001bill withers japanese uh do we need to have someone walk in from the camera that's a question yeah it's very wait what is alive with your viper yeah it's a little bit delayed on here but it's still going through how much of a delay is that there's that much of a delay it's not delayed on here but it's delayed on other devices okay hold on we've got people on right now okay good evening again uh for people here in the gymnasium people on our live stream uh apologize for the delay at the beginning there uh we're trying to do some uh some different kinds of technical things and do this live stream and as it was already mentioned to me murphy's law what will happen what will go wrong will go wrong so i think
002we've got some of the bugs worked out so we're going to go ahead we're going to get started tonight my name is mr plutcher i'm the principal here at gentile high school this is a really uh exciting evening for um eighth graders you're looking to come in and transition to high school and so we're just going to go through some information now you guys the students have already heard a lot of this information from our counselors but this is an opportunity for parents to hear the same and so we're just going to go through the information and we're going to do a couple other new technical things for you as well you'll see in a little bit there's a key we'll have a qr code on the screen it might be a little difficult for
003you to get that qr code to come up but you should have it in your folder so during the presentation if you have questions you can submit questions as soon as i hand off the mic i'll be monitoring those and we'll try to address your questions as they come up and then at the end of tonight's presentation we'll also have another qr code for a survey and get some feedback so tonight you can see tonight uh again i'm mr fletcher i'm the principal over here is mr stout he is the assistant principal he will be ducking out pretty soon now he's double booked tonight he's got a couple meetings that he has to go to tonight our counselors mr schmicker is over here mrs yoder is back here she was working the door um the
004school nurse mrs dean was working the door um we should have put mrs fredwell's picture up there she will be the nurse next year so you get to know her face and coach stoner has joined us too he's here to just kind of help us along as well so we're excited to get you a lot of great information so our outcomes tonight is we want to introduce you to the career pathway programs here at gym town high school connect those pathway programs to the new graduation process and review ninth grade scheduling requests so again you're about to eighth graders you're about to embark on your high school career four years seems like a long time when you say four years but it's going to go very quickly the other thing is your freshman year really
005is i mean the senior year is the one that everybody celebrates because it's the last year we're ready to graduate all of that stuff but your freshman year is really the most important year of high school it's where you lay that good solid foundation you build good habits that over the course of the next four years you're going to get really good grades you're going to get involved in a lot of programs activities sports things like that and you're going to have an enjoyable time one of the things that not only here at gym town but every high school that i've ever worked at we always spend a lot of time trying to get seniors across the finish line to graduation you guys you're going to be our guinea pigs we're going to work really
006hard to get everybody on track from get go and make sure we keep you there from get go we're going to try to invest a lot of time and energy in you all starting next year so that by the time you guys are juniors and seniors your course load is pretty manageable maybe you're spending half your day at the career center and you're just going to really enjoy those last couple years of high school so the work and in high school the work is really front loaded your freshman year your sophomore year you're going to be tackling a lot of those classes that you absolutely need to graduate and then the last couple years you're going to be working on classes to meet your graduation pathway requirements and we're going to cover all of that
007tonight so here's the qr code again i'll leave it here for a second if you want to try to scan it with your phone off the screen again i i had i had about a 50 rate of accuracy with this and i think it's because of the lighting and things but again if you look in your folder you will have some that qr code there as well so again as information is being presented please if you have questions go ahead and submit those and then we'll if it seems like a good time to interject with the questions i'll interrupt the speaker we'll try to address those as they go if not we will address some questions at the end with that being said mr wyatt schmicker is our guidance counselor a through l he's going
008to come i'm going to hand him he's now in charge all right thank you mr fletcher so for those who just saw i did take my mask off um slowly so you guys can hear me a little bit better uh we were messing around with it and it was kind of mumbly when i had my mask on and luckily there's no one around to have to deal with that so um yes i am the school counselor for the case loads a through well at the high school mrs yoder is in the back for the m through z's one great thing about the high school is that we cohort our students alphabetically instead of by grade level that's intentional um that process helps us build a better relationship a better rapport with our students throughout those
009four years um so it just seems like yesterday we were in the classrooms with our eighth graders kind of go over this presentation so luckily for us we have experts in the room as in your student because we really kind of grilled them and made sure they knew this information because there really is a lot of information when we get to high school one big thing is the screen behind me is our diploma options so every student at gym town high school is working towards the core 40. so the core 40 is indiana's college and career readiness diploma so that diploma when you walk across the stage and get to the real world it showcases to the world that you are college or career ready that being said there are two additional honors diplomas beyond
