001Then I'm going to give the floor to Mrs. Ley Mon teachers. Good evening everyone. My name is Megan. I am one of the teachers in the teen program here at Montistoria in Gunston. We have a presentation with slides for you, and we also have the counselor, Mrs. Rinaldi, as well as Mrs. Stuart, who is our social studies teacher, and Mrs. Sealen, our individual education teacher. I'm going to share my screen. It's working. Works. Very good. Thank you. So, today we're going to start the presentation with a video, and the Montessori students here in Gunston will be featured. We're going to share some general information about our program here in Gunston. We'll also share information about the Arlington lottery and answer questions if we have time. All right, here we go with the video. Um, Lindsay,
002could you just give me a thumbs up if you like it's working well? If it's not, we can just play it later. Okay. Welcome to Hi, my name is Ronan. Hi, my name is Leah. Hi, my name is Ann. Hi, my name is Hi, my name is Hi, my name is M. Hi, my name is Ken. I'm a monosy eth grader. And we're going to start this video out with questions and concerns Rising Fifth Graders had about Gunston. Are we going to have enough time to switch classes? Don't worry, you have plenty of time to switch between classes for a whole minute and it's never even been late. Are the monasory teachers Gunst didn't mean? No, Miss Megan and Miss Sarah are actually like both really nice, especially Miss Megan because like when you're like
003telling jokes and stuff like she's actually like she enjoys it and she likes how people are being funny. And Miss Sarah she's a really helpful teacher. What? No recess. Recess? That's our elementary kids. We have outside unstructured social time. Um, and during that time you could play on the softball field. You could just chat with your friends. You could play on the basketball core or you could have uh there's a tiny little break. It's kind of like the monasory playground but a bit smaller. So yeah, there's a lot of things. And try saying that five times faster. Are the eighth graders big and mean? No, actually eighth graders can be friendly and nice and in TA they can help you and show you what to do if you're not really understanding and don't be scared
004of eighth graders. Now what do we love about it? I love the freedom to learn in our own way. You can sit wherever you want on the floor or like at any table you want. And you can work with seventh and eighth graders to make projects or by yourself. I also love the focus on projects based learning and the emphasis on creativity. I love that I got to meet new people from other elementary schools. I made more friends and I thought it was going to be hard but it really isn't. Shout out to Gloria and Taylor. I love the trailer community here because mainly um like in traditional classes sometimes you need a ha pass to get from place to place but in here you could just ask oh miss blah blah blah can I
005go to the bathroom or miss blah blah blah can I go get water? Another awesome thing is that like we're separated from the school. It's really um it's really easy to get from class to class. I really love all the monasory only events like Nana R the celebration of light the beginning midyear and end of year celebrations. If you're worried about middle school or coming against Don't worry about it at all. As soon as you get here in about a week or two, you will get really used to your schedules in all of your classes. If you have any problems or questions, then there are se and eighth gaters and also teachers to help you. Even though the schedule seems really confusing, after a day or so, it doesn't. If you ever felt that feeling
006like when you're in third grade and you moved to fourth grade in the first day, like you feel like, oh, I'm not a fourth grader. But in Gunson, you're not going to feel that. What are you going to feel? You're going to feel happy and yeah and like you belong. Uh and you're just going to feel a lot more mature. Welcome to those are some of our current students who are just incredible and bring to us daily. A few of our students are amazing and make us very happy. every day. Gunston. Now we're going to share some general information about the Montessori program for young people in Gunston. So this is our monosory team. We have uh eight wonderful humans. We have five content teachers, one special education teacher, one instructional assistant and our monasory
007counselor. And then we have eight people on our wonderful team. We have five content teachers, we have one individual education teacher, and we have a wonderful counselor. Our mission Gunston is opportunities adolescents to develop into empowered individuals community and future. So, our mission here at GSTON is to give teenagers opportunities to develop as empowered individuals and to learn, be self-confident, be academically competent, have a community mindset, and be creators of their future. We uh ground ourselves in developing our community and teaching students that curriculum and events in life together. Yes. And we are focused on our community, and the actions of the students and our community are all truly interconnected. In our Montessori classes we have different topics, which we cover and the different groups are between the ages of 11 and 14 years. teaching
