001This is the Graten Board of Education Curriculum Committee meeting May 4th, 2026. It is starting at 6:03 p.m. and the um me committee members present are um Ian Thomas, uh Dr. Andrea Arian, and Mitch Shinrot. We also have uh remote. We have um Emry Mancini. Uh thought I saw somebody else on there before. Okay. I thought I saw a Melissa. No. >> Yes. Melissa Manzioni. >> Yeah. >> Hi. Hi. Yep. Melissa Manthion. Um, CT department head. >> How are you? >> You you I'm good. How are you? You disappeared off my screen. That's what happened. >> Okay. Is there anyone else? >> Yes. Um, uh, CJ Hersome is here, a business teacher, new teacher, doing a great job. >> Okay. And we also we also have Amy McKenna who's one of our assistant principles. >>
002Okay. Okay. Hi everyone. I will call the meeting to order. Um I believe the first item on the agenda is to review the meeting minutes of April 6th, 2026. And um with that uh has everyone um reviewed them and are there is there any discussion? >> Yes and no. >> Ian, you are you good with the minutes? >> I'm all set. Thank you. >> Okay. So, um I think we'll say that the minutes were accepted. by the committee for the April 6th meeting. Okay. Next item on the agenda is to review the new course proposal for school year 2728 investing 101. And so, by the way, we we seem to have a a favoritism here towards red ink. Maybe red letters on a on a white background would be better than white letters on a
003red background, knowing the cost of ink. Um, but moving on to this new course proposal, investing 101. Um what what is the curriculum for that? >> I that's why I'm here. I can speak to that if you would like me to. >> Yes. >> So um let me just share my screen that way you guys can see everything I got. So give me one second to first I'll walk you through the curriculum and then I have a little reason why we need the course as well. Can everyone see that? >> We can't Chris CJ >> says it's starting. >> It's start. Oh, >> it's Oh, here it is. We can see. >> All right, perfect. So, the course is investing 101. And the whole idea behind it I had was every student at some point
004in their life should have or should invest. There's going to be a point whether it's planning for retirement, trying to grow their money for their children to go to college one day, but it's a skill that we don't always talk about, but it's something that every single person in the world comes across. So before I show my proposal, I'll just show kind of it starts by what is investing? Why do we want to invest at a young age? Tying the math into it with the power of compound interest and what can happen when compound interest works in our favor into the types of investments, stocks, bonds, mutual funds, long-term versus short-term. And then we end with them discussing retirement plans and starting to plan because little they realize that 22 is actually the best time
005to set themselves up for 70. And I have all this, but I want to get to I just want to show Hang on. I want to flip my what I'm sharing when I get to Y. Did that change for everybody? I just want to make sure. >> I can see it. >> Okay, perfect. >> Okay. >> Yes. So th this is really a passion project of mine that I find so important being a business teacher and tying it into the state's really got this big push for money readiness as we've seen with personal finance becoming a graduation requirement. But the problem with a personal finance class, it's great. It teaches you how to manage your money. It doesn't teach our students how to grow their money once they know how to manage their money and
006get money. And I really believe this takes the next step for them where we look at about 50% of Americans under 35 have a retirement account. That means about 50% aren't invested in their future at all and only about two to three people reach a million dollars. And with inflation and you're looking at a 20 30-year retirement, that really is a goal that I would love to see that number up. And there's really a big gap with students entering adulthood with the lack of knowledge and confidence and especially now they're they start talking about there's all this gambling where you can gamble on the stock market the next 15 minutes will it go up or down uh gamble on the Kentucky Derby but no one's teaching them really what's the smart way to manage your
007money rather than just throwing it up in the air and flipping a coin and hoping that you win. And then additionally, right, we look at I think this is a great chance to close an equity gap. This gap is not only driven by income, but it's access and education. If people don't understand the system, they can't participate in the system. And right now, what we're seeing is black and Hispanic households are investing at a much lower rate. And I really believe that's because we aren't closing that gap for them. And I think this class is a chance to help everybody take advantage of their financial future. And then I was thinking about how this fits into our plan. So right now currently we have personal finance which is a graduation requirement. And then students can
008go on and take personal finance too once they finish. Personal finance 2 is a great class. >> But what what does the personal finance cover? Does that does that cover things like making sure you don't um invest more than you can afford to lose and things like that account? >> Personal finance is just a half year. So I call it it's like the appetizer. Like if you ever went to Chili's or Ruby Tuesdays and got like that sampler plate, >> it's a little bit of everything. It's on um >> avoiding FOMO. This is a budget. Here's how you get a credit card. Here's why you should invest for like a week. What is the stock market? H um and then how do you open a savings account? Why do you need a bank account? But
009it's only a half a year, so I only see them about 50 times. So, we don't really get into the nuts and bolts. It's more like that broad brush of the key important facts you need to know. Does that make sense, Mitch? >> It does. Thank you. >> You're welcome. And then in personal finance too, this is where I kind of dig deeper and they learn what is a mortgage? How do you sign a rental agreement? How do you buy a car? Leasing versus buying, renting, what does it mean to take out a loan? What do you want to look for? Uh filling out a budget. How do you get a job? So, this starts to kind of really now manage what we have. But I don't get in depth on the wealth building. So,
010what this class becomes is it's that nice next part where all right, you take personal finance one, you you think you got your finance management down really well, but you want to learn how to grow money. Well, you could take investing or you could take all three. So, it starts to create more of a pathway in that financial area that the state seems to be leaning into. And it puts us as a leader as there's not many schools in the state who are teaching this class. And I I think that puts us ahead of the curve. And that's somewhere where I'd really like to be. And we'll do this by focusing on compound interest, risk and reward, diversification, getting into retirement accounts, and really what's the difference between a day trader versus an investor and
011getting them to learn the importance of investing. And luckily through Perkins, we were able to get personal finance lab paid for. So, this is no cost to the district and it gets the students hands-on experience where they get to buy and sell stocks, open up different accounts while not using real money. So, they get to actually learn through mistakes, through experience, which I think there's nothing better. Then they get to write journals about what happened, why it happened, show me their thought process, and then go try to learn from those mistakes. So, this course is something that allows them to learn in a hands-on setting about a skill that they're going to need to set themselves up for financial independence at 50, 60, 70 years old. And then maybe they create that generational wealth and
