001everybody it is Thursday October 13th this is a meeting special meeting of the curriculum committee of the Daria Board of Education and we have a couple great things on our agenda today we're going to start with an art Department update and move on to the selection of instructional materials so I will start by turning it over to Dr chambark nurse good morning everyone thank you for joining us this morning uh thank you to Jacqueline Samus she is our art Department coordinator K through 12 uh in our continued series of program updates and Department updates um art is up next we did not get to Art last spring so we're excited to hear from Jacqueline this morning so I will turn it over foreign [Music] is July we had at first and second place on our
002FBI pretty art show um Charlotte conference uh first place Thomas graduated one second place this is an amazing art show thank you that we do all year because it has every student who enters the art show gets to be in the digital version of it so there are about 40 to 50 pieces that hang in the actual gallery of the Bruce Museum but if you enter it you get in so this year there were 875 students who entered the art show and only 45 that showed in the gallery and somebody did the math and said it's harder to get into I create than it is to get it to an Ivy League school percentage-wise which I just love anyways we've got a first and second place there um our kind of where we're at right
003now in our curriculum process is uh we pull from kind of our mission statement that we start off um every year with just we offer an emotionally safe and stimulating learning environment based in a Fine Arts Studio model where students can experience the joy eventual individual creativity experience with media techniques and processes and develop more in-depth understanding of the Arts we're a very Hands-On Studio program we love to just let students get in and just start working see where they're at and then develop their skills from there so everybody gets to start everybody has their own starting point and their own ending point and we like to grow and work with each student individually um we are based off our national art standards or the standards that we're using to develop our curriculum and what
004we are working with so it's about creating presenting responding and connecting um the kind of the process that every student uses K-12 is the thinking is our brainstorming is where we're going to start collaborating with peers talking about our ideas refining our process and then actually making it and taking a step back reflecting sometimes that happens in the middle of the process sometimes that happens at the end and then with every project that's kind of just our stages that we go through sorry just [Music] um whatever so where we're at in our actual curriculum review and using the new platform as we're still at the beginning of it we are still kind of gathering our materials working from our old paper curriculum and then we're gonna to this year spend a lot of time updating
005the new platform and putting materials online that way we will spend the spring PD days working on winter and spring working on that um instructional time so elementary students have our one-time for rotation um it's about 30 rotations in the school year and then they have those nine kind of extra art periods that happen throughout the school year so for a total of almost 40 class meetings per year um at the middle school we do have art in the sixth grade one time per week for the entire school year and then seventh and eighth grade it's for one quarter which is about 36 class periods um art attracts a wide variety of students from our like amazing athletes and rock star you know captains of lacrosse team are taking art classes and then you know
006our our whole our classmates are very diverse in that way we have a lot of different types of Learners that are taking them I think art is a great equalizer where students maybe that struggle in other learning or academic settings you know it can be absolutely amazing in the Arts and students love getting their hands into it and especially our clay classes are very popular it's very physical material at the high school and students just love working and not getting dirty um so we talk a lot about social emotional learning is there initiatives our k five students here this is um the students kindergartners that were working on dry erase boards so the idea that art isn't always permanent art isn't always something that's going to end up at hanging up on a wall or
007hanging up in your refrigerator that you're going to make something and then we're going to erase it we're going to do it again and we're going to try something new so just getting over that feeling that it has to be perfect at first time so they're doing Blind contour line drawings where they cover their dry erase board with paper plates they actually can't see what's happening and just really get to look at their subjects and analyze what it is they're trying to create and making that happen on the paper I'm stressing that there isn't always a right answer and just to enjoy the experience of making um seventh grade oh there's something you're supposed to be able to click from there all right so in seventh grade I wish that didn't translate okay um Miss
008Morgan in her classroom is doing a little mood meter where they're going to come in um every day they're gonna pick where they're at the movie theater and then they have to create a drawn using that mood and an object that she's giving them so some of the examples that we had were Pairs and you know they have to draw the pair but then incorporate where they're at in their mood meter on that in their pair so it was a PV pair was my example and an angry cup of coffee um a enthusiastic lamp were some of just the examples that students had so I'm just kind of thinking about where they're at um in their own art process and if they're coming in in one place you know kind of realizing that their own
009experience in the art room is going to be affected by that feeling or that move for the day oh I had to click the next button somebody you know what the it's my first time working with one of these so can we actually click on the no to see those examples there's no way if you thought it was access to anybody with the link if you click right on the mood meter itself is the yes Maybe oh yes okay so there are a second slide down is our PV pairs or tired tired pairs Okay so and then pumpkins was the next one so we had a hyper pumpkin um chickens or the subjects a chill chicken so these are just little like kind of five minute warm-up activities that students um get to do at
010the beginning of class get them thinking in their kind of artistic brain sketch out a little bit before they jump into their projects and we have our ghosts so you're seeing a lot of different solutions to the same prompt from these students all right and then back thank you Michelle so here we go all right so some highlights from the elementary so with Hispanic Heritage Month um students were studying Nero they've watched this lovely video about talking about his process with line and shape and form and color um and then students were all given the same prompts kind of every day that they had to work from but then you can see all their different solutions to the same problem so the first day was draw two lines across the paper and then they had
011to add the shapes and the patterns the form building them upon those that was happening uh this is fifth grade at tokenique um kindergartners we really start off with just thinking about line and how they're using their materials so they were doing some collaborative drawings on large pieces of paper it's nice that we're all getting back close together again and work in collaborative collaboratively on these large drawings you can see a whole class working on about a 10 foot piece of paper there um and then we're gonna move on to our middle school so sixth grade is working on Zentangles the sixth grade it does a lot of um to think about that same thing about live at the start of the school year I'm designing inside their subject or outside their subjects and then
012their class entangle that they're working on these kind of class Community projects happen at sixth seventh and eighth grade where they are going to always have something that builds upon whatever they're doing on their personal project and then it's the reward not to finish first and kind of get to work on the class project but to come up with something that's individual and unique and new for your class and then you get to add your kind of piece to that class project so if they were coming and came up with their own fully original Zentangle marker value they got to add that to the class project that is the lower right corner um seventh and eighth grade does this with other materials and Collage if you see those hanging around the school as you're going
013around the middle school um but the Zentangle will hang somewhere when it's done but it's kind of a nice reward for those students who have finished and have come up with something that is completely unique in their own our seventh grade we're doing some architectural and perspective drawings where they had to design a new community space that doesn't exist in Darien and then they had to think about who is it for what what is the access to it what is its purpose and depending on which the clientele for who it's for might determine you know if it's for kids then there might be bike parking racks there or does it have to be that unwalkable from different schools or the center of town you know or if it's a big field space you know where
014is that going to fall into our community designing then the building that is existing the layout of the entire park space so we're looking at roller skating rink that we don't have you know I don't have yet maybe um and then like where are they gonna Park and um and then the perspective drawing of the top one um had a new park space with this tree house that was happening just I mean this is all done by 8th graders this spring oh this fall sorry um all right then some highlights where we start working out at the high school with our Ceramics one classes there are eight sections surround this one so a lot of kids are working on this project with these themed boxes so you have to pick your own theme you know
