OTAN, Outreach and Technical Assistance Network. Hi everybody, thank you for coming. This is about projects. And the specific focus is ESL and ABE, not necessarily CTE because that's not my area of expertise and there's just so much more with that as far as STEAM goes. So there's the makerspaces and all of those kind of things. I'm more into the language area of projects. So if this is not your type of session, I understand, but I hope you could get something even if ABE or ESL are not your areas. I am an OTAN subject matter expert, not an expert, just a learner along with you all. And I am an ESL teacher at Miracosta College in the non-credit program. So today we're gonna cover what projects are and are not and why do projects? What are the benefits? What are some things to think about before you bring in project-based learning? And what I wanna say is traditionally PBL or project-based learning is when students more traditionally in K through 12 do a project over a very sustained period of time. We don't have that luxury because of fluctuating attendance in shorter terms of study. So what I like to do is projects that can be completed within a week or so, more like that. So that's what I'm gonna be covering. I think you would agree that having students do a project over 16 weeks, we may not have the same students around at the end. So I'm gonna show you some sample projects that you can use or modify for use even next week if you wanted to for intermediate through advanced ESL. You may see some things that maybe you could modify down even to lower levels of ESL, but definitely appropriate for ABE, ASE students. And then at the end I'll share some sources for project ideas. So hopefully by the end of this short session you will be able to describe the advantages for your learners of using project-based learning and maybe replicate or modify for use something that you see today. So base learning. Well, in today's workplaces, it's all about projects, really it is. And so these can be in our classrooms replicating what students need to do in their jobs that they have now in college courses if they get to that level and in their everyday lives. I mean, our students probably have projects that they do in their own households, right? So it's very relevant. In project-based learning, students can gain knowledge about different subject areas. I gain knowledge by introducing projects in different areas. I have one coming up planned in the area of art. I know nothing about art and I'm so excited because I'm going to learn myself. So by having students engage in tasks, they're creating this end product that demonstrates their knowledge and their skills game. Students can dive deeper into a topic by reading and taking on some of the agency for research. So this gives them a lot of choice and autonomy and it's really and a grogy based, where students are taking charge. And in addition to traditional literacy, reading, writing, when we integrate technology with projects, we're developing some of those 13 literacies described by the ed tech technologist, Kathy Schrock. I have a link here if you're interested in what they all are, but specifically digital literacy, visual literacy, data literacy, depending on the project, info and tool literacy. And when we carefully design a project, we can meet standards for us that would be CCRS or ELPS. And finally, by not just having students study grammar or do different readings, we can go deeper in that we can integrate all skills and build students background knowledge that will help them prepare for college and careers as well. So this is a quote by the executive director of the Buck Institute for Education. And this is a group that is really an advocate for project-based learning. And as you can see, as he says, that our world of work is changing, more and more tasks are being automated. I know I've had many students over the years that were working in manufacturing, those jobs are gone. So now with the jobs of the future, collaboration is going to be the norm and the information age is so important. I mean, students nowadays, they will need to learn how to navigate different systems like SharePoint and sharing things online. So it has become a project-based world and we need to get students ready for that. So one time I was coaching a teacher in another state and she said, I'm really excited about this project. I'm going to have students write a paragraph. In my mind, a paragraph is not really a project. So projects are not grammar exercises, a reading, a worksheet, a paragraph or a dialogue or a drill, some of those exercises that we do in ESL and maybe a bit in ABE. But projects are assignments that we can have students do either individually or in teams where they investigate a question or a problem. They go deeper and they think critically and they end with a product that they share or publicly publish. We can build community, not just community in the class, community in the school, community in the larger town or city we live in and students can collaborate and communicate for authentic purposes, align to standards as well as I mentioned. And we need to do all that scaffolding and teaching. We can't just say, hey, we're going to do a project, let's make a community garden. We have to teach the language through direct instruction and scaffold and make sure that we give students some choices about how they produce that end product because they are adults and maybe they have different ways to showcase their skills and their knowledge. Projects are opportunities for students to use the language. You know, we teach grammar, we teach punctuation, we teach vocabulary, but here is a great way to put it all together. And then we want to make sure that you may even ask yourself, hey, let's do a project. I was thinking of this and this and this. Which one would be most interesting for you all? Make sure that you get to know your students well so that you can relate projects to your students' goals, their needs and their lives and give them a chance to receive and give feedback. Finally, I already mentioned about student autonomy and having students, hey, here's your project, here are resources to do it. This is an idea of what the end may look like. You're giving them that sense of self-efficacy, I can do this, that will carry over into their language ability and you give them a chance through giving them different choices to choose the way to produce a product to shine, to show their best abilities, their best skills, okay. So I mentioned at the beginning, traditionally project-based learning is over a very long period of time, but you just can't do that necessarily in adult ed. So you can do a simple project that honestly could be conducted in a single class period, you could. You do all the teaching ahead of time and then you do need to give class time for that then. Group projects are what we do in workplaces, we know this. I have heard many teachers over this year say, no, no, no, it always ends up being one teacher, one student doing all of the work and yeah, in the workplace sometimes that's true too. But when students are given class time and specific detailed instructions and roles and duties so that everybody is depending on everybody