001all right shall we stand yep it's all right pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all great okay um so we've got the roll um we've re received the minutes um and did you have a chance to go through them do you have any comments about them or anything they were lovely so i move i move that we accept the minutes i second that we accept the minutes all in favor aye okay we're good all right uh in all earnestness they were really well done they were is it kevin that doesn't or marley kevin is he's a meeting no poet he's i'll take it i'll take it the first and probably last time
002i'll be ever referenced as a poet so i'll take it well he gets he also gets them out very quickly but thank you um faith we don't have any public comments tonight right um and we have no new business so we can jump right in to our item number four old business um yeah we've had an amendment or a change to a textbook recommendation so marlene if you want to explain that one yeah yeah and i'll also ask leslie pair to chime in as you know we've got a um course that's a dual enrollment with tux tungsten community college and so we sort of take their lead in what textbook we'll be using and so you all heard a little bit about the textbook the last time around but there's been a change they are
003looking at this book for advanced personal finance so leslie i will let you take it from there um i'm actually really glad that they changed the book this for our students so um it's a college level course but the book that the original book that they were using was very dry and um harder to follow i think our students um that this book is going to be more user-friendly and it covers all the same concepts for our students one of the major reasons why they went from the other textbook to this textbook is price this textbook is only going to cost 80 a book as opposed to two hundred and fourteen dollars a book it's a huge huge price difference and they are purchasing for us so tungsten using their perkins grant money they're purchasing
004um two two classroom sets um of these books so our expectation is that we'll probably run about two advanced personal finance classes a year so that'll that'll cover us so we won't have to um order them and and have them come out of the cheshire public schools budget great yeah and any questions like i said it covers the um same same material essentially but just in a and then i think it's an easier to read um what a nice and a nicer format so faith i would suggest that we just make make a motion to amend the book title for this course and it does not need to go forward to the full board because it's really a dual enrollment course and with the extenuating circumstances of not having to pay for it etc uh
005i think we're we're good in that scenario okay great um well ann i will hand it over to you do you want to make the the um motion to accept so moved you got that kevin okay all right so the motion on the table is um acceptance of the personal finance or pfinn um seventh edition by randall billingsley lawrence gibman and michael j jenk um so um do all those in favor looks unanimous thank you very much thank you um okay so that is our action item um now we're moving on to informational items uh here we have it again field trips so um if we could hear the update on um actually what seemed kind of nice uh exciting field trips for the kids yeah i really wanted to let the three of you
006and you know faith ann and tony know that while we haven't seen a lot of field trips coming forward to the curriculum committee because those are typically your out of state trips your international trips etc you may hear in the community about field trips happening and those field trips are really more team building based and they're local so we've got lots of kids going to camp sloper for team building activities and some science activities as well as some fun trips to lake compounds as well as empower which is again a team building activity sometimes they're coming to the the um elementary schools or the middle school and other time we are traveling to them to do some low ropes courses and things like that so while we haven't done a lot of talking about field
007trips we are starting to get back into the swing of those and i know we discussed dec washington dc last time but you know i just wanted to make sure people were aware that we're beginning to get back out there again and you may hear about some of those so just a little update for you i've lost ann um so can you just address how many kids typically will go on these trips and what kind of protocols do we have to follow so the the number of kids really depends sometimes it's a class trip sometimes it could be like the sixth grade class doing an end of the year activity where they're going to camp sloper they're still following all the cdc recommendations parents have the option of either driving them over to camp slope
008or or taking the bus in some circumstances where you know um probably having a few more buses than usual due to keeping kids you know giving them enough space they're they're hand sanitizing they are wearing their masks and for all three of the ones that i mentioned today those are all outdoor so they are not you know in confined spaces okay do you foresee any any um trips to i don't know any museums or any can any indoor trip coming up this year no i've seen none come acro no no requests come across my desk for that these have all been outdoor or park-like activities okay all right ann do you have a question any questions okay um great um next item then would be the cheshire high school school schedule for 21 22 school
009year and for that we're going to have dr gad fill us in on the work that she and her team including dr reed have done on the high school schedule for next year all right i will present my screen so you can see what it looks like and let me know if you need me to enlarge it a little bit it might be helpful so i will scroll down this is our schedule for next year for in-person learning we are looking at maintaining our 80-minute classes what this allows us to do is in the event students need support time we can split a period let's say a student needs math support and also writing support and they have one study hall it enables us to have a good chunk of time for support for each
010of those areas it gives us a good solid amount of time that we've really grown to appreciate this year and it also allows us to have four lunch waves we are not sure what next year will bring entirely uh so we want to we want to ensure that we can pivot if we need to um we we know that we'll need to keep students uh separated during lunch obviously it's a maskless time within our lunch waves we currently have some breaks and a study hall within each wave as students need to pass from one class to the next and we need time to clean each area what this also allows for us is a little study time during that period but it also allows us to create an advisory period without disrupting class time by
011utilizing some of those breaks and shortening each of those peers lunch waves so that we can have one advisory period either at the beginning of actually right at the end of um second period for next year and next year will be a five day a week in per go yeah i knew you were gonna go for it yeah sorry a couple of things mary sure dr gab um one of them is so we don't currently have four lunch waves do we yes yes we do that's to accommodate uh all of the in-person learners the four-day especially in-person learners and that's is that because of covid though that's because it's spacing how many lunch waves did we have pre-covered three oh we did have three okay so we've got four and they're shorter actually they're not
