001All righty. Well, good evening everyone and perhaps there are some that stayed over from session number one, but uh just as a quick introduction, I'm Michael Burton, customer success manager here at Skool Links and I have the honor and privilege of facilitating your course planning uh course planner training this afternoon or evening. Um in terms of the workflow and process uh for these training sessions or webinars, um this is ultimately to bring you up to speed on what is course planner being used for within Arlington Public Schools. um how you parent and guardian can be involved in that conversation as well as what the student process is for course planning. Um at the conclusion of our session today um I will provide you with some support resources that you can access and use to further
002enhance your knowledge on how to use course planner. All right, so getting started um first we're going to start with the overview of course planning. Uh so ultimately course planner is a studentdriven and counselor supported multi-year planning tool. Uh this allows students to in addition to selecting their courses for next year and plan those courses that they're most interested in. Um this also is a way to align the courses with their graduation goals. Um in addition to that, making sure they're on track for graduation. And this helps a parent and guardian uh be involved in the conversation by having access to view the courses and acknowledge the courses that have been uh chosen. In terms of uh who is course planning and course planning for what um for sixth grade students within the district, they
003are planning for seventh grade. For our seventh grade students, they are planning only for eighth and 9th grade currently, which is going to be the long-term planning. And then for our eighth grade students, our rising 9th, they're planning their courses for 9th through 12th, so all of high school. And then uh any of our students that are currently um or sorry, any of our students that are in 9th through 11th grade, they are planning for those remaining years of high school. And they will revisit and review their plan each year to make sure that they're still on track for their um for their outcomes for graduation. All right. The most important takeaway from this particular slide is that um there is a process and workflow and order of operations for uh course planning. Uh step
004one is for the student to in their uh schooling environment to review the courses, add the courses um for the different requirements and submit their course plan. Then there's a counselor approval process. Once the counselor has approved that course plan, you will receive an automated email from schools. uh it'll come from [email protected] uh letting you know that that course plan is ready for your acknowledgement and review. This is not a replacement of your current cadence of um advocating for or having uh requesting support for your student in the courses that they're selecting. Um but this does provide that visibility into the courses that are um being planned. All right. And then from there um after that part of the process, we take just next year's course requests. So, if I'm a eighth grade student just
005for 9th grade, we're taking those courses and then we submit them to your district for the actual scheduling process um which will happen um within the student information system. All righty. So, just as a quick highlight and overview, many of your students have already accessed the platform. But if you need to help your student or if they're asking you for additional support and guidance, um all students can access school links through the synergy my access portal. Um students will be able to click a link or click the school links icon and get directly into the platform to be able to work on their course plans. All right. All right. In a moment, I'm going to show you what this looks like live in the platform. Uh, but for our rising high school students or for
006our current high school students, uh, they have three phases or three steps in their course planning process. Step one, they will select a program of study. For step two, they'll choose the courses that satisfy and meet each requirement. And then step three, they click the submit button to indicate to their counselor that they're ready for that course plan to be reviewed. All righty. So, give me one second here. I'm going to jump into my student environment. Okay. And we'll commit. All righty. So, this is a student dashboard. This is what they see when they get logged into the platform. Uh, every student does have a standard to-do list which lets them know when to complete certain activities throughout different times of the school year. And one of the key items for all of your students
007is going to be to submit their course plan. Uh, students can click on the blue arrow and click on go to feature to go to their course plan or on the lefth hand side they can click on where it says plan and then go to course planner. In this page, as students are using course planner year-over-year, they'll always be able to go back in and view their historical course plans that they may have already completed in prior years. To update and edit my current plan on the right side, I'll press this blue button to complete the plan. One second. In some background noise, I apologize. All righty. So, once students get into course planner, um they'll be presented with a welcome page. In the welcome page, it'll let them know what school they're planning for,
