001oh at the middle school we have three specialized programs the first one is the essential skills program and that program is for students who have significant challenges that require intensive programming students may be on the spectrum they may have intellectual challenges and they may have complex health impairments the instruction is delivered through an aba model and the core curriculum is significantly modified all the standards are modified and functional and social skills training is delivered throughout the day in addition to the esp program we have our aims program for students who are on the spectrum or have neurological differences those students are coached throughout the day through our social skills model with a lot of pragmatic teaching and learning and in addition to that we have our student support program for students who have uh challenges
002self-regulating and modulating throughout the school day we are an inclusive school so all students access general education as well as special education and our special education structure this year as mika will also highlight is a little different this year we have two seventh grade special education teacher liaisons patrick hunter who focuses on humanities as well as special education and kimberly alderman shapiro who focuses on science technology engineering and math and special education in seventh grade and in our eighth grade we have michael russo who focuses on the stem and we have daniel hales who focuses on the humanities um in addition to that we are fortunate to have mika who teaches our pull out direct service instruction in english we have daniella ferro who teaches our special education math program and then we have keikis
003coblin who teaches reading tutorial for students who have reading impairments and who needs support and intensive structure intensive instruction on decoding and encoding um mika thank you doreen um welcome everyone and welcome to the arms open house my name is mika mcgee and i'm the sc curriculum special education curriculum leader um so doreen mentioned some of the programs that are available at arms and some of our small group classes in addition to the small group classes which i teach seventh eighth grade ela we also our students are also in inclusion classes and those inclusion classes they have the support of a paraprofessional or a sc teacher in what we call our co-taught classes with our goal to place students in the least restrictive environment to meet to meet their needs um so a little bit
004about our process um students are we are referred to essie and once we receive a referral um there's a comprehensive evaluation that's completed and the students are determined to be eligible for special education we go through a process of developing an individual education plan through a meeting we have that's called by what we call the individual education plan team or iep team we convene a meeting and determine what that plan will look like and determine their eligibility um and so once the plan is developed we determine the least restrictive environment and the students will be in either one of the programs that that doreen mentioned or they'll be in a small group class like my class or inclusion classes they also generally they are included in whatever electives other students are included in um each
005student is assigned a liaison which is a liaison is a special education teacher and that liaisons um that liaison is um the person that or the staff member that interacts with the student to make sure their academic needs are met that the iep is implemented um they interact with the parents and there you're kind of like uh your first contact at the school um as far as communicating should there be any challenges that you might have in the school or with your with your student it's a great idea to reach out to the liaison first liaisons also collaborate with the gen ed teachers general education teachers and related service providers should the student have like physical therapy occupational therapy speech adjustment counseling things like that on on the iep um so our goal is to
006just do a really good job at you know servicing our students uh one of the um other doreen mentioned this earlier one of the other services we provide is academic skills our students have academic challenges and some of those challenges are due to organization executive functioning and so our academic skills class addresses issues like executive functioning organizing or organizing themselves time management and also self-advocacy so we had a what we have a wide array of special ed services um within the district that are available to our students and i hope that if you have any questions that you please uh reach out to us absolutely um mika mentioned the academic skills and this is also a time for students to learn how to in addition to managing course expectations how to advocate for themselves right
007so for an example would be to learn how to email a teacher for clarification make a plan for future assignments work on extended time assignments um t of course you know the educators will be teaching um executive functioning skills and really also learning to practice the social emotional learning strategies and also always the opportunity to retake tests and assessments for your students and your children to do better to do their best i just wanted to slow down a little bit and highlight the teachers once again so for our essential skills program that is our teacher is denise o'donovan for our ames special education program that head teacher is corey haynes for our student support program our special education teacher is kim rizzotti balanced with the student support program and aims we have clinical support so
008in ssp our clinical school adjustment counselor is miguel wallace and in ames it's aaron neil kolozynski um in addition to that for our teams of special education teachers in seventh grade they are patrick hunter who focuses on humanities in addition to special education and kimberly alderman shapiro who focuses on the stem component and special education and in eighth grade we have michael russo who focuses on the stem and daniel hales who focuses on the humanities and to highlight once again our small group specialized content air instruction for reading tutorial is caicos coblin for our english small group learning focusing on writing skills written expression reading comprehension is mika mcgee and our pull out small group math focusing on calculation and numeracy is daniel farrow mika what did we forget um i think we've i think