010the core 40. those are the core with academic honors and the core 40 with technical honors now one question we do get quite frequently in the student services office is which diploma is better and in comparison those honors diplomas are the same tier there is not one that's better than the other they're both honors distinction however both of those diplomas might have different criteria if you turn to your student and ask them just very briefly you know how many credits does it take for the core 40 they're going to roll their eyes and say 40 duh it's in the name we always tell students don't overthink it there's 40 gotta have classes that we have to get to get across the stage and those are listed above um for time's sake i'm not gonna dive
011into those because honestly it's not the most it's not the best conversation to have talking about diplomas but you have 40 gotta have classes for graduation so swinging back to those honors distinction diplomas the academic and technical honors diploma have three things in common the first is that you need 47 credits to reach graduation so it's seven additional credits beyond the 440. you have to have a 3.0 grade point average which is a b throughout high school as well as have a grade of a c or better and that's a local decision of a c minus or better for every grade on your transcript that counts towards your diploma so both honors distinction diplomas have those two things in common so some differences with that you have to have two fine arts credits because as
012well as ap or dual credit offerings now those ap and dual credit offerings we're not going to dive into tonight because those are typically reserved for students in their junior or senior year but we have plenty of opportunities to receive those credits just speaking of dual credits right now we have at least 30 dual credits that students can earn while they're in the high school just at gemtown as well as other opportunities maybe at the career center or other half day programming so for technical honors and i guess i really should have mentioned for the in-person spectators this is in your folder there's a sheet that is very much this the core 40 so you can follow along on on that route so for technical honors you have to have once again 47 credits a
0133.0 gpa and a grade of c or better on your transcript the difference is of course that you need six credits in a cte pathway and we're going to actually talk more about our pathway opportunities coming up but you have to have you know see or better in those pathways as well as earn industry certifications or other dual credits so just jumping ahead not looking at what questions might be coming in yes it is possible to change your diploma throughout your high school career like i said these diplomas are built off of the core 40 so it's the core 40 width so all of our students can can earn both diplomas both honors distinctions if they choose these are things that we can definitely tackle at the high school so continuing to talk about credits
014one great thing when we hit the high school is something students may not have had to really focus on throughout their k-8 experience and that is earning credits so a credit is earned for every class that a student passes and for the state of indiana that's a d minus or better to earn a passing grade so students as long as you earn a d minus or better obviously we want you to earn the highest grade possible that you're capable of but that is how we start to earn our credits and there's actually two classes right now at the junior high that students might be enrolled in that count towards high school credit those are algebra 1 and spanish one one unfortunate conversation we have with students is they say don't worry mr schmicker when i
015get to high school i'm gonna get my act together i'm gonna really try unfortunately right now we might be enrolled in two of those classes that already kind of count for high school there's two differences though for that so with algebra one we ask that all of our students pass a proficiency exam in order to move on to geometry so as we get into our packet and look at those things there's we'll talk about the end but that's why every student on that worksheet is a template has algebra one so as long as students pass a proficiency exam in algebra one they're able to move on to geometry their freshman year this is sometimes problematic for students and families when they don't quite understand that process so the rationale for us behind that to pass
016that proficiency exam is in order to make sure we're ready for this upper level math and science classes because we still have to take at least three years of math while we're in high school and if we're not proficient in algebra one we might be falling behind and maybe develop a math phobia or really resist in taking those classes that's something that's not something we want to take the risk on so that's why we really ensure that students are proficient in algebra one before moving on their freshman year spanish is however different one great thing about gentile high schools we front load classes front loading is essentially moving them down early into your high school career so you have additional opportunities or flexibilities in your schedule for half day programming such as the career center
017or an apprenticeship work based learning startup moxie all those opportunities we'll talk very briefly about later on but those are great reasons why we front load and we really focus on intentional planning for our schedule why we're having this conversation again tonight so for spanish students would just earn the grade from eighth grade into and it goes right onto their high school transcript so students right now are in their fir potentially in their first two classes for their high school transcript so i asked our students yesterday when we were covering this presentation essentially i didn't want them to say or raise their hand but just a clarifying conversation of how well are we doing in spanish that's our first class that we're working towards for high school credit while we might not be able to
018change last semester we still have nine whole weeks to get that grade up if it's not quite to what we want it to be additionally along credits we talk about pe and i like i always love to bring over some seniors that i have in p.e solely because they hate it they don't want to be there they wish they would have taken it early in their high school career but that's one of those gotta haves for graduation and it truly does not get easier the longer we put it off so one great thing about gentile is we do have what's called an alternative pe that alternative pe is through sports actually mr stoner joined us yesterday in class we used him as an example for students that might be interested in participating in football next
