MRSD School Committee Meeting 02/27/23

001foreign thank everybody for coming thank you everyone um to our not regular school committee on February 27th this is a time that we always love to hear from our department heads um give us insight into the school and see what's going on I know um this year we came up with a different question um given that we are working on our strategic plan and that's kind of in the Forefront of our brains uh we wanted to ask you guys um and I will read the question given your role as apartment leaders and our current strategic planning initiative please Identify two needs in your department that you can develop into a strategic action to pursue over the next three to five years to improve the quality of teaching and learning in your department so we appreciate

002you all considering this question and being here tonight to talk to us about it um I know we have had I don't know if you guys have an order to how you want to go I know that we had a request to be on the earlier side yeah there's a because yeah they have an order worked out you have it also well then I'll let you guys uh take it from here wherever you're comfortable but I think standing like right there yeah we want make sure that people at home hear you right um because you know you're gonna tell us wonderful things so um and while we know who you are for all the people who don't uh just identify yourselves in your um do we have the slides okay I can put them up

003just give me a second so I'm Tammy Faye I'm the science technology engineering department chair at maskinomit um the question was a big question so they're Big Ideas um that we'll take according to sort of the framework of the question three to five years to try to do the work I'm sort of putting forward at this point so under the the guise of looking at the strategic planning um where are schools at and work one of the top things would be looking at our curriculum scope sequence and offerings from a 7 through 12 level in the department and I put that out there partly because um I was here when these were put in place but it's been two decades of having this particular sequence and it could be more but I wasn't going to

004divulge that um so I think it's important to have a collaborative effort to evaluate our program to make database decisions around why we you know is our programming where we want it to be are there things that we need to change why should we change them um and be able to align them and provide all of our students at Moscow with a rigorous stem program and appropriate stem program so like for example I think of middle school as an example right now we're sort of a layer cake model of life science in seventh grade and then eighth grade is physical science and Earth Science there's always a lot of questions on if that's the best model because there's often a spiraling that happens in middle school where they get each of the disciplines within each

005year and we haven't explored that I don't know if that's the best option but that would be a place that we should put the work in to try to evaluate what are what are we providing our students and is it where we should be if that gives you an example um I also think you can get stale so whether it's looking at electives and things like that though we have healthy enrollments in the science electives I think it's worth exploring you know I look at you know we could have fabrication classes right looking at stem at the high school and and maybe someone can be name change but maybe there's other things we're not offering and maybe there's things that our students would like that we haven't explored and we don't know what that information

006yet would be so that's where I talk about collaboration it's really looking at more committee work I look at guidance as being important in that I look at students I look at Partnerships with families Etc as being part of that so that was my big bullet number one can you clarify what you mean by committee work um that I think that there's people that want to have the discussion that I don't think it should be a top-down to to get people to buy into change that it really needs to be collaborative so it would be um somewhat voluntary we have science teachers that want to have that discussion I think that there's a mistake of solutionitis and having a solution to something before you identify the problem and actually figure out what should be done

007I have lots of ideas I don't know if they're the right ones and I think that everybody sort of has to enter the table with that sort of maybe mindset because I would say everybody should do biology but maybe not so ninth grade for example we have two different courses is that working for us is that where we want to be with a science sign class and a biology class for honors level but the history behind it went to providing those kids were really interested in science with a junior year that was sort of open um so we have to be careful of the decisions we make and the implications across the way when we make them so any other questions on that part I think the concern was was it school committee how much

008which we assumed at least I assumed that isn't what you meant but but thank you no I think this the school committee support on the other end is once you get some of those creating a plan and how to get those changes implemented may require some of that support whether it's teacher training you know what curriculum resources that's where I would look to you know the budgetary aspect and support from that um the second one I think Sarah Smith will also talk more about later um I think that in many ways we still work in isolation at Masco and in the 1990s stem became a popular acronym I don't think it represents very well in the educational setting and I think that's partly just because of how we've always been doing education but what changes

009do we need to make to actually if we're telling our kids that stem is important what is it that we're modeling in our schools to help develop that over time um I think that we have great assets at mascinoma I think that we have Assets in our community and I think that one of the places of growth that I would like to see would be collaboration within the school and that's for example with Miss Smith myself the teachers in the math and science department engineering is in the business department or not engineering excuse me Computer Sciences in the business department how do we help actually maybe bring those Concepts together in a way that has a Visionary point to it um but I also really value the fact that I'd like a community in this

010case I would say a committee people that want to engage with stem conversations related to our district and the students that come here and their children that look at as a partnership and having increasing conversations around that because I do think there are students that may benefit from stem that we aren't actually getting them interested in stem and I think again more voices different voices can help provide information for them along that line and so you said I think that that's really like a lot of people don't know what it is they don't know what you do with that like the more you make it like what does this tie into later in life you know why do you want to learn this and that concept doesn't necessarily need to be confined to stem yeah

011because lots of you know topics you can this discuss it in a stem environment also have repercussions and others like you know governments you know I think and and bringing more broad-based thing you know said before pick ing for a year or two right and all departments could kind of kind of incorporated into that I think you're going forward that's the biggest thing that uh we can give our students is the ability to recognize how a fact over here can tie into effect over there I agree with you any other questions I mean do you find so for the second bullet has the I know that um the Wednesday PD time like one-third is curriculum I have you found that that time I don't know about this year but like can become if it hasn't

012yet an opportunity for more of that I would I I welcome opportunities for those Wednesdays this year we've had some really big things that we're working on across the district which has been important but I think that's exactly where some of that can take place and um provide us with the ability to move on some of this which we didn't have before so that part I think is good okay is there more than that like do you feel like as you because I know that you can't this is the first year of that so obviously you can't do all of it right in the like three months okay check done over the years do you feel like that would be enough to sort of get at that second bullet I think there's going to be

013need other blocks of time that are longer I think that the hour is good but they're we'll have to creatively think how to do some of that I think some of the second part and the second bullet would not necessarily be during school hours per se so if people are on committees like teachers can volunteer to be on a committee right um doesn't have to be in the exact school schedule hours and if I'm going to invite families in or people that want to there also has to be openness to holding time periods that may be outside of some of the stuff the in-school stuff I think the Wednesdays will be great but an hour goes really fast so I you know we'll have to think about how to increase some of the time frames

014depending on the work that we're doing to get movement right any other questions for me thank you very much I'm leaving I apologize I'm going to school thank you can you scroll to Randy performance just all the way down in the kitchen there you go all right thank you I'm Randy O'Keefe from the performing arts department head um so I think one of our our biggest goals as our Performing Arts expand into the drama area now is to really address the inadequacies of our Auditorium our performance space um I've been commenting on this for a number of years but it's it's becoming woefully apparent that especially with the capital uh plan coming in we need a major work done in that room um lighting is bad audio is bad um seating isn't great and we're

015getting to the point where some of our Foods sheltered on the stage um the stage is every time we roll the grand piano out we're hoping it doesn't go through before it wanes a little bit um and we're also opening up to which ties into the second bullet point is we're expanding access to that room to our the entire District um so we have Elementary groups coming in using our Auditorium um we think it should be the you know the Crown Jewel of the school it could be a wonderful space um it could be a rentable space I mean I've always said the one thing mask an element has that you can't buy is location when you exit off a highway and you have I mean if you years ago I was talking to someone

016about you know if we had a a Wonderful House wonderful theater to rent we could actually make money but it's just not with the space we had so that's my first bullet point is to really address the needs in that Auditorium um and the second bullet point goes beyond mansco um we really see the Performing Arts music and drama is really includes our elementary Partners um kids in the high school band or in high school course or High School drama start that activity in the fifth grade fourth grade so it's just a continuation uh it's really not separate and it's become very apparent back in 2021 the three elementary teachers Elementary band teachers got together and created an elementary honors band which meets here on Tuesday night so they use our facility um they use

017our Auditorium for performances but so all the kids from students from all three Towns come together and it's it's just wonderful they work with all three band directors from the elementary um it's it's great and then um we would like to expand explore expanding that to the other areas of course you know and and the drama area and see if we can bring just all the kids up here and this is this is ultimately where they're going they're going to end up they're going to end up here as a culminating experience as a Performing Artist we're going to end up and it's really nice to see the wide-eyed elementary kids coming into the big house and we're trying something different this year for the high school band concert we're going to call uh we call

018the Step Up concert so this all the sixth grade band students are going to come to that concert and we're going to play the high school band is going to play with the sixth grade band students and so we're going to recognize our seniors leaving and we're going to recognize the future seniors coming so it's going to be real unique experience um so those are my two boyfriends Randy uh with you said the lighting and Acoustics are bad were they bad when the renovation project was done 20 years ago or has it become bad over time actually it got worse oh um in the old Auditorium at least on the stage we call them electrics those are the light bars to go across the stage and they light the stage the old all-term there were

019three of them The Architects took the back room out so now I only have two and you put a curtain there so every time we give a Content we just run the fluorescent work lights so so the back of the auditorium back in the stage can be seen um so that got that got worse so it's bad design 20 years ago I I spoke with the architect three times he laughed at me so much um thank you thank you thank you thank you you ever think and we didn't go anywhere so waiting for my ride one thing we we talked about which I didn't put in was we also would like unified Arts like a gallery section outside the auditorium right now there's wall spaces but there's nothing displayed artwork outside the auditorium so there's

