001good afternoon everyone i'm mr davidson i am the principal of the freshman academy and we're here to talk about what to expect um coming to danbury high school next year i know it's kind of a crazy year but hopefully we can make you feel at ease and feel comfortable going into going into high school so i have a few people with me and hopefully you can see most of them um if if you can't maybe that'll work better well there's a grid i don't know if you can see that too so um miss ondeck one of our school counselors is waving to you ms isaac who was in for mr rodriguez she's waving there miss carlson is our director of school counseling you can probably see some of your counselors in there too this is
002duff's in there and dr roy was our deco director and miss harris i think you could probably see her um counselors as well hi miss harris i'm gonna move this and present okay so welcome class of 2025 what are we going to talk about today i want to kind of go over what is the freshman academy what do you have to do in order to register for danbury high school i'm going to talk a little bit about supports what can you expect if you're struggling or not maybe doing your best what can we do to help you extensions what if you're doing super well you don't need any supports from us how are you going to stretch yourself and become even more of a superstar our danbury early college opportunity dr roy is going to
003tell you all about that and then what to expect next going forward before we get to freshman year for you next year so throughout the presentation i have a spreadsheet open if you take your phone and you scan that qr code it's in the bottom corner of each one of our slides you can ask a question that i'll then answer at the end um it worked pretty well on the last one that we did so hopefully it will again today so the freshman academy it's kind of our transition from eighth to ninth grade we know you guys come from all these different schools and then we kind of lump you all together at danbury high school so it's a it's a big transition so we set up the freshman academy kind of as an intermediary
004step so to get from middle school and instead of being a full-time all the time high school student we put you in the freshman academy to kind of ease that transition we have teams in our freshman academy we have eight teams um counselors are divided amongst those teams too we have additional supports that only freshmen are offered our teachers meet every morning or every other morning to discuss you as students what can we do to help this student um how's this student doing in your class versus my class each one of those teams has college prep and honors level courses that we'll talk about a little bit and our counselors are specially trained to help you be successful in ninth grade and move from eighth grade to ninth grade effectively we just got a new
005building a couple years ago um and it was left kind of alone during this pandemic but we actually do have students back in there so it's pretty cool uh 26 classrooms six of them are science labs we have brand new gym done in g-building there's locker rooms air conditioning which you really really appreciate when it's when it's hot and the rest of the rest of the school that's called rg building i have a few pictures of what it looks like it looks a little different now because we had to space everything out but hopefully when we come back next year it'll be a little more back to normal and then we'll be able to enjoy the way we're used to going to school but um that's kind of what it looks like so what do
006you have to take at danbury high school well way down the bottom where you see it says total that's the most important thing you need to take 25 credits in order to graduate from danbury high school throughout your four years so freshman sophomore junior senior you have to take 25 credits and we break that down into specific areas so you have to take four four credits of english you have to take three and a half social studies you have to take four math three science you need health um you don't need to worry so much about that stuff right now um your counselors are definitely gonna help you throughout your four years make sure you're on track to graduate on time um what you need to know now as a freshman is 25 is your
007magic number if you don't get to that 25 and those 25 credits don't fit the way that this screen shows you so for instance if you fail phys ed because you just didn't feel like changing and you didn't want to do that you'll have maybe more than 25 credits with your electives but you won't be able to graduate because you did not fulfill this phys ed requirement so you need to take and pass each one of these credits to earn your way to graduation if you fail the class you have to take it again the following year after school in our twilight program some other way if you don't take and pass these credits then you don't move on to life after danbury high school and that's absolutely the last thing we want we want
008you all to graduate and be successful so it's important that you take all these courses and you do well so really for for you aside from that number 25 you need to make a decision next year whether you take college prep english or honors english college prep world studies or honors world studies and whatever you choose in english you have to choose world studies the same thing so you can't choose college prep english and honors world studies those two have to be the same level college prep english college prep world studies or honors english honors world studies and the same is true for for algebra and biology so uh depending on if you're taking algebra 1 or algebra that course needs to be the same level as biology that allows our teachers to teach kind
009of in our schedule so that so that you can you know take the classes that you need you may be required to take a reading or math lab class to support you if you need it we recommend that all freshmen take health and phys ed and we have a limited number of electives not all the electives that's one of jamboree high school's greatest strengths is we have a class for just about everybody unfortunately they're not all open to freshmen um but i promise you if you get these core classes out of the way more open up as you move on so what's the difference between college prep and honors um so our our goal at danbury high is if you come here and you take damn if you take uh college prep classes you will
