001hi and thank you for joining us tonight i'm superintendent mike morris and we're so pleased you're here and so please you're joining us to learn a little more about kindergarten and a little bit about more about next year so we really appreciate you being here um very briefly tonight we have principals assistant principals some other folks who work with families in our district and our goal tonight is really just to share first 10 or 15 minutes about kindergarten about our schools but really open it up much more for question and answer and that's our goal for tonight so you can see in the lower right hand corner of your screen i think you should be able to see that there's a text box and at any point please feel free to put questions in or
002comments anything that you'd like we're we'll do this for about half an hour or so we know you're attending to other needs as well uh family and such and then we'll transition to a conversation specifically about our kaminante's two language program for folks who are interested uh at about you know seven o'clock uh around that time but mostly we want to say we're thrilled this is the high school graduating class of 2034. uh we're really excited to welcome them to our schools and share a bit about our district and what we do so we really appreciate you being here and getting the opportunity to meet some of the folks who'll be working with your children so at this point uh we're going to just hear you're going to get to hear from each of our
003schools school leadership teams as well as the family center and then we'll open up for a more general question and answer but we'll go in alphabetical order and our first school that we will have is crocker farm elementary school and principal shea and assistant principal smith will share a little bit about crocker farm so thank you for being here derek and jen appreciate it thank you mike thank you everyone for coming uh my name is derek shea and my trusted partner is jen smith and smith um hi jen um so i'll go as quick as i can with it um speaking too fast uh let me see crocker farm school beautiful little uh school in the south end of town approximately 300 students um some years two classes per per grade some years three um
004small class size 16 18 students per class this is my 11th year at crocker my 20 large number whatever year in the district um i worked forever for a bunch of years so i know forever a little my kids went to mark's meadow in wildwood my youngest child's graduate in high school this year so i have a fairly decent uh understanding of what goes on around here um i'll just tell you one brief thing so i think one of the most important things i do as a principal or one of the things i'm involved in as a principal is is hiring the people who come to work at concord farm so i've been very fortunate in the time that i've been at crocker farm i think uh between miss smith and i and the team
005of people we work with we've hired about probably 70 percent of the people who work in the building right now the other 30 percent of the people were hired by superintendent morris who was previously the principal at crocker farm but the reason i tell you that is because i think um the the ability for us to be able to go out there and find people um who've got diversity of experiences in life um and and sort of somehow can come to crocker farm and put all of that sort of vastness together um because our our biggest pieces of trying to make sure that the essence of the teamwork that we bring every single day to your school is to try to make us just a little bit better each and every time and so we're
006actually a pretty good school and we're trying to become a better school uh each and every day each and every year um so for me i was just going to mention that little piece about hiring the right people to come to your school and i know jen was going to say a few words i think in addition thank you yeah so i'm jen i'm the assistant principal and i think what our kindergarten program does is really strive to provide a balance of three components one is direct teaching in our foundational skills two is really supporting students social emotional well-being and three allowing kids time to play and explore and apply what they're learning in centers so we have an amazing team an amazing staff i really love this school mike actually hired me and we
007look forward to meeting you all and meeting your kids soon and the last thing i'll just say mike if you don't mind is that jen's just got me going there we have a beautiful school and a beautiful property so we have a massive amount of space outside i was outside myself today playing with a bunch of kindergartners and first graders so one of the beauties in all our schools is they'll get just really nice properties thank you so much derek and jen and they're going to hang around so if there's quacker farm specific questions you'll you'll have access to them in a couple minutes thanks and next in alphabetical order is miss chamberlain and fort river school thank you so much for being here diane good evening and welcome to your introduction to fort river
008so it's funny when we talk about our schools individually because there's a lot of overlap right i could say the same thing that derek and jen just said about crocker farm i think we have a dynamite staff i think that we are dedicated to continually learning and growing um and we welcome you to the fort river community so we have a couple of specific things i'd love to highlight is that we have a pretty dynamite behavioral health team that does look really um closely into student social emotional development um we absolutely value play for sure um and we value our motto is we choose love right so we really invest in developing the whole community so kids feel very connected that there's intra grade level connections older kids often get a chance to mentor the
009younger kids we really want to make sure kids feel really held and safe in our environment so they can do their very best learning and take chances to grow because that's what really they need to feel safe to do is take those chances we also really obviously value diversity as our community does we happen to house a couple of specialized programs for special education as well as a specialized program kamenantes which is a dual language program that we'll talk a little bit more about later um so neurodiversity and cultural diversity is something that's really at the forefront of all that we do um we are considering ourselves a language-based learning institution so even if the students aren't learning a second language they're learning the language of academics that makes them successful in academics and all