015think about designing it in the round every side is going to have its own original image and then they're learning those basic skills with claia scoring and slipping and attaching two pieces of play together making it functional with a slid piece um so they're so getting those into the glaze Kiln now and then lastly here's our drawing painting one students are working on um what uh impressionism and kind of um thinking about lights like value color and then capturing a space a landscape space and those they've just finished up last week so that is thank you Mr sandwich I appreciate that um a quick question about the at the high school level do you see that more students are gravitating towards the Arts you know we talk so much about the mental health of our
016students and we have the art being a very safe space and you know maybe not as stressful as you know the reading ready with arithm tech are you seeing more interest oh we if I tracked our numbers of our enrollment over the last five years I'd have to pull up um that spreadsheet but I believe we're about a hundred students over and 100 students more currently this school year than we were five years ago so sometimes that number is going to fluctuate and you know my one year might be 25 over from where we were five years ago but this year based off of um kind of the whole projection I think we're about 100 students more um I think students gravitate towards the experience in the classroom and just that classroom culture and environment
017that's created so even if they're not the most talented artists they really just like being in that space and that is a goal that all of our teachers have and that we talk a lot about of making every student feel known and valued in that classroom it's a great opportunity to actually get to talk with the students we talk a lot um as they're working because we're not it's just a different environment we're not lecturing it's not us directing it so moving around really getting to know those students we know their interests we know what they're doing on the way weekends we know what's happening at their home that they gotta talk you know that those little anecdotal things they can ask them about that I think that is a culture that attracts the students
018in the classroom thank you for creating that yes thanks this is amazing I can't believe those were done since the school year started yes and I think I need to find an adult art class because yeah I need this kind of yes schedule helps us so much just anecdotally if you know we love working in the block because the hour and 40 all right 20 minutes uh just is an amazing time where you can really get into your project get focus on your project take time to step back and look at what you're doing put it up and then get back and keep working so that revision and the analyzing what's happening is happening right there in the moment and they're able to keep working as opposed to I'm coming in I'm looking at it
019I'm working it up cleaning up and then I have to you know whole day before I get back to it that's great that's good to know yes um with all that interest and all our students are are there enough classes or people I feel like anecdotally I used to hear that Ceramics was so hard to get into like do we have enough sections so that's I hear that too and I think the students create that buzz I don't know who's creating that buzz um I believe every student that wants to get into it is able to um there have been years where we've had eight sections of Ceramics one which means it's offered every period of the day um over both days of the block so there was always a spot uh for students who
020aren't able to get into it it's usually because of other classes that they're taking at the higher level classes skills where the challenge happens because if they're in that French five class that is only offered during period two and AAP drawing painting is only offered during preview two then they have to make a choice but for entry-level classes students I believe are getting all their first picks I'm not hearing about anybody to come back saying I couldn't get into such and such a class that's great so I think I think we have are offering enough classes um it's I also love the support that we still get for our advanced level classes that do to have smaller numbers than our entry level classes that those classes are still running for those kids and do we
021have a few AP art we have talk four or five AP art sections running right now we have one section of ap's 2D design but it's through the photography Avenue we have two sections of AP Ceramics which is AP 3D design as the exam they're taking and we have two sections of AP drawing painting which is either 2D or drawing exam depending thank you 56 different sections in total robust thank you yes amazing so I'm curious if there's anything that you think K-12 is there something that you would like to change is there something you would like to revise where do you think you know going forward your focus will be my primary primary focus right now is just getting every all the great stuff that we are doing that each usually doing documented and
022into this new program so that all teachers can access what's happening in the other especially the elementary levels because there are five different buildings so they can help and use each other as those resources and um collaborate on lesson plans together that way um is there something that we need I I would love to see the Elementary schedule go back to the hour-long classes uh for the maybe just the three through five sections I think that that is a place where those students could use a longer block of time but that's what and what I'm hearing from my teachers is what they would like but they also understand the way a little school operates this is not what we're dealing with and the they still get the same amount of contact time with the students
023with those extra classes so they make that that work in terms of the elementary uh art classes I I assume and I hope that all five teachers are working together do they do the same project like is it the first unit of kindergarten is the same and everything or do the teachers have the autonomy to choose within a certain they all do something that's very similar just because of the progression of how it makes sense for working with students and their development and their mind motor skills they don't do identical projects necessarily but they all have the same experience so every fifth grader is going to get a printmaking unit you know every kindergartner is going to deal with the line is to start and then they're going to deal with color and mixing color
024um they love to share and collaborate on different projects and kind of steal each other's resources in a good way so they end up doing a lot of the same stuff but it's never going to look the same because each teacher brings their own spin to it as well but they are walking into sixth grade confidently the sixth grade teacher knows exactly what skills every student for every elementary school has had and experiences that they've had so when they get to sixth grade they've all had they have all had the same same skills same Concepts and uh just with each teacher's final twist thank you further questions about art no no my only comment would be um which doesn't really have to do with you specifically would be that because that Ceramics thing comes up
025every year that kids have this I can't get in I can't get in I can't get in so during that orientation in eighth grade when they they should tell kids by the way we just make more sections yeah it's it's I mean every year it happens so I will talk to the school counselor at South Middle School and make sure that everybody knows because again get the word out if 200 students sign up for it we will have 200 sections we'll have enough spots um because that means we don't have as many digital photography sections so we have the teachers and we have the space right and we have the amazing Kilns too it's just unnecessary stress it is silly every year all right thank you thank you Jeff I appreciate it that's awesome thanks
026Jack she's one of the leaders who you're K-12 um and the nature of the nature of the discipline itself the creative nature of that is also reflected in her leadership in the town of the kid in a town of the um it's a phenomenal option for students to pursue and equipment preaching of the board support of Community Support off the Arts as we continue to move forward with us we have the right people in place the right programs and I just want to recognize her thank you I will add just one more thing that we do feel that support from the board from the town we have everything that we need I know a bunch of season coming we're starting to think about that I mean the resources that we have access to is amazing
027and every year we keep getting it and it's great because the students get to make wonderful pieces with fine quality materials thank you thank you very much we will move on to our second agenda item thank you so this agenda item focuses on the selection of instructional materials the first few slides will look repetitive because they're really taken from the presentation that I gave to the full board in September of last year and then we dig deeper into some explanation of those things so we will always make that connection to our mission and vision because that is why we do what we do and the three main gears that turn curriculum are the standards and Frameworks that exist for every content area our vision of the graduate which we have built into our edu Planet
028platform and we'll make those connections K-12 and our district strategic plan uh this is our curriculum development cycle It's always important to point out that uh darian's approach to curriculum revision is we call it a responsive process so we respond in real time to changes in needs which means we reflect every year there's not a moment in time where we look at all English at the same time and do an audit so to speak so we're always in a process of inquiry related to where the units stand interestingly the we have the nearest visit happened this week at the high school and one of the questions I got as a follow-up from the committee was can you talk to me about your curriculum process because we're not clear and as I've said many times this
029responsive approach is not a typical approach so I explained it and they were very intrigued and interested so I'm excited to see what what they say about it but the the two big pieces that they commented on were reviewing the curriculum with Administration uh and just changes in general to make sure that we're closing the loop so we don't have curriculum people and teachers working on something and the administrators aren't aware of what the changes actually are and they're really not changes as much as I tend to classify them as as updates so today uh Julie drawler director of Elementary education Francis is our director of English 612 or department chair and Keith our department chair for social studies 612 they all have a chunk there might be questions throughout so this might make more
