001awesome uh good evening everyone welcome to may 6th uh 7 30 p.m uh special showcase meeting the board of education uh before we get into it uh mr have a call to order please sure mr crippo here miss howland here miss ham miss harrigan here mr martelly here mr parichini here and mr white here mr chairman you have a quorum thank you i said good evening everyone i hope everyone enjoyed quite a beautiful day today and you've had a chance to get that beautiful sunshine and mild weather i hope you put in as good mood as we are uh we have a great showcase screening tonight uh i'm gonna turn it over to dr gather or dr solner wants to kick off the showcase but this is not about the board tonight is about cheshire
002high school so we're all looking forward to the presentation thank you very much mr paragini and as you mentioned uh we're excited to be joined for this evening's showcase uh by dr gad and uh does that miss well speak in the background um so uh we have a special group with us tonight and they're going to walk us through a presentation all year we've been focusing on what are our schools doing to navigate the pandemic and to keep kids engaged and if you recall we've uh touched on everything from you know classrooms to clubs and so tonight you're going to get i think a little bit of both with the high school presentation so with that i'll pass it off to you dr gad thank you very much dr solomon we are delighted to be
003here tonight and i have a number of folks in the room with me and i'll introduce them in a moment but i just first wanted to make a shout out to our teachers this is teacher appreciation week and i'm doubly honored that our teachers and students have joined us tonight this is this is an honor of their hard work their perseverance and their tenacity through extraordinary circumstances so we want to talk tonight with you about how we supported complex thinking and social and emotional learning during the covet 19 pandemic and give you a little bit of context so as you know we've had a number of broadcast systems installed around the district we had 19 installed here so we're going to talk a little bit about this was a year like none other so what
004did it look like we have also cameras we have 19 broadcast systems installed we have cameras and microphones installed in every classroom we have 585 students attending four days a week 333 who are currently remote a number of who are remote during the ap testing which is this week and next week we have 438 students who are in the hybrid model which means when you combine our in-person learning days and our students in the hybrid model we have roughly between 800 or more students in the building every single day these numbers are subject to change as parents do make adjustments and we said this at the beginning of the year we mentioned and we continue to mean it we wanted to be flexible and adaptable because this is an ever-changing landscape and boy have our
005professionals been adaptable and flexible and more none more than our students so instruction has been both in person and it's also been hybrid every day so we have some remote learners some in-person learners a combination therein teachers have adapted to instruction using the google suite and it's been a really powerful year some things though have stayed the same we have had in-person testing we were able to administer the psat grades 10-11 on footwork psat 9 in december the sat school day was on march 24th to all of our juniors uh currently we are in our ap testing process for the next two weeks that started on may 3rd and goes through may 14th which is also in person and next generation science testing is may 24th and may 25th it's actually through may 28th i
006apologize so again to reiterate in a year like no other and i think we are all as i look out at this room very ready for when we don't talk about it being here like noble we've persevered we've adapted and despite extraordinary circumstances our kids have shared their insight with each other and with students around the district so uh we're extremely proud of the ways that our students have extended and the way they've adapted and the ways our teachers have extended and adapted so i'm going to share with you i'll make some introductions first but i'm going to play one clip from our deca club we have many many clubs as a feature of how we've kept our kids connected our clubs have continued in spite of this extraordinary time and so just one example
007again i can't stress from among how many that just showcases how our students have continued to learn and continue to think deeply and continue to learn in complex ways and then share that outside of the school walls and then you will hear from our fine arts and performing arts departments and we'll be talking about hands-on learning experiences and mr joe castardo our our department chairperson will speak with you and then you'll hear some clips from mr greg bell who can't be here tonight but i think i'll let his clip tell you why it's kind of exciting you'll also hear about our academic and organizational supports we have cheshire high school learning labs among other supports that students can drop into or be enrolled in and you'll hear this is anne well speak we'll speak about
008that our library media specialist and dr maureen reed our assistant principal for curriculum and instruction and then mrs pells is going to share just briefly about a program called scope that i know you've maybe heard a little bit about and then we'll end with our extraordinary pe department and our peer health group talking about wellness wednesday and our leadership initiatives so without further ado i would like to bring mr castardo up to share with you how our school wait no we've got to do deca our students have adapted to uh their hands on work to this environment but first a little bit of bad deck hello this is susan wage maker along with brittany and kerry we are the co-advisors for the cheshire high school deca club this year cheshire high school deca club members