010that is under that umbrella of choosing love and being good to one another and being good to our community and um collectivism is at the the spirit of all that we do at fort river this is a quick quick snapshot we also have about 300 students obviously kindergarten through sixth grade and we look forward to having your children 2034. wow thanks for that mike no problem it's amazing to think about uh hopefully we're in a calmer world in 2034 than we find ourselves in today um but thank you diane and again uh diana i'll hang out both uh for questions but also some for coming on days as well i believe so um and now we will go to principal wedding jones and palum lee thank you for joining us tonight thanks mike hello i'm
011lee whiting jones i'm the principal at pelham elementary school this is my first year at pelham it's been a little bit of an odd one but i'm so happy to be part of the pelham community we are a super small school in comparison to the other elementary schools in amherst so we have just over 110 students and as a result we have a really cozy community feel to our school we have one classroom per grade level and we have lots of traditions that just provide opportunities for students in different grade levels to connect to connect with teachers at different grade levels and it just reinforces the feeling of being a big family so we also have a mixture of pelham residents and students and families who are part of our school through the school choice
012program so right now it's about 35 to 40 percent school choice families who live in surrounding towns and communities and still we find lots of lots of opportunities to bring other families into the pelham fold whether that's through all school morning meetings or community events with the pto so in terms of teaching and learning at pelham we have a really progressive curriculum having one teacher at each grade level we're able to do a lot of vertical alignment and create experiences for students year over year with an emphasis on hands-on learning real world contexts learning the language of learning as some other people have talked about a bit and we're really excited to expand our outdoor learning program we have a beautiful campus we've had a naturalist in residence for the past few years and all
013of the staff are really excited to do do some more experimenting with what it looks like to learn outside and connect to the natural world and the last piece that i want to highlight about our curriculum is that for the past several years we've been piloting the let's talk curriculum which is a body positive consent based um affirming sexuality and gender curriculum that begins in kindergarten so we've been working with research partners through umass to really develop develop opportunities for students to acquire language around consent and gender and it really sets the stage for having open dialogue um and a safe nurturing learning environment in the classroom and then in the whole school so we are now accepting school choice applications so if you don't live in pelham fear not your kindergartner can still come
014to pelham if it feels like it's a good fit for your family great thank you so much lee i appreciate it um and uh our second last presenter in our last school um mr yaffi uh principal yaffi from wildwood welcome nick oh nick you're muted thank you thank you thank you it would be great when we hear it when we get to the day where we don't have to hear your music anymore that we can just speak to each other in person and that day is coming soon as we're all welcoming kindergarteners back in so as diane said and as we've all said there's more that's in common for all of us in the kindergartens across all the schools and yet each school i think what will what you'd see is that there's a strong
015sense of uniqueness and community that we've all created with a special love for the kindergarten because it's the kindergarteners who come in and then become part of the community um i was a kindergarten teacher for 20 years and so my heart really lies in that experience and how important it is to welcome each and every one of you to our schools and to watch the marvel of kindergarteners who come in and they might be a little nervous at first but then within a short period of time they get to know the whole school community they get to know their way to the library to the different specials and we all work to create these connections with the older students whether it's through reading buddies or math tutors that come in or just former students in
016the kindergarten up to sixth grade who just like to come in and spend time with their teachers as well as what each teacher each of each of the principals have stated we believe in the whole child and teaching kids the social skills that they'll need for life and at wildwood and at all the schools we've been exploring what's called project-based learning where kids are asked a question and a challenge and then they explore this challenge and take ownership for their own learning and oftentimes do some sort of presentation of what they've learned to a authentic community and so that's something at wildwood that we have been going deeper into both as adults and also with our students and in all the schools we believe the arts are important so you'll see kids expressing themselves through
017the arts and at the same time learning what they need to know in terms of reading writing and mathematics but in an engaging hands-on way so we look forward to welcoming you at wildwood and in all the schools and i can't wait 2034. goes by in a flash thank you nick and uh we'll have one more uh just introduction we have other people on the call for questions we have our ello coordinator our special ed director or curriculum coordinator but one of the things that makes our district unique is that we do have a family center and the family center works with all families and then works with some families more specifically but it's been really important to us and have been a consistent value of the district that we want to make the strong
018relationship with families you're you're our children's first teachers uh and dr gavara is the director of the family center and so she's with us nice thank you for making time for us dr gabara and maybe you could share a little bit about the work of the family center i am so excited to be here with all of you um of all the opportunities of all my experiences as an educator my favorite experience like nick said was being a kindergarten teacher i just love the age i love just the promise i love how wonderful sponges they are and i love working we all love working with you families because you're as as dr morris said you are their first teachers and so we think of this as a partnership or we invested in your children and
019the fact that even before you come in you can become aware of the family center and all we do so we work for all of you we work with all families there are things in programming we do for all families and then there's things we do for families who need a little more support the great thing is is that we have a doorknob in our website if you ever have any questions if you ever need any support that is the entryway as well as contacting me or any of our folks but we do we work really closely with you so even before you come in if you have any questions but we reach out we do programming we do a backpack project for families who need support and students get a backpack with supplies we
