0:15

Well, welcome to another

0:15

episode of Sage Studio.

0:17

I'm Tiffiny Webster, and today I am

0:17

joined with Kiley Duncan, and I am so

0:23

excited to bring Kiley on the podcast

0:23

today because she's gonna be talking to

0:26

us about Oakschool, all the new things

0:26

that are happening with Oakschool,

0:30

which I know our families love. So Kiley, welcome to

0:33

the podcast. Thank so much for having me.

0:36

I'm excited to be here. Always

0:38

good to talk to you. Now for our new families that may not

0:40

know you, or for our returning families

0:44

that may not know about your new position,

0:44

tell us a little bit about what you do

0:48

here to support teachers and families at say Oak.

0:51

Yeah, absolutely. So I'm going into my

0:52

eighth year at Sage Oak.

0:56

I began as a teacher and then moved

0:56

into a regional mentor position.

1:01

Then evolved into a lead

1:01

coordinator position.

1:04

And then this year I'll be starting

1:04

my role as the Assistant Principal

1:07

for our personalized learning academy. And with that role, I will still be kind

1:10

of overarching Oakschool as the primary

1:16

coordinator for our Oakschool program. So I'm really looking

1:18

forward to that role. My whole heart is in Oakschool.

1:22

It's a labor of love every single year

1:22

and we're, we're launching our second

1:26

year, which I'm very excited about. All these new things that we have that we

1:28

worked on over summer and the different

1:32

things that we're able to bring to

1:32

our families for the 2324 school year.

1:36

So exciting. I know that our families are

1:37

loving Oakschool as well.

1:40

So tell us a little bit, first of

1:40

all, what is Oakschool and what

1:44

can we expect this year? Oakschool, Is paid live instruction

1:46

where students would utilize their

1:50

instructional funds to purchase

1:50

enrollment for a class just like they

1:53

would with any local community provider.

1:56

and it's for our TK through

1:56

eighth grade students.

2:00

And what's amazing is we do

2:00

these on a quarterly basis.

2:04

And every single quarter we offer

2:04

anywhere from 60 to 70 different classes

2:08

for all of our different grade levels. And it ranges from core subjects to

2:10

special interests we can tap into

2:15

any interest that a student has. Most of our classes are once per week

2:17

for an hour, and you'll do like an

2:21

eight week session and then re-enroll.

2:24

We do have a couple of middle

2:24

school math classes that are twice

2:27

a week, but for the most part it's

2:27

gonna be once a week for an hour,

2:30

Something new. And it's kind of, it's,

2:32

it's up and coming. It has not been released yet.

2:35

In addition to this, we did hire two

2:35

brand new art teachers this year.

2:40

And so the amazing thing is

2:40

I am in the works with them

2:43

to design a bunch of classes. They'll be teaching and they will

2:45

be offering free live instruction.

2:49

What's really neat with our, our art

2:49

classes this year is they will be held

2:53

in the afternoons and these will be

2:53

free to TK through high school students.

2:57

Wow. Which is pretty amazing. So we do have some coming that will

2:59

be at no cost to our Sage Oak student.

3:04

I love that. Okay, good. So the catalog keeps growing.

3:07

That's an exciting thing. Okay, so let's first talk about some

3:08

of the the fun enrichment types of

3:14

classes that Oakschool offers. Oh my goodness, there's so many.

3:17

We do anything from Spanish classes to

3:17

sign language classes, to cooking, to

3:24

coding adventure, novel writing ukulele.

3:28

I, I mean the list like goes on and on.

3:31

We really try to tap into foreign

3:31

language technology, the arts.

3:37

Music while bringing some of the,

3:37

the core aspect to it as well.

3:41

the heartbeat behind Oakschool

3:41

is bringing students together to

3:45

collaborate, to socialize, to be

3:45

enriched, and for that teacher to

3:50

just keep them engaged for that hour. And, and oftentimes they do build such

3:51

great connections that they enroll for

3:56

one quarter and they're back for the

3:56

next quarter to see that same teacher.

4:00

Those same groups of students as well.

4:02

So, we have so many different types

4:02

of classes and, on our website,

4:06

you can look through our catalog

4:06

and it's a beautiful catalog.

4:10

It's got different images and detailed

4:10

descriptions and when I look through

4:14

it, I get excited where I'm thinking, I

4:14

wish I could take all of these classes.

4:17

So I'm very excited to see

4:17

what our teachers have in store

4:21

with instruction this year okay, so talk to me now about some of

4:22

the new core classes that we're offering.

4:26

This is exciting. And explain a little bit to our families.

4:29

How is a core class different than an enrichment class?

4:32

Yeah, so a core class, what that

4:32

basically is, is we're taking

4:36

one of our select curriculum. So when you look at our website, and

4:38

it's a curriculum we might want you

4:41

to utilize for math or for reading, or

4:41

for writing or history or science, and.

