Dr. Jobi Lawerence: The only growing group of students in our school system across the country are English learners. Other groups of students are declining. So if we really want to have the next generation of leaders trained, it’s about our growing population of our multilingual learners. We can’t ignore that population.

We can’t allow them to not be college and career ready coming out of our schools. 

Mandi Morris: Welcome to the ML Chat podcast. I am co-hosting today with Justin Hewett. We had an incredible conversation with Joby Lawrence today. So fun to be here with you. Mandi, that was an awesome conversation. Dr. Lawrence has been a good friend of mine for a lot of years, and I have just been so impressed with Joby and everything that she’s accomplished for the years.

Justin Hewett: But it’s so fun to hear her story and how she built an ESL program. Out of graduating from university. She built an ESL department and then, and curriculum and whatnot. And then, all through to where she was, [00:01:00] the State Department title three director in Iowa, and now she’s working and doing so much at the national level with ELPA 21.

And anyways, I love this conversation. This was a lot of fun for me. 

Mandi Morris: Justin, something that really struck me throughout the entire conversation today was how humble. Dr. Lawrence is about the work that she’s done. She’s accomplished so much, but she still brought just such positive energy to all of her work, and with so much humility, constantly recognizing all of the people around her who have been a part of the lift, and that was really inspiring to me.

Justin Hewett: It really is. And she doesn’t make it about her. It’s about the work. It’s about the mission. And it was fun how she talked about different initiatives or different projects that she’s done through the years. She’s wanted to make sure that she built it in a way that it was gonna be sustainable and that it didn’t require her necessarily continuing it.

And I just think that’s a, you’re right. I think it’s a really humble way to approach it and just recognize like. The initiative or the project [00:02:00] is a lot more important than your role in it necessarily. And just being very mission driven that way. I’m so glad that I got to be a part of this conversation ’cause Joby is just, she’s really inspiring to me and I hope all of our listeners will enjoy it too.

Mandi Morris: I think that they will, today’s episode is a must. Let’s go. 

Dr. Joby Lawrence is a leader in education with over 30 years of experience supporting English learners and at-risk students. She is the director of product development and strategic partnerships at UCLA Crest supporting ELPA 21, and is also the CEO of kids count and re two. She has also served as the director of Title three and education program consultant for the Iowa Department of Education.

Dr. Lawrence has impacted the field of education through teaching, publishing, and grant writing at both the state and national level. Joby, welcome on the ML Chat podcast. We are so excited to have you here today. Awesome. Thanks so much for having me. It’s an honor to be here and to be able to have [00:03:00] this conversation with you.

Dr. Jobi Lawerence: I wanna just say before we get started, I’m here representing. Myself, my core values, my beliefs, all of the opinions that I’ll share today are my own, and I just want the audience to know that I’m not here representing my place of employment. 

Mandi Morris: Wonderful. Thank you. This is a very special episode because we not only have Joby, but we have Justin joining us here today as well.

Justin Hewett: No, my pleasure. I’m excited to be here. I couldn’t not be here with Joby today. Joby and I go back. We were counting the years, well over a decade when we worked together in Iowa, back when I was. A rep with Imagine Learning and driving all throughout Iowa to all the little towns and cities, and sometimes I’d end up on dirt roads and trying to figure out where I was going.

But Jovi, it has been so fun to work with you and through the years, I’m just so amazed at everything that you’ve done, not that you, not only that you did in Iowa, but that you’ve done since then and now your work on the national scene. It’s really fun to have you here on the ML Chat podcast. Yeah, and it’s always so good [00:04:00] to reconnect Jess.

Dr. Jobi Lawerence: I’m always so excited when we run into each other in a venue somewhere or just get a chance to catch up by phone. So obviously I’ve always been a big fan of your work and advocacy. So happy to be here and sitting with you and Mandi today. Thank you. I’ve learned so much from you. I’m excited for all of our listeners to be able to learn from you today too.

Mandi Morris: Thank you, Joby. You have so much experience and we are very excited to dig into everything that you’ve done and all the different parts and pieces of education that you have been a part of. But let’s start with today. What does the work look like that you’re doing now, and what, what does a day in the life look like for you?

Joby. Yeah, I’m just honored and thrilled to be at UCLA Crest supporting Alpha 21, which. For any of our listeners who don’t know, elbow 21 is an English language proficiency assessment collaborative with states from all across the country who use our assessment and our suite of resources that support the use of data that our members get from the assessments that we produce, like [00:05:00] our professional learning, our instructional resources.

Dr. Jobi Lawerence: So I, in my current role, I lead the development of all of our instructional resources. The development and delivery of our professional learning, and then I serve in my strategic partnership role, I serve as our member outreach support. Leader and support all of our states. So as our member states, as we grow, I help manage the growth of our collaborative with the executive director.

I also have an opportunity to work with states to see what kind of technical assistance they need and help to coordinate that. So really, I. It’s what I love about my job is it’s so varied day to day. It’s really, there’s no two days that are the same. So when you say the day in the life of what I love most about my job is no two days ever look the same.

I have a core portfolio of work, but it’s with so many different aspects and pieces that change day to day, but really being able to support states who are implementing data-driven and English language proficiency, [00:06:00] standards-based instruction. Anything to do with that. I’m your girl. I love hearing about the work that you’re doing right now.

Mandi Morris: So tell us a little bit more about ELPA 21. We know that there are various state language assessments across the country. They’re serving similar purposes and that they offer a screener, they offer a gateway out of ELD services. But tell us a little bit more about ELPA 21. What makes it special? How is it similar or different from other state language assessment?

Dr. Jobi Lawerence: That’s a great question. Oh, 21. If you ask me about differentiation of Veba 21, it’s really. We’re smaller in terms of the number of states that are part of our collaborative, which gives us a chance to allow all of the states that are members of all 21 to have a voice in the collaborative. All the decisions we make, it’s not that we have a subsection of our states that are part of a board, right?

