001you're good thank you any correspondence oh none correct nothing so just uh the next part of the agenda is for visitor statements um I just want to let people know that we're going to we actually have two points in time this evening where people can make visitor statements one is now and then we're also going to open up for public comments with respect to our web so if you have a comment about 11 you could do it when we have our public meeting where you could do it at the initial comment section it's up to you uh with that is background there's a gentleman in the back are you doing public comments now um with that uh well the public comment for the levy we're waiting no this isn't on the login okay uh the
002visitor statements we're opening up now so [Music] oh thank you thank you for Austin I think you know the the rules please keep it under three minutes your name is Village name a village for purposes of the public notice uh Daniel vishni Buffalo Grove um happy Hanukkah happy second night of Hanukkah for those of you celebrating like me um Merry Christmas um I want to give recognition to uh I was hoping Mr gobble was here today but um I just want to give recognition uh that he gave me uh a lot of time in a meeting from the October meeting I couldn't make last month's meeting with the cop with the conflict so um I had a chance to meet in his office for about an hour and a half towards the end of October
003he was very gracious with his time and we had an awesome discussion about a lot of issues as uh my son graduated Stevenson 10 and a half years ago but I'm still a member of the community and somebody who cares greatly so I want to give big recognition to Mr gobble that we had a nice uh open conversation a lot of things and including like a curriculum point that I've spoken with Mark as well relating possibly in the soft skills area to offer an elective course that would mirror like a Dale Carnegie course uh on soft skills and that was a good part of the discussion I wanted to give recognition to Mr gobble for his time there we know we all get a great technical education here and get us ready for college and
004careers and whatnot and I think that aspect of conversation was also worthwhile and you know that kind of dialogue is very uh uh good there so um it's good to see I think there needs to be more of that uh type of dialogue uh rather than everybody just staying in their little Echo Chambers yet everybody thinks that they think that there was commonality of ideas all the time because there's not um uh this is a great institution but it can always improve and I believe and a lot of community members that probably are very silent that there should be two sides of conversation relating to certain issues because we all kind of shake our heads and be conformists yet everything is okay everything is very good here but there can be improvements made and those
005type of discussions should be taken on and should be encouraged so everybody should just get out of their common beliefs and see there's a couple different ways to go about addressing issues which may be challenging and I would encourage you to do that uh rev then just sit there and think that everybody agrees with everything that goes on so I'm going to recognize Mr gobble again I I thought it was really nice ending up that type of dialogue with a you know a very interested Community member and a parent of a graduate from a while back so please heed you know this type of statement thank you very much thank you thank you okay um Alex the floor is yours semester I mean I was gone by so fast started off the year warm nice
006out in the sun now all of you guys are clipped with your winter apparel so definitely definite change I'm already getting the sniffles so we're getting through it but ah it's been a great winter and I'm excited to see where some next semester goes so just starting off with academics course selection started off uh for freshmen recently in the beginning of December um a lot of them experienced some kind of confusion of which pathway to take uh but Siemens and faculty along with fmps did a really good job on explaining different Pathways and like I said in a previous meeting mentioning and prioritizing that not one pathway is correct there's several different ways you can go about choosing courses so that was really helpful for all the freshmen I know my advisor in particular had
007a lot of questions they're usually a quiet group but this time they spoke up and asked questions so that was that was really nice to see and then recently accounting marketing interior design classes took field trips to Chicago and I believe Milwaukee for one of them just to further explore those fields in an immersive setting so that was a really great opportunity just to learn more about those specific sectors in our society and how they can apply it in their future careers if they're really interested in those fields and then competition wise Science Olympiad received 25 medals which is crazy at a Palatine Invitational um so it's just great to see all these science Wizards uh doing so well within the competition aspect um another trip per se creative writing courses recently traveled to UW
008Whitewater and they were able to submit their own personal works for competition and a lot of them actually received multiple distinctions so it was kind of cool to be immersed in a college environment I mean I know creative writing is a senior class so a lot of seniors are already aware of colleges but I believe as well other students were able to attend this and then Illinois State Scholars were recently named um so the top 10 I believe in Illinois for um academic scores and gpa-wise uh so I was in Illinois State star so that was cool to see in the mail um but yeah and then finally the Esports team plays first in the inaugural play BS League of Legends not really sure what that is but congratulations to the Esports team I was
009trying to keep this one really short because I know you guys have a tight schedule sorry um I know there's a lot of charity work going on within Athletics as well I mean for NHS we're specifically trying to plan our next spring event and create something new within the athletic range so I will tell you guys more about that in March when it occurs um but the boys hockey team through their different games I got save either in Waukegan were able to raise money for St Joe's Hospital inspired after a nine-year-old with pediatric cancer and the Heartland Animal Shelter so it's just great to see Athletics and charity combined and then girls gymnastics won their first championship um at Rolling Meadows for this year um so another gold medal that's also cool to see along
010with boys swimming and Diving also placing first um within the Stevenson relays that take that took place at Stevenson so also great to see you and then recently we had the fat freshman Fan Appreciation Night where freshmen were admitted to the boys basketball game against Lake Forest for free I know they had like a Culver's giveaway um a lot of them got free shirts too so just another way to encourage involvement and boost our support for athletics team okay and a lot of things have been happening within the arts department recently I mean it is the holidays music is thriving during this time of the year so it's just kind of cool to see how it's related to Stevenson so I know we recently had the winter dance concert and the um students and the