008and then it will also let them know what graduation plan they're currently going to be planning for. All right. To begin the course planning process, I'm going to click on let's go. And the first step for our students is going to be to select their program um or their CTE pathway. And so when they first get to this page, this left-hand side will be blank. We go and they have a list of options based on the uh programs that are available at that particular campus. So here I can select I'm going to select the sports medicine and athletic training. And based on the specific program that I select, it's going to automatically add this as a requirement for me to course plan against. All right. And that will happen a little bit later when we
009get to the sports medicine athletic training page. Each of these icons here at the very top are going to be the different requirements that we're going to plan towards. And to advance to the next screen, we're going to click continue in the top right hand corner. Okay. So for the purposes of um this webinar, I am planning as an eighth grade student who is planning for high school. So, as an eighth grade student, the courses that I'm currently enrolled in are being considered as I'm planning for future courses. If I click on where it says view requirement details, this will let me know that I've already satisfied my eighth grade English requirement because I'm currently sitting in an eighth grade English course. This section here will provide me a brief description of the remaining requirements
010for which I need to plan. As you'll see here in this um English requirement, I'll need to add my courses for 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th grade. To add the course, a student simply clicks on add another course. Then they'll be able to choose from the list of options that are available. And keep an eye on this red bar here at the top. There we go. Once I have the appropriate courses that satisfy my English requirement for all grade years, this bar here at the top will turn from red to green, letting me know that I've satisfied the requirements. In this case, for English, I can click on view requirement details to see the breakdown. And let's say I was missing my English 10 course in planning. Give that a second here. There we go.
011Under the requirement details, it'll turn that dot from uh green back to red if I'm missing a certain requirement. All righty. So, students will work through that same process for each requirement. Uh, turning this bar here at the top from red to green by adding in the appropriate courses. To advance to the next requirement, we would click continue. And being mindful of time for this evening, I went ahead and added in courses for each grade year. So right now I'm under my history and social sciences requirement where I've added in uh world history and geography my US v US and Virginia history and my US and Virginia government courses. This is another instance in which as a current eighth grade student my courses are being pulled into school links. So I can see that my
012current eighth grade well geography course is also being considered. All right. So this would be the same across each of the requirements and anywhere in which a course is already satisfying a course or sorry a course is satisfying a requirement. um somewhere else in my course plan. I'll have this option here where it says view two credits not shown. So here I can see that I have two other courses that are already in my course plan that are already meeting this fine arts or CTE requirement. They're just not selected in this drop down here, but we'll take a look at those here in a moment here. We'll click continue to advance to the next requirement. I'm just going to remove one of these real quick to show you the sequential electives. Okay, so on the
013sequential electives requirement here, um this will indicate if a student has courses somewhere in their course plan that will uh qualify for the sequential elective requirement. Just as we saw before in one of the other requirements, I can click view one credit not shown. And I can see that I already have this accounting with QuickBook QuickBooks course in my course plan. Um, which would count towards a sequential elective if I add the next course. And in preparation for this webinar, I've already added in a gourmet foods, an introduction to culinary arts course. On the right hand side, I'm going to go ahead and add in my next course. And here in the dropown, students will see this small text here that says courses in progression. This lets them know that if you select one of
014these courses, they're going to satisfy and meet your sequential electives requirements based on what you've planned. So, here I already have gourmet foods, uh, the intro course. And so, I'll add the next progression of that course or that sequential elective. And then it will turn this bar here from red to green. All right. And then I'll click continue to advance to the next requirement. All righty. So for the sports medicine athletic training requirement, if you recall when we first started course planning for this grade level, I selected a program. In this case, it was sports medicine and athletic training. So when I did that, it automatically added this as a requirement that I need to also plan for. I'll follow that same workflow and process as before where I will add in the appropriate courses.