We have the entire set of states that are part of a board. We have a. I would say we have a very four states, five states approach to decision making. When you’re a smaller [00:07:00] collaborative, you can be a little more fluid and nimble, so the types of changes that we can make with our assessment happen quicker.

I’m gonna give a shout out to UCLA, not because this. Means that I’m saying we’re better than any of the other assessment providers. That’s not really what I’m saying here, because I don’t think it’s a matter of being better or worse. It’s a matter of being different. And different states have identified what they want in an assessment, and that’s how they make a choice, right?

So it’s not that someone’s better than someone else, it’s what are you looking for and what are your hopes and dreams for this assessment? And then you find the provider that meets those needs, right? So I will say what I’m really proud of. At Alpha 21 is being part of UCLA Crest. We have access to world renowned psychometricians and statisticians and you can’t get a better group of folks to build an assessment than we have access to in our home.

So that’s something I’m always really proud of and I’m always in awe of. They’re just incredibly intelligent and good at what they do, and I think that helps our assessment be [00:08:00] extremely precise and like I said, being able to. Make the types of adjustments that we wanna make ongoing and continuing to iterate to keep improving.

And then something I’m just really proud of being a part of is in the last several years, we just were able to develop an alternative ELP assessment for our students who qualify for alt content assessments, who are also able to be identified as English learners and through the de development of that ALT ELP screener and summative assessment.

For the first time in history, we’ve been able to exit some of our students who have the most severe cognitive disabilities, and they’ve been able to show us what they know and can do with language through the accessibility of that assessment. So talk about a civil rights win. Being able to allow students to have that type of access to show their true language skills has been able to allow us, again, to exit students for the first time.

And that’s, for me, it’s such a big win and really. Being able to be part of [00:09:00] something that really does meet the civil rights obligations of students is something I’m so proud of 

Justin Hewett: that you should be. That is amazing. That is. So that’s something we’ve talked a lot about at Flashlight is trying to figure out how can we help districts identify, is this some sort of an ex exceptionality for a student or is this a language challenge and how can we approach this?

And so that is so cool. I, we’re gonna have to talk offline about that and go really deep, but maybe talk a little bit about how. States or how districts are using that? Is that something that a district works with? 

Dr. Jobi Lawerence: Yes. Under federal law, all states are required to adopt English language proficiency standards, and then they adopt the assessment that assesses those standards.

So the assessment has to be aligned to the state’s adopted standards, and then the state requires districts to use that assessment. So a hundred percent of English learners who have been identified as English learners have to be assessed annually. There is no like. Certain content assessments have percentages, like a certain number of students, and there’s a little bit of a gap [00:10:00] in who doesn’t have to be assessed if they’re gone or whatever.

But for ELP assessments, their law requires 100% participation every year for students who identify as English learners. And districts do have the requirement and obligation to assess using whichever assessment their state has procured, and they’re using that for accountability. They’re also using it to get information about.

Students’ performance. So they know how their programs are doing. They know where you know how to serve students moving forward based on how they’re scoring annually, they’re able to see their growth. So those assessments play a really key part in district’s service of our English multilingual learners.

Justin Hewett: That’s amazing. I love that. Thanks for telling us a little bit more, unpacking it. So is that available? Primarily, in the 11 states that are a part of the Alpha 21 

Dr. Jobi Lawerence: Yep. 

Justin Hewett: Consortium and, okay. 

Dr. Jobi Lawerence: Yeah. And we have a couple of states that are alt only states, so they’re using our alt, and those states are not using the general screener or summited, but they’re using the alt.

So [00:11:00] we have 11 states that are using the full system. And then we have a couple other states that are procuring just the alt. 

Justin Hewett: That is so cool. Good work. That is important work that needed to be done. Yeah. I 

Dr. Jobi Lawerence: can’t take credit. I’m just the messenger on that. Obviously I play, I played a very small role in the supportive development, but our assessment team is amazing.

Our psychometrics team, our research team, they really knocked it outta the ballpark with the alt for sure. And the changes we’ve been making to the summative and screener assessments. 

Justin Hewett: I love that. Psychometricians. For anybody that doesn’t know. Are people who are magicians with math, and that is, that’s where the ishin part comes in, is it’s, it has to do with magic actually, and math.

But they crunch numbers and analyze things, and they’re able to really understand the nuances of different data pieces and unpack it for people like, like us. So we can use it to inform instruction and we can use it to inform programmatic decisions and things along those lines. Super helpful ’cause that is really neat.

That’s fun to [00:12:00] understand and understand how different states are approaching it a little bit differently. How is that decision made Joby? Is that a decision that each State Department of Education just determines which ELP assessment they want to use. 

Dr. Jobi Lawerence: It really, and is, and states have procurement laws that they have to follow.

Most states are required. To let an RFP to make an assessment decision, and then vendors compete for those. And yeah, it is a state decision, but typically it’s really driven by the RFP and that RFP becomes the statement of their needs assessment, right? So they thought about what they need and what they, their hopes and dreams for this assessment.

And then that RFP captures all those things. So when different assessment vendors write towards that’s how they can make sure that the. The best person who matches all of their needs wins that contract 

Justin Hewett: does. Does that come up every five years or seven years, or 

Dr. Jobi Lawerence: states have different procurement cycles?

So it’s really, that is very much state specific. 

Mandi Morris: Joey, we love hearing about the work that Elwa is doing. The [00:13:00] AL assessment is such an incredible accomplishment. I was actually just meeting with a director last week and she was talking about her number, the number of students that had exited and was.

Really though focus and excited about a student that had exited on the el ALT assessment. And of course this wouldn’t have happened even a handful of years ago before it was released, so I’m really glad that you brought it up. It is such an incredible piece of work from Alpha 21. Very exciting. We wanna go back and talk some about you and how you got into this.