011band concert and the choir concert so that's a picture I believe of the orchestra concert and then we also had um this event where Stevenson students were able to perform their own work and share it with others as well as you can see from the person playing piano right there that's really cool along with the art show so that I saw that piece and I was like that is crazy how can someone draw that I can barely draw stick figures um but we have a lot of very talented artists here at Stevenson so it's just great to see all the amazing work that people have done at the end of the year and just throughout the semester itself and then to the left is the failed presidential candidates improv show I personally went to this
012and they cracked me out there so hilarious a lot of laughs a lot of jokes it's kind of nice you know with finals coming up to have some kind of humor maneuvered intertwined with that so that's great and then again a lot of different music productions I know one is happening tonight as well specifically but in the past there's been an orchestra the winter dance concert right there um yeah and then give-a-thon so this is an event that NHS board which I'm a part of really planned thoroughly and that a lot of people at our school have been involved in for the past month in November and we recently got to see our impact on that through collection day and delivery day we had a record-breaking 400 families supported a lot of children received gifts
0131200 specifically and we got 67 bikes which is a lot because when I went to Walmart a bike was like a hundred dollars so that's sixty seven hundred dollars worth of likes right there so that is just crazy to see um but you can just see the hard work in action all those gifts right there in the warehouse students helping loading the trucks on delivery day um just getting together to do something fun and meaningful and then this past week so last week uh peer helpers had a de-stress week it's finals time early decisions were released last week and are being released this week so a lot of stress is in the air um just trying to finish up the school year and reach that finish line of winter break so peer helpers kind of
014helped us with that library and comfort dogs having this tea time session I know on Wednesday they had a they had an Instagram takeover and then thirdness Thursday sorry they gave kindness cards out to everyone um so that was really nice really motivational and then Friday they had trivia as well so just these just showcase the different events and aspects of students and Stevenson have been implementing to just ease our way through this weekend and so once we break where we can celebrate our time with our families for Christmas Hanukkah whatever whatever holiday they're celebrating and just to nicely end there so this has been Stevenson in 2022. um a lot of different events have happened both good and bad but this just shows how Stevenson students use the events and spirit we have to
015get through those bad moments along with celebrating the good through their passions seeing other people pursue their passions whether it be a play a competition serving others or just doing something for fun um thank you any questions for Alex just did another amazing job wonderful winter break thank you so much you guys have a great winter break too thank you thank you thank you thank you anyway we've got Awards you want to stay for the awards for sure [Laughter] [Music] yeah yep all right moving on so um tonight we're very excited to begin the meeting with a series of uh Awards um and our ambassador Awards our awards that are reserved for our students um and every once in a great great while a faculty uh or staff member um but who have achieved some
016of the highest Honors that are available to them including the highest levels of academic achievement um and or the highest levels of athletic or activity achievement and so tonight we're just blessed to be able to honor a number of individuals and so Mark onishek our director of curriculum and instruction we'll take it away yeah we're very very excited to announce a few of our state champions and I thought I would begin with the ihsa 2A girls tennis individual state champion her name is Sarah Wang she was unable to be here this evening but I did want to share out the name publicly along with Coach Jose Morales and Coach Mindy Fitzgibbons thank you we do have a truly outstanding group of swimmers here tonight um they are our 200 freestyle State swim Champions I'm gonna
017announce their names Abby Collins [Applause] thank you your mom is sitting right there so take a look thanks Stephanie caroba [Applause] taking a picture Lydia flooring pictures thanks easy guitar tone foreign [Applause] [Laughter] braided macro this one's for Stevenson's Instagram tighter one two three [Applause] questions I remember was nerve-wracking but I think I like blacked out for myself I don't remember anything I just remember touching the wall that's a good thing what was the time winning time uh we would have won one three oh awesome congratulations [Applause] sandwich yeah super senior yeah [Music] you know some swimming in college oh really yes where are we going I don't know I'm going to watch you next game it's great no yeah yeah not yet okay so how many years you guys have been practicing in the
018water since you're three years old four years old yeah I mean I think I was six when I started six wow same same wow started like at 10 competitively wow yeah same but I was probably started swimming at like four four wow yeah I started when I was six [Laughter] [Music] I'm right there [Music] um that would be great um his name is Alfredo apostles [Applause] and has been working here at Stevenson for 45 years thank you amount of time and others say he's not just a fantastic um staff member here but just a wonderful family man and just a dear dear person so if you want to give him a big round of applause [Applause] thank you very much [Music] everybody said thank you very much everybody because this is cool I started when
019I was single so and then I married I got my wife bought a house thanks for the job I got it this place you take care of more than my house oh yeah oh my gosh and and I loved my job I'm not tired yet because I like it what I do thank you foreign to give um we have someone who has been working with us closely excuse me for at least two years and unfortunately she's going to be retiring soon we wanted to give her something to show our appreciation for all that she's done for us because she is always there to help us and it's not just that she's there it's her view her attitude you've been incredible and we really appreciate everything he's done so let us give you a couple of
020things um you wouldn't I think will be special is a notebook with comments that people have Britain thank you oh thank you so much thank you so much congratulations foreign so Gary similar question what was the last leg like thank you Carol well all right well thank you for um that part of the meeting it's always fun to be able to recognize um folks with our ambassador Awards um but the second best part of the meeting is always our curriculum team presentations and tonight we have representatives from our social studies Division and including Brad Smith our director and so I'll let you introduce your team and kick us off oh thank you and good evening very tough acts there to follow [Music] yeah they're flexible you can be more comfortable and you've acquainted so there's
021four members we have three members of this team uh actually two teams believe it or not it's AP microeconomics and AP macroeconomics but to keep it simple we're AP economics for tonight and it is a absolutely wonderful Bunch that I am I'm thrilled to get to introduce and I have to take us on a bit of a journey maybe eight nine ten years ago even I remember talking with um sander quite extensively because we had a four-person AP econ team that we had a cluster of retirees coming and we sat down and really really talked through what do we want and what do we think we need to keep the strength of a really strong economics AP economics program going and growing but also meet some of the adjustments and changes in the type of