015And once I have my two credits of the retire required CTE coursework, it'll turn from red to green and I can continue in my planning process. All right, for the electives, uh, this is kind of the catch all. So, once I plan for all of my other requirements, this is where I can add in additional elective choices if I have room within my course plan. And then one of the important items for students to be aware of and also use as parents and guardians supporting them is uh we do have alternates for next year's courses. So if I'm an eighth grade student and I've already selected my elective courses, these will serve as backup options in case my first choice for my electives are not available. The important takeaway here is that for my next
016year's courses, these alternates will um be prioritized in the order in which the student selects them. So, for example, my advanced band is my first alternate, advanced choir is my second art alternate, and then theater arts one is my third alternate course. We aren't selecting alternates for future courses. This is only just for next year. All righty. All the way to the far right, if we click continue. Now, as a student, I'm presented with what's called a summary page that lets me know here are all the courses that you selected in each requirement. On the left hand side, you have these green check boxes or you'll have a red warning symbol uh if you have not appropriately planned for a certain requirement. You'll have a full column of the courses that the student has already
017taken in the past. You'll have a column for the next year's courses the student's planning for the future. And then you'll have the courses um that are planned far into the future that are not being considered for scheduling just for next year, but these are ones for uh two years and more down the road. In the bottom lefthand corner for the student's course plan, we can see the total number of credits they've planned. Um, we can also see the total number of requirements uh that they have met. And so when I say requirements, meaning these subject areas here on the lefth hand side, students can uh go in and view their goals that they may have already set elsewhere in school links to make sure that their goals align with what they're planning. They can
018also download a PDF copy of their plan in case they wanted to print one off and bring it home for you to review and take a look at. And as a student is planning, we have a drag and drop feature that allows students to move courses within their course plans within the appropriate requirements. So, for example here, um let's say my schedule is really full or my planning is very full for uh 9th grade and I might need to push out this French 2 and French 3. I can click this particular course and then drag it over to the next year. Or in some scenarios, if a student has already uh added in their world languages and cultures, but they also want to take an additional language and maybe have one language count as an
019elective, they can move it to the different requirements where it counts. Okay. So then as a student uh once I've gone in, I've planned those courses. In the bottom right hand corner, I'll click submit plan. And then on this page, if there are any errors in the course plan, meaning I haven't planned enough courses for a certain requirement or enough courses for a particular grade year, um it'll show this to the student, let them know uh what the errors are. They can click on the fix course plan button to go back through that workflow and process that we just modeled. Um, or if they've done all they can, they can uh leave a course plan note for their counselor and they can submit that plan with errors. All right. So, very quickly, I'm going to
020switch back over here and we're going to talk about you all as parents and guardians and how you can access some of the information that we just viewed and help and support your student. All right, the first thing is um you may have seen some communication from the district or from your uh your from your student school uh regarding how to access your parent or guardian account. Here you can use this link app.schoolinks.com to access the page. If you're using a Gmail address, um you'll be able to log in with Google here on the right hand side. If you don't have a a Google Gmail address, um that's rostered with the district. At the bottom here, you can click on forgot password. Enter the email address that you have provided to Arlington Public Schools and
021then click reset password and we will send you a direct link to set your password and log in. All righty. So, first, if you would like to access your students course plan as it's being uh worked on and in progress, let me switch to my staff environment or parent environment, sorry. Okay, so first I'm going to show you how to access just the course plan and then we'll talk about the course plan acknowledgement process. If I go here to my students once logged into school links and then find my students name. I have this thing called a case file which basically gives me access to the different sections of my students platform for the things they've been working on in schoolings. In the case file sections, you'll have a section here called planning. And under
022planning, you'll have a section called course plans. If you would like to review the students course plans in the same way that we just viewed it on the prior page, you can navigate to this section and view all the information that we just shared previously from the student perspective. Okay, so this is really just to review the courses, the options that the student has selected. You can also download a PDF copy from this page if needed. More importantly is going to be the course plan acknowledgement. As a quick recap, the student will submit their course plan. The counselor will approve the course plan. Then you as a parent and guardian will get an automated email from schools letting you know that the course plan is ready for your course plan acknowledgement. For the course plan
