001we are now recording and we are now live [Music] good morning everybody it is wednesday march 30th this is a meeting of the curriculum committee of the durian board of education we are first thing on our agenda is the world language department update and we are fortunate to have christina mauricio here to give us an update and uh dr tramberg will help us as well so i'll turn it over to you all i'll just say good morning everyone and turn it over to christina to walk us through the slides okay good morning um thank you to the members of the board of education curriculum committee for giving me the opportunity to present an update on our secondary world language program and to share with you some plans for our program's future today i will briefly
002review our department's thematic approach to instruction and provide you with an overview of how our curricula are currently structured i will also share how we have been incorporating diversity equity and inclusion into our teaching practices for several years and how we highlight underrepresented voices we are wrapping up our annual proficiency assessments in grade 8 and at the high school and have some preliminary scores which will shed light on how recent curricular changes have made an incredible impact on what our students can do with the languages they are learning and then i will share how we are preparing for bringing on two new courses at middlesex and dhs and finally i will share some upcoming curricular revisions and how our department is poised to meet our eduplanet rollout with great success it has been several years
003since i've had the opportunity to present to you so i'd like to start with this graphic in the world language world we call this the themes bloom all across the united states world language programs like ours are governed by the american council on the teaching of foreign languages standards or actful for world language instruction ten years ago as programs sought to accelerate language instruction and open access for more students to study languages at a higher level the college board's ap world language program synthesized all of those standards into this venn diagram this diagram makes it easy for us to visualize what our students learn and categorize it into wider broader themes that are all connected and five years ago here in darien we made the transition to each course exploring one theme per marking period
004this way our students are able to take a deeper dive into the material over a longer period of time and truly master it to illustrate this with an example food where we previously would have a two-week unit on food as just a superficial topic we now have a nine-week thematic unit on contemporary and daily life where we explore how to make healthy food choices how to describe your food preferences and the historic origins of ingredients used to make certain cultural dishes to that end our curricula are currently structured in the order you see here in addition to making a shift to thematic instruction five years ago we also made a shift to backwards design which puts our department in a good place to move into eduplanet right away our units begin with the unit overview
005and supporting information for teachers and this is where we tell the story of a unit the why behind what we teach and provide notes for instructors for example our sixth grade curricula in spanish and french begin with a unit zero which is intended to acclimate students to five days of language instruction at middlesex and more importantly how to be an organized independent middle school student in the spanish or french class that speaks or attempts to speak in the target language for the whole class period then we list our thematic essential questions and supporting questions which act as a frame for the things students will learn and by the end of each unit students should be able to answer each of those questions using the new linguistic skills i have acquired and eventually take those skills
006with them into the next unit and the next school year and beyond what we in the ubd world call transfer goals then we list out acquisition goals also commonly referred to as essential knowledge or a toolbox here is where we explicitly state everything that students will learn the vocabulary grammar and linguistic functions if you think back to your own time in a world language class your course's curricula probably started with this in a backwards design model the vocabulary and grammar student learns is so that they can use it to do something to listen to speak write and read about what they are learning and not the driver of instruction or of content and finally our curricula end with links to our resource folders and common assessments stored in drive and our instructor notes the instructor
007notes are how we exercise our responsive curricula and there teachers can make notes about how to tweak lessons based on student performance and lessons and on common assessments within a unit make recommendations for curricular shifts in subsequent school years and account for how to adapt units of study to departmental school or board and district goals and initiatives i.e the sealed by literacy vision of the graduate or mastery-based diploma and all of these are summarized on the curricula at a glance public facing documents which are available on our department's curriculum page world language instruction in general has always been at the forefront of furthering diversity equity and inclusion initiatives and for us it is not something that's new or a list of buzzwords because language itself is a cultural artifact learning another language puts you the
008learner in direct contact with the culture and people to whom that language belongs the actual standards that govern us guide us through the teaching of diverse cultures and languages with the three ps products practices and perspectives when we teach culture through this lens we channel our students own experiences by exploring the ways in which we are similar to rather than different from the people and places they are learning about and our curriculum in particular challenge students to draw connections between themselves and the cultures they are learning across levels regardless of proficiency for example a student with novice language skills can easily make these connections in the target language by learning about a cultural celebration notable figures typical food and dishes famous artists and traditional music furthermore an intermediate to advanced learner can do those things
009while also being able to understand historical concepts read authentic resources and process contemporary issues an example of this is our recent lunar new year celebrations and our mandarin classes at dhs which were recently highlighted in a recent issue of dhs happenings students in mandarin one celebrated this event through learning vocabulary and cooking new year's dishes and cooking where they go oh my gosh oh my goodness cooking uh new year's dishes whereas students in mandarin four made their own calligraphy following the traditional artistic method explored why this year of the tiger is particularly significant for the chinese people and drew comparisons between lunar new year celebrations in chinese communities across the united states so again we see how this approach allows students across levels to learn about the same products practices and perspectives in a way
010that is appropriate for what they understand about the world and what they can do with the language i'd like to transition now to our yearly stamp assessment and some preliminary scores the standards-based measure of proficiency is a computer adaptive assessment that calibrates a student's proficiency level in the four skill areas students can score novice low from bottom to top novice low mid high intermediate low mid high and advanced low mid high we've just completed testing at middlesex and despite covid these are the best scores our 8th grade students have earned since adopting this assessment in 2018 and not only highlights our students efforts but my colleagues efforts as well in both languages our students are meeting or exceeding target and the reason why students have a higher proficiency level in spanish is because they begin