009we've covered just about everything um i would say that when we um part of the implementing the iep is developing goals and so those liaisons and the um and the special education teachers work on uh the learning goals that are developed in the iep meeting and also students will have accommodations in class to make sure that we can meet their needs for them to to be able to to to access the learning absolutely and in addition to our other to miguel and erin who do our clinical support we also have hector santos who has a dual role who not only is a school adjustment counselor servicing students with iep goals and objectives but he's also the clinical coordinator of our bright program for students who might be transitioning back from hospitalization or a long absence
010from school thank you so much for your time welcoming mika and me into your home and we're going to turn it back to diego thank you hi everyone welcome back first of all i want to start unfortunately with an apology because i realized that at the beginning of the broadcast uh i forgot to go live um so there's a big learning curve uh for us and we're all learning here in the middle school and of course one of the things that i'm learning and didn't expect to be learning was to be broadcasting uh on our arp's youtube channel so uh so thanks for your patience uh but i think we're finally in and i see that uh as we start the all school meeting or as we're beginning to start the all-school meeting which was
011scheduled to start at 6 45 um we're i'm seeing the numbers click up and we're getting uh close to 100 participants viewing so i'm just going to wait for another minute or two and while i um thank mika magee and assistant principal dorian reed for the presentation about special education and and again i will be reintroducing this read in just a little bit but i think all of you who are here for being here and thank you for tuning in on the arp's youtube channel i want you to know that this video is being recorded and so if you didn't get a chance to see it live um you will be able to go to the arp's youtube channel and see it at any other time it'll be archived there for you to review so
012thank you um all right as the numbers start to click up i'm going to go ahead and uh and begin the next part of our presentation which is the all school meeting uh the all school meeting will be going from 6 45 which just passed us to 7 15. i want to remind everyone that at 7 15 you should feel free to go to the individual google meets that each of the teams is hosting uh the two seventh grade teams team c and d uh will be hosting uh their google meets as will the two eighth grade teams team a and b so that's going to be something that i'm looking forward to all of you participating in and in addition to the uh google meets which will be live and synchronous there are also
013links to this website that has been created for each of the teams and those will have links to videos and presentations about prepared by each of the teachers uh and those uh will be also for you to explore asynchronously so on your own time and and however you wish to um so again thank you all for joining us i understand uh that um that some people had some challenges uh finding the link i'm hoping that everyone is able to do that um and and we'll we'll be starting again soon again that link was sent via email on a couple occasions and uh from uh from elgato at the front desk at the front office and hopefully all of you are finding that so as the numbers continue to tick up i'm going to go ahead
014and begin and i want to welcome you to the all school meeting and i want to um um just start by reminding you that that here at arms um we have a um you know we have some a lot of work to do and obviously there are many things that we try to do and work together to try and do and so i want to begin by just sharing uh what our school mission is because at arms we challenge and inspire students to be engaged and curious learners uh to be collaborative and creative problem solvers to value diverse perspectives and also to care for themselves and each other and i just want to highlight the fact that these uh this mission which was written uh several years ago and obviously something that we work to
015live into each and every day that we show up at arms is a particularly challenging thing to be doing uh these days um and so obviously i don't need to go into details about the experiences that are going on nationally and worldwide which are truly unprecedented and unique and i will be highlighting some of those things in just a moment but i i just want to offer this um as an opportunity to commit uh as a community of of caregivers of parents of teachers of educators to the collective um efforts to collaborate on behalf of our of our students and our community and to recognize just how critical that need is now more than ever the the the events that are happening in our world have been termed by many individuals as a slow-moving trauma
016that we're all collectively experiencing and and and i think it's really important to recognize that students are awakening to a world and stepping into a world that presents these challenges to them at a time when they're trying to find their place in the world and so it's particularly important that we as adults maintain honesty and openness with them but also maintain uh unbridled commitment to support them in their growth and the and the development of self in in this in this community in this in in in this region and in this world and i think uh at a time when students are beginning to differentiate themselves and and make those changes um this challenge is particularly difficult one of the things that i shared in the in the communications i send to families every other
017week called open arms was a chart that was a really valuable reminder for me of precisely what that means we work with 7th and 8th grade students in our building and for the 8th graders the last time they experienced a normal school year was when they were fifth graders and for our seventh graders uh that's not something that they've experienced since they were fourth graders and so you could imagine that big gap between fourth and seventh grade or fifth and eighth grade um which is um which is a tremendous amount of time particularly when you're a young person that makes up a significant percentage of your life um it it is it is probably uh hard for us to imagine certainly impossible for me to imagine um but i see it and and meet those
