001Tuesday, September 9th, 2025. Work session at 6 or 3. And we'll stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Okay. I don't have an agenda, but I'm going to turn it over to you guys. All right. Hang out to meet the goals that we have set. Thank you, Molly. I've included the enrollment report in this, but as you saw yesterday, it's kind of changing every day. So next week, our building leaders will have made phone calls home to any students that we expected that hadn't showed up and give us final numbers of our beginning enrollment. So we'll have that finalized for you. Just to remind you,
002the two goals that. I have this year and that we then collectively have as a team is professionalism and our student achievement. And so as you listen to our building leaders share out on the start of the year, just know this is super informal. So interrupt them with questions or thoughts or ideas and comments. And we're hoping this is more like a. brainstorming session, a session where we can learn about the ins and outs of the programs being implemented and the opportunity for you to dive a little deeper should you get any questions from the community. So, Mr. Taylor, you're all alone tonight. You ready to run the show for the grade school? Yes. I'm Jeff Taylor. I'm the vice principal of the grade school. John's going to go ahead and pull up a little
003slideshow here. And we work really hard to create that space so they can get in front and work with each other and really collaborate to help create amazing opportunities for our students. So the first thing we did was basically from March to June, we had a team of probably 16-ish folks down at the grade school all come together to start having that conversation about what our master schedule should look like. I can only speak to the two years I've been down there, but I think the previous year, I think Mrs. Simons did a lot of that on her own. So really coming together as a staff and having a lot of voices at the table, obviously it could take a little bit longer and it's a lot more thorough of a process, but ultimately I
004think our end result was much better because we did have all those different pieces coming together. The first piece that we did is we identified we needed to identify our three top priorities. And again, we had voices from all grade bands. So it wasn't just like, you know, a select group of people. We had people to represent our whole school. Our number one goal that we came up with. John, go ahead and go next slide. I'm sorry. Perfect. Thank you. Was focusing on K through two literacy. Our primary focus will be, again, in that kindergarten through second. And one of the coolest parts about when that happened is we had our upper grades, knowing that a lot of the resources and efforts were going to be kind of focused on that lower age group. So
005to see their sacrifice was actually really powerful. They were willing to say, yes, you know, we'll take on maybe slightly higher class numbers to ensure that we can build up that. you know, K through because they know that eventually they're going to get up to them. So just kind of going through it, you know, we had to figure out how we were going to make it happen, trying to have lower class numbers in K through two and then trying to avoid blends at that lower level just because studies have shown that blends aren't the most ideal. Although this year we did have to have a two three blend. And in doing that, we're also going to retain our Spanish literacy program as a standalone subject with a dedicated teacher. We didn't, you know, we have
006a large Spanish population and we want to ensure we are doing that justice and making sure that it can stay as robust of a program as it is. For your sake, the educational research strongly supports it when students are solid readers and writers and speakers in their native language. So if they grew up with Spanish only at home, then they can pick up on reading, writing, speaking English much quicker. That only though is true if... it's sustained through when kids become proficient readers. So with the Spanish language literacy program, when the younger kids come in, they first learn to read in Spanish, if they're Spanish only at home, and then they transfer that skills of reading to English much quicker than trying to learn a new language while trying to learn how to read the
007new language. Yes. And then on top of that, we also wanted to increase the service through third grade. And I think ultimately we actually got to hire someone so we can go all the way through our fifth grade. So we are just noticing sometimes when they transition out, they would still have some lagging skills and they could still benefit from that continued program. We also wanted to retain. Oh, not quite. Retain grade level common prep. We use that time for our PLC meetings. Again, in that big collaboration piece, we think that we have incredibly valuable people that we work with and we want to capitalize on that. And we want to get them working together and sharing knowledge and best practice and all those things. And so I know we're only a week and a