008emotional. Yes, we firmly believe in working with the whole child and meeting their needs wherever they may be. Also, work together with the community and as a family to help the child succeed. We have found that our students appreciate having a self-directed and creative approach to learning, as well as the ability to work and make. They also appreciate various opportunities to learn different methods to demonstrate their knowledge and what they have learned from their peers. Our monosory classes are clustered together in the sixth and seventh grade. Uh classes where students are together in sixth and seventh grade and they essentially travel together from monasory class to monasory class so that they can build community and form bonds. Our sixth and seventh grade students are together and are of mixed ages, right? So they generally move
009around inside the building together and thus build community. is a word valorization and that's when we believe that if we give students enough time and opportunity and guidance they increase their ability and can understand. One word you'll hear a lot on the show is valuation. And this is when students are given enough time and guidance to do things independently. This increases their self-esteem, allowing them to grow and become the best version of themselves. service learning as well as students fundraising money. The way we work with this is through service learning and also by remembering macroeconomic funds. This means that they work on different projects and save their money and use it as they see fit . And upcoming we have something called celebration of light where we honor the light during this dark winter season
010across cultures. But we have many trips and celebrations throughout the school year. And we have many events. We also have walks, for example, right now we have a light event where we celebrate light, right? During these holidays for different cultures. We also have tours and many activities. We have resumes again. The first term was identity, the second term is perspective, and we always try to do quite a lot of work focused on our themes, and we also do quite a lot of social and emotional work. Um, this is a snapshot of the current classes that we offer. So, uh, for rising sixth grade parents, your child may take math six on the monasory team or take an advanced option. Yes, these are the courses we are currently offering in the Montessori curriculum, and for parents
011of children approaching sixth grade, we offer English and Language and Literature Six, or an advanced group or class. And as I mentioned regarding mixed ages, the sixth-grade children will be with seventh-grade students and will take language and literature and civics together. In sixth grade students are provided with two elective options. One is the students get in sixth grade the students are given two options. It is the exploratory wheel where they can choose from four to six classes of reflection. Yes, excuse me, they're working on the air conditioning. And the other option is to take a full year of music. Um, we just have a few disclaimers. One is that some students may be placed in mixed age electives or PE classes or assigned to a different grade level lunch because of our schedule that has
012many different programs in Gunston. And just a few announcements to make are regarding schedules, which sometimes mean students may be in a mixed-age and physical education group or be assigned to a different lunch group than their grade level. But if students are assigned to a different age level elective gym class or lunch, they will have a monosort of their grade level with. Yes, but if they are assigned to a physical education class or lunch or some enrichment class, don't worry because they will also be with their classmates. From the same Monteori advisory at the beginning of every day we have an hour in the homeroom where we have all 3 grades together 6, 7 and During our uh teacher advisory time, we are able to address and teach and monos. And during this time we
013can work on Montessori activities that are outside the content curriculum. Something that is unique to the Montessori program for adolescents is this document called the work plan. Students will receive a work plan. Good. So, each student will have the option to process the material at the speed they want and will also have the option to see how difficult the material is. Um, canvas is our learning management system and a big transition for new sixth grade parents is that everything is on canvas and it will take a lot of getting used to seeing which assignments your students have submitted on yema that we use to manage or administer our classes is canvas, right? Then parents will be able to see if the assignments were submitted, what type they were, and what we are working on when
014they access their student's camera profile . But don't worry, Gonstant has plenty of opportunities for families to learn how to use Canvas and how to become familiar with it. Students will receive letter grades , which may take a little while after receiving standard MPSA grades. And they understand that all the assignments they complete in the term are included in their term grades. grades start over. So each other, they just restart. And the grades start from zero, right? So, each quarter they start from scratch with their grades. Ah, during the video you might have heard them saying they were on the trail. Well, the lockers are in the main building. Yes, but the students have access to their lockers and can collect their materials and arrive on time where they need to go. Students have the