020have a dentist program when we used to you know in person not in this year but we support students during transition years we have an out-of-school time coordinator who works with families to provide before and after school care we have two case managers who work really closely with those families who need extra support we also do this registration so your entry into us will be with our registrar who's also our assistant mildred martinez so you've some of you have already submitted paperwork so again we're here we work really closely with all of the schools we work really well and we're here for you and your children and we're so happy you'll be with us welcome thank you barta um so i'm gonna get the whole group back on so our squares will get a little
021smaller um but um there we go and so just introducing some people who uh didn't get introduced tim sheens our curriculum coordinator thank you for being here tim katie richardson's our ell english language learner coordinator and dual language coordinator uh kamenantes so thank you katie and dr fay brady is our student services uh director um and a whole lot of things including glad fall under her auspices so uh again we really appreciate you being here you know you got a flavor or a taste of uh the schools and the family connections but we'd love it if in the lower right hand corner if you're able to type in a question so we can respond while you're doing that just uh i have a question which is for the group anyone can jump in um my
022kindergartner or my future kindergartner is a little anxious about going to a new school next year they've been at their preschool since they were three months old what advice would you give families who might be wondering about supporting students through the transition from a really familiar preschool daycare slash preschool environment into a kindergarten through sixth grade environment i wonder who's willing to jump in that also hopefully jog some questions from uh folks who are watching i'm gonna pick on mr yathy because he did this for 20 years so uh sorry to pick on you nick but uh don't mind unmuting yourself and i'm sure your colleagues will jump in as well yeah uh well this is the number one job really of the kindergarten teachers the kindergarten team and our school is to help kids
023make that important separation and to become part of the community um we recommend to families if they want to come by your playgrounds once you know you're coming to one of our schools during the summer and we also have visiting days during the first three days of school where they'll come in in small groups it'll give them a tour of the classroom as well as a tour of the whole school i think if you can connect to families who you know are coming to the same school that's also helpful for a familiar face but i'll pass the baton to anyone else any other thoughts people want to add on to what uh principal yaffi shared mr shea and then miss chamberlain so hopefully this will help it's hard to sort of picture it but like
024every they're really the best way to picture it is think about in the morning time when kids either come off a bus or they get a car and they arrive at school right and there'll be a whole series of people out there to meet and i do this every single day to meet integrating to say hello and to ask about what you did the night before and to talk with you in one class and i can tell you right now in all our schools and set like a speaker crocker farm there's there's 25 kindergartners in the school right now every day and i know the names of every single one of them and i know there's six or seven or eight other people in the school who know the names of every single kindergartner in
025our school so our expertise is in our in our interest is getting to know kids and getting to know them for seven years like a duration piece so that's the part where it starts right from the beginning thanks mr chamberlain the only other thing i wanted to add is that our kindergarten teachers take this transition so seriously they know it is the biggest one for these little youngsters of their lives they're entering their first public school experience many of them are entering and we also know it's tough on families right so we'll give you hugs if we can give hugs at that point to help you transition as well but the teachers go slowly in the first couple of weeks the first up to six weeks of school they really take it slowly and teach
026the rhythms and the routines and they want to hear about difficulties at home to be your partners so they're not going to ask the students to do heavy academic lifting for the first six weeks of school they're really going to nurture them and just take care of them learning the school learning the routines thank you and dr brady wanted to add a piece as well yeah i i wanted to say um one of the things when if your child is telling you they're a little nervous and a little uneasy that's a good thing and so one of the things we want to do as parents is to tell them that it's okay to feel that way that when we do new things sometimes many of us or most of us feel a little bit uneasy
027and that there will be people at school that will take care of them we'll be there to support them and hold them during that versus trying to say to your child oh no no don't worry it you know it'll be okay that it's okay and you can even use yourself as an example to say when i try new things sometimes i too feel a little bit uneasy and i think everyone has had the experience in the last year of trying new things so i think we have a lot to draw from i said there's a question about commodities we're probably about 10 minutes away from doing a commentary specific um extension of this info session so thank you for the question and and we'll speak to it mrs richardson and ms chamberlain and i will
028stay on and be able to speak to that um another question that i got someone emailed me that they weren't able to be here and they were wondering about the garden program um and what that looked like because they were they seemed like they were particularly interested in their future kindergarten or getting their kids getting their hands dirty um so i wonder if mr sheehan maybe could uh talk a bit about the garden program and some of the other curricular pieces uh at the kindergarten level sure um we have a really exciting garden program at all four of the elementary schools uh we were really lucky to have a science coordinator uh who works with classroom teachers both on the science they teach in the classroom as well as in the gardens and we also