009exemplified engagement perseverance and dedication in the most challenging year 27 students prepared all year remotely to compete in the statewide deca virtual competition held over two days in march the statewide virtual awards ceremony was broadcast to announce the winners with much excitement we were happy to announce that out of 14 events that cheshire students competed in nine teams placed in the top positions for their events these teams had the opportunity then to compete at the national virtual competition which was held in april this year was like no other as students wrote marketing plans community giving projects franchise business plans and other events in a virtual setting in many ways this virtual format allowed us to support our students more regularly and we saw an overall increase in member participation at deca meetings that were held
010virtually after school there were many challenges students had to overcome in this unique setting but each student persevered in ways that made both myself and brittany mccary so incredibly proud to be the advisors for these outstanding students good evening everyone thank you for um thank you for having me i'm happy to be here and i'm happy to share oh it's pardon me so used to having this on i'm happy to share um with you what our what our department has been doing and what we've been moving toward uh to really to boost our students social emotional learning as well as their ability to move forward with um you know pushing their personalized learning um forward at this point in the game there are three specific areas that our department is pushing it and one of
011those is a virtual slide critique because we noticed that the hardest part at this point in the game with the art with the arts was working with critiquing our students work um it was so great rickovit when we could have our students gather around we could have critiques firsthand but we had to find a way and i know the students could vouch for this to get that feeling back to get the feeling of a class back where students felt they were a group they were heard by everybody and they had the ability to comment on each other's work so um we put our heads together as a department and we came up with a very quick simple and a very effective solution and that was the virtual google slide critique in addition to that which
012i'll speak to in a minute um there's the personalized learning targets those two tie together hand in hand and i'll discuss how those go together momentarily um the last one on the list is the virtual google meet art share which um in the classroom again pre-coded we would be able to walk around and show each other what we were working on discuss as a class how well we were proceeding toward our um our ideas and our um you know the way that we were trying to how we were trying to develop each piece with that being said the hardest part was how are we going to do this in a virtual environment well we came up with a very simple solution we had students holding up work four or five or six at a time
013to the cameras and discussing with the class or even taking quick screenshots with the class and then discussing this work with the class as if we were right in the classroom which we technically were on a virtual uh setting so now i'll move forward and talk about our virtual google slides critique um it seems like you know again a simple solution to a very big problem that we were having and it's as simple as students taking um taking photos of their work submitting it to a shared google slideshow where everybody in the class was shared into that slideshow all students were this was real time so everybody was sharing their work at one point in time with three photos um and then students were set up into groups of three or four or more and
014they would actually comment back and forth on each other's work constructive criticism um things that tie directly into unit objectives into lesson objectives as you can see in this particular slide there's a photo of a student's mask that she was working on you'll see my comment at the top and you'll see three other student comments down below where students are commenting on again these are comments that are coming directly off of the rubric things that tie directly into students learning as well as developing their social emotional perspective so students are able again to tie in these ideas together and work as a class that was the hardest part they were feeling like they were no longer heard as a class so this is a great perspective and a great angle on how to do that
015the personalized learning target document this was um this was a brainchild of how are we going to make students feel like they can they can still share their ideas as how they're going to move forward with their learning we really wanted students to understand that they were heard not only from a perspective of the teacher like here's our unit objectives giving them an over-encompassing goal for each unit but we wanted students to again still break the bounds of the creativity component so with that being said the personalized learning target document was the way that we developed this um students would literally break down a pdf document i have a pdf of the document actually in this slide um it was it's about a four or five slide document i won't again i won't show you
016all the slides but um within that document students have to list their learning targets what their goals and objectives are for this specific unit how they're going to develop these goals they have to show their research and their work in progress these are incredible formative assessment tools for the teacher incredible tools that allow students to work together and discuss their progress and their process our goal as a department moving forward was really trying to have a way for our students to still feel like we the teachers and they the students were involved in the creative process so um truthfully that learning target document has solved two of those problems and the third thing is it has solved the ability for students again they don't feel like they're alone in their decision making the teachers are