023acknowledgement, this is actually the most common way to sign off and indicate that you have reviewed the students uh course plan selections. You'll get an email from [email protected]. It'll provide content similar to what's posted here and you'll have a direct link to the students course plan acknowledgement. Okay. Uh because we've done two trainings back to back, this has already been uh submitted and approved. Uh but within that course plan acknowledgement, you'll be able to see when the student submitted, when the counselor has approved the uh course plan. And then in this page here, you'll have a box just below this one. And actually here, give me one second. Get you Sorry, I'm going take a quick side quest because we didn't get to reset this here. Okay, so down at the bottom, you can disregard
024the previous sections, but you'll have a box similar to mine where it says approve. Um, this is where you would acknowledge that you've seen the plan. And you just type in your digital signature. And then you'll click the approve button. And then once you've done that, it'll show as approved in the date that you approved it. And then that will complete the student submission, the counselor approval, and the parent guardian uh acknowledgement for that course plan. Now, you do have two additional options just in case uh for some reason you're not seeing that email uh get generated. Uh the backup option number one is on your uh parent and guardian dashboard. Go home real quick. On the left hand side here, you'll have a to-do list. And on the to-do list, there will be an
025action item for you to approve the students or sorry uh acknowledge complete the student's course plan acknowledgement. You can click on it and it will take you directly to the student's uh course plan uh to be able to sign off digitally. And the third and final backup option in case you don't get the email uh you don't see it on your dashboard is you can go directly into a student's case file. So if I go to here where it says my students, find the student whose um course plan you would want to acknowledge. Go under case file section and then here we're going to go to where it says personalized plans. Now, your student will not have as many as my demo student has here, but you'll be able to navigate directly to that student's
026plan. It'll say course plan acknowledgement, and then I'll be able to click view plan, and that's where I can go in and sign digitally. All righty. So, that covers what the students are able to view and complete as when it comes to course planning. That covers how you as a parent and guardian can go in and sign off digitally. And the last thing I want to share with you all before perhaps opening the floor for some uh Q&A is uh how you can get additional help and support with some of the items we've mentioned today. Regardless of what page you're on in your parent and guardian dashboard, in the top right hand corner, if you click on the question mark, this is going to give you access to what's called our help center. In our
027help center, there are articles and how-tos for a lot of the features and things we've talked about today. And you can use this as a tool uh to learn more about viewing um your students course plan and acknowledging and signing off digitally. In addition to um our help center here in the top right, down in the bottom right hand corner, no matter what page you're on, you have this built-in chat feature where you can ask an AI agent any questions about the um platform and how to use different features. And if you prefer uh more direct support from a live person at any given point in that conversation, you can type in talk to a person and we'll connect you with one of our team members during regular business hours. All righty. So, that covers
028the content and I'm sure we might have a few Q&As's here. So, um I will go ahead and stop share and it >> Thank you so much, Michael. I've been answering some questions as you've been talking. Um but I will do some live now instead of um through text. Um, so one question from Carrie was, "What happens if you're working on a sequential elective and the second class isn't available to your student and the alternate is what is being given to the student?" Um, so this is a question I'm going to ask actually direct back um to you to speak with the school counselor about that is more of a scheduling question. Um, as a reminder, this is a planning tool. Students are creating a plan for the courses they'd like to take the next
029year or or the next few years um towards graduation. Uh once students create that plan, then we're going to take those courses for next year that they've uh selected and use those to actually schedule students into courses. Um for example, sometimes there are students who might need um code talk classes or or they need English language uh services in classes or um um maybe a math recommendation from a teacher came in after we did this process. Um various reasons why courses might need to be changed. you might review the plan um after a student has created it and and you have suggested changes. Um so there's many reasons why it might change after it's um put into the program. Um so yeah, that that uh it's not guaranteed, it's not set in stone what a
030what a student puts into um course planner. Um so please work with your student and your schools your student school counselor um to address any of those changes that need to be made. Okay. Can a student use this site to access transcripts? Um access and Michael, why don't you go ahead and answer this because it's kind of falls outside of course planner too. Um but yeah, go ahead. >> Yeah, absolutely. Um so students are also your uh seniors are using the platform for college applications in which they are using this for uh sending those transcripts to their colleges um as a part of their application process. Um so that is kind of a separate topic but yes there there's a level of transcript management within the platform both for college applications um and students are
