001hello good evening everybody and thank you for joining us tonight so my name is tom sadiq i'm principal up with the high school another folks introduce themselves my name is sam camera and i'm interim assistant principal nice to meet you hi everyone i'm nikki gromacki also an assistant principal at the high school and i am ella stocker i am the librarian at the high school and i will be helping out with the tech for this presentation tonight all right so i'm going to give a quick overview of what you can expect this evening so our plan is to well first i want to say that and this is a big transition you're all about to embark on and we want to we're hoping that the things that you hear tonight are really going to help
002you feel really excited about next year there's still a lot of unknowns and things may change between now and then but right now we're gonna let you know about what our plan is for the fall of 2021. so the idea for tonight here's the welcome is to explain go to the next slide if you don't mind stalker thank you so tonight we're gonna give a quick overview of the four by four block schedule that we've chosen for the 2021 school year the 21 22 school year excuse me you'll be able to we're going to go through some frequently asked questions if you have other questions of course you can always ask those also you can see in the description box below this video there's a link to the department head videos they're going to explain
003some more give us more information about the classes they currently offer there's also a link to the program of studies gives you more information about all the classes that are offered to the high school they're also going to be links to this in the chat as well in the last some of the last slides this presentation are going to give you some more information about other opportunities electives and clubs and sports and things of that nature and you know you'll also see the registration timeline that's going to let you lay out what's going to be expected of you in terms of getting your classes selected for the fall all right so this is a little bit about why we've actually decided to go with the four by four block schedule so with still so much
004uncertainty about covid and vaccinations and what's really going to happen next year we wanted to cut down on the number of transitions in the cohort students are going to be connected with so the 4x4 block schedule made sense in that regard and also we have to start planning for next year for the 21-22 school year now so that it necessitated us deciding on what a schedule would be so with the superintendent's encouragement we decided this is what was going to be best for our students and our teachers our community so with next year next winter winter of we'll have another discussion about what the schedule will be for the following year and beyond that so maybe that will stick with the 4x4 block as it is we may make some alterations to it or we
005may decide to go back to the seven drop one schedule that we've had for quite a while now when we do that we'll get feedback from students families teachers and then once we get all that feedback then we'll make what we believe is a best decision based on all that information so right now i'm going to actually hand it over to i believe to this camera to talk to you about the 4x4 block schedule take care so you'll have four classes each semester so if you look at the top of the table you'll see block and then semester one semester two and you go down through a b c d and so each of those numbers represents a different class and sometimes classes will meet for two semesters but not very many so that's that's
006the sort of basic idea next slide so this is what the bell schedule looks like and if you all remember we are flipping schedules so you're starting a little bit later next year um then the middle school so a block will start in the morning at 905 and run to 10 25 b block will be 10 30 to 11 50 and then c block as you can see here has three pieces to it and though and that includes two lunches okay so you'll either get first second or third sorry three lunches first second or third lunch and then d block is the last class we've added something called the d plus block which is a little additional time in that last period class to check in with your teacher or your teachers find out what
007you'll need to bring home for the evening for work email your teachers check your grades you know write a note to your guidance counselor all of those things that you might need to do before the end of the school day so here's the a sample schedule uh for nine incoming ninth grade students semester one you might have english then science math and an elective or health and an elective health is one quarter and an elective is one quarter right so and then you might have math the semester two you might start with world language social studies and then have two electives i'm going to turn it over now to miss bermacki might come up about the 4x4 block and one of those questions for those of you who are involved in music ensembles which will
008include dance next year the question is you know how does that fit into the schedule so we actually have a sample schedule that we'll be showing you but basically music is going to alternate and run every other day and then it will it will alternate with one of the other courses that you've selected so it might alternate with an english class or a social studies class or in some cases an elective depending on what other students enroll in who are taking music and so miss camera alluded to this but how will electives be offered so most electives will run as quarter classes so on the schedule that you just saw you saw elective that's actually two electives because you can take an elective each quarter so this four by four block schedule if you think
