploration efforts for and with students. This site connects graduates from Geneseo High School, which is about 25 miles west of the Mississippi River, the Quad Cities, and the Illinois/Iowa border, with one another and, most importantly, with current students. Through the Alumni Career Connections website, Geneseo alumni become a resource for career exploration for current high school students, who all engage with the Alumni Career Connections website systemically as part of their classes.

The full video presentation from the Illinois P-20 Network Career Pathways User Group is below, and this post continues below the video. For more information on the Illinois P-20 Network Career Pathways User Group, contact us via email.

The Alumni Career Connections Website – A tool that facilitates connections

Geneseo High School worked with a local website design company that already serves as their website provider to build out the custom Alumni Career Connections Website tool, which includes a survey for alumni to share their information, a database back-end, and a website with search parameters, an interactive map, and the search results and information that alumni have entered. At the time of this writing, there are currently almost 1,000 Geneseo alumni who have voluntarily submitted profiles. (For context, Geneseo High School currently serves just under 900 students according to the Illinois State Board of Education Illinois Report Card.) The school has a goal of doubling this to 2,000 alumni profiles.

Alumni are emailed and encouraged to provide their profiles and serve as a resource to current students, and even once in the database, reminder emails are sent every three years in order to ensure profiles are kept up-to-date as people change jobs and move from one location to another. Additionally, it should be noted that a Geneseo Community Unit School District 228 team must clean-up and verify each submission individually. (For example, this is one way to ensure that postsecondary institutions are listed in a single consistent format rather than having some respondents list Northern Illinois University as NIU while others write Northern.)

Systemically integrated into instruction

Teachers throughout the school use the Alumni Career Connections website in order to bring alumni into the classroom as experts who serve as guest speakers for students. Additionally, as teachers connect with alumni in specific fields, they actively reflect on the alignment between what and how they are teaching and the current reality of different types of workplaces. As a result of those conversations with former students, teachers make adjustments to their own instruction.

In addition to this approach, which positively impacts students throughout the school, all tenth grade students participate in a unit in their English class in which they identify a Geneseo graduate who works in an occupation that is of interest to them, and students interview them. Students are supported through this process with both a combination of pre-written consistent questions across all careers and with the flexibility to develop and ask their own specific questions that are of interest to them and/or specifically relevant to the occupation.

Building a positive culture around career exploration and connectedness

Central to the idea of the Alumni Career Connections website, is that it works on a “personal level” for current students. As Mr. Mackey describes, connecting students to alumni, “people who sat in the same seats that you (current students) do and had some of the same teachers you have had” has a tremendous impact on helping career exploration feel real to current students and that their career aspirations are possible. The tool has two other important side benefits:

• Alumni stay connected to one another and to the school.
• Alumni reference the teachers who impacted them, and honoring teachers “really keeps our teachers going” as they see how they made a difference in the lives of alumni after they have graduated.

Career Pathways Virtual Trailheads – Audrey Romito – Domestic Violence Program Coordinator

Since students cannot be engaging in face-to-face or on-site work-based learning experiences, we’re bringing people from a wide range of occupations to students remotely. These videos will allow students to learn about their work, the skills that are most important in their work, and to benefit from the advice that these professionals have to offer students.

In this Career Pathways Virtual Trailheads episode, we interview Audrey Romito, who is a Domestic Violence Program Coordinator at Schwab Rehabilitation Hospital in Chicago, Illinois. Audrey continued her education after high school focused on the world of cosmetology. She became a licensed hair stylist, and for a time, she worked as a hair stylist. In looking for a change, she found a position with Kane County, where she began working on issues related to domestic violence, and from there, her interest for working with victims of domestic violence grew into a career. In her current role, Audrey engages in a wide range of tasks and responsibilities with regards to supporting victims of domestic violence from coordinating services to providing counseling.

The work that Audrey does as a Domestic Violence Program Coordinator is part of the Human and Public Services Career Pathway, though Audrey’s work, particularly in the context of the hospital setting in which she works can also be viewed as part of the Health and Technology Career Pathway.

In this episode, Audrey discusses her unique experiences between her graduation from Kaneland High School and her career that she loves so much today. Audrey highlights the fact that her work is unpredictable from one day to the next, and there is a danger of experiencing professional burn-out for those working with victims of domestic violence as is the case in many occupations in the Human and Public Services Career Pathway. To minimize this risk for herself, Audrey focuses on both meeting people where they are at and the little victories toward helping those with whom she is working become more independent. Audrey also stresses that the following essential skills are critical to success in her work: active listening, setting and reflecting on realistic goals, and being respectful of other people.

Watch this Career Pathways Virtual Trailheads video with Domestic Violence Program Coordinator Audrey Romito.

We apologize about the audio issues in the closing minutes of this episode. We decided to leave Audrey’s important answers in the video despite the audio issues that resulted from our video conference software solution.

To keep up-to-date as new Career Pathways Virtual Trailheads videos are released:

• Follow the P-20 Network on Twitter
• Subscribe to the P-20 Network YouTube Channel

A resource for our times: Meeting student needs during hybrid & remote learning

Under the direction of the Illinois P-20 Council, a workgroup was developed and facilitated by Education Systems Center to study the impact and best practices related to the range of learning environments in place in schools across Illinois as a result of the COVID-19 Pandemic. A Framework and Resources for Measuring Student Needs and Development During Remote and Blended Learning has been published and is available for school districts and communities to consider. With the Pandemic continuing for the foreseeable future, school districts can utilize this resource for planning for the coming months.