017there the whole time to guide them through the process we can comment on the slides on that personal learning target document students are showing us their progress so with with full remote learners uh we are able to see exactly and the slide that's coming up will show the students pro this student's progress this is a full remote learner's progress with all of her comments and her perspective on how she's progressing through this this specific unit which is a coil constructed vessel so um the student is actually in the i can't unfortunately can't see all the words from here if i could i would pass and that's that that greeting very well but the eye exam but um i can't see all the words but unfortunately but the student is commenting on i pretty much know
018what she's saying here um from having her in class she's talking about her progress with the two black bars that she decided to put into pieces she wasn't sure if they were working she also discusses in this in this particular slide how she took some of the feedback from students and even though they were telling her that things looked like they were good she pushed herself to move beyond that feedback and really strive forward to develop it even further so i love the last photo on the far right because it shows um it shows the whole progress that she went through to develop the lid to this piece which was it sounds like such a simple task like put a lid on something but if you know from any experience being in an art room
019and working with different types of materials it can be quite a quite a work um especially when you're working remotely so she constantly was sharing slides with her classmates constantly sharing slides in this work in progress um particular slide from the learning target menu and really was able to be guided through that progress by the teacher by her classmates and ultimately be happy with the final result which this piece is going to be featured in um in a virtual art show this year for the um cheshire public schools at the high school so she's really excited about that too so that's how our department currently is utilizing those three specific techniques the virtual google slides critique the personalized learning target menu as well as last but not least the virtual google me art share which
020seems such a simple idea just to hold up your work and show people what you're doing but students feel so proud when they are able to be taught within that moment of saying hey you know what i might be remote but this is what i'm doing and here it is and i think it makes them feel great and it makes us feel great as teachers to see that so again thank you for having me i appreciate it um and we'd like to move forward now with mr bell so the next piece you're going to see is greg bell he's he's going to talk with you a little bit about how they adapted in the choral classes good evening my name is greg allen the chorus teacher here at cheshire high school i apologize that i
021was unable to be here in person this evening as we actually have a choral event that is going on downstairs in the auditorium at this time this year chorus has been able to maintain the opportunity to perform through virtual events we have been able to record our fire individually at home and then piece those together which i'll explain further a little bit this year we were still able to hold a virtual winter concert which the link is available for on this slide as well as a virtual senior showcase and pops concert which is going on currently last year we put put on a concert at elam park for the first time in which we performed the pops concert for the residents there as well as members of our community and we also gave all seniors
022the opportunity to perform solos of their choosing this year we were able to record the seniors individually doing their solos as well as put together virtual versions of the pop songs which i'll explain further this year we also have an in-person concert coming up in june which we are really excited about we were able to procure the use of the main football field here and we will be putting out concerts banned symphonic bandwidth ensemble orchestra jazz band the choirs in separate concerts of course over the course of multiple evenings but it is great for us to culminate a year that has been unlike any other good evening my name is good evening this year we were able to use programs like garageband and adobe audition in order to create our virtual choir experience we would
023work on the music together in class and students would either learn it with us in class or be learning synchronously at home i remember learning the music students would go home and take each individual part and using practice tracks that we have provided online students were able to record their own parts they would listen to the practice track on a set of headphones while recording into a device usually as simple as using their cell phone they would save these recordings and submit them to me i would then be able to take these recordings and place them all here in garageband where one at a time i have to edit the recordings uh getting rid of background noises whether they are you know a car driving by the background someone turning a page uh someone coughing
024or sneezing in the background i was able to edit those out at the same time as line them up so that way it sounded like the students were performing together we could then edit them for balance and for blend and i was able to use these programs to put together the songs that we were performing oh [Music] yes [Music] [Applause] [Music] sure [Music] oh [Music] i'd like to ask mrs well speak and dr reed just come in to talk a little bit about our learning labs and support classes hi good evening learning labs particularly the writing lab and most of our learning labs social studies and general learning lab take place here in the library and so um you know i see students on a regular basis along with an array of teachers from every
025academic area that come in to help our students and there are students that are assigned there and there are also students that drop in particularly to the writing lab and we all often talk about like how writing lab isn't really for bad writers it's for all writers and this year in particular students that wanted feedback from everything from a college essay to an ece paper were able to virtually meet up with a writing teacher and get some feedback and that could be done in real time over a google me or they could submit their work and they could get feedback on it so it was super successful we had we still continue to have a lot of students that are taking advantage of that and um you'll hear from a learning lab and writing center
