001all of our committee members except for lauren she's um she couldn't make it um but i do have her permission if someone would like to nominate her as committee chair which is a nominee emotion business thank you teresa nominated second seconded by joe all those in favor aye aye any opposed i think that was all unanimous so that the lauren would be uh committee chair um though she's not here i'm i'm happy to run the meeting in her absence or hand it over to another committee member whatever your pleasure is if you're prepped why don't you run it nope okay um i'm i'm prepped through uh dr casemiro so i will i will hand it over to you okay not a problem good evening everybody um so there were two items on the agenda one
002was and this was a conversation with rachel and was really just about a literacy update um the last board meeting meeting we kind of give gave you a very fast drive-by of of the legislation and what's coming and so certainly um to the best of our ability we can try to answer some questions about what we're doing kind of proactively in the background and then the second one was about uh just a little update on the porch of the graduate again um you know board meetings are kind of hard to get a deep deep dive or to kind of ask questions so certainly another opportunity to do that and um you know all of these things are sort of in process uh and in flux and so uh you know happy to have those those
003kind of ongoing conversations so what i can do is i did prepare a little powerpoint just to make it easier um because we're on zoom so let's uh that's not what i wanted okay you can just let me know if you could see this okay you're good kara okay okay now fill in lauren on that a little bit later so this um we selected a committee chair that was pretty efficient uh literacy update and then the portrait of graduate continuum now i i did um send the the members uh that were on that were listed actually rachel i'm not sure if i if i just added you to that but i will um a copy of the continuum it's kind of a big document and certainly not something that we would go through all of
004it tonight but i did want um the members of this committee to you know try to peruse it at their leisure and i'll explain a little bit about that piece so um this slide may look familiar this is what we went over maybe about a couple weeks back almost four weeks back now where we talked a little bit about our literacy program in alignment and sort of what the state is doing so last june june 2021 the connecticut legislature passed the right to read legislation and the collective goals across the state were really about systematizing the work of public schools around reading since it's so critical and fundamental to closing the achievement gap and the success of all students and so there's been a lot of discussion not just at the state level but even
005in teacher preparation programs and making sure that they're all producing students uh pre-service teachers that have a deep understanding of foundational literacy which has has been a bit of an issue uh kelly truches and myself speak regularly about sort of the skills that are really needed to come out and be successful out of the gates particularly at k5 and that that's an area for that certainly needs to be strengthened and our teachers would agree that they would have uh liked like into some deeper training along along those lines as well so the state has recognized this there's been a ground swell to do better and also to systematize professional development offerings um our state would like to be able to to offer pd for teachers where we can send teams out and train and again
006this is really about the alignment of all of those things most important to improve the reading outcomes for all of our students connecticut will select five reading programs that are evidence-based and focus on oral language phonemic awareness phonics fluency vocabulary rapid automatic name or letter name fluency and reading comprehension so those are top categories that have to be uh very evident and prominent within a within a system a program i should say always and so this is just a timeline you should be familiar with this and again i can certainly share this out for you to kind of keep on hand but this is really the timeline from the connecticut department establishing that center for literacy reading and research we're actually very excited about this um connecticut in the past has not had us hate
007to say a very strong department in on the literacy side and so um you know being able to reach out to a group that's dedicated just to this for feedback uh and for resources and for expertise is is very much uh needed and then those uh programs will be adopted i'm sorry the program will be identified uh by july 22nd danbury will then select a program i have pam dalton our k5 literacy supervisor uh invited tonight so we could talk a little bit about the two programs that we think are going to be top on the list and that we should be proactive at looking at and she can talk to you a little bit about the hallmarks of each program and why we why we like them for danbury um and then july 2023
008everyone has to implement their curriculum for grades k-3 from the center's list and then we're off and running and then a review cycle process will ensue from there so we included uh the literacy in our budget not know for this year for next year i should say this year for next year uh not knowing what will make that list um to be proactive and to make sure that we're ready to position ourselves to um to be ready for the for so what would happen typically is that we would do training receive materials purchase materials and do training prior to the year prior to implementation so we front load leading in so that our teachers and administrators feel feel prepared with any new program or curriculum that comes down the line so again i'd like to
009introduce pam dalton again pm is our k5 literacy supervisor and uh each week we meet in a our group called the curriculum development team cbt and that's comprised of our stem humanities and world language esl curriculum administrators and then our supervisors for math literacy uh numeracy and our srbi and so we get together in the last couple of meetings probably over the last maybe three or four months we have invited in folks from core knowledge folks from art core to begin really doing the research behind the different programs that have been highly rated and that we believe will be on the list and so this is our kind of our proactive approach at getting ahead of that process um because once once the list comes we lose most of our folks and it kind of