011learning the language much earlier in kindergarten the data from and i can go back to that if you have any questions about it the data from dhs is preliminary and incomplete as we have not completed testing in all languages just yet however most scores are in from french and spanish and these numbers represent a composite score of all juniors and seniors currently enrolled in these languages with an overwhelming majority again scoring on or above target and you will also notice that spanish learners are getting into the advanced range in all four areas because of how much time they spend in our program and next month when all of our scores are in i will be able to share the list of seal of by literacy earners from this year's graduating class and in darien we
012award this yield by literacy to students enrolled in our world language program as well as students who are heritage speakers of languages other than english and i predict that this year we will have the highest number of steel earners since adopting the program in 2017 not only because not only in the number of students earning the seal but also in the number of languages represented on our list we have two new courses coming up this school year year one of mandarin six at middlesex and ap spanish literature at dhs the new mandarin six course at middlesex begins with the fundamentals of character writing by hand and on the computer and in pinyin which is the romanization of chinese characters and hones in on proper pronunciation and understanding tones i do not need to go into
013too much detail here because um on the different units of study because you all have seen them already in my in my course proposal but i do want to take a moment to note that while these units may seem basic and perhaps superficial in subject matter in reality they are the fundamentals of the language and due to the complex nature of written and spoken mandarin chinese and the physical age of grade six students our students will require a full year of study to be able to progress into more complex languages by starting with these topics here and all the way on the other end of the proficiency continuum is ap spanish literature and culture and i also do not need to go into too much detail here with this because you are already familiar with
014the proposed course and as a former teacher of this course that uh considers this material to be her wheelhouse i'm going to have to stop myself because i'm very very excited for not only this content but for the fact that our students at dhs will be able to take this course but i will say that this course is the equivalent of a fourth or fifth semester university course as evidenced by the literary genres shown here and it is almost exactly like the ap english literature course the main differences being obviously that this course is taught in spanish and that it comes with a prescribed reading list from the college board and my last slide we have four writing and revision projects coming up at the end of the school year and in the summer the
015first is a revision of french six which we are using as our first course for eduplanet to which we will subsequently add french seven and eight in the coming school year and then of course mandarin six because it is a new course and we're also revising spanish eight which is the second course for eduplanet and dr tramberg has asked us to begin with just one unit in one course but because our world language curricula are already backwards designed and my colleagues are very accustomed to this model we're going to push several steps forward and do two whole courses rather than just one unit and we are now currently selecting our curricula for ap spanish literature and culture and in order to pass the ap audit we must select one of the four sample curricula from
016the college board uh this is the um ap spanish literature and culture is the only literature course that is offered in the world language program at the college board and so what they do to make it easy for programs and schools to adopt this course into their program of study is they say here are four curricula you can choose from the list is the same for all of the curricula but they just give us a framework and we just have to choose one based on what we think is best for our students and in speaking of things that are upcoming we leave for spain in eight days and the trip has been several years in the making and in the waiting and because of you it is finally here so thank you very much and
017that's all and i'm happy to take any questions you may have great thank you christina that was a really really nice overview of what you guys are working so hard to to make our our students have some excellent language experiences i'm very excited about spain and i hope you have a wonderful time um i will open up to board questions okay thank you you answered a lot of my questions for your presentation so thank you um i had a couple questions around this stamp uh-huh testing i believe you mentioned targets yes but i don't think we have them here so also said that these are great scores compared to what we've seen in the past so that's very reassuring but for example for the eighth grade results the speaking numbers are lower is that as
018we would expect or is that an area that needs further development it just if you could speak a little to that yes so to answer the first part of your question what is the target so for a french program like ours where students begin the first time that they take french they begin in the sixth grade and after being in that course for three years meeting five days a week 41 to 42 minutes a day we expect that our students would be novice high or higher than that the main difference between a novice a person that is of a novice proficiency level and let's say an intermediate proficiency level is that they can function in all time frames at the same time so for example in speaking they can speak in the present in the
019past and in the future and that's where the i i call this almost like a ceiling where you can get all the way to the top but if you can't speak in the present past or future you will never progress to the same level and that's just because of the time that you spend learning the language so you'll see on the french side most of the students are in novice high or already reaching intermediate low which is actually i guess going over that ceiling into the next level the speaking you'll notice that the the speaking and the writing those are the most uh challenging proficiency areas just because those are the productive skills so other than receiving a prompt there's nothing in front of you whereas like when you're reading something you can you know
020use your circumlocution or you can use other skills that you have from your english courses to help you get through that reading um but speaking and it's expected that these two would be lower just because those are the more challenging tasks and also the most challenging skills to acquire and in spanish we want what i share with my colleagues is we want them out of novice as quickly as possible because our curriculum in spanish 8 does present all major time frames to the students before they leave so that's they and they're in the program for enough time for us to be able to do that so that's why most of them are in intermediate and what i mean by range is that they're pretty evenly distributed low mid to high and you'll see here again
021that speaking and writing although they are lower they're still overwhelmingly already in intermediate somewhere in the intermediate range yeah thank you and and listening is more of a comprehension read than a than a dictation for example i did a lot of dictation yes yes so listening on the stamp is very similar to the way we assess and also teach listening in our program where you're asked to do lots of things like you listen to a news broadcast or you listen to someone talking about a certain topic and you identify vocabulary words that you hear you answer comprehension questions you put sentences in order it's again challenging for students especially because we like to get them accustomed to listening to different types of pronunciation in different languages and when you're taking a stamp test it's not