030sense to ask questions as you each person is going because it might be too much to go back eight slides and and ask a question about that so um this is also the instructional resources uh piece of I know we often call everything curriculum and in my mind as a curriculum administrator curriculum very much means the the written the taught and the assessed so I think of that as the actual content not the big picture of teaching and learning so we we talked about this a bit last year and then instructional resources in our units of study as we're working on the next generation of revision we want anything that's a guaranteed experience that all students will uh read or interact with no matter who the teacher is in any school to live within the
031units and then there's always those I think I call them secondary sources last year being cautious of that term today because Mr Keeler is going to talk about primary sources in the context of social studies curriculum and it means something a little bit different but when I'm saying secondary I mean that things happen and in real time because we're responsive we might include those and Mr Keeler we'll talk about that as well so we'll start with uh Mrs roller so good morning everybody can you hear me um at the elementary level our guaranteed experiences would be our whole class read-alouds and they primarily come from um the texts that are aligned with our teachers College reading and writing units of study so they are selected by Teachers College their process for selection is very similar
032to ours they rely on trusted resources American Library Association Publishers Award winners um kirkus book review horn book review New York Times book review all of those like how to cut Newberry all of those Award winners and of course for the read-alouds they um are books that support the goals of the unit so whatever reading or writing strategies those would be texts where they really pop out they're also generally for whole class read-alouds a little bit lower level because that's what the teacher is modeling and demonstrating and when I talk about independent reading you'll see the transfer for our content area and our social emotional learning those books are chosen by our curricular by our curriculum teams and um really heavily Guided by our library media Specialists who are our experts in choosing books from
033all of those resources all of them also are vetted by communities and Teachers College they have communities that read and review their books and field test them in classrooms with us the same thing our committees read and review those books so those are our guaranteed experiences for um for teaching from modeling for teachers thinking aloud and fostering class discourse and then books for independent partner reading and book clubs chosen the same way some of them are purchased by central office some of them are purchased by individual buildings we purchased uh Teachers College put together classroom Library sets where they had a variety of genres reading levels interests to support the units of study so those were purchased we purchased award-winning texts new books that are that are coming out we're focusing now as is as
034is Teachers College on authorship and our books and wanting the books in our classroom libraries to be windows and mirrors so where students see themselves in their lives and also learn about others in the world so that is primarily where we get our resources from and talking about the responsive curriculum this is just one example of a unit that was developed based on feedback every June we have what we call June feedback meetings and we meet with teachers and we get feedback on what worked what didn't work what we need so in fifth grade there was a need for a social issues book club unit in Reading we had one in third fourth and sixth grade it was missing in fifth grade we have an interpretation unit in the beginning of the year but we
035were really missing something mid-year so teachers identified that need we established a plan for collaboration led by RTC staff developers so that all fifth grade teachers in The District in all five schools could participate in the development but also professional development in content and instructional methods so we determine our goals what reading standards we have vision of The Graduate learning outcomes as part of that unit we develop the curriculum together teachers field tested it we really did it across a few months where teachers tried something came back we made tweaks we selected a shared read aloud shared experience we used a text um called front desk by Kelly Yang about a Chinese immigrant that our students were reading it's part of a trilogy but they were reading it like very quickly and kind of passively
036and not doing the kind of work that we wanted them to do so we used that so teachers could model think aloud strategies and also some note-taking strategies for kids really really effective and engaging unit and then we selected curated text again leaning on our library media Specialists to appeal to a variety of interests and abilities of the kids in our class so that was a really successful unit talk about elementary so I just have a few quick questions um you talked about the shared a whole class read aloud so does that mean similar to what I asked Jacqueline does kindergarten read the same all 22 sections of kindergarten read the same read aloud in September so every child is having that shared experience across the district or is it chosen at the school level
037generally it is across the district it teachers can make tweaks if they if they want to if they have a newer book um you know sometimes there's something great that comes out that one teacher will be passionate about and they generally share so some of them are provided but we don't say this is the only book that you can use because the world of children's publishing is so vast and changes so quickly so that week that was also you know behind my question was how much is prescribed for the teachers and how much autonomy does did the classroom teachers have because there is at the elementary level there are just so many options and there's so many new things and um so I like to hear that yeah in so many books can can provide
038the same purpose so absolutely teachers have Choice okay just a theme that will tie into that question is we've tried to send the message that we don't teach books so a book is selected in order for students to develop very specific skills so when we talk about a book um to us that's not talking about the curriculum that's talking about a resource we use and we try to turn the conversation to well what do we actually expect students to learn as a result of interacting with this content so that theme will continue could you just talk a little too when you when you talk about the fifth grade reading unit of social issues book club just a couple examples of some social issues that that are covered I think you said the other greats have
039them as well just to dimensionalize for us sure in fifth grade we talk about immigration we talk about fairness we talk about power friendship family um being inclusive empathy thank you questions on my turn I had one more but I don't remember what it was welcome back and we'll move on to Mr jonesco okay thank you um well and these first two slides are going to have some overlap with uh what Julie just spoke about in terms of classroom libraries and book club units um I would just saying in terms of selecting our books for our classroom libraries at the middle school so just like in Elementary classes teachers classrooms are equipped with a multitude of books that are typically arranged by genre and that's that's done to support our independent real requirements at the
040middle school six through eight um and the books that we find in those libraries um this may be surprising maybe not but a great number of them have just been handed down by teachers over the years and you can tell the difference between them for sure um but we also just like we do at the elementary level uh we'll make purchases of what heinemann calls shells which are curated by Teachers College reading and writing projects and it might come with 35 books that are meant to augment um the study of a given genre and those will be in the classroom as well um certainly we try to pay attention to what kids are reading and if they have books that are popular that are not on our shelves we will keep our eye on that
041and we'll add that to our list of potential books that we'll purchase for our classroom libraries we also get feedback from our Librarians and we will just as Julie said we'll look at award-winning texts and we'll augment the books that kids have in the classroom libraries through those meetings now for the independent books you know the students are expected to have one at all times they're doing a reading log that follows their work in those books they don't have to choose a book from the classroom Library they could choose them from the town library they could choose one that they have at home but we're just giving them a resource to augment their independent reading um if we can go to the next slide um so just like at the elementary level we have book
042club units um we have them at the high school as well but predominantly when we talk about book club theaters we're talking about the Middle School um at the middle school most of our book club units are focused on a genre so for example Memoir or non-fiction or uh mystery or dystopian novels those are some of the genres we study at the middle school through book clubs um typically the way we do things is that we'll use the books curated by Teachers College reader writing projects as the books that we'll start with for uh the students options for those book club selections and over time once we've implemented those units um a year or a couple years in um teachers and sometimes Librarians will offer some other books that will extend our learning of that
043genre and we will have conversations about them and oftentimes make those purposes purchases so you know a book club being that three years in will have maybe a few books that were curated by teachers college and a few that we added to round out that unit um I will just pause for a minute and say that we have um replaced Books at the middle school unit at the middle school level uh for book clubs when we have deemed some of the books that may have come from Teachers College as maybe having content that was maybe the mature content outweighed the value of those books so we have done those Replacements and I should even add I'm at the middle school level um We have replaced summer reading where for a variety of reasons we felt