Amplifying Solutions – Tips for New Administrators

Each episode of Amplifying Solutions focuses on questions and challenges from practitioners, primarily current graduate students earning their degrees to become the next generation of principals, school business leaders, and superintendents, as well as those students who are earning their doctoral degrees. In response to these questions, experts are brought together to discuss solutions and strategies. The complete video conversation is included below.

In this episode of Amplifying Solutions, Dr. Susan Homes from the Illinois Principals’ Association and Dr. Courtney Orzel from the Illinois Association of School Administrators discuss tips to help new school leaders, as well as veteran administrators, be successful. While the context is specifically geared toward the COVID-19 pandemic, as is discussed in the video, these tips are relevant and applicable at any time.

The same keys to success

While the COVID-19 Pandemic presents unique challenges that have placed tremendous stress on school systems and all of the individuals in them, from students and families to teachers and staff to school administrators, Dr. Homes and Dr. Orzel point out that the keys to being successful during the Pandemic are the same keys to being successful at any time. These include:

• Build relationships first – Be certain to know people as individuals, to understand and appreciate the community (or in many cases, the various communities that make up a school or district), learn the politics and dynamics of decision-making, and establish trust, respect, and fairness.
• Be genuine – People, including students, see through ego and falsehoods. Identify your core values and stick to them. (One tip is to ask your immediate family what they think your core values are, and you can check their answers against your own. Their answers are likely to reveal patterns in your daily actions.)
• Personalize the work – Students and staff members alike will learn more and do better when work has been personalized according to their needs and interests. Ask students and staff members directly about their needs and interests, and then follow-through to make adjustments based on what they have told you.

Taking care of yourself

It has become a common refrain to tell leaders to take care of themselves and to remind leaders that they cannot be successful for others if they are not staying well. At the same time, for many school administrators knowing that this is true is one thing while putting it into practice on a consistent, ongoing basis is much more difficult. Some tips include:

• Take advantage of professional resources focused on wellness – For example, IASA has launched its Mindfulness Matters series for its members.
• Find your group – Connect with colleagues who face the same challenges and pressures and be there to support one another. Text each other to simply see how others are doing. Call a colleague to check-in on the way to or from work. Make these routine parts of your day.
• Hold each other accountable for being well – Take a few minutes and eat your lunch. Drink water throughout the day. Exercise and know that the time you are spending doing so will help you be more productive and more positive (and more likely to stay well physically, too). Along with the colleagues in the aforementioned group, remind one another to take these steps each day. Ask each other if you did. If not, help brainstorm how to do so tomorrow.

Get important things done – and done well

With the busy competing demands that school leaders face, prioritizing is always important, and during the Pandemic, it is more important than ever. Schools and districts must continually ask themselves, “What are our most important goals and needs for students?” Then, when faced with new or additional requests, it is critical to ask, “Will this new task still allow me to focus on successfully accomplishing the priorities that we set?”

To help ensure that you follow through with the priorities, some of the suggestions in the video include the following:

• Use your calendar – Block out the time in your calendar to complete the tasks that are your priorities. If being in classrooms (in-person or remote/online) is an important part of your plan to improve student learning, time to be in classrooms must be blocked out in your calendar and maintained as a priority.
• Work with your colleagues – Most schools and districts are full of dedicated, smart people. As a school or district leader, you do not have to know or do everything. Share work with your colleagues wherever and whenever it is appropriate with their jobs. At the same time, you have to balance this by also protecting their time as the leader to ensure that they can maintain their focus on completing the tasks that align with the organization’s priorities for students.
• Follow-through – The work does not get done if you do not follow-through and complete it. This also includes being sure to close communication loops, so teachers and staff, families, and students know that the work is complete.

Looking to the future

In thinking about the long-term lessons from COVID-19 and the changes that schools can and should implement, Dr. Homes and Dr. Orzel identified the following key points:

• Identify what is most important and focus on those priorities
• Doing less will result in doing more
• Focus on equity and ensuring that real opportunities are available for all students and for each student
• Emphasize personalization to make learning meaningful and to ensure that everyone feels connected and part of their school community
• Identify the strengths of the school or district, and then work hard to do those things even better
• Focus on supporting teachers–They have the biggest impact on student learning
• Trust that educators can do great work regardless of where they are in their career journey – from their first year to their last year
• Emphasize the importance of adaptability for all educators

Resources

• Manage Your Time or Time Will Manage You: Strategies that Work from an Educator Who’s Been There by Meridian CUSD223 Superintendent Dr. PJ Caposey
• Onward: Cultivating Emotional Resilience in Educators by Elena Aguilar
• The Onward Workbook: Daily Activities to Cultivate Your Emotional Resilience and Thrive by Elena Aguilar
• 100-Day Leaders: Turning Short-Term Wins into Long-Term Success in Schools by Douglas Reeves & Robert Eaker

Amplifying Solutions – Creativity in staffing with COVID-19

Each episode of Amplifying Solutions focuses on questions and challenges from practitioners, primarily current graduate students earning their degrees to become the next generation of principals, school business leaders, and superintendents, as well as those students who are earning their doctoral degrees. In response to these questions, experts are brought together to discuss solutions and strategies. The complete video conversation is included below.

In this episode of Amplifying Solutions, Monica Schroeder from North Shore School District 112 and Matt Zediker from Rockford Public School District 205 discuss their organization’s approaches to staffing during the very dynamic COVID-19 Pandemic. When schools initially moved to remote learning in March 2020, staffing plans for the 2020-2021 school year were nearly complete. Over the next five months leading up to the start of this school year, school districts continued to face changing guidelines and a wide range of expectations, opinions, and pressures from various stakeholder groups.

Planning for Multiple Schedules

Like districts throughout Illinois, both NSSD112 and RPS205 had to plan for students who would be learning remotely and for students who would be learning in-person at times as part of a hybrid model.