026teacher in just a moment caitlin carter um math lab and science lab kind of run in separate areas you know being science it's important to be near the bunsen burners and such and math it's just a scary place up there there's been a math lab up there for a number of years and students are able to access a math teacher several math teachers that filter into the lab at various times to assist students um so um yeah that's that's what happens do you have anything to add to that dr reed in terms of like um you know more about the math lab and the science i think than i do because you'll yeah i'll just add in that while these students are scheduled in um also drop in that they're enrolled during their daily schedule
027that these are groups of students that can range from two to eight ten students the teacher tries to work um with each of those students in targeted areas that they're struggling in but they are in groups for the students i mean for the teacher and the science lab had about 42 students enrolled this year the writing lab about 63 so far and um the math support also extends to evening tutoring uh tuesdays through thursdays like seven to eight at night and sunday evening seven to eight online so we do offer quite a bit of support and as mrs well speak said i think we have mrs carter caitlyn carter in a video next to share with you her experience as a writing lab and learning lab teacher okay [Music] so the goal of the writing
028and the learning labs is to help support students and this might look a little bit different based on the different needs of the specific students so some students are given a writing or a learning lab as part of their daily schedule and this is great especially in a year that like what we're experiencing this year where students are experiencing learning in a very different way so these learning labs and writing labs provide students with one-on-one teacher support and we're able to focus on areas where students are struggling whether it be executive functioning or organization students are able to work with the teacher to set attainable goals for each week and this helps hold students accountable and also helps them have that one-to-one teacher support where they might be lacking and another great thing about the
029writing lab is any student at chs can get the feedback that they need on writing assignments so whether you're in an actual writing lab or a learning lab you are able to fill out a google form and that connects you with one of the english teachers and we're able to provide students with feedback and again in a year where it might be a little bit difficult for students to get that one-on-one teacher support they're able to fill out a google form and to get that support from from teachers and the best part about all this is it's not only helping students academically but students are also able to make other connections with different teachers that they may not be familiar with through the writing in the learning labs hello i'm kristen peltz one of the
030assistant principals and i'm really proud to be able just to give a little bit of blurb on a program here well a new school a new club at cheshire high school called scope which was the student community outreach program for education just wanted to make sure i got that right um the brainstorm of two junior students here at the school eddie chen and joanne junity who approached us with this proposal anticipating that there are elementary school students because of the remote learning that might need some extra attention this year and so they worked and coordinated with all four elementary school principals they reached out to parents and took it from there they've been coordinating weekly meetings between our high school student tutors and elementary students predominantly giving them assistance on reading and math and also
031just forming relationships with them through the year they're very excited about it they're hoping the program grows next year so keep an eye out on information that's coming from your from the elementary school principals because the program can only grow and it's been a great support to those students thank you thank you mrs pills and this is a perfect segue into our next group of students you're going to hear from kathy sullivan the chairperson of the pe department joe krutz physical education teacher dan lee physical education teacher and peer health teacher and students lucy helene connor d labelle giuliana destante brad krutz and jack lovelace all right i want to start off first by saying what mary gad said before uh thank you to all the teachers of this teacher appreciation week and i know
032that this year is much more challenging than every other year so again i just want to mirror what she said at the beginning as thank you to all you guys really appreciate everything that you guys have done so with this being said uh pure health is one of the big classes here at fisher high school it's very important especially for leadership and kindness and whole bunch of other initiatives that we have taken and that we do throughout the year but of course this year is very different so one of our first projects is the elementary school leadership program essentially what this is is every year we go to the elementary schools and we do a leadership conference and we just kind of teach them the ideas of everyday leadership and kindness and how they all
033tie into on each other so one of the first things that we always talk about is everyday leadership and this is very important especially to learn at a young age and this is the idea that you can be a leader without actual titles and positions so whether we're communicating this idea to kids in elementary school middle school or high school this is our first objective so exactly what is being an everyday leader kind of try to convey the idea to these students that you don't have to be a captain of the sports team or you don't have to be the head of the drama club or the president of the class the overall idea is just raising your hand in class and a whole bunch of other small actions is really what's going to build
