001I would like to call the uh committee meeting, the curriculum committee meeting to order. In attendance, we have Mike Whitney and myself, Adrienne Johnson as board members, superintendent Susan Austin, and Assistant Superintendent Ann Marie Encini. 602. So, um the uh first order of business is to review the meeting minutes. So, and I um take a motion to uh accept the minutes. I move to accept the minutes. I will second that. Discussion? None. All right. Minutes are approved. Um, next thing is discussion on professional development plan for next year, which I'm very excited to hear about. Um, oh, Emory, thank you. I'm very excited to talk about it. I want to note that this plan is still kind of in development. Nothing has been completely finalized. This is a draft and um, you know, so I
002I want to make sure that everyone is aware of that. this, you know, we are still working on this, but I'm really happy with where it is right now and um really excited to share it with you. Now, that said, how can I get this to advance? There we go. So, I want to talk a little bit about the approach that I take when I'm um planning professional development. And um I've had a lot of experience in this uh going back at least two districts when I worked for the Capitol Region Education Council. I had to plan professional develop. Part of my responsibilities was planning professional development for all of the district's teachers, including a three-day new teacher orientation, which would include upwards sometimes of 600 to 700 teachers because um they actually require all
003teachers in their first three years to participate in new teacher orientation. And then of course the big district PD days would be um all of the district teachers. So there was, you know, a number of teachers. I forget what the total was when I worked there. And then um my former place of work, East Harford Public Schools. This was a big part of my responsibility as well. Um and then because of my interest in professional development and the way that um teachers learn, I actually incorporated professional development into my dissertation, which I recently defended in October. And um really specifically, it looked at how do districts take important instructional initiatives and then implement them effectively, obviously through professional development. that's a big part of it. And um that focus specifically that I was looking at
004at the time was culturally responsive teaching. So those were it was kind of a two-pronged component to my um dissertation. So I want to kind of incorporate some highlights here that I've learned over the years. First of all is you know and I think that this is not going to be a surprise to anyone. Annually districts spend an enormous amount of money on professional development. And because of that, you really want it to be something that is valuable and meaningful for teachers and that works in terms of when I say works, it means improves student outcomes and helps teachers to grow. So, um, in looking into this a little bit further and I did extensive research on this as a part of my lit review, um, and I'm just summarizing some things here that in
005order for professional development to have an impact on teacher out um, practice and student outcomes, it must include the following elements. Um and I just summarized here really like the four main ones. First of all, it should be designed intentionally or using a systems need uh based approach in order to meet the teachers needs. Secondly, it must include uh opportunities for teachers to actively participate. So you want to actually incorporate strategies that are that you know are effective um related to adult learning and just learning in general. So um the more they can be actively engaged, the better. You want to also incorporate opportunities for teachers to collaborate and reflect. And um this kind of gets into another related point that I didn't mention here that when you have professional development, they always say that
006it's important for teachers to be seated strategically next to their maybe grade level teammates or their colleagues from their schools because that helps them to be more open during the collaboration and reflection process. And then finally, it's got to be reinforced by leaders through coaching, feedback, and support. The first part of this is really important about leaders and that is that everyone's got to be on the same page. If we say we're moving forward with implementing a new literacy program, you can't have one or two of our leaders saying whether it be a principal or um elementary literacy specialist or whomever it is. Can't have someone being like, well, I didn't I didn't pick this program, so I don't like it. You know, everyone's got to be kind of rowing in the same direction. And
007the other piece is that it's got to be reinforced. You can't just kind of hold a U workshop session maybe in September or October and then never revisit the um the things that teachers have learned during that session. It's got to be something that is continuously built upon during the year. You can't jump from one initiative to the next initiative. All right. So kind of considering those pieces, I outlined here what the effective elements some some of the effective elements of professional learning and then how I went about designing the professional learning plan for next year. And again, I want to emphasize it's only in draft right now. So thinking about teachers needs and even their interests, we identified these by um working with the members of the GTLC or the Graten Teaching and Learning
008Collaborative and we also reviewed district data in terms of a systemsbased approach. Um and I just talked about this. I am intentionally designing um a uh professional learning depending upon the grade level and the content area sessions that build upon one another. Um I really do think that is important. You can't do something related to uh maybe culturally responsive teaching in August and then jump over something specific to math and then in in um November and then do a completely different session when we meet again in March. It just doesn't make sense. Um, third, it's got to involve active participation and collaboration. And so when we have presenters, we make sure we vet them and that sessions are reviewed before the PD date so that it it we make sure that um there are opportunities