019year or in the fall excuse me so in the fall students can participate in football and start to earn that pe credit for that season the difference though is just being involved in pe or excuse me just being involved in sports does not mean you're going to earn the pe credit there's a form you have to fill out there are logs there's assessments quizzes and tests similar to the pe class but the great thing it's kind of like that two for one special while we're working on our season while we're working on our sport we're also earning credits for high school so this can really help like i said going back to that front loading this can really help alleviate some time in your schedule to maybe get involved in classes that you want to
020take because that's not something we might have had the opportunity to do in throughout ka either because we never really got to pick our classes it was we have to take these ones it's kind of state mandated when we get to high school we start to open up more and more opportunities for classes bringing us back to that 440 so there's 40 classes we have to have for graduation well our students at gym town have a seven period day and traditionally here for four years so we have 56 credit opportunities in high school so we have tons and tons of time to really invest in things that we want to do that are going to set us best up for high school or excuse me life after high school we talked to 8th graders yesterday
021and talked about that at gentile high school we begin with the end in mind because we set and work towards goals because we know where we want to be in the future as we start to roll into that pathway conversation that's going to be challenging for some students you're going to look to us and say you're expecting my students to pick a class that they want to do for the rest of their life not necessarily we just want to be intentional because we don't want to miss out on opportunities when we talked to students yesterday they might not have had etched in stone exactly what they do after high school but they have thoughts and ideas they might think here's a theme or here's something i really want to work towards and right there that's
022all we want to know because it's as just as important to find out what we don't want to do after high school as it is what we actually do want to do so high school is one of the best opportunities to explore those intro classes and really dive into just different areas that we might be interested in summer school is an opportunity for students to typically remediate for classes however this can once again help gain some flexibility in our schedule for that junior and senior year we use um health as one of the greatest options is every student has to take health that's one of those gotta house for the core 40. the challenge is that's that singleton class it's one class that doesn't really care if you're working in your schedule so sometimes things
023can get off sequence so we do have a lot of students that participate in summer school health either in person or virtually through indiana virtual academy every year unfortunately tonight we don't have what summer school is officially going to be yet um of course we're waiting for to get closer to really finalize those things with just the general state of the world right now but as soon as we have summer school opportunities if that's something you want to continue in or work towards um you guys will be more than happy and more than welcome to sign up for that we leave fine arts on on this slide solely because we need to know if you're interested in fine arts on that scheduling worksheet that we did yesterday as well as the worksheet that we have
024today there's spots at the bottom that says are you interested in participating in band choir 2d art theater arts because these are great opport great extracurriculars great opportunities for students to get involved because not every student is truly involved in that career pathway programming not every student's involved in sports but we want everyone to be connected in some capacity at gemtown because we find the students that are connected they just do they just perform better academically attendance wise behaviorally because they're working towards something as community as a cohort of students so that's why it's really important that if you're interested in participating or continuing to participate in fine arts we need to know so we can make sure it's in your schedule for next year all right so on the back of that 440 sheet
025is what's called the graduation pathway model so the graduation pathway model to me is very exciting solely because students no longer have to pass those high-stakes tests to graduate our current juniors and seniors have to pass the isep in order to graduate which is truly terrifying i told students yesterday and they might remember i'm not going to say it now we have just a mass amount of students that are at risk to graduate not because they're failing classes not because they're not showing up to school or behavior problems but because we have a high stakes test that we're not meeting those benchmark scores on so luckily for us at gym town we are excuse me luckily for us across the state we have what's called the graduation pathway model so the best way to describe
026the graduation pathway model is buckets we have to fill a bucket so bucket one is the easy one that's your credits it's your diploma so every student at gentown is working towards a diploma so that's something that we're constantly doing we're constantly talking about schedules and classes and credits and making sure we're on track for that that's the one that students have that is the path of least resistance of knocking that out bucket two is employability skills employability skills has three overarching areas which is project-based learning service based learning and work based learning however in each of these fields there's multiple ways that you can satisfy that requirement i like to use work based learning because it's kind of the easiest one to kind of visualize for students but in work based learning you can
027satisfy that requirement by participating in an internship an apprenticeship on the job training a job shadow paid work experience unpaid work experience there's just tons and tons of ways to satisfy these requirements and that's why it takes some strategic planning and that's why we really do talk about the graduation pathways and the career pathways at gemtown because we want to make sure we don't miss out on things we don't want to get to our senior year and say oh no we haven't worked towards this yet so for bucket three that's our post-secondary readiness the easiest way to describe post-secondary readiness is something you can take out you can take from high school that's tangible that showcases that either college or career ready on the board and as well as in your on your handout there's