008half into it, but so far it's been pretty awesome. So go ahead, John, go ahead and go to the next one. Our second priority was grades three through five support for students below grade level in core subjects. So we had the primary one looking at our K-2 focus, and our next biggest priority, again, is looking at that three through five and getting them the additional support they need to help get them up to grade level. That includes a rigorous MTSS process that I'm working with Mr. Palacios on. Again, just really using our time and our efforts and creating that space for our specialists to come in and work with our classroom teachers. Prime example would be during in-service week. We gave about an hour and a half just for folks to sit down and look
009at their class list. And we had every specialist in our building, including, I believe, some that are out of building, you know, that are sharing between buildings. So teachers could ask any question, right? So they can see something that shows up on the IEP or the 504. What does that actually look like? You know, what is, how can I do that in my classroom, in my space? And they can ask those questions. And again, just kind of keeping up that collaboration piece and letting us use the resources we have and the people we have and letting us really fall back on their expertise and their knowledge. So MTSS is multi-tiered support system. Have you ever seen that triangle that you see sometimes you'll see red at the very top and then you'll see yellow and
010you'll see green. So that's how the schools really break down. It could be behavior, could be academic. And that's how we kind of can classify our students as far as where they're at and the level of support that they require. Typically your green would be about 80% of your students. You bump up to the yellow, it's probably 10 to 15% of your students. And that red, they need the most extreme, you know, the most specific support would be, you know, right around 5% of your students. So. In a perfect triangle. In a perfect triangle. But sometimes triangles can be funny shape, right? Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. Go ahead and pop into the third one. And then we just wanted to increase our overall level of student engagement and belonging. I think that's kind of what
011all schools really want. But as you see, as we'll go into the next little bit, you can see we really wanted to. grow our classroom communities within the building. Meaning last year, there was a lot of times where a student, if they require, you know, going to a lot of, using a lot of services, they wouldn't be in the classroom very much just because they're getting pulled out to go do math here. And then they're getting pulled out to do reading here. And then they might get pulled out for speech there. Then they might have to go down to ELD. So it would wind up the students just weren't getting to be in the classroom a whole lot, which made it really difficult to help build that classroom community and have them really feel like,
012you know. This is my class. And we know that students usually perform a lot better when they feel comfortable and safe around their people. So we were very, very diligent about making sure that we created as much classroom time as we possibly could. For those... I agree with that. Sounds awesome. So 100% and I'll be able to pop over. We're going to go down. There'll be a couple more slides and you can see exactly how we addressed it. You're totally good. You're totally good. Well, it's actually really cool. And we did something really, really cool that I'm excited for and our staff's excited for. And again, I know we're only a week and a half into it, but so far, you know. I think it's going to be good. It's going to be good. We
013can always adjust if it's not quite what we want it to be. Increased, you know, our increased PBIS and attendance efforts to get students excited about coming to school and then hopefully just creating as many fun, you know, fun activities as we possibly can. So kids want to be here. And again, creating that classroom community. Let's go ahead and keep going. Here's the answer to your question, Miss Sweeney. So this is what we came up with. It's an individualized instruction block. So basically, like we said, we're coming from last year where there was kids getting pulled out at all different times. So we really broke it down to where it's an hour block that students will be pulled. from their class to go to services. So for example, if we have a student, if you
014look at the bottom there, if we have a student that needs to go to the LRC room for ELA, they'll go on that first block in that first 30 minutes. And then if they don't need to go to math, maybe they need to go to ELD. So then they'll go to ELD for that second 30 minutes, or maybe they need to go to the LRC for both. So then they'll be in there for that whole block. For students that don't need that, that's where you'll see that in-classroom teacher-directed intervention. So it could be, that's where we're kind of giving our teachers autonomy of like, what does your students need? Right? Because they know better than any of us, like where their students are struggling. So that can be some time, a dedicated hour where they