World of education. Justin, do you wanna take that question to bring us back? 

Justin Hewett: Yeah. I just wanna know where you started in serving multilingual students. I know you have such a passion for this work. It truly has become your mission in every sense and purpose, and I wanna know where that started. Like how did you get started on that track?

Dr. Jobi Lawerence: Yeah. You know what’s interesting is it really started with the life experience and growing up in a small rural town, a farming community in [00:14:00] Iowa. When we had a packing company that was bought by another company, they decided that they were going to de unionize. And in doing so, the workers that were working under the union were no longer interested in working under a non-unionized contract simply because the pay and all the benefits and everything changed drastically.

And so our workforce really changed overnight that summer, and we ended up with a really big influx of English learners. Specifically students from Mexico at the time, and I watched how the community. Unfortunately did not embrace the change. It was a big change, a very big change, and very quickly, and I think in hindsight, the company would’ve been well served to do a little bit of groundwork in terms of trying to make sure that their new employee base was welcomed in the community that had the services they needed.

But I watched this growing up in middle school [00:15:00] years, late elementary years. Kept thinking what is wrong with people? Like I look back now as an adult with a more mature understanding of what was going on, but at the time I’m just like, I’m appalled. Obviously I had family members, grandparents, for example, who just had never been exposed to diversity.

They’d never really gotten outside of, within whatever driving distance was to get groceries, right? They’ve never gone outside of Iowa, gone outside of rural. Iowa and so they just didn’t have an understanding, so there was a lot of fear of the unknown. Just, I don’t know, it was just, it was really hard to watch just how that community became divided.

Justin Hewett: I can imagine, all of those people who felt like their jobs have been stolen by these immigrants and by these people who are moving in and. And yeah I can imagine that would be difficult. And so you were exposed to that. You saw that happening 

Dr. Jobi Lawerence: and I said, this is not right. We are all human beings with the same basic [00:16:00] needs, and we should be treating each other with respect and getting to know one another, learning about each other, and embracing a new culture and just a new experience.

And I really. Wanted to see that from my communities. I went off to college and some of my really good friends were Spanish speakers. I started learning Spanish, just being really passionate about it because I had friends who spoke that as their heritage language and were learning English, so just helping make those connections for some of my friends that were Spanish speakers.

And then I went off to college and said, you know what? I’m gonna, I’m gonna get a teaching degree. My parents thought when I was born, I would either be an auctioneer or a lawyer. Because one, I talk really fast, so maybe an auctioneer was in my future or I liked to, they thought I liked to argue. I don’t know if that’s true, but I think because I had a very strong personality and a very strong sense of self back then, I came off as maybe a little argumentative to my parents, and so they thought I would be a lawyer.

Justin Hewett: You just had a point of view and you felt strongly about it. I [00:17:00] like it. 

Dr. Jobi Lawerence: Exactly. So I went off to college, got my elementary education degree at the University of Iowa, along with my ESL endorsement, and then. I, my principal at the, at Columbus Junction Community High School was there waiting for me to graduate and offered me a job to come back to Columbus Junction and start an ESL program because we did not have one.

Justin Hewett: I didn’t know you were from Columbus Junction. 

Dr. Jobi Lawerence: I was from Columbus Junction, Iowa. Born and raised. Yep. My dad still has a family farm there, still have really deep roots in Southeast Iowa. And then when I went back I was able to have an opportunity to start an actual. ESL program for students. So that language development piece, we didn’t have that program when I was there, and so that was just, for me, it was just a huge honor to be able.

To help be part of a solution to a problem that I had identified early on when I was there as a student myself. 

Justin Hewett: Yeah. You were a founder at, of the ESL team and department. You were a builder from the [00:18:00] ground up. How neat. I bet you learned so much going through that experience. 

Dr. Jobi Lawerence: Oh gosh. You know what?

Looking back now, I think, wow, I was so ill-equipped to do what I did. I just, obviously when you work from the heart, you and you do your best and your heart’s in the right place. You may not have all. The skill you need, but I had all the will I needed. And you can find the skill and you can find people to surround yourself with who have more talent than you and who have more knowledge and expertise than you.

And I worked really closely with area education agencies, so I think that’s something that really helped me be able to build a program. When I am 22 years old, like building a program from scratch, I really, I wasn’t qualified to do it, but also. I didn’t have a lot of competition. 

Justin Hewett: A lot of the great things that people do in their lives and accomplish are typically done when they don’t have the credentials to actually do it.

Dr. Jobi Lawerence: I’m definitely a builder everywhere I’ve gone. When I went to, when I went to William Penn, which was like the next step after my K 12, then I ended up building the ESL endorsement program there. They didn’t have one. Then I went to, you know what I’m saying? It’s just [00:19:00] like my story is pretty much. Second verse.

Same as the first everywhere I went. Oh, it is 

Justin Hewett: like you’ve been a builder from the jump 22 years old, building an ESL program from scratch in a district that’s never had it before. And. I just, I love that I can totally see that thread throughout your whole career that you have been a builder and you know what?

The world needs builders like. We need builders who are willing to step up and, try and do something that maybe hasn’t been done before, and they don’t even know how they’re gonna do it, but they’re gonna figure it out and just have some faith and trust in themselves and in other people that they’re gonna be able to make their way through it.

I think every new teacher to some degree. Has to be a little bit of a builder because they jump off this thing. They really they have no idea what they’re doing. Even if they’ve been trained, even if they’ve done their, they’ve helped co-teach some classes and stuff as they go through university and whatnot.

They get in that classroom and it’s just them and 30 kids and they’re like, oh, here we go. So I think that’s, I think your parents were right that. You [00:20:00] were meant to, whether it was an auctioneer or a lawyer. I like the idea of being a builder, but a builder who, a builder of ideas, a builder of of a mission.