031able to download their own uh unofficial transcript directly from the platform if needed. Um so yeah >> maybe you could answer that next one too. It's kind of related. Uh, if a student needs a counselor or teacher recommendation for a summer academic camp, uh, should they be using school links? Um, I would recommend as a starting point to reach out directly to the counselor or to the teacher for those recommendations. Um, because we're using our college application manager is really specifically for applying to colleges and or trade schools um, and organizing those documents. um outside of and also those requirements are based on what the college or school requires and those are kind of like pre-built. Um okay, sorry. Um and so when it comes to the um counselor teacher recommendations for other items outside
032of standard college or trade school applications, um I would recommend can can I like be set up for a couple of things? Uh reaching out to the students counselor So the next question is for summer school courses course credit that removes other requirements. Do we have to wait for the transcript to show up to see the space open up in the schedule? Um again this is a a not a planning question. This is more of a scheduling question about course requests. So I would just hold off and wait to speak with the school counselor about that. Um if if and when that happens. I will say that course history comes into schooling. So, if a student does take a summer school course and it counts towards graduation, um when they log in to see their
033plan next year, for example, and review and revisit it, they'll see that course having as a course they've taken and it'll show as a counting towards a credit towards their their graduation. >> Oh, this is a great question. Uh I'll answer this one. Student first logs into a site, they get a quiz assessment. What is the purpose of those questions? So um we didn't cover it during this particular session. We've done it in prior parent and guardian sessions. But uh school links is a college and career readiness platform. Um we are not just doing u the course planning process in the platform. I mentioned earlier some of your school students are uh using this as a centralized place to track their colleges of interest. Uh there's a level of career planning, goal setting, um doing
034virtual reality tours um all embedded within the platform. And so that assessment that you're mentioning and I may have a second or two to do that live if we have time later. Um that is called onboarding and that first assessment is called find your path where a student will read a series of statements and based on whether or not they agree or disagree with those statements we will show them uh recommendations for their top career um top career cluster matches as well as some key personality traits they may have. That way, no student districtwide will not have um or sorry, let me rephrase that. All students districtwide will have at least a starting point uh for their college and career exploration within the platform. Okay. Uh next one. Does course planner allow you to take
035classes in the summer? Uh for example, I kind of just I can read that part. Um, so course planner does not is not used for planning summer courses. However, courses that you take over the summer, your student takes over the summer, those do get fed back into school links. Um, so that way we can make the appropriate recommendations. >> Yeah. Yeah. I was writing this but that both for for current eighth graders will the middle school counselor be the reviewer of the plan or will a high school counselor review both. So the middle their current eighth grade counselor will review and approve their plan as well as um the nth grade counselor that will be receiving that student will also ensure that those are the correct courses for a student to take. [snorts] What is
036the ultimate deadline for picking courses for a rising nth grader? Depending on the option school we are applying to, we may not know until May, frankly. Yes. Um, for those families that are with us that have applied to um a transfer or an option school in the district, that's okay. As of right now, um, all students will create a plan based on their current planned school for next year. Um, and once they have been accepted and then accept a spot at a different school, then you will do a course request process for that school outside of school links. um that won't happen anymore in the schoolings platform. Um but the following year it would as you're still as you're now be at a new school and and you'll be planned for planning for that school
037within school links. [snorts] Yes. Oh, great. Ken, so looking at my daughter's course planner, I see a course populated by her math teacher with a star labeled optional recommendation. What is that? So um there is a feature in schooling's course planner that uh allows teachers to provide recommendations for courses in the platform. Um not every school opted to use that this year because they had already had a plan in place for how to capture teacher recommendations. So some schools are not doing that within school links. Some are. So again, your school is. So that just means that the teacher recommended a math course for your child and so that's populating on the student's plan right now. um it doesn't mean the student has to take that course. Um the counselor has the ability to remove
038that course. Um so a student can take something else, but it just means it's a recommended course from a teacher. And for those that don't have a student with that same scenario, I just pulled up a um this is my demo environment. Um but if you're looking at your student's course plan, you'll see these little stars here for an optional recommendation and it just lets you know like which teacher recommended that particular course and when. Okay. >> Can students who are not yet at APS use school links as a rising APS 9th grader? No, you need to be enrolled in APS, enrolled in a school um in order to have an account um in school links and use the platform. Yeah, my student wants to complete the P requirement during the summer. How would big