012shorter we were able to to um really kind of manipulate the time to work if that's that's the other virtue of having the 80 minute period it enables us to to fit a lot of flexibility into the schedule especially given some of the unknowns coming and i think the teachers have um well i know they have i think they've gotten a lot out of the longer periods and students have had time to learn and then apply what they're learning during that during that class time so it's it's been an adjustment but from from the feedback it's it's actually working well for everyone so the second thing i have and it's it's not really a question but i would appreciate any comment that you can give and also dr reed if you want to give me
013some feedback on what would this how would the schedule be affected if we were to think of um pushing the school's start time for the high school back an hour or ahead an hour whatever whichever yeah start 3 30. start later yeah it would mean that we would end slightly later um and the you know the impact that we've talked about has been with uh some athletic contests students in the fall uh practicing later in the evening but we do have lights um so i you know i think it would be determining how we would navigate that with our athletic conference and that's not the only reason that's that's just one element of of what the implications would be but you could be sure that kids can access activities um so that there's a whole
014experience and that would be a consideration but the other consideration is um what works for kids and we know we did get feedback when we went into um lockdown the first time that the the students especially i think the faculty too um appreciated the later start enough dr reed if you have anything you want to add yeah so it i guess my point is i know that there are a lot of issues a lot of constituencies that are going to um have some complaints but it's not it it's not something that would totally disrupt our schedule right we would just be moving everything down time down an hour if we had an 8 30 start time right now i think we'd have to talk to schools who have done it and see you know like
015we have and just just get a little more current impact um and that and that's a good point because there are schools that have done it and and they had issues with their athletic conference as well and but they're they're making it work because the most important thing is what's best for teenagers and what's best for teenagers is their health both physical and mental health that are greatly affected by this disruption to their sleep cycle that happens when you have to get up at 6 30 in the morning when you're a teenager so i only bring that up because i'm i'm not i'm not going to let this issue rest and it has gone by the wayside due to covet but um just giving you all fair warning that i'm going to be making some
016noise in the near future well if i could um chime in on that um a couple of things you know what's made the later start schedule work is the fact that both parents one or both parents were working from home and if and i think as the workplace dynamic changes if it stays kind of the with the at-home work from home model it certainly would make the um it might make a case for an 8 30 start but i you know i think we have to also we we have to see how the community can balance this as well um this is and so i guess my question to um marlene and to mary is what would the steps be how would we proceed with examining this whether it makes sense for cheshire besides just
017going to other schools and asking how they dealt with it and going to the um um that icac what is it i anyways i keep forgetting the letters um what other measures would we have to undertake to get a uh thorough examination of the issue and make a reasoned decision on it there certainly is a great deal of research out there i think part of it would be engaging the community i think we need to have a committee as an offshoot of this or or the board of education to really have some meetings about this and to share the information i know there was a sick were a significant number of students and adults who went to a number of workshops about this gosh and what was it two years ago yeah it's gotta be
018two years ago now the one at trinity mary you were there too yes yeah yeah bringing that speaker in is an option to speak to our our community and you know really engaging them in just in the discussion on the benefits to students health that this this kind of an option represents okay that that's part of what would be first steps and and that at the if i could interrupt i'm sorry um at that conference that was sort of the main thing that was relayed to us was there are you really need to engage your community and first and foremost get people to realize that this is a health issue first and foremost and all those other inconveniences are solvable problems surrounding what what you can do to help help students in this age group
019specifically help students um mean it's really the only solution to to addressing this health issue i'm not mistaken when the original group went out to do this there was a presentation by our students to the curriculum committee about what they learned and what their takeaways were from attending that conference so you know students have been preliminarily engaged we need to you know circle back and some of those students are graduated now so we would want to you know re revisit that and make sure that that students and teachers and parents were all a part of the process and um i appreciate all that and i was not part of that group and um so forgive me for now i think it was just before you got on board faith yeah um i don't think that
020i i would take a little bit of issue with minor inconveniences because uh and dismissing it as minor inconveniences because um you had a body of students who came in and presented but there was probably another body that would have could have come in and made an alternative case but in the i mean is it going to cause stress at home which is going to put even more um you know another layer of mental health um issues on on a child's plate i think we have to have an honest discussion about this and not enter it with um the assumption that 8 30 is it is the best time to start and that's all i'm asking for is that we do have that honest discussion and we don't go in with a foregone conclusion perhaps
021what you want to consider then is whether or not you would like this on our june agenda or our september agenda in order to give folks some time to pull together the information that people are looking for to have that kind of conversation so that's that's something to for you guys to to think about and marlene don't we also have do we still have i think we used to have that uh presentation that was done at that at that conference i can look into that mary you might know better because that was before i was up here in central office so you'll have to fill me in on the history absolutely and i'll look through all of my materials i know i have i have the information and certainly the feedback from students and it