4:47

What we've done is we've embedded

4:47

that within one of our Oakschool

4:50

classes, so that if you were to

4:50

purchase that curriculum, you have

4:54

a teacher teaching right alongside

4:54

your child once or twice a week.

4:58

So that maybe the burden of

4:58

the instruction for the parent

5:02

doesn't always fall on them, but

5:02

they have another teacher that

5:05

the student can be meeting with. Something really neat this year

5:06

that we did not have last year.

5:10

Is we did, we were provided with a grant

5:10

to use toward curriculum this summer.

5:16

So we end up purchasing a lot

5:16

of this curriculum on our own.

5:19

And what we're gonna do to give back

5:19

to our Sage Oak students is if you

5:23

enroll for an entire year of Oakschool.

5:26

So let's say you enroll one of our

5:26

Singapore math classes, we will include

5:31

that curriculum for free, which a lot

5:31

of times on its own, it's a couple

5:35

hundred dollars and the only cost that

5:35

would come out of the child's fund.

5:39

Is the shipping. And so I think that's something really

5:40

neat that we're bringing to families

5:43

where not only do you enroll in this

5:43

class and have this teacher that can

5:47

be instructing you, but we will include

5:47

that curriculum and for those classes, We

5:52

have for our first through third graders,

5:52

we're utilizing Beast Academy Math.

5:57

And then for our fourth through

5:57

eighth graders, we are utilizing our

6:02

Singapore math for our middle school

6:02

history, we're utilizing History

6:06

Alive for our middle school science.

6:08

We're using Generation Genius, and then

6:08

we have this brand new writing program.

6:14

And it's basically 180

6:14

days to write a novel.

6:17

And by the end of the year you

6:17

can actually get your novel

6:22

published and order it on Amazon. And other people can

6:24

order the book as well.

6:26

You can actually become a publisher and that's one of our writing curriculum.

6:29

So we've really opened the door on

6:29

a lot of these core classes where

6:33

if you're a student at Sage Oak

6:33

you have to have these curriculums.

6:36

And now we're embedding that. In Oakschool so that you, the parents

6:38

have support there as well as teachers.

6:42

So we're very excited for that. Wow. I can see why that is an

6:44

incredible opportunity full of

6:48

benefits for our Sage Oak family.

6:50

So that is so exciting. I cannot wait to hear how

6:51

our families respond to that.

6:55

I think that's going to be wildly popular.

6:57

So that's really, yeah, that's

6:57

a great option and such a fun

7:01

thing for them to get to, to try.

7:04

And you know, I love that one of the

7:04

things that you continue to lead our

7:09

teachers to do with this Oakschool

7:09

program is just to continue to innovate.

7:13

And I know that's one of

7:13

our Sage Oak core values.

7:15

And so always innovating and thinking

7:15

about how can we change it up?

7:19

How can we make it different? How can we make it better? How can we provide different offerings?

7:23

It's really great to see that all

7:23

of that innovation and growth is

7:26

continuing to happen in this program. So, So exciting.

7:29

Yeah, and we really, we really do

7:29

try to get feedback from parents.

7:33

So, last year I sent out surveys

7:33

like, what would you wanna see

7:36

coming for the next school year? Do you have any suggestions?

7:39

And I do the same thing for, for teachers.

7:41

So I really do pay attention

7:41

to all the feedback I get.

7:44

So I can try to improve the program and

7:44

keep bringing new classes that students

7:49

are interested so that you can actually

7:49

get to meet other students at our school

7:52

and develop those relationships as well. Now, one of the things I know you

7:55

tried last year was live PE classes.

7:59

How did that go over? Are you planning on bringing

8:00

back some more live PE classes?

8:03

So we did trial it at the end of

8:03

quarter four, and that was just in our

8:07

Temecula region and it went really well.

8:11

We've got so, so much positive

8:11

response that we decided to bring

8:15

it back to more locations this year,

8:15

so for quarter one and quarter four.

8:19

And the reason we're only

8:19

doing those two quarters is.

8:22

Quarter two and three. You never know about weather.

8:24

There's holidays. We're just gonna trial it a little bit

8:25

more, but we are bringing it to four

8:29

different locations for this school year.

8:32

So we'll have PE in the Anaheim Hills

8:32

area, so Orange County, the Redlands area.

8:38

Again, in the Temecula, Murrieta

8:38

area and then the Yucaipa area.

8:42

we tried to find places where

8:42

a lot of our students reside and

8:46

try to tap into those regions. And so depending on how quarter

8:48

one and quarter four go this

8:52

year, which I can tell you there's

8:52

already a lot of enrollment.

8:54

Maybe next year we would bring

8:54

it for all four quarters.

8:57

So we, we love kind of experimenting

8:57

and seeing where interest lies.

