Adult education resources

There are a number of ways of providing students with information about CSM:

• Send them to the Why Take CSM? page in this website
• We will be providing regular general introductions to CSM webinars which they could come to. See these on the Events page.
• If you're marketing to students, we have a Resources for Participant Organizations webpage with some flyer suggestions and other marketing materials that can get you started -- they're in PowerPoint and easy to customize for your needs.

You are very welcome (encouraged!) to contact us if you have any questions or requests for materials that would be helpful.

Organizations

Note that there may be people from local organizations coming to you -- employers, community organizations, workforce development (e.g. apprenticeship) programs, colleges, cities or counties, etc. Excel Together West Virginia will be placing digital ads, doing public relations, and presenting to various groups. In most cases, we are directing them to contact us, but they may find your contact information as a local provider.

Depending on who is contacting you, you can look at the corresponding page under the "For Organizations" menu above, or feel free to either contact us or refer the organization to us.

Most adult education programs use results from the TABE test in order to direct students into different programs, with the goal that each student can be successful at their program. With CSM, we use a slightly different approach:

• The student's math and literacy in their native language
• Their English language proficiency
• Their self-efficacy, drive, motivation, persistence and other "soft" factors.

In general, students with 4th grade math/literacy skills (NRS level 3 or better) can earn a CSM Certificate, given self-efficacy, time, and coaching. However, this should not be taken too literally -- there are many reasons, for example, that students might not do well on a TABE test -- test anxiety, illness, unfamiliarity with the format, etc. If a student seems sufficiently interested and driven, you may start them on CSM provisionally and monitor their progress and whether they "bond" with the program.

The CSM Certificate comes with concrete, useful benefits: college math credit and hiring preferences from employers. You should at some point read the Using the CSM Certificate page, and send students to it when they have completed CSM.

If your students are still having trouble using their CSM Certificate either for college credit or for hiring preferences, please contact us at hello@exceltogetherwv.org - we would like to konw now about any challenges your studetns face so that we can remove them for other future students!

In general, Excel Together West Virginia is doing a comprehensive attempt at getting the best college credit for CSM Certificate holders, but there are too many employers for us to reach all of them. If there are any employers in the region that you would specifically like for us to reach out to, we will do so on request. Note that in many cases some of the largest employers aren't the large manufacturing or construction companies, or even healthcare/hospitals, but rather schools, colleges, and city and county governments.

Especially in more rural locations, "people know people" and if you personally know managers in companies who might be interested in hiring CSM graduates, please contact us!

Almost all students will benefit from having a CSM Coach, and they get the greatest benefit if their coach has gone through our professional development course. This course is self-paced, online, free, and typically takes about 4-6 hours to complete.

More information about coaching is available here. If you would like to sign up for the course, write to us at hello@exceltogetherwv.org.

A CSM Community of Practice has been organized as a joint effort of Excel Together West Virginia and the WV Office of Adult Education. There are monthly one hour meetings that are designed to be highly interactive, with each meeting focusing on a topic of interest such as:

• Which students is CSM least successful with, and how can we improve their experience?
• What implementation practices lead to most success?
• What are successful recruitment strategies?
• What should the CSM-HiSET curriculum include?
• How can you partner with colleges in your area?
• How can you partner more effectively with employers?
• How can the CSM Toolkit be improved?
• A look behind the curtains at how CSM works.
• What is  missing in Career Strategies for special populations (people with disabilities, returning citizens, etc.)?

To join, you do NOT need to currently be teaching CSM students, or have taken the CSM coaching professional development (these sessions may help as you start using CSM!). Sessions are typically held the first Monday of each month, and the session dates and times are available on the Events page.

We have a list of marketing materials on the Resources for Participating Organizations page.

Contact us if there are materials that you would like that we do not produce.

Please send us materials that you have produced -- this may help us in designing other materials in the future!

And finally, contact us with ideas for new webpages you'd like to see on this site, or if there is missing information or something wrong on our webpages.

Employers can use CSM in three ways: in workforce development, improving the general community workforce, and providing upskilling opportunities for their employees. This topic concerns the latter.

If this topic interests you, we'd strongly urge you to read the Participating as an Employer webpage -- this gives many of the benefits for employers to use CSM in employee upskilling.

As part of any program involving employers, you should contact Tina White the WV Adult Education Career Pathways coordinator who administers the Federal Integrated Education and Training (IET) programs -- she may be able to provide assistance in the implementation of the project. She can be contacted at tnmwhite@wvesc.org and 304-922-4505.