Dudley you want to add to that yes that would be accurate you know not knowing we we do have virtual learning going on and and soon you'll get an update on what is happening but as dr. B says we're not going to know you know what the effect of this is one until we get our kids back into the building right okay thank you very much well thank you Pam thank you Amy Roger Pete dr. Beresford I said I would circle back so Katie do you have any more questions on this discussion do you excuse me um one of the things that I think and we haven't touched on it too much but I would be remiss is the recess time I know that when we did the elementary evaluation that was a huge topic of discussion and we had so many emails from parents Alice a pleading that they definitely wanted to see that more recess time so I do think that that's something that that we should also make sure that we are I know we are considering it but a topic of discussion that I do think that that is very important for our students and I just wanted to kind of make that comment there is that with all these discussions I know that there's lots of different recommendations but I do think that that is an important one thank you Katie Lynn do you have any additional questions no additional questions at this time thank you thanks Leila yes yes I do and Katie thank you for bringing that up about recess because what I was going to go back to was that elementary school day program evaluation and I was hoping dr.
Jenkins I'm not sure I just want to clarify that May 1st deadline is for kids to request just so to request that they can make some work up or resubmit if they guest get that request in which we can certainly re-emphasize to them they then have all that time to make their plan to come you understand that like is that people have checked out until 5:00 for under 8 that and so that deadlines falling before work or mentally checking in means that if there's a third of the students not checking in they me miss that one deadline yeah understood I want students to miss that opportunity right yeah so we can we can certainly Remus eyes that with our students and and if that's all on now I have one final thing for tonight and we have special guests coming to the podium mr. Nunes does the a mr.
Dudley could maybe touch on this I do recall although it's not in front of me there were several recommendations and one was additional time for inquiry for social studies projects for science related experiments and that was one of the basic recommendations I believe because we I mean for two reasons when we were looking at ISTEP scores we saw a bit of a gap and well anyway dr. Dudley could you just touch on that please I am not seeing dr. Dudley okay then dr. Beresford I don't know the answer to that mostly because I was looking for dr. deadly kid can you I'm sorry pant or at Leila could you could you just share that question with me one more time yes the question is during the elementary school program day evaluation I believe one of the recommendations was to extend the amount of time that we need for inquiry for social studies and for science and during that evaluation it was my understanding that they reviewed ISTEP scores at the time that there was a gap and we weren't making as greatest strides and so they felt as though if we had more time to dive deeper the performance of our students in their academic growth might you know be more positive right now I'm tracking with you now sorry I was distracted but yeah the basic oops who's talking about the achievement gap yes we have some students that are you know gap and from different you know different subgroups is what they call them I don't like that term but so the idea of having more you know really the kind of a list of things that were on that the benefits of having an extended 30 minutes of the day is that innovative you know learning more personalized learning more student choice and those are things that you know have been cited it's things that can help close those gaps yeah and what kind of interventions you can do with that with those I'm sure dr.
Nunez I'm sorry I didn't see that I've got no problem I guess I'm going to be the one who puts a fly in the ointment here but that's first and foremost I'm totally disappointed that you know we show 38% of our high school students you know not logging in and you know 29% of our middle school we're probably for argumentative stick just about all of them now have a Chromebook all of them at the high school and eighth graders have a Chromebook the middle school you know the middle school now has you know I would think most of them for the sixth and seventh graders so I'm a little disappointed you know that these students have checked out and my personal opinion and this goes back to what dr. Gifford said and also a comment to what Shannon said you know you're a little you know the Mayfair's deadline is is as far as I'm concerned is in concrete you know these are these are all big boys and girls and if they haven't taken the time to log into the system and they've decided to check out and now all of a sudden a deal you know Shannon you're a college professor if somebody comes running to you the day before final exam and says help you know I've got to redo this assignment well you've had all semester Teresa to resubmit it or help you know that type of deal I'm sorry I can't buy into that with regards to the passing of any course at the high school running you know the the 65% that kind of means in the next you know the 17 days of classes between May 4th and May 27th because of weekends in Memorial Day and everything outside I think 17 dates that means they only have to do 11 days worth of assignments I mean I got a major problem here with that I got you know we're not you know we're almost you know gonna let him slide by and that doesn't it doesn't sit well for me and the mic what my other question becomes as as we go into this new and again I just printed this out tonight too but as we go into this new extended learning and you know additional information that we have what are we doing I mean students you know the past six weeks of going to have been you know not remedial but reinforcements of what they've learned and now we're going to teach them new stuff what do we do if a student you know and we may have that same issue with a Chromebook don't get me wrong but you know Johnny as soon as he walked out of school on you know March 13th March 14th and you know look brought home what they needed to bring home and left everything else in their locker and they haven't been able to get back and go to school how are we handling those and I'm sorry if I've ranted well that they really don't need other things for the lessons that are ongoing so whatever they left everybody has has access with the devices that we've provided the bigger question I think what your ass is getting the schools cleaned out and emptied and lockers and all of that which is going to be taken care of once we have more details on the governors restrictions health restrictions etc but any learning activities that the teachers are providing at this point in time would become remote and internet-based etc or a PDF sheet that they're posting which is also being done okay I just wanted to bring dr.