015are giving just that student exactly what they need to be successful. 100%. 100%. A hundred percent. So that's why we kind of came up with that. We named it the individualized instruction block. I think we initially called it the intervention block, but it's not necessarily intervention. It's that individualized instruction block. So it's literally whatever that student needs to be successful. Yeah. So keep on rolling. I'm sure you guys saw on there, it talked about ECRI. This is our new curriculum. I am by no means an expert in it yet. That would be for Ms. Hill or Ms. Simons. They know it quite a bit better than I do. But basically, it's our core content. And they're given to them. They're pre-taught what they're going to learn. And so... They're taught like the consistent routine and
016they're essentially getting a double dose of what that core looks like. So they have that 30 minute ECRI block. So that'll be where they're going through the ECRI curriculum, but they're learning what they're going to learn in the full blown instruction. Just like it's like broken down a little bit different. Is that right? Yeah. And this is. Some small districts in Oregon are implementing this. So they went into, can I say banks or Gaston? I think it was Gaston. And they are seeing some really promising results with this format. So we invested some school SAA money in getting the training, getting the curriculum. But it's a relatively low investment for what we think the results will be. Thank you, Robin. And we have some teachers down there that actually have done it. They had gotten
017trained when they were in the Salem School District. And so they're like, oh my gosh, we got to actually, it's amazing. And they love it and kids love it. And it seems to be super successful. So I'm really looking forward to that. K through five? It's just K through two. I don't think ECRI goes three through five. I don't even think it's a system. I think it's just a K through two system. Yeah, the goal is that everyone's getting to grade level by third grade with this second dose. Yeah. So we can roll on to the next one. And we're just going to touch on, we sat down as like district leadership and really sat in or, you know, set out to make sure that we get things on, on the calendar for meetings. We
018wanted to create that space. If you were to, John, will you go one more? I want to see if that matrix is actually there. I think it is. So. As you can see, we went through and we've created the spaces for all of these meetings to happen. That doesn't mean that our teachers are going to be in meetings every single day. That means, for example. For example, you can look at Tuesday on the first week of the month up at the very top, right now, the second row on the Tuesday. So that would be our grade school SST meetings. It's going into the MTSS process where we're having specific conversations about students. That's only going to pertain to teachers who have a student in that in that program or in that system. It doesn't mean
019that all teachers come to that. So that'll be time for them to. work in their classroom. And again, really, really being really sure that we create that space for our folks to be able to work together. There's time for those PLC time. That's like your professional learning community where our teachers are coming together and they're, you know, working on grade band things and coming up with solutions. In fact, one of our first tier of our MTSS system is called GLT. It's grade level team. So, and we're creating that space, giving them the tools to be able to have those conversations before. it comes up the ladder and so again just really really increasing that collaboration piece um and then the next page is just more matrix and then um next piece is making sure that
020we're really diligent about collecting our data to make sure that everything that we are implementing is working um and then that will help guide us where we go next so that's kind of where we're at yes So like you started off the year with the kids being already in this block? Yes, yes. Is it going off of like how they ended the school year last year? Like what students do you know? Yeah, essentially, you know, we have a large number of students that already have their IEPs or 504s. And then if we, you know, have a question on a student, that's where they get into that MTSS program. So they get into that system to where like, hey, so they start with just teacher to teacher and they say, hey, I'm kind of noticing some
021of these things right here. And then, you know, that. that first level is 80% of our school. So it's, it's, it's supports that are available to all students. And so that might be an opportunity for the teacher to go, Oh, did you try to do this? Or do like, you know, have you tried to give them and one of the interventions is having a visual schedule. So a lot of students really thrive by being able to see where they're going to go next or what they're going to work on next. And, you know, that further would be an individual schedule that's the same thing as that but it's right here on their desk so they can just look at it right here and so um again just finding out to figure out if we need