009for teachers to collaborate and be actively engaged in learning. um it has to incorporate feedback or opportunities for feedback and after each one of our sessions this year um each teach every teacher was given an opportunity to provide feedback through a survey and um I can't tell you how many surveys I've made this year um you know just essentially for every single session that we've done and we've collected a lot of good feedback from this and based on that feedback I've adjusted so I looked at the feedback now I wasn't here in August but I did look at those surveys um And based on the feedback that the teachers gave us, I made adjustments for November. And then based on what we got in November, um I made adjustments for the March plan. And that
010was just this year alone. And then finally, ongoing support. Um this is where we incorporate our coaches, our specialists, and other district leaders. So looking at our professional learning plan moving forward into next school year, I kind of tried to think about um what are our big areas of of focus. Where do we want to really um put our energies? You know, there's a big continued focus of course on the wit and wisdom literacy program and that's really important. We don't want to again we don't want to say in this school year witten wisdom in our literacy program is important and then next year jump to something else. It gives conflicting messages to teachers and our teachers have indicated to us that they still need support in this area. We also are continuing to work
011on K5 science. I know that Ben Moon has come in and spoken to this group. He does incredibly incredible work and he's been partnering with the Connecticut Science Center. Um they did do one session this year. I believe it was in March and the feedback that we got from our teachers with was that they want more they want to learn more about this student- centered approach to science and so they're going to come back and do some additional sessions with our teachers. Mathematics is an area that we've been talking about as a full board all year long and I really have taken um you know I've listened quite a bit to the discussions that have happened here uh and wanted to build that in a very specific um plan for supporting our teachers in mathematics.
012You'll see that in a little bit. Um, artificial intelligence is something that the board has also talked a little bit about and our teachers are very curious about this and it seems to me that our teachers are kind of all over the like there's a range of teachers in terms of their skill set. Some are just starting to dabble in AI or maybe not know very know very little about artificial intelligence and how it could enhance their lessons and their work with students and some are very very skilled at this. So, we want to kind of start bringing everyone to the same level and we're going to start to work on that next year. The digital SAT is something that um really we saw a change from the college board, not this school year, but
013the prior one. And um what I've learned in our conversations with in my conversations with the high school team is that um they want to make sure that our teachers are up to speed on some of the changes. Now, when people think digital SAT, they think, "Oh, well, we just simply moved on um they went from a paper and pencil test the kids to a um online test." That's not the case. There were actual changes made to the SAT that we want to bring our teachers up to speed on. And then finally, another big piece of our work next year will be the IB self-study that's happening both at the middle and the high school level. And we really believe that it's important to give our teachers time to look at the revision of policies
014that's required with that updating curricula and reflecting on their current practice. So with that said, I wanted to kind of share with you some professional learning what I'm calling sequences or sample plans. And I have a number of them. You know, obviously based on each content and grade level area. Um, if you want to see more, I certainly can show you more, but I just included three samples here. The first learning sequence is with our K2 teachers right now. This is what it looks like on August 26. Basically, every day, every PD day, almost every PD day is u broken into two um separate sessions. You see here on August 26, there's actually a third because there's a what I'm calling like a skinny instead of it being a three-hour module, you see it's like
015a much longer um it's a much shorter module an of an hour and a half. But for the most part, these there are there's a session in the morning, there's a lunch break, and a session in the afternoon. So on August 26th, you'll see that our K2 teachers are going to do a a program prep and review, preparing for module one of Wit and Wisdom, just making sure that uh revisiting some of the things that we did this year and looking at how we can improve our instruction moving forward. Then they're going to do some report card um review and calibration. uh our literacy coordinator Sarah Beth um Stona, she spoke with us at the last full board meeting about some of the work that she's doing. One of the things she mentioned is that
016they're reviewing the report card and making some updates. And you know, a lot of that is going to consist on making the language a little bit more, I would say, user friendly for our families and our caregivers. And so we're going to kind of go over use that time to review some of the changes to um the report card. And then in the afternoon, they're going to have their first session in improving instructional practices in math. The person that we are bringing in is a woman that did some uh work with us this year. Her name is Robin Moore. She is a certified trainer for illustrative mathematics. She's also very skilled in building thinking classrooms. And we're really going to focus next year in uh really K8, not specifically on a program or platform, but