022education and instruction we're looking for for our students and Xander and I really sat there and talked through we want people that do know econ and and that's not exactly easy to always find in the social studies world so finding econ people but people who really really truly care about individual students the way here at Stevenson care and then that want to learn and grow as Educators and um that's sometimes difficult to find with the economics hires that are out there that don't always come with the same credentials and certification and that have different paths but finding people that are truly truly committed to learning and growing together because they care about the kids and the economics is important but it's secondary to that and we're thrilled to have this thriving team in a few
023um move to the next patient you'll see it as a growing team and and oddly enough one of the neat things about this presentation tonight is it's three years in the working we started these conversations actually more than three years in the working so a lot of those faces there I think Anthony certainly wasn't wasn't here at the time um and some of them were certainly younger Theo also wasn't here when we started talking about having a uh and we will soon be adding to the picture as well which is wonderful too but we we wanted to come together and talk about um the ways that this team or teams and really taken the task of integrating academic scl within their discipline in meaningful and purposeful ways that I think are leading us to a
024place of student self-reflection and and really very personalized academic agency which they take very seriously and is near and dear to their hearts and though we weren't using the terms probably nine ten years ago but finding a team that would keep that growth and moving towards that individualized student agency is really what you guys are here and going to show us about and I'm very proud to have even the work you've been doing the last six seven years thank you thank you yeah um I'm Lindsay de Paul this is my fifth year on the economics team this year I'm teaching college prep economics and AP micro I'm Sandra Wright I'm 24 years on the econ team so I do micro macro uh yeah the energy that these two have brought in is just amazing it's
025just awesome I like everything about what we are at Stevenson these two and body it's been awesome um and I am Chloe maduk I have been teaching econ for seven years um and apart from AP macro I also teach AP Human Geography so step outside of that realm a little bit um okay so um I know you all have a burning question every night you're thinking to yourself wow what's the difference between micro macro um so it was cute when the students representative was talking about helping kids figure out what um classes might be a good fit for them and what are things opportunities that they can try because we get this conversation every year in our department from our colleagues like what's the difference between micro and macro um so um content-wise or curriculum
026wise the macroeconomics perspective is going to be looking at most of the stuff we're going to see in our headlines you know or I just was watching the Janet Yellen thing are we headed into a recession um what's going on with inflation what's happening with unemployment rates all the really exciting um you know good news uh that rolls out especially in the last couple years all that good macro news um no so that's the piece for us it's definitely more of the social studies our kids who love social studies this is the way we really kind of hook them in and then we go from there and we hook them in with micro microeconomics is going to be looking at how do firms decide uh price and quantity of output and you know how is
027the airline industry different than the farmer's market and different from a pharmaceutical company that might have a patent and um so things as simple as how do you decide how to maximize your capacity when you're at the um um Patriot Wellness Center and you're trying to decide do I get a smoothie and a nakashi ball um given the amount of money that I have and then like one other treat uh what's the optimal combination so um we're just trying to expose kids to kind of the um the field and and tie as much social studies and math and so we try to make it as interdisciplinary as possible but we are social studies Geeks so you know I'm just gonna say to put that right out there okay so um as Brad mentioned you guys
028this presentation's actually been three four years in the making um it started back in the fall of 2019. we were actually supposed to present to you guys in the spring of 2020 but because of the pandemic that got postponed um and then we were supposed to go again last December and scheduling Catholic got postponed again so here we are finally um doing our presentation but we thought it was really important to kind of tell you guys where we started at out at um back in 2019 and then how that has evolved into what we are doing today because we've really taken our initial footfold and just transformed our two classes all together um so we have two kind of things that we've been working on um the first one just kind of looking at the
029castle framework is um this idea of self-awareness this is something that in macro we've really kind of Taken hold of and it's been um used in conjunction with the student voice survey and we really kind of transformed our course as a result of that um and then responsible decision making is the other one which AP micro has really been kind of focusing in on and we've kind of I'm still in Janessa's analogy had these two tracks of trains that have been running and we're going to slowly start to merge them so micro this year officially adopted the self-awareness component and my uh macro will soon adopt the responsible decision making so we wanted to kind of tell you about both of these because we have some great work going on in both classes that's merging
030together so to start us out um this idea of self-awareness in the student voice survey so if you want to um when we first sat back or sat down with Molly back in Fall of 2019 um we took a look at our student voice survey and all three of us were teaching AP macro at the time and we realized that there was one area in particular that the numbers were relatively low and that was the value of subject so if you don't know the topics or student voice survey are listed there valuing a subject is one of those topics um specifically within this the students are asked the following questions how interesting do you find the things that you're learning in class how useful do you think the classes to your future how important is
031it for you to do well how much if at all do these topics relate to your personal values and then how often do you use these ideas um from class in your daily life so overall we realized okay we're doing a great job of teaching the content our kids are doing really well relatively speaking on the AP exam um but they're not seeing how this relates to their daily life which with macros a little hard because how do you look at what the Federal Reserve is doing and the federal government and how do you connect those policies to your daily life so with this you know I'm sorry um we really wanted to kind of look at how we could grow this particular category so when we started in the spring of 2019 um our