010leave ready to go to college if you choose to go there we're not saying everyone has to go but we're going to prepare you for college with our content if you decide to go so you'll be ready for college if you take all college prep courses the difference between honors is you're going to learn the same things we're just going to ask you to do a little more we're going to ask you to dive deeper into that content and we're going to give you a heavier workload so you're going to be responsible for maybe more homework maybe more time outside of class where you're going to have to do more than you would possibly do in a college prep class so that's a decision you have to make and if if you are stuck and
011you're not sure which level is right for you talk to your teachers talk to your counselor they know what what our classes are like so they can give you kind of a kind of a recommendation is where they think but but ultimately it's up to you it's your choice where you want to go honors or college prep here's the electives as you can see there's still a ton open a freshman we have rotc classes we have a whole bunch of art classes business classes family consumer science music science classes that are electives that don't count towards your science credits these are just elective ones technology education theater arts world language if you want to focus on a world language all of these are available to you as a freshman in addition to your core classes
012so kind of what your schedule might look like we have four blocks and in the middle of those four blocks we have what's called flex and it's kind of like your team enrichment time but a little bit different so on monday you will go and meet with your mentor monday teacher and you'll choose what you want to do for those other four days of flex so maybe wednesday you have a big test coming up in math so on tuesday you're going to schedule yourself to go see your math teacher to review for that maybe you were out last week so on wednesday you need to make up an english test so you schedule yourself in that english teacher's flex now if you're not doing well in class your teachers will be scheduling you so every
013student will have somewhere to go tuesday through friday and it's not going to be the same each week and it's not going to be the same as somebody else that might be in your mentor monday flex class um if you don't need any support you don't have anything big coming up you're passing all your classes we do have enrichment type things they do have kind of limited space in some of them but we've done tire change tuesdays where you can go out the auto shop and learn how to change the tire if you need to do that we have yoga down in the g gym we have sodexo food testing with me so we we brought a bunch of students in sodexo brought in some reps from general mills and some other places and we
014tested out the food and decided is this a good product for our cafeteria so those are all different things that we can do in flex and that's kind of our flex program there um you can see it's kind of sandwiched in the middle of the day so we have block one and two which which are a little over an hour flex is is shorter only 40 minutes and um and then we have block three which is much longer but you have lunch embedded in there in a normal school year and then block four is kind of weird you see how it's shorter than all the other ones that's because block four meets every day so on a day you're gonna go to your 1a class it's going to be different than your 1b class but
015block four meets all the time so that personal finance class in my example meets every day from 1 17 to 2 o'clock so you have three choices on a day plus your fourth block so you have seven classes that you can take throughout the school year at cambridge so i told you about a whole bunch of courses really really quickly those courses are all in our course of study guide so on our website students course guide choose which language you want that course guide in so you can look at a description of each one of those courses you can get an idea as to what you want to take i'm sure you've heard from from other people that that you may know that i've been to high school which the courses you should you should
016look for but if you if you're curious about one take a peek in there and get an idea as to what that course is all about online registration it's going to be opening up soon um probably not much different than you did last year you're going to log into your powerschool account you're going to click on class registration and you're going to click on that little pencil over there so that you can choose which class you want to take i put a whole lot of directions in here and this is last year's screenshot because the new one isn't isn't finalized yet but it'll be ready for you i'm 3-1 um excuse me so it's just the same as last year for the most part you're going to select your core courses you're going to make
017sure you choose the first semester and the second semester click ok when you're done and you're going to do the same thing for any electives that you want to take as well and i'll post all these on on the website and send it to your your counselors so they can share if you need additional directions so if you get to danbury high school and you need some supports what do we do for you we have a read 180 program and a math 180 program for those students that need additional supports in reading and or math we have flex time like i said if you're not doing well in your classes your teachers are going to schedule you for intervention time so so and so is not doing well i'm going to schedule my math class
018so they can get caught up and do better on those concepts that they may have been struggling on we have directed study halls um that's where you come up in the level four office and kind of hang out with me to make sure you're on task after school tutoring program not running this year in person it's running virtually next year hopefully we're back in in-person tutoring again we have our twilight program if you don't pass the first semester in one of our courses um and you put the time in and you worked really hard you just didn't didn't pass the class we offer an opportunity to retake that first semester course during the second half of the year after school we also have a credit recovery program that's typically only available for upperclassmen but but
019this year given the circumstances some of our freshmen are in there as well and we have our typical srbi intervention pro program to help students who are struggling our extensions if you're one of those students that you know you don't need any additional supports at this time we have some challenges for you too we have 26 advanced placement courses so any student that takes an advanced placement course an ap course and passes with a three four or five they get college credit so you could theoretically go to college with college credits already before you even start for the first day so 21 of our kids take ap classes so it's definitely an option if you want to challenge yourself they're not easy but they're really rewarding and they're really good for college credits our flex