Delia could speak more more detailed to it but that Elementary evaluation was before I got here and so I picked up this pieces of it as we've moved forward since I've have been here thank you thank you circling back Pam and the other questions you okay yeah my since I since I don't have any other questions em I'll assume you're good you're not mute hang on a second Colleen can you add me Pam you Oh Here I am okay no no further questions thanks we're gonna have to go to sign language this year or something all right well so thank you I think we will have a way for teachers and students and parents to submit comments after this meeting I'm not sure how it'll be shared but yeah I'll share that right now mr. Kirschner if that's okay go for it please yeah this is the this last slide first off I want to say that yeah issues like this can really sometimes be divisive and and the communication is so much is so important and I've really been impressed by the way our our teachers and our community have been communicating with one another they've been on both sides of the issues and that kind of debate is healthy I think for organizations and and it's not been like personal attacks and all those kind of things which is kind of popular these days on social media and so I'm very proud of our our teachers and our community members although they disagree they're being polite 'fl and relate and respectful about that and it's just another example of you know why this community is as strong as this because it's okay to it's okay to agree to disagree and and have spirited conversations and I think that's what really makes organizations stronger so we know that this is an important issue to a lot of people so we wanted to have a way that the community could share their opinions with the board as we'll bring this back in May for for decision and so what we've done is we've on the screen there you do have a link and that link will also be in the board update that will be mailed email to all the families in the district and there's QR code there and both of those will take you if you want to - comment - the board will take you to a basically electronic form where you can you know fill it out and then put your thoughts into it and then that will be the most efficient way for the board to see everyone's comments that way a lot of times when people is just an email after email you know your inbox gets pretty clogged up and it's hard to you know to keep it all straight so this is a way that we will use to get information to the board so that it'll all be in one spot you know that will be easy to access for all of you board members so and again we'll have this you know on the board update that will be sent out later this week but we did want to make a way for any community members staff member anybody that wants to weigh in pro or con whatever side you're on it's no problem and and we always get some meaningful information when we do these types of things so with that I'll I'll conclude this recommendation thank you thank you but before you conclude I see dr.
Jenkins did have some comment and so I just I just want to respond to what mr. Newton Sykes mr. Newton said asked a question about what I would say if a student came to me and what I would say to my student is how can I help you right we're in the global pandemic it is unprecedented in our history our students are struggling I hear stories every day they're worried about their parents keeping a roof over their head food on their table there's teenagers who are picking up extra shifts at grocery stores they're worried about getting sick they are struggling right and as an educator my number one priority is making sure that every single one of my students is successful so my first question to them is how can I help and how can I make sure that you make it through this right so my concern is not about punishing students my concern is not about schooling students who are struggling my concern and our concern should always be how do we help these students succeed and I am hundred percent for every ounce of flexibility that we can give children to make it through this crisis in a positive way and I am glad to see that we are doing that and I hope that we can be even more flexible and meeting their needs dr.
Doug Lee's back on do you want to go back to Leila's question or how the Leila do you feel like that was answered well enough or would you like to ask Amy one more time you know could we just ask Amy - I find no absolutely go ahead okay dr. Dudley argue there I am sorry my internet went out okay questions that I had actually the only question additional question I had was during the elementary school day program evaluation it was and I I apologize for not having it in front of me but one of the recommendations was extending the school day specifically I thought for social studies and science inquiry that we felt like there was after all the evaluation happened and looking at ISTEP scores and just I supposed teacher and parent feedback that having additional time in those areas was really important could you touch on that sure so one of the the recommendations was to have additional time for specifically for inquiry but also looking at steam and having more time to delve deeper into so it may be an investigation that you might do in science to have more time for that hands-on learning that sometimes gets missed when you're rushed so it wasn't just for inquiry or just necessarily social studies in science but it certainly stemmed around those pieces as well when you think about that content in those engaging activities that do sometimes take longer and some you know you you're teaching the lesson and then now it's time to do the investigation and you have to get all of the materials ready and that does sometimes take longer so that that was part of that program evaluation alright thank you next we will we have another discussion topic materials adoption now the presenter is dr.
cassileth yeah I would just like to say we don't we don't know there are certainly some kids that are just saying forget it oh there are a number of families that are really very difficult places socially emotionally financially and um just it's just that I want to make sure we consider that whole social emotional piece some kids may have not had anyone there to help them they may not even know where to begin to do any of this so we don't know what's going on in those homes there are certainly lots of parents out there that are doing a lot of great support work but if you're a single mom and you've lost your job and you have three children and they all want something at different times you know we have to factor that in this this is a very difficult time for people I'm certainly sitting here is a retired person it I think of all those people out there that are well that's not even just think of the economic what about the 50 he says how many of these people have lost are they're frightened about what's gonna happen to them so I mean there might be multiple reasons why kids are not checking in and maybe if we had enough resources we couldn't find out more about that but um I just want us to be sensitive to that issue we don't know why this is happening in - dr.
