001[Music] um by calling the meeting to order at 7:02 and then I will just um call the curriculum committee members um for attendance and then we'll go right into the agenda um so we have Al I am excellent um Teresa present Dr Cronin um absent Lauren here and Louisa is here Al righty excellent um Dr Casmir I guess I will hand it right over to you and you can give us a little introduction of what's Happening sure awesome thank you Lauren and uh just want to say uh thank you to Dr Martins who is on her way to her daughter's recital and so she is pulled over to to make sure that she's able to participate today so thank you very much as well as everyone else um on the call um so tonight is
002really just um an academy update so a lot has been happening behind the scenes as you know students um have engaged in a selection process and there was lots of questions at the beginning of the year about how that would go um and it's uh kind of blown by very quickly so here we are it's May almost June and um we have our high school staff here tonight to talk a little about how that process went and you get a chance to see how those results shook out so it's very interesting and and very exciting um we have Melissa Nao Dr Nao is on tonight I'm not sure if uh Trish dinino Hall is on tonight but as well but um she's gonna go over oh thank you hi Trish I can't see on my
003on my screen um the Academy's essential curriculum um they're going to walk us through um that process and how teachers were engaged and uh what sort of the components to that looks like so that the board um you know is is involved and aware and that we can understand sort of how that curriculum development process is going and then also um Talk us through some of the the documents that have been produced um you know for the board's uh purview as well as we've attached those to the invite um for anybody who wants to take a look at those and then I'll talk a little bit at the end about the Congressional appropriation that we've received and how we're starting to um package that Grant along the lines of the the the the goals that
004that it was written towards um so we're happy to do that so right now I'll turn it over to Dan and mag and they can walk us through the latest Academy update thanks Cara um do you want me to are you gonna you're going to run it from where you are well if this looks okay on everybody else's end I'll use the PDF that was attached how's that does this work is this clear enough for everybody sure okay all right well thanks for having us here uh Meg's uh I said sitting in her car right now so I'll do most of the talking since she can't see the screens uh but we're here to talk about the academy selection process and as it says the results are in um we did a we believe a
005very good job of of going through this entire process from planning start to finish and our last part's coming up so let's talk about the process before we talk about the results uh process began soon as we came to school an exploration course the exploration course is the course that all freshman took probably 95% of them took in the first semester uh that starts off with them learning a lot about themselves setting the expectations for Dria high school and then as it work through there it starts going to heavily about theems uh during that time in the September we also came in contact with the group that was going to run the lottery for us um which is called Gunna Solutions uh they did a fabulous job of setting this up for everyone real nice
006and easy and it went smooth uh we worked September October uh you know October November working with them trying to get the verbiage down how we wanted to make this selection process uh as easy as it could and friendly for uh students and parents when they look at it so so during that process then we hit January we started with a all freshman assembly where all the Freshman came in we started talking about the process and then we also did team assemblies uh in which we met in the blackbox with the different teams there's eight of them uh plus our ESL population and started talking about what was going to be happening uh more straight info about the overall structure of how acmis work um you know showing the graphics that we're all familiar with
007and how the Freshman went through there and from there we started broke it down for two weeks of mini Flex sessions so they got an overall from their exploration course of and us as a whole group of what theem look like and in their exploration course towards January they really started looking at you know the careers and what jobs could be coming out of each Academy for for example if they had an interest in medicine you know it's an easy one to pick you know what um what jobs they were how much of those schooling was involved how much uh you know the salary was and those type of things so they could get a good understanding of where each Academy and course would lead them then the mini uh Flex section sessions were presented
008by the academy directors we did that for two weeks so they had a chance to get into each academy uh Meg and I presented for communication in design and we pleasantly surprised at how well prepared the students came in not with just the knowledge of um you know the basics of yes we got the email yes we know when the selection process how it works uh when it's due and all of that but their information and questions they had regarding what these would look like they got uh for example if they came to flex for communication design they got a little mini tour of the blackbox and and how their audio uh design class would look like they got a little tour of the TV studio the hatter TV studios and the soundbox and things
009like that downstairs and then um after that we did academy information night uh in January for parents to come uh kind of ran through the overall uh how the process is going to work information for them showed the program guides that uh Melissa and Trish have worked uh very very hard to get to they are easy and super friendly for people to see and understand um then we hit February we did another information night for parents just to make sure that uh anybody who couldn't get the first one came to the second one uh and from there we did the selection process closed and counselors and the admins up in the exploration Academy met with students who hadn't selected uh a a selection for various different reasons uh so we went through and asked them
010and explained to them why they needed to do this so they have a little voice and and where they could possibly go uh we've been sitting on this information as we're working through our scheduling process and now it's time for the Academy reveal which is coming up June 6 and the admins have been working extremely hard on trying to make this a fun event for for them but kind of run out of options when it's a big class size of 800 and what we could possibly do we went through the whole you know do we do like a good oldfashioned you know Sorting Hat and tell them where they're going to go and things like that so uh we have a good little plan coming up for them and that's coming up June 6th um