032value on the subject was at 58 across the board um and we have what about 250-ish kids each semester that take this class and then through the work that we've been doing we've now gotten that all the way up to 78 over the course of these past couple years so we've seen a substantial amount of growth so we wanted to kind of tell you guys what we've done to grow this category so what we did is again like I said took a look at that student voice data and we're like this is an area that we feel is a deficiency and we really could do a lot better at helping kids understand why this is important for them to understand on a day-to-day basis so what it ended up leading to is the realization that
033we needed to create an entire new skill we have two skills we have the economic application our analysis analysis thank you which was the multiple choice kind of component of the class and we had our graphene which was frq writing those kind of fell in line with the College Board and the skills that they're expected to perform on that particular exam but what we ended up realizing is there's a whole component of this class that is missing that is just as valuable as that and it was the academic application um so what we decided to do was create an entire skill it has been a labor of love that is still evolving um and essentially what we've decided to do is at the end of every unit we add ask the kids to make these
034conclusions to take what we've talked about in class and apply it to their day-to-day life and we've developed this through a series of projects one of which is uniform to both macro and micro so we're going to kind of present some student examples from that point so yeah so um and thinking about this skill to kind of piggyback off of what Colleen said you know we recognize that economists do more than answer multiple choice questions and draw graphs right so we really tried to be intentional in thinking about what might be useful to a student in the future if they're looking to go into econ what would the work of an economist really look like so in addition to knowing the theory being able to create the graphs using those graphs to predict the future
035impact of the policy students would economic data and then explain that data with the theory so in designing these Assessments in this new skill we really wanted to give students an opportunity to both look at real world data sets and then use what they had learned in class to make sense of those data sets so this is where this our first assessment in this category that is used in both courses both the micro and the macro courses was was derived from so the the assessment in both classes is called micro student experts and what it does is give students an opportunity to become experts on one topic throughout the course and the way that this works is students work in a small group so with two or three other other individuals and they are responsible
036for a couple of different things first for becoming kind of the classroom expert on the economic model so they're responsible for presenting the model to the class at the beginning of the unit rather than a kind of a typical teacher-led presentation and then with that understanding we ask them to look at real world data that connects to that topic so to to explicitly make those real world connections so they might for example look at the the BLS unemployment statistics for November of 2022 and then use their understanding of how unemployment is calculated what that means to make draw conclusions about how the economy is doing and then a piece that they also really enjoy doing is this can connection to peers where not only are they connecting the data and the theory to kind of
037larger um macroeconomic goals of the United States they're trying to connect it to things that they interact with every day so for example I had a lot of connections to giveathon with presentations in November as students were kind of seeing okay this is this actually relates to what I'm learning about in class so that those were some macro examples these are some micro examples again it's the same assessment in both courses but the connections to peers end up being a little bit different across both of those two so in micro we have seen more connections to things like financial aid college applications tuition the other piece that we're asking them to do is to use that additional literacy strand about research so we're asking them to do the news media connection and we're really having
038interesting conversations because our students want to put forth Twitter posts um and which is fine it just gives us to have that it gives us a chance to have that conversation of why did you pick this particular person on Twitter who are they why are they important why is what they have to say um meaningful um you know of course we default I'm old school I default back to like you know is there a printout version of this magazine um but you know just that piece where we're having that other Comfort we're building more um uh more than just our discipline literacy and skills we're also working on those research literacy skills that are important um so that's the real world has really offered us a chance to for kids to it's interesting kids will
039pick articles from um things that are of interest to them to hear them tie stuff from countries that they're familiar with that they're comfortable with um you know so we're hearing a lot about um examples outside of just the American perspective uh which is so valuable for them not only to feel like they can represent um things that are meaningful to them but also for our other students to get exposure to a much wider application of ideas in the market okay so Oh that's oh see this is why I still start um so the next piece that we have is in micro we've been working on and we've been doing this again as Colleen has said I feel like we should just call us it should the whole thing should be AP econ um so
040we started doing some pieces where we were looking at student performance on formatives and trying to give them a chance to say okay based on how you did on this particular formative let's adjust the practice that you're gonna do and we tried doing some casual informal Workshop type experiences and or choices where we would list different opportunities for students to practice and the thing that we noticed over time the research in action that we saw in our classroom was kids default to whatever the dominant personality of the table chooses to do so if we had four or five different practices based on level difficulty or what you needed to work on kids still would go with well what's you know so don would turn over me like what's Terry doing and then you know whatever
041tearing picks that's what Don is going to do even if it's really not the best fit for him um and uh and then also there was an element of um you would get the kids who would grab everything and we're having this conversation of you really this is not what you need to take from the options you know maybe I just want you to focus on uh option A not a through D or maybe you just need to do d and c um options so we really started looking at how does this how can we um formalize it or be put more parameters on this to really help kids and and what language do we need for ourselves so last spring we got to go to a conference um learning in the brain right learning