028tons of ways we can satisfy that so i'm going to try it out of memory remember all those things but it can be a test score which an act an s.a.t an asvab score it could be an honors diploma it could be ap or dual credit coursework a cte concentration a recognized apprenticeship industry certifications there are multiple ways that we can satisfy these requirements and that's why in our classes yesterday i kind of announced that all you know 30 kids per class each student could potentially graduate in a different way so while that is a lot of work on school counselors and administration to keep track of all that it is so relieving to know that we don't have to rely on a one-shot test each year uh it's a great question so the question
029was in case you didn't hear mr fletcher um was a student is not having the best time in spanish and was wondering if that is a requirement for high school um so actually we can get a little nitty gritty with this so if we go back to our core 40 sheet and first folks at home i hope that you can see this on that bottom left hand corner there's what's called directed electings so directed electives are three different ways we have fine arts world language or career and technical education so while students are encouraged to participate in things like world language it is not a requirement for graduation so what would i would i encourage families and encourage students that if that is something you're not interested in to continue in high school that's okay
030so that worksheet at the end that scheduling worksheet that we're going to collect that's a working document that we can look at so if spanish isn't something you're interested in just scratch it out that's totally fine and either what we'll do is we'll reach out if we have questions or concerns or we'll still have that front loading conversation one great example is is everyone needs to take pe and truthfully the students that have the most fun in pe are freshmen because they're just living it up so that might be a class or a history class or a science class we might load you instead instead of that world language one local decision that was created was that students cannot earn an a plus for alternative pe the rationale behind that was is while it is
031a supplement for physical education it doesn't always meet all the standards and all the core content of the in-person class um so unfortunately the highest grade you can earn for aspe is an a these are great questions and i kind of like this whole qr code thing all right so moving back towards that bucket three and that bucket too one reason why we kind of push career pathways at the high school is because by working through these pathways students can actually satisfy employability skills and post-secondary readiness by just participating completing and working towards those classes so so at ginson high school we have four different career pathways each one has kind of a little different branches and avenues but for overarching things so actually in your folder there is a brochure i hope that you
032guys have found that so in that brochure it's going to start to navigate that four year plan a little bit better for those class sequences so full disclosure i could probably talk about each pathway for about an hour but that's not worth any of your guys's time just because i get jazzed up about it doesn't mean you guys truly want to hear it so i'm just going to kind of go over it very briefly and with just some little bit little examples but of course if you have additional questions please reach out we can hope to provide that further clarification so our four pathways at gemtown high school are health sciences engineering and manufacturing business marketing administration and liberal studies so those four pathways we're gonna we're gonna take each of them and segue through
033um actually in the brochure there's about a paragraph of kind of information about just a supplemental information in case you forget this conversation or forget this presentation you can take that home so our first oh excuse me shouldn't have jumped ahead so our career pathways are intentionally planned so there is a specific class sequence there is college and career focus like i said we're working towards that employability skills and post-secondary readiness as well as applied work outcome driven experiences so that applied outcome-driven experiences that's that junior and senior year those are things like the career center work based learning apprenticeships capstone courses that really take what you've learned as a freshman and sophomore and start to really address that area so instead of sitting and getting like we're doing right now i'm just kind of
034lecturing you guys are listening and hopefully retaining this information in these career pathways it's more hands-on you're addressing problems or and working towards solutions for either a community partner or a business so these are great opportunities that students should definitely take advantage of so our pathways are supported by the folks up top so we have the elkhart area career center ib tech is our dual credit partner local business partners our governor's work ethic certification all these areas definitely we couldn't do career pathways without them and truly we probably wouldn't want to do career pathways without them because we'd be kind of doing to do a disservice without these people behind me well on the screen that's what really gets these programs really involved and invested because you're starting to see how what you're learning is
035applying to the real world there are many times i have conversations with students who's like why do i have to learn this how is this going to help me with life after high school and i have to say i don't know man that's what the state says we have to do but think about it we only have to knock out these gotta haves and then we can start to really focus on what's good for us and these career pathway programs really highlight and really showcase what's going to help us after high school all right so starting our career pathways we start off with principles of biomedical science so our principles of biomedical science and our engineering pathway are both through project lead the way so the key word and project lead the way is obviously
036project so students are truly looking at hands-on experiences to solve real-world problems in their class a great example for principles of biomed is that first week students are going to get a project and they're going to get a dead body dead bodies in air quotes it's not a real dead body but it's a fictional character that as a class or a small group you have to find out how did they die so through this class you're doing experimentation you're doing dissections you're really applying the skill sets that it's going to be needed to be successful after high school in college and careers um so mrs harkins who teaches our project lead the way biomed sequence she would always describe it as grey's anatomy and not that you're gonna watch grey's anatomy or it's really truly