020like i said extensions are available dr roy is going to talk very soon about the early college opportunity we have honor societies that you can join if you're really really into the national art honor society or english honor society you can join those and kind of be a superstar in that in that content field summer courses if you wanted to take geometry over the summer between your freshman and sophomore year you certainly could our concap upward bound program we have a whole lot of sports teams many of them just for freshmen we have clubs and what i like to tell freshmen every year is when you come to denver high be more than just an academic be more than just a student come here and do something else give back in some other way whether
021it's through athletics through clubs through our tutoring program but give back in some capacities don't just come here to learn in your seven classes and then go home so dr roy i'm gonna hand it over to you you can talk a little bit about the very early college opportunities thanks mr davidson so the danbury early college opportunity is a partnership with naugatuck valley community college where our students are working on credits towards an associate degree in computer information systems at the same time as they're working on their danbury high school requirements so we kind of double dip in some places where we can and offer some extra opportunities when we can whether it's before school or not before school after school or during summer or during some winter sessions we're able to work different different
022things with our schedules um we partner with danbury schools and business connections and we partner with some industry people to get you guys internships and different work experiences and mentors right through the classrooms so one of the things you would need to know is we do have on march 1st it's our lottery is opening up i am able to accept 60 students into the program and so you would need to complete that lottery or that application for the lottery anytime march 1st through march 12th we'll keep that open this would affect your schedule as a ninth grader because you would need to take a class called workplace learning so workplace learning is kind of the backbone of the deco program and it teaches you the soft skills of business so it's teaching you how to
023write resumes how to conduct yourself during interviews um how to work on teams how you function as a leader different roles of leaders within corporations and industry so it's a really cool exciting program we do focus on computer science which is something that you will be using in a variety of different fields even if you decide to go into something like medicine or something you're obviously going to be using computers and those kinds of things whatever you happen to do so if you'd like more information we do have a website you can check that out you can also email me if you have questions or any of the guidance counselors or mr davidson can also help answer questions about that and one thing that's kind of neat about the deco program is we do try
024to have a summer experience it's about three days where you're able to come in during the summer towards the end of august we run it you get to know the building get to follow your schedule get to meet some people do a little scavenger hunt try to find mr davison which makes it fun so anyways if you have any questions let me know and check out our website for more info thank you dr roy so what's next this week last week and next week we're going to be at the three different middle schools to talk about what what the transition's like so what you're seeing today we went to the west side last week and we're going to be abroad view next week to give you kind of a really basic overview as to what
025what to expect and what to be ready for at danbury high school on 3-1 that's the most important thing coming up next on 3-1 we're going to have our school fair it's going to be virtual this year in the past we bring everybody in um i speak to you in the auditorium mr donovan says a few things dr roy and then we let you kind of tour the building and go check out the clubs and the sports and all the different things that are going on there obviously with a pandemic we can't do that so we're going to try to host it virtually this year so it'll be a little different but i think we can still get a lot of good information out to you so on 3-1 that school fair starts at 5
02630 p.m so you can come learn everything you can about dhs and then right when that thing ends we're going to open up registration so you can start picking your classes on 3 15 we're going to bring the private schools in so we can kind of share information with them and that online registration window i think that date is wrong i think it's 319 now back to roy i think that's what they changed it to so i have to fix that so 319 you have to get your you know you have 19 days 20 days to get that uh registration taken care of so ask your counselor for help if you need it reach out to us if you need help with that registration process so that we can get all the courses that you
027want so the only way we can offer those courses if we know you want to take it so if we see nobody wants to take engineering which would be crazy um we wouldn't run the class so we want to know what classes you guys are interested in through that registration process so we can make sure we have the classes that you want that fit in your schedule so you can take as many of the ones as you want to take so that's our contact information i'll leave that up for a while as i'm answering questions if you have any questions you can reach out we will get back to as soon as possible with anything personally you may have um i have a couple questions that have come in the first one we got was
028uh why are credits important well credits are important because we won't let you graduate danbury high school unless you get to 25 credits so if you have 24 and a half guess what we can't let you graduate if you don't have the right 25 credits we can't let you graduate either so it's really important that you sit down with your counselor not so much freshman year because we have our four core classes and some electives and pe in health and maybe a world language but as you move on to sophomore junior senior year you want to make sure that you're hitting all those classes you need to fulfill those requirements to earn those credits the next question was how do we get or receive those credits that's the easiest thing there you have to go