022was mixed but yeah great okay and and it's it's worth it certainly we need to start circulating and i will point out and again i i'm not trying to dismiss student health concerns um we have a lot on the table coming through this summer with the modernization committee and the hearings we're going to have there and um so perhaps it is something that we explore over the summer and we take up in september when we hope we'll have we'll have the modernization plan working its way toward referendum and we won't be perhaps as stressed um ourselves with trying to get the different things uh you know get the schools back up and running um to their full capacity at a five day a week schedule and and everything else so if i had my brothers
023i would say let's do september uh aim for september for picking this up in earnest good anything else about the schedule that mary shared for the block schedule for next year i do have i think i was kind of blown away by a 10 30 lunch so i i lost um where i i just was looking at that and when is the fourth period lunch or the fourth wave lunch that when does that start that's probably two mary you are muted sorry i i have to pull it up because i don't have that schedule memorized even though it is our schedule and maureen reflect i mean refresh my memory when the regular lunch wave one began began in our old schedule i believe it was like 11 35 okay and then the last lunch wave
024is at 12 10. so it's not too terribly late which is why we we did that okay and um in order to get all the lunch waves in one period you really can't spread it out and make it later um and fee and feed everyone yeah and it's been we've started at 10 30 since the beginning of the school year okay all right so where you don't have kids dropping in the afternoon from hunger and everything so we're good all right okay i'm sorry i just want to share with you we don't call the 10 30 lunch lunch it's brunch and we just you know we just kind of go with it so i don't know what lunch wave the math department has but in business we have the 10 30 brunch and when they've
025been up since 7 30 i think they're actually pretty glad when texas rolls around and they can get something to eat yeah i imagine actually the 12 15 crowd is probably the one who's getting nancy but um it's perfectly civilized that's great okay all right i'll just add that um our first and second graders at chapman school begin their lunch at 10 40 on a regular on a regular time frame and our highland kiddos start at 11 20. so i think people would be surprised when you really see when you're trying to fit in you know five to seven lunch waves they have to start a little earlier than we would imagine yeah so um and then would you do you think would you have ever contemplated an 80-minute period if not for covid and
026what you your experience of this past year absolutely absolutely uh we had some conversation a couple of years ago we we convened a scheduling committee and we were really trying to figure out how could we develop a day where we could both get direct instruction happening and student support and teacher collaboration time and we worked a number of different schedules uh none of which seemed to to do the job and um block scheduling was something that the teachers were kind of not not really open to trying um although lisa and i both taught in a in a district where there was block scheduling that was just life um and so when kova came along uh as as a number of my colleagues have shared too it asked us to make really immediate changes to cope
027with our current situation and the block schedule fit the bill and i've heard from from teachers throughout i didn't think i would like this i really like it i didn't think it would work i can't believe it does um and i think i think what it does is it allows time to to not feel so pressed when you're trying to rapidly move through six periods in a day it can feel extremely rushed and teachers can can now next year they're going to five and a collaboration period thirty percent of the faculty so they will have time to work with a student and to have some collaboration time with their colleagues that is a good chunk of time compressed amount of time so okay thank you sure all right um anything else and do you have
028any other questions or anything okay um well thank you for that um next up we will hear about the algebra 2 textbook selection committee uh from them and their report thanks faith i um want to explain that this wonderful trio began this work in earnest before our kovid shutdown they were paused everything was thrown at them they resurrected that work once they were able to come off for a little bit of air from feeling underwater and they were about ready with it and then because they are at the top of their game and keeping current with the most current literature out there they asked for a bit of an extension to go back and do an even more thorough review so i'm really glad tonight to have three of our cheshire high school teachers here
029john redford stephen defalco and lisa bernabe who are going to share the painstaking process that they went through to select this algebra 2 textbook so i will turn it over to the committee awesome and i'm going to share my screen we just put together a small presentation for you guys um you're just going to have to let me know that it's working i'm used to the dual screen in my classroom where i get to see it on my cut and my computer otherwise so let me share it with you and uh just let me know that it's working we're just gonna take you through the need for for why we are picking an algebra 2 textbook um the process we went through and then just some of the uh the features that we want to
030highlight for you guys so let's do this share ah looking good we can see it on our end okay perfect so i'm i believe lisa's gonna start us off so thanks steve um so we're here tonight to make a recommendation on behalf of our algebra ii textbook search committee um to to purchase what's called the envision algebra 2 common core aligned it's an online textbook and resource platform that's going to help support building complex thinking and self-directed learning in a personalized learning environment in mathematics as a committee we were selecting we wanted to select a highly rated common core line textbook that conforms with the mission and vision of our district as well we selected a resource that will enable all students to access our challenging algebra ii curriculum in a technologically advanced online platform
031which is going to help maximize student independence and ultimately support students in their ability to achieve academic success um so why did we need a new textbook well when the common core and math uh was adopted in connecticut there were a few key shifts that required us as a math department to revise our curriculum uh we we focused more on a few topics we developed a coherence among these topics and across courses and we needed to increase rigor by developing not only students procedural skills but their conceptual understanding and their ability to apply the mathematics as well so we needed a resource that took a more balanced approach to these key shifts uh in addition with the um with the administration of the newly revised sat school day assessment junior year the test focuses on
032what really matters most for college and career readiness and that includes a significant focus on algebra ii and one of our goals as a department is to make sure that we're successfully preparing students for this content as it relates to the application their conceptual understanding as well as the procedural skills so we really needed a new resource that would focus on these key skills and key content this critical content the majority of the time so as you'll see in this presentation this online textbook and resource platform it's going to help us build critical thinkers and problem solvers who can tackle more than the rote practice of that traditional math textbook it's going to provide parents with a window into what their students are learning and it's going to provide teachers with invaluable data that's timely