037like that you don't solve a case every day but what you do is you're working it's not just diagnosing the patient and moving on you're looking at all the facts all the information and applying all the skill sets to get that answer healthcare especially is our next pathway so actually mrs fredwell has helped out this year and working on with our health sciences one and two students as well as midterm so obviously i failed to bring her up here but she may drone on a little bit so i'll just keep it short and sweet so health sciences the best way for us to describe it is that nursing not that students that aren't interested in specifically nursing can't find great skill sets in these classes but a great example so on the third class the
038third year three healthcare specialties actually it's a little longer it's colon cna so students will work towards that cna licensure while they're in high school that's pretty impactful because all of our courses we have work-based learning or other capstone opportunities so just think to yourself if nursing is a passion for you and you want to go out and help others or work in a hospital or in other medical fields maybe that senior year once you've got your cna license you might be out in the real world doing the work so you're not just sitting and getting in class anymore you're going out and applying what you're learning maybe at a community partner like hubbard hill who's just on the road who's actually asked us on many occasions if we can run a similar program because
039they have a need so that's one way as gemtown we can help our community by them helping us so they give us a place to provide this experience and we train we train a workforce for them so if nursing or healthcare is in your career pathway i really encourage you taking a risk on our health science so our next pathway is our engineering and technology so mr slayball actually champions our engineering courses so it all starts with our intro to engineering design so like i talked before how project lead the way is more than just sitting and getting i'm a great example is what we had last year so our last year's sophomores our current juniors actually designed and created all of the door stops for our building so while that is like okay great
040how is that impressive that doesn't impress me what do you mean so in intro to engineering design they learned how to use cad for cad programming so then the students were able to 3d print and create door stops that weren't going to be rough on our doors so yes it's very much easier to just cut some two by fours and stick it on the door but our students saw the need that our doors are brand new we shouldn't tear them up yet we need to think of a way to critically solve that problem so that's what they did for a unit they learned the standards and the skills by creating something and it wasn't just one shot they had prototypes they tried to mount they worked around the building got feedback so you're truly applying
041what you learn in these pathways our current students in our engineering design development are working with hoosier crane i can't exactly explain what they're doing with hoosier crane but essentially what i've been told is they're looking at schematics or other projects and they're finding more streamlined ways to address these issues because as we all know in the real world time is money and if we can find a more efficient way to do something or how we can cut down costs that's a benefit for a business and hoosier crane has approached gemtown because they've seen the things we've done we've sent interns over there before you know they're welcoming and they want us to help them because they want to have that workforce they want to give a student an internship or a part-time job summer
042work so they can perfect those skills so they come back to bogo and elkhart county and keep us going so deca is first the question was if i choose a pathway i'm just going to say a pathway outside of business can i still participate in deca the answer is yes the challenges of course is that for deca in a way to be enrolled in the class or excusing the club is you have to be currently enrolled in a business class so that's just to give like the introductory to kind of the process we actually have a very successful deca program at the high school very state recognized so that would be the quick answers you still have to have some sort of business knowledge to be in it and so that pre-req would be to
043be enrolled in some sort of business class not necessarily however and we'll talk more about this with the liberal studies but our pathways at gemtown they are they do seem rigid but our liberal studies piece which we'll talk about so i'm going to address that question if this request you can remind me of that when we hit liberal studies all right so our advanced manufacturing sequence mr slayball also teaches this so that's one challenge with our pathways with gemtown is it's that small small school so we have less staff and therefore we might have as many class offerings um so one of those business partners that i touched on very briefly is elkhart area career center so our students at gemtown are very familiar with that that verbiage one great thing that we like to
044say is we send almost half of our juniors and seniors to the career center every year and that's a huge deal for gemtown i see some head naughty from our from our students at the high school who are attending the crucial they would say the same thing the career center has over 70 different pathways gentile high school has four so if you don't see yourself necessarily fitting in a pathway which we'll talk about liberal studies the career center might be that saving grace so why bring up the career center now is because for our manufacturing construction pathways we can't unfortunately offer every class so we have what's so what we do is kind of offer the prerequisites the introductory classes for students to be successful at the career center and this is a great example
045for manufacturing one and two and construction trades one and two at the career center one great thing that i like to talk about for the construction trades is i have a current senior that's in that class and he is at the career center but he only attends actual class one day a week i think it's on fridays so from on monday and thursday he's actually going out on a job site and they're building a house so the career center amplifies that project-based learning for students very hands-on and that's why i think a lot of our students take advantage of it because they don't want they want to have as much on the job can't get your hands dirty experience as possible so one of our last pathways that's more scripted is business um so going