011you know we're going to try to make it as as hype for them as as they say as we possibly can uh so it's a good introduction onto their Academy their Academy directors and their path you want to move down Karen thank you so here's the overall of what happened through gun of solutions so 80% of the students who who selected and I mean by select is because uh some students didn't select uh for various reasons we have some programs like our our walls are special ed or Bas programs who we didn't didn't get to select where they want to go because if their programming is for them to go to the hospital which is a very successful program for them uh we put them in specialy the they're in you know the Terry wild
012group for public in uh public service that they kind of dictated where they would uh actually go if there if um so promatic programmatic changes and things made their choices for them but for everyone else 80% got their first choice uh 12.8 got their second choice and 3.5 got their third and it went all the way down to 19 no one got that far but it went all the way down to they could select all 19 Pathways at the time uh this does exclude the new one um the new Academy because we could not go back and have time like we spent all the time from September to January talking about them to add this on so that one will be rolled out next year so we're very happy with the 96.4% of students receiving
013one of their top three choices um you know the ones who selected they they got to choose where they want to go so uh we're very happy with that part of it Dan we have a question oh I'm sorry I'm not sorry Lauren no that's okay I didn't notice it so Dan we have a question shoot fire away where are oh Teresa sorry there you are what is the total number of students there's 720 students selected that went to it uh 800 the total number of freshman's 800 it varies but I'll say around 30 830 what happens to the ones who don't um who who don't select well a lot of them are the special education programs that uh we talked about they are placed into acmis because they're special education programming kind of dictates
014where they have to be whether it's at danry high school because what we have at that building which will not be replicated over in the other building um so they had to stay there and everyone else we go we we place them into eies and if Dan if I could just add to the discussion regarding vocational programming for those um it's typically our students with more significant special needs is a is a big discussion at the PPT process regarding you know which program that they go into so um there is input throughout that process but not a direct selection through this we felt that while they will not be taking the courses that the other students will Avail themselves of as they go through we felt it was very important for all the students to
015be recognized in an academy so when we start talking about our Academy celebration they they're a part of it just like everyone else we'll we'll be making special awards for them and things like that thank you you're welcome so one of the things that we noticed uh quite early on was we we we thought that freshmen were going to kind of pick by where their friends went uh it's the new building I want to go to the new building or it's not the new building I don't want to go but we started looking at the the breakdown of the first second third up to Fourth choices of what students chose it was very I was very very pleased to see that it appears they chose by what they wanted they did not choose there was
016we didn't find any peer blocking like oh everyone choose this one kids really chose what they it looks like they had an interest in same thing with the building the building didn't dictate to us it looked like where they went and we're going to go through some of the demographic numbers in a second for each Academy and I think you'll see that they're pretty even all the way through and uh I'll make some points as we go through is why we believe some of these numbers may be a bit different next slide dude sure I'm sorry okay so it kind of rolls the same way for all of them but this is emerging Tech and Entrepreneurship and this is the ethnic breakdown of where it is at uh you know 63% Hispanic 7.1 black and
01719. 2% white you'll see that those numbers probably only range within a 4% difference between any of theems that we look at uh which showed us that there was some interest there are some other outlying ones that we're going to investigate just a little bit further once we get going but uh you know you'll see as we go through you could scroll down gender uh merging Tech and Entrepreneurship it was you know kind of a 6040 split between males and females non-binary was a choice but most students uh did choose one or the other and for programming it's 7% sped and 22% ml which kind of mirrors where we are you'll notice that you know at DHS and Kelly you can correct me if I'm wrong we're probably at about 15% sped but as we
018said not all the sped students uh were Cho could choose where they were going they were given a choice so they're kind of not reflected this is the students who talk theres do you have a question or is that up from before yeah no um out of all theems which one had the highest enrollment just Cur I mean there's no numbers you've got percentages um which you did a great job but I like what is the best one or the most popular one you'll never ever get me to say the best one but the most the most popular one seems to be scientific innovation and Medicine oh so that that seemed that seemed to be the the most popular one I could tell you the least one was probably info and cyber security oh yeah
019H otherwise they were pretty even because you you had to choose and it had to put you somewhere and we didn't make there were so many so many spots that the students could go to so that's why not everyone if we just opened it up and put everyone where they wanted to go you'd have you know say x amount of kids in the 300 kids in the science Innovation and medicine one but that's why we had to put caps on and the cap for each pathway was 50 so it's 150 per academy uh that they could go into but it worked out very well even because if you saw those numbers of First Choice 80% of their kids that chose got their first choice you want to go through Cara yep here's scientific innovation in
020medicine uh you'll notice the numbers don't change much at all it's a maybe a five-point swing from where we're going on one and the other where you start seeing the the swings is as you come down the other one we just saw merging Tech was kind of male heavy in what it was and this one is female heavy uh for the medicine it's almost the exact opposite it's 6040 in the female one so it it while it's not too bad when we're talking about 150 kids when you're you're looking at maybe a swing of 10 students uh either way 80 to 70 type stuff or a little bit more than that actually but um they went through and then we talked about sped and MLS uh it's 5% in this Academy and 70% MLS this