015opportunity to eat in the cafeteria or outside if the weather permits. And they can eat lunch with their Montessori classmates of the same grade level. We communicate mostly through the park. Then we send group messages or individual messages to keep you informed about your student's progress . At the school level, the levels of support for gifted students look different. We work with our resources colleague to integrate information resources into our students' curriculum. In the traditional regular program we have intensified courses. We don't have these courses here in Montessori . And the reason for this is because we support the academic ability of all our students. For example, the work plans that I showed you earlier have two levels of difficulty to demonstrate learning. Yes. So they can work with groups of their peers and also
016individually to expand their projects. Special education services look different middle school. Individualized education services are also viewed differently in middle school. Excuse as well education instructional assistant. Yes, the support team consists of two professionals, always the general education teacher and the individualized education teacher or an instructional assistant. If your child has an IIP, you will be contacted in the spring to close the gap between elementary and middle school. APSy process. Yes, now we're going to have a brief summary of the IPS lottery process. Please be aware that if your child is attending MPCA, you do not need to apply for the lottery. They will immediately have a place in the Gonston program. Anyone can apply to the lottery if they are interested in a choice program or choice school. Some of the option programs include
017a focus on arts, STEM, dual language immersion or monory program. Some of the focus programs may focus on art, science, technology and mathematics, dual investment programs or the Montessori program. Arlington and Arlington Lottery, which is double blind, right? and choose to raise the applicants and thus ensure that there is no preference for a particular applicant. Again, if your child is going to MPS, they do not need to apply for the lottery. January. But if your child is going to another school, you can apply for the lottery before January 16, 2026. February is the deadline for the list. On February 6th they will let him know what his place is in the rankings. We will also reopen applications that were submitted late on March 2nd. And if they win the lottery and their child is going
018to participate in a program, they would have to register by June 26. If you want more information about the programs we offer, please visit the website here. At the end of this presentation I will share my email address and feel free to contact me directly or the school if you want more information about the Montessori program. Time for questions. What questions might they have? You can either type your questions in the chat or feel free to unmute and just ask the questions. Whatever is easier for you. You can do whatever is easiest for you. You can post your comment or question in the chat, or you can turn on your microphone, whichever is easier for you. The first are bathoms inilers back. The first question I have is, are there restrooms on the trails or
019do they have to return to the main building? And yes, there are bathrooms in the trailers. The next question is, what is the number of slots available in the lottery next year? And that we are still waiting on numbers from the elementary school. So we aren't quite sure yet. We still don't know because we're waiting for the elementary school numbers, so we're not 100% sure yet. The next question is, what does a typical day look like for students? For sixth grade students, they come to our homeroom for 40 minutes first. Then they have language and literature class with the sixth and seventh grade students. They may have a math or reading class for 45 minutes after this. And they may have a science class again with sixth and seventh grade for 90 minutes. And then
020they go to lunch and from there they would go to their enrichment class or physical education class. And the classes that have classes on different days, those that have them on the purple day are different from the aquamarine day. Yes, as the students mentioned in the video, the students adjust quickly to the different schedules and communicate with students in the other grades. The next question is whether they also have the opportunity to participate in athletics. Yes, we have different sports after school and students can try to join a team and then they can take the bus in the afternoon to go home. We have about minutesing. What time does it? We have three more minutes. So, if you have any questions, like what time the school day starts. So students are able to access their
021lockers beginning at 7:40 but must be in TA by 7:50. If students have access to their lockers at 7:40, but have to be in the homeroom at 7:50 and the school day ends at 2:35, unless they stay at school for some activity. curriculum or sports. Any further questions? It seems someone is typing, and that brings us to the end of the meeting. Where can we watch the recording of this presentation once it's over? Options programs may be on the school's website. If you can tell us if it will be posted there, it will be on the APS page . on both pages, on the Gston page and on the Arlington Public Schools page. If you have any further questions, please email Megan. apsva.usus US and thank you very much for your time today. I hope
022this session has been informative. Ah.