And I think that’s, it’s neat to see how much of an impact you’re having through a lot of those pieces. And so where did you go after Columbus Junction, after you built that ESL department? Like how long were you there and then where did you know, where did your. Take you from there. 

Dr. Jobi Lawerence: When I left the classroom in Columbus Junction, I took a job at Muscatine.

So the changes in my career path really all happened at the beginning because at the time my kid’s dad was. In law enforcement. And so when he would get a different job or promotion, I would follow him. So it wasn’t that I was ever looking to leave any position, it was just that he took a job that then I needed to find a job where we were.

’cause it moved him around. It moved us all over the state. 

Justin Hewett: Yeah. Muscatine that took you to the other side of the state then. 

Dr. Jobi Lawerence: So I went, yeah. So then I ended up in Muscatine and I got a chance to teach in a, which was so awesome. It was [00:21:00] under a Title VII grant back. This really ages me because Title VII hasn’t been around for a while as a title, but I was able to teach in a Title VII grant with a co-teaching model before co-teaching was even.

A thing. It was even, it wasn’t even cool back then, but I was co-teaching K five in a Spanish English bilingual program under a Title VII grant. And to your point earlier, I learned the absolute most about effective teaching in co-teaching environments because I got to see K five teachers every day doing it different.

And meeting the needs of kids in different ways, and I learned so much being a co-teacher in those classrooms. And so I just wanna say thank you to everyone who’s ever mentored me in any position I’ve ever had, because our mentors really do. It’s life changing for you to have great mentors in your life.

I was in Muscatine until, at the time again, my husband took another job, and then we moved to Ottumwa, Iowa. And when we moved there, unfortunately it pulled me out of a contract midyear, which is very difficult in [00:22:00] education contract world. You can’t just find another job midyear. So it was like November and I thought, what am I gonna do for a semester until I can get into a teaching job for the next fall?

So then I applied to adjunct at a small university, a small private university, not school Iowa, so William Penn University. I thought I’ll do this for a semester. So I picked up three or four classes in the spring. And again, Remi, remember I’m like 27 years old. I’m still. Way too young to be a professor, right?

Justin Hewett: You were too young to realize you were too young to be a professor. And you know what? It’s probably good because who, you wouldn’t take all those risks if you really thought like about who should be doing it and whether or not you’re qualified. And you probably realized there really wasn’t a risk.

Dr. Jobi Lawerence: I, you know what? I fell in love with higher education. I really, I thought it was just gonna be a filler for me for a semester to keep my foot in the profession while I was waiting for teaching contracts to open up and start applying. But I got into higher education. I absolutely fell in love with teacher training, administrator training, and so I spent the next 13 years at William Penn University and was really [00:23:00] fortunate to be able to develop.

ESL endorsement program at the university because they did not have one. And then again, back to this idea of doing things before, things were cool. Iowa had, we used to call it the ICN, it’s a fiber optics, closed fiber optics network, which was maybe the first foray into distance learning before. Now it’s all internet based, right?

And all cloud based. So I started this endorsement because in school is Iowa, you’re not gonna have enough students who want and need it in our education program to, to sustain it, to make it something that could pay for itself. So we built the program as a distance learning program and started providing ESL endorsements to content teachers and folks who wanted to be EL specialists across the state, in addition to our own undergrad students who were there on campus.

And I wanna just say I’m so proud of that program because we wrote, that was my first experience with National Professional Development program grants. We wrote, I wrote two. Hoped to maybe get one, but thought our shots were, our shot was so long, it was such a long shot for us. Small private [00:24:00] institution in the middle of Iowa who thinks we even have a population to wanna provide funding, but we got both grants in that.

Wow. So we had a good amount of resources to develop this program and to fund scholarships for folks all over the state. So just again, really proud of the fact that program is still working today. So it’s just, it’s a testament to not just building something but building something sustainable that doesn’t become person dependent.

And I’ve really been very like, aware of making sure that if I’m part of being lucky enough to develop something to make sure it’s not about me, that it can’t be relying on me because it’s never gonna sustain if it’s about the person who. It or innovates it. It’s gotta be something that can sustain when you leave.

So I’m so proud of that program. Gosh, almost so 23 years later, it’s still certifying teachers in Iowa. 

Justin Hewett: And why is it a [00:25:00] little extra special for you right now? 

Dr. Jobi Lawerence: It’s really extra special for me now because my youngest son is a student in the program and going to get his teaching license from William Penn University.

So it comes full circle, right? Who would’ve ever known? It is so cool. 

Justin Hewett: That is amazing. That is so cool. So you unexpectedly end up spending 13 years doing this where you had previously you had been loving your work in the schools and working with kids and doing this. Yes. But did you see this as an opportunity once you got in there, you thought you were just gonna be there for a semester or something?

Yeah. But once you got in there, did you realize that this was gonna give you an opportunity to. Almost have a broader impact or what was it that kept you there instead of getting back into another teaching another school position? 

Dr. Jobi Lawerence: You, I think you know me almost too well, Justin. ’cause you pretty much took the words outta my mouth.

I’ve always been, my entire life, as I mentioned early on, just I’m here representing my core values and just what fuels me every day. And it really is about making an impact. [00:26:00] I’m just gonna say this and maybe it’s gonna be something that. We have to be edited, but no one goes into education to make money.

They go into education to make a difference. If they go in to make money, they don’t stay too long as they realize it’s not about the money, right? We’re never gonna get rich in education, but we get rich in so many ways in terms of the lives that we change, the stories of students that we get to help.

Them build and write. And that’s always been what fuels me is every role I’ve ever taken has had to give me a chance to make a bigger impact or I wouldn’t have left the job I was doing. 

Justin Hewett: That is, that really resonates with me. And especially knowing you, it, it especially resonates ’cause I’ve witnessed that, I’ve been able to see that.

