001well good evening and welcome to this regularly scheduled board meeting slash study session for the Azusa Unified School District Board of Education on November 15 2022 the time is now 5 33 p.m and we will call this meeting to order and we will begin with our flag salute next we move to item 1.3 which is our roll call uh board member Rodriguez Pena president board member Cruz Gonzalez here and I board member Greer am here board member adianis and board members arianes and Bo will not be in attendance this evening this takes us to uh 2.0 and specifically 2.1 which is the approval of the agenda is there a motion on the floor make motion to approve 2.1 second moved by board member Rodriguez Pena seconded by board member who's Gonzalez any discussion hearing none
002we will move to a vote and the motion passes three yes the two absent this brings us to 3.0 and specifically 3.1 which is public comment on agenda or non-agenda items this is an opportunity for the public to address the board of education on agenda or non-agend items individual speakers may be allowed up to three minutes to address the board of education on any agenda or non-agenda item when the public wishes to address the board on any agenda item they may fill out a blue card stand at the podium or raise their hand while in Zoom attendance the Board of Education members are not permitted to respond to public comments the Board of Education will take blue card requests first followed an order by speakers at the podium and then those in Zoom attendance I
003will ask because we have some uh moments to just celebrate uh the legacy of board member Cruz Gonzalez here in a moment if you do have a comment to make in regards to that we'd ask that you hold that and we'll make some space when we get to uh 4.1 for you to share those comments about board member uh uh Chris Gonzalez so with that said Do we have any blue cards or or other commenters no okay then we'll move on to 4.0 recognition and awards and specifically 4.1 recognition of shielding Cruz Gonzalez or service as board member of Azusa Unified School District Board of Education and I I think it would be most fitting to just uh begin that with a um just really a a thank you and even an even a hand
004clap just for all that you've done foreign and your incredible uh just just years of service and of course there are many uh who are here to to celebrate you and I did want to begin um that Celebration by first calling up uh Giselle from Senator Rubio's office okay then uh Danae from assemblywoman uh Rubio's office good evening everyone my name is Dania Maya I'm the district director for the office of assembly woman Blanca Rubio I actually wanted to introduce our newest District representative that will be covering the city of Azusa which is Alexis Sanchez he's going to go ahead and present these resolutions and then all for recognition as well so we'll give a round of applause hello can you everyone hear me okay um my name is Alexis Sanchez and I am the
005new assistant representative for assemblywoman Blanca Rubio and I'm here today in honor of the honorees member board member Cruz Gonzalez and board member Greer um so today I would like to um I am proud to provide this legislative California legislator assembly resolution to Cruz member board member Cruz Gonzalez on her um membership of the zoo support us unified board School District uh since 2001. so thank you for your service and I also want to congratulate member Greer as well for his um presidency and I have these um beautiful resolutions in honor of you guys oh thank you and we also have representatives from Supervisor solis's office here with us good evening everyone my name is Ryan Serrano I'm a field Deputy with the office of supervisor Hilda Solis and on behalf of supervisor Hilda Solis
006let me say what an honor and a joy it is to be here today to mark this occasion for board member Cruz Gonzalez as a member of the United Azusa Unified School District Board of Education faithfully and with honor integrity and great distinction therefore on behalf of the Board of Supervisors of the County of Los Angeles supervisor Hilda Solis First District hereby congratulates commands and sincerely thanks board member Cruz Gonzalez for her 21 years of exemplary service commitment dedication and invaluable contributions to the Azusa Unified School District and its Mission and extends best wishes for her on a happy healthy and rewarding retirement congratulations thank you and also from the city of Azusa we have mayor Robert Gonzalez grab my bodyguard that's how that worked um and we didn't and we didn't bring anything for
007you Adrian because we know you have some more work today so sorry we brought you some socks we're just here to celebrate uh and I think you've all heard the sentiment this evening this is a celebration for showing uh to to serve the public in any capacity is a it's a journey and sheline obviously you've done this for 20 plus years and that said volumes from the community uh that has supported you and you're you're in the retirement mode of you know you did on your term and and you served this community with with pride integrity and and we can only thank you uh for what you've done for the kids in this community uh you've represented us uh in Sacramento well and we know that your your retirement uh will be well deserved and
008we know that you have a little one now that that you're going to pay a lot of attention to and and you deserve this and so allow these folks here to to celebrate you and and and honor you uh because you've deserved it uh I'm joined this evening by our mayor Pro Tem Andrew Mendez council member Eddie Alvarez and councilmember Jesse Avila so we have some some certificates and some flowers picked from Eddie's Garden so so Johnny come on down and and let's uh let's have Eddie while you do the certificate congratulations again 21 years where does the time go right I mean it went by so fast I just have a certificate I'm going to read real quick in recognition of Sheila Neen Cruz Gonzalez Board of Education the city council of the city