029to class and you have to earn a 65 or better if you earn a 65 or better in that class on average between the two semesters then you earn the half credit for that course so your english class if you show up every day work hard and you have a grade higher than a 65 at the end of the first semester you get credit and you're 0.5 half a credit towards your graduation the same thing in math science social studies and your electives that's how you that's how you earn those credits you come to class do what you're supposed to do ask for help if you need it and and try your best and as long as you pass those classes we we give you credit for them um somebody said do you have to
030apply for the honors program no you don't have to apply for any honors programs um you have to choose honors courses when you register for your classes so if you're interested in honors classes um when you register through powerschool choose the honors section of that class and and that's how you're kind of enrolled in that honors program and i don't want to be misleading and say that you're in an honors program because you could take an honors class you could also take a college prep class at the same time so maybe in math you you don't feel like you want to extend yourself and take an honors class you can take college prep but in english you you really you really want to challenge yourself so you take that honors class so you can be
031in honors classes and college prep classes at the same time and if you decide next year you know what i should have won all honors classes you can certainly do that you decide next year wow i just want to focus on college prep classes you can do that too so whatever you decide you want to do you're not stuck in any kind of track or any kind of program you can you can switch from year to year and challenge yourself or or find one that's kind of right for your skill set uh what else do we have well how do we register for classes that just through powerschool when you log into your powerschool click on register classes and choose the classes that you want to take what's more beneficial the college prep or the
032honors course that is solely up to you if you decide that you want to challenge yourself and that you're willing to kind of go deeper work a little bit more independently and maybe maybe have a little bigger workload then take an honors class the the good thing about it is during the first 10 days of school if you decide i made a big mistake i should be in the other one you can change during the first 10 days of school after that you can't change so if you get to day 11 and you say you know what i really should have gone into honors english we can't let you do that you have to stay in the college prep class for now um but on day three if you decide this isn't right for me
033i need to be challenged for you can go see your counselor and you can change your schedule and and change it up to college prep or honors or whatever you decide you want to do and those are the only questions i got so far today so if anybody else has any more send them in we'll take a look at it for like two more seconds mr davidson if they request a course are they guaranteed to get that course no unfortunately not i wish you were um the way the scheduling software works is it goes and it looks at the requests and then it puts the seniors in their classes and then the juniors and then the sophomores and unfortunately we're kind of last because we have more time to take those classes so so maybe
034maybe you're uh you really want to take american sign language as your as your um world language but it's filled up with seniors and juniors and a couple sophomores so you'll probably have to wait for next year on that one so your schedule may not look exactly like the way you want it but i do promise you um you will have opportunities to take those courses in the future and it doesn't mean just because you don't get it the first time around when you see your schedule that it's absolutely not happening um throughout like those 10 days those first 10 days if someone drops that class maybe you know if things work out and you talk to your counselor at the right time we can get you into that class as well so it's not
035you know it's not the end of the end of the line if you don't get in the first time sports we have a ton of sports i got a couple more questions coming in um just about every sport you can imagine we we have it and and we have a freshman team for it doesn't mean you have to play on the freshman team but we have freshman teams available that are usually usually made up of freshmen that you know maybe aren't ready for the jv team and aren't ready for the varsity team yet but it gives you really good experience competing still on a team against other schools um and so you're ready to move up to jv and varsity as you go forward so we have right now we're not doing wrestling because of
036the pandemic but all of our i think cheerleading but all of our other winter sports are starting and we kind of got the snow derailed us the other day but but our winter season is going on so so sign up for those sports we uh are extremely competitive and in almost all the sports we compete in all right anybody in the panel have anything they think i missed before we wrap this up i think we just need to reiterate one more time like mr davidson was saying don't just come here and take classes there's so much more richness to danbury high school be it sports or or other clubs we have so many um some of them are listed on our website but if there's a club um that you're interested in too we can
037certainly look to try to start one if you think that there's if it if it's not there yet so definitely utilize your time in high school to participate to be there to become immersed in the community because it's it's so many opportunities good point dr roy again i always tell people be more than just a student here get involved as much as you can not only does it look great on your on your resume when you go to college but it also helps you you know be more involved and get as much as you can out of the school all right mr dillon if i may yes ma'am i just want to thank you and thank the panel um on behalf of rogers park and i just wanted to let the students remind them that
038your counselors are here to support you through this process when you need to um request your courses so please take advantage and come to our office hours so that's for myself mrs duff mrs abbott and mr farrell so we are here for you to answer your questions and if you have questions in regards to the deco program and how to get into the lottery we can assist you with that as well so just thank you everyone yeah your counselors are pros they know exactly what it's going to take to come to danbury high school so take advantage of their knowledge and their experience and get yourself set up to be as successful as possible thanks everyone i really appreciate your time and we'll see you on march 1st at the virtual school