Both districts were going to require a significant number of teachers that would be assigned to remote teaching positions as a result of surveys of families during the summer of 2020, and this resulted in the need to move staff members into positions different from those in which they had originally been assigned.

From these initial experiences, the following keys to successfully navigating this COVID-19 environment emerged:

• Listening – Having relationships already in place prior to the crisis provides a strong foundation for success. Then, it is critical for leaders to intentionally build time in their schedules to be in schools listening to staff members concerns and challenges and questions.
• Empathy – School leaders must put themselves in the shoes of others from staff members to students to parents. When a leader can deeply understand the challenges (and feelings) that others face, they are able to craft solutions that better address a wider range of issues, and they are better able to communicate those solutions to stakeholders.
• Collaboration – Collaboration among and with union leaders, board members, and administrators on a consistent and ongoing basis is critical to creating solutions that will meet the needs of each school district as well as successfully implementing those solutions.
• Articulate why – While specific people may not always like certain decisions, if they understand the rationale behind the decision, how it benefits students, and why it is a fair decision and/or a good use of limited resources, they will typically accept, and even support, the decision.
• Know the law – The pandemic has brought with it unique scenarios related to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA). Additionally, the Families First Coronavirus Response Act resulted in additional, important legal parameters for school leaders to know. As is mentioned in the discussion, school law firms have provided a significant amount of ongoing, free professional development to support school leaders since the start of the pandemic.

In thinking about the long-term take-aways for the future of education, the following items were identified as being important areas of emphasis in a post-COVID-19 world of learning:

• Emphasize learning and de-emphasize seat time; Focus on supporting all students with achieving outcomes
• Continue focusing on the importance of social and emotional learning
• Be flexible
• Be creative
• Continue to foster an “all-hands on-deck” culture, including having families be integrated into our learning processes
• Remind teachers and staff that they won’t be able to be everything to everyone and support them in being the best that they can be right now.

Launching Amplifying Solutions

The Department of Leadership, Educational Psychology, and Foundations (LEPF) in the Northern Illinois University College of Education has joined forces with the Illinois P-20 Network to launch a series of videos, web-based events, and blog posts on important topics that have been identified by current teachers and administrators who are also graduate students in and alumni of LEPF programs.

The videos, events and blog posts that result from this partnership will be available publicly, and educators are encouraged to share this content throughout their professional networks.

Initial episodes are being recorded at this time, and content will begin being posted this week both in the Newsfeed of the P-20 Network website and on the P-20 Network YouTube Channel.

An Integrated, Comprehensive Approach to Career Readiness

Maine Township High School District 207, located in Park Ridge and Des Plaines, Illinois just north of O’Hare Airport, has developed a comprehensive approach to career readiness with its Integrated Career Services Team and their work with students, teachers and counselors, and community partners.

Over the past five years, Maine 207 has focused on the development of career readiness that is:

• accessible for all students and for each student
• integrated throughout the school day
• diverse in experiences from guest speakers in classes and clubs to paid internships
• aligned with workforce needs in our communities and is aligned with students’ interests and passions
• engaging for community members and organizations through their partnerships with the school district and their work with students

Connecting with Community Partners

In addition to the superintendent, the district’s leadership team, and the high school principals, the Integrated Career Services Team provides a very important public face for Maine 207 with the community. The Integrated Services Team creates and sustains relationships with business partners that engage in everything from serving as guest speakers to providing full internship experiences with students. To date, Maine 207 has developed a network of 700 community partners. Acknowledging that this number and range of partnerships may not be the same in our diverse communities across Illinois, all school districts already have relationships with businesses and community groups. Those relationships can and should be leveraged into real partnerships to support student learning generally and career experiences specifically.

Intentional Planning that Builds Over Time for Students

As can be seen in the two images below from the Maine 207 Integrated Career Services Team, the district’s work around career readiness focuses on long-term planning that extends into the middle schools and that builds upon itself with each passing year of high school.

In each of the above examples, the experiences start out as shorter experiences designed, over the course of multiple experiences, to give students an understanding of a broad range of potential careers. This is both developmentally appropriate for most ninth and tenth grade students, and it recognizes that, coming into high school, most students have a very limited understanding of what different careers and workplaces look and feel like in-action. Often times, younger high school students only have an intimate knowledge of the careers of their own adult family members, some other adults that they may know well, and their teachers. Even in these cases, they are likely to only have a limited, more superficial understanding of these careers. The approach taken by Maine 207’s plan is designed to address this head-on by potentially providing students with a strong foundation across many different career pathways. Starting ninth and tenth graders with everything from guest speakers to field trips to volunteer opportunities is also flexible enough to allow individual students to start focusing more specifically on individual career pathways in which they already think they have a greater interest.

Connecting Career Readiness to Engaging Instruction

Importantly, the career readiness activities also integrate with Maine 207’s focus on ensuring that all classes are designed around highly engaging learning. As career experiences are integrated into a wide range of classes, there are opportunities for teachers to more effectively and easily design instruction around authentic learning opportunities that allow students to both learn about careers and to learn concepts, content, and skills more deeply.

A Series and Sequence of Career Experiences

As students move into eleventh and twelfth grades, there are increasingly opportunities for more in-depth work-based learning experiences. These are varied as they allow for the different needs of students, the different natures of different careers and workplaces, and the different requirements and capacities of various partners.

As mentioned earlier, guest speakers are invited in to classrooms throughout the schools and across all grade levels. While Maine 207 has long been a worldwide leader in educational technology including being Google’s original school district partner for Google Apps (known today as Google Workplace), schools far-and-wide have become comfortable with online meetings and classes as a result of the pandemic. The increased access to technology and acceptance of remote meeting and learning tools has made engaging guest speakers with students easier than ever before. Additionally, these same tools allow even more students to benefit from a guest speaker than was previously the case as a result of being able to have more than 25-30 students in the “room” with the students and as a result of being able to record a session with a guest speaker and share it with students later.