Doug Lee thank you so this evening I'm bringing part one of our miscellaneous materials adoption for discussion and next month I will bring part two this is the year that actually we had some pretty big adoptions that were to happen but then as we went virtual it was more difficult to have our finish our literacy adoption pieces so I will be bringing to you next month for discussion some pieces of literacy adoption but I'm not I'm certainly not going to be bringing the entire literacy adoption we decided to put that on hold for next year just because of our circumstances right now but this evening the materials that I am bringing for discussion for materials adoption stem for from several high school courses the first one in family consumer science our educational professionals to this the change for this material is because this is a dual credit course through Butler University and they are recommending a new textbook to be used in this course so that is the textbook that they're recommending for this dual credit course the math you can see the math the science and the Wellness those are all new courses those are all IV courses that we added to our program of studies and so we need to adopt materials for those and the exciting part is as you can see the different IB courses I'm sorry the science and the Wellness our new IB courses the math the IB changed the curriculum and so that is the reason for the new materials for the math IB SL and HL but for the environmental systems and the sports and exercise science those two are new courses that we just adopted through the program of studies and so we need to adopt those materials and then the last course in Performing Arts for the piano and an electrical keyboard that is a new book that the high school teacher is suggesting to use for that course and we have not adopted materials new materials for that course in several years so those are the courses for materials adoption that are ringing this evening for discussion thank you dr.
Kara focuses point you know one of the things that I'm here and in my job and you know through my wife is that there's kids that are not home they're you know they may have a device they may have internet at home but they're not home their parents are working during the day they're there in the health care they're in the front line so they're at their grandparents houses there at relatives aunts uncles houses they don't know the first thing about technology and trust me I am all about technology and at the forefront of it but that's some of the things that I'm here and social emotional issues I've heard of students that are they don't like tsums that they're theirs hiding underneath blankets during the Xoom they don't want to do the zum-zum for whatever reason social emotional so without being said just just something that just popped into my head as we're as I'm sitting here listening to everyone is with these new guidelines that are coming out through Jesse what would the harm be in and maybe some building principals have already done this what if we what if we looked at from maybe a building a building based having zoom meetings with parents just why don't we it just or almost like a webinar not so much back and forth but just a presentation by our building principals in Dartmouth to address all everything that the expectations that we're moving forward in acting as a resource as to how Dartmouth can help these parents that help these students to get through this time so I don't know if it's something we look at through the building level something through the district level but just an idea that I'm floating floating around that because there is a lot of you know the parents right here parents finding out oh because they emailed that their students teacher there Oh Johnny or Susie was supposed to be doing this work and they're not doing this work so I don't know it's just over kai guess over communicate with something like this especially as things are continuing to evolve yeah I agree with that over communication I and I also agree with what dr.
Dudley this time I'll go in the opposite order if you're not if you're not ready Pam you can pass and I'll come back but any questions Pam no I think these are really great courses they looked very interesting and it's neat to see that we have so many IB courses being offered and I like seeing the adoption of the Performing Arts as well thank you thank you Layla any questions nope no thank you thank you Winn no questions thank you thank you Katie any questions no questions all right thank you well that is the un-- the end of our presentations for today next we will move to reports the first report is the student data report which has hinted to before by dr. Doug Lee is on a virtual learning update so dr. Doug Lee thank you can you see my um screen there yes we can perfect great so believe it or not we've just completed day 21 of our virtual learning journey that we have going on here and I'd like to share an update on some of our successes and some of our challenges thus far so starting with our access so let's look at student access so in order for our virtual learning to be successful for students need to have that internet access obviously they need to have access to devices they need to have an understanding of how to navigate canvas which is our learning management system as well as how to use Google tools to communicate their learning so our social workers our counselors and our administrators reached out to families to ensure that they have internet access and if the family do not then the school personnel help them to facilitate this access through various internet providers and we are very fortunate that several internet providers in our area provided internet access for free for 60 days and then some of them after the 60 day period they offered a very reduced cost to Internet and so we're excited to say that we were successfully able to help all of our families that were not previously connected to internet to get connected to internet during our virtual learning time so our families also had the opportunity to check out mobile devices if they needed a mobile device to use at home and some of our families needed maybe this to augment the devices that they already had at home we also saw a surge in some device checkouts when older brothers and sisters came home from college and they were also doing online learning and so we had another surge of some mobile devices so so far we have checked out 2526 Chromebooks for students who use at home and to put that into context you know we have about sixteen thousand five hundred students and we have about ten thousand families so that puts that into context of the numbers that have checked out those mobile devices we're also providing ongoing support to our families on utilizing their Chromebooks and troubleshooting technical issues as well as navigating canvas Google tools with information on our virtual learning website for families we have a very robust website out there that it has all kinds of schools for our students and our families to use and they also have the opportunity to seek additional help by submitting a virtual learning support ticket and so far our technology and our curriculum teams have responded to two 1487 support tickets and I just haven't want to mention that they do that very quickly the turnaround time is just amazing our technology team is just wonderful and the support that they give to not only our families but then also our teachers and answering kayako tickets so our data does indicate that a hundred percent of our students who use canvas for their coursework has successfully access canvas since we began virtual learning on March 18th so we do know that our students do have the access to be able to use the tools for the virtual learning it's moving on looking at another big piece in this puzzle is our communication so in order to ensure success in our new reality communication is essential and communicating virtually with students and Families can sometimes be challenging and you can see I demonstrated that as my internet went out completely right before I was supposed to do my presentations so we use canvas learning management system as our virtual learning hub for teachers to primarily communicate with students so this is the tool that teachers use to put their announcements in canvas each day that includes an explanation of the activities with the specific instructions clarifications of what assignments should be completed and submitted directions on where to go to find any necessary additional resources resources such as links documents and times when the teacher is available to answer questions and these announcements are posted by 9:00 a.m.