033and actionable that's going to enhance our ability to guide students along their individualized personal path to success so uh mr redford john you're going to speak to how the committee went about selecting this particular resource now yeah thanks lisa um yeah what i have to first say uh what a team uh working together with uh steve and lisa um you know i've never had a team a selection team uh so uh easy to work with before um yeah i like uh marlene pointed out we started this process way back before uh before kovid and um you know we were kind of like interrupted uh right in the middle of it uh everything came to a screeching halt so uh in the like uh year and a half span of this uh you know we even
034had uh like a new resource that we wanted to check out come across uh our desks and uh you know so we um you know kind of we even added to the uh it was originally four and we ended up adding a fifth um you know that we did a formal review of um we started off um you know with uh every uh report um they rate uh textbooks and uh you know we started off going through um most of the top choices uh that they listed uh with their extensive research um and then we applied uh our own rubric to it so we've got uh sort of um you know an intensive spreadsheet that we've filled out for each resource um and this these based on these five uh main categories standards assessments instruction
035learning tasks and materials um i think we've got a screenshot uh to give you an idea of of what that there it is um so um you can see here this this is just the standards uh that one one of the five tabs uh you know that we uh reviewed the book on um i don't know what that john guys problem is he must have been grumpy that day but uh you you can see um you know uh you know basically uh went through in you know the most sort of concrete objective way possible to give these resources uh the review that they deserved um and uh we we came out with uh you know a clear winner um and that's the envision series um we um did like i said come across another resource
036sort of late in the game over that one year and a half but we ended up actually reverting back um the original selection uh ended up to be uh have the edge uh for a few reasons is there uh do i need to keep going lisa was there anything more that no i think i think i'm up now john oh yeah that's it well you got you guys gave me the short inning i think um yeah so i was just gonna take you guys through now uh just some of the key features that we wanted to highlight these are not the only features just some of the ones we wanted to share with you tonight um and some of the things that that we wanted was just that it the envision textbook it promotes self-directed
037learners it provides instant feedback for students and it just as lisa said earlier it provides a a ton of data for us to be able to use um to uh to help us you know teach and uh drive instruction moving forward so i just took some snapshots to show some of the uh the features um this is a typical problem that a student might have on a homework assignment right so they're they're told to perform indicated operation and on a normal textbook they would have to do this this homework assignment and turn it in the next day and wait to go over it as a class um but through this platform there's the section on the right that says question help and there's a a few resources that the student can use to help them
038through the problem if they are struggling there's to help me solve this feature which i'm going to show on the next slide you can look at a similar example there's a video that they can direct you to to help you solve a problem along with some other things so the uh the help me solve this it gives instant feedback so if a student's not sure what the first step might be it'll take them through a similar problem step by step and as they get a problem the step correct they'll give this green um instant feedback that says fantastic great job and it will move on to the next step and if they struggle through a step it's going to give them some feedback as to why they got the step wrong and some suggestions on
039how to uh correct their mistake and if they're using that help me solve this problem it'll take them through the completed uh answer and then put them back to the original problem and give them a similar question with new numbers so they can demonstrate that they have understand the material and uh and complete the problem themselves um the virtual nerd that's something we we all kind of like about this as well there's uh videos that are linked to certain problems uh where there's an actual teacher that that goes through a problem uh and takes them through step by step rather than just look through the help me solve this section they can actually go through a specific problem and you can see this is a three minute video that can take them through uh the
040topic that they're going over the other piece of this that's really helpful for teachers is the data that that we get to collect so this is just a snapshot of the data that i had from one of my uh geometry classes because this is a the same textbook that we recently purchased for geometry and this takes us this was a homework assignment that that i had students uh complete for geometry and it you can see this gives a question analysis and gives me valuable information as the teacher so i know which questions that i need to go over in more detail during the next lesson or which ones that the students have mastered um so if you look at this example question one looks like 14 students got it correct but seven students got it
041incorrect so that's definitely something that i want to to uh focus in on in my lesson and making sure that we we correct any any uh mistakes and make sure that they understand it moving forward so this provides really good feedback about the types of questions um and what style questions that that kids are getting wrong and then the other part is you can see how individual students have done on it so this is um the student analysis section that teachers will be able to get so on that seven question homework assignment uh i can see how each student did individually so quickly like as i was using this for my class i can see all right well student be struggled they really struggled on this assignment um i know i need to have a
042conversation with that student and just see where are they and where you know where they uh did what what happened on this assignment and why do they struggle so much and and what i can do to help them moving forward but i know that student f g and h did really great got a seven out of seven on it so i can now uh personalize it to each individual student as well using that question analysis and student analysis was something that we we uh we have we found really useful so those are just a couple of the features that we wanted to highlight for you not the only ones but the ones that we wanted to highlight for you tonight um so i believe that's uh the the quick presentation we have for you guys
