- Coming up on Inside California Education, we'll look at an effort in San Bernardino County to increase the number of male teachers of color in classrooms.

It's called Project Impact.

- He's my first ever guy teacher.

I like him.

- This school in Oceanside is the first in its district to earn a Purple star designation for meeting the needs of military families.

- And it's a very cool atmosphere that you have so many people that actually understand what you're going through and are so willing to help you - And go inside the Central kitchen for this school district in Sacramento, which prepares 44,000 school meals a day, all of which are served for free as part of the state's Universal Meals effort.

- There isn't this stigma associated with school lunch anymore that has been around for decades.

- We'll also go inside a math class in Riverside County to see how this district is redefining the way they teach math and inspiring students along the way.

- They want to come to class because of this new approach.

- It's all coming up next on Inside California education - Funding for Inside California education is made possible by - The California lottery is turning 40 and together with players, retail partners and our staff we're celebrating decades of raising extra money for public education.

More than $46 billion in four decades of having fun.

Thank you.

From the California lottery, - Imagine a credit union where school employees are treated like the heroes you are.

At School's First Federal Credit Union.

Everything we do starts with helping school employees and their families live better today and plan for tomorrow.

Learn more at schoolsfirstfcu.org.

- The Stuart Foundation improving life outcomes for young people through Education.

CollegeBoard, helping all students own their future.

- Additional funding for Inside California Education is made possible by these organizations supporting public education.

- Meet Jacobo Lopez and his fifth grade class at WJC Trapp Elementary School in Rialto, a community in San Bernardino County.

The 31 kids in this classroom say they really like their teacher this year who happens to be among a small yet growing number of male teachers of color.

- He wants us to like do good so that like we have a good life and we don't have to like waste it 'cause he says we have a lot of potential so I really, I really like him.

- I just want three quotes and a conflict and a resolution.

All right.

- According to the Rialto Unified School District, this community is 87% Hispanic and 9% African American.

Yet until recent years, thanks to recent efforts, only about 5% of its teachers reflected those demographics.

That's on par with national statistics that show only 23% of teachers in the US are men and an even smaller number are from diverse backgrounds.

- He's my first ever guy teacher.

I, I like him very much.

He is a guy like me and he is like you know, very patient.

- Jacobo Lopez is one of 11 teachers within this district who is part of an innovative program called Project Impact.

It was created at California State University San Bernardino with the goal of recruiting, training and placing more male teachers of color in K through 12 classrooms.

- I did have a lot of teachers who didn't look like me.

I had a lot of teachers who didn't talk like me.

- Lopez says he struggled in school and had a lot of different jobs before being recruited by Rialto's Deputy superintendent.

- It's important because our students come from various different backgrounds and they've had different experiences.

We don't have one type of student, so we shouldn't have one type of teacher.

- Grades three to eight when they have a black teacher, their likelihood of finishing high school and going to college increases by 29%.

- Dr. Shaka Doku is Dean of the Watson College of Education at CSU San Bernardino.

He's also the visionary and creator of Project Impact, which was born out of his own experience as a teacher in East LA - I was always the only black man on campus and these young black men tend to gravitate towards me.

- In 2019, he proposed the idea of Project impact with university support and a million dollar endowment from Jim and Judy Watson.

The first project impact cohort launched in 2020.

The program provides tuition assistance and mentorship guiding men to not only become teachers but role models.

- Because right now we know that most of our children of color think that the only way they can make it is through sport, our music.

But we have so many intellectuals out there.

- Program director, Dr. James Huff works one-on-one, recruiting, teaching, and mentoring men who in most cases never considered a career in teaching.

Project Impact finds its recruits by partnering with local community groups and school districts like Rialto to hire from within.

- We have a custodian who is now a teacher because of Project Impact.

We have a groundskeeper who is now a teacher because of Project Impact.

- It's a great benefit when we have our employees that are able to become teachers in the community that they work and live.

- In its first four years, Project Impact graduated 62 Hispanic, African American and Native American men who are now working in 10 nearby school districts.

- I never had one black teacher all through primary and secondary school until I got to college.

- Another 98 like Jamal Crump are currently going through the program.

- So I feel like I can give them the life where like you don't have to be a TikTok start.

You don't have to be a sports player.

You can go to a trade school, you can go to any kind of schooling and you can further yourself through education.

Why not?

- The goal is not for high school students or even middle school students to drop out to think lower themselves.

The goal is to change the statistics for minorities.

- I believe Project Impact is breaking that stereotypical idea of who a teacher is, what a teacher looks like, what is their background.