And so I have an idea of where you went after William Penn after those 13 years, but what was next? What was the bigger. Opportunity to have a broad, bigger, broader impact potentially. 

Dr. Jobi Lawerence: So the Iowa Department of Education had an opening for the Title iii, an immigrant fund director. [00:27:00] So I was able to apply and secure that position, and then I was able to help lead the work in the state of Iowa for our English learners and immigrant students.

And I will say again. Had I known what I know now, I don’t know if I would’ve applied for that job because I went into a position where Iowa had 13 citations from a prior federal visit that we were still trying to clean up as a state, and then we were. Next on the list for a state that was gonna be visited my first year.

But my program officer called, and luckily I had worked with a lot of the program officers at the US Department of Education through the grant programs that I was directing. So I had a chance to get to know the OLL, the Office of English Language Acquisition staff really well. And she called and said, Hey, welcome to the job.

We’re so excited you’re there. You’re gonna be so great. And I was up for a visit and I was like, oh. And she goes, but, and I swear to you these are her words, she said, we’re gonna give you a stay of [00:28:00] execution for one more year. And we’ll come next year to give you a chance to get your feet on the ground.

So I start digging in and realize, yes, we have 13 citations. There’s no way to get those cleaning up citations at the state level. It’s not an overnight thing. You’re talking about policy rewrites. You’re talking about sometimes things you’ve gotta get a lot of folks on board with. You’re talking about task force.

I realized pretty quickly when we had our next visit, it was not gonna go well and we ended up with 17 more. So we had a total of 30 citations to clean up, and I was at the department for almost six years, and by the time I left, all the citations were completely cleared. 

Justin Hewett: What are you kidding? That’s amazing.

Dr. Jobi Lawerence: But listen, I can’t take any credit for that because again, as I mentioned, no one individual at any state Department can make those things happen. It was a collaboration of our area education agencies. We had a task force that we put together that was representative of every stakeholder, from policymakers to funding folks to [00:29:00] parents, to students, to everybody, right?

So we rolled up our sleeves, brought all the people that needed to be around the table together and said, what is our hope and dream for the state? What do we want this to look like? We have the chance to rewrite policies. We have the chance to make some things different. We have an actual mandate to make them different.

Hey, you know what? We got the stick on our side. We can do some things here that maybe folks weren’t necessarily inclined to do, but now you know what? Let’s use this to our advantage to really do the things that we wanna do on behalf of our English learners and their families and the immigrant students we serve, and we got to work, and almost my entire tenure at the department was really making sure that we were getting things right for our kids and getting us back into compliance.

Like I said, when I went, I had no idea that was gonna be what I was doing. I just, I got in there and I was like, wow, this is what I’m gonna be doing. But looking back, I learned again, like I learned so much because I didn’t have a policy background. 

Justin Hewett: Yeah. 

Dr. Jobi Lawerence: I hadn’t been reading legislation my whole life.

I’m coming from higher [00:30:00] education. I’m coming from a classroom and I will say, shout out to state education agency folks. It is one of the toughest jobs you’re ever gonna do because everyone at the district level goes, you can make it better. And everyone at the federal level’s going. Good luck with that.

’cause there’s all these other things. You’re stuck in the middle of what you have to do federally, what you wanna do for your districts, and then you’re also stuck in the middle of politics. You don’t just get to do all the things that you think you want to do. There’s just a lot of guardrails and barriers to doing state education agency work, and you get new administrations coming in every few years and they have political agendas.

And you’re subject to all that. You gotta navigate all of that. So huge shout out. If you know anyone that works at a state education agency, reach out to them and thank them for their work. It is grueling work. It is pretty thankless work and I just, like I said I’m really proud of colleagues that are still fighting that good fight at the state level.

And I felt good about the work that we were able to do collaboratively when I was there at Iowa. 

Justin Hewett: Yeah, reach out to them, appreciate [00:31:00] them, thank them. And then go give them a hug. So Joby Iowa is a little bit unique because we had, back then there was the area education agencies, and so you had Title three coordinators in each of these agencies that each worked with somewhere between 15 and 40 or 50 school districts and helped them administer those EL programs.

And I know that aas are evolving and changing and disbanding to a large degree. I think you might have an opinion on that. I know I do. But I would love to hear if you have anything you want to share about that, but also I’d love to understand what those citations work, what you know. Of these 13 or 17.

Obviously we can’t get through all of ’em, but can you give us an example of what that might be? 

Dr. Jobi Lawerence: So with Title three monitoring, there’s this big, long checklist of things they’re looking for. That mean you’re in compliance with the laws. I’ll give you just a few examples. We didn’t have consistent standardized entrance and exit procedures across the state.

Meaning some states were using one screener, or sorry, some districts were using. A certain screener, [00:32:00] and then other districts were using another one, which meant it really depended on what district you’re in, whether or not you may or may not have gotten identified. So that was a big one that we needed to clean up.

We also had citations around certification teachers that were teaching and being responsible outside of EL endorsements. So districts who were not. Staffing appropriately. Like the head English learners being served by a paraeducator who doesn’t have a license at all, for example, or a content teacher who doesn’t have their ESL endorsement was delivering the lead program.

We had a citation for parental engagement. We just weren’t. Just plain and simple. We just weren’t, we weren’t engaging parents, and so that was a citation that we were working to clean up. We also had to take a good, hard look at our funding mechanism just to make sure that as we were looking at weighted funding that we were, we had an opportunity to consider students who were coming in at different levels of proficiency so that we could maybe give.

Newcomer students, a little higher weight than students who were coming in like [00:33:00] level four, getting almost ready to exit. So we had an opportunity to look at equity in terms of funding. So we did that. Gosh, I’m trying to think. So many. 

Justin Hewett: That’s great. That’s really helpful to just try and understand as a Title three director at a state level, what are some of the citations, what are.