021is info and cyber security here we go again the same things 59% uh you know they they all Hispanic population that was leading the charge in this one uh and 15% white was down you know as we're trying our best to try to get more females involved in Computer Engineering and stem Eng General uh you'll see this one is pretty malale dominated when it comes to uh the computer informations and cyber security uh we will definitely look in the future on pushing for that to try to get this at a much closer to 5050 split this was probably our greatest one uh and uh special education and MLS this was a this was a heavy outlier for the ml one and and I'm thinking it had a little bit more to do do with the
022students that didn't make the selection when the selection was over and we're the ones that we had to go chase but we have no real um data for that right now because we weren't thinking that way when it came through so we're going to have to look at that number and just see if it was this year or if it's something that is a trend throughout you know cyber security also believe it or not had a lot to do with who was making the presentations how the presentations went who who decided to bring out the the cool things that uh they do I know for art engineering and design you know they they brought out some pretty cool things that they showed during those mini Flex sessions that made kids kind of go oh that's
023what I thought it was and there they go so professional Public Service I couldn't figure out how to outline the professional public service that's why it's yellow like that again pretty even across the board um this one you know deals with the law and the Civil Service part of Public Service part of what we're doing and culinary um it came out evening on the ethnicity part but then as you keep going down through the the gender part of it uh you'll notice that it keep going car uh this is our heaviest female one uh this came out they wanted to do that you know there are probably a doctorial study waiting to happen right here for somebody on why this occurred but you know it fits the trend that we've all read about when you're
024talking about stem and computers and stuff like that it's a little bit more malale driven and when you're talking about public service the education part and things like that it's a little bit more female headed so we're just kind of mirroring what you know everyone said so we're going to work very hard to get that um changed to 5050 uh this one has a heavy sped population because there are two uh Bas programs that are placed in this one because of the public service part um and the programming at the high school so they were placed in there but ml again is at 18% it's right around the 22s we've seen besides the outlier of 40% art engineering and design looks just like the other ones this one is almost a exact mirrors of the
025ones before it there's really nothing it was chosen where they're going and and how it worked another 6040 which is in bad uh you know when we start getting a little bit you know into the 8020 type range that's when we're we're looking at some serious stuff or anything higher than that but art engineering design this is going to be an interesting mix of um you know students in this one because you have art along with the engineering but again it's it's this one's at the the high school so it it's a heavy sped because they're staying there because of program reasons and a 30% uh MLL communication design same thing as the other ones it almost looks like the mirror image and if you like those Graphics you can thank Dr Martins because she
026worked very hard on the the logos to try to make them and uh you know as I look at them now they're they're very impressive on what they are we tried to find a similar format we got some work to do with two other ones but then we're done and then we have to do the green Academy as it comes out so you know our male female one this was was the closest one we had male female um when they were in there for the communication and design one I think it it talks to the communication part of it and the stem part of it uh that all come together so it'll be interesting mix on in this Academy definitely and again this one's at the high school so sp's a little bit higher and
027ml's a little higher too I mean that we were uh very pleased at the way firstly first one we concentrated on with was the ethnicity of them um we broke it down by college prep and honors classes that we had to give in the different ones and it seems like the scientific innovation and medicine one um has a uh little bit heavier honors uh population in it but besides that they were pretty even the whole way through and that's as far as we've gotten with our schedule so far and where we're going on okay that's the end of that questions any committee um member questions sorry Lauren yeah I have a quick question go for it what was the uh turnout for the information nights first one wasn't too bad uh I'd say it's probably
028a hundred total people it wasn't that bad uh the second one was non-existent we were all there and we probably had more admins than we did parents uh you know we had scheduled we were going to do a third uh but as we were going through it we weren't getting a ton of questions at that point we weren't getting any questions but we were like all right I guess we're good uh to go forward we really haven't gotten any more um I imagine it'll pop up when we bring it out on the June after the 6th uh you know when they get theirm and things like that going you know we spent a lot of time discussing this and I really believe that that exploration course that is taught in that first semester set an
029absolute great Foundation that these students could go home and talk to their parents about it and you know if you ask your your student hey what is this or what's this Academy and they give you the yeah I'm good I got it uh then you're kind of like all right you got it we're good to go and I I think we hit it the first one who had questions you know believe it or not more of the questions we got were not around the programming part but just more of uh you know what happens if they want to take uh play football but they're in the other building so it was you you know things we've all answered and we've said a million times over and over but just to get those and we've had
030answers for all of them because we've been you know pretty well this team sitting here on this Zoom right now has done an excellent job of planning this entire thing doesn't mean there's not going to be a couple of hiccups thank you thank you any other questions from committee members and any other Board of Ed member questions can you explain to me again how the um the special ed in the MLL how how does that work in these programs well the only one that is is different for them is some of the special education programs that's it ml ml students they are choosing just like everyone else we had special sessions for them exploration was actually taught in kind of a a bilingual type setting to make sure they had the information uh but they