046back to that deca question so business and deca go hand in hand deca is kind of the business club at the high school um so they go on different competitions and they promote to state level they get nationally ranked and it's really great um so you'll probably hear more and more about deca in the fall when we bring when we buy our clubs and sports and extracurriculars to um this kind of meeting in the fall but our business pathway is the longest standing at gemtown it was created far before pathways were cool and it will probably be long after they just the state changes it again so the business is so broad i mean i'm just looking around and i can only imagine the amount of different career pathways our parents and guardians are involved
047in my guess is you guys might fall into a business type thing so just off the top my head i'm thinking of like accounting and marketing supply chain management retail investment banking all those things kind of fall into that business world one great thing about our business sequence and of course with our other ones is half day programming so students in the business world can take advantage that junior and senior year because they've learned the stuff they've really learned how to be successful in that business environment they might go out and work either through like a program like startup moxie or an apprenticeship work based learning on-the-job training because we feel at gym town that's the most valuable lesson we can teach you is to get out in the real world and experience it and
048we don't want to push you out the door and say you have to do those things but we want to support you on that process too because it's hard to jump into a job or a career but it's easy if you have a such you know cheerleading encouraging along the way adding that additional support so a good example of one of those classes or excuse me opportunity to take advantage of is startup moxie so startup moxie each student will create what's called a passion project in that project they find out what's so important to that student and then they work on it we have a current we have two current students that are involved in startup moxie and one of them is trying to create a restaurant train for elkhart county so they're meeting with
049business partners they're they have a mentor they're really trying to address and adapt a business model to present to investors essentially so how great would that be to be able to put your name in elkhart county because you're involved in these half-day programs all right liberal studies so the question that mr putcher had received was is there a stem pathway and while stem is just science technology engineering and math i would say the easiest answer to say we don't necessarily have a stem but we do have an engineering pathway what's what what is great about gentile i mentioned it before is we really only need 40 or 47 gotta haves to graduate we have almost opportunities to earn credits in high school so what we can do as a group and as the students if
050you remember who's the most important person in that education path for you every student should be like pointing to themselves like they are we can meet with that student and family and talk about what our life after high school goals are because remember at gemtown high school we begin with the end in mind because we know where we want to be in the future we set and work towards goals so if we really see ourselves at purdue university for engineering okay great we can work through that pathway then maybe we need an advanced science advanced math courses and these are things that we can substitute in for that core 40 as well not to go on a long tangent about those types of things but in the core 40 under science everyone has to take
051biology everyone has to take icp chemistry or physics but then the third option is an additional science course so students can maybe take an ap physics and an ap chemistry it's really up to the student as far as what courses and what experiences they want to obtain while they're in high school so liberal studies also goes along that line of what experiences you want to have in high school so students full disclosure i looked through your guys's worksheets and i had a lot i had about 25 students that chose liberal studies and there was a few themes involved with it education law enforcement fine arts education so all of those areas we can help taylor so i asked the students yesterday i said we don't have criminal justice at the high school but do you
052know who does and a few sheepishly would kind of say career center like yeah the career center does so what we can do is if law enforcement is truly our passion that's where we want to end up we can do our best to set us up to have room in our schedule to attend the careers in our junior senior year but we just have to be strategic about it because if we have five classes we gotta have to graduate and we only have four slots in our day at the high school we can't go to the career center because we got to get those gotta have for graduation so that's why it's super important to think critically about our credits think critically about what we want to do after high school and how we can
053take positive steps in that direction liberal studies is kind of that piece as well so the example on the board the example in the brochure is education as a high school and as a school system we want to we want to create the next generation of teachers and principals and counselors and nurses we want to be able to push you guys out into the real world so you can come back and teach the next generation so while we don't necessarily have an education pathway we can get you started to give you the experiences so you can be successful in those other part half day programs junior senior year for education so our example we use we maybe you're freshmen you take child development and interpersonal relationship learn what it's like first for students and children
054to grow up as well as how to communicate effectively with them maybe as a sophomore we're taking courses like ap psychology or sociology learning how society and human behavior interact so then as a junior we might take the risk and go into the career center maybe we're involved in early childhood education or education professions and as a senior we say you know what career center was been fantastic it was phenomenal but i want more so maybe you don't go back to the career center and continue that maybe you jump into maybe an apprenticeship or a cadet teaching experience these liberal studies pieces can be truly tailored to you but we have to help you along the way we need to we don't want to get a year behind and not prep for that for life