009of it as having five core academics it actually gives you three additional blocks which could actually be six additional electives that students would take uh at the high school for many years especially if you have older brothers or sisters who attended the high school we used to have directed studies built into the day and that was primarily because students were taking all five of their core academic classes plus their electives in one day and so we used to have directed studies but in a four by four block we are actually not going to have directed studies um but as you get into the upper grades you'll have opportunities to do other kinds of of courses and independent studies um so for students that come to the high school that would typically take academic skills again
010that's something that's been offered for many years we are again offering academic skills but it's really important when you have your transition meeting those of you with ieps that you discuss with your team um you know what makes sense for you with regards to academic skills some students in a 4x4 block find that because they're only taking two or three core academic classes at a time that they would rather fill all of those those extra blocks with electives but you and your families and your team will make the best choice for you will some courses run year long in a four by four block yes that's actually a benefit of the four by four and that you can actually double the amount of instruction in some areas so there are going to be some courses
011like algebra one topics in math bc calculus that a lot of juniors and seniors take or ap physics those classes will run all year um and actually integrated one that's a course that's going to run in the fall and then and then one extra uh quarter in this in the spring and then you'll have another elective uh what about doubling up so for some students they actually want to stay connected to to say world language or some students would really want to have math all year long and want to double up in math so if that's something you would rather do than take an elective you are going to be permitted to indicate that you would like to double up on a core academic subject area and there's a space to do that when you
012register and we will do our best to give students those double academics if that's something that you're interested in doing principal sadiq did a nice job addressing that this schedule this 4x4 is happening next year as a result of covid and then for the following year we're going to seek community student and staff input to determine what happens in the 2223 school year and then for those of you that are interested in just learning more about the block schedule in general locally we have northampton high school is also in a 4x4 block and in massachusetts a school that actually put a lot of great information online is cambridge ridge and latin and we've included that link in this powerpoint if you just have general questions or want to learn more about the 4x4 block so
013i'm going to turn it over to miss camera again who's going to go through some sample 9th grade schedules with you hello again so again we're back to a few sample schedules so there's a chance you might choose to take a year-long math course and if that's the case you can take a look that the math your math class would show up in first and second semester and then first semester you would have math science social studies and then again look down below health and elective as split quarters mr mackey explained this really well second semester again you would have that math class again and then a world language english and then two electives as split quarters this yeah that's good so um this is an example of a schedule with music ensemble that shares
014a core academic so again musical music ensemble also could include dance as ms gramaci said so again in the first semester you would have core academ so you'd have three core academics and then at the end the fourth class of the day the deep period you'd have health and elective in split quarters and then again in second semester you would have um a core elective that alternates again every other day with whatever that music ensemble or dance is and two core electives so b and c periods and two sorry core academics and then an elective in the fourth period which be split quarters if you are someone that chooses to take academic skills you you have would have the option to take academic skills it could be one semester it could be for the whole
015year and so again this is how that schedule would look first semester four periods english science academic skills and math second semester world language social studies academic skills and health and elective you could choose to do academic skills for just one semester which would give you more elective opportunities so there are other opportunities at amherst regional high school so we've got something called an alternative learning program an alternative learning program has a lot of different options within it you could do community service um you could do a teaching assistant and you can do an independent study so um you'll need to speak with your guidance counselor about all of those options but for example some people will as they get a little bit older decide that they really want to study psychology and they'll do
016an independent study on that or they might want to help a lab teacher in chemistry be a teaching assistant set up labs or do some community service in the library so that there are lots of different opportunities there we will also have advisories and you're familiar with advisors from the middle school these are just a little bit different they don't meet quite as often and many of our advisories will be led by students and that will include different clubs right so let's say you're a part of the environmental action club and you're going to need an advisory on planting trees all around campus so that would be an example of that we have about 45 different team sports which is just excellent so you'll have a lot of choice and a lot of opportunity there
017and over 40 clubs um everything from dungeons and dragons and chess to the environmental action club to there's a ton and we'll have a club fair so you'll get the opportunity to hear about all of those different clubs and you can join multiple clubs so if you've got really broad interests you'll have the opportunity to join those clubs we have five different instrumental ensembles and three different choral ensembles so here's our timeline our timeline is that you'll see april 8th that's right now this is our opening curriculum night and then early next week you all are going to meet with guidance counselors from the high school they're going to speak with you in your advisory and they're going to help you sort of sort through all of this information there's a lot to digest here