031they select just like everybody else the only ones that really didn't get a chance to select um and Kelly I don't know how you want to explain I'm gonna let you do it you know it's the Bas and the Liz whites of the our class if you want to take that over explain yeah sure thank you Dan um so it's for our um students with more significant special needs um who have self-contained programs that um a large portion of their day is done in a modified academic setting um with vocational training built into their IEP or individualized education plans so those students even before we transition to the academy model we're doing vocational training uh during their you know during their school day at the high school and so those programs are continuing um within
032the special education department um and uh for some of the students with special needs it just wouldn't be appropriate to participate in some of the uh traditional academic classes um and so for those reasons um those students while they'll be part of an academy as Dan highlighted earlier we want them to be part of the comprehensive Danbury High School programming um and be included um when appropriate but for some of them the academic course uh courses will be done um solely on a special education track uh in modified curriculum so they don't pick they are laced they yeah so um so student students uh through their uh PPT process those decisions are made so every student has at least one meeting annually um where we discuss the individual programming for th for that child and
033part of that discussion um is both their Academic Program um and any vocational instruction that they're going to receive so through that meeting the program is dictated and and spelled out um and then as those decisions are made as Dan indicated earlier they're placed into the academy that's most appropriate to match that programming thank you they would and they would not be availing themselves of regular danber High School courses either um as an example the group that was going to they go to the hospital and work in the kitchen in the hospital as part of it they're going to be placed in public and Professional Service which is our culinary one so we can bring them into the culinary aspect of it but they won't be taking culinary as a class they they they can't
034do that but they're still part of it thank you anybody else committee members or board members okay um just a a question and I know everyone has has done their due diligence to our students uh when you make these decision special uh any student or special needs students and and talk about uh putting them in any type of program and when are you going to place them in the program I know you have a really sit down conversation with the parents so they will understand clearly what's going on just a comment yes that's correct Miss Cooper thank you Lauren can I ask a quick question please please go ahead thank you um and I'm not sure who the best person is to answer this but I'm thinking about our multilanguage Learners and sort of how
035they're going to be supported in you know these individual career tracks because I know you know we are still sort of working around how we're going to better address the needs of that that segment of our school population and I'm just thinking about like what that means in terms of having either technology or or a bilingual U teacher in that classroom as they're going specifically through the career tracks what does that look like I could I could answer that if that's okay um so one of we share the same you know concern that has been a focus for us for a while um I might just jump into number three on the Congressional appropriation because what you just described Kate really is addressed in the focus of how we're um of what we're doing in
036terms of programming and supports in our curriculum for second language Learners so the Congressional appropriation is geared towards taking the current curriculum the curriculum that's being built and making it accessible and rigorous for all students but particularly for language Learners there's something called the kelp standards um and so those are basically standards for for what's appropriate for second language Learners to to have and know and be able to do at different Lang at different stages of language acquisition and so the focus of that work in the Congressional appropriation um is to take um a lot of time money and programming and technical support and use that to take our current curriculum and to and to integrate um those uh areas of support in for second language Learners so that teachers are clear on what the
037expectations are for students at different levels so a loss one a l two a l three those are the language acquisition levels and then what they can expect of students in the curriculum and it kind of guides them to be able to provide better supports and so um we're going to be all about that in the next you know couple of years in terms of taking our programming and making sure that it's universally designed that it's accessible for all of our Learners and that we have specific reports uh specific resources and supports spelled out so that teachers um know where to go to address the different needs that that they're seeing in their classroom thank okay I think thank you so much if we're all set with that one I think we can move on
038Cara Okay so up next we have Dr Melissa Neu and then we have uh Trish deino Hall Dr NAU is our stem curriculum administrator and Trish deino Hall is our humanities curriculum administrator both of whom have stepped up tremendously during uh the transition here in supporting um the needs of the department and I've been doing a phenomenal job there's been a tremendous amount of work in the background with uh the curriculum development and the work around um all of the courses and the new courses in the pathway and so we thought it' be important to start to talk about those courses here and I will let Dr nidu and Miss uh Paul take over and start talking about this Essentials course did we losen Trish are you on mute and Melissa Melissa here did you
039want did you want a cast or do you want me to to roll forward for you Melissa you Melissa you ready I think Melissa's got like family things going on and there their dog is either barking she's laughing she's trying to figure out what's going on like she she knows how to hit the mute button she's like I can't unmute right now my kid's screaming it's bed time yes and I'm here I'm here to fully support Melissa in her oh you had it you had there you go is here she is you're good she's having some some sort of technical well we can talk about the essential course no we can't hear you we could talk about what the essential course so when we started with the exploration course in ninth grade the essential course