else with class time to do it, the result can be amazing in all the language and negotiation and soft skills building that happens. We're doing our students a great favor by including group projects. And finally, when you have a project, you know your students well and you include a project and you've done a lot of preparation through the teaching ahead of time. If it's so interesting and engaging, I've had this before, teaching remotely that, okay, it was a night class by everybody, classes over, it was nine o'clock, PM, I'm really tired. I left the Zoom room and the students stayed in Zoom to keep working together on their project, okay? It can happen, but you need to do it, you have to plan it out and know your students well. So as far as standards-based, probably you've heard of CCRS and that's more for ABE Adult Secondary. With that, that was in 2013 that calls for more complexity in the texts that we use, more having students read and write and speak making presentations, not about your feelings, not about your personal experiences but grounded in evidence from the text and building students' knowledge. So bringing in different topic areas, maybe different subject areas that they may encounter in college and careers. And then next came the ELPS for English language learners. And similarly, it called for increase on rigor in our instruction, including academic language, even at the lower levels of ESL instruction, including the teaching of language strategies. So when students don't understand something instead of slipping into their first language, how they can use strategic competence to understand or explain themselves in a different way. And the development of critical thinking skills as well as the building of background knowledge. So not just teaching grammar in English but teaching them about the different things that are around us, like teaching them, as I said, maybe about art or teaching them maybe a little bit about psychology, for example. So when you look at the ELPS, their standard five in particular for ELPS describes about the technology that we need to start integrating for our ESL students. I don't know if you've heard of teaching skills that matter. Thank you, Julie. Julie said projects are very learner centered. Can anybody type yes or no if you've heard of TSTM teaching skills that matter? You may not have. It's pretty new. It's only a few years old. Thank you, Lisa. Awesome. So I had the opportunity for the last few years to be a coach for teaching skills that matter. It's a federal initiative of Akte. And it's pretty new. It's only a few years old. So that's why you haven't heard it. It's rolling out slowly in the states that have adopted it. It's not going to be brought down hard from above, like you have to do this, but it's lessons that include the soft skills. Some of you have been teaching long enough that maybe you remember back in the, what, 90s? The scans competencies? Well, it's like that, but they've renamed and they call it teaching the skills that matter. So these are the skills that matter. The students need to have these different soft skills to be able to succeed in the workplace and in college classes, in high school classes, in life, basically, and you can see those there. Yes, it is a better name than scans, right? Skills that matter. And so within that, there is what you can access for free, a toolkit. And in this toolkit, project-based learning is one of the different methods for getting students these skills that matter. And there are several, several lesson plans for ESL, Adult, Secondary, and ABE. And I've pulled out the lesson plans that you can click on and see that are specifically projects, project-based lesson plans. So these are aligned to the standards and some of them, if you teach ESL, corresponds really well with a lot of our EL civics co-apps. So the one that I saw and I thought, this is so perfect for my class. This one is really perfect because every year we have something called, yes, I'm going to share, thank you, Susan, I'm going to share the link to these slides right at the end and you'll be able to click all of these hyperlinks to get to all of these. But these are the different areas that these lesson plans fall into. Civics, literacy, digital literacy, financial literacy, health literacy, and workforce preparation. So there are many other lesson plans. There are integrated education lesson plans as well as problem-based lesson plans. But these are the project-based. So every year we have at our school a diversity day. And I thought, hmm, that folk story lesson plan would go really well with the diversity day. Why don't I have my students create some sort of technology-infused project to tell a folk story from their country? But when I looked at this lesson plan, it is a digital literacy lesson plan. And there's very much minimal there as far as building up the language. It's like, the lesson is great, but it basically says have your students explore a folk story and present it using one of these tools. And I thought, that's not enough for a lesson for me. I can't just do that. They don't even maybe understand what a folk story is. So what I have created is a complete lesson plan that you could use with your class. So you, when you get these slides, you can click here and have all the lesson materials that I use successfully with my class. Now I teach an advanced class, but you can modify it down, definitely. So what I did is I went onto YouTube and I found, I think it must be a middle school teacher who created this silly video, what is a folk tale? And I created a listening close. So students watch that video and they have to fill in the missing words. Now this could be done online. I don't know if you've heard of live worksheets. That could be a way that students do that purely online and avoid paper, but it is possible to do that without paper, okay? So then the next activity, I love this kind of listening and structured retail activity. So I'm going to actually have you participate in this activity. So once students know what a folk tale is, what I tell them is, okay, I've created a PowerPoint slideshow with pictures and I print out the slides on one or two pages.  And I tell students, you're going to listen to me tell you a folk story and on your printout of the slides, you're going to take notes. Anything that will help you remember this story because once I have finished, you are then going to retell this story to a partner. And I did all of this in Zoom. I've done this before in face to face, but actually it works out pretty well. In Zoom. So I'm going to tell you this story and this story has a twist at the end. This story is from a book called Still More Stories to Solve. Fort Folktales from Around the World by George Shannon. He collected folktales from around the world. Some are very old and this one is from Pakistan, I believe. Okay, so I'm going to tell you the story and you tell me if you can solve the problem at the end. So I tell the story, students take notes, they go into Zoom, they retell the story using the pictures on the slides and then they have to solve the problem. Okay, are you ready? Here we go. So this story is called The Brahman's Wish. Once there was a Brahman who lived with his wife and his old blind mother. They were very poor and the Brahman was not sure what he should do. He prayed every day at the temple to Shiva and asked for guidance. After 12 years of praying, Shiva told the Brahman that he could have one wish. Whatever he needed or desired the most. Uncertain, the Brahman asked to go home and consult his mother and wife, very wise man. What do you think? What do you think? What are they? Well, of course, the Brahman's mother said she wished for her eyesight back. The Brahman would have been glad to grant her wish in thanks for all she had done raising him. But the Brahman's wife wished for a son most of all.  