018and we understand that which is one of the reasons we made these videos which you'll be able to watch shortly um actually i i see this april 14th to 16th we changed that my apologies those elective videos are embedded in the videos in the slideshow that you'll see tonight so that's not a separate event that's part of this um and then april 13 to the 21st you'll be having parent-teacher conferences to help figure out what the best courses to sign up for and to really think about sort of what you want your four years to look like and so you'll need to sort of project a little bit into the future and do a little bit of planning because you may decide that you want to take additional sciences or you may decide that you
019want to do more than one language or multiple ensembles and so it's a little bit tricky so you'll need to do some planning with your team and so those conferences will be from april 13th to may 21st um and then the the conferences themselves will end on the 21st of may and starting the 27th of may through the 31st you'll get what's called a course verification um which is an opportunity for parents to take a look at what you've signed up for and then review the course requests and then sign off on that so that's the registration timeline so we are really excited to welcome you all um it's it's gonna be a great first year and i look forward to meeting you all in person so what i'd like to do now is to
020put all of us back on the screen and give you an opportunity to ask us questions all right so i'm going to highlight a few great questions that i saw come in over while people were giving their presentation and we'll just try to get to them in order as much as we can so this is a question about taking required courses during the summer for example health great question so we are in the process of developing our summer school program and our hope is right after your spring break we should have a catalog available so um so just stay tuned we will have that information very soon and our hope is to offer at least pe or health if not both this summer so this next question is what is academic skills that's a great
021question so um that's a course that's in our special education department so if you have an iep that's a course that is uh taught by a lot of our special education teachers and we call them liaisons often and it's really it's really learning about academic skills organization time management and many of the skills that students need in high school in order to be successful all right this next question is about year-long courses if you take language or math both semesters are you credited with two years and is the instruction double paced right so if the instruction is not double paced but you would get four credits for each of the languages you took so you'll get four credits if you take spanish one in the fall you'd get four credits for that class and then
022you took spanish two in the spring you'd get another four credits for that class and the pace for each of the classes would be the same whether you took just one of those classes or you decided to double up because you wouldn't take them at the same time they'd be up into semesters i think the exception to that and maybe miss camera or mr mackey you think or mr sneak you can correct me would be if someone is taking a class that is designed to be a year-long course or a three-quarter course um that is intended to be paced differently then of course that's just one semester right so off the top of my head like a if you took a year-long class like algebra one if that is a year-long class you wouldn't then
023also be able to take algebra two the same year and if you took a three so it really only works with semester-long classes awesome okay so next question is from iris about what kinds of electives does ninth grade have so the good news is you'll get the opportunity to see videos from teachers who teach those elective courses so there are lots of different engineering courses computer science courses lots of different art courses as well as music ensemble music production there's a lot of options and so you'll have the opportunity to to be introduced to those in the videos again that are linked just below this youtube stream awesome so the next question is for students who are not currently at arms how can they meet with counselors before beginning at the high school so that's
024a great question and this is the time of year where students from lots of different schools begin to enroll in the high school if they live in the district so on our website is a link to our registrar's office and so the first step in that process is to actually register for the high school for ninth grade and then once you register you will get all of the info i mean now you can preview the information with the program of studies but you will actually get registration materials to select your courses in many cases you might need to take a placement test depending on the curriculum that you had this current year in a different school and those are set up with our department heads mostly in language and math and then at that time
025you will then be given an appointment with a guidance counselor to discuss more so i would say everything begins with registration at the um with the with our registrar and her name is michaela torre i'm also just saying that a few folks for some reason the link wasn't working earlier so they missed the beginning part of our presentation so i just want to let everyone know that this is a going to be recorded as soon as this is we're done and we're no longer live you'll be able to go back and watch everything you missed so don't panic this is not this is not a one-time shot you have an opportunity to go back and watch the beginning and right now we're just discussing what we went over in the presentation which is really just