055after high school all right so so in our folders there is this worksheet so this is our schedule request sheet that we will work on and we will actually submit before leaving today as i reminded students yesterday we were going to do this it's pretty much the same thing we talked about yesterday so at the bottom or see let's start at the top so at the top of course is our name one of the most important fields on the thing is your name please put your name on it i can't stress that enough put your name on it as well as your diploma type the diploma type is fluid it can change so that's something that we'll continue to review and edit and that's not something we're set in stone today like i said we're
056all working towards at least the core 40 and then our honors diplomas or the core 40 with so we're not behind by any means by not taking classes next year so that middle section is our class requests so those requests are skip or excuse me they are scripted it's a template for all students so there might be things there's an asterisk by algebra 1 for example because as a reminder students have to pass that proficiency test in order to move into geometry additionally we're going to have you guys circle or check the career pathway programming so once again there is a in your brochure there is the different pathways as well as what we talked about today so using those brochures those resources we're going to go ahead and select our pathway yes so the
057question was do you have to be an algebra one this year to take geometry next year yes algebra is one of those gotta have classes for graduation and geometry actually builds on the principles of algebra one so in order to be successful in geometry you need that those that proficiency um those skill sets for geometry so all students will be enrolled in algebra 1 if they are not currently enrolled or have not met a proficiency level for that so on the bottom of that worksheet once as again as a reminder because we're going to collect that today we need your depart we need your name your diploma type your career pathway and then make sure if you're in a fine arts or you want to continue in fine arts please put that down i don't
058know if you're a great singer i don't know if you're involved in choir at this time so you need to make sure that it's listed yes the question was can you do both academic and technical honors yes you can do both diplomas like i said they're both honors distinctions they have similar criteria for both the challenge of course is though that we have to make sure that we're planning for that because a good example is the career center is one of the easiest routes to earn a tech honors diploma so we have to make sure that is something we're thinking about and working towards as we get into high school the question was can you take pathway requirements as part of summer school they no unfortunately we don't have the availability to offer our pathway
059classes during the summer our partnership like i said we don't know exactly what summer school options are at this time we'll have it as we get closer to the end of the year but our summer school options are typically tailored for remediation either if you failed a course or didn't earn a qualifying credit in an honors diploma or for students that might want to get ahead to maybe in like a class such as health so the question was what if the student is not 100 100 sure in a career pathway my recommendation was to think about it and solely kind of ponder what life after high school looks like so the reason we're asking guys do this today is it is our attempt to build what's called the master schedule so if in the master
060schedule we have every student in this room wants to do a business class we're obviously not going to run the other pathways because we're going to prep for more students going into that so if you're unsure of what path you want to be in just remember that this is something that can change those intro classes are electives that you can take throughout high school and we're not going to be behind necessarily in those pathways if we opt if we're currently set on business and that's the class we want to do but we get into those business classes we're not a big fan we can go into a different pathway of interest that's something that we can still do and we'll still have time for in our high school career it just takes some doubling up
061the question was tailored towards what would a pathway be for an author or a student that wants to do graphic design so i would say liberal studies i would say liberal studies because either of those areas don't necessarily fall into our scripted pathways once again liberal studies is something that we can tailor to each student so that's something that we can sit down and plan for and while we might not have an author class we do offer things like yearbook so you're writing narratives you're reaching out to businesses you're putting ads in newspapers so that's something that can help build those skill sets of working with others working with publishers um it's just not necessarily in the the easiest life so that's something that we can think critically about and think creatively about we just
062once again we just need to know so the question was of course if there's going to be this slideshow sent home and the worksheets available um so what we can do if looking at mr pletcher i'm sure we will do is we'll probably do a voiceover presentation um so one of us in the office will go through this presentation it will be rather quickly though but of course that's for you know at home you can pause it and things like that but we can send this information home to parents and students the one thing though is the brochure will not be sent home um at this time we'll have to reformat that because that's formatted in obviously a brochure type so we'd have to reconfigure that but all that information would be presented as well
063in this slideshow so the question was asking about army basic training and if these different military branches give out high school credit for that um i can't answer at that time at this time so only because every branch is different it depends on how it's coded if it's coded through a college just going through a high school so unfortunately for that individual that family that had that question just please uh remind us as we get closer to that junior senior year um because things did obviously change on the meantime but to continue moving forward i am going to pass the slideshow on to mrs dean but of course if you have additional questions please use that qr code and we will get back to you and address the group if necessary thank you okay thank