044that a given selection was inappropriate for a given year and we have done that as well so I just want to make it clear that at the secondary level we do intervene and make these kind of choices along the way um I'm going to move along to the high school and she's sort of the land of the whole class novel can I just interrupt for a second and ask a question about TC because it's not used at the high school level um so we seem to be relying very heavily on the TC reading writers project for instructional materials um and I would just love a little background on what how do you what do they do to vet their to that the things that they suggest to districts um and also I know full disclosure
045I'm Alum from decades ago but they have changed the reading writing project has changed their um you know they're thinking a little bit in the past couple years and how is that reflected in in what they're suggesting now what do you mean by the last couple years changes yeah I think so the way that Lucy's ideas have shifted a little bit Lucy Hawkins is the head of the head in terms of um authorship yeah particularly yeah they're looking for books with own voice authors they're looking for more diverse and culturally relevant books so again they're looking for those books that appeal to where kids can see themselves in the classroom and learn about experiences um outside of their world but but within the world that they're the bigger world that they're living in but typically
046you know whether they curate a unit they you know New York City often is the testing site for a lot of those units so they're always in development so they'll test them they'll get a sense of what readers are engaged by um and they use some of the same resources that we spoke of in terms of award-winning texts they know authors personally um so there's you know there's a lot that goes into it before they arrive with us I would say at the middle school level of one unit in particular that um sort of reflects the um the authorship question that just came up is our contemporary Classics unit that we have at the end of our eighth grade uh experience and um you know which does have some text with some mature content in
047it but part of it is you know our thinking is we save that for the very last unit at the middle school thinking that our eighth graders are on the verge of the transition of the high school and we want to give them that opportunity um so that's by Design um are there other questions about no I just so it just seen you know just the vast nature of TC within our district like so you are all very confident in what they are suggesting to to us yeah and and as and as Julia said and I've said um over time um once we it's not it's look it's not one size fits all and some of the texts that they curate for some of our units aren't really that engaging for some of our kids
048and some of those Fall by the wayside we keep the ones that they are engaged in and we typically augment with some other type so I guess it's what you're we don't buy the shelf and that's all that's on the Shelf like we are augmenting with other stuff that our students are excited about nope thank you so at DHS where um as I said we do have book club units at the high school but um predominantly we have whole class novel uh experiences for our kids and you know you've all experienced this before where a teacher chooses a text and the kids read it and they read it incrementally and discuss it as they go along um at DHS for our courses what we try our best to do is balance the classic with the
049contemporary you know a text that is a classic has a strong purchase of the hearts of our English teachers and they tend to invest a lot of time and and energy into another Classics but often it's the Contemporary texts that we feel like our kids are more engaged in because they see their world reflected in them so we try to strike that balance as much as we can at the high school when teachers are requesting a new book um our process requires a conversation so at the high school almost every course is taught by multiple teachers oh just about everything is it has at least four or five teachers who teach sections of the same course so we have a conversation with all of them to make sure that they're on board with it um
050and then they draft a rationale for why they think that this would be a good fit for the curriculum of that particular course and then they identify any potential text that we might remove based upon you know adding that particular one and just you know it's not like they're pulling uh books willy-nilly out of the air they are typically reading reviews they are looking at award-winning texts um and I know I would just say I'll pause here and just say that one of the you know as someone who's taught in this District since 2003 one of the great privileges of working in this district is the responsiveness that we have enjoyed as teachers because you know there'll be an award-winning Nobel prize-winning novel that we are affording the luxury of pulling into our curriculum you
051know on the next year and um so this is not something that's typical in a lot of districts in our country and we all realize it and we all I think our kids benefit from that um and I think that you know they go off to college having experience and been exposed to some powerful stories that are really current and I think that that helps their transition there anyway when making our decisions about purchasing texts I want to emphasize that our decisions are primarily on the literary and narrative elements of a given text those are the core of our conversations that we have with our kids in our classes and we design lessons around them and so if uh if a text doesn't have that material then it really isn't worth our time and it's
052not going to create the kind of conversations that we really need our kids to have so those are the primary focal points of what we're looking for in the text and adding it to our curriculum and I'll just end this particular Slide by saying that just like at the middle school we certainly have examples of teachers requesting books that um sometimes it just didn't seem like the time goes right but ultimately it would have been you know something about the texts whether it was deemed inflammatory or too mature that the mature sections would have outweighed the literary value of that given text and those requests were denied um so unless there are questions about the process I have some some examples at the high school that I don't focus on at the end and um
053so I want to really draw our attention to three um and um the first two are the result of um our work in English sign accelerated and the last one is our work with English 10 honors and all of these book decisions were made two summers ago so this is the second year that we have had students reading these texts in the class or in summer reading so I'll just start with English 9 accelerated and in revising the curriculum for that course the first semester the focus is on coming-of-age stories and coming a page novels and um the conversation um in that conversation there are a lot of potential texts and titles bandied about but the teachers landed on Great Expectations Charles Dickens published in the mid-19th century you can't get more classic than that
054story of hip and the coming of his Coming of Age story and um you know uh as I said we like to strike a balance between the classic and the Contemporary and so for the second semester the focus of the second semester of that class is um trying to make sense of the external world and thinking about how myths and stories allow us to make sense of that world and so the uh teachers landed on um this book by um esteemed author of Summer I know you all know who I'm talking about um it's one of his recent Publications Haroon and the Sea of Stories it's a magical realism allegory featuring an actual Sea of Stories that the characters are trying to protect throughout the text um so um the author is already steamed and
055he's won every prize there is and we've all heard of him even recently in the news because you know he has been a mouthpiece for anti-censorship efforts you know throughout his lifetime based on his publication of a book early in his career but you know that aside is not because of that and certainly we selected this before all the recent events happened but you know that was our nod to having a contemporary text to balance out the classic for that particular course but the the main focus is on how those books engaged in the essential questions and themes of the semesters basically for English 10 honors so um the essential question for the course is how do multiple perspectives and ways of seeing give shape to our experience of reading a text okay so multiple
056perspectives is huge in this class and it's something that they encounter in the other books uh in that class so um after a discussion we decided to go with a book by a very young and up-and-coming author uh Eric Nguyen and the book is things we lost the water you've all heard about it because it's kind of brought about a lot of criticism recently that we've seen at some of our board event meetings um and I would just say that the story is structured um so that each uh each chapter represents the point of view of one of the three main characters so there's a different perspective basically um brought about by every chapter now it's third person omniscient so it's not like it's told the first person but we do get the vantage point
057of the main characters to each of us of the chapters um there's a powerful water Motif you can kind of maybe make sense that based on the title um and um the other thing that uh our teachers liked about it and it was a selling point was that um whenever we can in 10th Grade we try to opt for something that has more of a world perspective because we'd like to um you know have kids who are taking role studies in the history Department have a chance to bring some of that learning into their classes in English so when we can we try our best to do it and this uh story uh tracks the um sort of uh many years of a family that has to flee Vietnam in the fall of Saigon and
058they wind up in New Orleans and it's a story about the challenges that this this family faces um so uh this story has I mean recently we've seen that there are some there are there is mature content in the book and we have seen some aspects of that um brought about in some of our board event meetings I will say I just want to point out just just so we're clear on this um this is something that we had in place not this past summer but the previous summer too um we didn't have any feedback whatsoever about the book the entire previous year I heard nothing from any parent I heard nothing from any student and we have a unit at the beginning of the year that's designed around it um it's only been this