010forces a rushed conversation so we'd rather take it slow with that i will let pam take it away and talk a little bit about both programs um when i send you this powerpoint presentation later these links are actually live so you can click on it it takes you right to the website you get a little familiarity about what each program is about p.m thanks cara let me start by just saying i'm not exactly an expert on either of these programs yet um however i've done an initial survey and review of both the materials having looked at um organizations that rank literacy programs these two regardless of organizations for quite high and so without you know the jury's kind of out on what the state will identify um but i would imagine these two will definitely
011you know should make the list i would be surprised if they don't so core knowledge is an amplified product it's based on a previous edition that's still available free through the core knowledge foundation the amplify company has created enhancements to that work so a hallmark of the core knowledge program is that there are many different contents that are covered within a year in an integrated way with literacy so for example in kindergarten i think there are 11 units and as you move up the grades there are a little bit fewer i want to say in fifth grade there are eight or nine units and the topics range tremendously um in terms of history there are things like medieval times empires you know various empires um some american history topics are in there and then there
012are also some science topics that are in there mostly in the animal sciences and habitat you know kind of domains cross-cutting across the grades core knowledge has two different um components so one component is the skills block which for core knowledge is not differentiated it's a grade level uh skills block it takes roughly an hour and then it has the knowledge block which is the other half which is where the rest of the ela would occur so some more readings some um some writing it's a little writing light they're all kind of in that component of their program our core is similar in the sense that it's based within units of study they have four major units across the year and it's similar also in that it has two different blocks of time so one
013block is the foundational skills block and they have a k5 foundational skills block that's differentiated students are assessed and it kind of places them within the foundational skills block and there's materials like it's a tool kit you know that teachers are given the kind of guides that work along each of those levels and that work changes as kids increase their proficiency during the skills block and the foundational skills and then it has also another block where the main ela occurs grounded in three topics across a year so one topic focuses on argument and essay and interpretation one argument focuses on research-based things usually it's a science unit and then one article focuses i'm sorry one unit focuses on a literacy or a literature kind of component so that they're a little different in the number
014of units the our core units go a little bit deeper into some topics whereas the core knowledge does more of a survey kind of approach of topics both are rated very high in building background knowledge um so they have that as an advantage to either of those programs a component of our core that i think is especially strong is that it is aligned with the ngss standards the next generation science standards so the topics that the students learn about in ela when they're reading about informational topics have an alignment with the storylines that exist in ngss as well so that that's helpful it's kind of good overview of each of those we've brought the representatives in they've gone through and described them they both include assessment pieces so the art core assessment pieces place students
015not only in those foundational skill groups but then along the way in terms of vocabulary development background knowledge and each of those areas and core knowledge similarly has assessments kind of embedded into each of the units and each of the programs so they both have that core knowledge is um from because it's an amplify product it does have a nice alignment with dibbles which is the test that we use as a universal screener so there are advantages and um i don't want to say challenges but each has a different opportunity of these two thanks pam i know the group um was excited uh with both programs when uh the representatives came and we had a chance to really get hands on and to explore um they also provide us an opportunity to what they call
016sandbox um everything is license based subscription based site based so they uh sign you know allow us to go in and to play and to get to dig in and to see the quality of the materials both programs are are very highly rated some of the ratings uh really have to do with the quality of the grade level materials uh the text quality so the texts that come with the program are very important the ability to build background knowledge and the alignment to standards that exist along with usability for the teacher which is very important and often underrated and so sometimes when we make decisions about certain resources we have to take into consideration how much professional development and training is needed to go into um you know implementing a program or a program rollout
017um in some cases we're really just swapping materials out for teachers um you know one text for another in some cases it's really shifting a pedagogical approach meaning this is different than the way i've taught before and so i we take it'll take a little bit longer to to feel confident in the delivery and to feel facile with a program um but really the you know regardless of the program our focus remains really nailing down those literacy standards focusing on standards-based teaching and over the years certain uh programs if you will have have more or less um been well aligned to that approach and so we're starting to see program quality come on board um it's gonna make it easier to to kind of identify programs and there's also uh independent rating systems that are