020people come in yeah if we're if We're Dreaming you know We're Dreaming here in space tournament will allow us to hang things sculptures and such so thank you Randy um good evening everyone my name is Stacy Mannheim for those of you who don't know me I'm the director of the art department so I will jump right into it topic number one um the developing of media arts recently the Massachusetts Arts curriculum framework was revised along with the disciplines of Visual Arts music theater and dance media arts has been added the national Court of Arts standards defined media arts as quote a unique medium of artistic expression that can also amplify and integrate the four traditional art forms by incorporating the technological advances of the Contemporary world and Media Arts students cultivate both artistic abilities and

021technological aptitude end quote the Massachusetts curriculum framework States quote media arts education encompasses interconnectivity across all disciplines and domains artistic and academic elements Aesthetics and forms for the purpose of learning and creating in the Arts media artworks are intrinsically interdisciplinary integrative and expressive inclusive of Imaging sound moving images virtual and interactive components end quote so it's a lot to take into consideration so to begin to develop this area further um we have a new course this year called Digital Arts which blends art with technology so it's the use of cameras tablets and computers to iterate imagery both still and with motion and sound it's every evolving technology um can be a bit daunting for digital immigrants like myself those of us who grew up in the pre-digital age as opposed to our students who are

022digital natives who have not experienced a time where this technology didn't exist this contemporary and emerging art has tremendous growth potential and lends itself to cross-disciplinary Pursuits understanding and to further develop a curriculum professional development time within the art department and potentially in conjunction with other departments will need to occur and one thing I was just thinking when Tammy was speaking you know speaking about stem I do kind of like to call it steam um and one there's one collaboration that the art department has been doing for quite some time is for the Innovative product design class in conjunction with computer science or computer-aided design um where prototypes are uh developed by the design students and then the cad students are able to refine it develop and they work together sort of like client and

023production and the um CAD students are able to create the um the digital files necessary to do with 3D printing so it's a nice collaboration which we try to have that those two classes line up but it doesn't always work because it's tough when you have Singleton to have them line up but even when they don't we still have to figure out a way to work together so that that's sort of a nice little steam um example um so topic number two um improvements to the Woodshop we are really fortunate that masking on it has a wood shop so many were phased out many years ago in other schools the Woodshop provides an engaging valuable and Hands-On learning experience for so many of our students for many it's the class they look most for each

024day and I think it's likely that in the future more students will choose a woodworking class to meet their art graduation requirement the wood shop is also an excess an accessible entry point to the world of art for many boys that sometimes are intimidated by the quality of the student artwork and the predominantly female population of the art students um I read an interesting guest essay in the New York Times on January 9th called Society is failing visual thinkers and that hurts us all by Temple Grandin the author of visual thinking the hidden Gifts of people who think in pictures patterns and abstractions she writes that for many probably most most people it is words that shape thought but for some people images are the dominant influence of thought she makes a compelling argument for

025the larger emphasis of Hands-On learning to occur in all of our schools this type of learning allows for visual thinkers to thrive and helps all kids to be well-rounded students over the years many excellent improvements have been made to our woodshock to increase safety which we are grateful for recently you've been presented with many of the school's current list of needs and now I'm going to mention a want slash need in the future one of the things we feel is important to consider is enlarging the physical size of the wood shop the space is tight the circulation space around the large equipment is small the storage of Woodstock and student projects is very challenging to manage um a larger space would mean more room to work increased safety and storage room for new equipment and

026processes to occur and duplication of some often used equipment which would allow the students to work more efficiently additionally more space would allow the students student cap to increase to some degree for these classes however safety is Paramount and the class sizes in this space will always need to be limited another aspect of the wood shop that could use Improvement is the inclusion of a separate clean space for the application of finish on Final projects away from the dusty environment of the shop and to be able to have a digital projector in this space to show safety videos and woodworking techniques so much research would need to occur to plan a space to properly serve our students in the future so that's those are my any questions for Stacy did you see an increase at

027all with do freshmen take woodstocks yeah it the freshmen are available I mean they can't take it so with the new art requirement did you see an increase in the um the kids who wanted to take wood shop or I don't have the data on that I mean I think the numbers are have been pretty steady maybe we'll notice over time how that changes but yeah and freshmen can take woodworking one and two they can sign up for both semesters so that they're eligible for that thank you thanks thanks to be quick to get get out before the snowstorm comes we're here at midnight this is a better environment than the last time I spoke to you guys last like February or March so this is a little bit less stressful good um but I

028kind of like piggybacking on a lot of the things that I presented for the vision in 2025 and talking about experiential learning and giving students more opportunities to do things kind of outside of the classroom uh it's kind of like what I'm talking about in these two um you know two things that I highlighted the first one is something yes introduce yourself oh I'm sorry um I mean I know who you are but just further the business and computer science department uh the people at home director of digital learning as well sorry and whatever else no thank you so two of the things that uh we're looking at one is the school store um and the other one is kind of enhance enhancing financial literacy and community outreach through our Deca program uh and the

029DECA 2 class so I'll go into both of those first for the school store so what what they um the DECA has is something called the SBE certification which is school-based Enterprise um and that allows you to kind of reimagine your school store as kind of something that's more uh part of the school community school pride building it within like interdisciplinary um projects and one example before we kind of went out on covid we had talked about with the fashion design uh class in art because with a fashion design class comes up with some design for a Masco shirt or a Masco some type of outfit and then the school store then becomes part of the whole marketing process comes you know sells this sells the merchandise and then provides feedback you know what did

030people like about it what do people not like about it and kind of intertwine a lot of the classes um you know within that you can do the same thing with engineering classes where they're building things maybe 3D modeling and then they go and they sell those things in the school store um so that's kind of the idea about this SBE certification the other thing is that is also part of the DECA um the kids that are involved in that also getting um invited it's called the ICBC uh conference that's you know held every year and we get to send representatives there that meet with other uh schools that also have the SV certification so those are things that Madison Estes is working on right now um to kind of develop that there's also an

031issue with space because right now that school store is kind of in this little closet um kind of in that little link area like when we walk in over here across from the bank that is our school store and it's very kind of unassuming uh nobody really knows it's it's there especially since covid yeah it's virtual stores are in Virtual stores yeah you could definitely do virtual stores but it is good to have a storefront too uh where people kind of see the merchandise you can look at it touch it uh things like that so kind of looking at where can we put this store to kind of take advantage of foot traffic um not that I want to throw it exactly where I think we could put it but places that are closest to

032lunchrooms uh is usually the best just because if students are having lunch they're done eating lunch they can walk into the school store take a look at a sweatshirt that seems to be the best time where uh you know where kids are browsing for things like that um so that's something we're looking at look at kiosks like you're at the mall are you located the little 10 things that you buy we'll see Mark Vera used to have um what do they call them it's basically like this this um thing to put close uh hooks on and would walk that over to the middle school and would sell the t-shirts during their lunches so we definitely uh we definitely go mobile do you have other stuff so do you have students working at them or is

033that the smart our marketing class and it was a little bit different um pre-covered because our marketing class was actually run just period six so that they would be available while the kids were walking to lunch or while other kids are at lunch now that we have a different rotating schedule it doesn't necessarily work out that way because sometimes kids are having lunch and you know period three or four or five um but that was the idea so how always have that consistent time um where the kids would be involved in the store but the marketing class deals with the merchandise deals with when they did the online store they're the ones that put it together they created this survey that they sent out to the students to ask them like you know what types

034of things are you looking for in a school store what types of shirts and things like that would you uh you know purchase um so it's just something that we're hopefully going to expand upon and maybe with space um try and find a different area to uh to locate um the second one earlier this year um Madison and Brian actually went over and visited Danvers High School because they have probably one of the better Deca programs that we've kind of tried to emulate a little bit um and just like the Patriots did in the off season where they kind of analyzed their offensive coordinator and realized they probably needed a little bit of a shift when we did the um the district conference the kids had a virtual kind of a virtual awards ceremony so

035the kids all went on virtually we saw all the categories and they did like go Seventh Place sixth place and the kids could cheer and all that and there was a number of categories where it was just one or two schools we're the only ones that were being involved in you know the community service aspect the project management stuff things that are more kind of outside of the school that the kids are in charge of and have to kind of take over and that's where the DECA 2 class is coming in where that's more of a project-based community service and they use that experience in that project to basically present to judges and say this is the project that we worked on so it could be anything from helping with the credit for Life fair

036or the credit counts assembly that we do with the seniors could be uh community service that they do maybe Outreach with local businesses and that's something that's going to be if you've you don't have to have taken the DECA one class but it's more for upperclassmen and that will push us into other categories uh for the DECA conference that we have not been a part of before and gives kids more opportunity to then compete at the state level um and that's the those are the the categories that a lot of those schools are are competing nationally as well um so just trying to make us a little bit more uh competitive now that we have 170 180 kids that are involved in this and we're just continuing to expand and trying to find more ways

037to um you know meet the needs of where the kids are at and give them more of those experiences that'll help them it was that a class you're already planning this is a class that and it's it's budget neutral it's like if we offered three marketing classes we're just gonna do two and then this Deca two class would be that other alternative class uh that we'll run and Madison is putting together the curriculum for that because she does most of the Deco wirelesses right now and it's definitely a need the kids are already excited about it she's she's got a number of kids that uh that want to take this class um and it'll be the same way it'll be a semester-long class and guess it gets the kids prepared for the district competition in