059year where we've heard some things and just from my perspective I've heard from one parent I had one parent complaint and I called that parent and we had a very chemical amicable conversation about it um I really appreciated the perspective of the parent and I tried to explain the best as I could how I'm presenting it to you how we made the choice and you know so that's where I'm coming from I'm mean there have been you know some um some other folks at the board of ed meetings you know being critical of this novel and I get it um but it's not been levied directly at us and um all I can tell you is that if we eliminated every book in our curriculum at the high school with mature content we'd have probably
060five books that remain I have for you today if you like um I became prepared with um some passages from many books that you know and love that we teach at the high school that have extremely mature scenes that you can look at and just understand that those are scenes that all of our students are encountering all the time at the high school they've encountered in for many years and um you know we don't focus our lessons around let's look at the f-bombs in this particular passage and you know but we talk about perspective point of view and we try to channel it in the you know sort of literary devices that are employed by the authors throughout the text and you know I think you know you name it and the book has been
061challenged or banned for these kind of passages but you know once again we we have been privileged to work in a district that has been very open-minded about these books over the years um deeming them as good for students to encounter before they head off to college I will say because I just want to say one last thing and I really want to I expect to be questions and comments about at least this book I have a feeling um you know I mentioned there were multiple perspectives reflected in it I will say that one thing you know one thing's very clear about it is that one of the perspectives one of the the boys in the family in the story comes out as gay now we don't have a lot of books at the high
062school that feature that sort of you know development in a character so that's new and you know I would imagine that maybe less the you know the kinds of passages that parents have pointed out of the board members at the board meetings but you know I I have a feeling that that Dimension is part of the reason or maybe a large part of the reason why there is um some challenges that have been made about the book I just want to make sure that that was clear so that we're all on the same page um and I welcome any questions that you might have about any of these things that I've been throwing up Francis do you know how many um parents reached out to the teachers of 10th grade honors English or Mrs Dunn
063I can't speak for Mrs Dunn because she probably I mean there's no doubt she would have alerted me if she had heard from someone and um the teachers would have all I mean anytime any um criticism is levied about one of our instructional resources or one of the novels um if all Rose will lead back to me eventually so I have heard nothing from our teachers on this and in general that would be the recommendation right if a parent has a concern about an instructional material to reach out to a teacher as the as the starting Place yeah I mean I guess it look I I know certainly um the way we normally do things as Department chairs if a parent has an objection about something happening in a classroom for their particular student then
064typically we want them to reach out to the teacher to have that conversation first although as you might guess many parents reach out to me directly and I try to facilitate that conversation and then they might wind up coming back to me um when it comes to you know this kind of resource because it's used for all the sections of a given course I think that makes sense that they would reach out to me to understand thanks just to build on that so some of the emails that the best received about this book have come from children or parents of younger children that you may not have a 10th grade honors student or a student at the high school yet if those parents of younger parents are concerned they you're welcome you know you you
065are happy to chat to them as well correct okay and listen it's not I mean our teachers are well aware the entire department is well aware of the criticisms that have been levied about this book and I want you to know that you know these books are not etched in stone it's very fluid we change I can't think of a year that's gone by that we haven't made a couple changes in summer reading and um I don't know none of our books have a permanent status at the high school and we always take these things into consideration and we will certainly continue to have conversations about it um so I don't you know we're not trying to inflame the community with any of our book selections we're doing things that we think are in the
066best interest of our students question um okay so I have a couple comments um one I don't have a dog in this fight I have a senior and I have a son who goes to private school so uh two I've I have spoken to a lot of parents about this book and I have suggested they reach out to the board as a whole or reach out to Administration and often whether it's true or not they are afraid of repercussions for their children you know so that is a shame three in all the conversations I have had nobody has ever said anything about the boy being gay nobody cares about that it is about the over sexualization they could care less whether that is boy girl boy boy girl girl so to assume that's what it
067is is offensive but I'm not assuming that's the case I just want to bring that about as a as a possibility so but I understand can I ask for a clarification can you help me understand what the fear of repercussions means what is it like there's The English Department that something bad will happen they're afraid their kid's gonna get a bad grade you know everyone's trying you know everyone is afraid that their kid is gonna I have heard it so many times not just about English about everything I don't want to you know say anything wow okay because I'm afraid my kids now I have said listen I have been vocal for years right clearly my daughter has never had any repercussions right and I have I've said that that it's not a thing it
068is a fear that people have that is false I've never heard it about academics I'm sorry oh no oh yeah yeah yeah all the time all that I've heard it so many times and I've always told them that it's absurd because they're clearly as we know my daughters well and obviously we as as Sarah just pointed out a number of the complaints that we have heard come from people who don't even have students in the high school and or in this course so those individuals also fear repercussions to their students academically yeah um and they also you know people are also they look at one thing and they look at you know what's happening elsewhere and we know how long things taken in schools right how long did it take to get a you know
069AP in English right second AP like these things take forever I mean we're still we're still talking about you know accelerating math for 20 years right things take a really long time to move so kids people with young students to look at the high school and think well what's going to be there when my kid gets there or how long is it going to take to change it's also important to point out that the board level is not where specific book or instructional issues where concerns with those should be directed like the board as a whole doesn't have you know we'll we will not say to you Mr jonesco you can't use this book anymore that's not our purview so if parents in the district are having issues or have concerns or questions they need
070to go to the teachers and the and the administrators in charge um yeah we're happy to hear those concerns but we can't act on this yeah I I would invite you know that to happen and I you know I know it is happening on a sort of uh uh Central Services kind of level um but yeah I mean look we want to have feedback on this I will Echo what you said about um parents having a fear I mean this is just across the board it's not about this particular Orca issue but as a I'm sure Mr Keeler will say the same I mean for any circumstance that a parent brings to a department chair There is almost always some line about you know I'm hesitant to do this because I don't want to have
071any reprisals or whatever we do our best to you know allay those fears because you know I'll just say that you know people get into the teaching profession because they want to help and support students and not you know take of their vengeance upon them so um but you know so I I that part that's that's very valid um so I just want to make sure that that's clear but um you know I'll just say that you know I've given you a sense of what we do when we make our book selections we're doing our best um and we're doing our best to um you know put our kids in a position to learn and have conversations and and um and uh you know read books that we value do we think it would be
072valuable to share or make available what you referenced examples from other well-known and widely accepted uh books used for teaching that also include yeah I mean similar I mean I'll just say that I I I I wanna look I'll just say if people want to have a conversation with me about the book I I want to make sure that they've read the book right and I I think if you read the book there are some scenes that have not been brought about uh or have been focused on in some of the emails that have been sent to the district that um you know we can have conversations about but I think that um you know if you think I mean pretty much any of the core classic texts that you would expect that we would
073do in high school you know on my list Catcher in the Rye curious incident of the dog in the nighttime the things they carry The Outsiders The Glass Castle Slaughterhouse Five Death of a Salesman Grapes of Wrath their eyes are watching God Romeo and Juliet let me just tell you it's really hard for our teachers to have a unit on Romeo and Juliet where sex doesn't come up because it's available in the entire play so I'm just saying that there's not a scene but I you know but there isn't really a scene in Things We Lost in the water either so um so anyway look uh is this the first time we've had a book challenged no is this the last time it won't be um well I am very pleased by if I can