017really just about strengthening our um instructional practices in mathematics. I think that's before you do anything, implement a new program, look at a new curriculum, we have to look at where our teachers are and how comfortable they are with mathematics, especially at the elementary level where most teachers, you know, um, in fact, I think all teachers, they major as an elementary education major, they don't major in mathematics or social studies or English. Um, and so we have to work to make sure that the practices are really solid. And then you'll see here we're building on some of our our um our sequence. So you see the witten wisdom module appears again, module two in um in November and also in March. And then you see Robin Moore comes back and works with our teachers again
018um in math in in March. What you don't see outlined here is that we are going to continue to work with um Robin Moore on some of our TLI days. um and I just didn't list them in this case. Here's the sequence for grades three through five teachers. Essentially, it's the same um with the exception of uh when our K2 teachers are working on literacy, our 35 teachers are working on math and vice versa. Um and so there's some consistency again K through five so that um all of our elementary teachers understand that our two main initiatives next year are working on ELA and math and of course we're incorporating a little bit of science. I want to talk a little bit about one of our high school sequences and I just picked out science
019as an example. So looking at our our at our um science teachers and what they're going to do, they are going to have sessions on understanding the digital SAT. The first one's going to be on just providing them with an overview of what the digital new digital SAT requires of students, what it's like, what they experience when they um log into the platform where the or the assessment. Um you'll see that that comes up again in November. they're specifically going to focus on the evidence-based reading and writing tests and how that um the types of things that relate to science. So, for example, on this new assessment there, it's a much heavier science um emphasis when students get their reading passages. Um the one the test prior to this um when students get their evidence-based
020reading and writing assessment, they had two passages that were social studies based and two that were science and one that was a fiction text. Now, um there the college board is leaning a little bit heavier towards science and so we wanted to bring our science teachers up to speed on that. And then finally in um in March they'll be uh looking at the digital SAT again in terms of planning and classroom alignment. Now one thing that is not seen here is that our teachers are going to meet um in December with um with Sam Rosen from college planning partnerships. They're going to use that time to look at the PSAT data which is usually in um in December um because our students take the uh school day test in October. And they also have another
021session, an additional session, I believe it's in February leading again leading up to that March or April assessment. Uh usually we give it around early April. This year was end of March. So between the end of March, early April, we'll have an two additional sessions to prepare our teachers um to work with students more effectively. On the flip side of their sessions, you'll see that there's a heavy focus on this um working in to enhance our curriculum instruction assessment using AI and they're going to be working with Dr. Kennedy um on all three dates, first in August, then in November, and then in March. So, you know, again, taking that thread of learning and making sure that it continues throughout the school year. Um, that's the end of my presentation. But the other thing I
022really wanted to make sure that I noted is that um sometimes when you see professional development that's done in school districts or maybe um at the college level, you see that people are put into large auditoriums and um you know uh there's someone talking at them. Well, I already talked to you about my philosophy of making sure that sessions are interactive and things like that, but these sessions that I'm designing purposefully are um smaller sessions. So, you know, when you take K2 teachers together, that's not a very large group. When we do have larger groups, we make sure that the elementary specialists are pushing in and um have an opportunity. Maybe I'm just going to take the grade one teachers. We'll do a maybe one large group or component of the large group session and
023then we'll pull out the first grade teachers to work with one of our elementary literacy specialists or one of our math literacy specialists. So I don't want there to leave an impression that these are one of those things where it's a sit and get everybody in the auditorium 500 teachers and you know that's that kind of leaves first of all it's not a recipes for success and that leaves room for people to maybe be um I would say multitasking or just not focused on on what we want to accomplish during that um during the session. So, with all that said, um I'm happy to take questions and uh I want to again remind you that this is strictly in draft form right now. All right. Thank you. Questions? Yeah, I mean it's great to see