A son would help us in the fields when we are old. The poor Brahman, he didn't know what to do. He didn't want to say no to either one.  He walked and cried and cried and walked until finally he sat down in the center of the town. Many people walked past before a sergeant stopped and asked, what's wrong? The Brahman told him how after praying to Shiva, for 12 years he had been granted only one wish. But my mother wants one thing and my wife wants another. How can I choose whose wish to fulfill? I love them both. The sergeant smiled and said, no need to cry. Your problem is small. Then he told the Brahman exactly what to do. The next day, when the Brahman returned to Shiva, both his mother and his wife had their wishes fulfilled. What had the sergeant told him to say and do? What do you think? You can unmute yourself if you have any idea or share in the chat. What do you think is the solution? Believe it or not, he wished for his mother to... Good one, yes. You're right, here is the solution. So anyway, students go into breakout rooms, they retell the story. Along, I do this much slower and ask questions along the way, but I'm going kind of fast because you all are at a much higher level with your English proficiency. But then they come up with a solution. We come back, I hear their solutions and then I give them the answer, which is yes, you're right. The sergeant advised him to combine the two wishes into one. When the Brahman went to Shiva, he said, my mother is blind and her only desire is to see her grandson eating his rice. So I learned about this activity at my very first Katesaw conference back in 1999, but I made it added in the technology. So now students had some language practice, they understand better what a folk story is. And then what I did after that is we worked on some grammar preparation, pronunciation with past tense, past continuous, that's what we use to tell stories. And then I demonstrated and gave them print instructions as well as video tutorials, how to either make a PowerPoint slideshow with narration exported as a video or to use Adobe Spark video, which is really easy. And one of my students created a beautiful folk story from China using Adobe Spark video and she presented that at our diversity day. So they learned so much from each other. The assignment, I had them also explain what that folk story tells about their culture or the beliefs as well. So it got a really rich, much, you know, no offense to the writer of the folk story digital literacy lesson, but I thought it took it to another level. And if you teach ABE and you don't necessarily have students from other countries, we have so many beautiful Native American stories that need to be told. And we have a lot of, you know, the traditional stories that I don't even know them, I've heard of them, but it would be a really fun project for your students to integrating language, integrating technology and sharing with each other. So this is that project prompt, okay? And so they were able to find mostly in English the version of their folk story from their country, but a couple of them, they just remembered it. They wrote it out in English and they asked me to check it over before they added their narration. So this is more about the project prompt, the technical part of it. So that's one project. I have so many here to tell you about.  And I was like, what is this? Book bento, book bento. Well, maybe if you know much about Japanese culture, maybe you've seen these bento lunches. And so book bento is a book report with visuals that look like a bento box. So it's basically, you could do this for a book, a chapter, a short story. I would love to do this even for, you know, the digital icebreaker type of thing that you have students do the first week to get to know each other is have them do this for that activity. That's my next plan. But what I wanna show you is what I created as kind of a model for a reading festival book that we're reading. So basically book bento is a metaphor for a traditional book report. Those would be incredibly boring to read in this day and age, right? With all that we have at our disposal as far as technology. So it's more of a visual representation of a book review or summary with images that represent the characters, setting and plot of the book. So students are building their visual literacy. So here are many different links to visit and learn more. And again, this is coming from K through 12. So we can learn so many things from those folks. So here's a quote about book bento boxes. There are recent reader response strategy and they have students reflect on what they've read. And it's really seeing students go beyond writing a summary but thinking creative critically using their visual arts and using technology. So this is the one I created. We, every spring and we just had this past week we invite a published author to our school and we have a reading festival.  And she wrote this beautiful book. I get emotional, think of it, it's so good. Anyway, she grew up in our area and her book, while it's fiction, I really believe it is semi-autobiographical. And so I created this as a sample for our students and I have here depicted some of the chapters. The chapters were really short that really resonated and stuck with me like that in one chapter her father had to go and work as a migrant field worker in Idaho. And their traditional cures like the teas and using the egg. I don't know if any of you are familiar with that, with that cure. Then his, her father became an alcoholic. And at one point, her father feeling pressure from family members actually beat her with a belt, even though that was against his personal parenting belief. And at one point in the beginning, she and her sister, her sister was a real entrepreneur when there were little sold popsicles during the summer. So what students do is they find objects and they use the technology that they have their cell phone and take a picture and they arrange and then they write a short reflection piece. I think this would be so much more interesting as a presentation for a chapter of a book or for a book report. So I don't know if in ESL you're teaching books but there are some really short, easy to read books out there. I think we should do more of this and this would be a great project for our ESL. And obviously in AB, you are probably teaching short novels but it could be a personal presentation where students gather some different objects and make a short presentation about why these objects represent who they are. So what do you think of that project? Do you