040is what all 10th graders take they are in their Academy now there's some different specifics to them but every single 10th grader will be put into an essential course and I have not seen this presentation but but I imagine the next slide is going to go over what they're going to talk about and how they came about and the development timeline for what they did we started this well back in the spring of 23 and Trish you want to take over you can too but I think they're on the phone with each other uh the spring of 23 uh you know we did have some uh funds set aside to uh hire what we refer to as pathway leads who can write this curriculum for I I I I'm back I I phone called in
041because my computer keeps muting me every time I press unmute thank you for stepping up for me I appreciate it no problem good that was about the extent of my uh you done well done well done D and thank you so much what a nightmare okay sorry everybody I've never experienced that in my life every time I pressed on mute it muted me it's um it's it's very telling um so I'm starting with going over our ENT curriculum development timeline so in our district um our curriculum development happens kind of in a sequence in an order and we began our Essentials curriculum development last spring um with our curriculum boot camp so we brought together all of our pathway leads who represent each pathway and we reviewed how to identify the standards that would be
042prioritized throughout the year how to start connecting those priority prioritized standards to the pg attribute and really talking about what it means to be teaching um through a career connected lens and making sure that we're prioritizing how the P attributes show up in real world connections um so after that spring boot camp which was a two-day boot camp the teachers left the pathway leads left with like a basic outline of what they think their course is going to look like and this was on the heels of our industry partner days where our pathway leads were really meeting with industry Partners multiple industry partners um to understand what basic skills in this pathway course would look like um forem that creation of units began over last summer so teachers went off the pathway leads went off
043they started to create their um units of study we had check-ins throughout the summer so I would meet with our um curriculum writers um and give feedback in the first couple units to make sure that we're on the right path and making sure that everything is being aligned properly so you'll see there um there's kind of a little rotation between those two um areas yep there you go um where we are writing we're getting feedback we're going back and making revisions and that's happening all throughout the fall so um that's happening on a continual basis um the curriculum teams are constantly meeting we're we're giving feedback in the in the in the same time and it wasn't until this spring that we actually had some finalization to the documents and I and and the finalization
044really isn't the word here because um really where we are is at a point where they're as completed as they can possibly be because the real magic is going to start happening next spring as the curriculum is being rolled out um so you know Dan spoke earlier about the career exploration course so that career exploration course ran this year and right now we're in the process we have a ton of feedback from the the students in the course we have feedback from the teachers who were teaching the course um and so this summer we're going you know even though it was finalized we're going back and we're making those revisions this summer and that's what will happen over the course of next year as the teachers start teaching these essential courses okay Cara next slide
045so today I'm going to take you through the essentials course for the Academy of scientific innovation and medicine so remember this course is a 10th grade course this is for students who signed up for this Academy and all of these students who will be taking this course will be either be in a biome medical pathway which is really kind of like a researchy pathway um you're still studying types of medicine but it maybe through the lens of um being in a lab um maybe doing some really high level kind of medicine type thinking and then there's the sports and Human Performance medicine one of the easiest connections we can make to this is like going to physical therapy um understanding Kinesiology and how your body works and then finally the Allied Health Services pathway which
046we've had a very successful path way for years with CNA um and we're we'll be adding EMT into that as well so next slide so you guys have been provided with a couple documents one document is this PowerPoint which I'm going to talk through the second document was a PDF of the scientific and Innovation medicine Essentials course that's the like 50 some odd page document um so what I want to do is I kind of want you to reference that very long document as I go through this um presentation so I can pick out highlights of how these courses were developed um through the lens of P attributes but also through the career connected lens as well so on the slides you're going to see blue which is just information about the section that I'm
047referring to and I'll give you page numbers so you can look at them there's going to be yellow which is direct wording from the document you have in front of you and so for you to go back um and look at in in in the future there's commentary about illustrating what that example means in this curriculum document okay so next slide so in each unit there's something called a guaranteed experiences and lesson sequence so if you think back to your schooling in high school you know your teacher went through a day-by-day thing building upon knowledge as they went through a unit um that's what really this this section is this section lays out topics um in the order of which they should be studied so that they can build upon previous knowledge um and it
048connects back to what in our curriculum documents is called the essential question this also introduces our P attributes um and it also has a beginning section which for all teachers should be very common for every unit we want every teacher to start with introducing that essential question talking about what p attribute we're going to be focusing on in this unit but also talking about how that P attribute what those skills are connects to what they'll be doing in their careers but also how it is just a real world skill that can be useful no matter what type of career you go into so if you guys um you can go to the next slide Cara on page six and seven of your document that um the the very long document that is shared with you
049this is our unit one essential question for our Academy of scientific innovation and medicine so in unit one they are exploring this idea of what ensures safety so essential questions for a un unit are very big and Broad they allow kids to explore that topic through various various lenses and when they're going through that guaranteed experience they're really building upon knowledge that can answer that question and what the beauty about an essential question is is that it's a question that does not have just one answer so for this particular unit if you look on your pages six and seven of that very long document that has been shared with you you're going to see that guaranteed topic sequence and when you look at that you're going to see topics that range from um policies you're