024something like with a great foundation and well planned out and those were just two examples, right? For those are just two examples of of many. Um, so that your first point was a grabber for me when I looked at the slides before the meeting too is that 18,000 per year on not for us particularly but on on average uh per teacher uh for professional development. I was wondering if did that do you know did that number basically are they kind of including the fact that okay a teacher is spending their workday doing this or these work days doing this they're probably adding in that probably adding in that you know as I was reading and sometimes you see a lot of different numbers depending upon it's a very large school district like if you think
025about Cleveland public schools or something or Miami public schools I think Miami actually is number one in the according to the research in terms of how much they spend I don't know if that number is incorporated uh the fact that they're um you're using this day and they're getting paid to attend but not instructing students. I'm not sure if that's incorporated in or not. It it it didn't say specifically as much reading as I've done on this. That's not something that was kind of itemized out because we'd be seeing like in our budget like a $500,000 professional development line which I don't think we're seeing although maybe it's broken up. I just think about all those DODAS have really had the backbone of PD and when you think about nine of them over the 10-year
026period at a million to 1.250 2550. You know, there are there are other costs. There's the evaluator cost, there's the project director, there's supplies. So, it's not all PD, but we've certainly had that additional support in professional development and and a lot of grants will cover PD as well, like title two, you know, can coverit title one funds. So, um even if title four, for example, is something that I oversee here and have overseen previously, depending upon what the focus is, you can use title four funds. So there's a lot of flexibility and I think it may not be reflected in our board budget because we are able to pay for professional learning using a lot of grants, right? And I do like to see it's nice to see that mix of sort of in-house
027talent and expertise presenting as well because you often respond better to people you know and then then you respond in a different way like something new exciting coming in from the outside. Yeah, I think a science center for instance. Yeah. And I think it's really important for our teachers to have that mix. um because uh you want them to see their colleagues as experts. I mean, I think it's great when, for example, when our teachers or our coaches present. I I love profession uh presenting professional development, but at the same time, you're right, people that have that are from the outside often have new and interesting ideas that you can only get when you bring people in. So, um, while I want to be very mindful when we plan these professional development days that you
028don't want to overspend and have a an outside presenter for every session, every grade level. Um, I think the mix is important, right? And then I I can understand of course that classroom teachers um, you know, subject teachers would have professional development. Was wondering about um, for instance special education teachers uh, and even parents. Yeah. So our paras have are required to attend professional development I believe for a certain amount of hours hours state legislation and we've always provided it and the TLI days help too to support that but we've actually added another day and paying in their salary for them to attend beginning of the year and then at also in March they did a half day. Yes. and um our the president of the par professional union is on the grten teaching and
029learning collab collaborative the GTLC and so um when we're planning these um sessions and when we're asking for input she's there at the table and can let me know and the group know um hey this is something that the pairs are interested in this is something that really didn't work for us like for example um in November there was some online professional development for pair of professionals and um and she said yeah that's good sometimes but we'd like to have some in-person sessions as well. So, we took that feedback and made sure in March we made those adjustments for them. And even with those online components, it needs to be facilitated and discussed. You know, it could be clips of things and then a discussion needs to happen because if it's just online, it just
030loses its ump for anybody I think. Yeah. Yeah. My other question, so I there's at best a mixed view of professional development among teachers. Uh you know, because there's certain reputations like when am I going to use this? Everything's being switched every year and that's there always has to be renewal and I think people understand that. But um but then there's also um I'm sitting here doing professional development when I really should be grading this yeah virtual or real stack of papers or I was wondering within professional development days is it allowable or acceptable to kind of carve out like an hour to you know do do something other than uh you just it could be team building it could be actually working on something collect like basically open free time somehow. Yep. you see
031that actually if I showed you the entire document you'd see that um depending upon the subject level or the or the grade there is some time for like for example team planning or goal development um TLI days you often see that um even call it teacher initiated and sometimes it's a collaborative plan or grade level plan but they really look at what is the charge ahead and then they personalize it and work together on it. Yeah. And we have resources like the specialists who are available to them to assist them. Yeah. Yeah. And so I guess uh we could summarize it just as there's a lot on every teacher's plate. Yep. Uh and professional development has a might add something to the plate or change the plate, but is there a way like within that