018out that also really dig deep into the analysis of text the alignments um and and things like uh building background knowledge pam pam mentioned the background knowledge and why that's so important um we have a high percentage of second language learners in our school district and so building knowledge and schema about the world is very important it's important for all kids but super critical to name names to name things to identify vocabulary that helps to build meaning for students that build from one grade level to the next and it's that kind of staircase in building background knowledge that allows students to um to start to kind of connect the dots about the world around them and the art core one in particular had pam mentioned had some really strong ngss connections to it which of
019course we loved um and then there was you know wonderful science social studies connections in in both um that were terrific and we've been wanting to bolster social studies in elementary um and the best way to do that is an integrated approach in the literacy curriculum um but again when i share this little powerpoint with you so a couple of slides these are actually active links and if you just click on those it'll take you to things and you can explore at your leisure if you have any questions you can reach out to either one of us cara can i ask you a question real quick sure um so what we're do what we're doing is we're looking for a program this is not just a reading program this is a throughout the curriculum program
020so okay uh yes and no so we have we have science curriculum right now one of the one of the approaches that is rather than teaching subjects in silos the more that we can integrate content subjects and standards for students the more that they it will stick right so it's when you when when there's connected learning flowing from one class to the next or one one lesson to the next the students really it really deepens their base so so we look so what we're doing is making sure that if we're going to pick something that it's well aligned um to what it is that we're doing or or it's modifiable in a way that we can easily integrate and make a better learning experience for the kids excellent i have another one but they can
021reach you later this is about the literacy understand literacy first as primary and then the integration of content in other sites areas is kind of secondary but also important perfect thank you you're welcome yes this is for k through five yes so the legislation is k is uh k3 um but what so what's going to happen teresa is that you know depending on what makes this the list um we're going to have to go back and to assess you know one of one of the things that i really like to make sure that we have is is uh a is continuity in our programming and that they're they're you know things that things align right so um students move as they progress through grade levels um teachers move from second grade to third grade we
022want to make sure that we're using things and resources and and have professional training and knowledge on pedagogy that is aligned and similar and that we have common language and routines and so we'll most likely want to adopt a k5 program for that continuity um but again you know we're a little bit ahead in the sense that you know we've started looking at programs we love both of these they're wonderful they they come with slightly different price tags um i won't tell you which one is more expensive um we'll save that for you know down the road we don't want to bias people um but we you know we definitely want to make sure that we're selecting something that's exciting something that is uh has continuous uh resources and and flow from k through five
023and even can making sure we have good connections from six through six to eight so um you know again k5 is preferred um but we'll depending on what what comes out on that list we'll start those conversations about the best approach and the best rollout and even if we do go k5 teresa it doesn't mean we'll roll all of it out at once um because we want to make sure that we're supporting the teachers and we only have so many coaches to to help with that process and so we would probably do a staged or staggered rollout um and and kind of roll up or roll back so we'll have those conversations you must be pretty uh confident these two would be considered in the in the five uh the state is going to recommend
024i mean is there something from the state ed that's giving you this idea i mean i'm just just curious yeah the committee that has met thus far has only met one time and it was really just for introductions so their next agenda item will probably set up the review process um that's later this month um so this this is why this is kind of pretty it's not premature it's like advanced preparation anticipating like we don't want to get in a place where at least i'm sorry kara i'm speaking maybe no no go ahead you know it's important to me that we're ahead of the game so that we're not once the state releases that information for lack of another descriptor there's going to be a feeding frenzy for time with these representatives for people to
025come into all the districts in the states i want to be a head of the feeding frenzy so are you going to uh interview others or are these the two you really like so right now so so there so there are there are independent rating groups um there are also states that have already gone through this process and these are these are widely these are kind of common on on those lists as well as well as scoring very high in independent uh ratings and so you know as when we looked at that maybe like the top four or five you know these kind of were a little bit head and shoulders above everyone else and there isn't anyone that we talk to that's like thinks that these two won't be on that list um and
026so you know it's it's based on our years of of reviewing these types of things looking at the research behind it and understanding the precipice by the movement from the state on what they're looking for to change and these programs really do satisfy those those those areas quite a bit thank you you're welcome and cara if i could just add in a little bit about um just on top of doing this i think it's also important for this committee to be aware that the special education teachers have also undergone this year um some additional training on two different programs that are really hallmarks for students with disabilities um so all students will participate in the core programming that we do at the k5 level but sometimes we find students that have challenges in the area