050going to see topics that range from how to put on um PPE which I think is like a synon a word that everybody knows now after covid how do you put on gloves how do you put on a mask how do you scrub up using water and soap right they're going to look at um safety signs that are we can even see them in our chemistry Labs here in the school they're going to look at regular practices and safety that exist throughout all Health Sciences Industries so what we are looking for kids to do is to make this really broad connection that you know what insures safety is not just an easy answer because what ensures safety is policies in the hospital making sure that sure that you personally are able to provide the safety
051that is needed to make sure that patients are being cared for but that you're also caring for yourself too in this unit they study how um the the chain of diseases and how you can stop a disease usually just by washing your hands but they track chains of diseases throughout an experience in a simulation but also through case studies so they're looking at how everybody has a part to play in safety so next slide CA So within um the guaranteed lesson experience right so we're going through all of these topics to build upon their understanding of that unit um there's certain things that are built into to some of these units not all of these units that guarantee students will have the opportunity to have an iterative experience in their learning so if you're looking
052inside that very large document that I shared with you on page 16 it starts The Learning Experience for unit two and in this unit you'll see eventually on page 16 this little circular um Arrow grouping of arrows so what this does in our in our units of study for our teachers is it signifies that in this section these three topics in particular we want students to go through an iterative cycle so you'll see that they're starting with topic five five how do Health Care occupations differ and why is it important to understand and then they go to topic six where they talk about how to inform Their audience about these Health Care occupations it is then in topic seven that they get some feedback on what they've communicated to Their audience so what we want
053students to do with that feedback is to go back through their learning cycle and go back up to topic five use the feed back that they received from Their audience to go back and improve upon their presentation I think what we did in these units for these particular situations is we made it less about the content they were presenting and more about how they are presenting this is where we're trying to pull those portrait of a graduate attributes out and making sure that kids are being um they're speaking to those core components of a portrait of a graduate so for this example that's up on the screen right now these topics students are actually Pro practicing the P attribute of communication so in their communication are they able to communicate to Their audience what they
054want the audience to know but then in return are they able to take feedback from the audience because in particular in this unit students are using active listening so they have to actively listening to the feedback that they're getting from Their audience in order to go back and make the changes to make their presentation um more understandable um for the audience of which they're presenting okay next slide Carol so this chart represents in each of the essentials courses that have been created where these iterative designs are located um so it's just a chart that says um you know in computer science Essentials in units one and four kids have this guaranteed experience to give Fe to get feedback on what they're presenting or how they're presenting it and then go back and make changes based
055on the feedback that they've received and what we tried to do in each of these units you'll see um a box that's called Career connected lens we try to outline who should be giving them feedback as well so sometimes we do want industry professionals to come back and give feedback on their presentations sometimes it's just simply presenting to their peers so we tried to really make some of these opportunities formalized to get industry feedback but sometimes it is just an audience of their peers or even teachers in the school uh next slide please so that unit essential question right I just presented unit one which is what ensures safety okay we want kids to really ponder that and think about that because again these are the essential courses and these are the questions that are
056really going to be the foundational knowledge for them to build upon as they enter their Junior and senior years and as they reach their Capstone projects that will happen in their senior year and so what we're trying to do now is link these questions um to a reflective process to the students so what you'll see in all of the essentials documents is um an assessment planning where kids are going back and writing a brief narrative to go back and answer that unit essential question so when they are answering that question and what ensures safety we're looking for kids to explore that from their sense of personal self they're looking to explore it from situational awareness they're looking to explore it from federal policy or local hospital policy and they're able to communicate that through their
057reflection what happens with these Reflections is that they're actually going to be part of their portfolio so the portfolio that they start in their career exploration course this becomes an a piece of evidence that they carry without throughout their their High School career so that when they get to their senior year and they're deciding what type of Capstone project to do they can now look back on these Reflections and say wow maybe I want to do a project in my senior year on safety here are some of the things I learned in my course load next slide please part of that reflection is also on the portrait of a graduate so in each unit there is a portrait portrait of a graduate skill or attribute that is being focused on and so what we want
058them to do is go back and reflect on their progression in that attribute each attribute has um a rubric they can talk about where they started where they feel they ended up and pull from evidence in the course as to why they think they have um they've they've grown as a communicator or as an innovator right so again using evidence from the rubric is one of the common core standards for ELA being able to pull from evidence in their experiences and use it to support their claim that they're making um and again this body of evidence will follow them throughout their experiences in the high school um because as you know um the portrait of a graduate um we want them to be reflecting on that and we want them to reflect on how their