Career Treks and Job Shadowing experiences provide more in-depth opportunities to interact with professionals and to see and understand workplaces. As the slides above from the Maine 207 Integrated Career Services Team remind:

• These experiences can take advantage of other already-established programs, such as Junior Achievement.
• These experiences can and should take place in businesses, but they can and should also take place in other organizations, including other governmental agencies and in our own school districts. (Many Illinois school districts have started job shadowing and internships with their own Operations, Information Technology, and Business Services staffs. Of course, many Illinois school districts also do not have one or more of these key areas in-house as standalone departments due to either their size or available resources.)

Maine Township High School District 207 offers students both formal and informal internship opportunities. The formal internship is structured around a scheduled class period. In this scenario, the student and the school internship supervisor meet one period per week to check-in and discuss the internship. The informal internship does not include that scheduled class period and weekly check-in. There are a variety of options for when students actually participate in their internships, both during and beyond the school day, and these scenarios are based on both the student’s needs as well as the needs and parameters in place with the organization providing the internship. Maine 207 has approximately 450 students participating in formal internships, and there are additional students participating in informal internships. Between 5 and 15% of the internships have been paid internships.

For more information…

Maine Township High School District 207 Career Exploration website
The Maine 207 Career Exploration website provides up-to-date information on upcoming events as well as dashboards for students and parents, community partners, and staff members. Additionally, staff member information is available, including the opportunity to schedule meetings directly with the team members.

The Integrated Career Services Team at Maine East, Maine West, and Maine South High Schools also actively posts information on Instagram as another medium from which they can communicate with students in addition to the website, emails, and school announcements.

• Maine East CCRC Instagram Account
• Maine West CCRC Instagram Account
• Maine South CCRC Instagram Account

Career Pathways Virtual Trailheads – Denise Hoth – Surgical Instrument Specialist Management

Since students cannot be engaging in face-to-face or on-site work-based learning experiences, we’re bringing people from a wide range of occupations to students remotely. These videos will allow students to learn about their work, the skills that are most important in their work, and to benefit from the advice that these professionals have to offer students.

In this Career Pathways Virtual Trailheads episode, we interview Denise Hoth, who is a surgical instrument specialist that has now also become the manager of a team of surgical instrument specialists. As is discussed in the episode, surgical instrument specialists maintain and repair a wide range of tools used in surgery. Denise became a surgical tech after attending school at Triton College, and as a result of her work in that field, she had the opportunity to move into becoming a surgical instrument specialist. In this episode, Denise explains that her pathway to her current role is one of many potential avenues is as evidenced by the range of background experiences of her team of surgical instrument specialists.

The work that Denise does as a surgical instrument specialist. is part of both the Health & Technology and the Manufacturing, Engineering, Technology, and Trades Career Pathways. Given the time she spends managing financial, operational, and human resources issues, her work is also part of the Business & Finance Career Pathway.

In this episode, Denise explains the nature of the work that surgical instrument specialists do each day, including their working environment in the mobile service labs in the box truck that each surgical instrument specialist on her team drives. Denise explains how it is important that everyone in this role has strong mechanical skills, and that it is important to have integrity, strong verbal communication skills, and be able to work independently. Denise also stresses that this is a field with quite a bit of opportunity, and that a focus on customer service is the number one priority for each employee in her company.

Watch this Career Pathways Virtual Trailheads video with surgical instrument specialist and manager Denise Hoth.

To keep up-to-date as new Career Pathways Virtual Trailheads videos are released:

• Follow the P-20 Network on Twitter
• Subscribe to the P-20 Network YouTube Channel

Career Pathways Virtual Trailheads – Miles Robinson – VR QA Analyst

Since students cannot be engaging in face-to-face or on-site work-based learning experiences, we’re bringing people from a wide range of occupations to students remotely. These videos will allow students to learn about their work, the skills that are most important in their work, and to benefit from the advice that these professionals have to offer students.

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In this Career Pathways Virtual Trailheads episode, we interview Miles Robinson, who is a Quality Assurance (QA) Analyst on Facebook’s Oculus team. Oculus has been widely regarded as the leading virtual reality (VR) headset technology, and the QA team plays an incredibly important role in trying to minimize the bugs that are released in the complex combination of hardware and software. Miles grew up in Chicago and attended Whitney Young High School and studied pre-law as an undergraduate while also learning coding and software development, building on a long-time interest in computers and information technology (and video games). After earning his Bachelor’s Degree, Miles engaged in a submersive experience to learn software development in great detail that led to his career in IT and ultimately to his current role at Facebook.

The work Miles does on a daily basis is part of the Information Technology Career Pathway.

In this video, Miles stresses the importance of being adaptable and a team player. Miles also emphasizes that coding is not easy. It is complex work that requires a significant amount of study and a high degree of perseverance. At the same time, Miles strongly suggests that if you believe in yourself and do the hard work, you can be successful with this type of job.

Watch this Career Pathways Virtual Trailheads video with Virtual Reality Quality Assurance Analyst Miles Robinson.

To keep up-to-date as new Career Pathways Virtual Trailheads videos are released:

• Follow the P-20 Network on Twitter
• Subscribe to the P-20 Network YouTube Channel

P-20 Network Fall Virtual Meeting

Like the Spring 2020 P-20 Network Meeting, the Fall 2020 Meeting has also been moved to an online asynchronous event. Despite again missing out on face-to-face, real-time interactions, we are excited to bring you the relevant presentations that have been requested.