022your teacher that you've been listening to for a whole year who might have a pronunciation from a certain country and all of a sudden you hear when the students hear me they're like why do you say those words so they're not accustomed to hearing that um but it is it is comprehension but it's not rote comprehension where the teacher is like you say in front of the classroom do you hear this yes yes it's actually authentic um [Music] listening listening that they're doing yeah thank you this is that one um thank you and to so to follow up on that with a little bit of history um when we brought world language into the elementary school what was frustrating and i wasn't on the board miss maurizio wasn't here the example of what students would
023be able to do would be able they will be able by 8th grade to say where is my refrigerator and it drove some of us crazy because well that's fantastic that you can say that sentence it doesn't make sense um with christina and as department chair i will say the idea that we are now seeing intermediate scores is the scaffolding that we've been looking for in terms of curriculum we have scaffolded so that our kids are able to achieve and then have the opportunity to take ap courses and maybe college credit in the high school so i think this is amazing work these scores are um i'm so proud of them all the concerns we had when we when we were really debating world language in the elementary schools this shows the scaffolding that if
024done right um and done with intention and leadership um that we can really give a gift to our kids i mean i truly believe that foreign language is a gift to our kids being able to speak different languages so these are some of the most impressive scores i've seen and i think you've really kind of stripped away those concerns of like why are we teaching our kids a different language there's a real reason because it gives our kids opportunities absolutely um so thank you these are impressive if you look at um and again these aren't complete yet but if you look at the spanish and the french the the students are already advanced and even in in french where most of these students have only been studying french maybe five to six years versus once
025we get to spanish it's eight to nine years they are also in advanced intermediate is the most difficult proficiency level to get through just because of how much you have to do an intermediate proficiency level is like how we are speaking right now and being able to interject into a conversation follow up with a question that someone asks you with a response that makes sense it's very difficult to get through that but you'll see i mean in spanish it's when i say advanced range these these students are comfortably in advanced in low mid or high we have some students who can't score any higher because the assessment is doesn't let you score any higher so they're um they're they're doing extremely extremely well and the stamp itself the the management system that allows us to
026see the scores will actually allow us to go back into the speaking and writing samples of students so when you have a student that is towards the bottom of your target you can actually go in and read what they wrote and listen to what they said and because this assessment is happening to middle to end of the school year we're able to ask ourselves as my colleagues are able to ask themselves as teachers uh what can i do for this group of students before moving them on to the next school year so it's aligned to how we teach and we're also able to see their actual scores and the things that they turn in so it's a pretty remarkable um assessment and tells us a lot about that so mrs zachman mentioned the elementary school
027curriculum do you use this at all to inform that curriculum and how that is taught and has that changed throughout your time here and what do you think about the elementary yes so at the elementary level they use an assessment it's called an integrated performance assessment the we use those at the secondary level as a common assessment for each unit of study they use one um sort of like a culminating experience for students and it asks students to do the same thing that the stamp does but it's created by our colleagues in the program and is directly related to what the students can can do and what they are learning what we found was because we assess students in the eighth grade we're able to say um we're able to sort of like walk backwards
028and say this is what they can do at the end of eighth grade and this is what they can do at the end of fourth and fifth grade when they take their ipa how do we get them from fourth and fifth grade to here and beyond and because of how well the elementary school students have been doing we were able to make changes to our sixth grade curriculum which then sort of moves the students up so much so that two years ago we in spanish moved our kids up an entire level when they reached to the high school so they were previously entering at spanish two most of them were entering in spanish two they now enter at spanish three or three honors have the option to take two and spanish one is really reserved
029for students that have never taken spanish before so where they previously had two places to go they now have four which really allows us to tailor the language instruction to the needs of the students that are in the class so it really all is linked yep i've been quite i don't know if this is a question for you or for mrs klein but um some of the negative comments that i hear about the world language program is that some special education students are not able to access it because that tends to be what they're pulled out of for their services is there a way to have that not happen or is that just the nature of the beast and unfortunately that is what's what happens okay it's um we look at it every year though
030in middlesex we do use that time for related services or direct reading instruction or learning centers we do have available when students do arrive to ninth grade to start with spanish one or another language and one and that really does address their needs i think there's so much that you can give up in middlesex and um it is unfortunate just the period design doesn't allow that but we've looked at different ways in different configurations there really is no way without compromising for instance sometimes we'll do that short flex period as a related service but you don't want to compromise the related service time because you want to put in the world language so it is a conundrum we continue to look at it but there's no remedy yet other than having more offerings possibly also
031looking at other offerings in the following years thank you that would be good um so um so we will continue to look at that and students it also helps for students returning to district so they've never had a language if they've gone to an independent school or a private program um when they come in they have those opportunities for year one of language um in dhs so that helps also yeah i think that's important to understand that even if you are at middlesex and you are taken out of the language you can go into high school and you're not you're not left behind there are options for you and you can start any language at level one right and by in in spanish because now we don't have only spanish one and two some students
032that have had previous language instruction at middlesex but then are pulled out at some point we give them a placement assessment so spanish one may not always be the place for them to go they may test into spanish too because of their prior um because of their prior exposure and skills that they come to the program with so in giving them and giving the program more options we now give different types of students different options based on their needs also i think there's just also a misconception sometimes that kids don't start at level one in the high school and they do sometimes kids take french and then decide to switch to spanish sometimes kids take spanish and then are like i really want to take mandarin so entering at least in everything i've heard from