022to have more specific interventions um or you know for the student and we kind of go from there but yes to start out it would be the students that are here on a 504 IEP So if we were going through the MTSS process, I believe it's right after tier one. Yeah, so typically just the conversations that happen in between teachers, just supporting each other, getting ideas off each other. And if that's not enough, it's available to everybody, you would do the referral to tier two where more specialists are on the team. And at that point, a prerequisite to even having them talk about a tier two is parent contact. So the parent would need to know right away. And for ECRI, like if they're in that double dose, they're probably going off of IXL scores
023from the spring last year. And then any of the other reading, like. benchmark testing that we do for kids. And I don't know that we necessarily would have sent like a notice, hey, your kid's in this double dose. That's something we could explore. And you could exit out. So if you reach a point where you're showing grade level proficiency, then it's fluid, which is nice. And it's the same thing in the MTSS process. You graduate out, you know, once a student figures things out and allows, you know, they figure out that that intervention is what helped and, you know, sometimes they just graduate out of it. I think that was really exciting to me as we had an admin retreat prior to the school year starting and it was the first time we sat down
024and looked at ourselves as a K-12 system and how the schedules and programs feed into one another and what trajectory those students are on and how it is either deterred from their academic progress or has a great impact on their academic progress and it's just been exciting to see them, these guys collaborating. as a K-12 team in that way and feels. for the first time, like there's this intentional collection of data consistently to know where each of our students is at. And one of the unintended consequences that can come with too many pullouts in the school day is even though our teachers love and want our students to succeed, it can be when too many cooks are in the kitchen, so to speak, no one's really owning that student. It's like, oh, there's a reading
025specialist who's taking care of the readings for them. that's just being well i'm not the classroom teacher they really need and so unfortunately it can it can deter from someone really getting in the needs of the work with that student so i think it'll be positive outcomes yeah 100% should touch on that it was great jeff thank you thank you Thanks, guys. I'm sorry. Hey, hey, winners gotta win. Yeah. Bye. I don't know about this. John, I shared ours with you. Where's your phone? I don't know. Did I leave it in there? I know. I think it's in my car. I was just like, where did I put my phone? It's with your water bottle. How many times she asked me, where's my phone? I know. I'm getting one of these holster things. I love
026that we continuously call them holsters. I don't know. It's a holster. We assigned you to things. I'm going to go work. We figured we could all three talk about all the things. Oh, let's see. You can go back one. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, okay. No, we are. That's why we got to go back. We only have this picture there to just mess with you, Terry. So I think like when we first started, it was very much like, especially after working with Amy and when we all worked with our, in our admin team was just like. Culture is the foundation of everything. So if we don't have a group of teachers that are working together and that have a common belief and we're working towards something and that we can trust each other and rely on each
027other and we'd be putting a lot of energy into not a lot of return. So at our retreat, that's when we were like. this is this is where this is where we're going yeah this is where we're Ted Lasso's gonna get us there Yeah. I don't know if you've, if you've watched it, but it's, um, we have a short clip for you in case you haven't. So, um, so we're actually going to show you the clip that we started with our, our staff, um, on our building welcome back. Um, and so John, if you just click that link, it should work. Believe. Sorry. And then. I did because I'm ready. I got that one little piece. You know naughty scene we did take. All we need to win are the fellas in this room right
028now. And all you fellas need to do is believe it. Hey knock it off okay we're not doomed. No one is doomed but bumper catch yes you're right it is a sign. I agree. Yeah. Fact is, it's just a sign. All right, guys, listen to me. Belief doesn't just happen because you hang something up on a wall. All right? It comes from in here, you know? And up here. Down here. Only problem is, we all got so much junk floating through us, a lot of times we end up getting in our own way. You know, crap like envy or fear, shame. I don't want to mess around with that shit anymore. You know what I mean? Sorry. Do you? No. No, Coach. No. Do you? No. No, me neither. Hell no. You know what I
029want to mess around with? The belief that I matter. You know? Regardless of what I do or don't achieve. Maybe we've hurt somebody else. Or what about the belief of hope? Yeah? That's what I want to mess with. Believing that things can get better. That I can get better. That we will get better. to believe in yourself, to believe in one another, man, that's fundamental to being alive. And look, yo, hey, if you can do that, if each of you can truly do that, can't nobody rip that apart. See you all Monday? All right, so that was what we had started our staff with as we, as Jamie had said, on really setting the tone for the culture that we're trying to build in the building. Go back one more. There we go. Really centering