038December and then we're actually going to the state meet uh next week that's Thursday Friday Saturday in Boston we have 84 kids that are competing so the growth has been amazing what's that growth yeah yeah I remember yes my son advisors are just I mean if you walk down that wall you got the DECA signs and uh it's really kind of uh it's taken off five five years because I feel like um well I mean honestly like we had some momentum kind of going into kovic yes you know we were up to like 130 140 and then as soon as it went virtual everything kind of nosedive I mean you couldn't even get the kids to show up to a virtual uh Zoom uh or or Blackboard collaborate meeting um but then now that we're

039back into kind of the swing of things and this year really kind of took off um and they've even expanded the conference now it's like we have so many kids now that the district competition is a two-day event as opposed to just one day um so there's just a lot of different categories now so awesome so whereas if this program is expanding what's shrinking model you win no no no no I'm sorry school-wide you mean you know if there's more kids going in in this enrollment is dropping you know participation in some program therefore has to be dropping it sometimes just means study halls there's a lot of kids that are in studies that then don't take it we're trying to figure out and he just mentioned like you mentioned like instead of three before

040businesses because they're not in any study halls and you don't need to be in the DECA class to be part of deca I don't think kids knew about it so I think yeah because there is the requirement our first year we were wavered out of it but there you have to take a business class in your form style so you could take it your freshman year there's only a few classes that the students can take like Deca one for example um the computer science which has a business application um you know part of that that course that they allow you uh to use that for the DECA program but once you've taken that one class you're actually good you don't have to take a business class but a lot of them were finding that they're

041they take that Deca one class and then they just want more um and a lot of the the marketing used to be entrepreneurship and that transition to marketing um because of that's how it kind of aligns with Deca curriculum um so with the financial literacy programs you mentioned credit for life I know like every time that the Strategic survey had it in there I feel like at my entire career as a parent of teenagers there's always feedback about financial literacy being something we'd like to see more of for our kids as parents I feel like if I had like four or five bullet points that would be like another one that I would throw in there and that is a huge need okay with the financial literacy I feel like all the things that we

042do and the feedback we get from students is just like they they want more like the credit for Life fair is a great up like it's kind of that eye-opening experience about you know this is the first I'm seeing like where my money is actually going and maybe they have a little bit more sympathy for their parents in terms of what they're paying for um but you're right that's definitely a need as well so where you mentioned it there I guess what I was wondering is is the idea that there's some part of that that would be almost peer-to-peer like so where does that fit yeah so how it fits in so with the DECA 2 program they pre the project basis they do the kids are working on initiatives for the school so financial

043literacy would be one of those initiatives like how can we implement this a little bit more and they could be a little a little bit more creative of like all right we may not have a class that we can offer it but what are some other things and strategies that we can use to get financial literacy more into the school like the credit for Life Fair which is not a it's not a course that the kids are taking but it's kind of an experience so how can we then follow up with that to get the kids to be a little bit more um you know involved in that process yeah Okay so good question that is always talked about yeah anyone else no thanks man thank you very much thank you oh I'm Megan Hildebrand

044on the English department chair let's see many of you again well for New Times um bullet um is not necessarily something new looking into the future but we as an English Department are constantly looking at what we teach and why we teach it and sometimes you need to Rebrand a little which we are looking at a little bit more heavily right now um like for example when I started teaching here 17 years ago there were very very few of the books that we read were narrated or written by women we had very few we had none with people of color um that it changes over time what we sort of want to teach why we're teaching it but we can't just choose random pieces of literature that are hot right now um because the way

045we teach our classes and the way we run our department is that we have cortex that everybody reads that has the themes and the topics that then we use to teach the skills like writing and analytical and discussion and all the things you just choose a book because it seems like a good read or or the kids like it right now um it has to hold some weight a constant battle in our department and it goes kind of both ways a lot is you know what makes good literature and what is the value of continuing continuing to teach some of the same pieces of literature that are in the Canon versus bringing in new Etc and I think lately the the side has been winning a little bit for we need to we need to

046bring some new life into our curriculum why because we want if one of our goals for when students leave English class is to enjoy reading then we need to make sure that that's something that that we're doing um I think that also comes with a positive that my teachers have noted on the heels of covid is that we have many kids who really love to read now they are a lot of them picked up books during covid because what else was there to do Beyond you know the usual technology um and we've actually noted it a lot in the like the ninth graders this year like love to read in a way that we have not seen in many many years and they'll all say that like during covet I picked up books and that's

047what I did um so we want to harvest that a little bit now there's this love of reading we want to keep that um so that comes with the leading text adding others and deleting texts can't be done lightly um teachers spend a lot of time creating units and day-to-day things around this piece of literature um that was for a reason and so then to go and kind of toss it like we've done it the junior year a couple times because as the social studies curriculum has changed we've tried to continue to mesh with them um we we've done it we do it but we don't want to just like talk it out for no reason so there's a lot of thought that goes behind that and that takes a lot of time one of

048the other things we are pretty excited about is hopefully adding some new electives for next year we haven't done we've added one new elective in all my years of teaching here um in the English Department namely because we're the only course that I'm sorry the only subject the only discipline that has a four-year graduation requirement so we don't have to like keep selling our electives um but that being said we haven't done any new ones in a while and we seem to we're trying to listen to the students of what they would be interested in and what they really would like to see out of our department so we're hoping for next year to add a few we're getting rid of one because one of our teachers is retiring and it was his baby and

049nobody wants to pick it up because they don't think they'll do it justice the same way that he did so we'll really only be the six again but no budget implications because it's happier electives we're really only adding two more and we'll see how they go if those fly or not um weeks there say that again sneak peek on some um sure yeah so one of them is documentary filmmaking um so that's kind of a hot one right now and then a why a book club so like a young adult a young adult where the students would have full choice and and power kind of over what we're choosing what we're reading yeah that's been a Hot Topic and then the last one is the literary elements in the office the TV show The Office

050[Music] um so that's come back around to be a popular TV show again which is hilarious um but not only that like this goes to that like don't just choose something because it's hot the office as a piece of like literature it the office does all the things that we teach in English class when it comes to like teaching how to tell a good story and perspective and like all of that's like all of the boxes so it's going to be an interesting the students are going to get to kind of dissect it and decide like is this word is this a worthy piece of literature and can TV be literature and stuff like that so we'll see question I love that and Linton Cinema is the one that is leaving with the teacher so

051that's gonna it's been a good one it's had a good run but it's it's to see its way out um so that's my first bullet my second bullet um has to do with support supporting student learning loss so those of you that have been around with me through covet and such I put loss in quotes because I refuse to call it like gaps or loss or what have you because we as a department continue to just strive to not not necessarily say that there's gaps or loss we have to teach the students that are in front of us and what they're bringing to the table so like it's not fair to go back to the same bar that say like ninth honors was six years ago but they also can't keep you know a bar

052that was the covet bar so we have to reinvent at some point and just decide we are teaching the students in front of us and yes they may not be the same nine Honors that nine honors was producing you know six years ago but that's okay we need to kind of sort it out and and what that means um when I talk about time in here I will say zilly to your question earlier I think the Wednesday PD time is great we haven't had our curriculum time yet um which I had requested back when Mike was I was like can English go last because I kind of knew this would happen pretty much every single one of my grades has already decided what they think they need the time for in the spring and that

053is wonderful because they've been able to dictate and say like the seventh grade teachers really want to try and connect with the sixth grade teachers again in all the elementary schools like we did years ago and we kind of lost that with covid and for a variety of reasons and so they're really hot on reconnecting with those teachers and talking to them um our 10th grade teachers both Eva and myself they want to get together because before covid they were doing a really great job on having a service learning curriculum and connecting with Civics and all that it kind of crashed and so we haven't gone back to sending students out and doing that again so they'd kind of like to get back together and revive that so that's a Time personal studies in English

054to get together so I think that's exciting I think to Tammy's Point those Wednesday times aren't always enough like we we have been finding it even in some of our ideas training and whatnot like to try and get somebody to come in and do something meaningful that's a very small chunk of time to try and work with but I think in terms of working with what we need to do in our department it's excellent and I and my teachers are excited for it um other things in terms of kind of like the learning loss um I'm hopeful we're trying I'm working with Phil we're trying to bring back seventh grade ELA which we used to have um we had it before geolab before stem before all that um we had an Ela class that hammered

055home a lot of the core foundational skills that students need that we are finding they are not they are not coming up with right now since covid and whatever else um so we're hoping that that might help kind of set the standard and set the foundation for students um and I think something to note in this and that's what my teachers have noted as well when we talk about sort of this learning loss or gaps or what have you it's not just our struggling students um a lot of times that's what we assume that like acceleration academies can help it or it's the struggling kids let's focus on those kids across the boards our students are not the same students that they were before and so we need to continue to figure out how to

056address that and still get them to the point that where do we want a Masco grad to be in terms of their skills and what their experience is in English class um when you mentioned the ELA in seventh grade you weren't talking about English class you were talking about something right a separate class like like a Geo lab but for English we actually had that first came along and what have you and we were like here you go it's okay you take our time but now we're a little bit like we want it back I think we need it back yeah um earlier I asked about the financial literacy literacy literacy um I know like I was happy to hear you talking about the connecting with the sixth grade um because that's been a conversation