043and uh i guess i'll turn it over to uh to you guys and do you have any questions yeah um so is it is it pretty systematic like all the homeworks would be um automated like that so that you have you have constant week after week recording of which kinds of questions each student is doing well or is there more of a mix back and forth of the kinds of homeworks that the students will be doing so the online platform um offers both hard copy like paper copies you could still download a regular pdf and practice written work in the classroom along with these problems here uh to collect the data so it still has a traditional format of electronic resources for the teacher and for students along with the uh the platform to enter
044their answers in as well as assessments it offers both a traditional assessment and the electronic assessment where we could collect so they can do it traditionally and and then just input the answers so that you do have a complete yes they could yes and i was very helpful so when parents reach out or i have a 504 or an iep meeting i'm i'm able to go in and look at that data and know specifically what skills the student had was very strong on and what they needed more time to be successful thank you okay so that just answered one of my questions and i i've heard from some parents who who are concerned um with students who um it well similar to what we just discussed um you know it's flipping back and forth and
045um you know having the problem um on the screen but then having to go back into the material to try to find an explanation and i know you've got all of the you know the the nerd and everything but um so it sounds like i um again i heard from one mom who said i almost need two computers because my son you can't remember what he read and he doesn't read the problem and he wants to flip back and read what he read so it sounds like you have a program here or a text that will um be a little bit easier for those kinds of students who probably should have the book on one side and the screen on the other or something like that i don't know if that absolutely yeah and and
046i think you know the feedback that i've gotten from from students as well in the geometry classes they like being able being able to do it on paper as well and and that they can do the problems on paper and still submit the the answers on the the resource and be able to go step by step like i showed you previously um and you know i think this year more than ever we've all become so well versed with google classroom that when you assign it when you when you make an assignment you can have students turn in the the work that they did along with the um answers that you get in the feedback so you get all the data from the the answers but you also can have students turn in any additional work
047that they've done that they want to show for for problems okay all right and then um i'm looking at looking at that um student specific data two things stuck out is that poor child who is just not getting it um and then the kids who are acing it um and how do you handle those outliers i mean do you move the the kids who are acing everything ahead are they able to move ahead through the text or do they have to stay with you and does this enable them does this new text allow them to progress so that's that's a good question and and that this is specifically that was specifically from one of my classes so i can speak directly to what what i did there um that that's a that's an individual conversation
048with a student to see hey you know what what happened on that assignment did we try our best and we really struggled and did we try to use the supports or did we kind of just click through it and not give it our best effort right and in that particular instance it was a student that that didn't you know give their best effort they started the homework late so that was something that you know i knew we had to keep an eye on and see moving forward if if they can demonstrate mastery of that that um that content at a different time um so we can you can make the the assignment live for them again you can have them retry the assignment in terms of the students that did really well on it you
049do have the capability of of assigning certain problems to different students so it doesn't have to be a class assignment you can assign individual components you can assign the individual pieces of a lesson so if you have picture yourself looking at a math textbook where you have four pages in a chapter you can look at the each section of that each section of those pages and pick the one that maybe might be for the next next lesson and you can just select that let piece of the lesson for that student to go on to if you choose to do that so that really goes to the way that the teacher is going to utilize the resource and and uh and provide that instruction to them so they have the capability to do that and that
050goes to goes just to teaching and and how you want to best utilize the resource yeah okay and then um i appreciated the slideshow it's just um i think one area that i'm curious about is the real life application aspect of the of the text and and how does the text do that i mean what what's does it have like a breakout scenario section where they explain the application of the theory or how does that work so i think that every section of the textbook has applications built in but one of the features that we liked best about this text that really swayed us for the geometry as well as they were called three-act tasks it would pose a short video to the students maybe about 20 seconds and the kids just to generate questions
051what do you notice what do you wonder uh what do you think they're going to ask what types of questions do you think they're going to ask about the mathematics so it's really just to generate kids thinking and get them talking and discussing about the mathematics and then it would start to overlay some of the math with it and then and create um the scenario for the kids to go in and start problem solving so they would have to come up with an estimate to the problem and then come up with the solution that they thought would work and it was a great types of problems in each chapter because it had multiple approaches and kids with a lot of background knowledge and a little background knowledge could go in and approach these problems so
052i think that was one of the pieces that had sold us as well yeah because one of my questions was what about you know it's it promotes self-directed learning but what about the kid who is not a self-directed learner but what you describe may be the key to getting that non-self-directed learner interested i do think that it does try to spark interest by providing context for kids so that they can bring in their real life experiences to the mathematics and draw in that learner who may be as you're saying maybe this the math skills aren't as strong but i think there are enough scaffoldings that could be provided along the way for them to be able to access that higher level mathematics for those kids who can move along faster less take away some of
053that scaffolding for them and provide them with more of those enrichment opportunities along the way okay and i'll just add that the teaching is happening from the three people that you see on the screen that's where the magic where the art and the science of the instruction and the meat of that is what they're presenting today is a vehicle that they're going to rely on to be a support to them teaching algebra too but they are not going to be you know page by page by page of the book it really is the people in front of you who are doing that connecting and are are digging in to instruct the students just just not just the book but yeah yeah no it sounds like just to piggyback on that real quick you know marley