012they're able to hand that down to the next generation, which would be amazing if we plant that seed in this course. Okay. >> And that was that was really what I had and I'll stop sharing but I'll open the floor if you guys have questions for me. >> So this Perkins grant covers the entire cost associated with this course. >> Yeah. So, um I'm just going to try to stop sharing. Uh the the course itself, all the curriculum I've pulled from NextGen Personal Finance, which is the state's preferred website and where we use the standards from, and I've taught the course in the past, and I've used this website, which Perkins covers. So, there's absolutely no cost to the district with that. >> Okay. Um, it sounds worthwhile to me. Um, I'd like to find
013out uh if the any other members um e either um Ian or Dr. Arian have any comments or questions. >> Yeah. Can I take the course? It's too late now. I think >> I mean more the marrier. We can pass on different lessons still. I I don't have that sheet that you just put up. I don't have that in my packet. I wonder if we if uh somebody could send that. >> I can get that shared. I had just made that today for this presentation. >> Oh, I see. Well, that makes sense. Thank you. >> I I'll make sure that I get it over to you, Dr. A. >> Thank you. >> Yeah, I I didn't have it either. All I had was the presentation. >> Yeah. Um CJ just developed it today. Um, and
014I'll make sure that all members get it um uh at the end of the um at the end of this meeting. >> Okay. >> Mitch, can I ask a question? >> Absolutely. >> Okay. Um CJ is is is CJ that's that's his name. Amarie CJ. >> Yes. >> Okay. If you teach this class, what class are you not teaching? So, I'm actually not reducing my course load. We looked at the numbers this year and we've seen just a decrease in enrollment for accounting. Like right now, I had a section of four students only in my accounting. And what's going to happen is Miss Manzion already teaches accounting. So, it allows us to still offer it while having one section of this that maybe can reach a greater amount of the population than just five students.
015How many students do we have total taking accounting? >> We had about I could be wrong but Miss Menzone I believe we had three sections and about 55 students this year >> at most. At most >> you did. Yeah. >> I'd like to >> Oh, I was going to say it still allows us to offer two sections of that which we still can have 24 students in. So now you're looking at the majority of kids can still take the class. >> You said you only had five students in your accounting class. >> It what had happened is kids had dropped throughout the year because they gotten pulled to different things. So I went from like 10 to five. >> Wow. >> Even a class of 10 doesn't sound like it's very efficient. And that's why
016we're looking at adding this course because it's going to increase numbers. >> Did you do an interest? Did you do an interest survey and not not a survey survey, but did you see it prior to developing the course if the students are interested in it? >> So, can I can I jump in real quick because I I do have like a survey. I've got better than a survey. This year, we had an investing club, like a finance club. the kids. I had one senior um start the club. We had between 25 and 40 students come to CTL which is like a study hall period to be part of this club. We have big interest in investing. They the kids want to learn all about it so they could start early enough. And what we didn't
017have this year was because it was a club I was trying to create or work with the the student leader and create like mini lessons on the fly. and it it's not enough. We we need a definite course. We needed a curriculum and we also need that hands-on software which we just bought with the Perkins Fund this year. So, I think we have there's definite interest out there um more so than accounting which my first career was as an accountant. So, I'm kind of hurt by no one likes accounting and I try to make it fun but um the kids want investment >> but and they'll still get some accounting in like the business management. I always like give one one unit of these are the financial statements that you need to know and this
018is how the money flows through each statement. So they're getting some accounting in in business management as well. >> It sounds like an interesting course to me and a worthwhile one also. Is it only going to be one section or are you going to do like two? I mean I don't know what the interest is if you have like 50 students. So, I was say it really fully depends on the amount of students that sign up for it because I'm also teaching all of our personal finance which are now a graduation requirement and where there's just two of us. So, we got to be balancing it. But like at my old school, this was my most popular class. I wrote and developed the curriculum there and I had two sections of it and every year
019we had over 120 students sign up and we'd have to >> whittle it down because just as part of being CT, there's just less of us and it's picking. But right now in my mind it's one to two sections only. That way we can still keep offering the marketing class, the personal finance class that we need to. It's just uh additional opportunity for our students. >> Are you thinking about having like um um outside people come in and talk about investing like somebody from JP Morgan? I don't know. Or >> Yeah. So, in the past, I've had financial adviserss come in and even we have a partnership with Charter Oak and the bank at the school and they have a financial person. The bank already comes in and speaks with our personal finance classes. That
020would be a great place to grow our relationship with Charter Oak and have their investment person come in and talk to the kids because it's way better when it's not just me. When they start to see other professionals and field trips, they really get an understanding that it's more than just what I'm talking about. >> Yeah. Not that I don't have faith in you, but I do agree with that statement. >> Disrespectful at all, Beverly, but Ian's had his hand up for quite some time, too. So, if it's okay, we'll switch over and Ian, you have the floor, sir. >> Uh, thank you. Um, yeah, I I'm generally supportive of this this idea and I think starting out with one section is a good way to go. Um, but I do have a uh just
021a couple questions about some of the details, I guess. Um, are you going to get into things like um as far as like short versus long positions or um you know, mutual funds versus IRA and and and various other like you did mention the difference between day trading and and and some broader based. >> Yeah. So, yeah, I I didn't necessarily get into the nuts and bolts what I was talking about. Again, it's only a halfyear class. So, we don't get into options trading, which I think that's where kids already want to go and it's too risky. Instead, this is more about the principles of long-term growth. So, what they'll learn is they'll learn what is a stock. Then they'll learn what is a mutual fund, what is an ETF, what makes them up, when
022do you want to buy a mutual fund versus when do you want to buy an index fund versus when might you want to buy an individual stock and why? And then we'll talk about timing the market and why you want a dollar cost average into the market and what happens over a long period of time when you have consistent investing. And then we'll get into what is a 401k, what is a Roth 401k, what is the difference, then what is an IRA compared to a 401k, how are they different, and then what is a Roth IRA compared to a regular IRA. So, it's really trying and then they'll do a cumulative project where they figure out how do they actually open up an investment account and where might they want to invest one day if