057especially like the the special education parent advisory committee lens but also just in general taking the three communities and bringing them together and sort of the Nationwide issues with um some literacy um challenges yeah trying to find the right word how are you finding that piece of things I know this is separate from your question I hope it's okay to ask that now my question was done I know like the questions of the night like it wasn't a bullet but so in terms like how are we finding like the literacy pieces yeah and just um like if there's been increased concerns around um kids learner's skills yeah and it was actually seventh and eighth grade teachers that are the ones that said we need to bring back the ELA class because now that's sort of

058two to three years we've noticed that this is a struggle and we can't get we can't address it all in English class we just can't and again it's not just the struggling students so it's everybody needs it um so they were the ones that asked to meet with us and we spoke about it and it seemed very obvious I mean like it's even as simple as my eighth grade teachers a few months ago asked for me to order we ordered new posters for their rooms that went back to like what is a noun what is a verb what is a preposition because and that's usually not something we have to tackle from seven to twelve if it's not my favorite thing at all um most of my teachers it's not but again they've had my

059eighth grade teachers are like we gotta go back to this like I and very simply I need that at least at least posted so we can really address it and then at the high school we've noticed a lot I mean we're in terms of um longer pieces of writing like in terms of full essay writing we again all I have not I I have honors this year that's why I keep talking about them I mean I've had we all have kind of had to go back down to like okay let's really build this from the ground up and that's okay and that's where we're starting with um we're also battling against you know like AI generated essays so that's fun um so yeah I think we we are definitely noticing it what most of my

060high school teachers know though has less to do with skills and more to do with they don't know how to be a student in the way that like we've always known a Masco student to be in terms of being able to work to collaborate together and like for example seventh and eighth grade has always taught how to work in a group right like they they teach them how like have a recorder have a presenter have this person we're having to do that even like at the high school level now like here's how you talk to each other you don't just work in a Google doc the whole time like because you're not at home you're sitting here like turn face each other work together have different roles assign different things so I think it's more

061about you know those type of skills too not just politically skills you mentioned the AI um writer um which I had just heard about but do you have do you have like things that can uh figure out that is being written or does AI just keep changing and getting smarter they change that's what it's designed to do is to change and get smarter each time um various smart people are coming out with you know apps that you can plug it into that will supposedly tell you whether it is or isn't but I can tell you it's it what we've actually found is um the students who we have noticed seem to be using it there it's written worse than their actual writing it because it takes out the the voice so like if I've gotten

062used to you writing for four months in little thing like you know like informal writing and formal writing or whatever and then you have a robot to it it's fine but like if I'm if I'm a good teacher like I can tell that it's not yours but then it comes down to it can I I can't really prove that it's an already yours I just know that it's not yours that's the difficulty have them write an essay in class we've gone back to doing that actually but here's the hard thing so I'll tell you this we're going to write it in class here's your topic we're going to talk about it you can bring a note card with your quotes on it what have you they can still come in prepared with it like that

063oh you don't have them bring anything then just the principle then we don't actually teach them how to write the essay and we're not doing all the steps along with it the essay then you through critics of essays you can learn yeah well this is what you did wasn't very successful so you know doing these are to mimic the real world though when you don't have anything other than the way we did it back in the day the little blue books writing in class still mostly on laptops though it's the whole like face it to the wall so I can see what you're doing what have you um but then the question becomes like what are we battling here like how much is it worth to keep that that like I don't know if this

064is just going to be the world that they're living in it's more figuring out how to still work on skills that's a huge question it's like is answering to them why they need to know this if a computer can do it for us and like one of my teachers said I'm really just tired of playing police officer the amount of time she spent reading through essays and noticing like that it's that's all you're doing is trying to catch people which is not what we went into this for right right you're there to teach them any other questions for Mike thank you very much to the hot seat for the hot stand good evening everybody um my name is Julie Dan Case and I am the interim director of counseling and Health Services uh before I

065get into my piece I just wanted to um make sure you're aware that in the next couple of weeks I think in or March 8th um Mary Jo will be presenting to you our new program of studies for next year which will have or you know many courses that you're already familiar with but a lot of the new courses like Meg has talked to you about in our English Department and other departments so that is forthcoming which is exciting um so tonight my wants kind of like run across the board because my department knows I supervise kind of run a gamut of of individuals right from the physical health to the mental health and to the the academic component as well um so my first um bullet point up there stems on SEL EF training

066and academic growth so earlier in the school year myself and a few of my colleagues Kristen Duffy Alexis Costas and Brad that you presented to you on um the the work that the uh SEL leadership team has been doing for the last year and a comprehensive mental health system and part of what I am hoping for in the near future is to um continue that work but looking at the continuity between our middle school and our high school students okay and what do I mean by that so right now in our Middle School we have a student support center that is run by both School adjustment counselors and Educators classroom teachers so students in the Middle School can receive support from a social emotional level in terms of adjustment counseling whether that is drop-in service

067us if you will and or schedule time and then they can also receive some support from an academic standpoint and some have books okay they don't have to be mutual Mutual um up until this year at the high school level in our student support center we've only been able really to fully support students from that mental health perspective we have several School adjustment counselors in there over the years have done a fantastic job working with students in terms of the academic piece for example when we've had students out for hospitalizations and they return coming through the student support center the school adjustment counselors and the school counselors work for that academic piece to get them you know caught up on their schoolwork this year we are fortunate through Esser funding that we have the ability

068to have two Educators in what is now we refer to as our academic success Center so we have two teachers one General Ed and one special ed who work with our students to help provide that academic component okay so at the high school right now we kind of have two rooms that function how the one room in our Middle School works okay my hope is because after next year um those Grant funded positions will go away and we are seeing um as you know a need for the supports of our students to make them enjoy coming to school keeping them engaged in school keeping them in the building if you will in terms of who is their placement so it is important to be able to provide a continuous support between the Middle School and

069the high school um we have students that work in our academic success center right now who are getting executive functioning training so working on those skills in terms of advocacy um study skills um um excuse me who decides who has access to the academic success so we have a couple of ways and models into which we have students streaming through there first is we'll have students who will come back through that room if they've been out for an extended period of time so if they've been out for a hospitalization a long-term illness or whatnot they'll funnel back through there to get reacclimated back into their classroom we also have students that will go through there based on a recommendation from maybe um classroom teachers school counselors School adjustment counselors if they're struggling in the classroom

070academically if we're finding their grades or falling below what might be considered average and the stay in that Center is for a defined period of time it can be so we have some students that are in there for short-term stays if you will so they have been in there um when they've returned to school and they've gotten caught up and feel that they can be successful going back into the classroom and then we have some students that might stay a bit longer because of they are being provided with additional support for math English science or whatnot I've been longer is a semester a year a semester yep yeah can I ask a follow-up and I think I know the answer but just to kind of paint that picture since he's asking um is when you

071say a stay in that room is does it mean from the first Bell to the last I know we don't have bones but you know what I mean would you have a moment does it mean like for certain courses so it's a great question come and go student that is out for a long period of time they might be in there for multiple periods in the day um while they're getting caught up in a specific class so if a student comes back to school and their math class has a test going on it doesn't make a lot of sense for them to return to a classroom where they're testing on material that they haven't been a part of so they'll remain in the um in the Success Center if you will um until they feel

072that they are prepared and can go back into the classroom to be successful we have some students right now who are in there for a scheduled period during the day so that would be in place of like right now what would we would have a student maybe in the study and in a study hall in the cafeteria these students are in the more directed study in this academic success Center so they're in there for maybe one period a day um so we're seeing right now I would say probably I don't have the exact numbers on me but I would say probably right now we're working with about 30 to 40 students specifically going through um that room right now um and we're finding that students that had been maybe struggling coming to school or not

073feeling that they were capable of doing well academically or managing their day we're finding that the supports of this room has really been a factor of making them feel like they can actually be successful here at Nasco so like they would report to that room to start off the day some might start if it's their first period that they're assigned to be in there some go in during m-block to work with the teachers that are in there some go after school some might check in first thing sure they're all different reasons why someone might go in there when they might go in there and just to clarify it's does the does the student basically decide that okay I'm now ready to leave this additional support and then go back to so we often will have

074um the student is a has a voice in it as well um but it is a conversation between the teachers that are in the room that are working with the students with the school counselor that is assigned to that individual um if the school adjustment counselor is also involved so there are multiple voices that are there but we do rely a lot on the two individuals that are in there right now working directly with the students and Kyle Lambert who are there like in the trenches with them if you will um but we have conversations with the student as well so that they see that you know it's it's kind of like graduating in a way like we feel that you have the skills right now we feel like that you're ready to move on

075and go back into um either you know the classroom on your own or if it's moving from this more directed study to a regular study where they can you know pick the skills that they applied and get their work done independently um so we want them to be a part of it because they want we want them to hear that this is a positive thing and so that they feel like they've done the right they've made the proper steps to move forward and sometimes if they feel like they're not ready yet or if we feel it's not the right time we set up that you know what that time frame is going to look like and so that way the student understands that okay I'm making progress I'm feeling good about it we'll revisit this