054marlene's comment yeah the kids actually they've always had a virtual nerd right uh now now they're just getting a second one that's all uh all right okay can i ask another quick question yeah so for the uh students who are getting uh a paper copy to to work out their problems on how do they how do they actually get that copy is is it distributed when they're in class in person or do they have to go and have a printer at home and be able to download stuff and print it off i believe there's i mean this has been a unique year so since talking with them with the case in geometry but they do have the cape you do have the capability of of uh of printing out the resource for them and giving
055them the paper copy if that's what they choose so we definitely have that ability to do that as teachers you just you know you would plan for that for the students that that feel that would best support their learning we would be able to get copies for them thank you okay all right thank you team that was great good luck with it thank you math department i i i wouldn't hold it against you if you needed to leave but you're of course welcome to stay thank you all thank you what's what's next on the agenda oh up next we have leslie pair giving her executive summary of the business ccc oh nice nice leslie i'm gonna get the spark notes from you tomorrow okay thank you all right and faith that that was okay i've
056just introduced mrs pear all right thank you very much all right i am going to um share let me share my presentation with you and move me along guys if things get too slow just say oh that's nice can keep going and i'll i'll be happy to do so so we had our five year review um we were supposed to um i think present back in november of 2020 um but as so many things with covid um things were put on hold and we okay good and we regrouped and we um we really put everything together um january um starting starting in january and uh we made it happen in april so this let me see can you guys hear me yes we could hear you and we could see your beautiful presentation all right
057so i'm just i'm gonna share a few of the slides um as part of our review um our entire department is involved you know there's only seven teachers in the business department but everybody felt really passionate and is really passionate about what we do and the courses that we teach so everyone it wasn't everyone was involved in this and so i'll just i'll share with you part of our thought process is that business classes provide students with the opportunities to explore areas of interest career options and direction for future college neighbor majors and career paths our students are engaged and active participants in their learning throughout so you're going to see a smaller portion of the presentation but throughout this presentation that i share with you you'll see our students at their best exhibiting complex
058thinking skills amazing communication skills and confidence and i mentioned the confidence because in our classrooms we're very supportive and that's where our students learn and grow so i'm going to share a quick video clip with you you're going to hear from our students and some of their thoughts on business classes [Music] i've taken almost every business class that the school has to offer even though it's not my future major i think it really helps in future financial situations and improves communication skills i never would have known how to balance my checkbooks without personal finance class in marketing class i've learned how to review my views efficiently in my classroom to work with many different people on many projects that can help us in the future my freshman year i took personal finance and this class
059helped me so much when i turned 16 my parents got me a debit card for my birthday and i didn't even need them to explain to me how it works i knew right away so now when i go to stores or when i go get gas i'm able to use my debit card without a problem hold on there all right and this i just want you know uh this granted it was back in 1980 but i want you to see where uh the business department at cheshire high school was back in 1980 and these are these are some funny courses that we we offered at the time not funny but that's what was offered at the time and these are the courses that we offer now so when i when i tell people about the
060some of the different classes that we have at the high school they said that sounds like a college you know course course of studies and so i we're really proud of that and as you can see um three of the courses on here accounting one advanced personal finance and introduction to business next year will be offered for college credit through tungsten community college all right i'm not going to play the video on this one but we do our best to make our curriculum come alive and the curriculum so um there are five areas that we look at as we review um everything that happens in our department and so curriculum objectives and guides um that's the first um the first uh piece that we review and this just um this is a little video clip
061channel back in 2019 2019 um channel 8 came we hosted the financial reality fair and our students went to different booths um we hosted it in the west gym and they had to create a budget based on a career that they had chose and a salary that comes along with that career as well as a credit score and the credit score was based on you know past you know past behaviors of paying their bills and some kids had good credit scores which meant that they could borrow money at a um at a much lower interest rate and other kids didn't and so there was so much learning that took place but um we were very proud of being able to host that and to bring our curriculum alive for this one day all right um
062another part of the process that we go through is we look at uh where we were five years ago and it was really kind of funny to look at our goals and and what we were thinking and doing at that time um and then we we look at what we've been doing for the past five years and then we look forward to all right where do we want to keep growing our program in improving our program so what do we want to do um when it comes to curriculum we're really uh we're really right now in the process of articulating uh three business classes this year that we'll be teaching next year and then the following year at least with tungsten we are articulating the accounting two class so we had to do that in
063a two-year sequence and then we're also looking for dual enrollment opportunities with another community college tungsten is phasing out their com their business and office technology department so we we're gonna think about maybe getting in touch with uh gateway community college or another community college where we might be able to um articulate a course um for additional so we're we're thinking maybe microsoft office or or another one of our um another one of our computer courses so that's that's something that we're looking forward to uh we're also i'm sure you've heard about the mastery-based performance assessment requirement and we're looking forward to working with our students to help them with so many we do so many uh performance-based assessments in the business department so many hands-on and real-world activities that were we're hoping to be