009of Azusa he unites on this occasion to thank you for your 21 years of devoted and dedicated service to the Azusa school committee Community uh signed by The Honorable mayor Robert Gonzalez and the rest of the city council foreign and I don't have an actual speech prepared in a and since Jesse gave you the flowers from Eddie's garden and Eddie gave you the of course Proclamation I just wanted to congratulate you 21 years is an incredibly long time I've been on now two and a half ish years and that seems like a long time to me so 21 years in a good way in a good way the Tribune's gonna caught that watch but 21 years of learning is is literally a significant chunk of your life and I wanted to thank you because I
010I know in this position sometimes there's decisions that sometimes we don't want to make and there's decisions particularly in the last several years that we've made the board has made excuse me and to that that took incredible courage and I congratulate you for that in addition to the board as well so congratulations to 21 years congratulations to as you said for having you and being able to take from you for those 21 years thank you so much interesting and before we take a picture I just wanted to recognize the former mayor Christina Chris Madrid who's in the audience as well [Applause] and I did want to but before I asked my my colleague if she has anything to share I want to see if there was anyone else here that wanted to speak um and
011and share a comment uh this this evening foreign oh my God I am so proud of my lovely wife they don't increase Gonzalez um when I first met her and I had learned that she was uh elected a lot longer than I was I was like he's got more experience than I do probably smarter than I am where she is and so um It's been a it's been a wonderful Journey with you and um I've enjoyed um learning our school board both uh do your business I mean I've enjoyed also uh tagging along to some of your school board conferences and getting to know a lot of your colleagues and just growing art network of friends or circle of some of them become family and so I'm very proud of you love you and uh
012I'm enjoying to now I'm looking forward to having uh more time to spend with you so thank you for uh giving us back my wife good evening my name is Victor Gonzalez my one she's always my daughter I just want to share with you all right she had just come back but it might be hello in July president middle June it's been about two extra weeks in the first first week of July EPA president other s it's just bad I'm more call if I didn't run anything I understand and then on the Wednesday for the Friday to for the deadline she says Dad let's go on the I know sign up for what okay he took out her papers I'm home and on Friday let's go for two hours and she said to go turn
013them in no okay let's go return them in came back to the car I said I forgot one paper so I'm not really running for people with that statement I knew next morning for office he's ready she wanted to back out but she didn't run he'd come back and she won because he was lucky to back into the Union like she was part of a group of eight candidates eight candidates around that uh election and they all won here's one it seemed like yesterday now it looked 21 is later still the same I'm the same thank you very much [Applause] no I didn't plan on doing this uh so my first experience with Sheila mean was like many of you coming to these board members and and then following up with emails and driving you
014all crazy um and from seeing your Poise and the way you would represent represent the community I had a lot of respect for um then through the opportunity of our children being in class together I've had the honor of getting to know you and that you truly speak for children as if it was your own the way you advocate for your son for your child and those experiences and opportunities you want to give him is what you have worked so hard to give to the community and when I first got involved and somebody said you want to make change talk to Sheila Nini and it's been an honor witnessing that and to now call you a friend and to know that it doesn't end here because I know that you're constantly doing things for the
015community and I thank you for being a person with virtue and values that models it and walks your talk so thank you congratulations anyone else and I will turn to my colleague board member Rodriguez painted let me get my clinics on so you know um and and 2001 I do remember shilonin and her dad at La Flor de Mexico back in the days when she first ran for office and I'm like well that young girl you know she's running for school board wow you know how impressive I was that she had the guts and the nerve to do it because it's not easy when you want to run for office or you want to make a difference as young as she is was you know I've known her family for over 20 years but then
016she don't even comes you know and she has always given her heart to the students here of Azusa and also to the community that's how I know her but um and um the thing is in in 2011 she comes knocking on my door to what to recruit me and say Hey you know no there's a school board um you know seat open you want to run and I'm like okay come on I'll help you okay sure so I come in but you know shironin is being so young she has been my mentor she's been been my mentor since day one she took me to csda ACL SBA introduced you to a lot everyone knows her they go oh you're in she don't need sport I'm like like it was her board right because everyone knows