076short period of time to then see about what happens next great thank you this is something that you know we hear about the academic success Center a lot so I think we all have like like it's kind of just this novel concept obviously that was an important new program to have and we all are you know have somewhat confused ideas as to what it is so so excuse all the questions I think we all actually are very happy to hear it all so yeah and I would say like over the years you know Kristen Duffy one of preschool adjustment counselors she's been you know this is something that she's advocated for a lot I know within our department and within um student services about having a an educator a classroom teacher in the room with

077them when it was just the student support center because again you have students in the seventh and eighth grade who are kind of receiving these this type of model and this type of service and then up until this year they would come up to the high school and we could only really accommodate there for the you know social emotional needs we weren't really the we weren't able to provide classroom teachers in the room to provide that instruction that they would be missing so we're seeing that it's working here we saw that it worked in the middle school and I felt like sometimes when they got up to the high school we were kind of you know I want to say pulling the rug from underneath them but like you're they're used to one model and

078then they come up here and it changes and I would really like to see it continue do you think um and you might be talking about this excuse me because like we all keep interrupting you but um do you think it's better having it into plate separate or one together like the Middle School versus the high school I mean I think I I kind of like having the the two different rooms in a way because I think you can then do Sports the work that you need to do pertaining to what the needs are in that room at that time so I mean they're near each other so they're right across the hall okay so they're in like a little pot if you will they collaborate together quite a bit okay yeah thanks so even

079though they're physically two separate spaces they mentioned together as a unit okay yeah thanks we'll let you continue now okay I'm gonna move on to the next one um so you know as individ um the School nurses um in our buildings do an awful lot for our students um and they can't do it all alone often times so we've seen in situations where even just whether you're on the news and sports Athletics wherever we're finding that individuals might find themselves in need Health crisis or whatnot and if we can work towards educating and training our students and our staff in addition to our school nurses um in the areas of first aid CPR um it would be I think a plus in to the community in the sense of being able to reduce response times

080particularly with if a need for an ambulance comes needs to come to the school or whatnot um in conjunction with I know Mara gray our lead nurse she has you know been in conversations with local departments about making this a collaborative effort so we can bring in resources from the community to help training our students and staff obviously we would not be doing this as a requirement of everyone that would need to do it it would be for those individuals who would want to do it and be in a position where they felt confident in and being able to help in a situation when and if hopefully not if it were to come up any other questions okay thank you Here Comes Sarah good evening I'm Sarah Smith the math department chair um the the

081first item I have um is really the same as what Tammy Faye had in terms of the science technology engineering it's something that we've been talking about a lot together trying to do more cross-curricular work in our departments trying to for me personally trying to infuse more applications into our math classes as frequently as we can and there's a lot involved in that in terms of the the stem or steam help Stacey out um which I agree with um there's a lot of work we can do um to to help promote Fields associated with this work and Fields associated with math that people don't even realize are connected um previously uh some of you may remember we had an engineering day and I wouldn't say that that specifically is what I would want to bring

082back but to bring in people in the community um and try and make those connections whether it's in a form like our engineering day or helping just build a set of resources for if a teacher is working on a particular activity or application who do we have in our local community that's an expert in that they can come in and help in our classroom and give some background information or help push a project along and how we can utilize our community in better ways which I think helps the community and helps our students helps our teachers because there's certainly things that that we don't all know but if we got more information on we can help our students learn in ways that are going to be of interest to them um so I think that

083piece is very important along with that um you know we we do have the lab with a lot of wonderful equipment in it um that I want our math classes to be able to utilize more um and with that I think we need training on it um I know how to use a 3D printer I don't know how to use the Laser Printers that are in there I also don't know necessarily right now how to bridge that with students to help them learn how to do it um and how to build and that's something where you know using utilizing stuff from the art Department can help with that with designing things um bringing in some math to to work on that piece bringing in the Science and Technology pieces with the equipment we have in

084the labs I think is really important um so that's that's one of the big things that I would like to see happen in terms of connecting those departments um data visualization is an upcoming field we're not just collecting data and using statistics which I think more and more of our students should be taking and we are seeing an increase in students taking statistics courses which is awesome um but the data visualization how you're presenting that out um is a field that has grown tremendously in the last few years and their entire courses in college on just the data visualization piece um which I think we could again connect our departments better um in in doing some work around that so those are some of the things that I see in terms of Our Community Development

085with stem and steam um that I think would be fabulous um the other thing in terms of math that I think is incredibly important right now is professional development um spoke a little bit about some of the pieces in terms of how to use our technology teaching our our teachers how to use the technology we have um but also learning about what things we can do the connect curriculum um because it's great to go in and use the stuff and I had a 3D printer at home that I use my kids use but connecting it to the work we're doing and the learning we're doing needs to be a big component there so that we have a purpose I also think in connection to some of the work that Meg was talking about with our

086students and helping them get to a better place with learning um and with problem solving and skills that we maybe used to be a little stronger in um I want our teachers to start looking at different models of how to approach things in the classroom so there's a few different things out there building thinking classrooms for math specifically um so that we're not just working on rote practice and skills but the bigger picture having students think um and so that's one of them there's another one called experience first formalized later which is a lot about playing around with ideas um with some guided Explorations and then coming back to the real technical stuff later I've been using some of this in the intro calc course this year um and I would say it's definitely a

087struggle for the students because they're especially having most of their high school middle school high school come through covid learning where in math a lot of times we needed to really go through direct instruction with being on the computers and everything and trying to teach students remotely and just trying to build back a foundation I want to step away from that a little bit and have kids explore and investigate but it is a struggle for them right now so it's something where we have to figure out best practices for that which again involves some professional development um some of that stuff we can utilize I know you've asked about the Wednesday time we can utilize some time for that but having some of the experts talk to us they tend to do longer stretches of

088time so figuring out a way to balance that into into our schedule periodically um would be really helpful moving forward as well so those are my my big ones um so kind of back to the other back to that since you ended on that the the PD and this is the second or third time that that longer stretches of time but do you find that are your teachers asking for that because like I feel like there's often been I don't always hear that there's as much willingness as it sounds like I'm hearing from you guys too um inside of that I'm definitely hearing from my teachers that they want time I think right now um the teachers are happy with the time they have in terms of my department right now is working on the

089teaching and learning and having some space to step back and think work a little bit on something step back and think about it reflect over the week and come back at it again I think is really helpful in what we're doing right now in looking at what we teach and why um I think if we want to develop so let's say we are having somebody come in to teach us about things with the laser cutters and 3D printers and whatnot that time would be tight but I think there are ways you can make it work um if we have somebody in-house that's an expert on it you can get it in smaller doses I just think periodically having a longer period of time right along so that somebody if you're having somebody come in from

090the outside to work on something having them for a longer stretch is better can I answer that too I think it depends too what it is like years ago when we had longer stretches of time and the teachers got to help kind of dictate what they wanted like we did a Socratic seminar Workshop because us and social studies were like we'd really love to know how to do this the right way from a professional or we did argument mapping we had people come in from the outside to do things that we that the teachers themselves were like invested in like obviously there's going to be times where we just we have to do District initiatives or things have to get done for pdps or whatever but to answer your question do the teachers want it

091I think yes and um but like you know what I mean like yes and they would want it to be something that like they feel like is valuable that they want to use the time for Tammy mentioned potentially outside of school day hours so I guess I'm also kind of trying to get at that because I feel like before this adjustment to the schedule with the Wednesdays the expectation was that a lot of PD happened was offered on as you would like to basis and I don't know that we were having I think we have like that whole I always since I've been involved in like anything like this I've always kind of seen it like you have a third of your teaching stuff that are gung-ho like next Generation a third that are happy

092and doing and will follow that model and see it working and then test try it and a third that are like I'm good with how I've been doing it don't make me do anything new so um I feel like that's conversation's been happening I've been kind of paying attention for like a decade and I don't feel like that conversation's shifted much so I'm asking the question just to kind of get a sense of where are where do U.S department heads who are the like the next closest step for us to the teachers see that desire from our staff like do you feel like they would get excited if you offered a longer stint but it was outside of school hours I'm just curious you don't have to necessarily answer me right now but I am

093curious because like when I hear that I want to write it down like the teachers want it when I hear that that tells me that I should expect it from them I think it's basically what you said there's some who are going to be really into it um there's some who depending on where they're at in life are going to be into it but maybe can't commit that time right now in their life and there's some who and like nope not doing it yeah um I think I think you're always gonna have that mix but if we can utilize the ones that are willing to do it to help lead the way and they're successful with it and able to bring it back to other teachers I think it would be helpful so I wasn't

094trying to put you on the spot it's just a second question yeah okay are you seeing like we are seeing what the English Department like kind of a need right in front of our face to address kind of not the Gap whatever word we want to use I use gloss are you seeing that in terms of math like are the teachers coming to you and saying there's a systemic issue rising up yes I would definitely say so um I I know the Middle School Math teachers um brought up the same concerns that Meg was bringing up in English and it's one of the things we have started a conversation about too and across the department of chairs of that some of this stuff that we're saying we need in ela we actually need Ela can