064able to work with students and and help them through that requirement uh we also review resources or sources that we use to keep our curriculum up to date um and to make sure that we're using best practices along the way these are just some of the resources we had a list so long of great resources so anyway these are just some of the resources that was when it comes to curriculum all right um we the next piece that we look at as we look at our program is what text resources and technology are we using these are some resources that we currently use and then these were some of our or these are some of our goals going forward and i'm gonna let you hear a little bit from a few of our students [Music]
065i'm taking microsoft office too a lot of these platforms can be used in majors such as mine i'm going to be majoring in biology so we can use the google spreadsheets and possibly excel to document what we can do there the simulation on stu kit was an amazing opportunity for my marketing 2 class to understand modern marketing techniques on the simulation we were able to schedule and create sample posts on various social media platforms for the hypothetical back and largest company from there we were able to see the successes and downfalls of our coach and understand the analytics behind them we also were able to chat with hypothetical customers and understand what it's like to be a social media marketer the accounting simulation brooks books was amazing in helping me through my understanding of accounting
066by giving me a real-life scenario it taught me how to deal with clients what paperwork most clients would bring me in the real world and how to do accounting for a small business now most importantly it helped me analyze accounting decisions for companies and why companies choose certain accounting methods and also why some companies may need to change their accounting methods in the future wevideo was a game changer in marketing it really brought the business curriculum to life in a way that benefited every single marketing student from quick ads to flaunt campaigns we video gave students like me the ability to transfer skills learned in class practical real world applications we use wevideo to design professional high quality commercials that truly fit in with our brand's personality [Music] you know as i listen to these
067students and i've heard this you know i've heard them talk so many times um really the way students are learning and the resources that we're using um are so engaging and even just listening to the math um department that just put forth their recommendation on the algebra 2 book i'm thinking wow that that's just for you know and i i know technology isn't for everyone but there's there's so many engaging um resources that are out there so i think i think it's pretty pretty cool oh nope okay here we go um so the next section that we're going to talk about are instructional strategies and we use many many different instructional strategies and the many courses that we teach so we're looking for ways to engage students with new technologies and again if you look
068back five years ago what has taken place over the past five years and i'm not sure what's going to happen five years from now because so much has changed and has um become a part of our instruction and um student learning um so these are just some of the things um we're constantly um looking to make connections with our curriculum and current events that are that are taking place in the world around us and that definitely adds to the learning that takes place in our classroom and i've got another quick video here [Music] my sophomore year i took marketing one and focused a lot on how businesses will pick an age group to be their target market to help advertise their products towards and how they will use different things the different methods that will
069appeal to that age group and in my ap land class we're doing a project where we have to have our advertising appeal to a certain age group to help them want to do our class when they do course selection so marketing has definitely helped me in my other classes throughout my high school career as well i think my favorite business activity was in ap macro for christmas we made ornaments and everyone did a different model in macroeconomics so we could see everyone's different perspective and we saw a lot of different models and how it affected everyday life and it made it very realistic my favorite business activity was in my accounting one class when we had to create a business and we had to make like certain accounting proposals and make balance sheets and income
070statements for that business uh we wrote a book called bridgette ford and so we would read that it had really good information on how um a guy named robert kiyosaki he would uh he had a rich dad and a poor dad obviously both not related to him but it would show them the different life lessons and how assets and liabilities were beneficial to them [Music] all right okay um the next section that we looked at is different our words are different ways that we assess our students and again there are so many different ways um that that our students are assessed um some some of our goals going forward again are to work with students that are involved in the um in completing their mastery-based performance assessment projects uh as part of our um as
071part of our goals it's to create assessments um for new courses at the college level add more differentiated assessments and and more authentic learning activities all right [Music] one of my favorite business activities was a project we just did this year in marketing too we designed a marketing campaign for a company my group chose to do a campaign for an animal shelter located in north haven and we got to organize events activities and create a budget as well so we kind of incorporated all the aspects to help grow these companies and now my group is going to take our marketing campaign report and take it to the state competition so i took personal finance with mr mccarry my freshman year and we learned like how to write checks how to just be an adult correctly
072it was pretty interesting class i liked you did a bunch of simulations on what it's like to be an adult and just we talked about the jobs we wanted and how to pay off student loans how to manage our money correctly and just live an adult life with the finances that we had [Music] all right one of my fa i teach um personal finance and one of my favorite assessments is their final project and you know there's so many moving pieces to it as the student talked about they have to decide what career they're going to um pursue what's going to be a starting salary for that career they have to pay themselves first they have to get an apartment they have a car loan they have to they go grocery shopping which you think
073they've never stepped foot in a grocery store before and maybe they haven't but they have to they have to pay their electric bill they have a water bill you know they have to find an apartment and that process their final reflections at the end are just so um i love reading them because they're so heartfelt on you know what they learned and how they're going to take that information and go forward so um anyway that's what that's one of my favorite projects that i do with the kids all right the last piece that we look at is professional development um in the business department we love to get out and visit um different businesses uh these are some of the businesses that we visited over the past five years and we learn so much at