039knowledge in school links? This is a question for your school counselor um because it is possible to submit a plan that's missing a requirement. Um, but again, this is the knowledge your school counselor would have to have when they approve that plan knowing, you know, the student is going to take this in the summer. Um, so that's possible to kind of leave that blank. Um, and not sign up for PE next year because, you know, you're going to do it in the summer. >> Um, another alternative, I mean, you could leave it blank. Um, what I also see a lot of districts doing is that the student plans for PE as if it was going to be a standard uh, next year course. uh over the summer the student takes PE and then uh when
040we start this process next year or actually at the very beginning of the year when we get next year's course data that PE credit that they took over the summer will automatically be fed into their course plan. So we'll already acknowledge that they have taken uh PE and we'll let them know on their course plan, hey, you've already satisfied this requirement. If your student is a rising senior, will the classes they've already taken automatically be uploaded in their schooling planner? Yes. If they've been in APS um for as long as they've been in APS starting, I think in seventh grade, the courses they've taken um will show up in in school links because that's how the system is also calculating that they have the graduation requirements necessary. Um [clears throat] difference between course plans and
041personalized plans. >> Yes. Um I can take that one. >> Yep. >> Um so again from a demo environment here course planner is exactly what we covered today. That is the selection of courses for the student similar to this view that we're looking at. personalized plan, if you will, is almost kind of like a shell that is wrapped around it so that we could track other items and other things that students are doing all within the plan and also allow for a parent and guardian signature. So, there's a component of the course plan and for some districts that have other initiatives that they want to track in that same plan, goals, um, uh, colleges that students have favored, other items, those all get built into the plan. Um but in this case that is your
042course plan acknowledgement which is held within what we call our personalized plan. I can take this next one next one. Excuse me. Isn't the order off student counselor then parent? Shouldn't it be the parent before the counselor? And so the reason why we chose that order um is that our school counselors are uh trained on graduation requirements that come from the state that honestly change every now and then. So they're the professionals to understand kind of what courses um a student needs to take, how many credits of each content area they need in order to satisfy graduation requirements. Um but keep in mind the counselor's approval of a plan um is also not set in stone. um that piece of a parent or guardian reviewing and acknowledging a plan is required. I I I'm using
043that word to show the uh critical the critical um importance of your engagement. Um according to the Virginia Department of Education, it is required that a parent is uh given the opportunity to review a student's academic plan and kind of sign off on it. So um the process is so that uh the order is really so that students uh are ensured to have a plan that leads them towards graduation. Um but then your piece of reviewing and acknowledging and being part of that process is equally as important. And again, if there are things that you see you want changed and you know want to kind of revisit the plan, that's absolutely what um your stepping in and and being a part of that process is for um is to be able to then say, "Hey,
044wait, let's have a conversation about certain classes or certain a certain a sequence of classes you've decided to take." Um so that's the reasoning for that. Yes. So, um, each school has a plan for how to meet with all of their students. I can't speak to what happened last year, but I can, um, say that this is a new tool for the entire district, for all of our staff, um, who have been learning and using the tool since, um, we in uh, honestly last spring is the first time we introduced it. As soon as we decided to move with school links, we started to train our staff on it. Um, but it is a big learning curve for everybody. Um but with that said, everyone has a plan on how to work with their uh
045students individually and in groups on how to use it. It is the way that we will be collecting course requests for next year. So there is no other option. All students must be using this tool this year. Um so please contact your student school counselor and ask about that timeline. You know, when are you meeting with my student? Maybe you could you could also be present. We have had some parents um make a connection to be able to be present during that meeting and do it all together. That's wonderful if that's possible. I know that's not always possible for most people, but please reach out to the school counselor to learn that timeline. How do you register for summer classes? Uh, different topic. I don't want to answer and speak incorrectly right now. So, I'm