023they were to invest. >> Understood. Appreciated. Um I think that's a great approach. Uh so will you touch at all I on some of the riskier things with like more like a sort of a warning of like well these things exist. However, it's like um you know it's a wild west type way to ride the market like you said the day trading you know like where there's like a lot more pitfalls or like say hedge funds or things like that. >> Yeah. So especially that's what's so great about this game. they have the option to do those things and they have to do a reflective journal as they're playing the game and sometimes I make them make that purchase knowing it's not going to work and then they have to come back and explain to
024me why that didn't work, what makes that risky, why is that the case? Like we touch on a big thing now is triple leverage stocks and what does it mean to own a triple lever stock? why you might own a triple leveraged stock and is it smart to own a triple leveraged stock long term? Because like, okay, the stock market dipped, it went down, I bought SPXL, which is three times the S&P 500. That's great that it just went up, but should I still hold on to this, or is this a riskier investment? And how much risk do you want in your portfolio? And all right, if I'm a 25-year-old investor, what does my risk look like compared to someone who's 70? And why is that the case? >> Great. Great. And and one last
025question. Are you going to touch on sort of like uh some more philosophical approaches as far as like um you know investments in certain things you know um may be growth but it is also attached to certain industries versus like you know some other like ethical approaches or environmental approaches or um you know if someone is say concerned about uh child labor abuses in other countries and they want to avoid putting their money towards that uh do you kind I know that's a lot of detail to go into for a short course, but do you touch on it at all just in broad brushes? >> We do like that's more I paint a broad brush on you have to have an investor philosophy in why you invest and what your reasons are. And like for
026example, we talk about okay, maybe I'm someone who my values are green energy. I promote it. I think it's doing really well. We talk about buying an ETF in green energy versus one in oil and why you might do that and there's multiple different reasons why people do that but it's more of a broad brush just because it's only a half a semester. >> Understood. Okay. Yeah. As long as it's kind of thrown out there as a concept. I think that's great for an introduction uh just to you know let them know that you know there there are different approaches that one could take and of course and one could just you know choose not to do you just to go for the profit as well. So you know that's all Yeah, and that's and
027that's kind of what's so great about this game is they get to make that choice in the game of what type of investor do they want to be and then they write journal entries explaining their thought process, how it went and was that a good decision or why not. So, I love that because it puts them in charge. >> That sounds great. Um, congratulations. I, you know, thank you for your contributions and, you know, I look forward to seeing this move forward. >> Thank you. >> Okay. Does anybody else have any uh questions on this? >> Mitch, I just want to remind everyone that um because of the nature of the fact that um this course is coming forward after the program of studies has been put out and also because of the um our
028timeline um this course will and it says so on in the proposal, but this course will not be for next year. It will be the year afterwards. Okay, >> Emry, I just wanted to say that I really like the idea of keeping that journal. That's um to me um such an an essential part of a child's understanding what what's going on is to vote it in his own words. I really like that. >> Yeah, I think this going to be there's so many great elements of this course. Very well planned. >> Okay. Um I think this is good. Um I'm trying to figure out what action we have on this is this to uh recommend to the entire board that this course be um uh taught in the time frame you were talking about. and
029Marie. >> I think at this point, uh, Mitch, based on our our, um, our new process, um, we just, uh, approve that the course go ahead and be written and then once, um, once CJ and Melissa have a draft, they'll come back, uh, to us and present their draft. >> Okay. So, it sounds to me like the consensus is everyone agrees the course should be written and we should proceed as you just described. If everyone agrees with that. >> Yes. >> Sure. Yes. >> Okay. So, we can now move on to the next item on the agenda, which is the new middle school ELA resource wit and wisdom. And >> um I don't know who's going to lead. >> That's going to be me. >> Okay. Is it okay if we step out? >> Yes.
030I was just gonna say you are you are excused unless you want to u watch this very engaging presentation. >> I just want to say thank you guys. I'm so excited. >> Thank you. >> We can buy the ticker tape now for your room. >> Yeah, exactly. >> Okay. Okay, cool. Thank you so very much. >> Thank you folks. >> Thank you. It was great. Oops. Okay, this is not it. Uh, okay. So, I'm gonna take a second here to share my screen and see if I can find where the presentation is. Go. >> Okay. Can all of you see this right now? >> Yes, >> I can. >> Okay. Excellent. Great. And you can see this was the agenda for this evening. All right, I'm going to start here like I always do and
031tell you that of course everything goes back to our five pillars. And this particular item of course I like uh here in the curriculum committee. A lot of things always start with a pillar number one accelerating academic achievement which is you know a main focus here uh in in our curriculum committee. We always want to make sure that we are improving our student outcomes. So, I'm sorry. Here we go with the investing 101 we just saw. I'm going to talk today about a new ELA curriculum, specifically a resource recommendation. And the resource we're going to talk about today is um Witten Wisdom. The publisher for Whiten Wisdom is Great Minds. And their uh I would say their mantra is curiosity, inquiry, and knowledge. And uh you probably recall when we met last month, I spoke
032about illustrative math, which is a new resource that I was recommending for K8. This curriculum resource I'm specifically recommending for grades six through eight. But what's going to be interesting to you or I think is something I want to highlight is the fact that we already are using Witten Wisdom in our elementary school program, grades K through five. The recommendation I'm making today is to simply extend our use of wit and wisdom in into our middle school grades 6 through 8. And I'm going to talk to you a little bit more about why I want to do that. So our goal at the beginning of this year when I was working with our middle school teachers was to select a researchbased and standards aligned curriculum resource that served as a foundation for our middle school
033ELA curriculum. And why did we need to do this for grades six through eight? Well, really there was three main reason uh reasons. Number one, it supports improved student outcomes. And that goes back to our pillar number one in our strategic plan. We always want to make sure that our um students are improving. They're learning how to read, write, problem solve, you know, uh all of those things. Uh we are providing high quality instructional material for our teachers. Uh I talked about that last time. I'm going to talk about that again. You'll probably hear me talk about that quite a bit. And then also that we are establishing instructional coherence. I also talked about that uh last month. I think it's really important that we have uh consistency in our resources. If we're doing something