like it? Oh, Sheila, you lived in Japan. I didn't arrange this very bento looking but anyway, when you go here you can see all kinds of really amazing samples as well. Yeah. Christina, I don't have that available but maybe I can add that to this slideshow. Our library, I'm part of a college so our library is so wonderful. They have a special link, a special page just for our non-credit students that have these very short biographies. Now they're written for middle school kids but our students don't know that, our adult students don't know that. There are biographies and then I just like to look for, since I'm teaching immigrants, the immigrant lit that is typically for kids like for example, Francisco Jimenez, if you know him, he presented at Cortisol in San Jose back two years ago. Yes, diversity and culture and the more that we can let students show who they are and honor their diversity and their culture. I think that's wonderful, Sheila. Thank you. Oh, I love it. Susan assigned a similar assignment. Who am I? That could be like this is very similar, right? And then this doesn't take a lot of technology. Probably 99% of our students have phones. All they have to do is some gather some objects that they have in their home and take a photo, right? It's quite simple. So I don't know if you're familiar with OTAN's teaching with technology page. Can you type yes or no, if you are familiar with that? Unfortunately, Diana, you better be. Okay, so teaching with technology, it's been around. I was first involved with that. I think we started back around 2007 anyway. It turned into this enormous repository of like a thousand different websites and it was just too big and unwieldy. So we are undergoing a transformation of the teaching with technology database because it was so big, it was becoming not very useful. So what we are doing, we're in the process of changing that to be full lesson plans with technology because we want you to be able to go there and see and sort by, okay, I need a lesson. Yes, Diana, I need a lesson with these standards or for this level or this topic or maybe even this kind of technology and to find a lesson plan that you can take and use or take and modify. So these are some that I have contributed recently and they are things that I've used in my class with success and I teach again advanced level ESL. So they're a little bit on the higher end. Of course they would be perfect for ABE. You would need to figure out if you teach more of a lower level ESL how you would change that. So let me check my time. I have a little bit of time left. I want to share just a couple that my students told me they enjoyed, okay? The first one I will share and this is bringing in knowledge, building background knowledge is advertising. So I know at my college that there is a communications course where one of the assignments is that students learn about the three argument types, rhetorical strategies, ethos, logos and pathos. And I thought, my students, some of them have bachelor's and master's degrees probably already know about this but why not teach them about this? So do you know the website Read, Write, Think? Can you type yes or no in the chat? Okay, Read, Write, Think if you've never looked there, go there. It is for K through 12 but there are a lot of great resources there. And there was a gentleman that he created a video and he has a lesson but it's not exactly for our audience. So I wanted to scale it out into a full project and I used his video where students listen and take notes and they learn and they see examples in advertising of ethos, pathos and logos, okay? So there is a full lesson plan. This could take a couple of weeks, this lesson plan, okay? So when you go to here, this is available right now on the OTAN website and my students really like this project, really, really do. Okay. And that picture is really huge. I didn't put that there, but anyway. So they're watching this art of rhetoric, learning academic vocabulary rhetoric. Wow, you know, for an ESL student some of them do know what rhetoric means. They have that cognate, right? But they watch that video. I'm not gonna show you the whole lesson plan but there are lots of, you see all these documents that you can download and modify for use. But what I wanna show you is the end product that students created in my class. So there's that video from Read, Write, Think. And we're following the WIPIA model. Are you familiar with that? WIPIA, can you type yes or no in the chat? Okay, WIPIA is the stages of a lesson plan. Warmup or review, okay? Warmup or review, introduction, presentation, practice, evaluation, application, okay? Yes, you do know something. So what I did is I created this shared Google slideshow they've learned all about and we did lots of practice looking at different commercials that I just took from YouTube. And we analyzed, huh? Is this pathos, logos or ethos? And there was an additional reading that breaks it down to different features of each of those main rhetorical types. And so then what we did from there is my time up? Is my time up? Carla? No, you're still good. We go to 11.15, so I- Thank you. I got lost in the time. Yeah, you're good. There's a whole bunch that happens before this, okay? But there's this shared Google slideshow and I put in a YouTube video and I give my sample. So they have to watch the video together. It's a group project. They did this in Zoom in breakout rooms. And so class time given for group projects. So the company, what is the product or service? What is the message? What is the advertising strategy or strategies, the rhetorical strategy, pathos? And then this is from the reading, okay? The reading talks about ideal family, pull on heartstrings, prevention of negatives. And then they had to discuss together, would you buy this product or use this service based on this advertisement? And then you can see, this was some, I chose, this was, I chose my favorite. I chose my favorite commercials. Some from the Super Bowl, of course, those are always the best ones, right? So this was their work. You see, they work together and then I gave them other options if their group tended not to like the commercials that I provided. So that is a full, full lesson plan that you can use or modify with an end product that students can do individually or together. I provided the commercial, the advertisement, but you could have them go and search for one that they like. That could be possible, okay? And actually part of the lesson too was before they did this group project, I had a padlet too, and that's in the lesson plan, it's one of the practice activities, is they just posted on the padlet a commercial that they liked and why, before thinking about and learning more about rhetorical strategies. So it was highly successful. When I always check in with my students, what did you like? What didn't you like? This was one favorite project and assignment that they loved. So the other project that I want to tell you about is, well, I'll just talk about these ones. One is because I'm teaching ESL, students from all around the world like the rest of you teaching ESL and even those of you teaching ABE, you've had students come up from the ESL program, a digital film about