Jenkins was saying earlier you mentioned the nagging and you know being able to support your students it's not working in here yeah there's a lot of confusion I have I see both ends here and I see myself as a professional pretty engaged with what is going on and following along and reading up all the guidance and I still find it confusing and you know it's got three different you know students in my house I'm working my husband's working outside of the house and so it's like all hands on deck you know so it's been very very tough and you know I hear in my own my own kiddos my oldest kiddo you know that May fourth date so going back to what dr. dr. Jenkins said that May fourth date is something she keeps saying and there's a lot of you know she's a senior and so there's a little bit of that social emotional stuff going on with the reality of what you know is happening with everyone but there's been some movement and there's been some at first there was some reticence now there's like this movement around I'm gonna get to it and so she is one of those whoo-hoo we'll get to it and I think we'll finish strong but it's been a process of not pushing too much and not trying not to nag and really it's been a complex and and I and even for you know hearing it in the fields there's other repercussions that some of our more struggling students are actually doing better now because of that the stresses with the anxiety around the school refusal and so I don't know how that's impacting Dartmouth but I'm hearing it on a more statewide level where students who were struggling are actually like reading at higher levels and really you know feeling safe within their home so this is just you know it's not easy there's gonna be a lot of fallout with this and I've heard from educator friends who are feeling like well I can't reach my more complex students and what I say to them is living it here you know my son may or may not skip school a few days this last couple weeks but having a zoom on and hearing a voice and seeing a face and just having a familiarity around knowing those voices and knowing those faces as it sort of is keeping him up to speed whether or not he's completing the work to the degree that I'm able to help him do that but so teachers who feel that this is just a really difficult way to reach those struggling students just know that what you're doing just by doing it I'm being there and reaching out is so helpful as a reminder of you know some may find it what they're missing and it might be a little bit more stressful hearing those voices but for the majority of what I'm hearing and I'm experiencing it's just wonderful to have that connection and some pictures and some you know memories to share and stories to share and just having the voice and having you reach out is just I know we're all in this together and we're gonna get through it together so thank you everyone for your comments aronia I know we had a special guest coming right I think this is there but I don't know if I would should now turn it to Kate we have any public comment would that be okay sure it's Kate here yes so we had one email and I think it it's more of a comment on what was said during one of the discussions it comes from if you just bear with me Kathy in Simmons and she writes grieve it was my understanding that Sarah dicus was replacing Carl Robidoux yes that was announced already so the position she left is still open and that's the one we're not the assistant principal position we are not posting thank you for that and that's all that you have that is all I receive okay so I will turn it back over to dr.
each day many of our teachers link videos of themselves explaining the expectations and the announcements to their students and this is especially helpful in our elementary classrooms one of the things we're seeing is a lot of videos the teachers are doing many lessons with those videos and our teachers are really doing a fabulous job of collaborating together and working on developing those videos in then using each other so for example in first grade a first grade student may see all first grade teachers doing different parts of the lesson and so they're dividing and conquering and doing a fabulous job of that teamwork that our teachers are very much known for so communicating with the parents and the Guardians all is also key and our teachers are using traditional forms of communication that we've always used such as newsletters on the phone and email and they're also adding in our new virtual world a virtual check in meetings and virtual question-and-answer sessions with parents this is specifically helpful in our elementary for our youngest learners our kindergarten and first-grade Tom students and we just had some last week we had collaboration of our different elementary schools where our teachers and different grade levels had the opportunity to come together virtually and share the different tools that they're using and many of our teachers did share especially in community where they're having these question and answer sessions or check-in meetings with parents I'm communicating they felt that was very helpful so the next piece of this is talking about our connections and one of the biggest challenges in our new virtual environment is connecting with our students and helping our students to connect with peers and we know that is so vital in their social emotional well-being that they have those connections and you need to have the relationships before any of that learning takes place and so by music virtual videoconferencing our students have the opportunity to see their teachers as well as their classmates in a whole new light they get a small glimpse into their home and if they're lucky they might get an opportunity to see the teachers family their children or their pets as well as their classmates families and pets and so that has been an outcome that in the traditional classroom you didn't always get to see other than maybe in photographs so our teachers are utilizing many creative ways to connect with the students and many teachers are hosting their virtual morning meetings where students interact with each other seeing a class song express well wishes play a short game there and these are might be activities that are similar to what you might see in the classroom but it's through virtual conferencing teachers are also this is a great thing and meant we have many teachers that were sharing they're doing these they're hosting Lunch Bunch or chatting shoes where small groups of students have the opportunity to interact with the teacher and their peers and just connect on what's happening in their everyday lives and that's such an important piece of them being able to see each other and talk with each other and it's all on a more of a social level teachers also have students create videos of themselves may be sharing a talent or an interest that they might have so it might be a talent in building Legos or an interest you know a talent in dancing or playing the piano and then they upload those videos into what we call flipgrid and the other students are have the opportunity to view those so they get to see their students their peers doing bit many