034up your leadership skills so i have a few of the projects that we have done this year for the elementary school leadership program and one that i really want to elaborate on is the book drive so i think this took place at highlander chapman i don't want to pick one because that wouldn't be wrong but essentially every year they do a book drive and it was inspired by a student's grandmother who passed away who had a big passion for books and this has been going on for a few years so we didn't really start this initiative but one way that our peer health class was able to help this year was a group of students in pure health actually made a video promoting the book drive and then we sent this to elementary schools and
035this idea of motivating them to really take initiative and donate is really inspiring and i think just the idea of it coming from older children just in of itself is enough to get younger kids to really take initiative and then more so this kind of ties into the idea of community service and community action because it really was conveying the idea to these younger kids that they should be helping out their community whether it's in a small way donating books or in a much bigger way so the second program that the pure health class does is the elementary school kindness program thank you so as the name suggests really just promoting kindness in the elementary schools and again this is something that we usually do when in person where we actually send students in pure
036health to go to the elementary schools and kind of teach them these principles of kindness but of course this year we had to be adaptable and flexible because we weren't able to actually go to the schools themselves so one topic i really want to address is kindness week and kind of how we went about this so i think one of the biggest issues whether it was leadership or the kindness program or a few other programs that you're going to hear about in the future later on in this presentation is how we communicate and how we actually plan these events and like i said before we can't actually go in person so we had to rely on google meets for the majority of communication with principals and guidance counselors and just teachers of the elementary schools
037so of course this project is no different we have to rely on google meets especially with the principals at highland the chapman and a few of their guidance counselors as well i forgot their names but so one of the topics i want to address is kindness week so what we did was the kids that volunteered for the kindness program in the pure health class actually put together a series of videos where they kind of portrayed how you can still be kind and demonstrate kindness especially during these hard and challenging times so we kind of gave some examples of how like especially people associate kindness with doing big deeds but i think what our pure health class was really trying to convey this year was that all small acts of kindness all add up so in
038the video we kind of portray to them how you can just wave to someone in the hallway or just ask someone how their day is going and just that in of itself really shows everybody else around you how kind you're being so that was one of the first things that we addressed in the video and we also talked kind of like on the bigger picture in the videos kind of um taught them some kindness skills such as really getting into deeper conversations with people and it kind of goes into what i said before where it shows people how much you care about them it's just overall like these videos that we did the pure hall class did for the elementary school kindness program and leadership programs really were just designed to still keep these projects
039going even though it was a much more challenging year and like i said before uh google me i think was the biggest biggest um advantage in the situation because it really helped us communicate more and up next i think lucy's going to share about the food drive good evening everyone uh so i'm going to be talking about the middle school leadership program that we ran at god this year i was on a committee with four other or three other excuse me uh pure health students and we started by working closely with the dodd staff and talking about what elements of leadership they really wanted to focus on this year and as connor mentioned everyday leadership of course came up so from there we wanted to create some ways that we could engage with them to
040develop those leadership skills uh in order to do that we had to meet uh almost bi-weekly with teachers and administrators from god specifically mr connolly and mr paraceno were incredibly helpful and they helped us plan the leadership activities that we wanted to do this year so the main thing was that we produced videos that were leadership challenges and they were based around events taking place at dodd so what we would do is we would make videos with instructions on how the students could participate in the challenge and then also the importance of how participating in the challenge then translates into leadership skills so for example during black history month we did a challenge where students had to read a book or an article maybe a poem or a watch a video or a movie relating
041to black history month and then from there and well to have this challenge take place we produced a video like i said and within that video we interviewed teachers from god who talked about the importance of participating in this black history month challenge uh so that's just an example while we were doing these challenges we also developed a middle school leadership conference surrounding everyday leadership in a typical year this would take place at holiday hill and it would be this big event that students got bust the holiday hill for obviously that could not happen so we had it be held at dodd under the tent outdoors and about roughly 50 students attended the tent was a great resource and we were able to use the fields at dodd for interactive activities of course we collaborated