027of reading particularly in phonics or other areas that need more and so in addition we've provided orton gillingham training which is one of the hallmarks for students with dyslexia or other reading disabilities we've provided all of our special education teachers district wide with that training and they've been participating in that all year long in addition we've had some other special ed teachers do a second training in wilson which is another research proven uh program for students that struggle in the areas of reading so i just think it's important to know that this core program is is to try to improve the achievement of all students but we have about a third of our students that are identifying us in the special education department about a third of students identify with disabilities that have learning disabilities
028and a majority of those are in the area of reading um and so we've also done that additional work in kind of advanced to help merge it all together to make sure that we're servicing all students and i know a core component of the discussions around what core program is best is also um looking at our multilingual learners because that's going to be important particularly here to make sure that we pick a program that is meant for students that are learning or acquiring english or dual language learners i have a quick question um we're implementing this on the uh k through five um for the students that are going to be transitioning in the third fourth or maybe fifth grade is there going to be an issue going from one curriculum to the other as
029far as assessments now because we're going to be assessing on a new uh a new program rather than the older program is this going to affect where students are going to be falling as far as their achievements it's a great question um louisa so you know we we prioritize and focus in on the standards the standards drive all all of the teaching the resources that are curated by a particular program help to make that easier for teachers they provide ready-to-go ready-made assessments so um so with with us with an eye on the prize of of focusing on standards and standards-based teaching standards-based students uh learning and standards-based feedback um that part in theory should take care of itself if we're concentrating on those standards the resources the organizational structures the routines sometimes are unique not
030always different but just organized uniquely with different programs um you know some have varying excitement levels and texts that are the kids either like more or less um but but it really shouldn't um you know one of the things that we do do is have universal and common literacy assessments universal screeners to dipstick where students are and so if there are any hiccups or if there's any blips um certainly we'll pick that up and sort of the universal screener that's across the entire k5 regardless of the program because we're still looking for those foundational pieces present no matter what we're using that those are those are important great thank you you're welcome any other questions on the literacy update from committee members no okay actually one one silly question i'm only being half kidding when
031i say this is it is it appropriate to hope one of these for whatever program we pick is going to actually concentrate on teaching kids how to spell like intentionally rather than what we're doing now which is like by accident i'll let pam take that one this is a run it's a running it's a running thing with my kids yes that would be true um i don't think we'd ever want kids to spell by accident but the um both of them as part of their foundational skill development focus on some spelling you know where i don't want to be i don't want to be old and return to spelling lists but it's not going to be a weekly spelling test because pretty much those are awesome says that doesn't work it's awful yeah but they
032are they're they all focus on the patterns and the orthographic mac being related to spelling that should provide success to students over time awesome thank you very much sure is there the program what program are we using now so at kindergarten through second grade for the foundational skills we're using what's called being a reader from the collaborative classroom which may actually end up on the list we're not sure um it's the other arm of that program there's another arm to that program that has the comprehension of vocabulary work that we're not using right now so we use that and then we use readers and writers workshop presently thank you sure this um program it actually runs k both of these run k-8 so there's always opportunity there for finding success and we think it's a
033good fit down the road that there's also still that opportunity for even further uh continuum which would be nice so it's nice that that exists that's great yeah okay it's like i can any other questions i can move out to the next piece or it's safe to move on okay thank you oh let's see that's not what i wanted to do actually clicked on it so if you click on that this is what you'll be taken to just get out of there for a sec here we go okay so just a little update on the portrait of the graduate um you've seen this a few times already now at this point um and so you know we took a probably a good year and a half to get to the place where we've established advocate
034collaborator communicator innovator and learners and then you know sort of the big question so what do you do with all this stuff you know does it live on a website and people just admire it from afar or do you actually do something with this and integrate into student learning now recognizing that some things are measurable and some things are more aspirational and usually the good stuff the stuff that the kind of things that you say i'm really proud of my child for um are the hardest things to measure but those are the things that sometimes are the most important to discuss so i did share with you um in in an email the draft continuum and again we we're going to be going over in the email i mentioned that we're going to be going