074just make a shout out here is that we we did our English 10 curriculum over the summer and we're concluding right now a unit on banned books and so just about every book on this list has been banned over the course of time in America for one reason or another because the community didn't find them viable or were offended by some element of them and it's been eye-opening for our kids because basically the books that they're reading for an independent selection in that unit are our Classics but they've been banned and so it gives them a chance to read something they've always heard about and know that it was banned and they're reading it through the lens of why did this book get banned and so the um the assessment that the kids are doing
075at the end of the unit as a very authentic one I think is that they are writing a letter to our superintendent um either defending the book or advocating that the vote is banned so they have a chance to do that um with a guy what I think is a pretty authentic task and our superintendent has been gracious enough to read at least a sum of the selections called by our teachers and he will be giving them feedback on it so um who knows maybe the the videotape of this meeting will be a piece of that unit next year I don't know um but um you know all I'll say is that um you know when teachers make book selections and at the high school there is nothing more vital for the teachers than the
076book selections that they make that are the the basis of the units in in our high school and um to the high school teachers these books all the books that they teach have a sacred quality to them that they really probably don't have for us uh I include myself among them uh the teachers of high schoolers who find them sacred and certainly uh we try our best to explain to the students why we find these to be great works of of literature um but you know we like to think of them as powerful and you know life-affirming and life-changing kind of texts that the kids read and um so anytime we have discussions about this and about elements of literature you know a part of us we don't look I mean I'd be I'm not
077saying that we're happy that there's been a lot of criticism directed at this particular book but we're talking about a book and that's not a bad thing so thank you um I think one of the things we would all agree our time at a great that one of our biggest assets next to our students and the biggest difference that will make at China's life and in terms of learning uh and as the actual teacher in the classroom uh so the quality of our teachers the capacity of our teachers the thoughtfulness of our teachers the intelligence of our teachers and and the leaders that you see this morning that's something that all of us on the board and everyone actually uh really really supports so I just want to reassure people that the selection of these
078as you can see today like in the thoughtfulness of the presentation uh that there's a lot of thought and discourse that goes into the selection of the books I would also say they're not really exclusive like we're not tone deaf and neither I say that very respectfully and the the uh our department chairs our leaders aren't either it's not as if whether we have had discourse over selection of social studies materials with Keith that Francis uh English materials we'll all if even if it's a disciplinary right and let's say we didn't agree we would also always sit down professionally in an occurrent way reflect upon the feedback that we're here I would say that that one of the tennis tariffs of the community could be that they're they're afraid of what would happen to their
079student or whatever that means right and I don't think that's unreal um an unreal sentiment but it's also a culture that I think we have to continue to work at because otherwise it just weren't um and the professionals who are actually uh delivering the content don't have a chance to actually uh share the perspective and it may not be a mutually agreed uh outcome to that but but minimally they have to have the opportunity to do that and anytime we can continue to support a culture where based on trust these are professional people right we're in the professor because we curve but kids We're not gonna like the idea of Retribution and so on so forth I understand it comes up I understand it's a real thing but uh but anything that collectively we can
080do to continue to promote uh that sense of trust with their staff uh it's not that there should be any disagreements or otherwise you hear that today people are open to that discourse I would just continue to encourage them or we can um because it's the best way to really resolve something um and actually get to the difference between those and that's fine there's not uh uh maybe there can be a resolution but I I I I think that today's discussion actually is very important as a positive positive experience to have actually in this description yeah can I just add one thing just because I don't want anyone leaving offended because leaving meetings offended is never a good way to end any meeting and we still have somewhere to go um the francis's comment uh
081there was an article in Ed week a couple of weeks ago regarding critique of books right now and the national critique that's happening does happen to be books with lgbtqia plus characters and things related to immigration so that's kind of part of a national um thing that's happening and this book happens to be both of them um so we're just naming that and I also do want to name because we're really talking I think there's less than 10 people that we've heard from collectively but among the ten one person did write that I don't want this title selected or any other genderqueer books for kids so that is part of the probably six yeah and that was a couple that I'm going to say it with with my name should not be selecting books and
082I hope you heard today and for the record Chris tranberg does not sit and so like bucks this is a team of Highly competent people and from Jaclyn's presentation to looking at Student Art it felt so good to start this meeting to hear the talents of our staff talk about the thought that goes into all of these processes and I I will Echo too I know that there's a feeling every place I work there's a feeling of Retribution when you come to to try to engage in these conversations but like Dr Hadley said this is a group of professionals who want what's best for kids every one of us every single day in this town no matter where we are on any Spectrum want what is best for kids it's like a shared goal we
083have and if we can Center ourselves on that in every conversation we have we'd be in a different place most of the time tequila right okay good morning everyone so I I will um maybe start by just by saying that I I a small shout out to Jacqueline and the art department for beautifying our buildings too I feel like I kind of wish that we could hang history papers around the building the same way and it would have would have impact but I don't know that it would um so the you know I'm gonna talk about the selection of resources that we use um on the history side of things and the closest thing to our a whole a whole class novel is really the the textbook selection process that we might go through the
084textbooks that we would use when we're selecting a textbook we start really by identifying a need and that need can come from a number of different places it could be that we have a text that's outdated or there's new scholarship in the field New research recently in the last few years we've replaced our psychology elective textbook um the science in there just wasn't up to date and and really needed to be needed to be renewed um were in the process for this coming budget that we'll be submitting very soon um looking at AP we've finished really looking at AP European History textbooks um and so that came about you know the book that we had was older we wanted to make sure that we had something that was up to date um standards and Frameworks
085change over time and that can also be really important driver of when we need to look for a textbook so once we've identified that need then we have to gather samples and there are a number of Publishers who will send us things freely and send us samples um unsolicited other times we'll reach out and say Here's the class here's the topic you can you know do you have anything that might be available that we could look through um there are some texts that are really widely published for particular areas those we would certainly ask for we also can work with our other dirt and Regional colleagues so next week I have an opportunity to attend a social studies department chair director um meeting at CES and that's a great place just to exchange ideas I
086can ask you know you know this is the text that I'm looking for this is the the class that I'm looking for do any of you have any suggestions that I should look through um and that's a really helpful group to to work with as well and anytime you attend professional conferences there's always lots that's available there um the companies I think are are pretty quick to send us samples um and also give us online texts that we can review as well so once we actually get our Collective group um what we're going to start by doing is really looking to see how aligned is the content of the textbook with what we really need it to be um I think I heard it said before by one of my colleagues that you know these
087books don't drive the curriculum but they serve to support what we're doing um and so that's really the first important question we ask is is the content aligned we look to see is the text rigorous and complex but also making sure that it's not too rigorous or too complex it has to be appropriately accessible for the students who are going to be in that class and then also especially now more so than than before I think we have to consider things like is there an online version if you want the online version what does that look like are there other supplemental resources that might be really useful for our classes do we need those what's the cost of it um once we go through this whole process we ultimately land on the text that we
088want it gets submitted in our budget request and makes its way through the budget process and then we purchase as we the budget rolls over at the end of June into July every year and gets ready for the next school year foreign one of the other kind of main sources that students will let that students will look through when they're taking history classes are we might call like student sources so there are going to be things that we ask students to go out and find and look for it's important to note though that this is a responsibility that is gradually turned over to students in grades 6 through 12. so we don't start in grade six by saying let's start googling and see what we can find we're really careful about how we do this