095kind of be the Avenue that that takes care of some of it so even things like small scale problem solving in the Middle School I forgot my pencil and paper and they get the students get stuck there some of them and so the teachers are needing to help problem solve like okay well here's how we can go about this so here's here's a way you can approach this and then stepping forward into the math content my teachers are reporting to me that students are struggling to read directions and problems um and go from reading the problem to thinking about what am I then supposed to do next um so some of that is about reading and processing and some of the ELA skills that Meg's talking about so we're hopeful that um bringing some of

096that will help in in the other content areas too but I would definitely say we're seeing some of those struggles perfect thank you I love those PD areas that you were talking about at the end that aren't kind of just shaking up the way kids think of learning like because I mean and I know covid shook it up a lot but the idea of like let's think about why we should be learning this this is how I got what you're saying like let's just think about the applications of this before we start just digging in on it yeah and it's it's something that I do think needs to come from earlier ages I'm teaching 12th graders this year and so they're so used to a certain way and you try and knowing their worlds right

097yes so so it's morning it was also you know post vacation everybody's not really ready yet but there were some real quiet moments in the classroom yeah because they weren't quite sure how to do something and that's very uncomfortable for them yeah um so we need to we need to build that better right right I mean but especially as that's like those are the skills those thinking skills that we need to be developing absolutely more than any of the your academics so it's thinking about why you're learning yeah it will blow my mind too but I think it would be such a great such a great challenge any other questions thank you thank you all right I think it's me seven hello everybody my name is Eva Urban Hughes and I'm the social studies department

098chair I'm new this year I've been in education and a social studies teacher for over 20 years and worked in variety of capacities and it's been my pleasure to be part of the mascot Community this year and explore what Masco is about and also with the social studies department is doing and I think what it is that the directions that we're headed and so what I wanted to talk to you today about is a number of points I have three points which I think might have broken the rules so bear so bear with me our initiatives in social studies uh really kind of hinge I think um on one key term over that you know continues to come up during the curriculum revision Frameworks of 2018 and so on and and that's citizenship and what

099you know as you know Masco Community but also as social cities teachers what is it that we're actually teaching our students and why is it that we're teaching it and these are some very thoughtful conversations that I've had with the Department over the course of the year but I know that they have been thinking about in their curricular revisions over the course of the last three years you know like what is it that we're doing here are we um you know simply kind of reciting like the things that happens and trying to find meaning in that and I think if you're to ask any social cities that teach or that question they would tell you absolutely not like what we want our students to learn from our classes is not the details of the War

100of 1812 but rather to gain the skills and the confidence as well as the thoughtfulness uh to be able to go out into the world and become good citizens and so we focus and I will be focusing on really how can we as social studies teachers and as a department Advance the goals of getting you know good citizenship skills out of our graduating seniors and so back to the 20 2018 curriculum Frameworks as we revised our curriculum across the state across the social studies very much a focus on Civic engagement and you know learning some of these what we would call softer skills of uh you know being critical thinkers of being able to persuasively make an argument and also be able to take perspective in history and ask some very hard questions of ourselves

101as well as of our society in terms of what what is it that we've learned right from our past and how do we intend on taking that learning and advancing it in this case and I think one of the best things that came out of the 2018 curriculum revision was very much the Civic engagement project which is in fact a state mandate I had an opportunity last year to work with the state as a Civics fellow to help districts around the state develop Civic engagement projects and successfully integrate them into the curriculum and as I walked into Moscow what I'm seeing is that social cities teachers here both in the eighth grade as well as currently in the 10th grade have really embraced the Civic engagement project as it's outlined both in the curriculum the

102Frameworks but also in the state mandate that we implement this somewhere across the curriculum so social studies has embraced this and I think strategically and as I look forward in the future you know recognizing that this is not only Central it is good citizenship and being able to walk out you know of high school as as thoughtful good people being able to integrate Civic engagement in the project specifically across across the curriculum not just in the social cities but also in all of humanities as well as potentially in stem and as well as in math in the many projects that I facilitated with students at the high school level I found that some of the most engaging were those that weren't necessarily about policy work right in government but rather about environmental issues right and

103about other sort of global issues and I found that in this work teachers are working very much within their context as but primarily as facilitators in order to have students engage in an experiential way right with something that they're very passionate about and gain the skills that they need in order to become active citizens uh in my work in the humanities here in my work with Meg in the English Department I think we're very excited to potentially create a collaboration and revive some of that work here at mascot that had evidently started um and then kind of died off during the epidemic and now beginning to beginning to come back and so I think going forward Civic engagement the Civic engagement project and integrating it both in our curriculum but also in our electives and

104then being able to build across curricular connections using that project and also Vision 2025 and hopefully our strategic planning process in order to in order to make that happen so that was my first point uh second points is also working off of an initiative this is something that I began working on over the last couple of years and really thinking about as I saw it coming down the line but in 2021 I believe the state passed another law they mandating that every high school and in particular the social studies curriculum address genocide studies somewhere within the curriculum and I think for all the the right reasons like we need to be able to engage with difficult topics and also be able to um face our history um and and so they're requiring that we do

105this and as I personally approach studying the Holocaust this year uh and as I work with teachers in you know talking about the Armenian Genocide or their wand and genocide what I find is that even as teachers we have a really hard time grappling with and presenting is very very difficult topics to students and sorting it out with students and so I saw a need to be able to build capacity in teachers um in order to be able to implement this I think in a thoughtful way right intentionally engage with genocide studies um and so what I did is I wrote a grant and I collaborate I wrote it collaboratively with Salem State University Center for genocide and Holocaust studies a man that has been um very instrument I wouldn't say instrument but really engaged

106with the social studies Department Chris moriello who runs the program out of Salem State and together we collaborated in this Grant and over the course of the next we've actually started with the course of this year and then into next year um we'll be providing both professional development sending teachers to workshops um I've received today three boxes of genocide Studies books to create a library for projects that are already being implemented right and so we're beginning to engage in this work and we want to do it very thoughtfully so that's a project that that we as a department are going to be engaging in over the course of the next year or so it's kind of going forward so I'm excited about that I don't know if excited is the right word right but I

107think it's very it's very important work and again um it's building that capacity in teachers that I think is is Central in my mind as we continue to do the good work that we need to do in order to be able to not only meet mandates but meet the obligations of our students to be thoughtful people to be good citizens when they walk out the door and then finally literacy um this is I think central to the humanities and and what I when I think about again that work these conversations that we've I've had with social studies teachers over the course of the year like why is it that we do what it is that we do it's not right to memorize this to facts right and to um and to and to deal with

108the topics in a superficial way but rather to also gain very basic skills so these are obviously you know critical thinking skills and and argumentative skills and and being able to also read and and write and um you know thinking back to a conversation that I had 20 years ago former superintendent he he asked me on the spot and said what do you think is most important right that kids learn when they walk out of school I came up with some kind of I don't even remember what I said um I tried to spread the needle right and he cut me off and he said it's to read it's to write right you teach them to read and you teach them to write and that really stuck with me and as we engage in social

109studies education you know I think foundationally we have to acknowledge that kids need to learn how to to think and they also need to learn how to read and they need to learn how to write and so you know to this end in my conversations with teachers this year um we I I I feel that it's very important for for all of us to acknowledge in our department but I think everywhere that um we have to focus in on those foundational skills uh and that's why it's my hope over the course the next three or four years to be able to you know very carefully align both vertically like horizontally across teachers but vertically throughout the Departments and and hopefully horizontally with the with the English Department the writing skills that we're offering our students

110that we are you know putting out there what Meg was saying about students having shed some of their skills as students right um really knocks at the door of losing right some foundational literacy skills and so you know being able to reinforce those in the social cities I think is extraordinarily important and so that's another goal that we are also going to be looking forward to over the course of the next three or four years and I have any questions well I just want to say I mean even I've had obviously the pleasure of getting to know you through the Strategic plan thing as a as the newbies to know all everybody else but and I remember talking to you about working on the genocide Grant we'll call it and and then being able to

111congratulate you um once you got it but just you know publicly like we thank you for all your work on having done that and bringing it to us with you um and so all the work that you're doing is very exciting so thank you all right go ahead um I just want to add I worked um the whole Middleton and some of your students I think came and I think that's just a really good and they worked the polls with us and it was just a first-hand experience for them and I think they enjoyed it we enjoyed having them so I just want to thank you for opening up that opportunity for him oh I think experiential learning is really important in social studies um very often we wonder you know like why is it

112that we do the things that we that we do and by putting those kinds of experiences in the hands of kids and that's why we go on so many field trips and so on but in particular the working the polls is very important I teach the politics and government course and so I brought in you know the Middleton town clerk who is riveting I don't know she's riveting and at the end of that she um you know convinced them that uh their their contribution to work in the polls was very important and this is something I've done actually in numerous communities is trying to get Young Folks to come out and participate in those ways but thank you for that acknowledgment that they did a great job they can do it in the spring at

113the local elections too I know I will certainly I will certainly try I think many of them will be on internship with them yeah um under genocide studies you also your your final bullet point talks about diversity equity and inclusion could you talk a little bit about that yeah I I I think that and this is something that we're also working on in the curricular documents and the teaching and learning that we are um that we are engaging in as as Meg and many of the others are pointing now we've got sort of a chunk of professional development time I actually I've already kicked off the curricular documents with the goal of creating curricular documents for both the courses but that goal I think for for us and for certainly for me is to be