064you everybody for being here tonight just a couple things regarding medical and health um you all have the gold form and we would like you to carefully fill that out and turn that in tonight based on the information you know of your student right now any medical or health anything that is like asthma seizures food allergies um major chronic like diabetes we would like to talk to the parent between now and the beginning of next year and sit down or over the phone talk to you there's certain forms that need to be filled out for those types of chronic illnesses also if there is nothing please check at the bottom of the sheet no no known allergy or no known medical condition or anything like that so we know that you looked at all of
065what's on there don't forget to put your student's name on there don't forget to sign it if your student needs medication during the school day or will need medication during the school day if it is a prescription we will need the doctor's permission and this parent's permission so don't just send medication to school with your student um because it's we have to have the paperwork done before we'll give it if it's uh over-the-counter medication it would just need to be the parents signature and the form filled out and we have those if anybody wants to pick any up tonight if you're going to the doctor between now and the beginning of the school year we do have some forms that can be filled out at that time for next year and now i will introduce
066our athletic trainer carl landis and he's going to talk about the athletic forms right in your packet also is uh the athletic physical um which is required by the ihsaa for um athletic participation so those are required after april first so if you get a yearly physical exam if you could i know everybody is kind of different on different days but if you could get that done after april 1st then that is sufficient for next year's athletic participation all right so um in the past we have had athletic physicals here at the school but with the pandemic that has happened and through the ihs double a this past year waving physicals for athletic participation the physicians in the community of elkhart county and south saint joe county have put out the proclamation that they are
067not going to participate in mass physicals so those physicals have to be at your doctors this year so we are not going to have a physical um night uh this spring um for that for that uh for filling out those um those athletic physicals so we are requesting that you go to your healthcare provider and get those physicals done um now those can be you know those can be your doctor nurse practitioner physician assistant anybody can those three things can sign those um so the other thing the other part of the packet is your consent form so you have in there a informed consent which gives us permission to treat if your son or daughter gets hurt in athletic participation it also gives us emergency information that we can contact you by if they're away
068at a at a at a sport and you know they get hurt and you're not there so we can also get treatment um you know as expedient as possible if so if needed the other part of that the other half of that is a sudden cardiac arrest and a concussion form that is by law through the state of indiana that athletes have to have that on file so all these things have to be on file before an athlete can participate in practice so we have certain days that we start practices um in the year for fall sports winter sports and stream sports if those are not on file um your athlete cannot participate it's a risk management issue basically um so they can't participate in practices and sometimes depending on the year and the time
069frame if they don't get so many practices in they can't actually compete in games so that's why we want those forms done and turned in as soon as possible so once we get those forms then they're cleared to participate and cleared to practice i do not believe that that is the case you know there's no physical requirement it's not an issue sanctioned event so i don't think it is recommended any other questions all right okay moving right along here it is really important for us to have up-to-date vital information for your student if we ever need to contact a parent for a health issue or if we want to contact you to talk about grades behavior any of that thing any of that stuff we need to make sure that that stuff is all up
070to date in your packet um you should have this information if you could please just double check um to make sure that it's correct so that we get the correct information into renweb for those of you that um [Music] aren't familiar with renweb that's where we kind of house all of our information about our students it's our management system for student information and so uh we do attendance and grades and all of that stuff parents who do have access to it many of you probably already access it and we don't foresee any changes in the immediate future with any of that stuff so again please review and make sure that that information is all up to date if they make changes if you have any changes you can leave that with us on your way
071out and then that way we can start updating our records okay okay so we are winding down the evening didn't take it that terribly long i hope you appreciate first of all i just want to say i appreciate your flexibility i appreciate you sitting on these uncomfortable benches um it's one thing to sit on a bench when you're watching a ball game it's a little more exciting it's a little more difficult when it's just a sit and get so i appreciate that we just wanted to make sure that we could spread out a little bit we're still trying to do our part with the pandemic and so we appreciate your help there if you have questions or any kind of other comments or concerns you can always email us here here's our email addresses for
072myself mr stout the counselors the nurse if you had any confusion about anything tonight please let us know and then there is that qr code for that final survey and in closing before we close out and i kind of cut you loose tonight i just want to say we are really looking forward to having you all come over to the high school and be the freshman class next year it's going to be a fun and amazing ride parents we are looking to to create a really strong working relationship with you all and we look forward to continuing that keep your eyes and ears peeled next august we're going to do some additional orientation activities where you'll actually be up and about in the building and you'll get to explore some of the other activities there
073are to have at the gym town here guys drive safe have a good night we appreciate you all thank you very much for showing up um