042the brain um with this whole group went it was [Music] um yeah it was awesome because I think it was something we had been talking about since before the pandemic so you can imagine what happens when you get a group of uh super nerdy people together going on a trip for the first time at post pandemic um and um one of the pre-conf conference workshops that we came across was uh Katie Novak who has Universal Design for Learning and her idea is that if we're having a party for her analogy is if we're having a party if we're having a dinner party I can make tuna noodle casserole right and everybody can eat it or I can say well yeah that's easy and that has a lot of variety in it um but the other
043thing that I could do is if I want everybody to have a really good time I could think about what are some options that are available that I could serve that um meet more needs or make it fit my guests a little bit better because um if you had 200 oil casserole at our house not a single person would eat it I might just because I would feel bad but um we have people in our house who would definitely stick their nose up um and so you know at the same so this differentiation push is have all these options and that's what we were exploring and it just really wasn't working and she kind of like for us was when she said you know think of it more of like a buffet that you don't
044want to be a shorter cook it is not realistic and we tried I mean I felt like oh my gosh the pandemic is giving us this opportunity to differentiate and individualize learning and if I just put every pathway for every kid on canvas it'll be amazing um but that's really not what it isn't what our kids need um so Universal Design for Learning is kind of saying what are the things the options that you would offer at a buffet that you know are meaningful and and purposeful for learning that give kids choices within some parameters um and so again if I offer a buffet I can meet the needs of the vegetarians and the you know the meat eaters and the people who want to keep um you know who have dietary restrictions because of
045health issues or religious issues ETC I can make very specific choices that allow people to kind of work and pick and choose within the buffet and so that's what Universal Design for Learning is you want to okay so what we do is we've created Choice Sports for our kids so what we feel like we are is we're the experts in the content right we're the experts in the pedagogy so we have created um the choice boards in which we pull together all of the opportunities for kids to explore the content um but I mean you might be surprised by this but I would not be good doing a video lecture because it's just not my thing but there are amazing people out there who can and so I think our kids go out and they
046explore the internet and they watch these videos and our piece says well how do we pull that how do we curate that for them but also give them choice and are there some things that are better than others um so we are giving them structured class time in which they can access the content either through Reading with guiding reading notes we have uh different parameters for that we have graphic organizers we have traditional note-taking options um and then also some different practice uh uh options for them so on the choice board kids get to choose what they want to pull from the buffet but we also have certain pieces on the buffet that say you must have kind of like um I do think about it like your your Healthy Living of you must have
047a protein you must have a vegetable you know you must have um um you know three different colors of your veggies right I don't know I just um sorry it's the analogy was really good in my head this morning and yesterday um but that's the piece with the choice part so we give them some guided pieces and say you must do this but then there's other choice and then um we will um give them a formative assessment and then based on the formative assessment we adjust and tailor the practice that comes afterwards and you're like okay yeah that's what teachers are doing all the time and RP says yes we've just upped the game in terms of the coaching that goes on so that when Lindsay um does really really well on a particular topic
048I will say that's great I'm only going to just ask for like the um enrichment practice but you've really struggled with understanding this particular content or being able to do these practice problems can you show me what you've done and we start having more conversations about what did you do to practice to try and give them more um concrete feedback on I made this choice to practice and access my learning so like you know in the olden days I would have said did you do the Quizlet did you do the vocabulary or we would have said you need to work harder or you need to learn the vocabulary and now we're saying um okay how did you practice the vocabulary well this way that you've practiced it doesn't seem to be working can we try
049something different can we look at um and so instead of telling kids to study harder or work harder or do more words really trying to focus on on um where do you need to practice and is the method that you're using working for you and if it's not kind of coaching into um a different piece so we're having a lot more one-on-one conversations with kids or we might be remediating um and so this kind of gets us into our student agency and student agencies where they are um these components come in here identif identity belonging resiliency efficacy and proficiency um by saying to them we trust in the choices that you're making uh in this particular example because we can see that you're perf you're able to perform you're able to demonstrate Mastery or proficiency
050these other places let's back up and rethink what you're doing and I'm going to give you a couple options and you can try again and then you know we've with some students we've done more hand-holding where we've said okay you know you're you're overwhelmed you're drowning we need to put some more life preservers life preserver and also maybe get you a little swim coach to help you with that and other students are ready to to rock and roll um so we sometimes mix them up with mixed ability so we might say okay this table is going to work together because on this particular project and it's good to have kids with different levels of understanding but then on the next Workshop day we might cluster them based on where they're struggling and do some real
051targeted intensive remediation based on what students need so it's very fluid for our kids on a day-to-day basis I feel like all over am I done so this fits into the idea of again going back to student voice survey the um pedagogical Effectiveness um and again you can see the questions that the students are asked to identify there I'm not going to read all of them but essentially like how interesting does the teacher make um what you're learning in class uh what are some of the other big ones um for this class how clearly does the teacher present the information how well um do you understand or not understand the topics um so again using that student voice data this is focusing on micro because this is where we've really been working on this so
052this one for us is how well can this teacher tell whether or not you understand the topic that was a big one for us we want kids to know that we understand that what they're learning and what they're not learning because otherwise I can't serve you um and then also um you know because the kids will say well I'm an auditory learner I'm a visual learner and I I mean I now have a high schooler and a seventh grader who tells me that all the time I'm like no you're not honey um but there's more to right you can't just only be an auditory learning or only just be a visual learner there's more to the story and the process um so what we found through the student voice data is again we began this