034in K5, it should extend to the middle level and when appropriate, it should extend into our high school when appropriate. Obviously, you know, when students are doing things at the upper lake uh the uppermost levels in our high school when AP IB, that's not always appropriate to share resources in in those things because they have their own they have their own uh unique features. Um can I ask a question? >> Oh, sure. >> Okay. Um one is how successful has this been in improving uh test scores for the uh kids who are now getting this which is I think K through five. >> Well, I'm glad that you asked that, Mitch. We only had one year. So, we're only in year two of implementation of Witten Wisdom and last year was our first year, but
035I can tell you that we saw improvements in um so of course we only had testing in grades three through five of you know when we talk about implementing in K through five. We only had testing in grades three through five. In grade three, we saw a little bit of a dip and that's not unusual in the first year of an implementation. Actually, I expected us to see a dip in grades three, four, and five. We actually saw a great improvement in grade four. And I'd say modest improvement in grade five. The only um grade level that which we saw um a decrease was grade three. So this year, our students are just starting to take the Smarter Balance assessment and I hope to see even more progress than we saw last year. Do do
036you really think um maybe uh it would be a good idea to hold off on introducing this in six to eight until we had more data? >> Uh before we before we talk about that, let me um go a little further and I'll talk to you about why I feel I'm going to use the term my hair is on fire about this and and we we can uh you can let me know what you think after I finish the presentation. Okay, thank you. >> Yeah, of course. So, um I want to let you know a little bit about the process that I went through with our English language arts teachers um before making this decision. So, between the months of August and October, we um some of our teachers started piloting a curriculum called uh
037common lit. And specifically, this was our grade six and seventh uh grade teachers. They piloted they selected one or two units and started piloting those uh that curriculum resource. By November they had decided that um our students were not so common and lit was a is a pretty popular I would say um curriculum that middle schools use and it's very highly rated but our students by November started feeling like they weren't too engaged in the resource. um they felt it was pretty boring and they started letting our teachers know we don't love this and so in November um well I would say by late o mid to late October our teachers started letting me know hey our kids don't like this they're not very engaged in the um in what we're doing. So, I used
038the November PD day to meet with our middle school teachers, and we looked at um a number of different resources starting with the um I talked about a um a platform called Ed Reports. We went to Ed Reports. We looked at um only those resources that had the highest ratings in um and we uh reviewed eight in particular that had the highest res that had the highest ratings. and we select based on that we spent the entire session reading about these eight resources and really thinking very strategically about which ones we might want to have come in and do a presentation. From there we had we used our December and January TLI dates to ask particular vendors to come in. Great minds came in in December and in January Savas came in that they u
039represent the my perspectives program. Great Minds is the publisher for Wit and Wisdom. They both came in and did an extensive presentation with our middle school ELA uh team. In February, I started to um talk with different districts that are using both of those resources so that I could collect information from those um districts about how their implementation is going. What do you like? What do your teachers like about the resource? How are your student outcomes? You know, how are the how are the children performing? Are they performing better? um what do you think about the resource? What are the strengths? What are the what are the areas that could use improvement? How is the platform? What's the usability? All kinds of things. And I kept notes, extensive notes on that. And then in March,
040um we conducted classroom visits. Our grade um our GMS teachers went to our grade five classrooms to see Whitten Wisdom in prog uh in process and they also went to um Hatam Killingworth Middle School to see how Witten wisdom um was being implemented. So they saw an ele elementary version of Whitten Wisdom and they also saw the middle school version. Now, I want to talk to you about my three reasons why I believe Wisdom is the best selection for implementation at our middle school. The first reason is um number one, I believe it's going to improve our student outcomes. I want to show you um what our student outcomes have been over the last several years. You can see here in 2019, our students were doing pretty well in um in literacy. um we had
04150% of the sixth graders performing at um at I would say at target or at student e at the state expectation or better. Grade seven we're at 64% which is really good and in grade 8 we were at 57%. In 2020 obviously that was our COVID year. We had no state testing and in 2021 the state doesn't really count those scores because we had some students that were testing at home and the state really can't really account for who was if someone was an adult was helping them or the students were using resources that they shouldn't be using and some students were testing of course at school but it was really you know um those those scores are not that reliable. Now I want to talk about a couple of different factors here because you
042can see in this last column this plus minus the post pandemic since 2019 to 2025 we've lost six percentage points in um sixth grade 15 percentage points in seventh grade and 18 percentage points in eighth grade. So that's a significant decrease over time. And I want to talk about a couple of factors that you know when I'm speaking with the ELA team they've mentioned have contributed to this decrease over time. The first one obviously is is uh the pandemic. Nationwide only one in three schools have recovered fully from the pandemic. So student learning loss um we know that students were heavily impacted by the pandemic. They lost a year definitely a year and a half of instruction some students because they were learning from home. um that would be you know the most amount of
043instruction that students lost but a number of students lost several months of instruction and it really impacted their skills. Um the second one I would say is the increase in onetoone devices. We know when students are on the more they're on screens the less that means in ELA at least that they are actually reading texts that they're interacting they're writing because they are interacting with technology more. Now, not to say that technology is bad, but a um I would say that a discipline like like English language arts really requires you to be more um you know there no other way to say it than I like to call it time on text and less time on screens. Um the third is that there's less instructional time in 2020. And these I would say numbers three
044and four are really highly correlated. In 2020, um there was a change to a to their instructional schedule for the students because the students moved to the larger middle school and they went from having about 40 I think it was about 45 minutes per um for each day they would have English language arts and I think it was about 45 minutes to a longer block schedule which is every other day they were meeting with their English language arts teacher. That's the current schedule that they have now. And then the last um and fifth uh factor that I think contributed to this is that around I think it was 2023 or 2024 um they had a loss of the department supervisors. So I believe that Amy McKenna for example used to oversee the middle and high