033you um and an experience entering at level one doesn't preclude you from having a full rich experience in a foreign language um which is the exciting part about mandarin for kids who want to start that earlier um but i think we see it all the time i watch it in the class groupings i can tell like when people switch from french to spanish or mandarin or you know so i don't think entering at level one precludes you but we have a lot of kids who want to do more and so i think we're offering that although i might really get on that sign language program with mrs klein the other possibility from the middle school scheduling presentation from spring of 2020 was the possibility of a language elective uh so that that scheduling committee and
034i'll talk about that a bit when we get to the gifted update that group is reconvening with the new administration to make recommendations for next fall but in that last proposal the idea of having so this isn't replacing how language works now but also giving an option for it to be in the elective rotation for students who either don't have access during the language instructional block or uh for students who might want to pursue a second language so that's another possibility so they don't have to wait until high school thank you any other questions about world language well it's more of special education than straight up language so the students that are unable because of the scheduling in middle school and then come high school want to get involved in a language what are the
035extra supports for them is there special education available within the language how does that work okay um they're beginning it's just on hello uh they're beginning with a uh an introductory course so as as um christine said um they can start with um just the basic skills in either the languages they're taking so the instruction is really specific to the language any accommodations they have in their iep is an accommodation they have throughout all their classes um so those the accommodations they would receive there is no remediation in a world language that you're taking because you're acquiring it consistent with as you're having the instruction but all your accommodations are available um also in dhs you do have your learning options you can go throughout the day there's teachers there from every discipline and you
036can stop into your connections learning connections and have those opportunities for a language-rich teacher to help support you i do want to say um that my experience with world language teachers are they make themselves available throughout the day before and after for students who have questions about the specific language and of course they're familiar with the ieps and they know all the accommodations so for instance if you have an accommodation that says not penalized for spelling or punctuation in your native language you are not penalized for spelling or punctuation in your world language that you're acquiring thank you [Music] any further questions thank you christina i don't have any further questions i just like to reiterate with what ahman said uh for your leadership within the department for the people or staff here in the
037department it's it's really encouraging and obvious of the the vision you have and the leadership new courses exciting opportunities for kids at different grade levels uh experiences taking kids away not just one year but multiple years these are the experiences that enrich our lives that they'll never forget um so thank you and the members of the department for your continued vision around where languages thank you thank you for supporting our work thank you christina how many kids are going to spain 58. that's amazing good luck thank you have a great trip okay we're gonna move on to our next agenda item which is the gifted education evaluation follow-up with dr tranberg and julie droller [Music] good morning again and thank you uh last spring uh during our june final meeting we had the presentation of
038our gifted program evaluation and in november of this year we talked a bit about what the steering committee and the steering committee was actually one of the recommendations from that evaluation was formed and we shared the priorities so we're going to talk about some progress uh with the priorities from this year and a look ahead to where we're prioritizing for next year so what we had identified uh for this year were the the establishment of the steering committee itself the elementary math acceleration which was an interesting recommendation that came through this process because as i've stated before math acceleration is not necessarily a product of students who are identified as gifted because students who are not necessarily identified as gifted may be high achievers in math and still require access to those types of opportunities
039the middle school schedule in general which has been a regular conversation and the achievers program at the high school which is our unique to darien 9th grade program that's an extension of the idea program just to make some connections to our vision mission and core values especially the vision because i love it so much that i keep trying to get a t-shirt made preparing all students today to thrive in a changing world tomorrow i just think it's it's the best vision statement that's out there this is the membership of our steering committee and we have representation of the teachers in the gifted program some general education teachers uh administration and parent and we do have a student who has not been able to join us yet but that came up again as an important part
040of the steering committee these were our priorities the math acceleration the middle school schedule and then the threshold the credit threshold which we visited as a board last year and there was a desire to know more about what actually would be in that program for it to be worthy of a full credit because it only meets two days in a cycle but it meets for the whole year as we're looking ahead we are looking at curriculum that was one of the recommendations there has been most concern expressed that came through the report if you remember is regarding the middle school curriculum and the middle school schedule so those things go hand in hand but there is a need to visit the curriculum across mostly because there isn't too much student choice in the program itself
041so once students have access they are with their like-minded peers which is an important attribute of a program but there isn't too much independent exploration outside of a given topic so we do want to look further at that the other piece was exploring school-wide enrichment opportunities so that is the enrichment for all philosophy and there are very different philosophies out there on gifted education instruction one is to provide specific programming for identified students one is enrichment for all and the recommendations that came through our evaluation is a hybrid of those two so yes we should be looking at the program itself but we also want to provide more opportunities for all students so they have choice in their learning and one place that we see that for next year and the current proposed budget is
042the uh genius hour at the middle school and another piece that we have not taken a deep dive into is the professional development for staff and julie is here with me i'll ask her to talk a little bit more about where we are with our elementary math acceleration so the math acceleration we have another committee that's studying this we have classroom teachers gifted teachers math specialists at the elementary level middle school math teachers and administrators we have visited classrooms in grades two through five with students who are identified as gifted to see what their math instruction looks like in a variety of learners so we have data from that we have studied a lot of research which has been interesting because um there is research a lot of different viewpoints come out of the research
043we are looking at comparable district visits that was a little bit challenging with covid but we are going to wilton in a couple of weeks we're going to westport new canaan felicia and i have a zoom call to talk about their programs we have also studied our tri-state districts and what their math acceleration looks like when they start what are the opportunities for onboarding um and and offboarding so we've looked at all that we have also consulted with and are continuing to consult with nicole bridge who has been working in all of our classrooms in all five schools so she's actually seen what math instruction looks like she has seen actually our process replacement so we are consulting with her um to get best practices and she has done some work in math acceleration as
