So four quarterlong elective classes. Um otherwise it wouldn't it wouldn't impact the schedule in any other way. There are five options presented here. um whether they're participating in band or choir or both or study hall and those electives or participating in the dual language program. And just to to clarify it, right, like this is the groundwork, right, of getting those four electives. One of one of the problems that we face that our students face is when we currently do course selection to go into seventh grade, which is in January for our students, all of our students have really only experienced one semester elective. And so our counselors and our teachers put in all this work and visit classrooms and say, "Hey, these are all of the electives that you might get to choose when you go to seventh grade." And our students haven't experienced any of them, right?
They they've experienced much. So they're they're making these choices, right? Think of they're they're making their choices because their older brother or sister had that class or they've heard that that teacher is pretty cool or >> any reason, right? Their friends are wanting to do that class. So again, we're really trying to to give our students as many opportunities as we can um so that they can make the the decisions that that are best for them. And we'll get a little bit more into some of uh the current constraints with with our whole process and why we're really going this way and then talking about what we really want to do as we as we roll this forward in a little bit. But we've talked about data a lot throughout the night and and a huge piece is our student voice. So we're going to give it over to Mr.
Gensler from Murphy to talk a little bit about our student voice part of this. All right, as we talked about this evening, student voice, it's huge. You know, kids come to school every day. We want their opinion. All right, they're the ones who have to go through this every day. We're adults. We've chosen this. So, we got the voice of the students. Ask them what they want. Junior high kids are going to tell you if you ask for their opinion. So, we asked for their opinion and they gave it to us and this is what they said. These these are the things that they're talking about. I enjoyed the teacher like that. That's again, teachers attract. Different teachers attract different kids and every kid's attracted to a different teacher by how they teach, what they teach. All different reasons, but it they enjoy the teacher.
The teachers bring this stuff to life. It's a safe place to learn how to cook, boil water, work on a wood shop, all those types of things that anybody get hurt doing any of this, but we're doing it in a safe spot where kids can challenge themselves, kids can fail successfully and learn that that's not how you do it. All right, now we know how to do it. And these are the things we're talking about. They enjoy the content. I had the opportunity to be creative. Creative can be innate. It can also be something that you're taught. So all these things are what kids are looking for. I felt a sense of belonging. Like a lot of kids find these things in all these classes and this is why they like these classes. They're a little bit different and it's it's that real world feel that they really like.
So once we go over to the next one. So what skills? What's knowledge? Creativity is number one. Again, it can be innate or it can be taught, but they like that creativity. They like that thinking out of the box. They like, you know what, I see it this way and it can take me here and take you there. Cooperation, junior high kids in cooperation. I'm amazed that that's number two. But they like to work together with their peers. They like to say, "Oh yeah, you do this at home. Oh, we do this at home." And and they talk about all that stuff. Content related technical skills. Folks, we're on the other side of technology. These kids are growing up with it. So they like those skills that they're getting now in junior high. It's a safe environment where they can be expression. They get to express themselves.
You see kids carrying all kinds of stuff around the school from the wood shop and it's why'd you make that? I don't know. I thought it was cool. That is pretty cool, man. And then they tell me all the bad stuff about it and I go, what are you talking about? That was nothing. And then you made it into that. It didn't have to be perfect. Things like that. And resilience. We're looking for a lot of resilience in junior high. It's hard. It's a tough three years, but the these are the things that kids are looking for. And now, sorry for the uh folks that were talking budgets and cuts and all that stuff, but these are all the things these kids want to do. And as a junior high AP, my goal is to get them to do all kinds of it. Do the cool stuff.
Have fun with all this. Learn learn in a safe environment. Learn with your friends. Realize that we are all different, but at the same time, we're all the same. We all live in the same town. Cooking, culinary, wood shop. I mean, we could read all those and we there could probably be 10,000 more. But again, I don't work with the budget, so we're just going to leave it right there as what kids were saying. >> So, this is what we're looking for. >> Finance fun. >> I'm sorry. >> Make personal finance fun. >> That's what we could do. Let's figure that out. I I'm good. >> There you go. All right. We're looking for meaningful access to the full range of electives electives we offer. We current structure limits students to only two elective experiences that are not the same options across our entire system.