032to sort of let them feel like they're taking something off their plate oring? I think that's, you know, when we look at the K2 plan, for example, or really the K5 plan and we're looking, for example, at the literacy development that they're doing, a lot of that is not like it's not where they're where people are providing them with instruction. It's collaborative time to work on, okay, we're we're getting ready for module two and wisdom. Let's look back what what happened last year. How can we improve? So, it's kind of more of like a collaboration session than, you know, we're going to sit in a room now and someone's going to talk at us, you know, about written wisdom, right? Like this year going through it the very first time, you'd hear things like, well,
033I don't know why we're reading this book and how is this going to relate, you know, later on, but when they get to module two or three, they said, oh, now we see it. So, anytime you do it the first time around, there's some skepticism, but it does seem like their eyes are wide open now. And I think going through the next year is going to be really a good thing and they're going to be able to to look at it and see you know what are some things that you know we can tweak or what are some things but they've really tried to be true to the program this year and now I think they understand it better and we got that feedback loud and clear from our teachers that um in August they
034had a they had a session that was with one of the presenters from Whiten Wisdom and they thought it was beneficial that really they had actually a number of presenters come in um you know one worked I think with maybe K2, another worked with 35, but in November, we gave them time to work with one another and plan with our elementary literacy specialists leading that work and they said that was incredibly valuable for them. So that's why moving forward, we started to incorporate that into this year's plan. So they always have a piece you're talking about. Yeah, that's great. And I think they need that. And that I liked your uh comment about I hadn't heard that before about new new teachers like from the first three years going to the orientation. My work we
035have a new student orientation and often we're we we just kind of repeat it like six months later. Yeah. For the same but I think if we kind of had them come they could kind of basically almost like a peer peer interaction there at different stages help quite a bit. You know, again, this was a work I did in in at the capital region education council and because there were so many te that that district at the time was growing exponentially. They were adding new magnet schools. So sometimes it would be an entire staff um of a school, brand new school, they would have to come to new teacher orientation. And so what that wound up being, especially for teachers in year two and three, they weren't going to the, you know, to the basic
036sessions. they were going to sessions led by other CRE employees who have been that were more experienced teachers um and presenting for one another. But I think that's something that you have to do as you know especially when you're going to year three of three days of new teacher orientation. That's essentially you know nine days plus the other PD that you get throughout the year. So there you want to really listen to your colleagues. Thanks. Yeah. Um so I've got a couple although you answered most of my questions. Um do do we keep track of um the difficult parts of like Wit and Wisdom or a new curriculum? Do we keep track of you know what teachers are saying was difficult like this year and then is are we like kind of keeping a a
037a score sheet on the on the hard parts and focusing the PD for you know? Absolutely. So, as I mentioned, we collect surveys um after every session, but not only during the during the or after PD. our um elementary literacy coordinator Sarah Beth um Sona who was here at our board meeting last week. Um she is constantly talking with teachers, collecting information from teachers, um you know talking with our literacy specialists, getting feedback from our principles and she's keeping that information and that does help us to inform the work that we're going to do with them moving forward. So absolutely we have so many notes on you know what went well this year and you know what we need to improve um I feel really prepared going into next year I think also we're looking
038at providing resources through title one for the hill on for literacy because that organization really helped us and I think just to get that kind of sense of people who really have that strong background in science of reading to be able to support some of the PD and some of their questions that they might half. Yeah. So, I don't know what that's going to look like, but we've it's still under development. I think we have a meeting with them either this week or next week, but it looks like we're leaning during to doing um work more in grades three through five. And Margie Gillis, too. She's part of that. She's part of that. So, she'll be working with us. And um she did a whole group, but she was I thought she was fabulous. I've
039seen her a few times and her over the years, but um you know for some things I think you know we do do a large group but I think even when we do the large group it's important to get them into small groups to discuss it afterwards so that they can debrief discuss debrief. Yeah. And I think you know you mentioned an important thing um is that you have to really consider the presenter. Sometimes people know their stuff just like a teacher you can be, you know, you can really be very knowledgeable, but um there are some individuals that are just not good presenters. They don't engage the audience. And so we really consider that too. Um, and we want to make sure that the presenters that work with our teachers are are people that