Systemic issues or systematic issues that you know that you’re trying to adjust in the state to make sure that hopefully when students show up, they’re getting a certain level of experience, a predictable experience, depending on no matter which district they’re in, as long as they’re in your state or they’re in the nation.

Yeah. That’s really interesting. 

Mandi Morris: Joby. I worked at a district level, so I was on the other side of the Title three compliance. When our version of you, when it come to district level and say, we’re doing our look fors and finding where are you in compliance and not in compliance, and having gone through that process, it was very eye-opening.

Really puts districts in the space where they have to look at [00:34:00] areas where they do need improvement, like parent engagement. So when you’re going through that list, I’m remembering back like all the evidence we had to provide of what we were doing in each one of the different parts. And I’m just trying to imagine the weight of that job because you are doing that communication, like you say, really a middle person in a sense, and then having to go back and manage it.

From all of those different districts. I wonder, what did it mean for you, having grown up in the state, started your career in the state? What did it mean for you to have that opportunity to sit at the table and say, here we are. We get to make some changes. Let’s look at it as an opportunity to build what we wanna build.

Dr. Jobi Lawerence: Yeah. It meant everything to me, being able to do that work and to have, the ability to not only have my own voice at the table, but to provide so many other people with a voice at the table who would not have had one otherwise. And then back to that. A challenge of being the [00:35:00] person who has to deliver the news to the districts who has to go in and help have those challenging conversations.

Sometimes. I was really lucky I was a grow your own in every sense of the word. I was a grow your own teacher. In my first district that I taught in, I was a sort of grow your own person at the State Department because I had a chance through our grant programs to work with. One of the grants I wrote when I was at William Penn was called Project Power Up.

It was aimed at school leaders, recruiting school leaders, making sure they spent two and a half years as a cohort training around EL best practice so that they could coach around it, they could lead around it. They knew what it looked like, sound like, and felt like in practice. And they picked three teachers, three content teachers to be part of their team as part of the grant.

And it really helped me build relationships across the state with so many districts. So I went into my role at the department. As someone that already had solid relationships with districts, which made those conversations a little easier because they knew me, right? So I wasn’t coming in as like an outside [00:36:00] person.

What do you know and why are you here? And I was welcomed in for the most part. I wasn’t like, the conversations were always like easy to have, but I also had an open door and a seat at their table to have those conversations. So that collaboration and relationship building is key. I got really lucky.

Because I got a chance to build it before I was at the State Department, before. My state colleagues, if there’s a piece of advice I’d offer them, get out there and build relationships. Have the good conversations before you have to have the tough conversations. So I had a chance to have so many really great conversations and really positive conversations with districts that then I had to sit down with and have some tough conversations that meant they’re gonna have to reallocate funds that they didn’t really wanna put somewhere, or that maybe they were gonna have to make some hard decisions with staffing that they.

We’re gonna not get a lot of school board support behind. So there were just things I had to help them think through. But I think because we had a relationship where there was a lot of trust already built, we were able to navigate those conversations and they ended up turning out the way they needed to for students and [00:37:00] families.

Mandi Morris: So after six years at the state level, where do you go next From there? What’s your next stepping on your journey? 

Dr. Jobi Lawerence: Yeah, the obvious next place. So I ended up being fortunate to direct the National Clearing House. For English language acquisition. So I was able to lead the Sela work at the national level.

So again, if you look at like the next place where you can make a bigger impact would be the national lens, being able to work with different states, different partners. So I got a chance to work really closely with the Office of English Language Acquisition in the US Department of Education in my role as a director of Sela.

So that was something, again, just talk about a steep learning curve and something that I got a chance to get into and dig into and just learn so much about. The federal policy level right too, and what’s going on, and all of the mechanisms that provide opportunities or challenges for federal level work around our English Center population.

Mandi Morris: I’ve talked to other career women and often you have that conversation of, oh man, I heard this person on the [00:38:00] podcast and they’ve accomplished so much, and I’m having a little bit of that feeling right now. And Jovi, I’m like, you accomplished so much and you have three kids. And I’m just wondering from a perspective of having been a working mom and you were, it sounds like you were always pushing yourself too.

The next thing, the not afraid to take risks. Not afraid to try something new, to put yourself out there. I’m just curious, what’s your philosophy around that? How have you continuously with you have such positivity and energy around the work that you’ve done? I would, I just would love to hear you speak to that.

Dr. Jobi Lawerence: Yeah. So to all the working moms out there, like just, yeah, shout out. It’s not easy. It’s not easy because a lot of the roles that you play in a leadership role, they’re not nine to fives. Their long days or weekends or travel. I will say, shout out to my three boys. They have been tremendously supportive because they got drug along with lots of things I was doing.

If we were running a [00:39:00] conference, Justin and I talked about this earlier, if we had a state conference, they were there handing out flyers and doing the boxes and helping with lunches, and so I really involved them in a lot of the work. I was able to take them to a number of the professional learning opportunities I had.

They got a chance, and if you talk to them today, they would probably tell you. They thought of it less as an opportunity at the time, but I think looking back they see the value. I got a chance to go to Spain for a summer and it was a, an opportunity to work with. So I taught in the morning. In a Spanish English immersion program in Spain in the morning.

And then in the afternoon we did professional development with the teachers. So we would model teach in the morning, and then they would, we would do training in the afternoon. I was gonna be gone for almost a month, so my kids had to go with me. And so they got a chance to be in the summer school and they, for the first time, were the language learners.

They were the ones who, yeah, so we went on a field trip and all the, it was like to the NASA space center, and it was all in Spanish. And my kids had no [00:40:00] clue what was going on. So it really, I’m telling you, it was such a great experience at the time. They really, they would tell you they didn’t like it ’cause they were very uncomfortable.

It was one of those experiences that puts you out of your element completely. But now looking back, I know they would all say it really was a good experience for us to get that kind of insight that you can only get by being immersed in the feeling of how it feels to be. A student who doesn’t have the language, who doesn’t have the friends who sometimes is feeling somewhat ostracized.