- When you have somebody who was a groundskeeper who did not think they had any other professional pathway and they are now on a professional pathway that gives them a middle class wage.

You're talking about social mobility.

- I think if I had a teacher who who saw you know me slipping through the cracks in high school, I think somebody could have stepped in and stopped it.

So that's kind of my mission statement going into the classroom.

- Jacobo Lopez says his goal now is to be that role model for the kids in his classroom to change the statistics and to give young boys other dreams to aspire to.

- Well maybe if I do ever become a comic artist or like a artist or something like that, I probably will remember him actually just the day he encouraged me to do it.

-Academically, your teachers are like the most important thing.

- Studies by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that the short term impact of black teachers on black students is significant benefiting students in test scores, attendance, grades, disciplinary actions, and educational expectations.

[Gentle happy music] - Six times a year families gather at Stuart Mesa School for lunch on the lawn.

It's a big day for students they get to eat with their parents, many of whom are on lunch break from nearby Camp Pendleton, Marine Corps base.

- Stuart Mesa is a very unique school.

We are located on Camp Pendleton.

We are one of three schools that Oceanside Unified School District has here on Camp Pendleton.

We are unique because 100% of our students have families living on a base.

[Sounds of kids and teacher playing] - Principal Heffernan grew up here in Oceanside, a coastal town in San Diego County with a large military presence.

Stuart Mesa was the first school in Oceanside Unified to be designated as a purple star school from the California Department of Education.

Now more than 40 schools in the state have the designation recognizing their ability to meet the needs of children of military personnel.

- Military families have very unique needs because of their moving, because of deployments.

A student who is in military on average moves six times before they graduate from high school.

It's a lot of stress on a family.

- Fifth grader, Levi knows what it's like to change schools.

His father is in the Marine Corps, mid school year they move from Colorado to California.

- It was kind of hard because their, their school year is a bit longer than ours and they have a bunch of different things that my class didn't do.

Yeah, I had a lot of friends back in Colorado and leaving 'em was like one of the hardest things I've ever done.

- Military personnel don't have complete control on when they move, so oftentimes we see students who may come at the beginning of the year, which is the optimal time to start in a new environment.

It can also come spread out through the rest of the year where learning may have looked very different from what they came from.

The other part of that is when they move state to state, there's different standards.

So what's taking place in San Diego as far as the learning in December may look very different from that in Oklahoma at the same time.

- Hey girls, I like your matching shirts.

We all got our purple on today.

Wonderful.

Let's go talk over here for a little bit.

Okay.

- Rachel Rubio is one of two school counselors at Stuart Mesa.

She understands the unique circumstances of military families.

It's her job to support students academically and emotionally.

- I know sometimes when we don't have our loved one here today, it makes it a little hard, but you know what?

We're surrounded by so many people that really care for us here and I'm really happy that you're here today.

When we get some new students, they come in from different states, all sorts of different areas, different countries, and sometimes the academics like might be a little bit ahead, maybe a little bit behind and so I work closely with the teachers to create plans to support the child and enhance their learning.

- Deployments are also difficult for students who may have a parent sent overseas during the school year.

Stuart Mesa provides support throughout the deployment and during the reunification period, which may require time off from school to reconnect with their family.

- So me and my husband met in Bahrain in 2013 when we were both stationed out there and then we got married in 2014 when Cameron came along and we moved to Hawaii from there.

And then from Hawaii we moved here.

- Heather and her two children.

Cameron and Harper say that having a supportive was crucial.

When the children's dad was deployed for nine months to the Pacific region, - We sort of had some days at school where we had some like breakdowns about missing our dad a lot.

Our dad was gone for that long of a time.

We really missed him a lot and just like the three of us at a table sort of found a little bit empty, but once the nine months were back, I, we were super happy to be with him.

- During her dad's deployment, Cameron says the school counselors checked in with her twice a week just to talk.

- It was really big.

Like if we didn't have Miss Holly and Miss Rubio and everybody else here at the school, we would not have survived the deployment.

And it's a very cool atmosphere that you have so many people that actually understand what you're going through and are so willing to help you.

- It's very challenging as the things that occur on at their home, they trickle into the school system.

And so having parents that are deployed, that really affects the students here and their emotional wellbeing.

And so our priority is making sure that they are feel seen and heard.

- Other ways the school makes sure that students feel seen and heard is by holding events with ties to their military parents like lunch on the lawn.

- It also shows their their children, this is a safe place that we respect this place and that we want you to feel safe and that you can be their extended family.