030around the professionalism. But again, like Jamie had said, and we had all collaborated on is the grounding and trust, the collaboration that we're working together. We're a team, right? We got to all bring together and come together, believe in each other. That's the biggest piece. I don't believe that we're all capable and professionals and that we believe in our students. So that was kind of the place we started. And then if you go to the next one. So then, you know, we have this team of the three of us. I don't like that angle. I'm sorry. I tried to find the best ones I could. And then, and then, well, I was like trying to find a single one of us. And as you can see, I mean, yes. So we, we, we really talked
031about in setting the tone, share it, talking about norms. professionalism, really showing our united front and that cross-campus collaboration because we feel like that is fundamental to what we're trying to build. And then resetting the staff culture and getting to work with StrengthsFinder, which is kind of the next piece that we are going to talk about. We address some of the shared leadership between the three of us, how we're sharing all of the responsibilities and being super transparent in our communication with staff. who they can come to about what and that if there's things or concerns that they have that we want those brought to our attention so that we can make adjustments if we need to. So that was that piece. So there's some photos. Yeah, you can go to the next one. These
032are photos from our day. I if you come and watch me lead anything I love playing games with staff, and I did it when I was a classroom teacher also so this is just them playing some games with each other and having fun and laughing. So that's kind of what you see there. And then the StrengthsFinder book, I'm actually going to let Jamie touch a little bit on this this was something that she had done in the past with staff, and so we decided to do it again. and really have staff take this assessment so that they could see where their top five strengths were. So like one of my top five strengths is communication. So like how I communicate, what I communicate, all of those things. And so staff could really look at what
033are their strengths, what are they bringing to the team? Yeah. And I think that's, that was the piece that, you know, the, the games and stuff where we're really focusing on connection before content, because a lot of times it's just that connection with each other that helps us open our minds and hearts up to learning and listening and seeing, learning more about each other through different avenues. And so the StrengthsFinder is just, it's a more formal way to learn about each other. And so our Staff took the assessment on Monday, but essentially they will get a printout of their top five strengths, but it will be a very individualized report of each strength and how that shows up in them. So like if both Nicole and I had the same strength, our report would look
034different because there's so many ways to describe that. And it just helps us. And we're putting it together in a spreadsheet so everyone can see everyone's strengths. So those people that were. in Dayton in like 2011, we have the, from then, we have their strengths. And so some of them are interested in seeing how they might have adjusted. And the research shows that the top 10 stay about the same, but the top five can fluctuate. So like the 10 can move depending on where you're at in your life and what you're doing. So, and we're really looking forward to that and doing some work around that. And it also really helps you when you are, When you are working in teams, like. The three of us or like the secretaries or like a PLC, because
035not everybody shows up the same way. And sometimes we tend to judge if someone shows up differently than us, we assume like, well, that was kind of rude or, and they just might be more direct and they might be less, you know, they might be, they're, they're just different ways to like, yeah. But if you're, if you're struggling, yeah. And if you're struggling with like figuring out how to connect sometimes. If you look at each other's strengths, you can say, ah, like that's where it's showing up from. And then you can approach it from a place of strength versus like a deficit. But it also lets you understand the biases that we bring with our strengths and where they can also be places that we have to be cautious of. All right. Nope. Nope. Oh,
036yeah. We're not going to watch that video. No. Yeah. So so this just kind of going into the data piece, too, with our scheduling last spring, I was able to get a chance to sit down with Catherine at the junior high at Davis, the counselor. And we were able to look at some of the IXL formative data that was collected in reading and in math for middle school. And it was some work that we had just done. in Willamina where I was at. And so it was, and we had done some really good work collaborating with Amity. I know, can you believe it? It was great. And so we, cause we're all facing the same issues. Like our students are, have gaps and they, and the typical differentiation that we've used in the past isn't