040they're going to be able to relate to want to um, engage in the professional learning session um, and not turn off or tune out because of something that the presenter said or the fact that they're not interesting or they don't seem knowledgeable. We've recently had two, one in the middle school and he actually worked in a in classrooms for a couple days with the teachers and um the teachers were just really wowed and want him back. You know, he was just terrific. And then the other one was in elementary school when she was doing some of the foundations of math and the properties of mathematics with them in a very engaging way. And teachers really respond well. You can tell and they'll they'll answer you pretty freely. and we kind of stay out. We let
041them do it, but we'll pop in every now and again just to check to see if they have, you know, any questions or whatever, but we were getting good feedback in the hallways and I think on the survey. And it's really important for me, um, and I know Susan does this as well as the person who plans professional development to be in sessions. And I can't be in all of them at once, but I make it a point to, um, go to those sessions, go to the math session, go to the literacy session, make sure I understand how it's going. I will sit next to teachers that I trust and say you know I don't know all the teachers yet but the ones I do know and uh you know I value their opinion I
042will ask them how's this going what do you think of the presenter what are you learning here and so you know that is also a way that we get feedback it's although it's it's informal but teachers don't hesitate to let us know what you like and what they good bad or ugly they do let us know and we do have breakfast with the unions and they'll let us know or we want we don't even have to wait for breakfast I'll get a call and I'm glad that they let us No, because we can't we can't improve and make it better for them unless they're honest with us. All right. Um, one other thing is there are there any models or is there any way to do PD kind of in a rolling fashion? I mean,
043I know we're stuck with three PD days where we've got to do the entire district at once. Um and and teachers probably aren't going to want to do it over in a rolling fashion over Christmas vacation. But um is there a way to do that in a school system or or is that just not possible? So basically to get smaller um PD sessions. So I'm thinking of a group of a dozen teachers, you know, maybe the K and one team or the two and three team per school and to do like a shorter maybe not even a whole day. Yep. So I give you an example of something that we did just last week. We had uh a person come in from New York and you know kind of along the lines of improving our
044teachers instructional practices. Um we had each grade level at the elementary level come in. Um so it was all the grade one teachers. They came in for a three-hour session and it was two and a half or three hours and worked with this consultant from New York and that went really well because it was a smaller session. We had this person very knowledgeable, was engaging and um and she was honest with them. Yeah, they loved that she was just real. And that was something that we planned probably we started working on that around January or February. And um you know it was um we did all of the uh let's see I think it was grades two and five the first day, K and one the second day and three and four the third day.
045And they had the books to go with it. So they had the lessons to go with it that they would do with the class. So they had gotten these new books and they've had other versions of these things they call strings which are really laying the foundations and the properties of mathematics with kids and doing a lot of mental math. But you know this like took it to a whole another level these new books and now they're so excited about having the books because now they know how to you know do some of these things and they've been um you know given the taste test. I will tell you what's problematic about a model like that when we don't have a day where kids are not in school is that, you know, then you're pulling
046teachers for three hours from their classroom. And this time of year, they don't always love that idea. Um, and I would talk about feedback when um when I sent I originally sent out a memo saying, "Hey, we have this great opportunity. You're going to be, you know, learning about math. We have this presenter that's coming in and here's the schedule." some of the initial feedback um was not positive to me uh about about that and I understood why because you know as a teacher it's oftentimes more work to be out of your classroom and to prepare for that than to you know than to be in a professional obviously than to be in a professional development on a day off. It's always harder to be outside of your class and um because you have to
047do the preparations. Sometimes there are repercussions from being out. You know, maybe the students feel a little naughty and you got to deal with that. So um you know ultimately I think um they were very uh positive about their learning that they had that day but initially I think not as happy. I'm a little skeptical. Yes. We heard a lot of people say, "Oh, that fraction unit was terrific, or that geometry piece. I'm going to go try that right like tomorrow." So, when you get that feedback about PD, you know that it was a hit that they want to try it out. Yeah. Well, I can I can speak to that. My wife hates being out of the classroom. like she will stack everything possible into a day off like a personal day or something
048because um it is so much work doing plans and to have those sub plans go well and you're absolutely stuff. So So yeah, I can I can appreciate that from what I hear. Um um oh do we um we all know that you know teachers have a contracted amount of time that they work um but I'm pretty sure that all of them work much more than that contracted time. So um as far as PD do we give them resources to be able to like look into something specific on their own time or have access to that type of thing? Talk to me a little bit about what you mean by resources. So um so so for example maybe in witten wisdom they're having a hard time with a with a section or something like that.