044well and then we will be making a recommendation to the board regarding the middle sex schedule we i reviewed recently with uh carolyn rodriguez the recommendations that came from the spring of 2020 and we went back to the people that were on the committee and we thought based on the transition that's happened and the time that has passed we wanted to bring that group back together to make sure they were well calibrated and so they're working on those recommendations so they can be tightened and reflective of the the vision of the current administration and provide access for more opportunities for students where the achieve where the idea program fits in the challenge is students have access to the program during lunch and that wasn't it kind of got quiet for a while because of covid
045it didn't feel like a giant inconvenience but now that the weather is nicer and students can eat with their friends again it's starting to feel like okay this is a problem again so we are looking at opportunities but the challenge is something's got to give so no matter what the solution is there there's some choices that need to be made so if it does work as an elective within a rotation the students are still electing to be part of the program and electing to not do something else the other model is a rotation where students are pulled out of class once uh once every cycle so over a through seven periods they would miss one academic class or not necessarily academic but any one of their periods over seven weeks so once every seven weeks
046they would miss math once every seven weeks they would miss english that makes people nervous because they're missing some academic time but then there's a balance of the the part to balance is students who are identified in these programs are very often among the highest achieving students if they miss math in reality it's not necessarily going to impact their math performance but doesn't mean it's going to alleviate the anxiety they feel about not being in class and not being like the rest of their peers because they're missing class go to another program so that's the the challenge that's there and there's always the opportunity of uh keeping it the way it is uh in the lunch program looking at opportunities during flex so we are doing all of those things but as you're aware time
047is a finite resource and at some point students that are participating in the program will have to make a decision which surfaces again when we look at the achievers program so many students from the middle school to the high school that's when we see students choose not to continue with the program and that's time they're making a full commitment to take one of their periods and spending the whole year and using that as potentially their only elective so as we're looking at the program right now where we are is looking at access one of the recommendations was could we open up access to students in the high school so that's that's something we feel like we can possibly make a recommendation for in the fall when we talk about changes to courses so that would
048be through an application process of some sort that we would develop and we would like to make a connection to on the left side the service learning component which is one of those other recommendations which is an attribute of high quality programming for gifted education to make sure there's something back connecting to the bigger picture of the real world so those are the two things we're looking at for sure emily boston who's the high school teacher in the program is out on maternity leave so we haven't been able to talk to her too much and we need she's a big part of the knowledge of the program and and where it's been and where she would like it to go so we're going to definitely include her there's a ripple effect to it so if
049we make a recommendation for full credit that's supported or if it becomes a letter grade and that's supported that's a substantial change to the program and at the same time if we opened up access it could change the dynamic of what the program is and its connectedness to being a part of our gifted education programming we don't want to lose that that part of it so it's complicated but we are hopeful that we can make a recommendation in the fall within the timeline for the next budget cycle and we're glad to talk about any of the the where we are on gifted education thank you i'll open up the committee questions mrs worm looks like she's ready to go i felt like i saw everyone's mouth open at least once during the presentation um so
050i have a couple questions comments um so not sure where to start uh let's start high school um so one question is more for the board because obviously the administration had already made a recommendation for it to go full credit and the board did not vote for it so i'm kind of curious what the board needs to do that and if administration is supplying what they asked for last year right um so that they can do that because obviously yes they have only needs twice a week but they're doing a lot of work on their own depending on their project what have you we all know that the threshold is different and that probably needs to you know be a little bit more cleaned up um the other thing is middle school the idea of
051uh obviously pull out not a great option and obviously we've been discussing the lunch for a long time that's when they lose a lot of students because of the fact that it's a lunch pull-out they're asking kids that are often you know socially not really where some of their peers are today can you just speak in like i just have the copyright sorry sorry sorry um so one of the things that you didn't mention that as an option you mentioned a couple different options that i know some other districts do is work it into social studies and use that as the gifted period so that they are not being pulled from lunch also not missing an academic class because as you mentioned yes typically some of these kids are the highest achievers and therefore also
052end up in that highest level math not all of them but there is definitely a large group that do and even though they're high achievers that's still a really hard place to be and they most of them do need to be in there in the class in getting that instruction so those are some of my sure if i can respond to just a couple parts of that um [Music] one of them we there is another option we were looking at within the lunch as a potential adjustment for next year that doesn't change the integrity of how we do the program but grouping students more by interest keeping consistency with teacher things like that because the grade levels meet the same grade as meeting the entire lunch period so for the shift of the the makeup
053of the group to change just based on what team the students are on isn't necessary and one of the strengths of the program is the cohort that develops in the elementary schools they're with the same peers for an extended period of time and in the middle school that's a shift of a dynamic of a group every year so that's something we can do potentially in the interim so we are looking at that um i can definitely explore the social studies piece more and as far as the the achievers program you can hit the nail on the head with what i'm struggling with right now is the program can be very rigorous or it cannot be very rigorous based on the challenge that's accepted the mentor the student has but a credit is a credit and
054what motivates students to work hard would be often a grade unfortunately at the end not necessarily the intrinsic motivation that we so hope will motivate students to achieve at the highest level all the time so we're just wrestling with that dynamic because all even though those four things are separate they're so intertwined that once a recommendation is made related to one of those boxes we're trying to check it affects all of the others so we're just taking time to make sure we do that well i also think i think that the the discussion of accountant gifted a particular achievers program came up a number of times regularly and maybe every year every other year type thing um i think the board just was looking for can we have a comprehensive look at this and as