035over the continuum with our administrative team on thursday on st patrick's day and so they'll have a little bit of a deeper dive in an orientation to the flow of the continuum across 6 8 and 9 12. um and just to what our little reminders here is that this really is an elementary middle school and high school project this is not just a secondary graduate project but that the work starts here these are our out exit outcomes are live here but we're really backward designing right at the elementary level so we start conversations with kids um very early on and so you received a copy of this it's very dense um and so what i want to show you is this and it's organized through an excel spreadsheet a google sheet uh for just sort
036of ease of flow and so as we work with it we we use this in a google spreadsheet and our group gets together there's a small core team that works on this uh every other wednesday for some times and then i meet with future design school to work on language which has been um you know probably the the biggest component of this is really developing the language around these descriptors and what things look like so in the previous presentation to the board we talked a little bit about achievement indicators and so you know on an espa assessment um you know we have scores of one two three or four um on report cards we have different numbers but for the continuum we have come up with terms that really delineate the level of proficiency and
037progress along a continuum so recognizing that um we're not scoring a child like oh you're only a one here this is really about the status of where students enter into these into their skills around the areas that the community and the parents teachers and administrators who came together community supporters identified as important to them and so early early entry into some of the skills is really that called exploring okay progressing getting closer achieving as you're there and then this love this term um i got giddy when we finally settled on it as consciously pursuing um and that really a student is is in a in a space where they're really just beyond them where they most kids are for their age and really an aspirational place of of skill in some of these attributes um
038so these are delineated by what we want students to know understand and do in each category and then there are definitions and these came out of if you remember from the actual community conversations and the work of portrait graduate as we defined as a as a group what we meant by learner what we meant by advocate what we meant by communicator and what we meant by collaborator and innovator and for those of you who are part of those discussions multiple discussions you knew how how kind of rich those conversations are parsing out words and what they might mean and how we were going to interpret those and so those were captured here um and then the other pieces that and so each of the um attributes were identified um with having different outcomes and so
039if uh if an ideal state um a graduate celebrates all forms of diversity and actively works to protect the rights in our community and our outcome is that students will value diversity and perspectives of others demonstrate empathy and cultural confidence and understand the effects of bias and confront it here's where we start with middle school sorry uh middle school in grades six through eight this is what it looks like at the exploring level progressing achieving and consciously pursuing and then at the 912 level this is what we and don't mind the the dark bold we're still working on lots of language um what it would look like at a little bit of a deeper level a little bit more sophisticated level for grades 9 through 12. we had wrestled you know just for the for
040for the group we wrestled uh initially with coming up with a 9 10 continuum and an 11 12 separately and it we really got uh started to get a little convoluted in the language there's only so many ways you can you can build and on top of these things without language starting to crisscross and so we decided that uh we may have been overshooting and that really at the end of the day a 9 12 um a 912 continuum was really important it gave it gave the entire high school and teachers who teach at different grade levels really common language uh across so we have advocate one advocate two so these are outcome two collaborator outcome one collaborator outcome two okay this is this is interesting i'll just stop here for one second i mean
041again this is it's a lot to digest it's not necessarily appropriate for a zoom to go into every single one of these um and we'll be here till midnight but i apologize for the paparazzi hearers hang on students will assume a shared responsibility when working interdependently to accomplish goals and persevere through disagreement to build common understanding george can you just grab the dogs for me please it's nice okay sorry guys someone's here so they doing their job um so what does this look like in a classroom how do you coach a student around this outcome right and so what would it look like at the achieving level in middle school for let's say so a student clearly understands the vision of the team and achieve their own independent goals to contribute to the overall success
042of the team so those are really great conversations that you can have with students around what their purpose is in their role when they're working both dependently and interdependently in a group there are opportunities within our current rubric systems as kids are working on projects as they're working on groups and when they're solving problems when they're working collaboratively to actually score and give students feedback on these things and so over the last over the next couple of months we're going to be working on coming up with examples and samples of student work where we can work these types of attributes and focusing at the achieving level into rubrics and learning activities uh with the intent of giving students feedback not everything is clearly measurable um and in those cases we'd be building portfolio system to
