001OK, good afternoon. Thank you for all that are joining us. We are so happy that you are here with us today. We would love for you to share in the chat box as you're joining, where your location is, like where you're joining from, what role you're in, and maybe school district. We'd love for you to do that in the chat box. There should be a little circular dialogue bubble at the bottom of your screen. You can open that and just make sure you click on the Everyone tab. So, it's going to the whole group, and we'll go ahead and get started. We love that you're here. Just to let you know that we are recording our PLC session for today, so that you're aware of that. But again, welcome to our
002Purple Star Campus support professional learning community and our first session, which is Purple Star Campus designation. What's next? Our professional learning communities, or you'll hear us refer to them as PLCs, are really a great way for educators and school professionals to collaborate with and tap into a network of peers and partners in support of military connected students. This PLC is designed again for school professionals and educators across campuses in Texas that are implementing or working towards that Purple Star campus designation. Our knowledge sharing model brings together a network of learners, including subject matter experts and peers from multiple focus areas, really for a robust and holistic approach. We love that aspect to the PLCs. You'll have the opportunity to identify potential solutions to common challenges related to Purple Star Campus program.
003 So again, welcome. Thank you for joining us today. Please feel free to share your name, your location, where you're joining from, maybe your role, and your school district in the chat box. We'd love to see that next slide, please. So, my name is Nikki Harrison. I am with the Military Child Education Coalition or you will commonly hear us refer to as MCEC. And our mission really is to support all military connected children by educating, advocating and collaborating to resolve those education challenges that are associated with the military lifestyle. Our vision as that we would love for every military connected child to be college, work and life ready. MCEC values the importance of professionals possessing the knowledge necessary to identify and respond to those complex needs of military connected children.
004There's a lot of great ways to stay involved and informed about our upcoming webinars, workshops, and additional resources, and you can e-mail us at [email protected]. Again, I'm Nikki Harrison, I'm a project manager in education services with MCEC and my colleague Marie, I'll have her introduce herself. Hello everyone. My name is Marie McGarry and I am an educator for MCEC and really happy to be with all of you today. As a former classroom elementary classroom teacher, I'm always excited when I get to be with educators and present and and talk with them. So happy to be with all of you today. Thank you so much, Marie. And we have a couple of other colleagues joining us from MCEC. We have Michelle Brashear, who is our another educator in Ed services.
005She'll be helping in the chat box and all those tech aspects today. And we also have Terry Widden, who is our military student consultant and just a fantastic resource at MCEC and has the answers to so many questions. Purple Star campus related and we are joined by our TEA counterpart, Dr. Ann Le. Would you like to introduce yourself? All right, thank you so much. We here at TEA are so honored and appreciative of the collaboration we have with MCEC. And just to introduce you, our team, our military work is within our HMAR program and it's led by our fearless leader, Kelly, who wasn't even who wasn't able to make it today. She is our director. I serve as the manager of our HMAR program and on the point of
006contact for military work and Purple Star work and also the state coordinator for our State Advisory Council with Mick 3. And then my program specialist is Mr. John Dobbins. Every now and then, you will see his face in our PLCs and our PD opportunities, but he's unable to join us today. So welcome and thank you so much for being here. And we hope you have a wonderful time on during our first PLC for the 25-26 school year. OK, great. Thank you so much, Doctor Le. We appreciate that so much. And so, let's talk a little bit about the collaboration and partnership that MCEC is so honored to have on our next slide. We really have cultivated a really strong collaborative partnership with the Texas Education Agency or TEA. We
007are really excited about all of the work that we've been able to do together and are proud to offer this five-part professional learning community series that includes professional development and office hours fall 2025 through spring of 2026. So, we still have a few other sessions together. This collaborative effort really underscores the commitment to nurturing a positive educational experience for our military families and acknowledges that really vital role that schools play in facilitating a successful integration of our military connected students into their academic communities as well into just in general their local communities. So, so honored and excited for the collaboration and partnership. So, a little bit about our professional Learning community series. We were able to do a three-part series this past spring and that was really focused on campuses
008that had already received that Purple Star campus designation. But with this new year and our new professional Learning community series, we're back and we're offering this professional development and office hours for campuses who are either implementing that Purple Star campus designation or you're working towards it. So, our goal really is to provide coaching support and strengthen guidance. And so, in these PLCs, as you continue on with us throughout the next sessions, we want it to be very collaborative. We want you to feel comfortable asking questions, what you're going to be using again, really want it to be just a really great experience for you all. And you will have an opportunity at at some point to chat with one another in our breakout sessions. So our learning objectives for today for
009this first session is to understand the requirements of the Purple Star Campus designation, discuss the benefits of a Purple Star Campus program, and really examine that Purple Star Campus implementation and recommendations for what we kind of consider best practices or exemplary practices. I'm going to hand it over to Marie. Great. Thanks, Nikki. So, let's start by talking about our goal for today, the Military Child Education Coalition. MCEC is the national advocate for Purple Star Schools, a program that supports military connected children as they experience school transitions. The Purple Star School program is designed to help schools respond to the educational and social and emotional challenges military connected children face during their transitions to a new school, and it helps to keep them on track to be college, workforce, and life ready.
010 Military connected children refers to children of service members on active duty in the National Guard and Reserves, as well as veterans. During our first session, participants will understand all the components needed for a Purple Star campus designation in support of military connected students. So, let's chat a little bit. We want to hear from you. So, we have our first question, and we would love for you to put your answers in the chat box. So, the first question is, have you had any experience working with military connected students and families? So, you can respond to that if you're new, if you have been working with families. So, so we'll kind of get a gauge on our experience level. So, this year we have some definite yeses we have not in this
011capacity, new to the district, so bringing some expertise from their old campus to their new campus. Lots of yeses. School counselor had an experience. Someone said their campus is 99% military, so lots of experience there. Terrific. Guess they are very resilient. Oh, love it. Third year working toward purple star capacity criteria, not for schools, but outside experience. Terrific. So, it looks like we have kind of a range of experiences here, which I think is fantastic. So, it lets us, those of us that may be new to working with military connected students learn some ideas or get some ideas. And those of you that are veterans working with military connected students, you can share things that have worked for you in the past. So, I love that when we're able
012to have that dialogue and that opportunity to share with one another. So, what are some things that you have learned about the military lifestyle? Very diverse, flexible, resilient. I've seen some of those words, other thoughts that you have working with military connected students and families. So I'll give you a minute to respond. Mobile. Yes, that's for sure. Friendly. Love that.