059skills have grown in these areas next slide please so in in these documents um the one that has been shared with you has um assessment sections in it um I was very anxious about sharing these because these are how our kids are going to be assessed in these units um and as you can imagine um assessment security is very important because we want kids to be their own authentic selves as they're going through these assessments um and so what I have here is an example of how in um and this can be found on page 49 of the document that I shared with you again I realize it's a very long document um but this is a unit that kids are going to be exploring towards the end of their sophomore year and it's actually
060a Research Unit so kids are going to study um a disease maybe something that affects themselves or a family member and through that um study they're going to be focusing on the uh portrait of a graduate of a communicator and in particular they're going to be a they're going to have to communicate effectively through a variety of traditional and digital media for um in in all content areas so this was a pretty exciting um assessment for us to make um and there's two different parts of this so the traditional part of this assessment is that we are asking kids to write a research paper and then take that research paper and create a research poster so for anyone who's ever had to create a research poster they are very plain they are a big white
061piece of paper with pure words on it it's a very particular type of presentation in a traditional form that's a very academic form so that's one assessment we want kids to do that speaks to that part of that PO gr PG attribute that talks about using traditional media the second topic is topic seven and what we want kids to be able to do here is to take that traditional form and now create something either an in infographic or a social media post that is able to take those very research researchy type health things and put it into a form that's easily recognizable but also understandable to the general public because what we're trying to do here in the medical field is be able to communicate not only with people who are in my field in
062medicine but also possibly people who I'm communicating to as a patient I need to make my information attainable and understandable for my patients um I don't know maybe I'm showing my my 44 year old age but on on my Instagram I follow certain doctors who put things out there um about param menopause that I can absolutely understand and they do it in really fun ways and that's what we're looking for kids to do here take a topic make it accessible for a general audience but also be able to show it in a way that can show that you're a professional and you're an academic setting as well next slide um I believe this is my last slide um so this shows um how the P attributes um are represented in each of the units of
063each of the essential courses um so it just kind of um is an array that shows you know in the computer science Essentials course we really are focusing on communicator and innovator um just by the nature of the content of those courses right so we're also really trying to be um aware as we move through these next couple years of creation that we are hitting as many of the portrait of a graduate elements as possible because again if we're asking kids to reflect on their progress and that's going into um their portfolios they can have a full body of a portfolio to pull from as a senior and be able to do some reflection and creation of a Capstone so I believe that's it for me I would open the floor up to questions unless
064Trish has anything she'd like to add now that my phone is working she dodged a bullet there and I appreciate you for that um I just want to say how how incredible it was to even be able to introduce this Essentials curriculum to all of the uhms at um at Danbury High over the last month we visited every Academy and were able to introduce this and walk it walk them through and then um tie it tie in some connections and provide some ideas and uh for generating um some specific lessons that might align it to within the other content areas and so that was really exciting and we thank Dan and Meg for that um allowing us to come in and and do that work this was such great information so thank you all for
065that um other any committee I see Teresa has a question so go ahead Teresa um what happened to learner column so the learner that's that's a great question Teresa so if you remember the learner P attributes um I'm going to try to sneakily pull them up on my computer as I'm talking here um the learner is an every single one of these documents um they're going to be actually at the top under the priority um prioritized um skills and attributes by nature of the essentials course right the essentials course is absolutely connecting to Career um to Career um skills so the the idea behind learner the learner outcome in the ideal State states that graduates use acquired skills and knowledge to transform life for self and positively influence the lives of others so what you're
066going to see Teresa is that in these curriculum documents that is prioritized number one every single one of these units is about being a learner especially in the um context of outcome two outcome two is students will independently apply real world life skills learned from a college ready and career connected Continuum I'm sorry career and connected curriculum that is every single one of these Essentials courses so while that skill is not necessarily um highlighted in the assessment section it is literally the driving um force behind every single one of these Essentials curriculums that is the the the the outcome we want to see the most sure thank you thank you just did a nice job on on the chart and I'm going wait a minute there's nothing there yeah thank you you're right there is
067nothing there I think when we get to um senior year Capstone that's when they will show that big evidence of being a learner throughout the throughout every one of the um the uh courses that that they experience within their Academy the ultimate um goal is for them to Showcase their their learning through being a learner um at that in the so that will be your big highlight for learner as well with a lot of evidence right right no that's yeah thank you any other Committee Member questions um okay board member questions I would just like to say thank you I know everyone has been working and I can't even imagine the time and energy beginning with the big chief M Donovan and Dr kme and everyone that has contribute to getting this information out to