045school English language arts departments and that was cut from the budget or those positions were cut from the budget. And now even though the high school kind of has like a depart an informal department head who works with the teachers there is no one overseeing middle school academics and when you don't have a leader that's really going to impact you know the work that's being done. So I believe that all of all five of those factors have really led to these significant decreases double digits in the seventh and eighth grades. I'm going to continue here. Reason number two that I believe that this shift is important is that it's going to provide our teachers with high quality instructional materials. Now, the current middle school curriculum is grounded in teachers college readers and writers workshop. Now,
046this curriculum is no longer supported by the state department of education and by literacy experts nationwide because of its approach to teaching reading. it relies too heavily on leveling um and that approach uh and specifically the approach of having students read only books at their levels um which means that they never actually have access for some students they don't have access to grade level text I see your hand Mitch I'm going to get to you in just one second it prepares students inadequately for the high school for the rigors of high school meaning that they're never going to u be able to read and analyze complex text and it does not systematically build knowledge um for them and this all of this is kind of around that idea of the science of reading and many
047of you have probably heard about this. Now Mitch um I'm happy to take your question. >> Okay. You have two acronyms here and I think you said what one of them is. Um you have TCRWP and CSDE. >> Yeah. Um, >> so the first one is the uh teachers college readers and writers project and cde I'm so sorry I always assume everyone knows that is um the Connecticut um state department of education. >> Okay. All right. That was that was my question for now. Thank you. >> I'll try to remember not to do that so much. >> Okay. >> Now this slide you probably remember from last week. Again, this is a continuation of the importance of providing our teachers with highquality instructional materials. Number one, it's beneficial for students because there's a strong link
048between having highquality instructional materials and having positive learning outcomes because several of our of the studies find that our choices of textbooks have significant effects on test scores. It's also more beneficial for teachers because when teachers don't have high quality instructional materials, they're forced to spend time online looking for materials and they're forced to spend time creating their own materials. When that happens, there's no quality control. There's no alignment to standards. There's no quality control in terms of what they create and there's no alignment between teachers. So, for example, in our sixth grade, there's three teachers. Well, if they're all looking for different things online, that means that the students in sixth grade have um it could be anything in terms of what they're learning. One teacher might be teaching one thing based on what
049they've learn um what they've pulled from online. The next um students might be learning something else based on what their teacher has pulled on from online. And the next stu group of students might be learning something completely different based on what their teacher has pulled from online. 17. >> Okay. I got my >> Oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead, Mitch. >> Yeah, I get my hand up again for for for the seven hours. >> Yes. >> Um per week and the five. Where did that data come from? >> Yeah. So, um I It's from an article. I'm happy to share it with you. >> It's from an article. Yes, it's from an article that um on I forget what the title of the article is is, but I will I think it's it's something called like
050uh the importance of high quality instructional materials, but I will share it with you right after this meeting. >> Okay. I was kind of hoping you said that you you talked to the teachers and got it from that. >> No, no. >> And and you know, our our the teachers that we have um I didn't pick them, but I'll bet you they're pretty smart. they are >> and maybe um it would be a good idea to let them have some more uh lateral um uh decision making in what material we're going to cover. I mean, why do we have to have um every teacher doing uh the same thing, reading the same book um and things like that? Uh, can't can't we let them um make some picks of their own? >> Um, well, here's
051what I would say is when that happens, there's no there's not necessarily alignment to the grade level standard. And I think that's a real problem. When you when teachers are don't have something that grounds their curriculum that means that we are um you know that they don't have something that is um keeping them making sure that they are teaching to the standard >> and >> okay thank you >> and and what we are seeing so that's what's happening right now Mitch is that we have some and I'm going to just and I'm not criticizing our teachers because I think they work are working really hard and I think they're doing the best that they can with what they have. But I can tell you for example that let's give you an example of the eighth
052grade right now. We have one teacher in the eighth grade, one of our most experienced teachers, who has shared with me that she is using part of the district's approved curriculum, which is the teachers college reading and writing project, and some of a um old curriculum resource. Now, that they've been using Teachers College here in um in Grten for at least 10 years. I think since about 2014, so that's maybe 12 years. Um, she's using a an old curriculum that I think predates the Common Core. Now, that's a problem um that only I believe she has access to because the other two teachers on her team um were hired after that time period. And um now no one else at this point, like I haven't seen that curriculum. I don't know what's in it. I
053don't believe anyone else on, as I said, no one else on her team have access to that. And again, it's not a criticism of that particular teacher. She's trying to fill in the holes of what she knows is a gap um from the teacher's college, but you but there's that creates inconsistency. Look at the decrease over time in grade 8 and look even in the decrease between 2024 and 2025 or even 2023 and 2025. we have a problem. >> I to a certain extent I think I want to maybe applaud that teacher for trying. >> I do too. I want to applaud her too. I think she works really hard. But what I'm saying is when you have inconsistency in the curriculum materials, the the outcomes show I'm not this is not a criticism of
054all I think at all of our teachers. I think our teachers work really, really hard and I think that they're good teachers, but I think that you have to start with a solid foundation of the resource. >> Okay. Thank you. Well, Ian, you have the floor. >> Uh, thank you, Mitch. Um, just a couple of questions and and a couple of comments. >> Yeah, of course. So, first off, you have me 99% convinced uh that this is a good move because you said you're getting rid of teach this would displace teachers college. >> Yes. >> So, um I'm I'm in full favor of that. I' I've worked with that program in my own experience and had, you know, my children deal with it as well and I'm not happy with with that program. So, very
055glad to hear that that's on the chopping block one way or the other. Um two uh so it's my understanding that you know this this curriculum package um it's not like so rigid that it it dictates you know mandates like you know uniformity between courses like I mean if you have a different course it basically gives you a bank to choose from of books that do measure to standard is that or books and and yeah so you know it's not like everyone's locked into teaching the exact same thing the exact same way. It depends on you know are you doing like you know dystopian fiction or you doing like you know historical fiction or or um you know informationational text versus you know whatever approach you want to take. >> Yeah. So there are some