042with the dodd staff on safe and engaging ways to create this event for the students it actually happened last week we had a panel of uh student leaders from the senior class and uh juliana and connor actually gave a presentation about everyday leadership and it was a great success the students really enjoyed it um so now i think uh juliana or yes juliana is going to be talking um oh no i am still going around a little bit so earlier in the year we uh the high school held a food drive where we worked with the cheshire food pantry and we really wanted to give the students this opportunity to support the food pantry and create the opportunity for them to learn the importance of being a community contributor you know some people might assume
043that because of the pandemic that isn't something that we can still really focus on but i think this creative opportunity really showed that you know you can still find ways to give back to your community so in a typical year uh clubs and sports teams from the high school would participate in a supermarket challenge which was a fun competition uh with the goal of donating as much to the cheshire food pantry as possible but we weren't really comfortable having large numbers of students inside uh at the beginning of this year so we had to pivot and we went with another still creative still fun alternative plan which meant that the peer health education classes collaborated with the national honor society here at chs in creating a covet friendly neighborhood food drive as far as we
044know this is one of the first times that two major groups like this have come together on a community service project like this and i can say as i was in the meetings it was really incredible to see representatives from pure health and representatives from the national honor society all collaborating on this common goal so that was a really awesome thing to see like i said we still wanted to make this as fun as possible for everyone participating so we took some ideas from the cheshire lights of hope and created a um a drive where students got to be street captains meaning neighbors that wanted to participate simply had to put a bag filled with non-perishable food items on their front steps and the students were street captains would go around and collect that allowing
045for contactless pickup for anyone who chose to donate overall the group donated 5063 pounds of items for the cheshire food pantry on behalf of cheshire high school and the cheshire community so it was quite the success um that is all i have to say hello everybody my name is juliana destante and i am the project manager one of the project managers for pure health one of the largest projects that peer health sponsors and puts together at the high school which is the cheshire high school leadership conference uh so the goal of the conference that we hold every year which is also sponsored in part by the ryan t lee foundation provides students with the opportunity to participate in a day-long event and focus on many different facets of leadership such as problem solving uh community
046community service communication and team building and all these different ideas centered around the purpose of promoting everyday leadership and we talk about this in class a lot and coach lee talks about this as well this idea of vertical planning which we're also trying to promote in pure health this idea that we have the same kind of leadership message that we are making sure we're teaching to the elementary school the middle school and the high school so as you work your way up through the cheshire public school system you're learning the same idea of leadership um and peer health is very happy to be enforcing that through our conferences and different programs that we have and outreach so we want to make sure we're enforcing this idea of connectedness and adaptability and guidance through the pandemic
047as everybody's talked about before all of our programs and projects that we've run through peer health usually look very different this time of year and uh we have had to adapt in many ways and we have definitely been able to do that and still pull off as much as we can given the circumstances so this year for the 20 20 21 school year we have kind of altered the uh conference event and we've been working very closely with nurse stanton to kind of follow these procedures and protocols to make sure we're holding a safe and effective conference so this year we're going to be hosting over 75 chs students that are going to attend the conference on may 19th and it's going to be an in-person conference typically on a normal year uh peer health
048and cheshire high school would host about 375 students from different high schools across the state and we would all come to the high school and we would usually have the same template every year that we can apply we didn't have that template this year so we had to kind of re-adjust the way we wanted the conference to look so um my members of the members of the project group that i'm working on and everybody is working on is to speak to different presenters and speakers in the community and we even have a graduate who graduated from cheshire high school that's going to be speaking at the conference to show students you know where leadership takes them post cheshire high school and the different successes that they have applying the skills that they've learned here going
049forward and that's super meaningful and we really want to enforce this idea of hands-on learning through activities and how important these interactive informative activities are because students always wanted to be active and that's why we chose to do a smaller in-person only cheshire high school event because we figured that that would reach students the best and would be the most effective and we always enforce this idea of parallel planning and you know in the day and age that we are things are constantly changing and we've been doing parallel planning planning a remote version of our conference to um adapt and you know help students that choose to be remote on the day of the conference that way we're not excluding it everybody has an opportunity to participate in the cheshire high school leadership conference so