026about the schedule and overview so you'll have lots of opportunities to catch up on whatever was missed um i want to get to the next one let's see here here we go is there a specific date for when you can start signing up for classes once you've had your your conferences so once the guidance counselors come down to advisories and once you've talked to adults on your team you know you can you can register then it is a digital registration so it's in powerschool so that will be open next week um and but again i would encourage you to wait until you've spoken with um teachers from your team as well as guidance counselors awesome so next question is what classes are required for ninth graders and what electives are available that's a really big
027question and i appreciate it i really like it we have what's known as the program of studies and the program of studies is also linked below this if you look you can click on that and go into ninth grade and you'll scroll through all of the required courses and all of the available elective courses it's a google site so you'll need to go up to the top and click on the bar on the right hand side and then you'll see that i could spout them out all right now but it would take a long time so take a look at that sometime um in the next few days all right next question i want to make sure i'm not missing any as i'm scrolling through here um our next question is about does sports do
028sports cover physical education as a class i'm guessing that means like maybe either what's included in physical education or if you play a sport do you also have to do pa i'm not quite sure maybe miami can fill us in and what she means by that question uh if that is the question if sports can take the place of the pe class the answer right now is no it can't sports uh pe is an elective we do a pe 10 is a requirement graduation requirement and then there are several other pe electives students can choose so if you if pe is not your you know one of your favorite classes you would only really have to take one semester or actually one quarter of it in the block system if you do go back to
029the seven drop one it'll be a semester-long class awesome so here's a question about honors options for all subjects uh yes they're just about all the subjects there are honors level classes excuse me in the program of studies is really explained pretty clearly there are some classes like all the english classes are mixed honors and college prep most of the world language classes are also mixed honors in college prep then there are separate classes for all the science classes are divided between college prep and honors when you get into some of the upper level social studies classes they are combined but in their first three years of social studies they are split between honors and college prep the electives there's no honors option in the electives just the core classes so here's a question about
030availability of courses do popular classes typically fill up fast so that that's a great question so one thing to keep in mind is that the scheduling process is not first come first serve so everyone will have until a particular date to be able to put their course requests in and then once we have all the course requests then we try to create as many sections for as many students who elected those courses what happens in some areas are in some of the elective courses for example there yes there are only so many sections so the way that's done is it starts with seniors so seniors have priority then juniors then you know 10th and 9th however for example in art um there are three at least three different art classes that are just for ninth
031graders so you're the only ones who can take them and they cover you know they're just fantastic classes so we work really hard to make sure that ninth graders really have access but it's very important and i'm glad charlotte asked this question it's really important that you put a lot of alternate choices down okay it's definitely important to put you know your first choice but if you have a lot of alternates you have a great chance as a ninth grader to get the courses that you've actually asked for so thanks for a great question so there's a question about the budget cuts and how they are affecting the availability of electives and dance art et cetera so actually the budget cuts this year aren't really affecting our electives the way that we originally thought they
032might so we're able to there's a lot of details involved but we were basically able to shift some funds and not have to lose any of our elected classes this year awesome so there's a question about how big typical classes are which i think is a great question as well that is a good question and you know there's a huge range it depends so let's say ap computer science is often a much smaller class than um a popular um engineering class which might be you know go all the way up to 25 students so the range i would say average range is somewhere between 18 and 23 students per class but again there are some smaller classes something like music production is dependent upon the number of computers that they have for use so those
033classes are a little bit smaller great um so there's no other questions that i'm going to give it a few more seconds here they take a little while to migrate their way over from youtube to where we are conducting this live stream so we'll just give them another little bit of time to get here but no questions at the moment and while we're waiting for some questions again i just want to thank everybody for taking the time of your busy schedule to be with us tonight and if you want to spread the word if people did come in late or if you know some people who may have missed it um like miss stocker said there will be a this will be available on our on the arps youtube channel for you to watch at
034your convenience if you miss something you want to go back it'll definitely be there for you um there's another question from eamon here which says what time do clubs start and also what time do advisories meet during the school day so clubs will start after school and generally they'll start at three o'clock if actually since the schedule is changing a little bit for next year they will start right after school gets out and we're still working out the schedule for advisory so we had to put advisory on pause this year while we're in the three by three block schedule we're still and we before this we had a special advisory schedule because unlike the middle school advisory does not happen every day at the high school it's generally it hadn't passed been a once every