029have a garden educator who works with them and the garden educator um known as farmer leela to the kids um she leaves lessons um out in the gardens the kids do planting and harvesting they learn about the life cycle of plants they learn about pollinators um it's really an application of the life science that goes on in classroom instruction in a really great hands-on way um and we have we have a bank of lesbians that go with this from kindergarten up through fourth grade at this point and we've we're continuing to add a year on each year that they go thank you tim i appreciate that um you know i had a couple other people questions uh that are typical ones so uh i could speak to this personally and professionally but when i used
030to be principal crocker farm kindergarten we used to do you know this obviously much more in person and the students most exciting so many of the students were so excited to ride the bus so many of the families that was their fear so it's this strange kind of phenomenon of uh uh you know kid excited parent maybe lasso uh i don't know if anyone can speak to you know how to manage that when there may be some dissonance between family opinions about the bus and student opinions about the bus and how does the bus work if you're a kindergarten student you sit in the back i mean all those kind of things i don't know who is want to jump in talk a little bit about transportation and the bus diane you look like you're
031ready to go with this one so i mean sure sure so um we work really hard to make sure the kindergarteners do feel safe on the bus that everybody feels safe on the bus so they are seated in the front seats so the drivers can space pay special close attention to them we actually have in the past asked some sixth grade students to be kind of bus ambassadors for our young ones on the bus um we make sure that they are greeted right outside of uh the door um every morning like derek had mentioned uh greeted by name usually pretty quickly as soon as our folks are able to remember those names after the first day of school they're greeted by their teachers out front when the very first day of school so we do
032take the bus safety really seriously again so they're seated up front some potential mentors on the bus and personal escorts to and from the door every morning and afternoon thank you diane i see you coming at this question again we'll get to that shortly uh here's another one any thoughts on what we can be doing over the next six months or so to get our kids ready who have been out of preschool for the past year due to covet so the timing of this is perfect as many of you may be aware we're reopening for five days a week instruction a little less than a month from now at our k to six level so we're spending an awful lot of time thinking about how to support students in this transition so i don't know
033if anyone on their team wants to start but just you know what are things that families could do to support their children um especially young children who have been out of school for some length um jen want to jump in yeah just two things that i would just say that come to mind is just to keep reading to them and keep talking to them are the two most important things you can do right now [Music] thank you um diane yep i'm going to speak up for allison too our assistant principal from principal from wildwood who always says don't forget the numbers right if you're able to count along the way with your child if you're going by a farm how many cows can you count if you are walking down the sidewalk how many steps
034can you count um so just play play with rhyming play with numbers and i think uh you know i'll add to if i could jump in um with a non-facilitator hat on i think the other thing is you know in ways that feel good it is getting warmer it's amazing it's not pitch black at 6 57 right now so looking at my window it's pretty exciting to me and just thinking of ways that you can make reconnect with kids even if your child's not in preschool but outdoor play dates going to playgrounds things like that because you know the academics we're good we you know our staff know how to do that and really a lot of the focus of supporting students when they come back isn't necessarily about um just the academics it's about
035what does it mean to be in a group right that's a really unique thing that students haven't had as many experiences with over the last year so anything they could do that brings them joy that connects them with a peer or family members um you know now that it's being easier in my opinion to be outside i know there's some winter lovers out there i'm not in that group um but i think that would that's another thing that um can do it i mean you know graff park is if you haven't been there it's amazing since it got redone and i think that also helps because we probably are in a world next year where there's still masks so building up mass tolerance and figuring out how play days work with that especially if they
036haven't been in preschool and haven't been wearing masks you know we're flexible and we're working on mass tolerance with students who are back in it's not like they have to be perfect on day one but it is something that might be normalized that process for them so those are just a couple of things that that i wanted to share so anyone else who won i thought i saw yeah i just want to say that derek mentioned and others mentioned about the wonderful buildings and properties we have and off out of school time visiting the playgrounds and walking around and getting familiar with it it's it's also i i found it with my own grandchild it worked really well so visiting the playground and walking around the building also helps count fears and the familiarity works
037really well yeah so really good question sasha jumped in responding to it but um linking with other families um you know this is going to be a good plug for me that one of the most used uh just wonderful organizations we have in each of our schools is our parent guardian organization or at pelham pto parent-teacher organization and they often will do things like kindergarten meetups before the kindergarten year starts so as you register or enroll you know please do we encourage people to reach out to the parent guardian organizations because they have in the past and they continue to even virtual environment at the moment do a fabulous job connecting families and exactly in the way you said so you know uh if you haven't you know i think the pgos usually in the
038summer they ask us for some information and you may get an all staff or all family email from principal and have links to parent guardian organization but they they play a huge role in making these forging these connections especially with the younger students um dr gover yes i would also say so i work really closely with all of the parent guardian and pto organizations and they have a role for everybody so even if you can only spend a little time there will define a role that you can come and help them they're great people they're very uh generous with their time and their efforts they help us with many different activities we just did a district wide coat and warm uh you know accessories uh two months ago and it was wonderful so everybody works