043give students opportunities to reflect on their learning um to respond to certain prompts um along these attribute lines so um you know there's a lot of work ahead to come this is uh not a one and done type of deal this is going to be work over several years uh as we dig in and as we align this to teaching and learning practices as well and the feedbacks that we give students on this um so communicator with outcome one students speak you read and write for a variety of authentic audiences to inform influence and motivate communicator to read write and speak variety of audience to inform influence motivate and entertain some of those sound very similar to our common core standards another one on communication effectively uh work through a variety of digital uh traditional
044digital media in all content areas and put on an innovator students will think critically and flexibly to obtain interpret and use knowledge facts and data to identify and problem solve students will generate evaluate and implement imaginative solutions to real world problems so how do you score those things um and and so those are questions that we're having now in in with our teacher ranks and with those who are working most closely to this what does that look like uh when we're when how do you score a student on implementing imaginative solutions to real world problems so really again how do we build some of these learning points into our instruction to kind of spark these conversations to generate this so again not everything is is a score it's not an a or a b it's
045really about um aspiring students um and getting them to reflect on on their work so um what you see has a question oh i'm so sorry i can't right no that's okay it just a lot of this uh so emotional learning and i could see how how would you grade this i mean yeah on top of what you got to learn you're asking for a lot of um open mind and uh and incorporating or realizing any biases i this is hard to you know to uh judge that's why the rubric is so important right and so these are these are it's a great it's a great question theresa and one i can tell you that as a group we we sit around the table and we talk about well what does that really look like
046what's what the beauty about this process is that um you know we're very used to talking we're very used to identifying okay so um i uh two i know how to add and subtract uh you know uh you know two two digit numbers that is very concrete where you can it's black or white you did you didn't do it and this is what you need to do to practice on it these are harder conversations to support these are yes and that but this is the stuff that we're saying as a community right that we want to build innovators we and really a lot of this has to do with mindset and how we coach kids to persevere through struggle how do we coach them to problem solve how do we coach them to get along
047and and and be leaders within a group um you know we have we have some students that are phenomenal with um you know their 4.0 students that really just give me the project i'll do the whole thing myself i got it but they're not working well with with their peers um and what we heard by and large from our business community in particular was that business community members they didn't say give me someone who can ace a multiple choice ques test they said give me someone who could work well with others and understands how to bring the best out of a team right so how do you measure that but you got you have to give students opportunity to practice that and you have to stop from time to time and use these as talking
048points to coach students on what that might look like or praise something in in real time as it's happening in a classroom right as examples or models of that was a wonderful thing that you just did right there let's celebrate that for for just a moment um and or let's reflect on our ability to do x y or z but these rubrics if you will this continuum helps teachers to to catalyze language into opportunity in the classroom and so it's going to take a lot of conversation over a long period of time on what this looks like and how to do it it's going to take a lot of conversation on how to build good learning examples one of the things we would like teachers to do is to sit in the presence of of
049these um of the outcomes and and re-examine the curriculum that that they have to say where would be some great opportunities to weave in some extra practice on some of these or call attention and bring to light or get students to reflect on some of these attributes so it's not again it's not a it's not an overnight process this is a long this is for the long haul um and it's over time and so you know we're committed to doing that work and and it's it's very much new for everyone we haven't really operated like this in the past where we're having these very you know cerebral conversations about things that are difficult to measure um most assessments that are designed are designed with the scorer in mind for convenience they have nothing to do
050with with actual student ability they're great dipsticks but when we start building assessments for ease of scoring purposes and and to be able to expedite it uh you're missing out on on things like this that really get to the heart of of what develops a graduate who's going to be very successful out in the world is it are we asking a lot of our students you know the academics and the emotional at the same time and this point in time in their life i mean it this is a lot of stuff so cara can you can you um speak to the pog how we landed on the pog those characteristics of the portrait of the graduate i know you had referenced it earlier um but just maybe review that because not all the board members
051were here for that whole stakeholder engagement process that helped him form the pog in the first place sure like why this continuum is so important just to connect those though sure and i'm going to try to get out of this slide for one second because i'm now out of the presentation and i want to get back i just it's mind-boggling no i i appreciate that uh teresa it's a lot it really is um let me go back to to this right here um and as you can imagine the the amount of conversation that has generated and work in the language has been you know very rich very uh intense but but rich nonetheless so so we started this kevin am i wrong in saying did we start this in 2018 we we talked about it