053work kind of informally in the fall of 2021 and that um particular component was 77 and then this winter when we gave the survey again it has now jumped up to 89 um and this is something that we hold very true because we have Juniors and seniors they're going off to college next year and we want them to be able to feel confident in the decisions that they are making as students be able to advocate Advocate and also know that there's a variety of ways that you can go about learning the content and if it doesn't work the first time then it's okay to go back and reassess and maybe think okay what worked and what didn't and how can I adjust to do better for the next time um so so with that adjustment
054piece one additional component that we wanted to build in a few times throughout the semester was some really targeted self-reflection uh the other teachers and I felt like we were having a lot of conversations with frustrated students where they would tell us well I studied a lot and I still did bad and that didn't really give us a whole lot of information in terms of where to where to kind of direct them for the future so we designed um some kind of very targeted assessment Reflections that we've been giving after the second unit test after the fourth and after the sixth unit test and these reflection questions some of them are from a checklist like you see and some of them are open-ended and they're designed to help students identify first what concepts am I
055struggling with of the specific content what must I do in order to be successful on a question like this in the future so we were noticing trends of vocabulary related issues versus graphing related issues and we wanted students to be able to recognize that for themselves so that if they can see that that vocab is their problem that they can use a vocab related tool to study in the future like making flashcards or something like that and then we asked them also okay now that you've recognized that these are the issues how might you better prepare in the future for a similar assessment and again we felt like giving them a specific checklist of steps that they could take to more actively study would help us avoid the conversation of well I reviewed my notes
056right that's like okay we're not again we're not quite sure what that means but here's some things that we think might help you to be successful um so these are just some examples of a final assessment reflection questions student work so for example the student on the left when she looked through the questions that she missed um noticed that the issue was looking at a competitive market versus a firm so something specific that she could review um you know clearly identify the difference between the two and be successful in the future and then student on the right is an example of a student that noticed she was having vocabulary issues and making flashcards might be something that could help her to be successful so for the future of the course both AP micro and macro
057we're hoping to continue to improve Valley valuing of subject through economic application standard Dr Wright and I today we're talking about the last assessment that we just gave in micro and how could we improve that to kind of better increase student understanding and then continue to improve student self-efficacy and learning strategies through this implementation of udl and again through that very targeted student self-reflection thank you for having a lot that's happened over three years so any questions I have several choose two Choice it's it's really impressive what you just did in um Dr Claudel and all the groups always sit here and tell us this and that about learning how to teach it's about learning how kids learn or finding out how kids learn and that's exactly you think you're sitting there having the kids
058identify what techniques are that they need to use so that they can learn and to your point it's it's not just all I read well how did you read or what did you you know really diving into that's really impressive I'm curious with the first um the First Column that I was I waited to ask the question I hope I can remember were people valued the the subject in in the application it it's interesting because did you find that that also then led to having a Snowball Effect and it led to a Better Learning because now they were appreciating how excused and having other kinds of consequences so I think um we're one of the we're all about we've got content um so in AP right they add more and more content um and the
059time that we get with kids is getting shorter and shorter um and so we actually we did a significant audit our belief was the scores will come if you're doing what you need to do with kids the scores will come um and so we felt like it was worth soccer there's some elements of the content um first of all we couldn't even stand up and lecture every day and cover it all anyway so there's some stuff that we made sacrifices for we said kids can get access you know some of the stuff they can access pretty easily themselves some stuff takes more of us and um valuing in the content the more we did the enrichment things the higher the scores on the AP exams have been because they're really integrating it they're synthesizing it
060to a different level that beyond what they would need to do for the AP exam so um they talk about it like um after the exam they're talking about oh yeah you know I remember the the labor market project that we did that really helped me to understand um marginal revenue product and and then that's how I got that graph down you know so we are finding that by using the application material they're getting a deeper understanding material and yeah like the conversations like I have kids all the time they'll email me and be like oh my gosh this was in the new stage you see this I was like no I did it but thanks for sharing like they're being more aware of the world around them and starting to make some of those
061personal connections of just like oh like we were just talking about foreign currency Market in class and like they're looking at um what was it the the microchip Factory I was like the new largest like Financial investment in U.S history and they're like oh we just talked about this concept in class I'm like yeah like that's awesome and so they're they get excited about it more than they ever did because we didn't realize until we started doing this that for us it's easy to make those direct connections because we're so ingrained in it it's what we do it's what we live and breathe but for them it wasn't and we kind of took that for Advantage and I feel like now that we've made more of an explicit effort to help them see how it
062lives in the world around them they're getting more excited about it we've had parents come up to us and talk to us and be like the conversations that they have with us at night like we didn't even know that they knew this stuff about the economy that's that's what we want to have so and the other thing I would add to that to Steve's point that I think is really important that they didn't even take the time to recognize themselves but I think it is very important it's from the time we went to this conference to even their data in all six categories in the fall even though our initial conversation was this conversation of valuing of subject last spring well even before last spring right but then even the results come this fall in