089there a lot of the material that you find in sixth and seventh grade any and eighth grade tends to be very curated so here is a pool that we want you to look through to find the information that you might need um we're trying to be careful that students have something that's readable and accessible but also content appropriate for for the age group um that we're look we're working with the when you move into like the high school that's where you might find like in a 9th or tenth grade research paper students are really being encouraged to go out and find additional sources see what they can see what they can uh discover on their own um written into our vision of The Graduate is the competency of curiosity and so we want nothing more
090than students who um because of the work that we're doing in class say I actually was looking this up on my own and I found this really interesting and I want to know more about this um so we are almost always going to encourage that the the times where we're going to really pull back and ask students not to seek additional input is when the assignment is such that part of it is designed to assess how students read and understand material so a good example would be like in a document-based question in a DBQ that we would give in a history class those assignments we ask students not to go out and seek additional input because we're really trying to see can you read and interpret the chart the map the primary source the the
091political cartoon whatever it might be so that's those are the times where we would really say stick with what we're giving right now when students are turned loose or eventually turned loose to do this it's only after they've really been taught to evaluate sources and they're giving you some sample questions on the right side of the the slideshow here these are some of the things that they have to consider is the source current is it reliable who is the author where does it come from what's the purpose what's the perspective um you know these are things that over time you start even at six and seventh grade even though they're not going out and seeking a lot on their own we're starting to build that competency early on so that they have the ability to
092do it as they mature through the agreements foreign one of our other main readings that we work with students on particularly in our history classes is primary sources this is what Chris had mentioned before the distinction between primary and secondary in the in the social studies world when we're talking about primary sources we're talking about um artifacts that were produced in a in a specific time period the time period that we're studying um oftentimes it's pieces of writing but it doesn't have to be necessarily these are really the basis for our history classes they are um even if we're not reading all of them which would be impossible in our classes the secondary source the article the documentary The Textbook is based on somebody's reading of those primary sources so we we do want to
093give students the opportunity to explore them they're incredibly interesting they grab attention and they are really what allows us to explore critical thinking and push critical thinking with students you really can't have even a text a primary source that presents as unbiased or seems unbiased has some degree of bias in it by virtue of what was included what was not included what was the order how were things said I mean it to name just a few so it's really important that students learn over time to explore these primary sources and understand a lot of those same questions who wrote this why did they write it who did they think was going if it was a piece of writing who did they think was going to be able to read this why would they have said
094what what they did and when we really start to explore that that's where we're able to develop a lot of nuanced thinking um going Beyond just the simple what did the author say is where our classes really get interesting and that level of thought is what we're pushing students to do so the primary sources are incredibly important um we also try to be really careful that we leave that views for students as well they have to be something that is appropriate for their age and the content that's being presented they also have to be relevant um there are plenty of things that I've found over the years that I felt like really did a wonderful job of making a point or illustrating um some idea or Trend in history but the problem was that the
095text was way too hard or way too long or not practical to use with students and so in those cases we simply wouldn't use them so those are some of the things that we we tend to go through and think about as we're we're working with students on this and again I'll just close the primary source section by saying this is really one of the main areas that we work to teach students to think independently to be critical consumers of information and although we may do this oftentimes in the context of historical pieces it will serve them very very well in their lives where there is just so much information that they're exposed to um and lastly as we're as teachers as we're trying to figure out where do we go to find this information
096for students how are we going to incorporate readings into our classes we have a variety of places that we can turn that we can work collectively some of these like the national awards are more fitting for my English English counterpart here but in terms of um you know what the district uses we have Library databases that are incredibly useful these are helpful to teachers to find information but they're also helpful for us to direct students to and we have some really outstanding databases that we have access to there are other District resources they vary a little bit from school to school depending on um you know the age of the students but these provide us with article like like article it's kind of periodical type um Publications that are really useful um and really can
097illustrate points well for us in terms of web resources there is so much that's been digitized over the years in the world of history so for a lot of uh colleges or or historical societies they have really large Digi digitization projects and so there's so much that's available right now to name a couple there's the National Archives is a really wonderful resource for us there are modern and ancient history Source books that are out of Fordham University um there's many places that we can go and we employ the same the same strategies we teach our students where is it coming from who's the author why was it published and we have to hold ourselves to that same standard that we expect our students to use when they're doing work for us lastly um in terms
098of current events this is probably one of the areas where you know I think students really look to their social studies teachers when something happens in the world they they often look to us first and it's interesting now because something can happen over lunch and you know particularly at the high school you know students will have access to their phones really easily and there may be these alerts that are going off letting them know this breaking news this is going on in the world or nationally um and so when that happens we you know we we take that responsibility of dealing with what's going on in the world very seriously and I think the way that we tend to approach this is really to start by at start by answering students questions because oftentimes they
099come in just just having questions to say well why and what what is that who is this person um and so we try to give them some basic information um in the moment and we'll try to field some of their questions and some of them we have to say you know that's something we should really explore I'm not really sure about that we try to be responsive when things happen that are relevant to our curriculum and again we we there's a whole variety of places that you can turn to this where you know some of us were talking at the outset of this meeting how great podcasts can be um you know there are certainly digital uh texts that we can look at articles from current news news organizations there are written ones there are
100uh short video clips some of those can be useful to use with students we vet them and we also share a lot there's a lot of collaboration in the context of current events and throughout everything I've just talked about um you know one of the strengths one of the things that I have the pleasure of talking about when we're hiring candidates is typically they'll ask well what is the department like and I have an opportunity to sing their praises and say this is a really a really talented group of teachers who take their jobs very seriously who care for the disciplines that we teach and really want to bring that to life for students and that comes through in all of the formal and informal ways that we collaborate and and work together so I
101think that brings it to a close for me thank you I'm happy to answer any questions that you all might have um just similar to what we talked about with Mr Tasco when people have concerns about whether it's a document passed out in class or a resource used do you want to be that person should they go to the classroom teacher who what do you suggest so I'm my door is always open my my email is always open my phone is always open I am happy to be contacted I often think that contacting the teacher first is best I just think they're going to be able to really give a sense of here's what we were doing in class here's why we're using it I certainly can do the same thing but I I feel
102like it it Fosters a good relationship between parent and student um I think with what the Swarm was saying earlier I I hear that a lot when parents do talk to me as well that their concerned that they you know can you leave my child's name out of this but I want to talk to you about X um and you know I try to reassure them as much as I can that as Dr chamberg said nobody said it nobody gets into this profession because we're eventually wanting to be out for vengeance we get into this because we want to help our students and help to help them to grow and I look at all of this parent interaction as parents who want the best for their kids and have a concern in some form or