017her that way I'm like no it's this is the board but you know I'm like you know I could be so smart you know I'm here the first year and I'm she knows everything and I'm like but I have to realize Yolanda you've been there one year she's been there 10 years but I always looked up to her she came to my house and showed me how to do the agenda how to follow it properly and when you didn't help I know I can always turn on her she was one of the best board members that you can ask for I'm gonna miss her because her knowledge is incredible not only known a lot of people she knows a lot of programs she knows the right direction she knows the right thing to say I'm
018gonna miss her um sitting across the road this time it's like a marriage right we've been through thick and thin we've been screamed back we've been kicked up we've been yelled at we've been congratulated on and we also have to get we all stick together so I am going to Mr truly you know I'll miss you and I'll say I I think back yeah on just the the pleasure of being able to serve with you on this board over the cap of course these past four years and and just thinking the the roller coaster ride that was this past four years and recognizing that you have have been here and you have ridden those those highs and those lows here in this community continuing as so many have already said to advocate for to speak
019on behalf of to be a voice to to promote Elevate and platform the voices of others um you have have been a an inspiration to me as I as I Look to what it means to be a school board member and and and yeah it's incredible as everybody has shared the ways that you have not only been a mentor but but also just your your your Brilliance and and the ways that you bring that to to this board to this district and to this community and so we we wouldn't be who we are without you having been uh just such a strong part of this team for so many years and we are we we celebrate you as as you you head out but we also you know definitely recognize that the loss uh that
020we have uh with you not no longer sitting around this table but are so grateful for the times that we had or the votes that you've made for the tough decisions that you've needed to to weigh and consider um and I am just personally grateful uh to know you as a colleague to know you as a friend um and and to to share in this community um with you and so I just want to personally say congratulations to you foreign behalf of the Azusa Unified School District we have awarded to shielding Cruz Gonzalez and recognition and appreciation for your service as a member of the Board of Education of the Azusa Unified School District from 2001 to 2022. our president before uh we let Mr Lee and Cruz may say absolutely just want to say
021on behalf of uh cabinet um everything that has been uh said today but I I wanna I wanna I want to just make it loud and clear that um shieldoning Cruz Gonzalez's impact in Azusa goes beyond Azusa um it is uh her presence is felt across the state um not only in her decisions but her work uh her advocacy her uh Relentless um championing of what is right for students um obviously right she's here in our home Azusa but the Ripple effects are real uh and the Ripple effects uh go extremely Broad and so uh we just wanted to say thank you uh thank you for being um such an amazing board member such an amazing partner and just on behalf of the kids and the uh and and hear the district uh we just
022want to thank you and congratulate you and then of course you know you certainly would love to give you a moment chilling to share thank you um and I I didn't prepare anything because I really didn't want to speak for very long but um I do first want to just acknowledge and thank my family for being here I have my parents Victoria Victor my grandmother Caroline Cruz my my cousin's Adrian Joaquin and Roger are all here um uh she was just a grad or two as a unified grad um and my my aunt my Deandrea my sister um and then of course my family my husband Tony and I said who's back there with his friend um it's dual immersion friends yes um and so I I also want to just recognize you know I
023don't think I would have run for school board 26 if I didn't have the pathway um except for me with my grandfather because am I yeah sitting as the mayor at the time right I think when I thought about wanting to change um that I saw that I saw them I saw the mentors I saw the um the examples and that's where my mind went right so I think I have to really acknowledge the fact that that existed for me to be here I will also just say um my dad told the story about me running I actually that Friday after I pulled the papers I actually planned on not running but it's when the tribute announced on the Sunday newspaper wrote everyone who was wild and my cousin my cousin Roger called me up
024he's like you're running for school board I was like that's it I have to run now my name's not right so because I have fully intended I'm not doing it so it was sort of by accident that I ended up having that I ended up um but I you know I just want to say two things and one is um I never thought I would serve this long I thought oh yeah I'll get in there you know I'm always focused on my outcomes right so I was like 12 years I'll run a couple times and then I'll move on right schools change so slowly incredibly slowly um and so you know I I I still I can't I can't honestly say like oh yeah we are we are where I would want us to be
025right but I think I've done my part um um I think I've helped push this District um to be a better place um and more importantly there are so many strong things in place there's so much strong leadership on our board aboard you know we have a board who understands the importance of equity and the importance of ensuring that every single of our students has a has the ability to succeed and Thrive right not just educationally but as a whole child um and so I feel really good about stepping down and moving on and moving on to something local like Cub Scouts instead of school board um because I know I know that the district is in good hands with my fellow Boardman and with the leadership that we have in our schools and the