114able to then take these foundational documents and then begin to lay over right um some very uh important work about building in and you know increasing diversity into our curriculum in a way that we presented equity in terms of reaching all of our students across the line as well as you know including everybody in the conversation and so as social studies teachers this is Central to our work and I think um going like as a social studies teacher um I I know that leaving folks out of the conversation right or otherwise marginalizing uh their stories is extraordinarily isolating and not only is it isolating it's damaging to kids and so in our work I think it's absolutely Central that we do that and I wanted to convey to you that I do have a process

115in place to it right that in fact we're thinking about that at all times great thank you thank you any other questions for Eva welcome to mask off in your first like formalized thing with the school coming to here good time for some World Language some English language Learners I like to say that in our department we try to bring Masco to the world and uh you've heard me talk a lot about proficiency-based instruction um beers sorry sorry for everybody who doesn't know I'm sorry yes thank you do you know Hearn uh World Language department chair and ell Co coordinator thank you uh so uh over the past few years our department has done a lot of work on uh becoming familiar and uh proficient in our own way with uh proficiency uh based instruction

116and so we are very fortunate in our field to have a very strong State organization but also a National Organization and actful is our National Organization the American Council on the teaching of foreign languages and they have really wonderful uh professional development but also a lot of research-based uh standards and strategies and techniques that we all use and um they have uh formed proficiency targets for each after each year of study so that teachers know what their students should know and be able to do with their target language at the end of a year or study so that has been very helpful so we uh we had our teaching and learning uh 10 weeks at the beginning of the year which was wonderful because we had our new world language framework come out last year

117it hadn't been updated since 1999 last year and so we did we've done a lot of work at looking at the framework um and again looking at our targets for the year and uh doing a lot of uh horizontal and vertical aligning and it's it's a multi-year process but having those 10 weeks was super super helpful for us and we got a lot out of it so we're grateful for that uh so I my two uh points here uh have to do with proficiency testing so last year for the first time we were able to offer the assessment for our seniors to earn the Seal of by literacy we were very excited to do that we had Spanish and French level five students voluntarily take the assessment and we were very pleased with the results

118uh from last year I last year I had applied for a grant from uh Jesse for um more funds for proficiency testing and I did not uh I was not awarded that year but this year has been a good year for uh Jesse grants because we were awarded a grant this year which I was very happy about and um we're right in the middle of all of the testing uh I've started um I'm almost done with all the eighth grade middle schoolers uh 244 students to be exact uh we we are giving the assessment too it gives a score for speaking Reading Writing and listening and a really nice detailed report for each student um so that they can see what their score was for each skill what they need to work on and it's

119invaluable data for the teachers and I have to say uh we're we're very pleased with the results we've seen so far we know what the target is and we see what the scores are that are coming back and we are very very happy with how our 8th graders are doing and it speaks to you know as far as Gap or loss we're not seeing it right now in our proficiency scores now we don't have anything to compare them to right so this is the first year we've we've tested our 8th graders but um I'm just very happy to say that um our 8th graders are very strong as far as what the proficiency Target is so and I'll have um when all is said and done I'll put together a report of course and share

120the results uh we did have our French um AP and CP level five students take the assessment and they all did very very well and stay tuned for some sealed by literacy uh news for for this year's uh group because we still have the Spanish and the Mandarin the Chinese to do the assessment so it'll be going on throughout March but um so like I said 244 8th graders and 135 level five students will will be doing the assessment to to get their scores so I've mentioned here this is wonderful data and it's I I'm hoping it's going to be a real good motivator for students to see um where they are at the end of their eighth grade uh career in World Language and then um hopefully you know as they progress through High

121School they'll know that they can take it again as seniors um so I put this in um as a as a wish uh I could keep continue to apply for Grants but it would be wonderful to think that some districts do uh just have this for their students every year they uh can use it as a midterm grade some sometimes they count them as grades or a final we are purely doing it outside of grades just purely for the information for the students and for the teachers so this would be the cost and um we just we think it's very uh from what we can tell so far we think it would be very very worthwhile for for our department the second item would be regarding our resources we've stepped away for the most part

122from textbooks and if you look at our budget we really have not budgeted much over the years for replacing textbooks instead our teachers create our own resources and we've been doing it for for quite a while and we're happy to do it and we're lucky that there is an enormous amount of resources out there especially for Spanish really high quality effective resources uh the thing is it takes a lot of time to find what you're looking for and of course to integrate it into your curriculum it's very time consuming so uh we've been looking around for an online uh curriculum that would would meet our needs and this is just one example this audio adios textbook that we found that is available by the way in all languages in English for English Learners so I

123just wanted to give you an estimate of what what kind of a cost that would be and this is something that gets updated every year you pay for it every year but it's updated every year so it's always um it's always new new ideas new research and new resources for our teachers to use um with their curriculum so I wanted to put that there and um I want to I don't know if I should move on to the English language Learners or if you would like to speak to either of those two points right now does anyone have any questions a quick question on the second one so is that is it like a subscription where if you like say you did it every second or third year is that an option absolutely okay yeah

124absolutely that would be great and you know there is so much there something like that would probably even make more sense so it's a textbook but it's an online it's not it's all it's it's all online resources yes very cool several different units it really is uh and again that's just one one example we wouldn't necessarily uh go with that but that that seems to really meet our needs and then we would not be uh I mean physical textbooks are good as a resource but we wouldn't we wouldn't need to purchase uh physical textbooks with something like that okay now just move on and if you think of anything else certainly that's still here oh thank you Mike um so as I said I'm also the English language the ell coordinator and I think this

125is the first time that I've presented to you about that that group and I thought it was important that I do so uh so if I were to speak to you about the needs for for this um this group I would mention sheltered English instruction training for our staff uh currently we only have three uh English Learners in at Masco I'm sorry four but three are newcomers which means they're new to the country and uh they came with very little no English whatsoever so you can imagine it's it's very very uh challenging for the teachers to have the student a lot of times uh students transferring in the middle of the year and the teachers um we have to serve these students and we we have to help them uh not only learn the content

126but of course learn English uh and there there are certainly ways to go about that but in in order to have the time to work with the teachers as the ell coordinator uh there's really no time in the day built in to do that so we do the best that we can and and um luckily over the uh each year we they have their own assessment done through the state and they all make progress they all meet meet their targets which is great but uh even with these four English Learners uh we have eight currently former English Learners so these are students that have tested high enough that they no longer require a English Learners supports our services but for four years I'm mandated to um uh look at their academic progress and monitor it

127so they also benefit from sheltered English instruction strategies so if you you're only thinking about say four English Learners and maybe eight former English learners but think of how many teachers that that's involving right that's involving 20 25 teachers that could really um uh some kind of ongoing training uh in order to help them to support these students so um with relicensure every uh five years when people uh renew their license they need 15 pdps in SEI or ESL uh training but these teachers need it right away they need it now they've got these students in their class in front of them and they they don't speak English so I'm thinking of this is beyond really the 15 pdps every five years this is something that needs to be offered to to teachers um I

128have to be outside of the school day but and it would be voluntary but it would be something that we would have time to work with them on their curriculum and say okay this is this is how we can approach the curriculum for this particular student so I wanted to just um mention that as as a something that would really make a big difference for our teachers and for these students do you come to group um these students with specific teachers who have done training in this or do that so everyone has been uh trained in this certainly but time goes by and you know this this would really be very individualized and specific to that teacher's content uh not just kind of an overall Workshop that they went to right that we would be

129working together on their curriculum and so that teacher would then take the next like be more the teacher that that student a new student should have also because they're kind of specializing in that so to speak right right yeah it would be it would be ongoing for every new teacher they have and uh as as teachers become more proficient with these strategies and these supports then of course they always have them they'll have the experience of working with a student like this and they can they'll always have those those skills going forward um so that was the first thing and then uh I was speaking with ili who is the um the other ESL teacher in the high school and she mentioned that um it's just kind of a nice wish item an annual field

130trip for our English Learners um you know they haven't grown up here uh for the most part and they don't have the same background experience and background knowledge that our students have so a topic might come up in one of their other classes that maybe everyone just assumes oh sure they they know what what the State House is or they know the Freedom Trail or they've been to Boston and done all these things because many of us have as children have and we have that background knowledge but these students might not have that and so they can't make the connection they don't have the vocabulary um so it's it makes learning the content more difficult so something like this a field trip just once a year it's a small group um we just think would

131be would be really great to to give them some of that background knowledge um of our state of of many different things I mean it's there's a variety of things that we could do and of course the cost would just simply just be the van and some lunch and um just wanted to put that in there as a I think a really a really nice thing that we could do for them that would benefit benefit their learning is there any way to engage some of the students who are um pursuing the global diploma as peer leaders or mentors to any of the student group or right yeah and so we've tried to start the peer Leaders with with the language department and um that's been started and we're trying to uh encourage that but yeah

132certainly Global diploma we have a strong group of seniors in the global diploma program this year and a strong group of Juniors but you're right we we can tap into into those students to maybe do some different activities with with these students as well yep that would be a wonderful wonderful idea or even I was just thinking like I don't know if you would want it you have to be thoughtful about how you're naming it but like the best buddies program I don't know my daughters right now are volunteering with a a a refugee family teenagers that don't speak a word of English and they love it I could see that kind of happening yeah Lynn and I have talked about what you know we want to try to make Masco more welcoming for these