018challenges in the conversations i have on a daily basis with students uh all over the school um and and so so in that spirit uh i am uh wishing for and and hoping for and asking for us to be committed collaborators uh in supporting that and and and what does that look like what does that partnership look like uh and why is it important well first of all developing uh when we are when we effectively partner uh on behalf of students in our building we are helping them to develop social emotional and academic competencies that will allow them to become fully incarnated hopefully free human beings and that's something that that i hold as a goal uh for all our students um and so in partnering together i want to just let you know about
019some things that are going to be happening uh at our school one of those which i'm going to be sharing information about soon is about a partnership that i'm really excited to announce uh within an organization called the family institute for student success um and this partnership with this organization which we're going to be launching officially in january but we're going to be reaching out sooner than that to ask for support and and volunteers to serve as recruiters and trainers for this effort it's an unprecedented effort in this community to really try and develop meaningful partnerships between between our school and and the people who work here and our community and those of you who are parents and guardians of the community and who interact and support our students at home throughout their you know
020throughout the other parts of their lives and days and so i want to invite you to stay tuned for information about the family institute for student success and that partnership which will be kicking off officially uh in january but prior to that like i said we're going to be reaching out and trying to get support from all of you and certainly inform all of you about it um and the other thing that i want to really uh stress as a real opportunity is um is the pgo the parent guardian organization here at arms is an important vehicle for us to develop relationships with parents and to give parents the opportunity parents and guardians the opportunity to have an impact not only in the in the lives of their students and even participate in in those
021lives at school but also uh to support some really valuable initiatives the mission of the pgo is to create a supportive and welcoming uh community for students their families teachers and administration and the ways the pgo does that i think offers some really unique opportunities because they work to support equity in the classroom through organizing events and programs that foster a positive environment and they also support uh serve as a resource and in information for family engagement and also importantly they they fund academic and community initiatives and again these i i'm hopeful that we'll have a lot of uh initiatives and programs that bring our community closer together and allow us to celebrate and recognize the tremendous work that goes on with our students who constantly uh impress me and remind me with their resiliency
022and their capacity and and the highlight of my day is always the time i spend with them informally at lunch having conversations and dialogues with them i want to let you know that the pro the pgo is in the process of rebuilding of course our virtual school years were really impactful of that organization but i'm going to ask that you all look for an email from the pgo which will be coming out next week and consider volunteering and as a reminder stay posted and tuned in for information about the family institute for student success which will give us another opportunity to really collaborate and work on behalf of our students in our community and so i want to let you know that the work that i do in administration and and uh is is uh
023is a team effort and there are a lot of people who work with me on this and i want to make sure that you have the opportunity to meet some of those but i also just want to take a moment to just recognize the tremendous and herculean efforts of our teachers and our para educators who work uh in in the critical space of the classroom with our students and um and who work really hard and and put in tremendous hours and energy and effort to make sure that our students are not only met with safe classrooms and safe spaces to learn but also with engaging curriculum uh and fantastic assignments and and and work that is uh teaching them not only the skills that they need to know to to to make sure they meet
024the standards of education that are created for them but also to learn a lot of those skills which they really work on in which i'm really happy that we have students in person to be able to do like the collaboration the interpersonal communication and and and i'm really uh honored to work on trying to support their work in the classrooms because that's where a lot of the real learning happens one of the most important and valuable partners i have in this work is is someone who i'm happy to introduce to you right now and that is the assistant principal doreen reed uh during uh welcome back to the presentation and i just want to see the floor to you and ask that you introduce yourself and let us know a little bit about the work
025that you do absolutely thank you diego um it is my pleasure to be the assistant principal again at the amherst regional middle school and collaborating with diego on a daily basis in addition to pk we're also working very comprehensively with our partners at umass we are um we have embarked on a system to support their special education department we are currently working with their pre-practicum students where we have a number of students from umass supporting um our special education department and learning from our from our special education teachers in order for their students to become academically prepared and culturally competent educators in our community um in the next semester we will also be offering practicum opportunities for some students to work more comprehensively with our special education teachers and learn how to do more direct
026teaching and planning to connect with our our students and families in our community in addition to that we have partnered with umass for the happiness project it's the well-being promotion project it's a 10-week evidence-based tier 2 support addressing students social emotional wellness through activities targeting gratitude kindness character strength and hope especially during these times within the 10 weeks students will learn about feeling grateful for their past feeling grateful for their current relationships with their families and friends getting to feel excited about their day and using their own character strengths to build their individual characters feeling optimistic learning how to just take hope and pleasure and finding the best about their future and about themselves and really learn how to say goodbye in a positive way so they can reflect and grow and move on to