a holiday or celebration. That one was wonderful. It's a full lesson plan. And I love this one, I just did this one. I've changed it over the years. Now my students are, instead of writing paragraphs, they're writing essays. That's kind of the demographic shift that we've seen with our immigrants. Maybe you've noticed that they're coming more prepared, but students use the internet to do some research about their first name, what does it mean? And it's been beautiful because first of all, someone here said they lived in Japan. The Japanese naming system, wow, your name can determine your life trajectory. Same for Chinese, but then students learned some things about themselves. A lot of them did not know why their parents chose their names. So they had to find out, it's such a beautiful, because part of their personal and life history, and then they make a presentation about it. It's really, I love that project. Yeah, another one again, because I'm teaching ESL, but this could be for ABE, it could be symbols of my hometown, okay? So we do this whole learning about symbols. And what they do then is write a paragraph and make a presentation or a digital story about symbols of their native country. What are the main things that the world recognizes of their country and what do they symbolize? The last one that I'll talk about is the personal logo project. This is one that students also tell me that they loved, they really loved. So with this one, it's a multi-layered lesson plan. It has so much going on here. So there are all the documents that you can use and modify for your use right here. And the standards are all there as you see. And we have some conversation and there is even, I think it's a Kahoot game that you show different logos and then they have to recognize what is the company. And so the introduction is that, the logos Kahoot, right? And I didn't make that, I just found it. So then what they do is first is I demonstrate this website, famouslogos.net, everything from sports teams to fast food companies, even rock bands have logos. And so I demonstrate how they use this and then they go find a logo of a product, a company or anything that they like and they fill out their slide on a shared slideshow, their slide, they put in the logo and they find some information about the logo. So who established it? What do the colors represent? What does the design represent and so forth? And then I introduced the project. So for the project, what they do then is some, oh, sorry, more practice. They learn about the different types of logos. Like there is a special name, you know the Google logo, how it changes with the Google doodles. There's a special name for that. I didn't even know that. And then they learn about the hidden meanings between the Baskin Robbins. There's hidden meanings behind many different logos. So they do some listening and note taking, language building. And I included a reading from a textbook here that I didn't include the actual document but if you want to include reading and then they create their own personal logo. Write about it and present it. So there are a couple of places that they can do this but I tell them if you are artistic, you can draw and paint if you want to. There is the Canva logo maker and there's the Luca logo maker. So first they need to think about important things that they want the world to know about them and what kind of imagery would represent that. So then they do the writing, get feedback on the writing and make a presentation, a slideshow. So let me just show you some samples of the logos that they created. This was from summer of 2021. Here's my sample. I have an apple because I'm a teacher and that is the symbol of our profession. I have behind part of the logo of the school I work for because all my professional life has been spent at that school. I have an open hand because my profession is a caring profession. And finally I have a heart with wings because teaching is my passion and my goal is to give students wings to fly. So this was Valerie. She's a professional photographer. I love this one. This is Pan. Julie, maybe you had Pan as a student at one point. Pan, you see that her name is there but she was so funny because she said a snail is a hermaphrodite. And while she's not a hermaphrodite herself she is taking on the role of mother and father because she is alone here with her kids and she has to do both duty of mother and father. So I thought that was a really, but just to show you a couple others, I mean, look at the different styles, all kinds of different styles. So they had to use visual literacy. They had to explain in writing. And this one, he has his own business so now he has a logo for his business too. This one was really interesting. A student from Iran. This was a basis of a letter he wrote to President Obama. Just really, it was a great first project where I got to know the students so much better and the symbolism. Yeah, isn't it wonderful? So I think my time is almost up. So I'll just finish up by telling you that these are all links to different projects that you can download and use. They're not full, full lesson plans yet. They're more like project prompts and examples that my students have made, but they're going to be fleshed out into full lesson plans to be available on the teaching with technology database on OTAN. Here are a couple others that's sometimes fun to team up with another class. This one was so, you can differentiate the technology. In this case, we talked about heroes and I made a Google Slides template because I didn't, you know, I do this intake form and I find out students technology skills, but this student, you can see that she ended up putting her whole presentation, her whole project on one slide because she had little to no technology skills. On the other hand, giving students choice and autonomy, I have this other student who has traveled around the world, has a drone and has her YouTube channel. And having her make a Google slide presentation for her project about her hero was kind of like taking many steps backwards. So of course she made a video. So that's the wonderful thing that we can do. We can differentiate. Okay, so anyway, choice boards are a way we can differentiate. This one's very busy, but so you wanna make them more simple. And finally about project ideas. What you're interested in, what your students are interested in, that's what you should do your projects on. And there are other sources listed here. My time is up. You can get the slides in the chat. I'm going to do that right now, or you can email me if you need to run out. Let me go ahead and put those slides in the chat right this moment. Thank you for joining me.