133families and we certainly provide a buddy for the first week or so a week or two for these students to get around school but yeah something expanding that would be a really great idea as well so um I've been talking to some people at the elementary school level and they're seeing that they're having to look into hiring people uh or staff to kind of additional staff to handle needs coming in and so you're not really seeing that uptick that they're seeing in the lower grade levels of students coming in with English yeah you never know and it comes in I think the highest number that I've seen since I've been here was eight eight or nine so from year to year just don't know and last year we had two students transfer in so far

134this year we've had one transfer in yeah okay but no we have not noticed an uptick any more questions great thank you for your time thank you hey everybody I'm John delanis I'm the wellness department head and the athletic director thanks for having me tonight um a couple of uh bullet points and um a couple other things I'll kind of Veer awful that um I kind of wanted to add into the presentation so um the first thing um I wanted to mention that I know this has been talked about a lot um I know even you know that at this table as well but um an upgrade to the athletic facilities definitely um in terms of you know short-term and long-term goals and plan um not just for the athletic department but for you know

135our Wellness department for staff members for community members um I think would go a long way um you know we've seen you know us not have the ability to really kind of keep up with the the demands um here at our facility and so that's definitely something that is uh necessary and um certainly something at the top of the list of of needs for sure um and then the the second piece is um and this has been something that our staff has spoken to me about because I know that that's been a question asked of other department heads is our staff is really in terms of PD maybe they've really enjoyed the opportunities um the beginning of the school year we um our staff was focused on the teaching and learning part which was great

136for them and a great opportunity for them to get together and you know kind of gain some momentum and it was great for um just for them to collaborate during those Wednesday PD times but they would love to see as well maybe opportunities you know learning opportunities outside um whether it be the Wednesday PDS learning opportunities to bring back to Masco is one thing they mentioned that that would be a great idea um another thing that was mentioned is our Comprehensive Health class is the only Health requirement of students and it's a one semester-long class and the opportunity for our health teachers to get into more depth they feel like it just goes by so quickly especially with all the things that we've talked about with mental health and and things like that they really

137feel like if the opportunity was there to even have that class be a year-long class the chance to get into some more depth of of learning for students would be would be a benefit to them um um and then to establish a progression in our physical education classes you know right now we have um physical education is only required um four credits total for to graduate and um it would be great to you know for us big picture to maybe offer a progression um I know that that potentially could have you know budget implications but if our Dream would be to you know have uh kind of a progression of opportunities for students um you know so that would be kind of a one of the things would would really um look to do I

138know a lot of what that look like so um I know that there are a lot of schools that um they have different themes for different grade levels so like grade nine um you know there'd be a certain Focus grade 10 so for example we have our project Adventure class you know that could be a certain theme in a certain grade and then by the time you're a junior there are certain themes within the semester and by the time you're a senior who's maybe more Independent Learning you know senior going off to you know whether it be the workplace or you know college or whatever it is but there's kind of a sequence of of learning um from grades nine through 12 for student opportunities so um a requirement of you know a two-year requirement

139for example is what a lot of schools do have so a semester-long um PE require environment you know in Grade 9 10 11 and 12. um and you know I've had in our professional development um with over the last few years with our Wellness staff we've kind of talked about what that progression might look like and how it would you know we would kind of scaffold it um that would be you know you know something in terms of you know our department and we have a great dedicated staff one of the things Beyond this I wanted to mention too is um Nick perianos who's a new health teacher we hired this year he's teaching our EMT class and our first responder class he's reached out to like bullport ambulance to offer um we've developed a

140relationship with them for students to have like internship opportunities rides your opportunities for experiential learning so it's a great opportunity for students one of the things that we have made some good strides on it's something that seems small but um for our department it was a great step is many of our physical education classes used to be core along classes now their semester along so classes like a yoga class you know we have a couple of amazing teachers in yoga who you know um you know really can incorporate some of the like the SEL PD time that we've that we're working on right now we can really get in into some more depth like with with mental health um you know uh different mindfulness activities that we do in those classes and to have them

141a semester long I think has been a real benefit for students so that's been um so that's been great as well in terms of like a big picture of where we're trying to go with the department and um uh lastly too our health staff our two Jen Ayers and Nick have reached out to uh Meredith's Shaw at the tri-town council um and have had some speakers come in um to the classroom um to specific specifically to focus on Mental Health which has been really good for us so those are kind of the big the big ones there and I don't know if anyone has any questions or I think you're getting away without questions or do you have one I do but I stay with their hands on at first I mean you're talking so

142much so we know a lot about the outside spaces that need improving can you tell us some of the inside spaces that's a great question um because a lot of people when they probably think of that they think of fields and uh track and tennis courts or whatever but um so the gymnasium for example you know our our bleachers um just something little but actually not that little is um things like not having railings on bleachers to walk up and down the stairs no railings on the sides in terms of needing to be upgraded out lighting um PA system in the gym the field house you know is a great space but it you know it's an older space so that's something too that um our fitness facility which is a nice facility but the

143equipment and the fitness facility is um you know not what I would consider like modern equipment that you would see in a gym in this day and age you know it's functional but you know so those are some of the the indoor uh pieces the indoor facility um that I would you know and I've spoken to um you know Jeff depends about you know we've walked the facility many times I've um our new we have a new director of facilities as you you know um the two of us have already met um I've tried to help get him up to speed on Masco and you know our facilities and how you know Athletics and PE kind of tie into his job and how we can work together um you know to make things make things

144better so great Brazilians um oh um I had a different question but just to add to that one what is there I know that indoor track doesn't you know have a place on campus for indoor meets is that something that is even feasible in our in our field house so the current structure doesn't allow us to to hold and into a track meet just because of the size of that we we're able to practice in there which is nice to be able to practice in that facility you know there is an indoor track that goes around but it's not like a regulation size to hold a meat so it's not feasible I guess that's what I was yeah enough to add on to the space yeah I would have to add on to it the

145one thing that we are fortunate in the northeastern conference which we're a member of now there are many schools in the northeastern conference that have an indoor track facility so it's it's great for us because we can we can even though we don't we can't host a meat we're able to you know go to Beverly or Danvers or Gloucester uh or Swampscott and go to a meet in the afternoon and get home at a reasonable hour whereas there are some other leagues that have no indoor track facility at all and they have to go into Boston or to every beat or they're competing at 7 30 or 8 o'clock at night on a Wednesday night and getting home at 11 o'clock um and it's just not great academically for kids so even though we don't

146have our own indoor attractive host of meat it's it's not a terrible situation compared to some other places so my other question was um about with the health classes um I had heard I can't remember if it was through Triton counselor where it was but I think it was maybe Mrs Ayers was doing the mental health first aid with like one of her classes is that something that when you talked about the semester long I was just wondering if that something that's I don't know if it's even appropriate tonight to be asking that question but how that went if that's going to continue I know she I know we have discussed it I know she I believe she is but I'm that's I'd have to follow up with her on that yeah um but I

147know speaking of of first aid too where where um we're working with um Nick who um is a certified like first aid CPR AED instructor to see if we can get not only our coaches but additional staff members certified um right here at school so those that's something that just popped into my head when you mentioned that so a little off subject but I haven't mentioned earlier too I don't remember somebody I don't remember him there we go there it is I found it under your name um just to clarify um because it's been a while you said four credits for athletics that's one year of gym so four credits for yeah so um so a semester-long class is two credits so if they take you know two semesters worth of physical education their requirements

148are done because Sports no longer yeah so Athletics used to count toward PE credit but um yeah you can't do that it's been now maybe at least four or five six years which means it's probably longer is that that no because before because I'm getting older I did one year of yeah I don't think it was that long ago right and it wasn't that right now it's like 28 20 2018 2019 when it passed okay so it's not as long as I thought so yeah and I know that my kids benefited from that but I know it was after them that they did okay so it's just one year of gym that they need so when you're looking at that's Comprehensive Health class as a full um year class are you looking at it more

149as taking the same subjects or topics that you're discussing and expanding on them or adding new so it'd be like a separate just one example I would say both it would allow us to expand the curriculum but also get into some more depth and detail of what we're doing in classes because they the feedback I've gotten from our staff is they feel like they're a little rushed with time because of fitting everything they need to kind of fit into the semester um at the same time they want to be able to dedicate the necessary time because the topics are important topics so questions for John thank you John thanks thank you oh awesome well for everyone who continued to stay thank you um we really appreciated this I don't know how you felt about this

150as an exercise versus what we've uh what we've done [Applause] um feel free to let me know if you have any feedback but we appreciated hearing from you guys absolutely thank you thank you good night thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you Capital Investments are any of them included in the capital plans okay yeah but it's not a comprehensive Capital plan either what we've seen so far right it doesn't we know it didn't include everything but you know things like but nothing yeah you can well indeed the question was doesn't include the plan we have include definitely doesn't include educational spaces that and the way the question had to be that they were asked to answer they seemed like they were being asked give input to the Strategic plan as as opposed

151to necessarily the capital plan right which right there's some capital and doesn't be yeah yeah but some of them yeah should be part of true yep absolutely more than others yeah yeah anybody have any other questions or comments I thought that was good awesome okay well on that note then I'm gonna um that was fun um thank you very much