068the board and I'm just so excited about it whenever it open that I wish I could go back to school but I know that won't happen but I just like to say it's very exciting information and to know that there's a different phase of educ education that children are going to be partaking versus what I went to school and had to take so I just don't see how parents can't get excited about this it's going to be a wonderful opportunity for sure I could if I could just add Lauren for a sec um you know the the the the liftoff in the background of what of this Academy opening you know everyone's anticipating the building being open but um we're open now and I think it's important for people to understand that that our first
069cohort is they're our freshman group that we have right now and next year they'll be experiencing they'll have this uh curriculum as as being as being presented to you and then while they're engaging in that and we're and we're Gathering feedback from teachers and students on that implementation at the same time we'll have about 10 more groups working on curricul the next level uh for grade 11 so we're we're always trying to go one year out in terms of developing the curriculum then we'll implement the curriculum gather feedback on that curriculum and how it's going and then engage in a revision process to make it better so um we get the teachers together that's part of the work that um you know Dan did a great job of pulling together a schedule it's almost impossible
070when you think about it a schedule where all of these teachers teaching in the same Academy have a have a professional learning community so that's a break during their day during the school day a couple times over the week where they can come and talk about this and and share how things are going um and then you know making sure that they're addressing the student needs so anybody who's you know struggling or having a hard time or sharing ideas on how to make things better so that per that PLC time that has been B in the schedules is a um going to be a game Cher for teachers to be able to collaborate around the Great work and the curriculum that's that's happening and being built in the background so super excited about it I'm
071extraordinarily proud of the team that's working on this there it's night and day if they've been doing it since the pandemic um we've all been working on it since the pandemic it's still going on um and will continue to go on for the next couple of years at a at a very intense and complex uh manner so um just kudos to the team and and thank you for a great presentation yes thank you so much and Teresa I think you have another question uh right so you're saying this is [Music] further this is for the 10th grade correct this is the 10th grade curriculum okay gotcha thank you and so the the course that that that she shared with you was an example of for one of the courses and there's multiple so you can
072you know there's we'd be here all all night until next week if we were to go through all of those but uh it's you know very dense documents so U that was really just an example to walk you through um the last thing on the agenda is the is about the Congressional appropriation which I think I touched on um kind of quickly it was an opportunity to just really talk about taking this these types of documents and then overlaying into those additional information to guide teachers on how to address the needs of language Learners at different levels of language acquisition so the grant would be used for a lot of the the training and professional development digital tools um curriculum development to professional technical support um to work with teachers to do this work and
073to work with our administrators because our administrators are still working and learning on how to best meet the needs of second language Learners it's a it's a it's a real shift over the years and and um especially as uh new folks come in we have to continue to train and keep up with the training uh needs of both teachers and administrators um but also the grant will be used for um um bringing back we hope uh and restoring some of those SC up and coaching positions um at the for second language leers so um you know we think it's a it's a great focus and again there's not only is the curriculum work taking off but also the supports that our students are going to need to be successful with it so they can access
074it as well Teresa uh the from what I understand aren't there going to be for the each Academy like a overview committee with Business Leaders I mean are we establishing that here as well oh yeah we're working on um they're called advisory boards and they will have everything from teachers students community members to Community Partnership that are with those acmis uh that's the work of Brent Dean and he's been doing a great job making these connections and we're starting the um on boarding of those next year thank you Dan you're welcome any other Committee Member questions okay board member questions Al righty um I know Cara just wanted to touch on one more yep yep so as long as you're you're done so I know you know we've had some conversations around um you know
075clarifying roles responsibilities the curriculum committee is still a relatively newer uh of the Committees and we've got a lot of new board members and even new administrators sliding at different roles so um I know part of the training um for for this and other things will come on uh June 24th this is really more for the board members uh in the form of a workshop and so we'll be able to touch on um roles responsibilities and and what we're all supposed to be doing and and when with regards to our responsibilities around curriculum so we look forward to that and um we'll be touching on that on June 24th and there'll be more information and info coming out in my my board update uh to the board so um awesome thank thank you all so
076much I know this is a lot of work and we appreciate you bringing it bringing it to us um for further understanding and um we just really appreciate all your efforts and all that you do for us um and if there's no other questions can I I don't have a question Lauren but I just you know I'd like to say thank you because I don't know we we all we should always say thank you when you appreciate something and I just want to say say thank you to Lauren for uh putting this together and bringing this forth to the board uh this is my second uh meeting I got a little late on it but it's something I had to run out and do I want to thank Kate for uh first doing our community
077relation committee and then we have learned to have put together this uh information for the curriculum committee and I want to say to both of you I certainly appreciate the hard work that you continue to do and continue to support the board and the board members that are always on to get more additional information and ask questions and I I feel like I should always say thank you and I want to say that thank you so much for those words glus and thank you for always being there for all of us um if there's no other questions comments or um anything else can I get a motion to adjourn Teresa so excellent can I get a second second hi second okay excellent um so thank you all have a wonderful evening and um again thank
078you so much