037enough to really bring them. bring their skills up. And so we're really trying to look for more targeted things. And often, once you leave elementary school, those things, there aren't a lot of them out there. So I'm excited about it. So we were able to look at the data in reading and math and be able to give kids opportunities to build their skills. And just like Jeff was saying that it doesn't, they aren't. it's all fluid. So like as students build their skills and they can like bring their work, their proficiency level up, things will, their schedule can change and they can, they can move fluidly to different spaces. It's not like a tracking model. It's just an opportunity to really focus in on some of those needs. So I'm very excited. We have a
038math and a reading opportunity for students. And the math is, it also goes to advanced as well. So we're. Yes, yes, yes. Next slide. This has me on it? Yeah. Okay. As you all know, or I believe everyone knows that we didn't get that literacy grant that we were hoping to get. I would be curious to get it backscored to know why to better inform our grant. writing in the future. But we were able to sit down with Dana and Eric and Jamie and myself and look at our literacy needs pre-K-12. So what are our goals pre-K-12 for literacy for our students? What are we doing? What are we not doing? And then how do we prioritize that? So we were able to repurpose some FTE and that did take a little away from the
039grade school, but then they gained a little in other areas so that we were able to offer these courses because part of that grant was a hiring of a person. So it worked out really great. And we had set ourselves up for success in the spring by purchasing. some things ahead of time out of other funds that were use it or lose it. So really, worst case scenario, like we did really well without getting that grant. So we have the IXL math intervention happening. There's even a high school section of that. And then we have other interventions embedded in the school day as well. Next slide. Was that a state grant or federal grant? That was a state grant, but a grant that Oregon got from the federal government. And then it was based on
040your ranking. So we were a little high in ranking. The higher you are, the worse it was for you. But we weren't so high. So part of it was your ranking and then part of it was your plan. So that's where I'd want to know like what within our plan. It was pretty heavily vetted and the ESD helped us a lot with it and a team. I felt pretty good about it. That's why I made a big comeback. Thank you. So at the high school, I've already talked a lot about this throughout the spring, but we were able to add some new CTE offerings. Those are getting off the ground really well. Shelly Artosa has a passion and a knowledge set for health services. So she's jumping in headfirst there as well and supporting. Alex,
041our athletic trainer who's teaching, and she's already started working with our nurse to look at our anatomy and physiology curriculum. And then she's been working with Frank. We just got a curriculum ready up and running for him today for that personal trainer aspect. So we're just super excited to see the expansion in that field, but in the current ones and some of the other new ones. I have been down a bit of a rabbit hole. Craig has been down it partially with me. Expanded options. So we offer Shemeketa courses for students, but what I'm finding is we don't have an equitable system. So if you know, if you've had a sibling, if a teacher mentions it to you, you would reach out and say, hey, I want to take the Shemeketa course. And as far
042as I could tell, we just signed. But as I started digging into it, I'm like, wait a minute, we're paying for all these classes. And where's that money coming from? And how can we make sure that students have more equal access? So I have a meeting with Shemeketa. I've been digging into the language of the law to just try to systematize that a little more so that more students can access that. And we're a little more strategic in when and how they would access it. so that it can help them reach that post-secondary goal and gain college credits. And then open periods was kind of another rabbit hole that appeared with that. So right now we've really limited the amount of open periods we let a student have, and we've limited how many times a
043kid could be a TA. So last year, I can't remember numbers off the top of my head, but we had an exorbitant amount of student teacher or teacher aides. 20 in a class or something crazy. And I think that was having a really negative impact on our seniors in particular attendance. So a student can only be a teacher's aid with that teacher's approval and they can only have one period of it. And a teacher can only have one teacher aid in any given period now. And along with that, unless the student has met with me and shown me like I'm on the fire department, I'm looking into photography internship, I'm getting a job. I'm only really allowing one open period in most cases. But then we got to talking about could a kid have two?