035other week meeting and next year one of the plans is to meet either every once a week or once every other week and once we work out those details we'll have a much better idea of when it will happen but when we do send out information over the summer about you know all important information that you'll need to know going into the 21 22 school year you'll definitely see what the advisory schedule will be there's a related question here about um sports starts times with the new schedule hey and that's something else we're also trying to work out because we're also trying to coordinate with other schools about game times and what the practice now will also influence when the practice times are so they're still you know we're trying to get as many things
036ironed out as we can but there are still a lot of details that we are working on great and then i also see a quick question from helene about the time that school day ends i know we went over this but it's probably good to remember folks but the actual start and end time of the day will be next year right so the last class we'll get out it's 3 15 and then we have the last 15 minutes is the d plus time when students can have the opportunity to meet with their teachers to um figure out what their homework is for the day to ask any questions that were unanswered during the day then at 3 30 students will be going off to either clubs or practices or heading home awesome and then there
037was a question a little bit earlier that i accidentally skipped over apologies maria she is wondering um the 80-minute block of time and sort of concerns around attention spans for high school students i love that question and it's something i like to think about as a teacher i've taught at amherst high for 21 years before taking this role it allows us an opportunity to do really interesting projects and so our there's a lot of project-based learning um i agree with you i think 80 minutes is a long period of time i think the sort of average time the average amount of um attention span for folks is around 20 minutes and so teachers will create lessons that are really pretty varied um so small lectureets something then to um do an interactive component and so
038there's it allows for lots of variety but i do recognize that 80 minutes does feel like a long time this year we've got 80 minutes and our teachers are really reporting that they're able to really go deep in individual topics so the depth is a little bit different and that's been really wonderful they also have the opportunity to help individual students a little bit more in that amount of time so it gives them an opportunity to do work in class and also helped students individually so i do appreciate that that question and i do think about it a lot i'm not sure if mr sadiq or mr mackie want to add to that but i there's a lot to say about that one i think you did a great job awesome so there's a question
039here about criteria for getting into honors classes how do you get into them how they set up all those kinds of things okay so from going from 8th to 9th grade a lot of it will depend on recommendations from your teachers and when you get into the high school like with the english class for example you'll be able to decide after the class starts for some of the other classes there are prerequisites you have to do really well in the classes that come before them but it is a lot of conversations between your family and with your guidance counselors and with teachers figuring out if it's gonna be a good fit for you or not awesome um there's two questions about this so i'll put one of them up here but there's a repeat right
040below it about i'm sorry this is a different one about um range of science classes and i think that's something that'll be covered in the the videos you'll be able to watch right after this but not sure if anyone wants to fill that in i think it's worth noting that it's um ecology and environmental science that's the required ninth grade course for all students yeah all right so let me see i think i i may have accidentally skipped one so i'm just going back through our little uh roll of comments here to make sure i haven't missed anything important um there are a couple questions about um being able to tour the high school before next fall or an in-person orientation i think is what somebody else said right so in the in late summer
041we will have an orientation for all you'll be ninth officially ninth graders at that time and also were thinking about ways to introduce you to the high school slowly without all the other students around so one of our ideas to have you have a day the first day of school will be only 9th graders in you'll be in the in the high school only 9th graders for at least half a day potentially the whole day but again one of those many details we're still trying to work out but there would at least be an orientation day for you to come through the high school do tours talks talk and meet with some of your teachers and then you also get at least a half a day in the building with just other ninth graders actually
042also students who are new to the district will be there as well and actually there is uh virtual tours available there is a link to that we can get that centered out it just kind of gives you that you can get a one a sense of what the building is like but of course there's nothing it doesn't compare to being in the building but it'll give you kind of an overall view of what to expect once you get here or to the school so there's a question here about um college prep classes and also about taking classes at the colleges specifically foreign language classes here but i know there are other subjects people may be interested in so that you want to go ahead in this camera so the the college prep classes that's just