9:02

One thing that we hear over and over

9:02

again is that students wanna get

9:05

together in person The other part of

9:05

that too that's amazing is bringing on

9:10

these new art teachers that we have. We are gonna be offering art in the

9:11

park two times per month, where we

9:16

will again, pick different regional

9:16

locations and our art teachers will go

9:20

teach a live art instruction, some kind

9:20

of class, and then anyone is welcome to

9:25

join and do that right along with them. So we're. We're really trying to build as much

9:27

community as we can and, and tap

9:31

into not only the virtual platform,

9:31

but also being in person together.

9:35

So good. And I think our parents are,

9:36

students are really gonna love that.

9:38

Okay. With all of these offerings that are

9:39

so amazing, how can families choose?

9:45

Is there a way that they can see what

9:45

different courses are going to be offered

9:48

through the year? So we did release our catalog just

9:50

this week as well as enrollment

9:54

just opened a few days ago.

9:57

I worked really hard this summer

9:57

to try to make it so we could see

10:00

a year long plan of Oakschool. One.

10:03

Part of feedback that I received

10:03

last year was by quarter four, a lot

10:07

of families were out of funds and

10:07

they were really bummed out because

10:10

they couldn't pay out of pocket. And had they known that a certain class

10:12

was gonna be offered, they would've

10:15

saved their money for that class. So I thought, let's shoot for the stars

10:17

and see if we can get all of these

10:21

classes laid out for the entire year.

10:24

And so this couple days ago, we ordered

10:24

enrollment for all four quarters so

10:28

families can see a year long schedule.

10:30

Because not everything is offered every quarter. So that's kind of where you have to

10:33

dive in and say, okay, if I wanna take.

10:36

A music class, when is that offered? If I wanna take a language,

10:38

when is that offered?

10:40

And then they can work with

10:40

their teacher to kind of plan

10:42

out what that's gonna look like. We have the beautiful Oakschool

10:45

catalog, and as you look through

10:48

the catalog, something else new this

10:48

year is we have filtering options.

10:52

So you can filter by

10:52

subject area or content.

10:56

You can filter by grade level,

10:56

you can filter by quarter.

10:59

And then you can actually enroll

10:59

straight from the website.

11:03

There's an enrollment button. One is for our p l a program,

11:04

for our personalized learning.

11:07

One is for v l A. Our virtual learning students only take

11:09

classes on Mondays because Tuesday,

11:14

Wednesday, Thursday, they're meeting

11:14

with their regular live teacher.

11:17

So, lots of opportunities there. I do encourage families that if you

11:19

wanna enroll, I would get that ball

11:23

going 'cause classes are filling and

11:23

it's a great time over these next couple

11:27

weeks to meet with your, your teacher

11:27

and ask them about what they suggest.

11:31

Are there classes that they've come across

11:31

that would be great for that personalized

11:35

learning plan for, for the students. So enrollment is open, all the

11:36

parent directions are there as well.

11:41

We've tried to make it

11:41

accessible for everybody in a

11:43

very easy enrollment process. All they need to do is talk with their

11:46

teachers and see what what classes

11:49

would be great for their student. If they wanna check out the entire

11:50

master schedule and the full catalog

11:53

of offerings, they can find that

11:53

on the website and they can enroll

11:56

straight from the website as well. So.

11:59

Awesome. So good. Well, Kiley, we are excited about

12:00

all of the new offerings that

12:04

you are bringing to Oakschool. I know this program is continuing to

12:05

grow and it's going to continue to be

12:09

a great success for our school and a

12:09

great benefit to all of our students.

12:13

So thank you so much for all of your

12:13

hard work and the team's efforts in

12:18

bringing this program to Sage Oak I think it's gonna be fantastic.

12:22

Love it. Oh, I am. I am so excited. I feel like every day I wake up and

12:23

I'm just so excited to see how many

12:26

enrollments that we're getting and

12:26

that families are excited about it.

12:29

We've had a really

12:29

positive response so far.

12:32

So I would love to see that growth

12:32

keep happening and I cannot wait

12:36

to see to step into these classes

12:36

and observe the teachers in action.

12:40

That's always my favorite part, is

12:40

just you, you do all the enrollment,

12:43

you do all the planning, and then

12:43

when the actual classes start with the

12:46

fruits of the labor, it's just amazing. So I'm very excited.

12:50

All right, so we will drop a link in the show

12:50

notes to the catalog that is available

12:54

on the Sage Oak website so you can

12:54

check out all of those courses.

12:58

Alright, thanks KIley we

12:58

always love talking with you.

13:00

So great to hear all things that

13:00

are happening with Oakschool.

13:03

Thanks for dropping by the podcast, and

13:03

you'll have to keep us updated throughout

13:06

the course of the year. Thank you, Tiffiny