Each of the presentations below links to a video on the P-20 Network YouTube Channel.

Welcome – Thinking about Engagement Networks
Dr. Rena Cotsones, Chief Engagement Officer & Senior Associate Vice President, Northern Illinois University

College & Career Readiness – College & Career Pathways

An Overview of Career & Technical Education and Perkins V from ISBE & ICCB – Natasha Allan, Director for Career & Technical Education, Illinois Community College Board; Marci Johnson, Director of Career & Technical Education and Innovation, Illinois State Board of Education

Bringing Work Home: A Framework for Virtual Work-Based Learning (Also presented for the Forum for Excellence 2020) – Heather Penczak, Policy & Program Manager, Education Systems Center at Northern Illinois University; Carl Schneider, Fellow, Education Systems Center at Northern Illinois University; Nikki James, Practera at Northeastern University

Career Pathways Virtual Trailheads
Career Pathways Virtual Trailheads YouTube Playlist
Suggest a Guest

College & Career Readiness – Dual Credit

“How does a teacher get a dual credit endorsement in Illinois?” – Dr. Jenny Parker, Associate Vice Provost for Educator Licensure and Preparation, Northern Illinois University

Dual Credit Teacher Professional Development Plans – Alauna McGee, Director of Early College Opportunities, Heartland Community College

Equity & Opportunity

Parent University: Key Components and Getting Started – Susana Das Neves, Director of Illinois Migrant Education Services, Northern Illinois University

Research & Data

Illinois Postsecondary Profiles – Launch of Path 2 – Occupational Profiles – Charlie Rosemond, Data & Outcomes Manager, Education Systems Center at Northern Illinois University; Dr. Jason Klein, Director of P-20 Initiatives, Northern Illinois University

P-20 Research & Data Collaborative – Overview + State/Federal Projects – Dr. Alan Clemens, Director, NIU P-20 Research & Data Collaborative; Dr. Ben Creed, Assistant Professor, College of Education-Northern Illinois University; Dr. Kelly Summers, Associate Professor, College of Education-Northern Illinois University

P-20 Research & Data Collaborative – Working with Local Organizations: Perspectives from Superintendents – Dr. Steve Epperson, Superintendent, Paw Paw CUSD271; Dr. Lynn Gibson, Superintendent, Paw Paw CUSD271

For more information and to be part of the conversation of the P-20 Network:

• Subscribe for free to our every-other-week P-20 Network Newsletter
• Follow the P-20 Network on Twitter

Administrator Academies 2020-2021

For this school year, the Illinois P-20 Network & NIU STEAM have added new Administrator Academies and are bringing back other important Administrator Academies.

UPDATE – 02 October 2020 – The DeKalb ROE registration link is now live.

Each year, school administrators in Illinois are required to participate in at least one Administrator Academy professional learning workshop. The Illinois P-20 Network is pleased to offer these workshops in conjunction with the DeKalb County Regional Office of Education and registration links for each online workshop will be posted on the DeKalb County ROE Professional Development website under the correct month. Of course, teachers and postsecondary staff and faculty members are also invited to these professional learning sessions. Professional Development Hours (PDHs) will also be provided to those attending who are not administrators. Each workshop costs only $124 per participant, and they are all online and available to educators across Illinois and beyond.

• October 30 — How Data Demands Dual Credit for Everyone – Expanding Early College Options
  Dr. Jason Klein (Administrator Academy #1895)
• November 10 — Social and Emotional Learning Leads to College & Career Readiness
  Dr. Jason Klein (Administrator Academy #3753)
• November 18 – STEAMing it Up! Integrate science, technology, engineering, the arts and mathematics (STEAM) in-person and online in conjunction with NIU STEAM
  Dr. Kristin Brynteson (Administrator Academy #3697)
• December 9 – Finding High Quality, Standards-Aligned Illinois Resources – iOER in conjunction with NIU STEAM
  Dr. Kristin Brynteson (Administrator Academy #3758)
• December 11 — College and Career Pathways
  Dr. Jason Klein (Administrator Academy #3749)
• January 22 – Postsecondary and Career Expectations (PaCE) Framework: Are Your Students On PaCE to Thrive?
  Dr. Jason Klein (Administrator Academy #1890)
• April 14 — College and Career Pathways
  Dr. Jason Klein (Administrator Academy #3749)
• June 8 – Postsecondary and Career Expectations (PaCE) Framework: Are Your Students On PaCE to Thrive?
  Dr. Jason Klein (Administrator Academy #1890)
• June 9 — Social and Emotional Learning Leads to College & Career Readiness
  Dr. Jason Klein (Administrator Academy #3753)

The Illinois P-20 Network is also happy to work with individual school districts, Regional Offices of Education, and other educational organizations to bring Administrator Academies to you. If you have questions or need more information, please contact Jason Klein.

Career Pathways Virtual Trailheads continues expanding

From Broadway to the lab and from the courtroom to the construction site, we are excited to bring work-based learning activities to our students as they learn at home and to provide relevant, ready-to-use resources for teachers to use with students. Share the Career Pathways Virtual Trailheads series with your teachers and students! 

As we start the 2020-2021 school year, we are creating and publishing new episodes. If you have a suggestion for a potential guest for a Career Pathways Virtual Trailheads episode, please share that with us using this Career Pathways Virtual Trailheads Guest Recommendation Form. 

Learning – remote & in-person across the P-20 Network

As the 2020-2021 school year begins in never-seen-before fashion, school districts and postsecondary institutions are each determining the best ways to balance the needs of keeping students and staff members safe, meeting the demands of their stakeholders, and supporting students with learning and teachers and faculty with teaching.