049Are there resources where they can go um oh yeah like in real time or after a PD session or something like that and learn about that? Yes. Um Sarah Beth um our coordinator has a whole she has Google folders. Um we have we of course we have our our our curriculum site but in addition to that Sarah Beth has organized Google folders by grade level by module. So there's a you know a number of resources that teachers can access for additional information. All right. So, so going to I guess the the like the the um PD like as they're teaching. So, if they have a problem with something, we have Sarah Beth is the one that where teacher would go this really isn't working. How do I do this? Within the building there are elementary
050literacy specialists. So, each building has one of those and they meet together every month. Yes. So, the elementary So, the structure basically is Sarah Beth is our coordinator. Uh in each building there's a literacy specialist. Sarah Beth meets monthly with the literacy specialists, but she also then goes to each grade level in each school and meets with those groups and the elementary literacy specialists of course meet with their teams. So there's a number of ways that they can kind of access support if they need it. All right. Are the literacy specialists are they working with kids individually or are they they're doing both. They're working with teachers and they work with students. All right. Then they have the intervention intervention as well as supporting teachers. Yes, but in literacy we have at least three to
051four interventionists on top of the specialist. In math, we have the one specialist and we used to have math tutors. All right. Um yeah, that was mine. And then I my other one was um was math specifically like if it's curriculum focused or if it's just kind of overview. And it sounds like um like a lot of the math PD is more of a general. It's going to be really on strengthening our knowledge and our instructional practice for classrooms. So making sure that PE teachers feel confident in the math. You know, a lot of times and I'm not a I'm not was not an elementary person and I'm certainly not a math person. Um but a lot of times our teachers at the elementary and sometimes the middle level um I would say through grade
052six, you know, they did not specialize in in mathematics. So they may not be as comfortable delivering the content um or maybe knowing a variety of ways. For example, you know, when you talk to a high school math teacher, they'll often know like, okay, the student isn't understanding, this is not a perfect example. I know they do ratios and proportions in the middle school, but let's say let's say it's a middle school teacher and um I bet they know maybe two or three different ways to approach that if a student in their class or a handful of students in their class are not getting it the first way they they taught it. Whereas at the elementary level, now I'm not I'm making a generalization because I'm sure there are a number of our math of
053our elementary teachers that are strong at math. But I'm just saying generally what you find is that our um elementary teachers, and when I say are, I mean statewide, nationwide, are not as comfortable because they just didn't have that training in their background. Maybe they had to take limited courses or methods classes that focused on math. And so um that's why I really wanted to focus next year on just looking at strengthening their knowledge, their skills and then how to deliver that effectively in the classroom to a range of students. They are very versed in the common core and know what is the priority goals of their grade level. Um I think it's always good for teachers to know what comes before and what comes after as well. So because you're going to have kids
054who are gifted and might be beyond that and they might have kids who still need help and support a year or two behind that you know to get them up. But um the presenter did say she was very impressed with our teachers knowledge and ability and certainly um I feel they are more comfortable than when I first arrived. You know um they've had a lot of math um PD but I do feel like it's time for a little bit of a revival. just like what we've done with literacy. Um so and I think that you know I'm kind of looking forward we've looked at the state curriculum and you know looked at some exemplars and um they've helped us even in selecting and trying out some things. Yes. So yeah. Yeah. That's great. I I
055imagine that a lot of um teachers that go into elementary ed um maybe they just weren't great in math and and the earlier elementary school like Yeah. speaking from some that I know very well. Yeah. I don't I don't know if that's why they selected elementary or they you know they like being with the younger kids, but I do feel like there's a heavier emphasis on literacy than in mathematics in their in the program and science as well. Math and science. I mean, I was a math major at Yukon and I was wanted to be a middle school math teacher, but I was pre-K through eight because back then in 7 through 12 they, you know, certification was the kind of thing if you got the degree, you got certified. So, you know, but there,