044Could we offer a student as an incentive their junior year to possibly have one? So those are all just conversations that are being had, but really trying to tighten up schedules so that when kids are having an open, it's for a more meaningful purpose that we can come alongside and partner with them on that. Continuing to ensure high quality pathways for all students. That was a lot of work done in the master schedule in the spring. And then continuing to support teachers in how we can stack classes. So stacked class means we could offer ninth grade English, but within that class, some of the students might be doing ninth grade advanced English. So they show up in the same roster in the same. period in a grade book, but teachers know, okay, this chunk has
045opted into that advanced path. We had a conversation this morning with the math department looking at personal finance and financial algebra, because there's a lot of crossover in those standards. And being a small school, if we can stack those where kids might be able to earn. both in the same time, then that frees up their schedule to be in more advanced courses elsewhere down the line. Robin, are they doing that when they're stacking on the, let's say, advanced math? Is that like an AP math and they're getting some college credits for that or no? We don't have any, to my knowledge, AP certified teachers. That's a special certification. But I started talking with the math team and Nicole is heading up math this year, which is a good thing because she's an amazing math teacher.
046I was not a math teacher. But looking at how do we get more teachers trained to offer college level courses? Because what's good about that is they're getting guaranteed college credit if they pass versus AP where they have to test and get the credits. And so how can we expand that? Josh Grossenbach teaches college level math and his numbers, I think, are up this year. So the more kids we can get prepared for that, the more we can offer in the long run. Thank you. Yep. So can I just. Thank you, Terry. So then what is the advanced portion? Are they learning like the next grade up kind of curriculum or is it just more challenging for students who need it? Yeah, I would say especially, so I've been helping to teach the 11th grade
047advanced English class a couple of times the past two weeks. She's good at it. Yeah. And so with them, I already started talking to that class. They're kind of doing similar to what the other 11th grade classes are, but they need something with more depth. Like it was very clear when I was teaching them, they were spot on. They knew what author's choice was. They knew what, why they chose to introduce character a certain way. And they could talk about it with like articulate language. So maybe you're choosing. the same text, but you're going deeper with it, or you're choosing accompanying texts that make it more thought-provoking at a different level of rigor. But I could speak most clearly to English because of the seed rigor. No, I appreciate that. And I want to just
048take a quick moment to point out, and first of all, say a huge thank you, Robin, and the rest of the team for all of this. I think I was the most vocal in complaining when we were looking at graduation requirements in reducing our credit. requirements. And I was promised, we were promised this kind of thing happening. So it is so encouraging. And I'm so thankful to hear this going on to make sure that our students are still receiving an education, even if they're already at those, those like credit numbers and that kind of thing. So thank you very much. You're welcome. Okay, next slide. So we don't, we're not going to watch this video, but we just wanted to point out that, so Amy showed this at our, at our staff welcome back or
049whatever, the district, yeah, sorry, district. And it was at the end, and it was one of those things that kind of like, we walked away from when we said this needs more like. We need to like unpack this a little bit because it's easy to talk about hard, but when you're in hard, it is hard. It's hard to walk through it, right? It's like hard, it's challenging. And so we started off with our staff replaying the video so we could kind of get back in that space and talk more about it. And then John, if you- No, no. Sorry, I know. You guys can have a copy of this and you can watch it. But what we ended up doing is we took the staff outside and we did an inside outside circle. So they
050were partnered up with someone. And then we we were able to have some really good discussions about maybe some hard things. And so we talked about how obstacles can be opportunities. And so. we're faced with them all the time. And sometimes when things happen and we're not expecting it, then it gives us an opportunity to step back and pause and decide like, okay, so how can we turn this into a potential opportunity? And so what we did is we had... Keep going. Yeah, you're going to put them all. There you go. You can do all three. So these were three quotes that came out of our work with Jennifer Abrams with our admin retreat at the beginning. But this kind of goes back to the cultural piece. And we just, we talked about these three.