Over the past year, as part of the NIU P-20 Research & Data Collaborative, Illinois P-20 Network staff have been deeply involved in a number of statewide research projects on topics ranging from early childhood education through postsecondary student performance. In an effort to best serve the Illinois P-20 Network, through conversations with leaders of P-20 Network partners, it has become increasingly clear that one way in which the P-20 Network can support its partners is by collecting and providing access to real-time data. To this end, P-20 Network staff have collected data from partners’ websites on the current status of their remote versus in-person learning plans for the start of the 2020-2021 school year. While the Illinois State Board of Education has also created a similar tool for analyzing remote versus in-person learning, it only includes data from about 75% of the state’s school districts that responded to ISBE’s survey request.

This data below is provided separately at each level – elementary school, middle school, high school, and postsecondary. In conducting the data collection and analysis, the P-20 Network team quickly understood that many school districts are approaching their remote and hybrid learning models in complex ways, and this led to the presentation of data in this way.

Below, there are 4 slides of data with a chart and map at each level that you can click through:

• Postsecondary Institutions
• High Schools
• Middle Schools
• Elementary Schools

Postsecondary Institutions

High Schools

Middle Schools

Elementary Schools

If the data for your organization is inaccurate, please let us know by emailing the Illinois P-20 Network.

Over the coming weeks, we will be seeking out additional data, including trying to collect the cost of COVID-19 thus far on each of your institutions, and we will be refining and improving these type of data visualizations moving forward. We look forward to bringing you more useful data in ever-more usable formats in order to best support organizations across the Illinois P-20 Network.

The ILLINOIS P-20 Network

Since its inception at Northern Illinois University in 2014 as the Northern Illinois Regional P-20 Network, the goals of the organization have been threefold:

• Bring together educational leaders from all levels of education – from early childhood educators through K-12, community colleges, and universities, and including adult education leaders
• Identify common challenges and solutions and work together to enact those with policymakers and to implement best practices across our organizations
• Increase learning, achievement, and the attainment of degrees and high quality credentials among the people of Illinois, making all of our communities stronger and helping individuals achieve their personal dreams

Throughout that time period, leaders have come together for meetings each year and to undertake important tasks in workgroups that have led to state-wide results. Increasingly, Northern Illinois Regional P-20 Network staff have worked on specific curriculum & instruction projects in Central and Southern Illinois. Additionally, staff members have been involved in statewide research studies, and the Network provides important connections between practitioners and the development team for the statewide Illinois Report Card and Illinois Postsecondary Profiles websites.

As a result of these statewide efforts and in an effort to support all learners and all educational organizations across Illinois, we are excited to announce that moving forward, we will be the Illinois P-20 Network. We will continue to focus our efforts on supporting all learners and on initiatives that require collaboration across the various “levels” of education in Illinois. With this official expansion to a state-wide footprint, we hope to:

• ensure that high quality instruction and services are available in all schools and communities for learners of all ages
• collaborate with educators and organizations statewide to best leverage our collective knowledge and strengths
• share successes from across Illinois to spread those solutions widely and quickly to benefit students
• build upon the existing statewide research and data projects with which the Illinois P-20 Network has already been involved

To become involved in the P-20 Network, leaders in school districts, community colleges and universities, as well as other organizations, should simply subscribe to our free, every-other-week Illinois P-20 Network Newsletter.

If you have ideas regarding priority Areas of Focus for the Illinois P-20 Network and/or other comments, questions, or suggestions, please email the Illinois P-20 Network at p20network@niu.edu.

College Changes Everything (CCE) Conference

This year’s annual College Changes Everything^® (CCE) conference is being held virtually in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The online conference includes both recorded interest sessions and a schedule of live sessions over a two-week period with the first live event on July 22, 2020. 

To register for the live sessions and access the recorded session as your schedule permits, please visit the 2020 CCE conference website. 

Model Programs of Study Guides Released

As part of the Perkins V Plan in the State of Illinois, Model Programs of Study are being developed and articulated through specific guides for each program. Support for these efforts was provided by the Illinois Community College Board (ICCB), and leadership for the development and publication of these guides was led by Northern Illinois University’s Education Systems Center. Four guides have been released in the following areas: 

• Education
• Health Sciences & Technology
• Information Technology
• Manufacturing & Engineering

Each of these guides is available on the Model Programs of Study page of the Education Systems Center website. 

Additionally, public comment is open on the draft guides using this Model Programs of Study Guides Feedback Survey through August 28, 2020. 

The P-20 Network – Who we are collectively – June 2020

At the historic and unusual end of the 2019-2020 academic year, the P-20 Network decided to collect a small amount of demographic data and analyze the make-up of the Network based on who its students are as reported publicly via the Illinois Report Card and Illinois Postsecondary Profiles websites. This data is based on the numbers reported on those websites on June 30, 2020, which, to a large degree, is data from the previous school year (a year old). Nevertheless, it paints a relatively accurate picture of who makes up the P-20 Network. For this analysis, only data from school districts and postsecondary institutions from across the Network was studied as including the state agencies or other statewide organizations would naturally include all students and organizations across Illinois.

Overall, the P-20 Network currently includes organizations that serve over 700,000 students, and approximately half of them are served in school districts and half of them are served in postsecondary institutions.

Elementary & Secondary Students

Across the school districts that are engaged with the P-20 Network, there are 366,810 students. In general, the demographics of the P-20 Network mirror the State of Illinois with a few key differences.