046going to ask you to please reach out to your school counselor about that. Um, also just want to say we acknowledge what happened on screen. Apologize for it. We will discuss internally how to address it, but apologize that that happened. the technical tool to select courses. How do we know what track we should put our students on? What's the guidance for? Please reach out to your school counselor. Again, this is their job. Academic planning with students is um one of the three key components of their job and that they're trained on how to support students through this. Um so, please reach out. Also, um all of our schools over the next few weeks are having course information planning nights. Um, so hopefully you've heard about when that is for your school. Um, they're happening at
047all the middle schools and all the high schools. Most, um, some are in person, some are virtual. I think there's one happening yesterday and when there's one tomorrow there. Um, so those are great opportunities to to hear directly from the school counseling teams about uh, this process and um, different pathways, different programs. Please take advantage if possible. Um, when is this happening? When will we need to do this? So course planning is happening over the next two months. Um and so again I would reach out to the school counselor to know you know what's this the timeline at at their specific school um so that you can be ready but but once a student submits a plan and then once the counselor approves a plan like Michael said you will then automatically be notified that
048it's time. Um so it's started already. We have students submitting plans. We have plans being approved by counselors. We have parents starting to look at plans. So it's already happening. Um, but if you want to kind of really be um, ready to go, I would say reach out to the school counselor and to your student um, to say, you know, when is this happening at your school? Um, I'm ready, you know, to look at this with you. The student could technically log on at home tonight and do a plan. Um, it's open for them, but they haven't necessarily I can't say for sure everyone's gotten the guidance and the training from their school yet. So, but they can't they can't break it. If they wanted to do that, they could. Um, and you could do
049it with them if you'd like to, but parents and guardians don't have the ability to create the plan for students. Yes. And the is there a way to see all the course and program options through the guardian site? No, not at the moment. The best place to go to to view um our kind of course catalog for APS is through the APS website. Um, the program of studies is the best tool to use right now. >> [snorts] >> Yes. So, I I'm just going to take a moment and and skim through since we're running low on time to see if I can answer some in bulk. One moment, everyone. Um, Heather, while you're doing that, I can take uh the one about the IB. >> There are a few of those. Go ahead. Yeah. >>
050Yeah. So, I figured that we can just group that one together. All righty. So, in the student's course plan, and my apologies, we're not covering this in detail during the session. Um, but when a student's on their summary page down at the very bottom, if you click on other options or when the student clicks on other options, uh, we have what's called a supplemental grad plan that while they're planning for their main grad plan, their main graduation, uh, requirements for, uh, the advanced studies or the standard diploma. [snorts] Uh down here at the bottom, I can click view other requirements and see for um Washington Liberty, the uh high school IB diploma, for Wakefield, the immersion program, and then uh for the schools that offer AP and the capstone. I can click this arrow here
051and it will let me know based on my current course plan, um am I also satisfying these additional requirements here? And uh similar to how for each subject area, math, science, social studies, um I can view per requirement where I'm missing credits or what courses in my course plan are already meeting these requirements. >> Great. Thank you. That was four or five different questions about that. So, thank you for showing that. Um just going to speak to a few of these. Um so, again, you you have to have a you have to be an APS student to have a school links account. Currently, the course planning tool is being used with our current sixth graders through 11th graders. Um, so if you're at an APS middle or high school, this is a tool you are
052using this year. Um, again, the math courses can be added, but they're not going to be guaranteed. You might have a recommendation that comes from the math department later this spring. Um, and then their class would be changed. Um, the course history. Um, so there are certain middle school courses that are that count towards a high school graduation credit. Those are accounted for in schooling. So if your student is taking a course in middle school that counts towards high school graduation, that that's being counted, um, as they make their academic plan and and pick high school courses. Um, if you're taking courses outside of APS, um, but they're counting towards high school graduation credit, they wouldn't be selected within school lengths, um, but they would show up in course history. So again, that's that's where
053the, um, expertise of your school counselor is going to come in to help kind of make sure and keep track of those things. Michael, could you take the question about from Ken about if you had a comment to the course plan, who could read who could read that? I assume it's the student, the counselor, and the guardians, but what about teachers? >> Student, counselor, guardian, and uh teachers by default don't have access to the course planning module. Um, unless we provide that to them. Teachers like start off with like I guess the lowest level of access and permissions. Um and if we do give any user any staff member access to school links uh it is only for the scope of students that they support. Um so like teacher or counselor from school A could