039well together and there is a place for you so consider volunteering yeah and on that point about a voluntary opt-in list what typically works is that there's a class parent and the parent guardian organizations organize that and that class parent often plays a large role in kind of facilitating or arranging kind of optional play dates or things like that before the school year starts so you know just again a plug for them and they really have a great ability to have a wide reach for our families um let me see um i don't see non-commandantes oh i'm sorry nick go ahead i just wanted to jump in too because typically when we do registration in person we give out as a district some kind of kindergarten countdown calendar and that's that's something that families can
040do is just build up that sense of that this is going to be something to look forward to it's going to be a positive experience and as uh dr brady said listening to their feelings and and reflecting on those but just uh counting down the days because the sense of time you have kids who you know when they turn five they think okay i'm going to kindergarten tomorrow this way you could count down the days through the summer yeah and one other thing i was going to mention is there are opportunities in our community you know whether it's athletics or some of the nature opportunities that do have preschool programs in the spring and summer in our newsletter which you'll you'll start getting next year if you don't have an old if your child doesn't
041have another sibling you know we advertise those and we try to communicate because as much as possible we want folks to know what's out in the community for them to participate in so uh there's a question how big are anticipated class sizes at fort river in 2021 2022 um hard to know until we register uh the kiddos but in general our class size is under 20. we have a very low class size policy in both amherst and pelham in the elementary schools and the majority of our classes are have under 20 students especially at the primary grade levels so we won't know exactly what that looks like until we have all of your information but that's in general are i think our class size guidelines from the school committee at elementary level are something like
04217 to 21 or 17 to 22 but we tend to be on the low end of that particularly as it relates to kindergarten if people another second um to see if there's anything else that uh comes in um so i think the last thing um i might want to say before we transition is just that this isn't the last time to talk to anyone on this call so if you think of a question later or you think of another question all of us are our emails are very accessible and if you think of you know reaching out to the principal it's okay to reach out to them before your child's a student there that's really normal sometimes prospective families feel like oh i'm not really a student i'm not really a family yet and you're
043on this call we consider you part of our family so please do reach out as questions come up as you're thinking about the year as you're talking to your child and your child's opinions are going to change probably many times between now and when the school year starts um so you know please uh please do access us whether it's in the family center or uh any of the rest of us in the call i think mr shea had a hand up do you want to share one other thing um so so mike on that note um historically in the past um we've certainly uh encouraged and supported parents to come to the building and actually have given a number of tours to people prior to school starting it's difficult in this pandemic time to do
044that obviously and that's not something that we could do right now but i was wondering about those videos that we made sometime in the either the fall and the winter mike and and we made some nice little videos of um of all of the schools perhaps three four minute videos where you can actually get a tour and i don't know how that could be accessible or where you find that no it doesn't replace coming into the building to walk around but being lower you get a chance to at least take a look see what it was like yeah so last year because of the pandemic we made virtual tours and that's pretty neat because they are narrated by the folks on this call uh and they are interactive so it's not just two-dimensional images but
045actually you can kind of see around that so we that's a great point and that's uh we can definitely get that link up uh maybe sasha who's in the green room here i would be able to get that link in the chat thank you derek i think with that we'll transition um so um we'll just hold on to katie and diane but everyone else is welcome to depart but really appreciate all the other principles directors being on the call and they will see you soon okay so if you are not interested in kaminantes which is our dual language program you also can enjoy the rest of your evening and don't feel like you need to stay on but we're excited about coming on days i think the three of us on this call have been
046been in this for and i was looking at when we visited other programs it's it's it's it's been a while you know and what's nice is the program's maturing we have kindergarten first grade and now we're uh up to you know our first group being in second grade next year which is really exciting but i'll turn it over to katie and diane uh to um describe a bit about the program and how the process works we didn't rehearse it so you could you gonna jump in katie or shall i yeah all right go ahead all right um i was just asking i think that i can share here um let me just see if i can i have a few slides um just to talk a little bit about the main ideas katie would it
047be easier because i have multiple screens would it easier if i shared the screen my screen that one thanks so much so uh um as dr morris said we're really thrilled to be going into the third year of our caminantes dual language program um it's been a wild ride and so much fun and so exciting to see our students learning bilingually so it's been really fantastic um and so in a moment you'll see dr mars will pull up some slides but we really think of the foundation of the program as these three goals the bilingualism and biliteracy the grade level academic achievement and the cross-cultural competence so we're really looking to build students that are bilingual but also aware of culture um and how that you know how they can really bridge across the language
048and culture aspects um about you know learning in spanish but learning about the spanish culture cultures right of many different places um and we're really excited that many of the folks in our community who are spanish speakers have the opportunity to have that talent shine and that background shine in this program um if you go to the next slide it gives just a little more info so we talk about the dual language model as being a program that really aims for those bilingual and biliterate goals right and it functions where students have half of their day in english with one teacher and half of the day in spanish with another teacher so they learn in both languages and throughout the course of the program they learn all subjects in both languages some subjects they learn