The school districts that participate in the P-20 Network have an overall lower percentage of low income students (38%) than Illinois does statewide (49%) and a lower percentage of students whose families identify as Black (8.4%) than does Illinois (16.7%). There is also a higher percentage of students whose families identify as Asian across the P-20 Network school districts (9.4%) than there is across the entire state (5.1%). Not represented by this data is the fact that the school districts that currently make up the P-20 Network also represent a wide variety of communities, from smaller (in population), rural farming communities to urban centers to a wide range of suburban communities featuring many different types of housing and commercial areas. The range of careers that make up the communities represented across the P-20 Network is arguably as diverse as anywhere in the United States.

Despite these differences, the general diversity of students across Illinois is represented by the school districts across the P-20 Network, and regardless of comparisons, the students being served across these school districts represent a wide variety of backgrounds and experiences.

Postsecondary Students

As a result of the efforts of the Illinois Community College Board, the Illinois Board of Higher Education, and the Illinois Student Assistance Commission, the Illinois Postsecondary Profiles website offers a wealth of data about students in higher education in Illinois. This data is not aggregated statewide like it is in the Illinois Report Card, and there is not data included about how old students are or what their pathways to their current postsecondary experiences are. (For example, the question how many current community college students already have a Bachelor’s Degree? is not answered by this data.) Nevertheless, there are some important data points we can begin to track across the P-20 Network.

From even this brief data set, there are a number of important points for analysis. First, the percentages of full-time versus part-time students has significant implications for instruction, schooling, and supports. Most of the postsecondary institutions in the P-20 Network are community colleges (20 of the 25 postsecondary institutions), and the high number of part-time students is not new or uncommon in community colleges. Nevertheless, it is important information for programming and supports and ensuring advancement and degree completion. With regards to the race/ethnicity data points, the enrollment of postsecondary students across P-20 Network institutions closely reflects the demographic characteristics of the population of elementary and secondary students with Black students being underrepresented in postsecondary institutions in comparison to the percentage of the current K-12 student population statewide and with Asian students being represented at a higher percentage in postsecondary institutions than they are in the current K-12 student population statewide.

Overall, the P-20 Network is very diverse, and educational successes across the P-20 Network are successes that can likely be replicated across Illinois, the United States, and beyond.

Thank you to P-20 Network Graduate Research Assistant Sadia Qamar for the data collection and methodology work done that served as the foundation for this analysis.

Transitional English – Learn more and provide feedback

Over the course of the 2018-2019 school year, in collaboration with the Illinois State Board of Education, the Illinois Community College Board, and the Illinois Board of Higher Education, Education Systems Center led a committee of educators from school districts and postsecondary institutions in the development of the draft Course Parameters and Competencies for Transitional English. During this same period, the Illinois Community College Board awarded grants to support community colleges and school districts in beginning to develop and launch their Transitional English programs locally that would based their work on this statewide framework. The ICCB Transitional English Grant awardees represent a variety of institutions, geographic regions, and demographics throughout Illinois.

On June 2, 2020, Education Systems Center, the state agencies, and representatives of the Competency Development Group presented a statewide Transitional English webinar to provide background and explanation regarding Transitional English.

Educators and the public can provide feedback on the draft framework using this Transitional English Public Comment Survey through July 31, 2020.

The image below provides an outline of the process of moving from where it is today to full implementation.

At the time of the publication, the State of Illinois is in the left-most circle. Based on the feedback, there may be adjustments to the draft framework. Then, during Fall 2020, it is anticipated that the state agencies will review the course parameters and competencies and then adopt them. At that point, the work will shift to implementing the statewide portability panel in order to ensure that all students who are successful in Transitional English can be placed in the appropriate college English class across Illinois.

For more information, visit the Illinois Community College Board’s official Transitional English website.

Learn about Competency-Based Education

Join Education Systems Center for a webinar that highlights Competency-Based Education
June 23rd from 9 to 10.30 AM 

Competency-Based Education can provide a stronger foundation for providing deep, authentic learning opportunities for all students and for most appropriately challenge students as well as meeting individual academic and social-emotional needs. Competency-Based Education offers flexibility that can also support very strong implementations of Career Pathway Endorsements and a wide range of Dual Credit offerings.  

Over the past four years, dozens of Illinois school district have been implementing Competency-Based Education. As one of these superintendents recently said when referring to the shift to remote learning in March, 2020, “Being a Competency-Based district made the move to remote learning so much easier, and we were so much more effective with students as a result of the work we’d been doing.” The benefits of Competency-Based Education extend far beyond remote learning. The realities of remote learning have caused professionals across all kinds of fields to consider changes to their work. In the case of educators, one result of these reflective questions is a heightened awareness of and desire to learn more about Competency-Based Education. 

On June 23, 2020, our partners at Education Systems Center invite policymakers and practitioners to a webinar that will explore the opportunities remote learning provides to shift from traditional teaching and learning to more systemic personalized and competency-based approaches. Led by national experts, this session will provide a framework with entry points and next steps for pivoting to personalized instructional systems that meet students “where they are” and support them in moving forward as they are ready. Participants will also examine the challenges they have addressed implementing remote learning and consider how shifting to personalized, competency-based approaches can provide a useful framework for next school year and beyond. 

This session will be led by three national experts in personalized and competency-based approaches who are authors of the new book Deeper Competency-Based Learning: Making Equitable, Student-Centered, Sustainable Shifts: Rose Colby, Karin Hess, Ed. D, and Daniel Joseph. In addition, participants will hear directly from Illinois districts at the leading edge of implementing competency-based approaches through the state’s competency-based pilot. 

Following registration, participants will receive excerpts from Deeper Competency-Based Learning: Making Equitable, Student-Centered, Sustainable Shifts along with reflection questions to respond to in advance of the session. 

Register for the June 23, 2020 Shifts Happen: COVID-19 “disruptions” can offer new opportunities for moving toward personalization and competency-based approaches webinar 

Transitional English – Public Comment opens June 1st

Transitional English info is available for review now, and there are two upcoming webinars in which you can participate to learn more and ask questions!