050um brad and jack are now going to talk about the new project for on spence day hi hi i'm brad uh first of all i wanted to say please excuse my appearance just came from lacrosse practice so our pure health initiative is wellness wednesdays which was created because i'm sure many of you know that all chs students are remote every week this year so we would create a lesson plan for physical education and health classes um in order for students in order for teachers to teach students topics that make a social emotional connection um to help in their everyday lives typically the topics would be rotated on about a three week scheduling period and um each lesson plan would have um stimulating uh ideas for the students such as videos articles quotes just something to
051get the students like brains kind of flowing and then the teachers would you know ask the students what you get out of the video how is it going to impact you every day um so now jack will talk about how we came up with some of the topics and yeah good evening i'm jag loveless and um here we're talking about wellness wednesday so how we came up with some of these topics is we would originally go into our group meet brad and chisholm okoro and we would talk about what would be good to talk about and what things this year have been a need for students that like they need help on and stuff like that some of the topics have been like helping others uh wellness like personal wellness managing stress writing an email
052to teacher and good study habits so um a lot of these things people need help on especially in the year with covid and everything that's going on managing stress and mental wellness uh people just need help sometimes like nobody can go through all this alone so we've uh we've discussed with teachers and uh faculty and tried to come up with lessons plans that every three weeks get uh pushed out to the students um so for example helping others if you see somebody having like a bad day in the hallway just giving them a nice comment sharing them up if you see somebody drop their books help them pick it up like everything helps it nowadays and uh another one writing an email you wouldn't be surprised or you'd be very surprised how many kids could
053not write an email to a teacher in the correct format so stuff like that it's just in in a year like this where there's a lot of remote stuff and a need for technology it's just very helpful for the students to have these uh resources on wellness wednesdays thank you we are we are so lucky to have these incredible students and teachers who have collaborated and i think it's been the hallmark of the year that our teachers have been focused on ensuring our kids still have these rich and deep experiences that they are still connected to each other and to us and that we're finding every way we possibly can to ensure they're getting the the depth of experience as well and i think this evening uh articulated so much of that and i just
054want to say again thank you to all the faculty um the last piece of what we'd like to share with you tonight is our drama and theater theater department of course something that is typically very very much in person and shared with the community has had to to do all of their work remotely and so we have a little uh dance number that they put together they were able to do 12th night this fall as the drama production and little women is a musical production and that video is almost done and it will be broadcast at the senior walk on the 21st before pretty much i hope i hope i haven't i haven't i hope i haven't told too soon and it'll be just for friends and family so we can keep the numbers small
055but we're psyched to be able to make use of the tent and show the video uh but until that was all done they also did a dance number these kids were learning dance moves by watching zoom they were singing in the shower and then recording themselves when they were later on so that they could you know practicing but they did everything in recording uh we had some in-person uh events that they kept it some some in-person rehearsals and certainly this dance number is a culmination of one major in person recording session and the man behind the scenes is the man behind the scenes on this meeting as well and i would like to send a special shout out to mr michael salamini without him much of this year would have been ever so much more
056complex than it already is so our drama theater department fantastic job and while things have been virtual performances have been virtual passion and excitement has remained actually [Music] um [Music] come on [Music] so come alive okay is okay so do you have any questions for us first thought it was very very cool video well done uh before i comment uh any questions or comments from the board uh tim thanks yeah i'm just curious the uh how many students do you have is it for 1400 355 okay do you know how many of them have gotten vaccinated uh we're collecting those data right now but i think early numbers are at about 40 percent of eligible students okay what percent is eligible at this point based on the 16 year old i guess we're students who
057are 16 and over and it's about 800 kids okay thank you all right adam okay i was looking at the comments uh capture me next uh am i upper here's kev okay well okay um i just wanted to comment to say uh what a fantastic presentation um i i i was thinking back to uh when we were putting together our um i guess our our 10-year objective plan jeff i think in in in policy last year where we're uh going back between words and things that we wanted students to focus on and and uh two of those things was critical thinking and also flexible thinking and i and i and it's incredible how to see that sort of come come into reality this year seeing the students really use the technology to to to bring
058people together to bring students of all the great levels together be able to just create a new community in this time when you can't physically be together and i think that was really great and to also see that the teachers use technology which i'm sure they weren't all that experienced in last year or two years of whatever 18 months ago or however long ago it was it seems like yesterday now um that they all sort of became experts and became really uh uh almost i guess experts now in using a technology to to keep students interested in this subject at hand so it's really fantastic presentation thank you thank you thank you adam uh catherine thanks tony um thanks dr gadden and everyone there who participated tonight um and put together the program really great