027the next educational opportunity friend opportunity um just giving them the skills this is a two-year grant so we will be partnering with umass for uh two years for this research-based project in addition to that we have students who are receiving not only supports from our special education department but also through our 504 process we have a lot of students in need and we continue to not only support our students but our family and our community through purposeful empowerment and interventions that we offer at arms if we need to connect families with outside resources we are fortunate to be able to do that and we do that also through support with our family center and dr martin barra diego thanks so much miss reed i think it's a bit of an understatement to say that we
028collaborate on a daily basis miss rita and i are literally moment to moment throughout the day working collaborating and problem solving but also sharing opportunities to interact with staff and students um and on the whole it's a really joyous thing and i thank you for your collaboration miss reed uh and uh already looking forward to tomorrow me too i enjoy it all thank you great thanks so much um so um i'm gonna i want to talk a little bit more about some of the things that we are doing in this in the school and i want to just uh acknowledge that part of this partnership isn't just within the school but also in the community um and um and one of the um things that we're able to work with uh and i and i
029want to offer just my gratitude uh for um a new position that we were able to create in the school which is a culture coordinator uh and this is something that um i think has been having a tremendous impact not only on the relationship between administration and teachers but also the relationship between teachers and students it's no secret that there are a lot of challenges that we experience in the school on a daily basis trying to meet the needs of all our students and and i want to just introduce dr litha gail brissette who is our culture coordinator and give her the opportunity to let you know a little bit about the work that she does on behalf of our our community in the school uh so dr gail berset why don't you take it
030away and i'll let you um share some of the work that you do thank you mr sharon hello everyone thank you for joining us this evening and for open house um as mr sharon mentioned you know i'm literally impressed and the cultural coordinator here at arms in my role i'm working with the administrators the staff and student and most importantly to build an inclusive environment of culture because we know that the climate of culture provide us the opportunity for learning caring and success we want all our students to work together to have a great middle school experience we talk about the values the traditions be respectful of themselves and also each other and it's no surprise we all know that you know middle school can be that very awkward period and it can be complicated
031at times and challenging for some of our students as they made that transition from elementary to the middle school um so it's that period where you know the students start becoming more conscious of understanding themselves and also building their identity and i guess many of us including myself can remember those days of going through that phase you know it's really can be a bit challenging um so without doubt um having a positive school culture will have a huge impact on who they are as individuals and also their learning um this is not only coming from me but you know research has shown that a positive school environment sets the tone for everything that happens within our building you know the ease at which students develop competences in their academic work um understanding differences when they're
032interacting with other people who may they may even think different from them or even whole different views um so that is why we are really working very hard here at arms on building a culture that allows our student to thrive to build strong bonds in the community and ultimately to succeed in their academic and of course importantly social life so how do we go about accomplishing this uh mr sharon did mention a while ago that one of approaches that we're doing is practicing restorative justice approach um so in this approach we use strategies to teach our students skills and how to make good decisions resolve conflict peacefully and come up with their restorative solutions and i said come up with their restorative solutions when they encounter um issues and how to deal with those this
033requires us helping our teaching the students um certain skills of working together showing empathy connecting and negotiating different points of views and overall this is about developing positive mindset in our community because that is really very important and also how do we also teach these practices to student so some of these lessons and activities they take place during our advisory periods and also in restorative circles with me and i also do one-to-one meeting with many students as one of the most important one of the important things also is to provide mentorship and support for our students as well of course the success of this program is dependent on the support from everyone in our school community especially you parents we want your support as we work with your children and you please feel free to
034reach out to me via email my email address is gail dash bracelet l so that's g-a-y-l-e dash b-r-i-s-s-e-t-t-l at orbs.org or you can give me a call my number is 413-362-1840 also i'll be reaching out to you as i get to know your children and working with them because we want them to be the best they can be again thank you for joining us and have a good night fantastic thanks so much for that uh informative presentation i appreciate that uh and again just an opportunity to uh see uh see some of what goes on behind the scenes here in in the school thank you uh dr gilbert said for that and um one of the other things that i want to share with you is that there are a lot of resources that are