055opposed to just perhaps every year or something this topic comes up maybe through the budget process or otherwise and that was a time just to sort of step back and give us the charge to actually do a comprehensive review of it so if there are changes that are going to come through it i don't think this is on but if there are changes that are coming through it will come through the comprehensive report and also the the budget process the way the recommendations from this will for next year this is that one so i'll do it the other way i'll take off where my storm left off middle school and then go to high school um middle school i i do think we've heard this problem and i do think that it is real i
056think it's an issue the board needs to take up there's there's so there's such little time to socialize and if we've learned anything from the pandemic socializing being with your peers is of true value um so i think we need to solve it part of the problem is it's a discrete group of kids and we're trying to fit it in someday so i don't know you know i would argue social studies as an academic you know and if you're moving forward to history and things so if there's a concern about missing academics we should look at the breadth of that social studies is still taught it's just the way it's taught and it's they still would be learning the same things as far as i've heard you know i would just say that if we're
057worried about missing academics we should look at academics as equal that said if we're looking at choice and we can make this an elective type period where kids are together with the same teacher and there's choice and i don't know what requirements we have to hit i mean you know you always have to have health and there are certain state requirements we have to hit but that might be a way that kids can choose have a designated period have a teacher be with the same peers because i do think in these classes trust among peers is also really important so they can feel the need to like be their own wonderful selves because often they have ideas that their other peers aren't having and so you want to trust in that group so i don't
058know how exactly how that would work with schedule but an elective based would work um or would seem to be a better model to me than missing any academic math history english foreign language any of those high school um to answer first the question because i was one of the biggest questioners of why we were moving to a credit you know we heard it at the board of finance last night they've asked us to look at programs that aren't always as active as we'd like them to be or to do an assessment and what we were seeing was considerably lower numbers and achievers and so the question became is that program a program that we should transition to something else the administration came back to us and said no give it a full credit and
059that disconnect was sitting for us either we need to make it more robust with some more metrics um so we understand what the projects are or we need to look at a different type of program to serve the needs of these students but that's exactly what we were doing and we heard it come up last night like are you reviewing programs or reviewing which programs to keep to lose and achievers fell into that bucket what i find interesting is we talk about opening up the program now that we know there are no barriers to classes if we make this a full credit class with a grade attached any student is eligible to take that class and that also significantly changes what achievers originally was that doesn't mean that's a bad thing it just means that
060we are changing what the achievers program is and as part of a gifted program it is significantly changing so i don't know how you wrestle that um but as i hear those are those are the questions that come to my mind if the idea is we really need to create a space for certain types of learners to thrive which we do in lots of certain ways then um giving achievers a credit in a grade changes that dynamic um i don't know if i'm saying that i think you all know what i'm how i'm saying it i don't know if i'm saying it coherently but um so i feel like we're still stuck and and one of my questions would be in maybe talking to students and achievers is what are you hoping to get out
061of this great this class what opportunities for that goal are there in dhs is this in the right sequencing at the right time and tell us why this is important to you because then i think as a board we can start to wrestle with how to achieve their goals so we do plan on talking to students again because of all the aspects of the program evaluation last year um i did them pretty much side by side with teresa rangel when she was doing the evaluation the time with students in focus groups was the most valuable and insightful of any other part so those conversations need to continue for sure the challenge that is embedded throughout the considerations and commendations is there is a high level of satisfaction with the program but also things that we
062want to change and sometimes making those changes affects the things where there's a high level of satisfaction so that's pretty much what we're wrestling with uh and each of these even though we're trying to compartmentalize them it's very hard to do any one of these things in isolation but it does feel like we're making progress forward at the same time the other piece that i don't want to lose the opportunity to mention as far as something we need to look ahead to because if you if you look at the literature of where gifted gifted and talented education is traditionally the the title and identification but there's much less on the label of gifted it speaks much more to student talents um as the research base is moving forward and we are kind of swung the
063other way on the gifted label so there has to be a look at the identification process and how do we tap into talents and strengths of the gifted area versus you're identified based on our process and now you all have access to exactly the same programming so that's not independent of the curriculum right so if we change that process we're looking at a curriculum that is more uh flexible for students and gives them choice you could tear them okay could you just um talk about that a little bit more about the identification process because it has changed multiple times the past few years i can't i don't even know what it is anymore yeah so it has changed even recently i think it's less than five years i think the last change was so that
064process is sound it's good practice what we don't uh have a process for right now is looking specifically at talents that don't fit the traditional metrics so we do have a process for teacher recommendation for parent recommendation but what if a student is gifted as an artist what if the student is gifted as a musician what if the student is gifted as i mean you name it there's best practice would be to also have an extension that would welcome that as well and then the district becomes challenged with just because you identify a student doesn't mean you necessarily have to provide service in that area but if you have a musically gifted student it would be helpful for the music teacher to know that the student has identified gifts in that area a very strange
065story when i was cleaning out in my last move i came across my master's thesis data and i found my list of the students that i had used and i gave a music aptitude test for my master's thesis and later i became the assistant principal of the high school and i had all of my students from elementary school and when i looked at the list of who visited the assistant principal's office compared to who had a high music aptitude i was like wow if i only knew back then that this kid who i saw in my office had such a high music aptitude could i have attended to their gifts to help them be an orchestra i don't know but it was just really insightful information that sometimes we miss the opportunity to make sure