different things that they are interesting to them also our teachers are offering virtual one-on-one meeting times with the students so the teachers can connect with the students individually because you know our teachers miss seeing their students in person and our students miss their teachers and we keep hearing this over and over again just how much they do miss being in the classroom each and every day and they're so creative our teachers are so creative and helping ways to help our students to connect in that vital to our social emotional well-being for our students and so you're just really thankful that our teachers keep trying new and different things that help them to connect so looking at engagements again teachers are utilizing several different tools to virtually engage our students in active learning and this is really a change we have a lot of active learning that goes on in the classroom but when you're thinking about building those lesson plans virtually there's a lot of different strategies that they need to think differently about so some of the things that our teachers are using is students might be assigned a discussion group in canvas where a small group of students have a book club discussion or they have an opportunity to solve a juicy math problem teachers use padlet where students have an opportunity to share their responses in a full class discussion in real time students might be asked to upload a video of themselves reading a book or they also might be figuring out a problem and thinking aloud and then the teacher has the opportunity to come back and view that video and then share feedback with the students and they can really see if the student understands the problem or if they where their learning is breaking down so the teacher can come back and share that help that student to understand how to solve that problem teachers are using Google Forms that students fill out at the end of lessons so they can check for understanding and they have a very quick exit ticket so they can play their next lessons to know where the students are at and where they need to go next we also have teachers engaging small groups of students can individual and also small group conferences to check in on learning and some some of our students are receiving one-on-one virtual instruction based on their needs and some other examples our teachers are embedding small group challenges into lessons where students engage in friendly competition they might be using tools such as Kahoot to have these competitions and our teachers are engaging or creating those engaging virtual learning opportunities so that our students are continuing to learn however keeping the students engaged in learning in this new reality is challenging and some students are thriving in this new environment because they love the opportunity to set their own schedule they love that they can do their assignments on their own time because many of the assignments the students can do them asynchronous where they're all doing them at different times there are opportunities for them to come together as a group but those are not required necessarily unless they're taking maybe an assessment at the secondary level other students are not thriving in this environment they excel more with more structure in their day and one of the things that they might be struggling with is learning how to manage their time in this new environment and as I mentioned earlier a hundred percent of our students who use canvas for their coursework have successfully access canvas however only about 95 percent of our students are continuously staying engaged and we want to make sure that all of our students are staying engaged so our teachers our administrators our social workers our counselors are all working tirelessly to ensure all of our students are engaging in that learning and not giving the students the opportunity to opt out you know typically when we're in regular session usually this time of year engaging our seniors in that coursework be challenging we are still seeing those challenges and engaging our seniors but we're also seeing challenges of engaging other students in their coursework and we don't want to give them the option to opt out we still have several weeks of school left that we want to continue the learning and so when teachers are noticing that students are not logging into canvas or turning in the assignments the first point of contact is that the teacher reaches out to the students and the parents through a phone or email to ensure the students are understanding they have the tools to make sure that the student is safe make sure they find out what is happening and what supports they might need and if the student needs additional support then the teacher alerts the social workers the counselors and the building administrators to help to problem-solve in a small number of our cases we've also utilized our SRO SROs to do home visits to ensure the student Safety's or just to check in on our students so another important piece of this is collecting feedback and collecting and utilizing the feedback has been essential in our virtual learning journey and one thing we've heard from our teachers and our students is that everything seems to take much more time in our virtual learning environment so collecting that feedback from our students and our parents on the amount of time it is taking the students to complete the assignments and then using that information to adjust has been key during this time and it's also essential for teachers to provide concise focused and informative feedback to their students teachers do this in a variety of ways to include written feedback just as they might do in the classroom and also in some cases recording feedback a video of the teacher sharing that feedback for the students and the teachers are providing live feedback to students through one-on-one conferences or small group conferences as well so our virtual learning journey has not been perfect and we're continuing to learn along the way and to improve however you know I've never been proud of our entire school community and how well we've all persevered I see perseverance daily and our students taking ownership of their learning and finding creative ways to connect with their peers and their teachers I see perseverance and our teachers learning new strategies to actively engage our students in virtual learning I see perseverance and our families supporting their children in virtual learning while juggling working from home and family life I see perseverance and our social workers or counselors our instructional coaches and our administrators in finding creative ways to support our students families and teachers in this new reality and I see perseverance in our technology staff and tirelessly ensuring that all systems are working and one system fails it quickly figure out the issue and get it up and running and so despite all of the challenges that have been quickly thrown our way these past couple of weeks and the challenges that we know are yet to come I know one thing is certain that our school community will persevere and so with that I will answer any questions you might have well thank you dr.