054not see the information from theiru from other students random students at school B. >> Yes. Thank you. >> There's a few different questions about selecting a program of study in the beginning um uh before they start their plan. It is optional. they do not have to select a program. Um it does if they select a program that has uh courses required to meet that program requirements then it will kind of se suggest those courses for students. But if they don't select a program that's totally fine. They can still uh plan and they can also change their program um the following year as they revisit they could change the plan. the deadline the deadline to submit and acknowledge the course plans. So, I know I've been a little vague about that on purpose because um I
055can't speak to like when your counselor will meet with your student to do the planning. However, I can say that as a school district, all of our academic course planning will be completed by March 2nd. So, [snorts] um that's the ultimate deadline. However, as I mentioned, schools have started. There's already students submitting and approving plans and counselors approving plans. So, I I would uh reach out to the school to see what's the timeline for you all. >> All right. Um, one came in the chat. I do want to make sure because it says apply universally. Um, is how you can adjust, we did it earlier, but I don't know if um, everyone was on at that point. Um, how you can adjust the language of a plan. Um and so the short and sweet is
056uh within the course planner itself or any page that your students in school links here at the very top uh where it currently says English. I can select uh different languages here and it will adjust the entire experience of school links including the course plan uh to whatever language I select. Just going to give it a second and of course it's going to push me back to course planning. There you go. So, I'm going to answer a question from Christine about um so as I understand it, if the students students will plan for their neighborhood school even if they applied for other programs u in the lottery and then once they know if they get into their program then it will be redone. Yes. So, similarly in the past, you would just do a course
057request form for your neighborhood plan school and then if you got into another school, you'd have to submit a different uh course request form um for that specific school. Um the difference this year is that it won't be done in school links. So, the plan you create in school links will be based on what is your planned neighborhood school for next year. Um if you get into a new school and accept that spot, let's say in March or April or May, um at that point you would work with that new school to specifically request courses um with that school. However, again, the next year you would work in school links because the course history of now where you go to school and the courses you're taking would be in school lengths and accurate. There's a
058question Michael wanted you to ask. [clears throat] Oh, wait. I don't see anymore. Um, just a few more. We have two more minutes. We'll try to get to them. Summer school classes are not being um signed up for or registered for in school links. Please contact your school counselor to learn more um about summer school. Um we did that one already. Changes could only be made changes can only be made during specific period of time and student has to wait until next planning period to make adjustments. Yeah. So the timeline, I'm sorry if this is not coming out clearly. So um students will work on their academic plan, create this academic plan right now over the next few months. At that point once they submit it, it's locked and the reason for that is so
059that we need something to work off of to start scheduling students for classes. So um there will be a period of time when school links is locked. They can't make changes in school links. However, um uh again, if a math recommendation comes in or if a course needs to be changed, that can happen in our other system afterwards. Um and then, uh once a student starts the next school year and they're, you know, have a set of course courses they're in, the school the course plan will be open again. So, again, a student will revisit this plan every year. they'll have an opportunity, a time frame uh every year where they can vis revisit their plan and um potentially change the plan right as they learn more about themselves, their interest, their plans uh for
060graduation or postsecary things like that. Um so there will be a period every year where students can revisit the plan and make changes to it once they submit it that and that's when we're like at that point we're going to use the the the selection for next year for course requests. So there does come a time each year where we'll need to kind of lock the plans. Uh [snorts] so where they can't make any more edits within the plan each year. Um for the sequential electives question, I don't want to misspeak. That's not my area of expertise. So I'm going to ask to please reach out to your school counselor about that. Um and if you have any any have any um issues or or um problems with school counselors, please make sure to reach
061out to the director of counseling. Um, every middle school and secondary school, middle school and high school has a director of counseling who's the administrator who supports all of the school counselors in the building. So, please feel free to contact that person. You can find their contact information on your school's website. Um, and I think with that we have [snorts] addressed all questions hopefully as clearly as possible. Um, and if we haven't, we're we're just going to close. Um anyway, uh this is the first of of more, you know, information, first of many that we'll offer. I should I should say more that we'll offer. Um and your schools will also be providing information and working with your students to learn this. Appreciate your patience, your engagement um throughout this uh evening. Again, the the
062recording will be posted on the APS website along with the slides. Thank you all so much and thank you to Michael. >> Thank you all so much. How we doing?