For us, we also do a homecomings where the family member coming back will do a homecoming at the school and surprise, they're dependent here at on campus.

We partner with our, our our military to do the fitness challenge where they have the Marine Corps come up and they set a whole fitness field up and they have the kids run through it to see what it's like for their parents.

So there's these great opportunities to engage with our community and allow our families to ha experience more than they that they possibly thought before.

That this really is a safe place.

This really is a place that we care about them and that we can support them when someone that they love is not at home.

- And I think the most amazing thing about this is it's not just the military connected students that we got better at taking care of.

It was all of our students - Still ahead on Inside California Education.

Math has traditionally been taught the same way for decades, but a new approach to an old subject is inspiring creativity in both teachers and students at this school in Riverside County.

But first, see what it takes to feed tens of thousands of students a day in Sacramento.

A look inside this Central Kitchen's effort to provide nutritious and locally sourced meals all for free.

[Light music plays] - Here at the Central Kitchen in Sacramento, they found innovative methods to serve up tasty meals, a lot of tasty meals.

- We serve 43,000 meals a day.

- Those meals include breakfast, lunch, afterschool snacks, and dinner for kids who stay late.

All meals are free and delivered with a simple intention.

- We believe every student, regardless of income, deserves a freshly prepared meal while at school.

Now everyone can come in for a lunch just like every student gets a book to study in the class.

- Central Kitchen provides meals for 80 schools in the Sacramento City Unified School District.

- We are the departments within the district, but funded separately, meaning we do not receive any funding from the district.

We get a small reimbursement from the state.

We receive a federal reimbursement for every breakfast, lunch, supper, and snack that we serve.

It covers the food and the labor, which are the most expensive costs, but it also covers the refrigerators.

We need the ovens, we need the repairs to them, the trucks, the vehicles to transport meals.

- It takes a lot of planning and advocacy to keep school meals healthy.

- We get to control how much salt we put into it, the sugars.

There's a lot of regulations in school lunch, but we also get to make the choices of which quality ingredients we're bringing in.

So having the ability to cook from scratch really gives us the ability to give our best to our students.

- Schools in Sacramento serve several entrees every day with a menu that rotates every one or two weeks.

Halfway through the school year, the menu shifts to new entrees.

- We'll change some things around so it's not stagnant throughout the year because kids do need fresh choices.

They need something new or else they'll lose interest.

- Free school meals started in 1946 with the National School Lunch Program, signed into law by Harry Truman.

Free school meals were provided to low income students, while other students paid because families had to disclose their household income to participate.

Experts say many students simply opted out.

It wasn't until the 2022-23 school year that California became the first state to implement a statewide universal meals program, breakfast and lunch for all school children regardless of household income.

Seven other states have followed suit with several more considering implementation.

- There isn't the stigma associated with school lunch anymore that has been around for decades.

There would be students that needed a meal, but they're with their more affluent friends and too embarrassed to go in and get a lunch, so they would just starve.

And I think that has vastly changed in the last couple years.

What we say in our program, if they're hungry, they can take as much fruits and vegetables as they want.

If they're taking it, it's because they're hungry.

- The central kitchen team keeps the menu interesting and healthy by adding fresh persimmon, mandarins, strawberries, and a different kind of apple every fall.

- We save money, we support local, we support California growers, which I think is important in an ag economy.

- The cafeteria team at McClatchy High School in Sacramento enjoys interacting with the students they feed - And the ladies and the gentleman working here, they say, “good morning, how your day?” and sometimes you can impact kids' life.

- That impact is rubbing off on student workers.

- The environment, you know, communicating well and just just helping out students.

That's what helps.

That's what I like about the job.

- I really like the sort of community that grows within the cafeteria.

It inspires me to be more of a hard worker.

- Thank you.

Have a good day.

- Crowd flow is important at McClatchy where lunch period is only 30 minutes.

Approximately half of the 2,500 students eat lunch from the cafeteria.

That's 1200 to 1300 kids in the lunch line in less than half an hour.

- High school's a long day.

Lots and lots of kids here are after school, so it's really important for them to get lunch.

- We're an educational system and we are trying to teach our kids how to eat better.

- National research indicates that students who participate in school meal programs have physical advantages over students who do not.

They have a higher intake of essential vitamins and minerals, are more likely to meet the daily recommended servings of fruits and vegetables, and have lower rates of obesity.

They also perform better academically and are more engaged in class.

[Marimba plays] - I've had a lot of students kind of resist math because they weren't comfortable in doing so, and I think now they're more than willing to try it - In Riverside County, changing how math is taught begins by finding the root of the problem.