052in 1819 as we were developing the strategic plan and then the pog was actually an extension of the plan right and the pog became its own thing during the pandemic initially we paused and then we picked it back up and ran fast i had i had i had to go back to the year because i it was a blur with the piano so um but yeah so we started off initially with community conversations and i think we had 60 people or so from the community maybe more um you know family liaisons uh folks and our folks in the business community organizations and of different uh different education yes higher ed was their business members uh dsabc mentor programs um to bring them to the table to talk about sort of the ideal outcome for the
053graduates in danbury what is it that you're looking for in our in our students and over time and time again um you know i can't emphasize enough you know how much the idea of collaborator communicator came out someone who can innovate and and think creatively and critically and flexibly um to solve problems people that could work independently as as team members um and interdependently together and people who are self-starters and learners we spent a lot of time on this word learners as lifelong learners self-starters independent thinkers uh this this this evolved many times over the course of a year and a half about what we're really trying to get to and then this idea about advocates you know living in a world that um can sometimes you know be kinder or less uh to more
054kinder or crueler to others and and how do you approach situations and you you know make sure that everybody is is you know participating it's fair and and that you're working together collaboratively and you're bringing you know you're bringing your friends along with you on the journey no one's left out um and we're doing this together and and when something's not right that you have the courage um and the language to speak up um to kind of call things out if there's if there's an issue with something so um these are really deep conversations that we had with those community members the teachers participated teachers participated we have administrators participate our board members um participated greatly and and led a lot of those table conversations uh which were very intense around so these we landed
055on these as a result of literally a year and a half almost two years of the can of community work together that um was was quite amazing and and you know fairly well done the the the and then identifying then another layer of work with defining these um and then deciding what those outcomes you know so what do we want out of this and um you know that that work sparked into so what does that look like when you're in high school what does it look like you're in middle school and then how do we identify sort of the seedlings of success at the elementary level so we can cultivate students to be thinking with a mindset that um that will eventually graduate with these with these great um with these great qualities but you
056know it doesn't come these things are not built into your common core standards necessarily some of them are not all of them um they're not necessarily built into your math curriculum these are things that you have to consciously pursue in in while you're teaching uh with students and be able to provide students feedback on and theresa you mentioned about social emotional piece you know we don't have a curriculum per se on social emotional right like there's no script that says you have to do social emotion we have training not necessarily a scripted program the training allows teacher in teachers in real time to know when to work in and stop and to address and adjust on the fly to um to be able to you know invite students into that social emotional learning or to
057take a moment to to grow in something that was happening itself whether it's self-regulating um or or uh anything along those lines so you know a lot of the bullets that you see in the continuum have great um discussion points for student for teachers to be working with students and coaching on that mindset as well so um you know the the the training that we provide teachers with social emotional and some of this stuff actually does dovetails nicely and builds thank you i have a quick question um these uh bullets and a lot of this um information you give us some giving to us on portrait of a graduate i i think is very important and definitely um something that i see children need as they're going into higher education and out in that real
058world when we're looking at the curriculum changes on k-5 are we keeping these in mind as we make our choice for our new curriculum absolutely yeah absolutely i'm so glad you asked that question yeah so yeah so so part of you know part of what we look at in programs is that ability to integrate in all areas and there is no perfect program per se there's you can you could you could look at 100 programs and you know as pam said some of these are a little light on the writing so we're gonna have to build that piece up or there's you know this one's better aligned to the science and so if we went with this one we'd have to do more work in that area so there is no perfect program but we
059do look for um components that that would build off of what our vision is right and so if we're saying that these are the what's important to us then you know then we'll be looking for that um using this as a lens as we make make those selections in in conjunction with all the other things that we have to look for and we have to weigh those you know those areas where we may do more or less work to shore up some things now those two curriculum options that um that were just presented those seem to fall into this um as far as the portrait of a graduate or those is that um is that taken into account when we chill narrowed it attention i jump in cara yeah sure yeah so i i would
060say yes to that i can give you an example if you'd like so for example i'm not going to pick the exact topic correctly but like for example with like our core or any of them really um like advocate when you're in the argument unit right you have to study something else that you can advocate for your point debate will be included things like that collaborators in a research unit you're going to have collaboration in a literacy unit you're going to have collaboration um communicating i mean that is ela so that that's that's going to be embedded into any of the programs that we might choose as with learners innovators would probably show up more when they're working on their own projects so if they're doing a research driven project you know how are they