074eat and each of these businesses is so different um i will say not this past august but the august before we went to highland bowl in um in cheshire and just seeing every you know it's it's a business and all the different aspects of his business and his struggles and um it's really it's really so um so great for us to see that and we bring that back into the classroom and sometimes we specifically integrate our our learning into our curriculum or a lesson that we're teaching that where we know it's going to be a good fit and then other times we'll just be talking to our students about a certain topic or subject i think i had just mentioned to marlene we were talking about employee benefits and one of the places that we
075went to visit was uh pratt and whitney and when they shared with us what some of their employee benefits um are it was you know it was really phenomenal so it's just something that we can we can share what we've learned with our students these are some other types of professional development that we've participated in sometimes sometimes these are annual like the deca and the fbla conferences are usually annual conferences and other times it might be um professional development that takes place um just not in on occasion and these are some places that we've gone to and companies that we visited and then just going forward as part of our goals we'd like to continue to participate in a wide variety of pd experiences create professional learning communities based on next year part of our
076focus will definitely be um the courses that we're developing with tungsten community college and then some other other plc's along the way and then lastly bringing bring really bringing everything together for our students we have we host three business business clubs in our department and they really provide students with the opportunity to meet meet new people compete by creating different business projects or it might be impromptu speaking uh would they have there are state level competitions i think deca and fbla have gone to the nationals the past two or three years and the experience that our students get as a member of the club as well as participating in the um the different competitive events um is really amazing and i don't want to leave out mock trial because our trial club any student that's
077interested in learning about the um the trial process that club does a phenomenal job of preparing students and and teaching students about the um court proceedings and the trial process but they're all there's also a competitive part where in non-coveted days they would actually go to a courthouse and they would compete against other schools mock trial teams and there's so much learning that takes place there so i've just said a lot i've talked for a while let me i'm going to stop sharing my screen all right and just ask if if anybody has any questions hi anne hi leslie thank you for that presentation it was fantastic and i got it just got me to thinking over the five and a half years that i've been on the board year after year you leslie and
078company i'll call you leslie and company have come to curriculum committee and have shown us how you are developing this program and it's pretty astounding when you look at the accumulation over five five to six years of where this program has come from a couple of business courses to a whole slate and college courses now being sprinkled in there so that students can even get courses for college credit it's it's amazing and i just want to congratulate you and to thank you for all of the work that you and your cohorts have um have done with this program because it's it's really it's come a long way yeah great program thanks we really are we're you know looking and always trying to continue to grow our program and do what's best for our students and
079and the interest um is definitely there our ap macro our ap ece macro economics course and you know macro is a whole different ball game it's not easy and it's so great for our students to take it in high school with the nurturing teachers that you know really can spend more time with our kids once they the feedback we get from kids in college for their economics classes they're tutoring their classmates in college because they have such a solid foundation so thank you thank you for saying that and it's a truly a team effort it's it's my whole department that really um everybody everybody is passionate about what they do so thank you and you're welcome and i wanted to include uh leslie and company because we have seen and heard from some of the
080others in your department as well and and so take this message back to them as well thank you i will thanks i'll just um i haven't been here five and a half years but um you know leslie every time you come in you're always so positive and um just forever looking for new opportunities for these guys so i um that's what i've seen in my nearly two years on but um and what it what a great and powerful presentation um thank you for that uh how many kids go through the business course now what percentage of the high school students do you think come through it um are you seeing trends upward movement actually yeah our our program our our courses and course enrollment grew this year um pretty significantly i think i and all
081students had to take personal finance good right that's a that's a graduation requirement and um yeah i want i don't i'm not sure what the total number is it maybe i'm going to throw it out there maybe around 800 or so could that be does that sound right that would be taking at least one that might be high in a year we'd have to i think if we looked at the scheduling numbers um do you want me to look and see i would not or you know what i'll i'll tell them i'll tell mary and maureen and they can share it at the next meeting yeah um just to see what the trends are because obviously the emphasis is on business now in in you know i mean the kids are much more attuned to
082it than when i was in school i mean i was i think i don't even think they had invented typewriters when i was in school but um no but seriously i just um i would love to see what kind of growth there is because you just keep adding some just fabulous courses and um you know as the whole dynamic of college changes i um surely that's probably being demonstrated and made manifested in the numbers you're seeing kids who are saying look it may not be for me right out of school i i've got to prepare myself for the fact that i may not get to college until i'm 24 or 25 um which is what my son did so you know i i know we're starting to see more of that and it are you
083seeing that in your numbers so okay yeah i'll i'll let you know i know our numbers were were up from the year before but i just don't know the exact number okay thanks no that's information i feel like this is a a beautiful example of if you build it they will come exactly because you've just built this fabulous program and these course after course after course have been added and synchronized and progression throughout and i think when you when you build a program like that that just makes a lot of sense um you'll get students who want to who see the value in it right definitely well thank you well thank you sure so um did we save the best for last was that what that was it was oh i'm so glad i'm so
084glad the math department people have left already they're watching offline i know they probably are i didn't mean it anyway well that leads us to the end of the meeting so um unless any like hot mail came in or something i think and you're up so yeah sure i'd like to move to adjourn a second all in favor we're good well thank you everyone i appreciate everybody's time tonight and again i'm sorry but um