049for example science they'll have a unit in english and a unit in spanish back and forth throughout the year whereas some subjects like our math instruction tends to happen in one language or the other depending on the grade level so there's a bit of a split that way this talks a little bit about the registration and enrollment process and i can speak to that a little more at the end some of the characteristics we think of um if you're interested in your child being bilingual if you're excited about that if you're excited to take on that challenge um and and work with your child to potentially learn uh another language that you know at first will feel really challenging and then we'll grow to feel really exciting and to be a part of who they
050are um are you okay with stretching yourself as a parent right and supporting them in in maybe a language that you don't understand whether that's english or spanish right um so those are a couple aspects i think of miss chamberlain feel free to jump in too that this is just some kind of basic information from our brochure one of the things that's really important to instruction at all levels but especially language learning is physically being involved with it there's a lot of dancing there's a lot of singing there's a lot of asking for students to practice using their oral language and i have to say i was just observing in our first grade dual language spanish instructional room virtual room the other day and it was amazing to see children responding to their teacher in
051spanish kids that knew know spanish in the beginning of kindergarten and this is with almost a full year of remote instruction already able to answer her questions in spanish and the flip side of that seeing students that are native spanish speakers able to answer in the first grade classroom on the english side in english so their their rate of the language acquisition is is stunning absolutely yeah it's been really really awesome to see despite the challenge of remote learning um and absolutely that that interaction is key um always getting them talking more interacting using the language so we're always trying to get teachers and i speak for myself too as a teacher i always take talk too much myself so we're always trying to get ourselves to stop talking and get the kids talking more
052um so the next slide shows just a little bit of a typical day we do tend to use red to signify spanish and glue to signify english and so this kind of shows some of our routines where we have an entrance and kind of conversation time a morning circle or morning meeting there'll be some various parts of our instruction right so in kindergarten math is in spanish we have um the letter c in the picture there represents casa right so we'll have phonics in spanish we'll have content and literacy and then the circle is meant to represent centers so we have some different hands-on activities or enrichment activities that connect to different parts of the curriculum an important aspect also with this program is that we try to really embed the language learning within the
053content so that it's very um interdisciplinary we don't kind of say okay we're going to have a writing unit that's separate from our science unit but we're going to do those together so that they can be applying the language of that content all the time then they break usually in the middle of the day we've got a recess and lunch time and then they'll switch to the other language for the remainder of the day so you'll see specials there will happen in english and then some of the same academic routines so i can go to registration unless you have anything else okay great so our registration policy um the timeline is on the next slide and um basically we're we're starting to collect applicants for registration at this point and during that process you indicate
054interest in the dual language program part of that is to indicate your family language background because we are aiming to have a balance of english speakers bilingual students and spanish speakers across the program so that we really have peer models and we have students learning from each other so that information helps the enrollment team figure out which lottery group you your child would fall into so it's it's a bit of a mouthful but you can see their group one is our spanish speakers enroll uh living in the fort river zone group two is our spanish speakers in the crocker farm and wildwood zones group three is english speakers in the fort river zone and then finally english speakers in the crocker farm and wildwood zones so we fill the seats according to that breakdown and
055we're looking at about 20 seats for spanish speakers or bilingual families and about 20 seats for english speakers we aim to have our lottery on april 28th this year and then we would follow up with families and let you know um that you either are offered a seat at that time or you would be on the wait list and we'll have some information sessions and a little chance to discuss more ask questions before you commit to joining the program so i think that's the overview um anything else miss chamberlain or dr morris did a great job summarizing you've done this before and so uh at this point you know again if there's questions please do put them in the chat um you know it's it's usually when we do this event uh most people bring
056their children and it's this really dynamic event where we get to like see you and see your children and you know uh food and it's just you know games and it's really nice so this is i know a little a little awkward in terms of the world we're in but we do really want to receive feedback and questions and comments uh from anyone so if you do have any um please do uh let me ask i'll put a and you sort of address this a bit earlier katie but um if you have someone um before we get to the question if you've apparently you're thinking about this you know what um but you're a little nervous about your child you know and and their acquisition of english not they may be a native english speaker
057but is this going to make them slower to learn how to read and will they ever catch up you know that's one that we we get pretty consistently uh i see a question come in but before we get to that one do you mind addressing um sort of how that works and in terms of dual language programs what the research would suggest sure okay so um there's lots of research that shows that essentially students in general learn to achieve the same um levels of literacy by about third grade in both languages so we we sometimes see that because they're learning bilingually across languages that we might not reach the same levels that we would experience monolingually but that we would see those two reappear by about the middle of elementary school our experience with our