056you know, I do, I have noticed that colleagues, there are some who really just get it. I think our interventionists or our specialists have had so much in-depth training that they really have understood it in a in a real big way. And so it's great to have those people in the buildings helping to support their colleagues. So thanks. Any more questions or anything? No. Well, thanks for giving me the opportunity to show you my draft. Yeah. So, I'm really excited having Ann Marie to do some of this, you know, planning and working with the groups and, you know, seeing some of these plans come to fruition. We're excited to show you too strategic planning. It's in a drafty form, but it's getting it's getting there. And we had a big team working on that. So,
057I'm feeling like we're really moving forward with her support. Yeah. Yeah, we're really really looking forward to it. And it is great. Um, all right. Next thing, uh, review of the referral tracking sheet. I don't have one. Yeah. Was in the packet. Oh, I have one. Oh, I'm not sure there's a point because I said we couldn't add any as a committee. So, I don't know why we do this anymore. You have English language arts curriculum 6 through 12, which I think you just did, but Andrea wants to keep it on there. Yeah. You have um the program of studies for Graten Middle and Fitch High School. Those were just updated, I think, because kids have picked their classes. Um developing a schedule um for curriculum updates in all subjects. And I think you're just
058meeting with the the um department chairs up there and hearing them out has kept you kind of ahead and they know now they finally know to make sure that we're aware of what's coming up so that we follow that pattern the you know for the curriculum. Um and then let's see um reading and writing K5 and that's going to be ongoing. Yes. and Sarah Beth. That originally was supposed to be Sarah Beth's presentation to hear, but then they but then it was the decision made to share that with the larger board. So, that was something that obviously we just did. Right. Right. And then financial literacy. Um that was that's coming up. Melissa Manzion did that last month. She did that, but then they wanted it on still for some. Yeah. For anyway. Yeah. I
059think it was uh that wanted Matthew. And then the honors classes. Um I know that you've discussed that also. I think that was maybe January or February. Yeah. And then discussion regarding study of IB. So that's going to be interesting having that review process. That's quite an intense process um for both the my So it sounds like that's one for kind of early next year. and Bev had put on the math curriculum which we just talked about but again it's not one and done you know this is like ongoing all this it's like quite a project last month in addition to the financial literacy we did the uh review of of math curriculum oh you did okay so you guys have been really working I assume that we can put things on the on the
060referral sheet well I think you come when when we did it didn't show up or is that for the CO that's a whole page. So I Yeah, we we did a couple meetings ago. Oh, we put stuff on and it didn't show up on the referral tracking because it has to be done by the whole whole board. So yeah, we've got quite a lot on there for us talked about it a lot on the but not actually. There you go. Um well the CO um that has the most policy. We're just we'll go through that um whenever Bev's going to going to bring that up. Um I guess we can leave. Is there anything else you want on the like you're interested in for Well, I think the strategic planning is something we'll want to
061share, but that's probably the whole board, too. I mean, for me, I don't know if it's on there, um but um API um like kind of test score successes and things like that. um and not not for this school year right now, but to to go through that um actually might in terms of the context the IB program might help might be looking at that anyway. Um you know like how many people are taking a test, what what's the score range? We did that last year and we'll be ready to do that in the you know near future once the tests are all done. We did it this year as well. The kids are just starting AP tests. In fact, my daughter just took AP economics today. So I know that the tests are just
062for AP are starting. Yeah, May is the big month. And IB starts this month as well. They may have already started I believe. So it seems like that's sort of thing to bring back in the fall, right? Like when the the the scores are in and everything. Yeah. After those the scores come back in July or something, right? Yeah. We can um we're all ringing. Yeah. So maybe if we can do that and kind of and then at that point we'll know class sizes and that kind of thing as well. So maybe we can review um review all that together like how many sections of each class, how the grades were, how many kids are in each class, how the grades were last year, you know, what the changes are year to year, that type
063of thing. And for me, it's not only about the scores, it's about the variety of of uh classes, too. So, but yeah, maybe we can make that a deeper dive into all of them, which will be what's got to be was there probably 40 classes, I guess, in total in that range. It all depends on who signs up for what, right? So, you'd have to see what's currently going on. And I haven't even seen how they the scheduling has gone well. And I know that the classes are pretty full, but um I haven't really looked to see all of the ones that are running. All right. So, we'll um kind of uh leave that on the study of IB. We'll just make that the AB and IB classes. We'll just modify that. All right. So,
064we kind of hit future meeting topics in the same thing. We're at the end. Have a motion. I don't know if we can do this. I know. I I move to endure. All right. Second. All right. Thank you. Thank you everyone.