Gifford yes so thank you for all your comments I especially liked the comment like suggestion mr. Oliver made about the parent zoo meetings that might be a good and I think that would be good building building based anyway tonight we have and I'm gonna leave it to mr. Gallow sure once again to introduce our special guests we wanted you to see what some of the teachers are doing with the Google classroom we had a actually I'm going to stop right now I'm going to let mr. Gallo show take over yes sorry for the awkward moment I came in earlier to comment and I didn't want to take myself off the screen is that something might go wrong so I got a chance to crash your entire School Committee meeting here at the podium so that that's okay during the meeting and you'll see in the recording some faces came by quickly those were people in the waiting room those were were our special guests I hoped could take a couple minutes of your time to to introduce some special people in the district that are working on the front line with technology and education what we've done is an amazing thing in the state and in the country and the world to have an online presence from March 12th or 13th that day till three or four weeks later having a full submersion of technology and education so that would not have been possible without the the foresight and forward-thinking really the the School Committee as well as the superintendent to hire some people in the district called instructional technology specialists so I wanted to introduce them to you and have them give a brief explanation of what Google classroom is and to show the the school committee as well as show the community what it is the Google classroom and it's a really short kind of advertisement about Google classroom so you can see what we're doing and I also wanted to say that the data that you had provided before if it leads to talking points it's a wonderful thing I think I have to produce some more data so it's it's you get a fuller picture of what's going on I as I go these training classes and as the instructional technology teachers will tell you they're full in regards to training these teachers day and night on training sessions actually I had 25 people come to my 7:00 p.m.
Dudley and dr. Beresford for this very timely and important update I know it's a concern for all of those on the board as well as parents and community you know we have I think we've demonstrated that we've all stepped up to the challenge again I just want to thank the technology department teachers and administrators parents and and families for helping their students learn in this new environment I will open it up to questions I'm going to start with Lynne and then we'll continue in the normal rotation and then if you want us to skip you will we can come back III don't have questions but I do have comments from my personal experience I see my daughter every day Monday through Thursday very engaged in finishing her activities and I'm amazed here by the variety of activities the amount of engagement they're her teachers putting to keep her continual learning and then and this is definitely very beneficial so students do not lose learning during this hard time and I really appreciate the work by our district this is by comparison to the previous history that I live in which is also a high performing district my friends comments is that their teachers are not doing anything and some teachers already putting the entire all the assignments for the rest of term just leave them to students so I'm very happy and very moved by what CCS teachers are doing for students thank you thank you and Leila yes I'd like to reiterate what Linda's saying I have two boys well I've got three all very different learners and they have been challenged and it really has been a very positive experience for us as well one thing whether I was really happy to hear Amy that you were touching on feedback and how we're growing and learning through the feedback and what I was you know my question for you and maybe dr.
training class last Thursday I was surprised I didn't know anyone would come out that night to do that but they are going to these training classes and learning how to do all sorts of technology and with that I'd like to introduce a few of them so they can they could show you Google classroom I'm gonna start with the elementary school I hope that was the proper order that was going to do this first with one of our first tech teachers who's been around for many years Trish leery Trish if you could make yourself appear Trish leery and it's from the Quinn elementary school and Trish has been around for a long time and she used to do instruction Tec for the entire district if that was possible way back when I don't know if she out there okay let me let me maybe I need to on there we go I'm gonna unmute her and she's going to be accompanied by Potter's technology specialist which is a Sandra chicka who is from the pottery elementary school and she does that through through Potter and one of our newest just started this year taking over for Josh Rodricks at de Melo school and comello and Cushman schools is Liz vocie who just started this year Josh Rogers was drafted by the Tampa Bay Devil Rays there's mo C would be the player to be named later so she would be that player we picked her up on waivers but she out there let me see if I can turn that camera on as well and there we go so then what they're going to take over the stairs Liz they're gonna take over the screen Trish and Sandy and Liz could you take it from here and show us quickly what do we see it a Google classroom for elementary kids sure I'd be happy to you so I'm just Larry I'm gonna get started I'm actually going to share my screen and this is something that teachers have been doing through our remote learning I've needed with their students if they're using any of our platforms communicating with them so mr.