063all six areas as they started to make these shifts they saw a tremendous growth and so even though these are the only two Focus to your point one that entire culture and that climate of the classroom changes we see tremendous growth in all areas oh can I can I I guess I had the same thought about the the way you're teaching or how they're learning to learn I mean that's going to apply in everything that they do and it's going to give them a better understanding of themselves and it's going to give them the confidence that they need and it's just like goes on and on that's fantastic yes just real quick so for those classes are they just one semester class or two yeah you could do both yeah well do a lot of
064kids take both I was wondering we're sending more crossover the nice thing with it being a semester um there's a lot of flexibility so we're seeing some kids take one junior year the other one pops up senior here I've got one who's doing back to back in the same semester um so um I do think that is reflective of kind of like what's going on in the room is that more kids are saying oh like this is not only accessible but I can it's not just a silo I've also had a few students take College Prep economics and then decided that they wanted to take an AP yeah can you talk a little bit about if you can the difference between how the students are taking to these strategies and College Prep versus AP yeah
065yes um so in college prep the with the on the choice board so for example we do use the choice boards in college prep um we are it's a little bit more structured so like Dr I said you know you have to have you have to take the protein and you have to take the vegetables we do give a little bit more guidance in terms of which resources they should be pulling from but I have seen and this is the first semester that we've implemented it in college prep I have seen the grades in college prep go up as well so it has been something that has been very successful in college prep and we do a similar type of data application assessment what we call it the current state of the economy assessment where
066they where students look at unemployment numbers inflation numbers and GDP numbers and then they use all of what they've learned throughout the semester to make sense of those of that data and argue okay we're headed into a recession or we think the economy is doing really well and when I ask the students to reflect on the on the semester at the end of the semester they do say that that was really valuable and it kind of helps them tie everything together I think the cool thing too is when we talk about them being experts like you would be amazed what they explore and share with us as they're because they're the ones leading the course then for that topic so even in college prep they come with their a game and um we all have
067I mean we've got the backup ready to go in case like you know they flake out no one shows up or they miss something but we're finding over time we're not like they're they're nailing it um and it's really cool to see them to give you the background when we start every new topic the kids actually introduce the topic to their classmates so instead of Us coming up and saying okay this is what GDP is this is how we calculated it's like okay we're gonna talk about GDP today here in the student Network and it's really the students teaching their peers about the topic and then we come in and fill in the blanks and go to that next level that they're not ready to teach their peers about but this is how we introduce
068all of our topics so to say when writing Rec letters when you know because we get some Juniors when we ask them like what is the thing in the class that stood out for you or what are you most proud of or what do you they're coming back to these pieces they're not I mean they're like yes I grew in my analysis but what they were they're really giving us something that's meaty that they can we can I can talk about in a Rec letter uh and and feel confident that yeah you're right this is I have your I have a sample of this work I can but um I mean that's what's exciting to us too is when they're coming back and saying yeah when I presented to my peers you know a year
069ago in October about blah blah blah um that was really cool because it was the first time you know I was I was the rock star like their their topic was dealing with uh monetary policies literally like last week you walked in and said so do you think the fed's going to raise the interest rate by like um my guess is but I don't know and he's like how is it gonna play on the stock market I'm like literally you could have given like no care in the world about this class like three months ago and then you did this presentation and now like you analyze interest rates like a hawk I'm like okay great I'm not ready for the FED yeah I'm like some days it might be I'm like oh gosh don't forget
070what have you learned about this I know that Steven some grad who's a PhD who worked at the New York fed and was a professor in college who just took a job to go back to the Fed so maybe you can use this person yeah I just want to chime in I have to say that this was like the sleeper hit of 2022 for me because when we sat down and you were like Mike I was like it's gonna be amazing but your energy that you're bringing to this work and that I love the fact that the way that you're approaching this work is Meaningful because when you were talking about differentiation early on I was like oh my gosh this is a lot of heavy lifting for educators you have found a way to
071work so much more efficiently and effectively your energy is coming through and I'm like oh my gosh these kids are excited they should all take microeconomics but they're also learning about themselves as Learners and to Steve's Point that's just such a wonderful thing that they're going to take with them wherever they go our piece I remember a long time ago um Mark brought in somebody who said word the speaker who talked about where do we want our kids in 30 years or at 30. sorry where do we want our kids at 30 where do we want them and so we've always seen this as Journey that we're the first step on the journey um and that's what we look at is what are some skill sets that we can start laying around for and support
072that you know because everyone says well will you use this in your job I don't know labor Market's changing a whole lot um but will I need to be able to reflect on what I've done find out you know the information will get more and more accessible so how do I um kind of Wade through the information pull out what's important but also yeah find out what's working for me what's not so what is feedback how can I get myself feedback you know that's that efficacy piece that's awesome I'm being fun for your choice for the concept I love it so much thank you very much presentation have a nice holiday and we're sorry thank you guys thank you so much thank you all right well it's all down downhill um so next item is
073uh approval of our board policy updates um for the most part uh these were again as they typically are mostly um tiny wordsmithing and footnotes Carol correct with the exception of um policy for colon 9-0 which is Student Activity and fiduciary funds from press issue 106 and Sean do you want to give us just like a brief elevator pitch what was the change um it really just what they're taking a look at is how you record those funds on our client it's nothing the it's nothing we've already been doing it so it's all great but this is for you had the attorneys look at it just to be sure that we're yeah yeah just to be sure that we're in alignment and after you've approve the motion yes fire away so anyway the board tonight