059um i agree with adam it was just like very impressive um i particularly loved all of the leadership work that is being done across the district that is so phenomenal and the fact that it's so student driven is really incredible and i i just feel like that that's the kind of thing that's going to have an impact that's going to help our kids get past covet and you know the resilience that we're going to be hoping they can display um that's got to help a lot and so i appreciate all of the work that the students um are doing and the teachers and the principals and uh i would like to say i appreciate all of our teachers this is a great week for um our teachers they're doing a phenomenal job so i'll be
060quiet now because everybody else wants to say something to you but thank you so much thank you catherine uh tim just wanna say oh by the way i'm to say thank you for the presentations in the comments uh andrew you had a comment and then faith sure just to dr gad and um the whole cheshire high school community um i'm continuously amazed at what you guys do at cheshire high school um i'm an alum of the school and you know to see the different activities and the leadership roles and being part of the different you know the entire school community it's really been very impressive and this year hopefully you do not have to ever deal with circumstances like this again um you know i i always was questioned the whole day off on wednesday
061but seeing the presentation tonight and the different things that were able to be done during that time i think that that's really important for everyone to see so thank you and congratulations that the year is almost over and we've we've made it out and uh the good work thank you thank you thank you thanks andrew faith i um my colleagues have said everything so um i don't want to keep the need the evening going long so i'm just going to say thank you dr gad and to everybody assembled there and all the kids who put together the the presentations the faculty who guided him um most impressive and we're very proud of you so thanks thank you thank you i wish you could see everyone here i almost want you just to come so you
062can see who's been here because we have a cast none of this happens without a lot of people doing a lot of heavy lifting and so you know i'm i'm grateful every day for the extraordinary colleagues and students that we have the absolute privilege of working with every single thing awesome thank you andrew uh i'm sorry faith uh and europe i just want to say thank you for the presentation uh dr gad and and all of all of your uh cohorts that you have there helping you tonight um it's wonderful to hear words like pivot and changes that we made to be able to continue to do the good work that cheshire high has always been doing but during these times that are really hard but you know what the attitude of everybody here tonight
063really shine through and the fact that we can get videos of student work and we can think of new and interesting ways to show student work to assess student work to to just do bit do the business that we do i i just want to commend all of you and thank you for showing us how you have been able to pivot this year and um be flexible and and make things happen make the magic happen so thank you very much thank you thank you uh i i just want to say i i i personally cannot thank our entire staff enough um teacher we appreciation week or no teacher action week in any given day especially this past year has been um well a year and a half tremendous and just see the the excitement to
064ann's point you know everyone's so happy and excited talk about your contributions how the students are responding we see these students engaged that just that high level that i see whether it's at a board meeting or you know hearing my daughter's teachers talking sometimes during class if if you all are frustrated and tired you're not showing it um so i i can't thank you enough for the hard work and and uh you know ann mentioned pivoting i you know in listening to uh the structure of all this you know i kind of try to relate what you're doing with our kids in this remote model to what's happening in the corporate world today um where things are more agile um they're not very static and agile being mean at teens and little team members employees
065to move quickly and adapt and have these online conferences where they're trying to make their pitch their project their idea known to people that are not just in the office with them but around the world and i think the skills that they're learning you know this there's a positive to the covet is they're learning these tools and technologies as you are so they're learning with you but they're building a confidence level um in doing so and learning a better way to communicate which is going to help them immensely in college and beyond so i you know i i think where kids are could be better positioned uh in their careers as a result is um so i i can't thank you enough i appreciate all the time everyone put in this presentation i know there's
066a lot more to it than you're able to show but thank you um very well done and i was impressed i'm impressed and i could tell you many many many parents students are impressed especially considering the year that we've had so uh thank you thank you yeah absolutely uh dr song do we uh have any public comment at this point we do not mr peregini right barring any public comment uh the only item of the agenda is to adjourn i would read the upcoming meetings unfortunately available to me but uh it is on our website and our calendar that being said unless there's any other comments from the board on tonight's showcase yeah i want to thank the entire staff at cheshire high school and especially everyone that's there tonight and again i we all
067recognize michael salamini thank you for calling him out because uh without mike involved and you know his support staff we want to have these kind of meetings tonight be able to showcase to you so mike thank you thank you for sticking around for the long nights as well um that being said do i have a motion to adjourn came in first place and i think anne came in second and you're a distant fourth sorry uh second all those in favor aye it is a unanimous thank you everyone please have a good evening and we'll see each other