058our first year at least because we have better data from that group is that we didn't actually see much of a delay um honestly as much as that we had hoped and i apologize i don't like the word delay right it's really not because we're actually seeing an additive amount of growth that is equivalent or greater to the progress that we would see in a monolingual student um but sometimes that does happen because again your your brain is processing in two languages and you're using what you know from one language to help you in the other language um sometimes you learn to read more quickly in one than the other and then eventually they balance out so um both from our research base and from other programs we've spoken with but then also from our
059experience so far we really haven't seen any concern in that area so what we do is if we have if we have one language that's moving at a more accelerated pace than the other we look at the the growth together and make sure that each student is progressing overall between both languages for a whole year so yeah and the kids have done exceptionally well um and quickly answering the second question um there is busing so we've had um double busing basically is what happens where if a student is in the crocker farm zone they would take their typical bus with their neighborhood folks and get off at crocker farm and then get on a different bus and come over to fort river so it is they get the magic of two buses and i did
060actually want to say research tells us to the previous question that students that learn bilingually actually can have better outcomes at the end of their high school career and going into their their college level studies thank you for taking care of both of those diane um i appreciate that give a second for more questions to come in so there's one i yeah there we go um the school library have materials in english and spanish so i'll let either of you jump in on that one i can say our librarian is super dedicated to diversifying our library thank you lanny so she's been working really hard not only to get a significant number of spanish texts in our library and as well as our online resources but more languages than spanish as well katie has been
061really wonderful in securing significant grant funding over the last two years and has bulked up our both classroom libraries and helped the library as well so we we definitely it's a big goal of ours but i would say we've done a pretty solid job of getting multilingual books in the hands of kids over the last few years and so the next two questions are sort of related how are the 20 seats per language divided by the four registration groups and how many students in the fourth group tend to get in the program so any answer is going to be conditional because it depends on how many students are interested how many spanish speakers how many english speakers we have and where those students live and and you know we live in a relatively small community
062which means year to year we could see pretty significant shifts um in all of those census data which isn't perfect would tell us that our incoming class of kindergartners tends to will will be a smaller cohort um census that is not perfect because there's a lot of transience in amherst because of the universities and some other factors um but um so it's really hard to to put real clarity on it um except to say that i think um and katie you can correct me if i'm wrong but you know we've had small but non-zero numbers of students in group four um you know who made it into the program but but if there's fewer kindergarten students next year that may increase the number but it all really depends on sort of who registers who's interested
063and where they live um is that do you think i'm capturing it well katie and dan i do yeah we we really try to prioritize having seats available um for a long time for spanish speaking in bilingual families so just for a number we tend to aim to fill 20 seats first from group one then group two um into the spanish speaking side and then for the english speaking side we will fill only up to 20 at the maximum until we really see the whole picture um but yeah absolutely we've had a few students join it is a lower probability but it's definitely not impossible for zone or four students to join and we have made that call in august even and said if you're still interested it's sometimes there's a little bit more of
064a waiting game so mm-hmm and so i'm going to jump into that question right away too so for english speaking students the entry point is kindergarten to be exposed to the level of language that they need they really do need to start with the cohort for spanish speaking students they are able to join at different stages along the way but again for english-speaking folks it's a kindergarten entry point you're muted i mike made it through this call without without uh being muted so uh didn't make didn't quite make it so have you seen a significant number of families redshirt their children due to the pandemic should lead to a larger kindergarten class size um always been a certain you know portion of families who for a whole host of reasons either stay with their preschool
065for an extra year because they feel connected um you know so we definitely our kindergarten numbers were down this year and i think pandemic was certainly a part of that um i haven't heard a tremendous number of those families indicate that they want to repeat kindergarten um it's much more about that there's a lot of um there's a lot of interest in returning to school now that we're full back and the school committee is committed to that for next year um so you know we'll wait and see but i i i tend to think that will have a relatively minor impact um on us um and so now that katie probably can take this one on registration question about registering for uh how does how does how does one register for uh both common antes
066and zones kindergarten um in case student doesn't get a spot sure yeah so as part of the registration process you're automatically um just identified for the school that you would be going to based on where you live but when you indicate interest in the dual language program then we pull you into the lottery for that as well so both are happening at once you don't have to do a separate process you should see the elements that you need to complete for the coming at this registration and lottery process as part of the regular enrollment forms great all right well we're giving it a chance for any last questions katie diane anything else you'd want to add or you'd want to share with families who are considering this or maybe on the fence about whether they
067um want to put in for a lottery and have their child uh attend the coming autist program just want to say a shout out to our staff who are really dedicated to this program and have built it from the ground up so i think there's a huge sense of pride and commitment to making it work for everybody so if i had a kindergartener i i'd be right there i guess one thing i i thought when you were going to ask a question earlier um dr morris i thought you were going to ask will it be hard on the kids to learn a new language and that's a challenge that we sometimes hear from families um kids are really tired right when they start kindergarten in just in english right or whatever their first language is