056some supplemental uh materials that teachers where there's some choice and it's not a scripted program but I think a lot of people have the understanding I at least even I did it to a certain extent I thought like oh it's it's uh one of these programs it's going to be scripted teachers have to be on the same page or at the you know in the same place all the time and that's um at least for me it was a misunderstanding once I looked into it a little bit more um there is some choice that teachers have in terms of um maybe in this particular per module or unit. Uh uh they can have you know one seventh grade teacher might choose to do uh one particular text where another uh teacher within the theme can
057choose you know a different text and they definitely it's not scripted at all. Um you know they can uh they might choose different pathways within that module. >> Right. And and I'll just and I appreciate that greatly and and I can speak from experience that you know there there's a lot of latitude and a lot of interpret interpretation that you know a teacher can bring their own individual spins on on this material. Um and just to you know the importance of having something that is already like the the the the work has been done to match this material to standards ties directly back to to questions about uh test results and and and and overall you know achievements. Um, you know, if we're looking to use these standardized tests to measure achievement, well, then we
058have to use the standards to which the tests are aligned. >> Absolutely. >> And we have to use curriculum to that aligns to those standards. Otherwise, you know, we're just we're kind of spitting in the wind. >> Um, yeah. So, sure. Yeah. >> Yeah. So this sounds this sounds I think and I like the idea too of like maintaining consistency in in in an overall format as far as uh you know Whit and Wisdom has you know had a year as our foundational learning level and to expand it outwards. Um you know I think that makes sense. It's a logical step. Um I would have some questions that you may cover later about like the costs and all that kind of stuff but I'll let you finish your your presentation until >> Thank you >>
059for those. Thank you. >> Yeah, thank you. Um, so I just want to talk a little bit about um, Whiten Wisdom in terms of its rating. It's met the uh, ratings expectations by ed reports in all three gateways. Gateway number one is about text complexity and quality. We know that one of the issues with the current curriculum resource which is being used again uh, teachers college. Um one of the reasons why it recently has been um you know criticized by or come under uh yeah I guess come under heavy criticism is because students are not exposed to um complex text and so um this has met uh 100% you know the way the expectation uh from ed reports for text quality also in terms of building knowledge uh again 100% meets expectation and usability uh
060by teachers is 100%. So it has met the gateway expectations um in grades 6 through 8 in particular uh by 100%. So I think that's really important. Whiten wisdom has also earned high marks from the knowledge matters campaign for a rich text connectedness of writing to reading which I know Dr. A you'd be in favor of um and then also aspects of their aspects of the of the resource and a publisher of Whitten Wisdom. The publisher of Whitten Wisdom was highlighted by the New York Times for the program's emphasis on having students read full text rather than excerpts. And I wanted to point that out because since the Common Core, there's been a real shift in a lot of these publishing companies to have students read only short texts or excerpts of full texts. And
061that's not what happens in this. Um, if we were to adopt this program, students would actually continue to read full novels. And I think that's really important. um if they don't read in the elementary grade levels and in the middle school level full novels at least exposed to you know I'm not saying that that's all they read but if they don't ever get exposed to full novels when they get to high school um they won't be prepared for that level of rigor and I think that's really important our high school teachers expect of course that students will have read a couple of novels in their middle school during their middle school experience so this establishes and this is something that Ian just referred to program coherence Our current model in stu students were are currently
062um using the witten wisdom program in grades K through five and then teachers college in grades 6 through 8. But if we were to adopt in grades K through eight, all of our students would be building on the existing routines and structures and building on them that momentum and using the Whiten wisdom program which I think is really important. We just talked about this last month when we adopted the illustrative math resource how important it is for the teachers and the students and to have those consist that consistency. So what are some of the key features of the Witton wisdom program? Number one, it's designed around the science of reading and I that's really important. We know that in literacy. It uses complex text to build students background knowledge. It integrates reading, writing, speaking, and
063listening through the study of rich authentic text and also works of art. And that's really cool to see to go into the classes and see students as young as our kindergarteners, but then this will extend through grade 8 really studying uh great works of art. And then pro it provides sample dialogue and clear structures, but it's not a scripted program. It encourages teachers to adapt lessons based on the needs of their students. Um some other key features, it's a module-based program. Um you know, it's organized around four theme thematic modules per grade. And so here's just some of the um module topics. Uh resilience in the Great Depression or a hero's journey, the American Civil War or the World War I. That's just some examples. It includes rich or high quality authentic texts. Um and
064uh you know we we've got core texts that are award based on award-winning winning mo uh novels, primary source documents, poetry,formational texts. It has visual art which I had just mentioned and also it includes diverse perspectives. So you know um we have texts that are curated to act as mirror mirrors and windows. So students see themselves in the text. It's very diverse. Um, an additional key feature is that there are instructional routines. Again, these instructional routines will start with our youngest learners, but now continue through the middle school level. And then, um, there's support for our struggling learners. So, at the middle school level, there's a specific set of supplementary lessons called the prologue that are designed for our multiling multilingual learners and students with desk uh, disabilities. And this allows our teachers to frontload
065these lessons with like essential vocabulary or background knowledge so that all of our students can participate in whole class discussion. Now again I I know that this is something that Dr. Acriman in particular is going to be really interested in. Um there are very specific or daily lessons in grammar called deep dives and these are focused on morphology again grammar and mechanics and vocabulary. Um the students are doing speaking and listening on a regular basis in the modules um through Socratic seminars and these are really powerful to to watch and then of course there's um very heavy writing instruction. This focuses on using evidence from the text to build arguments. Um there's informative essays and then it really moves away from that personal response. There is narrative included in the modules but it's much less