This reduces our exposure and prevents students from discovering interests and developing skills that can be built upon through junior high, high school, and beyond. Students can see their strengths and areas of interest to help them learn about themselves and their future. And I think that's this is one of the biggest things we all talked about. When a kid goes to high school, they all don't know have to know at 13 to 14 15 what they want to do for the rest of their life. But if they go in and they're like, I do not like that class cuz that's just not a me thing. That's that's not a bad skill to have. Nothing's worse than a kid graduates and he's like, "I took a bunch of classes and I don't know why I took any of them." If we can get that idea in junior high of this is what I like.
This is this is what I want to do. Whether you're good or bad at it, we'll learn how to put in the work. But know what you want to do in high school. You can have more fulfilling high school classes instead of just picking what mom and dad or older brother or some other kid down the street told, "Oh, take that class. It's easy." or have them go to high school knowing what they'd like and what they're attracted to academically will help them move through. So there's our same image that we saw last time instead of option 1 2 3 4 or five if you're having trouble reading that options are not names. So Billy is going to take band and then two semester electives and that's our current system in the system we're creating. Billy's going to have band and he's going to get the four rotation and it's that intro and it the intro is they can teach the kids, they can show the kids, they can help the kids and everything there.
You'll see all the options in the blue. Everybody's got one thing filled in and then they're only getting two. Now we have one thing maybe filled in and they're getting four. So it's that option of you actually have options now instead of just one per semester. Now you're getting all four of them. And that way in seventh, eighth grade, you can take the next level if you like it. Or you're going to give it the old no thanks bite of, yeah, I took that and I'm okay not taking it again. And that's okay, too. So, it's all these types of things where dual language kids, they can have band, choir, or an elective rotation. Study hall, you still get the four. Band and choir, they're the only two difficult ones. If you're in band and choir and there's a select number of kids, they that's their jam.
Then they're okay missing out on these. But the opportunity to give all kids as many opportunities as we can before they get to high school is is the key is really let them challenge themselves and try things out in a safe environment. >> Just a couple more things, right? One of the things that that's really important with this currently our system is and and if you've had junior high kids, um there's a good chance you've probably emailed their principal to or counselors to just talk about scheduling, right? when when we when we offer our students the choices of the electives at the end of the day, there are so many individual needs that come up into the system that even if you did want FCS and intro intro to Woods or something, at the end of the day, if it doesn't fit within your schedule and where your other needs are, if you're go a high school kid going to geometry, if you're in other electives or other other classes, a lot of times the the choices that you want aren't always what you can get within your schedule, right?
And so so we always have this this this thought of choice for our seventh and eighth graders and and one of the things that we really wanted to start with our sixth graders is we wanted to build this foundation so that it was going to be equitable for everybody. Reagan talked about this at the beginning. We have a a technology wood shop classes in our district right now in seventh and eighth grade. The state of Illinois there are two colleges that you can even get that endorsement anymore. And so the the reality is the way that our classes are set up currently we have three teachers four teachers across our five schools that can teach that two of them are retiring within two years. So we we have to be part of this future focused is even us as educators that what are we building so that is actually going to be able to be implemented for our students in our system.
So one of the things that we're really looking at is right is getting this so that our sixth graders all at every building have the same option. For example, if you go to plank right now, sixth graders don't even have the opportunity to take home because we don't have the FTE to do that. If you are at other schools, there are classes we don't even offer in our grade levels because we don't have the right certifications to do that. So, that leads us to our FTE. Here's the great thing. We are doing all of this for only four extra periods across our our system. Four. So twothirds of an FTE increase for us to do this. Why you ask, how you ask? There's a lot of reasons, right? Currently the way that our electives are run because they're just a I'm going to say right there almost like an afterthought, but really that is right like we we plan our FTE for everything else.