why a million dollars yearly is not enough. Hey, have you been thinking, hey, a million bucks? I mean, a million bucks is a lot of money. That's all I need. If I had a million bucks a year, I'd be set. Well, unfortunately in this video, I'm gonna show you why a million dollars a year is just not quite enough. Hey, I'm JR Fisher. Thank you for watching this video and visiting my channel. And if you haven't subscribed yet, please do so. Hit that big subscribe button down there. And when you do, there's gonna be a bell that's gonna pop up, bell notification. You gotta ring the bell, turn on all bell notifications. If you do that, you will be notified. You will be part of the Fisher family, the VIP group, who gets notified every single time I do one of these videos. And you'll also be told when I'm going live and maybe we can chat back and forth. Do me a favor, put any questions below. If you're thinking a million dollars a year is plenty, put that below and tell me why. And if you don't think it's enough, put that below too. Okay, so I remember as a kid, I thought, wow, a million dollars. If you had a million dollars, you'd just be set forever. You could have anything you wanted. You'd have cars and boats and planes and all these things in big houses. And the truth is a million dollars was not what I thought it was. As you get older, you start to realize what a million bucks is. And even though it sounds like a lot of money, it really isn't. So there's a couple of ways of looking at this. Do you have a million dollars a year and just net income coming in? Or do you have a million dollars a year in sales in your business? Because those are two vastly different things. If you're thinking about retirement, that's another angle, is a million dollars enough to retire.  Okay, so let's start with number one. If you have a business and your sales are a million dollars a year, are you set? Well, you may be and you may not be depending on what your cost of sales are. Now, with any product, whether it's a digital product, whether it's a physical product, whether it's a service, you're gonna have some cost to those sales. So we sell survival food. And our survival food, there's a cost to that canned meat that we put in a box and there's a cost to the warehouse and there's a cost to the boxes that it goes in and there's a cost for the shipping. So when you figure all that in, you don't really have a million bucks if you're doing a million dollars in sales. And I will share with you how I got to a million dollars in sales at the end of this video. And I did that in 24 months. So let's take a look at this, though. If you are generating a million dollars a year in sales, you have to look at employees, you've gotta look at rent, you've gotta look at, like I said, your cost of your goods sold and how much you will have left over. And that's one way of looking at a million dollars, okay? The other way of looking at a million dollars is a million dollars a year in income coming in. Now, if you have a million dollars a year of income coming in and that's just pure money coming in, yeah, I mean, you're gonna be probably set as far as the US standards go. However, most people don't have that advantage. Most people are trying to save for retirement and they're trying to figure out how much money do I need for retirement? Now, here's the question. If you had a million dollars for retirement, you had a million dollars cash saved, is that enough to retire? Well, there's so many factors that go into this and I wanna kinda go over all those so you know what you need to do and you know where you need to be and I can kinda show you how to get there, too. Okay, so let's first break it down. A million dollars, first off, what does it cost the average American to retire? They say on average, and you may be different, it's about 66,000 dollars a year. So once we start figuring that in and looking at a million dollars, we gotta factor in how long that's gonna last us. Now, to get to 66,000 dollars a year, that's about 5,500 dollars a month and that's food, housing, entertainment, clothing, anything you need, you're gonna need about 5,500 dollars a month, or on average. Now, your expenses may be more or less. Maybe you only spend 40,000 dollars a year or maybe you're accustomed to spending 100,000 dollars a year. Those would change but we're gonna use the 66,000 dollars as an example and then you can adjust it to fit your income. Now, if you're planning on retiring 10 years from now with economic adjustments and inflation, you're gonna need actually 1.7 million dollars in the bank to be able to live at that rate of 66,000 dollars a year. So basically, a million bucks, well, it's a good start but it's not gonna get you there. So you may be thinking, GJR, I know we're close to having a million dollars right now and I'd like to retire in a few years. Well, there are things you can do. You can obviously cut back your expenses. I mean, I know of people who've actually moved to foreign countries. They've moved to the Philippines. They've moved to Mexico where the cost of living is a whole lot less and if you don't wanna do that, then you gotta adjust how much money you have to live on. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average person between the age of 55 and 64, 58% of them still have a mortgage.  Now, the average mortgage payment for somebody at that age is 1,010 dollars or roughly $12,000 a year. So that 12,000 comes out of that 66,000 that we figured.  So when you retire, of course, you can travel. If you're going to travel to a campground and pitch a tent, well, that's gonna be a whole lot cheaper than going to Paris or England or some foreign country that's gonna cost you a lot of money. So you have to factor all that in. That's why I say this million dollar number is just a starting point. Now the average person over 55 spends $3,350 a year on entertainment, yours may be different. Now keep in mind, if you do have an income, you're gonna have to withdraw a little bit more money to pay the taxes. Taxes are still gonna be there even when you retire. Now keep in mind, when you plan on retiring has a drastic effect on how much you need to save and how much you need to have. If you're planning on retiring very soon, we can use these numbers. If you're planning on retiring 25 years from now, that's a big difference, but the upside is you have a lot more time to save up. You also have to factor in, do you have any debt? You know, credit cards, car payments, all those things can really add up, especially during retirement, when your income is probably not going to go up. Now, here's the other question.  I work online and I really don't have an inclination to retire because I'm not quite sure what that means to me. Would that mean that I would get up every day and just watch TV? I can't picture myself doing that, okay? I have to have something to do. And I can actually travel now, and you know, there's a course I wanna tell you about, it's below in the description here. You can grab this course that will teach you how to sell stuff online, how to make money online. But because if you have a job like that, a position like what I'm in where I can earn money online, what's the point in retiring? All I do pretty much is talk and type and you know, sell stuff online so I can do that from anywhere in the world, which means I can travel anywhere in the world. Now, I also told you, I wanted to share with you a story about how I went from zero to a million dollars a year in sales in only 24 months. My second year, I did hit a million dollars in sales. Now, there were a lot of factors there. And some people say, well, J.R., you sell survival food. So, you know, that was really hot when you started out. And that's why you got that money and that's just a luck thing and it has nothing to do with anything else. And nothing could be further from the truth, okay? The truth is I started selling things online. I learned to sell things online. And maybe I would have gone in the, you know, health and fitness area. Maybe I would have sold supplements. Maybe, which is also very popular. Maybe I would have done something in love and relationships, which is also very popular. The point is I got started. And I think that is the number one problem with most people is they go, well, gee, I've got to find the perfect thing, the perfect product to make all this money.  