066of an emphasis. Um, again, students are going to be writing argumentative essays, informative and explanatory essay essays, and then some um some narrative pieces, but this much less of an emphasis. They use a process of writing called the craft stage framework in which students examine a mentor text. Then they experiment with some skills in a low stakes way, and then they ex execute a formal writing task. And it's usually done this way through three tiers. Number one, checks of for understanding, which are short informal writing pieces that they complete daily. Focus question tasks, which are usually much more um significant writing pieces, usually multiparagraph um that students do in a more um every one to two weeks. And then finally, end of module tasks, which are capstone or summitive pieces that students complete at the
067end of module at the end of the module. Again, they're much more substantive writing pieces. Now you probably are wondering you know what's the support plan because this is going to be a change for our teachers. So I've developed a support plan in which they would be provided with four different layers of support in year one of implementation. The first one would be initial training which would take place on August 27th. They would have a half-day session which is their launch training and a half day of module study and our specialed and our bilingual teachers would be included in that. Then we would have two days of co-planning and co-eing with the uh with a consultant from the publisher who would work with our teachers in the classroom. They would model and co-e lessons. Whatever
068our teachers felt like they needed, that's what they would do. We would have two days of um of PD that I've already planned with learn. Uh our teachers have specifically asked they wanted um teach they wanted a PD through these two PD sessions to be on the science of reading and I've already arranged for those. And then our teachers wanted some time um to uh and support on pacing of the curriculum. And so I've scheduled that or I've arranged at least blocked it off so that they would have that time. So um with that said, one thing I did not talk about is cost. And the cost of the startup year is approximately $100,000. I'm actually working with the publisher right now because um they sent me the quote um they've actually sent me a
069couple of different versions of the quote throughout the year. Um that includes professional development. It also includes digital license, includes um all of the texts for the first year. You know, we have to buy all of the student versions of the text, that kind of thing. Um and I'm working with them to see, will you wave the um p will you wave the shipping fee? will you also consider um discounts in you know these types of areas? So I'm kind of haggling back and forth with them if you will to see if they'll reduce some of the costs. Um I also let them know that we're an alliance district. Will you consider that consider making some reductions? And um they are letting me know that they're going to get back to me to to see
070if they can um uh include any more reductions in the cost. Ian, >> go ahead. Yes, thank you. Um, >> just a quick question. I'm glad to hear all those approaches as far as reducing the cost. And is there also like a some sort of discount since it we already have the K through five version of this? Is this >> Yes. So, that's that's another thing that I mentioned to them. I said, you know, we've been working with you already. Is that something that you'll also consider? Now, some of this um we are going to use a grant part of the DODIA, one of our do uh DODIA literacy grants. Um, so it will not be all um board funds. I believe like $30,000 we were able to um allocate from the um one of
071the DUDIA literacy grants. >> Are you all set in? >> Uh yes. Thank you. Thank you. >> Okay. Um I have a comment, but I' I'd like to turn the floor over first off to see if uh Dr. Aerman has any comments before I say what I was going to say. >> Have reservations about this. First of all, I don't like um I don't like a program and then I have some questions about um you know, can we ever see an actual lesson? I looked up wit witten wisdom and the science of reading and I couldn't find anything that really showed me what does it look like when the teacher stands up there. >> But the other thing the other thing that and of course um I don't like reading novels in in the classroom.
072I like reading short excerpts and looking at how the writing is done. But I also trust Ann Marie and if she has I mean look at the thorough dive into this that she has done. She's really looked at everything. So all of the reservations that I have I think um she has already anticipated and has looked into and she she thinks that this is the way to go and I truly with her background as an English teacher I don't I don't think that she would make a mistake. So let's see if I'm right. Okay. >> I appreciate that Dr. Arian. did do a lot of diligence in in researching this program. >> Yes, I can see that. I can see that. But two things. Can can can we get that article from Absolutely. >> And
073um where do I see a lesson? You know, when I looked online and all that, I saw all this high high thinking stuff, you know, like, okay, this is nice and all, but what does the lesson look like? You know what I'd love to have you see is one of our teachers teaching the lesson. One of our teachers in in our elementary schools, they've been doing such a great job with this. >> Okay. Oh, in the elementary school. >> Yeah. Yeah. Because you know they've been they've been they've been implementing now for two years. So they've been on >> I have no idea what an elementary school lesson should look like. And I'm sure I'm going to see something that's if they've been doing it and doing it successfully. But I want to see I
074want to see the middle school. That's my that's my idea of a hot time. >> Yeah, I understand that. But the structure would be the same. >> Okay. Okay. So, uh I didn't mean to be patronizing and >> No, no, no. I don't think I don't take it that way. >> Okay, Mitch. Okay. Um, one of the things I'm uh, it's very obvious you put a lot of work into this. Um, as as you usually do with everything I see. Um, I'm not sure what weight the New York Times uh, article has on this. Maybe that's due to my lack of knowledge of um, the education system. Um, and I didn't see uh a a weighin um from any of the uh teachers um in Grten. We're basing all this on what looks like to
075a certain extent and I and this is not something against you, Amarie, but it looks a lot like a sales pitch from the from a vendor and that bothers me. >> I can assure you that I created this presentation. Nobody no vendor created this. >> You know, Amry, that's the other thing. I don't know what what the middle school teachers think about it. So did you and did you discuss it with them? I I thought I heard you say >> Oh, you did? Okay. >> Oh yeah. >> What kind of feedback did you get? >> So you know um we the different teachers the different grade levels all agreed to pilot different things. So the sixth grade teachers piloted uh new perspectives, the seventh grade teachers piloted wit and wisdom and the eighth grade teachers
076piloted common lit. And the se the ones the teachers the seventh grade teachers who piloted wit and wisdom they loved it. They said that the students were engaged, you know, they um that they enjoyed the working with the resource. They enjoyed working with the with the uh consultant who worked with them. Um and then I had the sixth grade teacher, the sixth and the eighth grade teachers, that's why I had them go and visit um Hadam Killingworth Middle School to go and see it in action. And I also had them go and visit our classrooms at the fifth grade level. so that they can see it also in the in our elementary schools. So they can see obviously two different versions at a middle school version and elementary. The seventh grade teachers win as well,