051quotes and had the staff talk about what that meant. And then we were able to connect those to some examples and how important it is as the way we talk about things and the way that we, the words that we use can be either, they can help us with those opportunities or they can be like verbal paper cuts. it can be really, really difficult. Also, just how important it is for us to take responsibility for the energy we bring into the space, any space we walk into. And the word that we really liked was the emotional pig pen. For those of you that know the character pig pen, there's just like this cloud of dirt, dust around. And it's kind of like you've been in those spaces where someone walks in a room and it's
052like, it can either be like, wow, it lights up and it changes the energy or it can be like, whoa, it just sucks it right out. So we talked about that because we feel like everybody has to own that for themselves. And then also just, you know, somebody's learning how to be a person by watching you let that sink in, right? And it could be an adult and it could be a student. We said we could have a new teacher at a school and if they could walk into a staff room and there could be some, like if... if people are talking about something negative, it can be like, oh, that's what we do in here. And that's not what we're trying to do. So it just allowed us to really have a little bit.
053It was, I would say it was like a deeper part of our, our, our time. We got, we got kind of into it and then they were able to share. We, after each one we said, so what would you do if you. came across the situation so that we could talk about like yeah that's hard but then like what can you do what action can you take so that was really cool to hear people's ideas And so, and then our big takeaway was just less social friction. So, you know, could allows for more intellectual friction. And that's what we really want. That's where we want our friction is we want people to be questioning and like rumbling about things that matter and, you know, our school and our students and how we can make it
054better. And so that was our, that was really powerful for us. I don't think we're going to show this video either just because of the sake of time. So I'm just going to quickly describe the video. So this was great. It's great. It's a great piece. So this this in this video and this was kind of towards the end of our time with our staff is at the end of this video or during it. It's there at a halftime and coach Ted Lasso. He just has them. OK, do you guys have anything to say? And one of them walks up with a piece of. the believe sign that they had ripped up and then the next guy next team teammate comes out and he has a piece so they all come they all end up
055having having a piece that got ripped up and then they all they put it all back together um and put the believe sign back together and that was kind of and then they rallied um in there and um before they went back out on the field so and the idea is that they put it back together to be stronger than it was yeah originally yeah And that's ours. We did the same thing. So we, so Nicole graciously put up this belief sign and numbered it and everything. And then we, so we can put it back together. So we gave everyone a piece and they wrote a hope or a dream, a statement of belief. What do they believe? We had them put it all back together. Yeah. I had shared with them that when I
056got interviewed for this position, both times that I asked. I asked the staff that were all in the interview, you know, what do they love most about Dayton? Why, why are they proud to be a pirate? And the things that they said, like, ultimately, like it, it not, it sold me that like, I have to be here. I need, this is where I'm supposed to be. I get emotional thinking about it, but they had such great things to say. And so I made sure that I told them that, and then asked like, you all believe something about why you're here about the kids, about yourself, about your staff. about this town, this community. And so they all wrote down those statements on the back of the. And it was powerful because as they each brought
057their piece up, they read what it was, what their statement was. And so at the end, we got to hear what everyone believed. And now it's laminated and it's in our library. So when we come together for our professional learning, it's there. And we did staff t-shirts. Yes. Yeah. Yes. Oh, yep. There they all were. There's our sign. And they wore them all on the first day with all students. And it was really cool because there's just the sea of staff and white shirts and students to come back on the first day. And maybe they didn't think it was cool, but it's not the pirate. And then the belief on the back. next oh and there ain't a whole lot of places like Dayton so that we took a line from Ted and made it
058our own the last line of that video that we didn't watch I think that's it. Yeah. So I had the opportunity to watch their staff development the first day they had their junior high and high school staff together. And I can tell you, I haven't seen energy in that space like I saw in the Hope in the room. I think they did a phenomenal job setting the stage for coming together as a team in that campus. So questions for junior high and high school team? You can tell we really have to fake it. It's really hard for us to get along. So to make a space for the meeting, because we do have a lot of people here, we're going to move this table into that room and we're going to shift this guy to
059the middle with the two chairs. Just right in the middle where it typically is. And then thank you so much. All right. I'm going to close the meeting at 6.53.