061going to communicate about that project so these elements will be like i don't know what the right word would be but they're like inherent in any good ela program thank you thanks p.m questions before we move on from board members michelle are you you're on mute if you're sorry about that um so i you mentioned that it's hard to grade the social emotional it looks like it's really going to be interweaved right through the process how does that compare when you know you have a senior graduating and you know that 4.0 is extremely important to the student and to the family um if you're going to be kind of focusing more on you know communicating and you know arguing points or collaborating like more more involvement based trying to um [Music] great somehow how does
062that affect like when you're going to schools if we're choosing this new kind of um program how does that now uh if somebody's going to go ahead and they're not in connecticut maybe applying to a school in vermont how will that impact sure they were grading right no it's a good question so just to just so to be clear this is this doesn't um supplant a normal grading system and science social studies right it it's to enhance and it's and it's integrated so um there are opportunities for students and one of the the um things that we're doing i mentioned we're converting to a learning management system a new one um and we'll have digital portfolios built into into the that system so students can reflect on some of these questions that are posed around
063the attributes and you can you can um score students on their reflections not whether or not they've obtained the status of innovator but rather that that part of it you know as as any other assignment that you've completed a reflective activity and you've you've done that work we give kids reflection activities now um to guide them that they get scoring grade on their normal grades and scores um this there's no um this you're not getting scored independently on are you a good advocate uh and you know whether and and that that's exploring is going to show up on your on your uh transcripts right it's really about embedding embedding components in to work that students are already doing to enhance um and give practice with these attributes so that we kind of get to that
064outcome piece so it's not it's nothing to be concerned with in terms of changing gpa or weighted grades or anything like that this is really about providing kids uh stopping points to really think about um their the skill sets the soft skills that we don't always get a chance to to flex across the year we we really want to make sure that they have an opportunity to practice that and to reflect on it and get more importantly get feedback on that right and get our teachers used to to having conversations about how to give feedback in these areas to coach students um and if you think back to probably all of the teachers that you had and you think about the most memorable ones they certainly weren't the ones that gave you the a on
065the paper they were the ones that took the time to talk to you about you and the development of you as a person in areas for growth and so you know we're hoping that this could be a catalyst for that as well okay thank you you're welcome karen just to add i also think you know just just to share a little bit more about the rubrics our students are used to using them right now so developing out you know a rubric in which we're giving feedback on the communication skills or the advocacy skills is something we might tweak the wording and the skill set that we're targeting but as far as rating them on a rubric and providing feedback allowing students to self-assess themselves on a rubric um having peers assess one another on how
066their performance is and really helping students understand you know if i'm um let's say at a level two how do i move to a level three or four um those are really skills that um will target with with the students to build on what they already know so right now if you're presenting a project for example in history um you are expected to communicate out your knowledge to your class and your teacher and we're already giving feedback on those skills this will just make it more more opportunities across the curriculum to really highlight the importance of this so that not only do students have good content knowledge but they're then able to take that knowledge and really transcend it to any scale or career or college university that they choose to attend next any other
067questions from board members or committee members you should did you have anything further for us cara that was um pretty much sums it up pretty much sums it up um you know we did we did talk about um had a chance a lovely conversation with teresa the other maybe like last week and we talked a little bit about um you know kind of excitement around the new a new website um and really making sure that we have some parent-facing documents on the curriculum to give our parents a good opportunity like an overview of of all that we offer at each grade level and it does two things one it keeps the parents informed but also empowers them to support their children at home which is very important and so as we kind of get a
068sense of this of the website our team next year kind of a goal across the year will look to kind of design something that integrates well with that website that offers parents kind of more transparency view in terms of what we offer in denver public schools um we certainly have a lot of exciting programs that will come online with the academy we want to make sure that everybody feels that they that they understand what those are so that they can make good choices as parents um and so you know we're looking forward to doing that work and building a robust site for parents sounds awesome yeah now as someone who's watched this from the beginning from a thousand foot high to see you know a deeper level is is pretty cool and and to know
069all the communities that were brought in and and i've i've talked with some of the stakeholders that were involved too and what though that process looked like from their perspective it's um it's exciting it's it's very awesome so thank you for this this you know you know taking us deeper into what it looks like you know underneath our very broad vision at the board level absolutely anything else from committee members all those in favor please signify by saying aye we are adjourned at