035available to all our students uh and um and one of the key contact individuals and someone who's a group of people who are always working on behalf of students tirelessly are our guidance counselors and they offer support to all the students in the school and because their caseload is so large they each take one of the grades and so i'm going to bring them bring them on and uh and share share this group with you real quick and so um let's see so we have miss delinda dykes and mr elise gomba both of them are guidance counselors the linda dykes works with the seventh graders uh and she works with every single seventh grade she's brought um she's new with us this year and she brings a tremendous amount of experience and also a great
036deal of enthusiasm and energy um and uh and it's something that we all appreciate uh so thank you miss dykes and i also um uh want to share that miss dykes is someone who if you have a seventh grade student and you have some thoughts or questions or concerns about uh them and you want some information she's a good place to reach out and same is true for uh if you have an eighth grade student uh and uh and uh want to hear from them or want to have some questions or thoughts about what's going on with them please feel free to reach out to mr gomba he's the eighth grade guidance counselor and i'm gonna give them the opportunity to tell you a little bit about what they do on a day-to-day week-to-week basis
037on behalf of your students and to preview some of the things that may be going on later this year so i'm going to get out of the way and let them share some of their work with you so let's start with miss dykes in the seventh grade if you wanna uh go ahead and share some of the information you'd like to share and introduce yourself to the community that'd be fantastic hello hello hello everyone hey i am the linda bayman dykes and i am the proud guidance counselor for the 7th grade students i'm very excited about being here first of all i want to say hello to all of my teachers the administrators the parents because we are all front line workers people we're getting our children ready for the future so i want to
038thank you guys i want to take this time right now just to say thank you for all you are doing uh okay so a little bit about what we do here as guidance counselor well the guidance counselors help students to identify issues that are affecting their school performance attendance is a big problem so with some of the students so we kind of help them identify if you're not in school we can't teach you right so and just be able to do it in a nurturing way of course so we also teach students how to build and maintain relationships we help them address their um their social and behavioral you know some may have behavioral issues we kind of help them with that we also help students to develop the tools that they need for academic
039success as well i counsel students are individual like individuals group counsel and also group counseling i work closely with my teachers my administrators and also the parents to help improve students performance you may get a call from me on a saturday you know you may get a call from me later on in the evening because that that means that i really want to connect to connect with you regarding our baby so middle school is a challenging stage of development kids are going through a lot of changes and turning to their peers for affirmation instead of their parents and they're often unequipped to deal with the increasingly grown-up problems right so counselors provide a critical support to them during this transition from childhood to adolescence so yeah we work really we work real hard with our
040babies to make sure that they know um how you know and able to kind of transition from this this stage my goal is to ensure that students see our school as a safe space a caring and la and a caring learning environment and it will set the students up for academic and personal success so therefore i act as a resource and i connect with the teachers and parents and administ to help them connect with the teachers and parents and administrators so that way they'll know how to you know make sure that their needs are being met i'm almost done y'all counselors are charged with being the voice that's why y'all hear me we charged with being the voice of our students because sometimes kids feel like their voice is not being heard remember the knowledge
041attitudes and skills um that the students are acquiring now helps to build their foundation for future success and i'm honored to serve on the front line for our children our future thank you for your time thank you so much miss dykes so i'm mr gombos i'm the 8th grade guidance counselor um a lot of the things that we do miss dex is already um covered um some were more talking about our 8th graders so you know part of this journey is the transition to high school and that's something that i want to support them as much as i can with so academically social emotionally that is my goal is to be that support for them as they transition to the high school kind of building those um habits and making sure that we instill those
042good habits into them as they move on um into the high school um part of that too part of that transition is you know upcoming um uh conferences in the spring to talk about appropriate classes that they should be taking for next year um you know a lot of this more of this information will come as we go along the year and um you know i'm really just here for support and trying to figure out how we can um kind of go on this journey together and have help them navigate throughout the day to day um as we move on uh throughout the year um so please feel free to reach out to either of us for seventh and eighth grade um and we'd be happy to help you with anything fantastic thanks to the
043two of you i'm gonna let you all go and and and get uh get into your evening a little bit but thanks again um and i wanna just uh thank everyone who joined us this evening thanks for all the participants uh who had the opportunity to uh share a little bit about what they do in the school to make uh arms the great school that it is and again i want to thank all of you for your support i appreciate the comments and and i want to let you know that if you you should be going now to the individual team meetings uh the seventh grade teams are teams c and d and the eighth grade teams are teams a and b um and so i'm going to get over and join the presentation for
044the team that my son is in excited to hear from that so that starts at 7 15 so i don't want to delay you thank you very much for your participation and engagement i look forward to hearing from you and seeing you in person soon have a wonderful rest of the evening thank you you