077but they didn't need as much to see it because they've been had been working with the program. Does that make sense? >> Yes. And and the seventh grade teachers loved it. They What were the the responses from the other two? sixth grade. Um, two of our three sixth grade teachers were very interested in, in fact, two of them had have students have their own children in our elementary schools and um, you know, feel very comfortable um, in making this transition because they are excited about what they see in their own children and their improved literacy skills. one of the teachers um had some reservations because she was not sure like a um her biggest concern was you know um does the program include diverse text. But after kind of showing her um you know the
078different selections at the middle school level and then also um having a conversation with some other of our elementary school teachers um and one of the principles. Again, that was part of the visits, you know, at letting them ask questions of our teachers and our principles and, you know, literacy people. Um, you know, I feel like she was more comfortable. Um, she also asked, you know, our seventh grade teachers who were piloting, um, they immediately said, "Yes, you know, in our pilot unit, here's all of the diverse texts that we read. We read Martin Luther King, we read Malala, we read, um, Soldier Truth." and they named I think five pieces just off the top of their head. So she said, "Oh, and now I feel more comfortable that you just you were able to
079very quickly name diverse authors um that you read during the pilot unit." Um so she seemed to be a lot more comfortable with the transition. Um the eighth grade uh teachers um originally I think they were less um enthusiastic about you know getting on board, but I I met with all of the teachers on Tuesday the 28th, which was just last Tuesday, and they seemed to be okay with making the change. They understand why it's important to have coherence in, you know, from one, you know, one from elementary school to middle school. And they also know that what they're working with right now is no longer approved by the state of Connecticut. >> Right. So when when can we go see those classes? >> Uh you mean at the elementary level? Whenever you want to,
080Dr. A. I'm sure everyone will welcome you in. >> Don't be too sure. >> It's a little It's a little bit It's It's a little bit tough right now because I think all of our schools are starting testing. So it might be a little bit tough. >> Okay. So you want to wait till September? Is that what you >> Sure. You you tell me what what a good time. I want I don't want to go in when the teachers are It wouldn't be a good time for the teacher. >> Yeah, we'll we'll we'll identify a good time. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Testing's probably not a great time, but >> Yeah. >> Pitch. >> Okay. Um yeah, I I had uh uh one question. So, we we implemented this for K through five. Now, we're
081looking at six, seven, and eight. Is there another version of this? I'm sorry. I apologize. Okay. Is there another version of this for the higher grades? >> There is not. >> Okay. >> Oh, wait a minute. I don't You know what? Um, you know what, Mitch? I don't I don't know. I don't know if there is a if there's a version for 9 through 12. I Let me look into that. >> I'm not saying I necessarily want it. I'm just curious. >> Yeah. I I I don't know. I didn't I didn't look into it to be honest with you. There might be and I'm not sure. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Does Does anyone else have any questions on this? >> Yeah. >> Ian, did you have anything? >> Uh, no. I'm all set. Um
082I think it was a great presentation and and like I said if we're phasing if we're moving away from teachers college then we're in the right direction and I'm also glad to hear about the full the full texts approach um uh because you know as we know uh there there's a lot of science about the struggling attention spans of uh youth today and um so like anything we can do to build in sustained attention over time over a period days and weeks. Um, I think it's all great. All >> good. >> We got to re build their reading stamina. >> Exactly. Appreciate it. >> Thank you. >> Okay. So, our action on this is probably to make a recommendation to the board of education um as to whether or not we want to recommend that
083this go forward. Is that correct? >> That's correct, Mitch. >> Yes. >> Okay. So, um Andrea, it sounds like you're in favor, Ian. Yes. >> Oh, yeah. That's affirmative. I'm in favor. But um I I am too, but I'm gonna say it's basically because um I trust Ann Marie and um I don't I don't know enough uh about it. So I I think what I'm probably going to do is abstain. Okay. But I think it still passes. So, um, we'll we'll make the recommendation to the board that this be pursued. All right. >> Thank you. I appreciate that. >> Okay. Thank you. Okay. I think I we're up to item five, which is the BOB referral tracking sheet. And let's see. >> Is there a way to project that? I don't have my packet with
084me. >> I have a hard >> I can I can project it. >> Appreciate it. Thank you. >> Can all of you see that? >> Yes. Okay. >> Yes. >> And I'll make it larger. Dr. Acriman. >> Yeah, I it looks to me as though the um discussion of reading and writing K12 is still there. I thought we were going to change that to just um 6 through 12. >> Yeah, you're right, Dr. Acriman. And I I think um I didn't capture I have to work with Eric on that. I think we just didn't capture that in the notes. Um, I will make sure that I get that changed tomorrow. >> Great. Thanks. That's it. Anything else here? >> Um, well, we're just the first the first four items are ours. The others belong to
085other committees. >> Yep. >> Correct. >> Okay. So, um I guess we're going to say that uh this is okay as is. Does everyone agree with that? >> No. >> I'm just curious to know what we um so this is discussed at cow on 428 and then another one was discussed at cow discussed at 44 and 1124. Um >> yes. So does that what was the resolution or what was the action that came of those discussions or was it just a review? Was it just um >> yeah I think coming out I think the um the reason why those are those dates are listed there is that um because those are going to be reoccurring items and um but they wanted the uh the suggestion was to keep the dates on there so that it
086doesn't look like those um those topics were never addressed. Okay, that makes sense. Thank you. >> Just to clarify something, >> I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Mitch. >> It's okay. Um I should I should have I shouldn't have just spoke. Um but you want referral number Dr. Arian on uh 2023-23. You want the wording on that one changed so it's not K to 12. Okay. >> Yes. 6 to 12. Thank you. >> Okay. >> Would it be okay with you, Dr. Acriman, if we maybe separated out K through five and then 6 through 12 so that um it reflects at least in case um anyone wants to talk about uh elementary literacy. >> Oh yes. Well, then we'll just leave it the way it is because it does the same thing if we as if we
087separate it. Correct. Um, yeah. Well, unless, you know, unless someone wanted to uh had a question about elementary literacy in particular. >> It's it's because it says K through 12. So, if they had that question, it's included. >> Yeah, I guess. >> Yeah. So, I think we we'll just leave it then >> if that's okay. >> Yeah. If it's okay with you, I want to make sure that you you know, you're you're okay with it. Now, did Adrien Johnson make that recommendation or did I? >> I don't I don't recall. I mean, obvious it was in 2023 and I wasn't here then, so um you might have a better sense of it. >> Doesn't matter. One of us did it. >> Okay. So, if I'm reading this correctly, we've um completed all the uh items
088on the agenda. Is there anything new that anyone wanted to bring up? >> Not me. Just one thing left. >> I'm all set. >> All right. >> Okay. >> Do you want me to do it >> or no? >> Go for it. >> Okay. A motion to adjurnn. >> Seconded. >> Okay. Thanks, folks. >> Have a good night. >> All right. Have a good night. >> Bye. >> Good night, everyone.