- Math has been taught in very similar way for the last a hundred, 150 years.

It's very skills based, procedural based.

It's very much built off the idea that the teachers going to provide the steps on how to do something to students, and students are going to repeat and replicate those steps.

What we're trying to do throughout Riverside County is kind of the shift to students making more meaning for themselves so that the learning that they're participating in sticks longer and they have a deeper understanding of how it applies to other things.

- We're gonna be labeling one side of the box notice and wonder - The State Board of Education passed a new California mathematics framework in 2023.

Shifting the way educators teach math schools like Bethune Elementary in the Val Verde Unified School District are embracing this new way of thinking.

They say their goal is to engage students, giving them ownership over their learning.

Today, this math exercise is called notice and wonder intended to spark questions and curiosity.

- There's not really a wrong answer.

There's a lot of entry points.

Kids could notice the simplest things and they could notice things that are highly related to mathematics, and then they start to ask questions.

- Okay, go ahead and share Bailey.

- I think I noticed that the area of the of those two waffles are the same.

- Okay, so I heard you say the words area and that you said that these two are the same.

That's something that you noticed.

- The students were given an opportunity to share their ideas before the teachers jumped in to clarify misunderstandings.

There was a couple of times where kids shared out like, “oh, both of both A and B are equal,” when in fact they were not.

But that wasn't necessarily corrected right on the spot because that was that student's current understanding and they knew that the activities they were going to be doing throughout the lesson were going to help to clear that understanding up.

- What are some things that we wonder about the two options that is presented to us?

- I wonder which waffle holds more syrup.

- You wonder which waffle holds more syrup.

Nice.

That's a good one.

- Math is fun and I think it's fun because we could do it in many strategies in many ways.

- Another strategy is having students work closely together.

- Traditionally, I think of what we would see in math classrooms 10 or 15 years ago with timed math tests or worksheets.

What we're really trying to shift to is more of a community-based learning environment where students leave school no longer thinking that math is something they do by themselves.

- It's more powerful for a child to learn from their interactions from their peers because what they're thinking in their head is that maybe, I don't know this, I'm not too 100% sure about this, and I know that my partner may or may not know it as well, but I think we're both in the same boat.

- The school has also introduced math games and more hands-on materials.

This dice game is helping students learn how to measure area while also letting them have some friendly competition with their friends.

- How would you read this?

Two by five.

You could read it as a two by five or a five by two.

Why can I interchange that?

Why can I say five by two or two by five?

- I like it because we had a partner and we were able to talk how we did it.

- All right, friends, go ahead and shake hands with your partner.

Say, good job.

When we first came back from COVID, the scores were really low.

They were very, very far away from our standard.

By the end of the two to three years that we've been doing this, we are closing these gaps.

- Here at Bethune, math proficiency among third graders increased from 20% to 43%, but educators say scores aren't the only thing that matters.

- We're really shooting for so much more than that.

We wanna change the hearts and minds of the way people think about mathematics and recognizing how instrumental it is to their daily lives and understanding the world around them.

- I like learning math because I'm always gonna need it in future jobs.

Instead of someone just giving you the equation, they take little steps to help you learn the equation even more.

- I see the joy.

They want to come to class because of this new approach.

They're so excited about having the opportunity to collaborate with other students.

They're having the opportunity to share things about math, and we didn't see a lot of that in the past.

- What we saw today is really building that stability and allowing our students to see themselves as mathematicians and to be able to see this as something that they can do.

- That's it for this edition of Inside California Education.

If you'd like more information about the program, log onto our website insidecaled.org.

We have stories from all of our shows and you can connect with us on social media.

Thanks for joining us.

We'll see you next time on Inside California Education.

- I just want three quotes and a conflict and a resolution.

All right, - Thank you.

Have a good day.

The area of the - Those two waffles are the same.

- Okay, so I heard you say the word area.

- Funding for Inside California Education is made possible by - The California lottery is turning 40, and together with players, retail partners and our staff we're celebrating decades of raising extra money for public education.

More than $46 billion in four decades of having fun.

Thank you, from the California lottery.

- Imagine a credit union where school employees are treated like the heroes You are.

At School's First Federal Credit Union.

Everything we do starts with helping school employees and their families live better today and plan for tomorrow.

Learn more at schoolsfirstfcu.org.

- The Stuart Foundation, improving life outcomes for young people through education, CollegeBoard, helping all students own their future.

Additional funding for Inside California Education is made possible by these organizations supporting public education.