043the term for our standard level classes and then we have the honors option in a lot of those classes as well and for college classes we have a great agreement with amherst college and they allow amherst high school students to take up to two classes a semester there for free the trick is to figure out how it's going to fit within your schedule most of the time most of the classes students take there are students who are on if they want to take a class that's not offered at the high school first off and if they also if they're on accelerated math track and they want it they've gone through the ap calculus bc and now they want to take a higher level math class they would take that at amherst college and there are
044also students who are on accelerated track from the world languages and they would take a class at amherst college as well but it is open to take other introductory psychology classes again classes that aren't offered at the high school that would be a conversation you would start with your guidance counselors and then would figure out what makes the most sense and how it would fit into your schedule and it's mostly that typically is something that juniors and seniors generally do great so here's a question about how do mixed honors and college prep classes work and i'm assuming that's meaning classes that have those heterogeneous groupings so yep i can take that one um so the idea here is the material that you're covering is the same for for honors and college prep but when you
045take the honors option you're going to get more depth and there may be more asked of you right so let's say you're doing a research project as an honors option you may need to go find additional primary sources you may need to work with ella stalker our librarian um or if you're in an english class you may be reading some of the same books but you might need to read additional books that are more challenging um and so it's really about depth it's not just additional work however it's about it's about how much deeper you need to go and how much harder is the material to know and understand so here's a great question about what teachers will you have you have the same teachers for all four years we have different teachers each year
046i think it's a great question i can also answer that one um you will have a lot of different teachers however you may discover that you have a particular passion for playing you know in the wind ensembles and so you would get that same teacher or you love engineering so you would get that same teacher so electives there's a chance you'll have the same teacher but in terms of you know four full years in each different department the likelihood that you'll get one teacher more than once is actually pretty slim it happens for sure um but it's less common than you'd think great question that is our last question at the moment just these have been some really great questions so thank you all for asking such thoughtful things about your future high school careers
047or your students future high school careers if you're a parent writing these questions um here is a quick question about ap courses and if you can take them earlier which i'm not quite sure what that means but um i can i can answer that too unless mr siddique do you want to answer that right that's fine i think that's worth looking at the program of studies um for and there are ap courses in almost all departments um and there are a lot of different options um i think this means can you take an ap course in in ninth grade i think that's probably what that question is and yes you could take ap computer science so what you want to do is you want to take a look at the program of studies and click
048on 9th grade and scroll through those different departments and see what the options are here's a question about how many hours of homework will students can expect to receive so it's going to vary ideally it will be no more than a half an hour per class but there may be times when you're involved in a research project or you're preparing for an exam so it may be a little bit longer than that but we'd like to think there's approximately a half hour of homework per class but it again it does shifts from time to time i think we'll take maybe one or two more questions here there's a great question about just where the virtual link to the high school lives on the high school website and i actually don't know the answer to this
049i feel like i probably should but i don't um does anyone know on this call if not we'll figure it out and send out an email to parents and families about where to find that information yeah i'm not sure if it's linked to the the high school website or not but if it's not we'll make sure that it's up there otherwise it would be something that um we could email to you but i like the idea of having a link to the high school website so we'll make sure that gets up there as soon as possible and this i think is a perfect final question if we come up with questions after this live stream ends who should we ask excellent question so you once you watch the slideshow with the embedded videos you will
050see at the end of that slideshow is a form that allows you to ask any question about anything um and so we will get back to you that way you could also write to any of us at the high school but i think the form makes really good sense because it will we'll have that coordinated responses so guidance counselors will answer guidance questions you know engineering teachers will answer engineering questions english teachers will answer english questions etc etc yeah great point um the other thing i just wanted to add about that is that that form is linked in the slideshow everything that we've just mentioned the program of studies the the slideshow are all linked in the description box right below this video um so that is where you'll find them if you don't see
051them right away you may need to click a little button that says show more and then more of the description box will appear so if you're having a hard time seeing those links make sure you click that show more so you can see everything and i think that is it sorry that's just a nice thank you from folks we appreciate having you here as well definitely yeah please do reach out if you have other questions and we will be in touch again thank you all have a great night everyone