103another um that they're that their kids get good experiences and that they have a a helpful a helpful time in school and I can very much appreciate that being a parent of the three myself so um I don't I welcome it but I would say initially I would reach out to the teacher if that feels unresolved or you didn't get the you know it didn't help then by all means reach out to me and if more comfortable than my door email and phone are open okay thank you any questions um just just one and uh I I definitely learned something today but um for both of you thank you for the very thorough um presentations um Mr janosko we got very focused on yours very quickly so I just want to back up and say
104it's very helpful and I do I mean I look at the curriculum today and I'm so appreciative of how far it's come from when I'm pretty sure I read Charles Dickens year after year after year when I was in high school so it's nice to see how contemporized or or well-balanced things are today I was just curious for the both of you has the process changed much in how things are selected um and if so what has led to that and if not then then it hasn't in some ways it hasn't changed much um in some ways it's changed tremendously um you know um so I'll I'll get at uh how it hasn't changed and as someone who has the vantage point of being in this District since 2003. um the way we um put
105forward book requests for the high school I can only speak the high school I didn't do the Middle School in those days um it typically comes at uh at the end of the year when there is a time crunch and from my vantage point um we have to go through the process fairly quickly um when making decisions because ultimately we want to get the books and the kids hands come September and that doesn't happen overnight and there's a lot of books that we wind up ordering not just new books but predominantly it's just replacement texts for ones that we've lost or were wrecked from the previous year um so just as an aside um I do think that um I could tell you that we're going to have a conversation at the high school about
106streamlining that process and we're going to do some reflecting on when we do certain things because um you know as much as I think it's important that we you know make these decisions based upon the curriculum I I empathize I get what the you know the parent response to a book like this but if they don't have the context of what we have in the other books that kids are reading and part of the reason why is because they've heard the titles of these books so many times over the courses of their lives they or maybe even they read and forgot that these books also have passages in them that if I isolated just those passages you know any parent could isolate those passages send emails to Dr adelian Dr tranberg and we could be
107looking at removing any book from our curriculum I think the thing that's changed um if I go back two years um when uh in the spring when we all have the pleasure of leaving the building for the pandemic that was also a year you understand me that that was also a year where um we Mr Keeler and I um we had that was in the wake of the George Floyd murder and we had students both past and present who need who we I mean they facilitated it but we joined them for meetings on ways through which we could make our curriculum more contemporary and connected to the world today so those are present students that we had and alumni who were frustrated by what we already have in place because we're not having the conversations
108that they thought were important in the world the following year I had a group of students um this is what 2000 2021 I had a group of students that basically had a club where they were studying the curriculum of The English Department of high school and they were critical of how we lacked we weren't Progressive enough for those these are students now um and we had meetings with them over the course of the year we tried to show them that you know these are the writers that we talked about we kind of did a similar thing to what we're doing today with students so we hear things from both sides of the you know um conversation the national conversation about which books are most appropriate for um our our schools so I would say there's
109a heightened awareness of you know the book selections that we're making um but I want to say that this isn't easy when um it feels like we have um voices from two sides of extreme polls criticizing the choices that we're making and it's really hard to walk that midpoint line and make it all come out right so um so that's a little bit of context to what we're going through right now I think what I would say is that we as a department um with some of the smaller sources that we use we really try to be meaning not like the textbooks which are set and around for for years um we really try to hold ourselves to that as I said the same standard that we hold our students to to make sure that
110you know we're checking to see where did it come from who's the author what's the point of view being expressed what's the relevance perhaps most importantly what are we doing with it um you know it's hard to avoid that that exposure to bias so it's important to name it and bring it out so that we can understand it so I guess in I don't know that anything has has had a dramatic change as much as if that has become more of a focal point of our discussion since we're in plc's and department meetings on TV days and we have collaborative time and we're looking at sources and the work the material that we use with students that's something that I think we we talk about more now I would say um it's not to say
111that we didn't before that we didn't care before but it's something that we is maybe more in the Forefront of our thinking I would say and I I think the consistency is always maybe what's what's the same is making sure that we're finding resources for students that are appropriate for their age with the content that we're exposing them to as well as giving them an opportunity to develop the skills that are essential and that we teach in our classes so it sounds to me correct me if I'm wrong that it that the the inputs and the variables have maybe grown in complexity and and number but your process for sorting through all of that information and the way that you work through it has has remained mostly the same is that a fair characterization for
112us I think that's quite fair and um but I would say I love the way you put it and with that rise of complexity I think to meet the challenge we're gonna have to figure out a way to um have more steps of our process so that we can I'm not saying need complexity with more complexity just for complexity's sake but I do think we have to respond by reassessing how we do things yeah we are looking at all of those processes right now and one of the big steps we're taking is a more interdisciplinary approach because you often get feedback from other colleagues not in your department area who come in with the lens that can be really helpful in making those decisions so that's the work of our curriculum leadership team this year
113I think I always like to True back up to our vision which is preparing all students today to thrive in a changing world tomorrow and it sounds to me from what you said today that you're doing that in a very thoughtful way and that you're thinking hard about what our students will need when we launch them into the real world after they graduate so I think thank you for for being thoughtful in from Julie all the way up like it's it's clear that it's being done um not really knowing exactly no I want to thank them uh for the candid discourse and uh for the leadership this is again we recognize the leadership and we recognize the talent for teachers this is a time where you lean into that you can't just be selective around
114it and uh but they're also again very inclusive and what their self-chargeable yeah thank you all for for being here and for sharing your thoughts can I just share one other thing before uh just because you brought up PC uh I just want to prize just of the development um for the Pre-K the reading programs from the uh from from the state there were six programs that were selected and initial list doesn't have TC on it as you know we supplement our programs with heckerty and Foundations and so on um they're they're developing a waiver process for districts there's many districts are all around us and uh further across the state that use TC uh so they'll be they're developing a waiver process and I'll fill the board in a little bit more but we'll
115be participating in that thank you thanks and we move on to public comment is there anybody in the good morning um Mr ceney has his hand raised sorry I can't see that in the room yeah should we well we'll let John's go ahead John I mean expect special treatment thank you can you hear me yes we can go ahead um so I appreciate it um I just wanted to log in appreciative comments as well I think when we envision this committee we wanted to see you know transparency of discussions around curriculum like this and I just you know applaud us all for for having them and again just a heartfelt thanks uh getting deep into the content this morning and really having that that conversation that I think a lot of parents will appreciate um
116as we move this committee forward thanks Jeff good morning my name is Deborah Ritchie I live at 16 Stony Brook Road South I am the co-chair of the council for Darien School parents but these comments are my own again they are my own comments thank you I just want to thank the darien board of education for their passion and dedication to educating our children I thank you for the hard work I thank Dr adley for your leadership and I just I want to thank Chris and Francis and Keith and Julie and also Jacqueline for your leadership I want to thank you for challenging our children I want to thank you for your passion for Education your thoughtful approach I appreciate it that my son is for in school disclosure he's a ninth grader and he's
117reading Great Expectations right now and he is loving it and I am loving being part of that process with him and going back in time and revisiting a classic that I loved but I am also appreciative of the Contemporary choices that you have because it is exposing our children to different perspectives and current perspectives in our world and also we just wrote a great essay about Alexander the Great so yeah in that Western Civ class that we all dread but I just I just want to really say how grateful I am as a parent for all of you because because of you our schools are fantastic and great in the top of the state and I just want you to know that I appreciate you thank you there are no raised hands okay okay