Well, I got to tell you, survival food did really good when I started out. But depending on who's in the White House, it can go up and down, okay? And we've had big swings in that. Right now we're in the midst of coronavirus. Yeah, survival food's doing great. We're doing really, really well. Prior to that, we weren't doing as well. We've always been able to make a living. We've always been able to sell it. But the other thing I want to share with you is don't put all your eggs in one basket. You know, if you had money to invest in the stock market, I don't think you would take all the money you had and put it on one stock. I know I don't do that. You would probably buy a whole bunch of different stocks. And that way some go up, some go down. On average, you're probably going to get an increase. However, when you're selling things online, you need to do the same thing. Yeah, we sell survival food, but I also have a course that shows you how to set up a drop shipping store. I also have a course that shows you how to set up a Shopify store. I also have a course that shows you how to work Facebook ads. I also have an emailing course. You know, I have a whole bunch of different courses because I don't want to have all my eggs in the same basket. I don't want to own just one stock in the stock market because some of those things can do well and some of them can do poorly. So it's really important to remember, number one, get started. Okay, get started. Get started with your savings plan. Get started with learning how to make money online. You grab my course down there, it's absolutely free. All you have to do is click the link and learn. But make sure you are getting started, okay? With that savings plan, with that learning on how to make money online. And maybe you'll find that, you know, you want to make money online and you don't even want to retire because it's a pretty good life. You can shoot some videos. You can, you know, work on your computer. You can travel the world and you can still make money and not have to retire. And I don't think, you know, near as I can figure, being retired and sitting around the house is probably not good for you. I'm figuring health-wise, if you just sit around all day and you just watch TV and you don't really get much exercise and you're not out walking, you're not exercising, you know, it's probably going to be really bad for you. So I would suggest, number one, you watch this video to see what a million dollars a year would be like and maybe thinking of retiring. And I'm here telling you, I would not retire if I were you. I wouldn't think it was the thing to do because it's not healthy. It's a whole lot better to learn how to make money online. And this is the environment for it. If you think about it, guys, we're in the midst of a pandemic now, but what it's done is it's taught a lot of people that they can buy online, that they can order their food online, that they can get their clothes online, they can get their exercise equipment. You know, gee, if I think back over the past five months that we've been in this coronavirus, I think it's been about five months, maybe four months, four and a half. I bought a lot of stuff online and I've actually changed some of my buying habits. I used DoorDash and Postmates and all those things, Grubhub, to get food to come to the house of which I'd never used before. Now, I'm not that fond of that because I'm thinking, you know, the guy at Grubhub may pick up four different houses, meals, and drive them around town and you're not gonna get hot food. So I'm not that fond of that. However, there are people who started using Instacart to get their groceries or Grubhub or Postmates and they love it now and they would have never tried it before. So the market out there now for people buying online has never been better. If you're in a job right now and you don't like the job, you don't like what you're doing, I gotta ask you why you're doing it. There are alternatives, okay? You can do this. You don't have to be a genius. You could grab my course down there, you could get started today. So that's my suggestion to you. Million bucks, mm, not much money, not as much as I thought it was when I was a kid, but it is a start, okay? And you can do it and it doesn't matter what age you are, it doesn't matter if you're very young, very old, okay? You can start making money because time's gonna pass anyhow. You might as well do something with it. I really appreciate you watching this video. I thank you so much for that. Do me a favor, if you haven't subscribed yet, go down there to that subscribe button and turn on bell notifications. Make sure you ring the bell, okay? If you ring the bell, you'd be part of the Fisher family, the VIP group that gets notified every single time I do one of these videos, especially when I go live, you can also participate in that. So make sure you do that. Now, I wanna hear your comments below. What do you think of a million bucks? Is that enough? Do you think a million dollars is enough? Have you started saving? Tell me what your saving plan is. Have you started online? What did you do online? How has that worked out for you? Has it worked out really well and you wanna share some of your successes? Put that in the comments below. Thank you so much for watching this video and I'll see you in the next one. Hey, thanks for watching my video. Don't forget to subscribe to my channel and click that little bell right here so you can be notified every time I do a new video. Also, click on one of those videos there. Keep watching on my channel.