And so I got a chance to help my kids experience that. But I really think being a working mom was really about making sure you don’t lose sight of your priorities, but also being in education, it was an opportunity for me to involve my kids in a lot of ways and things I was doing right. So I feel fortunate that way They got a chance to travel with me.

I got a chance to experience things and be part of things like it or not. That’s how I navigated being a working mom. 

Justin Hewett: Jovi. That is just so cool that your kids were able to watch you do your work and they were able to see what, how hard mom worked [00:41:00] and they were able to see you pursuing this mission and doing this important work while also being mom to them.

And loving them and being there for them, and I just, I think that’s quite remarkable. I appreciate you sharing that. Talking to that a little bit. I would love to, to shift gears a little bit and just think, can you have such a unique perspective? From the classroom in Columbus Junction to the State Department and or to creating an EESL endorsement program at William Penn to working at the in program and policy in the State Department of Education in Iowa to now everything that you’ve been doing these last number of years on the national scene.

Right now we’re in a unique time where it feels like our, the students that we are also passionate about serving our multilingual students. Many of whose families have immigrated here and frankly, even more who were born here in the United States, but it feels like they, they are, there’s some risks to what you know of change to what this looks like as we [00:42:00] serve our multilingual students across the nation.

Is this a storm that’s just gonna pass? Is this gonna drive real change? Like how do what kind of an impact is all of this rhetoric and some of these politics gonna end up happening on. On our funding landscape and our policy landscape and our ability to actually meet the needs of these students and their families.

Dr. Jobi Lawerence: That is such a great question. And again, just coming back to this from my personal and professional perspective, I wanna speak from, just from that viewpoint. The opportunities that we have are to, in some ways, the need for advocacy is so strong right now. So the opportunity where maybe in the past it’s you just, you’re cruising along, things are going well, you’re in compliance.

Just remember, compliance guys is the lowest bar. Compliance is like the bare minimum we should be doing for our students, right? Like districts that are getting it right are far above compliance. They’re working with a mindset that these students bring huge assets to our schools [00:43:00] and communities. They’re the future of not just our economy, they’re the future of our.

Security. Honestly, if you think about what it means to be bilingual, being bilingual is not lost on me. That it’s just about the nice of being able to. Stay connected with your family from your second generation grandparents. That’s an important piece, an absolutely important piece. And that’s probably the main piece is that we wanna focus on education is just not losing their language and culture and their identity.

But outside of that, we’re very shortsighted as a country to not understand that we are one of the only countries that doesn’t graduate students from high school. Bilingual trilingual or more, right? So if we want, even if we’re self-serving as a country in terms of economic success, in terms of military security, even if we’re just self-serving in that way.

We would be focused on making sure, yes, all of our students spoke English fluently, but they also spoke another language fluently when they graduated. [00:44:00] So a little soapbox here, and I apologize, but this is where this is gonna go. I’m just gonna warn you guys out front. And that concerns me that we are in a time and place where we’ve gotten so shortsighted on the value of bilingualism and multilingualism.

At the federal level. Okay. That doesn’t mean though, listen guys, like I’ve been at the federal level, I’ve been at the state level. I’ve been at the district level. Just because the federal government is no longer saying I have to do a certain thing a certain way, if I rescind the Dear Colleague letter, that doesn’t change the laws.

It only changes the fact that the federal government is not dedicating resources to monitoring the laws that way they’re not. Putting resources towards interpreting the law to tell you how to implement it in practice, that doesn’t mean that the states and districts no longer have the same obligations to their students and families that they had.

When that Dear Colleague Letter was guiding our day-to-day practice, that’s what the Dear Colleague letter was. It was just guidance. It was guiding our practice. So I think a lot of [00:45:00] what’s happening at the federal level with executive orders and rescissions of things, it’s sending a message about. How the current administration feels about education and about our students.

But that doesn’t mean it has to change how I feel. You feel the school leaders feel, the community members feel. You’re not prohibited from doing exactly what you’ve been doing two years ago, right? So I really hope that people will take this as an opportunity to do the right thing because it’s the right thing to do, not because someone’s telling you to do it.

Just because a police officer isn’t following me down the highway every single day to make sure I don’t speed or that I don’t drink and drive just ’cause they’re not there watching me doing what I’m supposed to be doing. ’cause it’s the right thing to do. I do it because I don’t wanna kill somebody. I don’t wanna hurt somebody.

I don’t wanna get in an accident like same thing with our English learners, just because no one is saying I’m coming out next year to monitor you. Because there’s maybe not federal funding to come out and monitor, or just because I’m saying the dear colleague letter’s not [00:46:00] something we’re gonna resource anymore.

They’ve actually, the federal government is actually now saying to the states and the districts, it’s on you. You guys need to do this and you need to be responsible for making sure these things are happening. So I’m concerned about the funding in the sense of when there’s not enough funding, even districts that wanna do the right thing, states that wanna do the right thing.

There’s only so much resource to go around, so I’m concerned about the funding piece the most. I am less concerned about the rhetoric because I think so many of our school leaders and teachers where the magic’s happening with kids are doing it because it’s the right thing to do. They weren’t doing it because the law was coming in and monitoring that they were doing it.

Now, having said that. If everybody just did the right thing because it’s the right thing to do, we wouldn’t have needed all those laws in the first place. We wouldn’t have had any of those laws. So I don’t wanna be Pollyanna in terms of thinking that everybody’s out there, altruistically just doing the right thing for all of our students.

But at the same time, I wanna just say the biggest concern I have is [00:47:00] around not getting the funding we need to resource our programs well, because that is where districts who do wanna do the right thing have to make really hard choices and if there’s only so much money, right? And so when you only get so much money, then that becomes where I think certain students are not gonna get all their needs met.