074we're recommending that the board adopt policy updates to current board policies as contained within press plus issue 109 as well as policy 4 colon 9-0 as presented creative emotion so moved got it so Eric and I were talking earlier because I had some trouble with the this is my own clicking on the links and after he helped me I found the changes in the footnotes and stuff in the in the in the policies and what I'm confused about is how do we use they specifically say that when you adopt the policy you do not adapt the footnote it says that in the Press thing how do we use are the footnotes kind of reference stuff that we would go back to but they're not actually in the board policy okay if you went on our
075website you would not see any footnotes um listed online yeah interesting I'm sorry any other and it keeps us I mean just real quickly it keeps us in compliance right from a compliance perspective Okay so any questions about the policies would you please pull the board it's a Voice vote oh I'm sorry all in favor opposed yes okay and then you will see our typical um Human Resources report nothing particularly out of the ordinary in there but if you have any questions um certainly now would be a time to ask and that takes us to the business section and we begin tonight with a public hearing for the 2022 tag celebrities correct so um just briefly before we um go into public comment um as you know this is an annual routine for the school
076board to set the levy the levy is of course based on the Consumer Price Index or inflation on the equalized assessed value of property eav and new property so the uh CPI for last year was seven percent um it is capped at five percent per the property tax extension limitation law the um value of our properties um as of November estimated to go up 2.5 percent and the estimated value of new construction is 45 million dollars um so with that we are in fact um going to be uh recommending a levy for the 2022 tax year and the amount of 115 million 300 even um and that would excuse me 115 million 300 000 thank you um forgot how to read today and that would leave our projected fund balance or which what I should
077say is our protected fund balance right now at the end of this year is scheduled to be 41 million 605 747 on the group modified accrue basis set at the end of the fiscal year that's at the end of the accessory correct so right now it's recommended that we open a public Hearing in accordance with the truth and Taxation law to hear public comment on the 2022 tax level and I have a motion the voice of all in favor aye aye opposed okay we have open for public comment public comment the results so can I have a motion that we close the truth and Taxation some of them this again is a Voice vote all in favor and can I have a motion to approve the tax levy so moved second any other questions for
078Sean before we vote on the motion okay um would you please pull the board of course and bye moons eye Tire aye pressed aye no all right ciao hi it carries seven or nothing okay okay next time next item is um the approval of contractors or the uh contractors for the summer of 23 and summer 24. improvements to academic facilities um as you we've discussed um previously in our site facility uh meetings we have a number of Renovations and maintenance projects to keep in line keep our facilities in line and not uh really age if you will um and break down uh the bids happened over the course of the last several um well maybe 10 days and what I'll say is that the um bids came in about 230 000 under estimates are the
079most recent estimates that we had in October um so following any discussion we are recommending that the Board of Education award the contracts as presented um earlier and above in your board book and a cost not to exceed 99 929 771 dollars even and that does include the Professional Services for both our Architects and construction management for promotion please some moved a second um Sean is trying to make note that um that figure um includes some costs that are a carryover into 2024. correct in fact this is going to cross two fiscal years correct um this fiscal year next fiscal year and possibly even into 25 right so it's a little bit higher than I think overall than we had projected but and includes it includes projects for the next couple years and so we're
080spanning two budgets here we're we're spanning two budgets a little bit and part of the reason that we bid some of those projects together one we couldn't do the project in its entirety over one summer so we had to do it over two summers and so we created economies of scale by holding the bid all together right now saving the district some money as well as ensuring that all of the materials that we need will be available when we're ready and running we're ready and running to hit the ground and that's okay see yeah and that's mostly the performance testing yeah for sure so we have the motion we've talked a little bit any other questions for Sean because we've spent a lot of times facilities and finance going through the consequences of this would
081you please pull the board certainly moons I Tire hi Frost no aye Ben Joseph aye ciao aye gorson Hi Well it carries and then you can see our we just have our uh seems like quarterly uh for your request from Smart procure um again trying to saucer software um we keep supplying them the information our software does fabulous stuff other than that I have nothing else for tonight can I have a motion to approve the consent agenda I'm not sure who was first on that Terry but who's the second I'll second it oh thank you any questions for Arizona consent agenda would you please pull the board sure all right Frost no all right what was I approved okay um so just a couple final items for tonight the first is you have in front
082of you a book that not sure who recommended that Steve recommended that they use it in one of the sessions we want to yeah yeah so uh from downtown uh that was a recommendation that came out of the conference so um we wanted to make sure that everybody had a copy of that um also um we talked about [Music] um especially for our new board members um each month uh Troy and I host a parent breakfast um and a couple of you had asked well can I get a copy of the letter like what do you send home for that so this is just a copy of the letter that Troy and I sent home uh and the documents that we send with it we usually send 100 letters home 25 freshman sophomore junior seniors
083we get about 10 folks that come to those meetings each month-ish it's actually a great number because we're able to have really good conversations Jamie was sitting in on those conversations the last couple months this morning uh and we frame the conversations just so you know um all around constructive feedback so actually to the point you were making earlier um we don't really want to share your compliments at that meeting you know we get that uh here and there but this meeting is very specifically focused on constructive feedback and sometimes parents come in with a long list sometimes they just have one item this morning um it was interesting we talked all about students not having lockers to freshman advisory to some actually good suggestions for communication course selection how to identify career Pathways things
084like that so it was it was good um and we had about eight parents there who gave us some really good feedback so just wanted you to be able to see kind of what that you know information looks like um you can go from there and then the last item I have for you is as some of you know Ann loves to make toffee so we have your yearly batch of coffee for our board members thank you Sean you get none thank you thank you no not even alone so that's all I have for tonight thank you can I hear a promotion to adjourning thank you