068um it is hard to learn in two languages right all of a sudden we really do throw them in and we you know obviously with love and support but we we really expect that the language stays the language of instruction in the classroom and that's how we immerse them right so in the beginning it can be challenging for students um and we see that and it's okay right so that's part of the process we've seen uh students work through that and have a fabulous experience even though those beginning days really feel hard so that's something that just to be aware of right that sometimes the kids will come home and be frustrated um but it really doesn't take long before they're coming home singing in spanish right so it's um it's a bit of a
069transition and it's tiring at first but we really see excellent results and i think that to tie those two comments together just i think that's so dependent on the staff that we have who make that work both the english english-speaking staff and the spanish-speaking staff who very much are cognizant of the social-emotional needs of students they understand that the cognitive load is a bit higher right if their students are in both languages and their you know just my experience watching is they've been so wonderful about supporting students and one of the things that we've seen is just the empathy that grows for for all students growing up my monolingual whatever that first language is to be in an environment and that's part of the and you know just go back to one of katie's first
070slides that's part of the goals of the program it's really that cross-cultural awareness and um and and we see that live and in person and when we were visiting schools i mean i can think of uh one conversation i had with another district somewhat ours and one of the things they said is you know you can you can talk all you want about you know like the things we've talked about tonight the biggest thing is you go in the cafeteria and no matter what language of instruction is the child's first by the time they're in upper grades you can hear spanglish going on all over the place with these students and they're going back and forth and that that kind of social connection piece is huge um here's another question there are other applicant components
071for commonantis aside from indicating interest during kindergarten registration sharing the language background and okay do you want to answer that no there's not that's it yeah um so to anticipate the upcoming changes school level administration have any impact and so you know i want to say two things about this one diane has been a huge um part of this program so uh i can't answer that question no nothing at all because diane has been on the trips gone to visit schools connected with other principals to language programs but the reason i feel confident moving forward isn't just that katie's staying here and the staff are saying here is that we're actively looking for a principal who's interested in whether they have an interest a background personally or not in dual language schools a principal who
072wants to dig their heel wants to dig into this excuse me wants to learn and wants to be a part of that experience and what we've found so far and looking through kind of the cover letters of the applicants is that this is a draw that we we have people who are like wow i applied to this job because i want to be the principal at a dual lane a school with a dual language program in it and so you know that's what makes me feel confident moving forward but i can't minimize the impact that diane and renee but you know that diane's had from the get-go of the program and all the i mean i just you know reminisce of all the decisions that had to get made and you know you you know
073you're going into it and you're doing all the things that research would say and you're also keeping your fingers crossed because we hadn't done it before here right this was the third time it's my 20th year in the district and towards the end of my 20th year it was the third time that it came around where people were saying we should do this and we finally did it and you feel great and they're like oh we're really doing this right and and so there was that feeling and diane's been a huge part of that so i really can't say enough about her leadership in this role but i do have confidence that we'll move forward in a really positive way um [Music] i think you talked about this perhaps in regard sorry i wasn't tracking
074these questions that well um but in terms of the groups um you know katie i don't know if you want to take this one sure so in general no so the question is about is spanish proficiency of an english-speaking student at all considered the general answer would be no but any information we we have what's called a bilingual continuum and so we do ask families to indicate um if there is some level of spanish for english speakers if there's some level of english for spanish speakers right there's a continuum um if we have a student who has a really strong bilingual background then the enrollment team may consider them differently but for the most part we're really looking for students who have a family language background that is spanish speaking versus families who are english
075speaking and maybe have had some exposure to spanish maybe that's in a preschool or you know some other kind of program so it's really focused on that family background and orientation but that's not to say that it's a dead fast rule there's a team that looks at all the enrollment information and tries to think carefully about that so i think we're we're just about out of time and i think we've gotten all the questions uh that people asked much like i said earlier if you have questions please keep them coming you know at this point kitty probably is the best person um to be sending them to and i think her information's on all the registration form but i'll see if i can um successfully put that in the chat so that um [Music] there
076you go um so if you have any other questions for us about dicomenantes or registration or any pieces katie will be a point person but we really appreciate you spending an hour with us we know it's really busy uh this time of year and we know it's really busy having a four or five-year-old in your house as we head towards bedtime hopefully what is bedtime for you i know daylight savings i got young kids and one of my kids did well with it and the other one uh still adjusting to the daylight savings um so we really appreciate that and please continue to be in touch with us thanks so much and we hope you have a great evening and we can't wait to meet your kiddos uh as we head towards spring through the
077registration process and screening uh and then certainly when we get to next fall so have a good night thank you thank you all good night