066we're recognizing and honoring the gifts that students have because all students whether or not they're identified they have gifts they have assets and if we can tap into their assets as early as possible we're going to make them have a more engaging experience throughout so that's the big picture in richmond for all but there's there's a way we should be also tapping into that through the gifted identification process so on that are you also looking at you know more of that 2e component you know the kids that do have a really high iq but maybe on the autism spectrum yes that's a great great example so right now of our 260 identified students across the district 14 are twice exceptional we need to be we need to make sure that our process is not creating
067barriers for students to access a program where they might have gifts that's that's the basic story and that's where we are with as we look to review that as our next the next wave those are the things we want to look at if we think the conversation we're having now is complicated it gets more complicated when we start to do that right but the desire to make the program the best and what our students and meet the needs of our students is why we're doing the work we're doing thank you um so back to math um and often actually it's been quiet for a little while but for a lot of us an off debated issue of acceleration um i think it's great that we need to provide opportunities for children i mean i would
068argue to your point talents in math and english and and and give them opportunities to excel what i get worried about is putting up barriers unintentionally and we have heard this at the middle school level several several times once you get tracked in sixth grade it's very hard to move outside of that track and that really then dictates your math path forward into high school unless you choose to double up on math or get an outside tutor or or test into a program and so i wonder as we do this are we doing this with intention to also understand that learners emerge at different times right you might have been more interested in tag in fifth grade than math but by seventh grade you might really have found your niche um and are we are
069we really looking at how to give kids those opportunities because once we decide where someone is in math in sixth grade they're very different human in ninth tenth grade um and and right now we're we're pretty narrow on on how to do that or you have to go to i would say um difficult lengths to change that so are we are we looking at that because we've asked to look at that for a number of years yes we talked about this quite a bit um i'll say one thing and then i'll turn it over to julie because this is one of our regular conversations but the fact that from fifth to sixth grade there's an opportunity for students to not only accelerate but like double accelerate there's not something magical that happens for most kids
070between fifth and sixth grade that now they're ready to go arguably three times as fast so where in their learning would it have been most appropriate to start to accelerate them because i think the end point the endpoint isn't that much different so if we look at where high school is arguably arguably but most kids are going to end probably near where they are but if we if a student double accelerates and is really struggled by that if they're if they're struggling to do that but we're ready to do that one level of acceleration earlier they could have gotten there if they were accelerated at the appropriate time some students are only ready to within a unit perhaps go outside that unit of study and then that model that model becomes more curriculum compacting so
071you go out for this and then you come back and then maybe you're with the class for that unit then the next unit comes up and you're out again so there's all different ways to look at it and sometimes the answer is not just one answer and that even with scheduling it's not just here's the new schedule option it might be you can do this or this and it might be the same type of recommendation that we bring forward with math it might be this or this or this and this i should say because it's not necessarily one model that's going to meet the needs of hopefully all of the students perfect i don't have that's exactly what we've been talking about no so i guess my two cents on this is a curriculum committee
072that's really kind of diving deep in this i like the idea of looking at different points for kids to accelerate and not waiting until fifth grade because sometimes for kids it's just daunting to think i'm gonna have to go three times as fast and maybe maybe had they been able to accelerate a little earlier it wouldn't feel like such a jump um i do think it's important to look back i would argue for some kids by the time they're hitting their junior year and they're having to look at and you know i know we all don't like and i'm not suggesting teaching to the test you've all heard me up here that that's a bad idea but kids taking acts and sats there certain math that is presumed to have had and if they have
073gotten kind of streamlined in a math track and they haven't hit certain maps it can be difficult coming up against that right um and i do think here in darien we're blessed with people who are willing to invest in education and find ways around that but i do think as a school system we have to look at what opportunities are we providing for kids to accelerate who are ready to accelerate in second grade and what opportunities are we looking for kids who come into their own in any given subject at you know seventh eighth grade i think we do it well at the high school but math is one of those things that is particularly scaffold you know you can't skip algebra 2 and go think you can do calculus i'm hoping that's right that's
074a good one okay thanks so i just i do think as we look to accelerate i also think we need to look that learners emerge at different points um and what i don't want to do is is have such severe tracts that kids don't have opportunities when they start learning and growing to achieve more if they want to yeah for sure and one of the things that we are learning is that we absolutely cannot skip any content and we're also looking at how are we differentiating and providing those opportunities for our learners that need to be challenged in all grades so to that end has has there been thinking elementary at the elementary level has there been consideration to doing instead of doing differentiation within a classroom can you do grade level differentiation so can
075you do can you pull three kids from mrs smith's class three kids mrs jones and that's a scheduling nightmare but that might be a way to create more flexible cohorting so that throughout the years things can change so that is something that we're looking at but also looking at like how do you provide those opportunities so that all students have the benefit of the rich conversation and those rich tasks that are um you know high ceiling low floor and really are differentiated it's a tricky task i had a quick question just on the um how to handle uh pulling out for idea in middle school unless it's changed my understanding is at the elementary we do the pull out on a rotation basis and i understand that some kids enter the program in middle school
076so it's not they haven't been accustomed to that routine however do we know that kids immediately become anxious about missing missing a class every seven weeks as soon as they hit sixth grade where they weren't anxious about it in fifth grade i i asked them about that during the focus groups last year it was about 50 50. so just the idea of it the students like were visibly stressed out just by me asking the question so yes and in the elementary level there's di block and most of the time they're taken out of di so they don't feel like they're missing something and others i will share because the student shared if they were missing something they didn't feel that stress of if i miss math today i'm going to be fine and that goes