B maybe even Christy I'm not sure whom where are we housing these lessons learned through this experience it would be really they'd be sad if we aren't you know growing and getting better through this entire experience we really hadn't had a learning days prior to this and we jumped in wow we just divided in and our teachers and administrators have been doing amazing things I don't I personally don't feel like my children have much of a slide and God willing everybody else's children are on the same you know launch pad and they're growing and learning along the way as well but how are we as a district growing and learning through this experience and where are we housing all this information so we can continue to get better sure so you know one of the benefits of this is we you know we were thrown into the and we had to swim and our teachers are swimming wonderfully with you know we've been using canvas now for four years and we've had some teachers that really embrace that and we have other teachers that maybe we're just doing just the communication in canvas but now they have to use that tool and what they're finding is that you know it's really powerful and how they can once we go back to being in class how they can continue to use that tool and as I said our teachers are creating a lot of different lessons a lot of videos the teachers have the opportunity to share keep those courses they keep them in their canvas course so this year their canvas course would go inactive but they would still have opportunity to go into that course and have access to all that information and then canvas also has another tool called canvas Commons which teachers can upload into the canvas Commons and they can upload it just for karmically teachers they can upload it for teach all teachers using canvas and so we have do have a lot of teachers that are uploading different lessons for example our early literacy lessons we have a very large number of video lessons that we have uploaded into the Commons where the teachers are able to then pull those down and put them into their own individual canvas courses and we're also keeping a lot of the learning pieces and the ideas in our Google Docs and we have Google folders like I said our teachers are we just last week we had district sharing by grade level in our elementary schools and then the teachers are uploading different ideas and different lessons into Google folders as well to make sure that we can continue using this the learning because right now we are a hundred percent virtual in the future we don't know what that will look like but we do know that we can continue to use technology to really amp that learning even if we're back to completely normal and so it really has helped our teachers to engage and then also our students to engage and to use that new technology so that that's a very positive piece of all of this has come out one other question we've reduced the elementary week to three days a week and the high school to four days a week has that had a positive effect I mean I know my kids are happy with it but his how has that been going so the elementary day is on it's still four days a week but on Monday it has new content but it's if they can continue to engage in different enrichment all different activities and they more SEL pieces and that has been a very positive effect for our students and then the high school in the middle schools because they're on that block schedule they meet in their classes twice a week that's why they're in the four days and then the teachers have that Friday as a planning day that has really helped with their well-being as well because as many of our families are doing and they're juggling helping to support their children at home many of our teachers are also juggling that and that has seemed to help the mental health of our teachers as well to have that day that planning day and as I said when our teachers are really seeing is that everything seems to take much longer virtually where you might be never planning and using that feedback and having that time to really plan and work with your team teachers as well I would just add Leila that our principals are doing a great and shepherding they're their staffs and they're collecting information and they're sharing with one another as well and then they're sharing that with our teams here and the people are in this meeting every area is communicating and working and working it and trying to figure out the best ways to do things differently than we're used to and so it's been really impressive and I know it sounds like a broken record but the collaboration that goes on in this district is amazing you know all the social workers have been meeting all of them in through is to azumed format and are collaborating with different ways to support kids and families and and tracking people down to see you know where they are and what they need and dr.
Gallagher ah can you open up the screen sharing right now and it's um it's disabled oh that would be me PC good job with your security preferences mr. Gallagher on doing I I've been trying to control this we were afraid we didn't want any party crashers to our meeting miss leery is that is that available to you now oh there we go so hopefully a Google classroom has come up if anybody can kind of tell me if it's there because you can see it great so you know as everyone knows and we've been having discussions like there's a variety of tools that our teachers are using to communicate with students and provide learning experiences for them and one of those tools is Google classroom and this platform is giving us a place to share curriculum materials to communicate with our families and our students so what we're going to share with you tonight is a brief overview of a sample Google classroom so what I show you here is not as extensive as what is being used in the classroom there's many more materials posted and you'll see a lot more on a working classroom this one is used for teaching teachers how to use Google classroom as well as creating screencasting things that we post in the drive to share with parents students and all of our staff so we use this for a lot of ways but you'll see this one isn't a live classroom in terms of students accessing it this is used for our courses that were providing for teachers so when students log in this is the default page they go into in the stream and I'm just going to scroll down a little bit so you can see primarily what the stream is used for is announcements and just communicating with students so you see these are some samples that we put in here in the stream where students can access some of the tutorials that we are providing for them as well as just straight communication with them and just let them know we're thinking about them this is a spot where we just say hello let them know we're thinking about them in this class comments actually you might hear me here for many of our classes is turned on so students can communicate with their teachers depending on which way they're communicating the entire class might see the comments versus a private comment directly to their instructor so this is just a very very brief overview of what a stream might look like you can share a multitude of different file types on here so I tried to include video just a comment scrolling back up I go slowly a slideshow here and again the stream is primarily used for just announcements and just some communication with kids I'm actually going to turn it over to lesbo see who's going to talk about class work great Thank You Josh so this classwork tab in Google classroom is really where all the teachers and students can come together to have their work organized and put in a way that each student is getting the assignments and the enrichment activities and the communication methods that they need so you can see in this example classroom Trish has it set up so there are different topics so you can see the enrichment lessons are first some teachers will have their zoom scheduled there and there's your expectations there's another section for important resources and this is also a place where our social workers have put in like second step lessons and some social-emotional activities our specialists are our teachers and phys ed teachers and music teachers are using that tab down there to post their weekly lessons and it's a way for two-way communication so in each of these activities when the teachers post them students have the opportunity to either just look at something if it's posted as material or if it's posted as an assignment students can comment on it or even submit their work to teachers that way but this is also placed for special education teachers to be posting resources that are general that the whole class can see or also specifically to the students that they service and then the students who only the students who get assigned an activity can see it so if there are special education resources there only the students who get that assignment will see it and they will only see it for themselves so it's really a place where all the teachers can come together and organize their materials for the students in their class in one place and I think if mr.