And that’s where it comes down to advocacy. And we need to be advocating for our English learners and multilingual learners, bigger, bolder, louder than we ever have because a lot of times their parents aren’t. Either they don’t know how, they’re not sure where they don’t have the language. There’s so many barriers to them being able to advocate for their own children that we have to step up as a global and national community.

For our English learners and our multilingual learners in our states and in our communities. So I just wanna encourage every listener to figure out what can I personally do? What am I able to personally control right now? And get out there and do it. Because we all need to do something. We can’t just sit idle and hope someone else is gonna do it right now, funding’s the biggest thing.

Call your [00:48:00] elected officials. We have midterm elections coming up. Make sure they’re voting on the floor the way you want them voting on behalf of our students. Make sure they’re getting funding for our kids, and if not, vote them out of office and find someone that will. This is the fastest group you guys.

This is something else that we need to talk about. The only growing group of students in our school system across the country are English learners. Other groups of students are declining. So if we really want to have the next generation of leaders trained, it’s about our growing population of our multilingual learners.

We can’t ignore that population. We can’t allow them to not be college and career ready coming out of our schools. 

Justin Hewett: You’re exactly right. That’s a drum I beat a lot as well. Is it, is the growing population. There’s two things here, Joby, that really stuck out to me from what you share. I’m excited to go back and listen to all of that, to be honest with you because it just really resonated with me so much and appreciate you sharing that.

But number one, first and foremost, that time now is a time for advocacy. Now is a time that we need to be. [00:49:00] Using our voices. We need to be writing letters and notes, and we need to be talking to our congressmen and doing those type of things. I think that really resonates with me and I think it’s time for all of us to do that, not just expect that someone else is going to do that.

And then the second piece was just what you mentioned about compliance being the minimum expectation. And I think a lot of times people think of this is what we are supposed to do for our English learners. No, that is the minimum. That you should be doing for your English learners, for your multilingual students.

There’s a lot more we can do and that you should do and that you can do. Let’s get to it. I know, Mandi, I know something a lot of that resonated with you as well. 

Mandi Morris: Yeah. It really brought me back to the conversation we were having earlier where you talked about when you were at the state level, the conversations were easier because you already had the relationship built, and that made me think about the Title three funds versus Title one funds and how those departments can have siloed.

Experiences, depending on the school [00:50:00] district where you work, and we talk to people. I talk to admin where it’s, oh, forget it. We’re over here on our own island. If we don’t have our own funds, nobody’s gonna come and work with us. And then there’s that other extreme where. You have interdepartmental communication and collaboration and funds are shared and the student is perceived as these are all of our students.

I would love to hear you speak some to that Joby thinking forward, and what advice could you give to school districts that are out there and saying, Hey, I’m doing everything that I can, but I feel so alone, and with the funds being depleted for Title three, I don’t really know what to do next. 

Dr. Jobi Lawerence: Yeah, I would say find your network, reach out to the State Department and see if they have listservs of Title three consultant meetings that you can join the national conversation.

So become a member of nabe npa. The places where there are opportunities to come together through [00:51:00] webinars, through, you know. These types of podcast opportunities, but you need to connect outside of your district there. There’s never been a time that’s more important than now that you extend your network.

We need a lot of support. I think what’s going on right now, to your point, it’s incredibly destabilizing emotionally in so many ways. Everybody’s just in living in very uncertain times, and that makes it really hard. To stay focused on the right work, right? Because there’s so much distraction and so much noise.

So build your network, find your tribe, work together, support one another. We’re in this together, and you know what? Together we can be so strong individually, it feels so isolating. But if you can find a group of folks in your community, this surrounding community, the neighborhood schools, and start meeting on a regular basis and talking about what you can do together, I do think it’s gonna take all of us really engaging our personal networks.

To be able to support one another in a way that we can stay grounded for our students and families. Because if we can’t stay emotionally [00:52:00] stable, how do we expect our kids and our families to stay grounded in and focused on the right things? So I think that’s a big thing, is just supporting each other.

And sometimes I feel like I have colleagues that’ll call, and I’m not gonna mention names, but I have to talk ’em off the ledge. They’re just so distraught. They just are thinking about getting out of education altogether. They’re just. The anxiety level’s so high, right. But I try to focus on, like I said, the things that I personally know I can do.

And then I personally know I have colleagues that can do other things. And I just am really working on engaging my network of folks who bring different areas of expertise to the table and have different connections. And I have to really start leveraging every conversation we can have with anyone who gets a vote in this.

And I’m just gonna say, I’ve been so privileged. We’re so privileged to be here today. We have microphones, we have opportunities to have conversations that a lot of our families and a lot of our community members don’t have. When you’re given that opportunity, you need to take full advantage of it because not everyone [00:53:00] has the opportunity we have.

We don’t. When we just have a voice and a network and an opportunity to have these conversations, not everyone gets to have. So I feel really privileged and when I have the chance to have the microphone, I never forget that it’s an honor and it’s also an obligation. 

Justin Hewett: Amazing message. Jovi, it was such an honor to have you here.

Come and join us. So fun to be able to spend this time with you and talk through your journey. no surprise that you’re having the impact that you are today and that you know that you’re sitting where you are and engaged in this work. I’m just, I’m excited to see where we go from here. And so I’m grateful that we have leaders like you that are advocating for our students and in our system to be able to serve.

Our multilingual learners and their families and make sure we’re giving them what they need to build their future to hopefully go live their American dream, if you will. What a, what an honor to have you here, Joby. 

Dr. Jobi Lawerence: Oh my gosh. It’s so good to be here and so good to have this conversation and I know we’ll stay in touch, Justin.

’cause no matter how much time passes, we always find a way to reconnect. 

Justin Hewett: That’s right. That’s right. 

Mandi Morris: [00:54:00] Thank you so much. This has been such an honor to have the conversation with you today.