077to our desire to make sure math is appropriately challenging every day for all students so i mean arguably part of that is if the kids know they're going three times faster and they're missing there's a stressor there right so again to your point starting that process earlier for kids who are ready might alleviate some of that anxiety um i mean and maybe not all of it and maybe that's still not the right way to do it but i i think the feedback i've heard at this board and the feedback i've heard as we've talked about math since the year throughout the years is part of what these kids value and as part of their identity is how well they do in school so if you take them out of something and they they feel as
078if they're not achieving their stress if we maybe pace that a little differently um and it's not three times all of a sudden faster in in middle school we might we might be able to alleviate their anxiety which i think is overall good for the whole child yes and there's a i would say there's a parent piece that goes with that and the teacher piece as well because it's a shared anxiety from what i've seen yep agreed yeah i love that you guys are looking at acceleration in elementary school because much like all the comments that were made yes being pulled out in elementary school these kids are not being challenged so it's really not a big deal for them to this class they could basically just not go to school and you know hand
079in their little assignments and then they are put into double accelerated in middle school which is super stressful because they should have been accelerated all all along and i think it's also going to open it up to more kids right if there's acceleration done at an earlier level i think we're missing kids that could be in that sixth grade double accelerated which no longer would be double accelerated obviously because it would just be a natural transition what did you first say there i just i don't know when you when you said about the the students in elementary school were not being challenged did i pick that up right oh yes right for years right for years in in math specifically which is why this conversation has been happening for 20 years so i guess some
080contacts that we bet right uh yes we've recognized the dynamic it came through the report we're addressing it uh i i'm just saying no i haven't had kids in the elementary school a sweeping comment i understand people have talked about it we've recognized that we're addressing it um i just would be cautious of saying that no students are no no no of course absolutely some kids are i'm talking about a small subset we were discussing those no no we were talking about those kids that end up in that math three and sixth grade absolutely majority of kids are where they should be and challenged we're talking about a small group of children that i feel have needs haven't been met so i would feel better i would feel better saying that we work to challenge
081all of our kids there are some kids who could do even more and so that it is probably great that at this moment and time we're really taking a deeper dive into how to do that but um i think we look to challenge all of our learners i am just you know we all know that i have that group you know i i hear that group chatter quite often and it is a very small subset it is a small subset but um you know that's it's been an ongoing and yes we have looked to do more and i'm just happy that it's finally going to come to fruition we are grateful to you all for yeah for working on this i'm sorry i just want to add mr stroller thank you for your update because
082it sounds like a very very thorough approach on a very difficult topic so i look forward to hearing more yes thank you and is the goal i know you said you're gonna be presenting things to us is the goal to change things for next year are we still two years out we would be making recommendations throughout i would say we would have an idea of the recommendations this summer and then a more formal presentation in the fall just in case there are any implications for the budget process okay thank you both and the curriculum process correct very much and i i will also need to say on the record the professional development process for teachers if we're asking them to if we're doing anything with how their that schedule works at the elementary level that's
083that would be a big a big shift right for sure thank you and we'll move on to public comment are there any public comment in the audience or i don't see anybody on oh wait let's do it okay we have one okay miss katie lublin you are unmuted and recognized thank you good morning um i always um very much appreciate these committee um subcommittee meetings in particular um so i have a few comments um first i just want to say thank you to miss mauricio um i always enjoy your presentations and i really hope that more parents will be able to come back and view this um you know for one reason is that i think that these presentations and this in-depth discussion about what our curriculum is and how it relates from grade to
084grade from grade level um and building level highlights the just great importance of the department chairs so thank you for your role in that and upholding it um to such a high standard um i could not agree more with dr adley's comment about the life-changing enrichment and worldview expansion that the trips provide um i especially appreciate your comments on a connection to di and the explanation of the three ps um i was really happy to hear about the excitement for the expansion of languages offered to dps students um and i think that this is a great example of how we can continue the excellence of our existing programs without being complacent or stunting growth for fear of diminishing others um it was really encouraged by mr tran um dr dr congratulations dr tran vern's comments
085on the possibility of a language elective i hope that this type of discussion continues and the creative problem solving will continue you know in relation to adding programs and or i should say adding languages and looking at ways that we can get kids in those classrooms um i have to bring up asl again i know that this is championed by some of you at the table and certainly by a lot of parents in town so i just would like to say again to please continue that conversation asl you know would obviously be especially valuable to students with hearing impairment but it would also be a boon for students who have language-based learning differences you know one example um would be a child with a dyslexia profile um you know spanish starts in kindergarten um and
086a lot of children aren't even identified as having language based disorders but they're already into a second language um and then you can think about how they go to the middle school and maybe they have to drop a language and then you know further down the road parents start to worry about well what are colleges requiring for entrances and foreign language requirements um more to come on asl but can't can't go without that plug regarding the gifted program i'm very very happy to hear the conversation about access um i would love to see the administration consider opening access to this type of programming to more students the current criteria is is very rigid and narrow and i don't feel that it adequately recognizes the wide variance in what comprises an individual educational profile or the
087very common reality that most people and not just children are simultaneously high achievers in one area or more than one but not all um it's great to hear that you're talking about opening the access to the high school but you know i have to ask about the elementary and middle school as well i very much appreciated ms lakman's comments about giving access to students who develop as students beyond the early identification years special education remediation is a great example of this again coming back to a dyslexia profile you know you you will have a student who doesn't hear almost a time okay thanks we'll speed up um you know content comprehension versus independent reading high math ability to story problems um uh okay thank you so much thanks katie any other football comment there are
088no more race hands at this time i think you may have a motion to adjourn this one thank you everybody our next meeting is april 28th