Dudley's group has just been a real good obviously not perfect but we are figuring it out kind of piece by piece and and that one thing she shared that I've ever quite often is that kids we thought might not be engaged or have been very engaged in this setting and some that we had anticipated would remain engaged we're not and so there's a big question mark there how do he you know how do we navigate that how what do we need to do and and and we'll keep working the problem but we got a lot of talented teachers administrators a you know that are just doing a wonderful job and I appreciate it it's tough it is a tough setting I think another piece to Leila for your question we wanted to also so much is coming out everybody and we wanted to really help manage that communication and so what we implemented that seems to be working well is we have a daily administration log that we put new information into one document and we share that out each that they have access to it where they can refer back to it and that seems to have helped rather than getting a million emails because as you know everybody's getting a ton of information at this time so that's another way we're capturing all the things were learning okay thank you Thank You Leila thank you dr.
Gallow can invite the rest of our technology specialists in I'm gonna hand things over to the middle in high school all right mr. Gallow I was getting there let's say the middle school is as an instructional technologist named Tempel Mitchell and let me bring template oh I'm sorry I it was listed under Helen Helens her her full name but we call her temple gods their nickname temple if you could introduce yourself yes hello um temple Mitchell and I work at the middle school and Jen Thomas is new this year from for the high school and Jen are you there yes sorry I needed to unmute myself I'm here introduction so I am kind of taking over the class toward peace laughter I'm just you some of the more specific types of things that can created by teachers for their students well this fist on the material and arranging them by topic I'm gonna focus the more quickly on the types of assignments so at a high school level and at the middle school level we tend to get back or assign things then also get them back from students who turn them in the elementary school a lot of it is more one way on communication we are actively assigning and collecting work from students all the time so the way to do that is at the top of this classwork page this button that says create you're given a whole number of options and depending on what your goal is for the type of work that you want to assign assignment you can assign a quiz directly within class work so you if you if you click on the click assignment it will actually allow either attach a quiz that you've already created or to actually create a brand new quiz in Google before and attacked it and have it sent out to your students you can ask a question so in a lot of teachers right now especially are doing like question of the day just to keep kids aren't asked a question and the kids respond and you get formatted back nicely and like a little graph to see what the responses are and then like let's touch done you can just Ariel so if you have for example YouTube videos to watch there's no assignment attached to attach to it you can just click on my chair and upload a video or any type of material really and one really great feature is that you can reuse a post so if you click on that and you you're going to be asked which posts you want to reuse and you can assign that within the classroom or any of your Google classroom here maybe some delay we yeah okay sorry my internet is having issues so did you hear me talking about we did but you chopped up a little bit right so the last feature that I just wanted to touch on quickly is that reuse post where you can reuse posts from classrooms and send them to any other that you might have so that just is a little time saver trick that I like to suggest for teachers and I think it's just a really quick overview of how the password page works both at the elementary level in upper low levels as well okay temple did you want to add something sure um I'd like to talk about the grades first Trish rather than the yes so I'm hearing a lot of your concerns about reaching out to students students kind of signing in and logging on here is where teachers are able to see their posts so what you can see at the top there are different assignments that Tricia's put into this classroom and along the left-hand side you would see the students names here is where the teachers are able to see the actual activity that's happening through their classroom so it gives them an indication if you were to see a live teacher's classroom that's going on right now there would be checkmarks in all of these columns and rows letting them know and being able to get a quick visual on who is opening the work who is working on their their assignments and from here they're also able to communicate back and forth it really is this Google classroom really is a portal that is opened up for the students to be able to communicate back and forth with the teachers so the grades gives them a great quick visual on kind of a check-in who's doing what and again another portal for them to maybe make comments or repost or send it back to them and let them make more adjustments to their work so the teachers are really liking this and hearing your concerns with everyone having a Google classroom and having assignments being posted they're able to tap in and this is another quick check on who have an i've heard from and and who is you know continually on the next thing i want to talk about is the people tab this is where you would see all of the teachers are listed first and then you would see the students beyond that neat thing about this is as soon as the students are logged on or part of your classroom you are also able to that's the middle tab our middle view there it allows you to invite guardians to kind of join in on the efforts of what's happening in the classroom when a guardian is invited into a Google classroom they don't have the same access that the students have they have what we call a summary so they'll get the invitation they're able to join in the classroom and they were able to see they can either suggest or actually request either a daily summary or a weekly summary and what it does is give them involved in what's happening on the classroom what's getting posted and it's a notification that either comes daily or weekly so it's really a nice way to have the families involved but not too involved they can see what their students need to be doing and well it can have a voice I'm kind of to let them know I can see that you have some work so it's been a great way to invite families in without really dipping into they couldn't go into the grades and also they can't get into any of the attachments but they can see that something was sent out so that those two areas there's a lot of communication and a great visuals that those that are part of the classroom can work with okay any questions we just wanted to give you a quick overview that there's a lot being done and I think the best way to reach all of these students is to have the teachers do that as they as they know they know their kids best they know their students best do you have any questions sandy you could take some of those questions I actually just want to thank all of you for letting us crash your meeting tonight and yes give you the opportunity to ask any questions from us thank you Chris he's muted you're muted phrase there we go Thank You mr.