We have this FTE. Our seventh and eighth graders get their classes and whatever we have left goes to our sixth graders. with being intentional with this. Right? Currently, we have some electives across our system that are running with 10, 12, 13 kids in the elective. This system is going to get us. We are going up to 28 in every elective class. So, we know right away we can have 112 seats in in planned periods for our sixth grade and maximize the use of our FTE. So, a lot of these we can just increase the students in these classes without even having to make another section because we're just making full sections where they are. Right. the other part right these are going to be nine-week classes rather than semester long classes the way that we are are are going to I don't even know the right word Dr.
kid like registering these with our state in our state codes and course names. We want our most um uh our teachers with the the right credentials to be teaching our most rigorous classes at this sixth grade level in year one. We are going to still have our teachers that all have these endorsements teaching these classes in the few areas that there are a section here or there. We've also designed this so that anybody with a teaching license is able to teach these classes. the way that we're designing the scope and sequences, right? Intro to technology, we are going to have the scope and sequence in the curriculum map so that anybody can really pick them up and do them. Additionally, we have really worked to we we've worked to hire elective leads this year. So now we are even going to have that that professional learning teaching atmosphere and and aspect when we do hire a new teacher, right?
Now we are going to have someone dedicated part of their job like how do we help onboard these people? How do we help connect them to the curriculum that we have? How do we show them the resources that we have and then be that point person to answer questions? Because as much as I don't know, I don't know about sixth grade music. I don't know about home. I I could try, but like let's start connecting you with people with some dedicated time and and opportunity to really onboard our new teachers. Uh again, something that we we've probably missed in in this realm for for years. Um another thing that we've done, again, this is all to be fiscally responsible. We have really worked to adjust our allocations in in our budgets that we give for electives right currently band has some money we give some money um to our to our LRC's for books we give some money for just various reasons we have started to reallocate that as a per pupil uh expenditure because right now if you're at Bedars with 520 kids their programs are getting the same chunk of money that Trober gets with a thousand kids so we've we've even worked to adjust that of what is a per pupil cost so that you know Ben Narik might get a little less, but we've got to give some to Traver.
But again, with student counts, that makes sense. So, those adjustments have also helped us free up some money for some of those unforeseen costs that might come with the roll out of these electives. Here is our our course title changes, right? All of these are going to be exploratory in nature. Um, again, this is that foundation. We we really want kids to learn how to start to measure. We want kids, you talked about financial literacy, that is something that needs to be in our scope and sequences that currently is not. So part of our sixth grade home is just some budgeting stuff, right? Some some very basic and then we're going to build on that as we go. The exploratory music, the exploratory art so that you know and so that the public knows in all of these classes. There are aspects of relating to college and careers within these classes.
Right? So yes, if you're a sixth grader and you've done music for six years at the elementary level and now you're going to do another general music, well now we're going to start getting like music production, music creation, all of the the aspects within music that aren't just singing and and playing an instrument, right? So that people can again start saying, "Oh my gosh, I love music. I'd love a career in that. I didn't even know that there were all these other opportunities for me." So we're starting that in in the sixth grade exploratory world. and then Josh can talk a little bit about our curriculum map. >> The curriculum map is the document that we've been working on in our committees. Each each elective area has been working to develop um what this new quarterly curriculum will look like. Um we started with the state or nationwide standards depending on the particular area.
Um and as we've talked already the connection to the high school and beyond that those career opportunities. Um, from there going into the enduring understandings, what what are the what are the things? What are the skills? What are the real things we're going to take out of that classroom and into the world and into the high school and into the career and just in into our lives beyond the walls of our building. The essential questions are more the why questions is is the purpose behind these skills and these things. Um, Bill talked so much about the importance of the creativity and the and the the spirit underneath these skills. um instructional resources and um are what we need to make it happen. And then the comment of um summitative assessments each u going back to what John had been talking about about the equity across the buildings that as we develop these courses we're all going to be assessing the same way even if we approach those subject matters uh differently depending on the teachers and the students that we have in front of us.
>> All right. So that that is really all that we're doing this year. Just so that you all know know kind of where our our vision is going, right? Once once if and when this is approved, uh we will then work on rolling this out for next year. Our team is meeting in April to all of a sudden start looking forward to to the following years, right? We need to make a decision on what the structure of our electives are going to look like in seventh and eighth grade. For example, do we want to continue to roll up these four quarter options or do we want to stick with semester options for our seventh and eighth graders? We also want to um really do a gap analysis. Jennifer Prior talked about like those seven competencies. One of the things that we're going to do in April is really look at all of those skill sets that are that are required in the state and needed for our students and see where we are really hitting those well as a district and where are some opportunities for us to start maybe designing some different courses uh that that really can meet, you know, again, the future skills that our that our students need uh and deserve to have.