Hey, this is Brett and this 2016 Mazda MX-5 Miata convertible Grand Touring is stock number 12931Z. We are here at Summit Automotive in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, near new and used sports car and convertible headquarters. This 2016 Mazda MX-5 Miata has the two-liter dual overhead cam inline four engine, which puts out 167 horsepower. This car has been fully-safetyed and inspected by our service shop, has a fresh oil and filter change. All the fluids have been checked and topped off, and this car is 100% ready to go. We're going to go all the way around in this video inside, start it up, take a look in the trunk and under the hood. Jet black mica is the color, and we shoot all of our videos in 4K, so if you have HD capabilities on your computer, tablet, smartphone, or television, I highly recommend turning them on right now because it is your best way to check out the quality, condition, options, and cleanliness of the vehicle before seeing it in person. If you like the video and how we do things here at Summit Automotive in the lower right-hand part of the screen is a subscribe button to our YouTube channel. Click that, and then click the bell notifications and you'll get updates every time we do videos of our new and used inventory here at Summit Auto. Everything comes with the painted alloy rims, and it has 205, 45R17 tires, and these are Bridgestone Potenza tires, and they should have just about all the tread left. There's only about 2,800 miles on this car, it's a one-owner clean title history, and with only 2,800 miles and being a 2016, that's less than 500 miles a year that it was driven average. The bumper and lower valance are in very nice condition, you can see just how reflective and mirror-like that paint is. The hood is in excellent condition as well, very nice car. Coming around to the passenger side, front fender, I didn't see any dents or dings on there, and the passenger side rim, no major scuffs or scrapes on that. And let's just take a look at this jet black mica because it's got a little bit of metal flake to it, a lot of purples and blues and even some greens in that metal flake. So really a cool color, you can see just how nice that paint is too. And as you go down this side of the car, take note of how clean that body is, how reflective and mirror-like that paint is. We take these HD videos, so if you are far away or even if you're close by, you just cannot make the trip down, but you're still interested in purchasing the car, you can see the car, hear the car and have confidence in the vehicle that you're looking at before you even get here. So when you do get here, there's absolutely no surprises. And you can make a smart and informed buying decision from wherever you're at, and if this video helps you make that decision, let your salesman know that you saw the video, that it was helpful, and that Brett sent you.  Moving around to the back of the vehicle, rear bumper is in very nice condition. I didn't see any scuffs or scrapes or dents or cracks. The trunk lid is in very nice condition as well, you can see just how nice that paint is. Look at the reflection of the ceiling on there, wow. Back trunk area, you get a set of factory floor mats back here, and the storage area is very nice and clean, I think that's a first-aid kit, not sure. Very, very nice back here, and we'll actually put the top down in just a minute here, and then we'll do a walk around with the top off, rear quarter looks really good, I didn't see any dents or dings on there, and for full disclosure this back room is in really nice condition as well, and down this driver's side door, I didn't see any dents or dings, looks really, really good, you get heated power mirrors, this one does have blind spot monitoring, inside the grand touring package gives you the black leather interior, both of these front seats are heated, you get the red stitching, no rips or tears on the seats, they are in very nice condition, factory all-weather floor mats in here, power windows, power locks, power mirrors, you get the leather bolster, and then this door panel is actually a jet black mica as well, so that's really cool, looks really good, we'll hop inside, check out the miles, the radio, and everything that this car has to offer on the interior, and then we'll take the soft top down, you can see that this car only has 2,808 miles, outside temperature display, average speed, instrument cluster is very nice and clean, comes with the leather wrapped steering wheel, cruise controls on the right, bluetooth and audio controls on the left, note that you get the red stitching on there, this one also has the blind spot monitoring, stability control, and lane departure warning, and you can set your tire pressure there, this one does have the factory navigation system on here, you get your climate controls down here, push button start, if we can go to the home screen here, might be able to pull up the radio and see what options we have, audio sources, you have AM, FM, and Sirius XM radio capabilities on this car, and down here you get two USBs, they're your heated seat buttons, six speed manual transmission, passenger side floor mat and seat are in excellent condition as well, no rips or tears on there, you do get cup holders there and a little storage box, and then up here you get home link buttons for your garage door security systems and lighting systems, auto dimming mirror, and to get this soft top open, just go like that, and just kind of push it back, and you can actually just shut it by pushing down on it like so, and to get it open you gotta do this latch right here, anyways I'll put the windows down and we'll start it up and then we'll do a final walk around on the vehicle, we'll also take a look under the hood, see it starts right up, no check engine lights or anything like that, actually sounds really good, I've driven this car a little bit, the chrome tipped exhaust back here, take a look under the hood, really a nice looking convertible, I would personally like to thank you for checking out the video today, and hopefully from this HD video, you've been able to verify the quality condition options and cleanliness of this car all the way around inside and out, under the hood we have the two liter four cylinder engine, 167 horsepower, engine bay is very clean, runs very smooth, once again this car has been fully safe and inspected by our service shop, has a fresh oil and filter change, all the fluids have been checked and topped off, and this car is 100% ready to go, there's your emissions sticker, so I'm going to turn the lights on so we can check out all those lights in the front and then we can, because they are HIDs, and then I'll do a final walk around with the top down, and once again I'd like to thank you for checking out the video, and hopefully from this HD video you've been able to verify everything on this car, options wise, cleanliness wise, and see those HID headlamps there, very nice and bright, and I would highly recommend this 2016 Mazda MX-5 Miata convertible from a quality and condition standpoint, and to see more pictures of this car, one of our other 450 new and used cars, trucks, SUVs, minivans, wranglers, convertibles, sports cars, you name it, we've got to go to that website right there, summitauto.com, full pictures and descriptions of every single vehicle from two locations, all at summitauto.com, and if you'd like to check out more HD videos you can go to youtube.com, so our summitauto, number two, like, subscribe, and share on this video, and all the videos that you see there, click the bell notifications, you'll get updates on the videos we do each and every day here at Summit Automotive, in fact in a second you will see a link to subscribe to our YouTube channel in the upper left, a link to more Mazda Miatas like this one in the upper right, a link to this vehicle on our website in the lower left, and a link to one of our latest YouTube videos in the lower right, click those, check us out, and we're super excited to be helping you with this ultra clean, ultra low miles, nicely equipped 2016 Mazda MX-5 Miata convertible, grand touring, and jet black mica metallic, thanks again for checking out the video, remember to like, subscribe, and share, and I really appreciate it.