Throughout the 2019-2020 school year, a statewide committee of educators representing school districts, community colleges, universities and state agencies came together to examine research and best practices and to develop competencies and course parameters for Transitional English to be offered to high school seniors throughout Illinois. Recently, the committee’s work was published in this draft Statewide Transitional English Course Parameters and Competencies document. Public comments will be collected between June 1, 2020 through July 31, 2020.

Information to login to each of the following webinars is being sent out to P-20 Network Newsletter subscribers on Friday, May 29th. If you do not currently receive the P-20 Network Newsletter, complete this short P-20 Network Newsletter Subscription Form before May 29th. After May 29th, for more information on logging in to these webinars, please contact Brooke Simon at the P-20 Network.

Introductory Webinar

On June 2, 2020, at 2.00 PM, Education Systems Center will be hosting a webinar to provide important background information regarding Transitional English.

Follow-Up Webinar – Brief Overview and Question & Answer Time

On June 9, 2020, at 2.30 PM, the P-20 Network and Education Systems Center will be jointly hosting a webinar to answer questions from practitioners about the proposed Transitional English Course Parameters and Competencies. Login information for the webinar is listed below. Organizations are also encouraged to submit questions about Transitional English ahead of time online.

Career Pathways Virtual Trailheads – Jocsan Martinez – Nuclear Power Plant Management

Since students cannot be engaging in face-to-face or on-site work-based learning experiences, we’re bringing people from a wide range of occupations to students remotely. These videos will allow students to learn about their work, the skills that are most important in their work, and to benefit from the advice that these professionals have to offer students.

In this Career Pathways Virtual Trailheads episode, we interview Jocsan Martinez, who is a civil engineer and shift manager for Exelon Corporation at the Byron Nuclear Power Plant in Byron, Illinois. The Byron Nuclear Power Plant can generate enough electricity each year to power over 2,000,000 homes, and Jocsan leads one of the teams that runs the plant’s main operations, which range from managing the layers of safety systems to performing important maintenance in order to produce power all day each day. Jocsan grew up in Chicago and attended Whitney Young High School before studying civil engineering at the Illinois Institute of Technology. An internship at the Byron Nuclear Power Plant led to his eventual full-time employment there and a unique 5-week rotating schedule that features 12-hour shifts.

As a civil engineer, Jocsan’s job is part of the Manufacturing, Engineering, Technology, and Trades Career Pathway.

In this video, Jocsan describes engineers and their work by saying, “We solve problems, and there are always problems to solve.” Additionally, while he stresses the importance of math and science skills, he emphatically states that “teamwork and communication are key” to success in his work.

Watch this Career Pathways Virtual Trailheads with nuclear power plant shift manager Jocsan Martinez.

To keep up-to-date as new Career Pathways Virtual Trailheads videos are released:

• Follow the P-20 Network on Twitter
• Subscribe to the P-20 Network YouTube Channel

P-20 Network Career Pathways User Group

The Postsecondary Workforce Readiness (PWR) Act created the Career Pathway Endorsements in Illinois. School districts across Illinois are increasingly exploring how they may offer Career Pathways Endorsements to students. As school districts navigate through implementing instruction aligned around the Career Pathways Endorsements, as a result of feedback with school leaders in a wide range of school districts across Illinois, the P-20 Network is launching the Career Pathways User Group.

The Career Pathways User Group directly builds on the central theme of the P-20 Network, the User Group is an opportunity for school districts to identify both challenges and solutions and to share ideas with one another to successfully implement Career Pathways Endorsements. The Career Pathways User Group is open to all school districts. User Group participants will be able to ask questions and share ideas with one another at any time, and there will be optional online meetings and sharing sessions led by User Group members to help one another spread best practices and problem solve how to overcome obstacles.

Sign-up to become a member of the P-20 Network Career Pathways User Group today.

June 2020 Administrator Academy Opportunities – Online

Each year, school administrators in Illinois are required to participate in at least one Administrator Academy professional learning workshop. Given the unprecedented and extraordinary efforts of educators throughout Illinois over the past two months, many administrators found their original plans to participate an Administrator Academy were unable to be completed. As the P-20 Network had already been developing a menu of Administrator Academies to offer for the 2020-2021 school year, we are excited to offer four online Administrator Academy workshops this June.

These workshops are being offered in conjunction with the DeKalb County Regional Office of Education and registration links for each online workshop are posted on the DeKalb County ROE Professional Development website under the June 2020. Of course, teachers are also invited to these professional learning sessions, and Professional Development Hours (PDHs) will also be provided to those attending who are not administrators. Each workshop only costs $124 per participant.

• June 10 – STEAMing it Up! Integrate science, technology, engineering, the arts and mathematics (STEAM) throughout the school (in conjunction with NIU STEAM) – Dr. Kristin Brynteson (Administrator Academy #3697)
• June 12 — Illinois Transitional Math: All students ready for postsecondary math courses in their field of study (in conjunction with NIU STEAM) – Dr. Kristin Brynteson & Dr. Jason Klein (Administrator Academy #3696)
• June 17 — How Data Demands Dual Credit for Everyone – Expanding Early College Options – Dr. Jason Klein (Administrator Academy #1895)
• June 24 – Postsecondary and Career Expectations (PaCE) Framework: Are Your Students On PaCE to Thrive? – Dr. Amy Jo Clemens & Dr. Jason Klein (Administrator Academy #1890)

The P-20 Network is also actively developing additional Administrator Academies that we look forward to offering in the near future during the 2020-2021 school year. For more information, please contact Jason Klein.