026and the teachers that we have in our class every every every teacher that my son has had so far has been excellent excellent and it's just amazing what they're learning and so um I you know I I feel good about that I feel good about where I'm leaving and I think what's important for leadership is not what you've done right but what happens after you leave but I really look forward to seeing what happened right throughout the years by the time my son graduates from gets into high school and is part of the IB Program um and uh graduates from high school to see where our schools are in in the next 10 years um someone asked if I'm going to watch board school board meetings I said no I am not going to watch
027the board meetings um so I but but I'm sure you guys are going to have fun with those board meetings and it makes some really great decisions um and so I I'll leave it at there and say just thank you so much I appreciate the support of the community I so appreciated um representing the community and really asking for more for Market from our agents from our school district from from the people that serve our community um and um it's just been I don't know know it's been very fulfilling and I and I um but I'm also happy to let it let somebody else take that first oh thank you yeah and so let's get a picture with my family so my family would come up and I also wanted to just recognize all my
028friends in the audience my my parent friends my my fellow elected officials who came I just really appreciate all of you coming and supporting me foreign and now this brings us to 4.2 recognition of Adrian Greer for service as education president of Azusa Unified School District this first so um I want to thank Adrian for taking this whole year as being where president he did such a fabulous job you know he he's he's very young you see that and you know we've become word president and he was willing to do a great job and I really appreciate his sentiment I appreciate the way he handled situations we went to some tough situations and he always stood his ground and that's what president is he ran meetings very not smoothly we just talked about you know
029our word readings are not until 10 30 at night he's really managed to work with the superintendent and have our board meetings run smoothly and that's his job and he did a fantastic job at that and I'm very proud of him it means such a nice young man and really doing a fine job I really appreciate it because I have been here 11 years and I've seen different there's people have different styles when they run when you become the word president and he has a smooth look at him slick Style I mean he may be yelling at you he may be mad and you didn't even know it but I know him so I look at him and I can't lift him because I wonder last and he looks at me and we're like okay
030Adrian but I'm very very proud of him um for for getting us through this very tough year that we all have to go through so I have a um I thought the gavel came off but it doesn't um a very nice clock here presented to Adrian Greer in appreciation for your dedication and Service as a board president as a zenified School District board uh December 14 2021 November 30th 2022. congratulations Adrian do you have anything to say to him middle name do you have anything to say to Mr Greer um well two things one um just so appreciate your leadership this past year over some really difficult decisions um and some really difficult meetings um and two I'm really I'm really excited that you decided to apply for that appointment and it will be here
031four more years so I I think I think the district would miss you if you weren't here so I really appreciate that can we take a picture over here Mr Speaker do you want to say a few words Mr Greer uh president I'm sorry for a couple more hours um no just just just thank you thank you for for your words thank you for uh taking the time to share uh your thoughts and and appreciation I appreciate it this is not easy work uh but it's important for uh so it's an honor to have been on uh this dice to continue to be on the the dice board member rodrig Espana and to have been on with you board member thank you Adrian well now we will move to uh 5.0 consent calendar and specifically
0325.1 and 5.2 that we see here on our consent calendar and so is there a motion to approve um our consent calendar I'll make a motion to approve second and there will be no discussion and so we will go ahead and vote and the motion passes three yes to two absent which brings us to 6.0 our study session where we will use the remainder of our time and 6.1 specifically which is presentation of Azusa Unified School District Pre-K to three coherence collaboration it's the boring part no I'm kidding you're all welcome to stay but this is gonna be it yes we're transitioning to like to a meeting yeah you're welcome you're welcome to go as well all right we'd love for you to all stay you're free to go particularly we could take a picture
033yeah Gojo my God all right the floor is yours thank you good evening board president Greer Board of Education superintendent Ortega and cabinet tonight we are excited to share the work and journey of our p3cc Pre-K to uh third grade coherence collaboration um I am pleased to be a part of this amazing team and to be included in the amazing work that this team has done thus far in early mathematics through their partnership with the California Ed partners and um Improvement team we will be presenting with some of the members of this team this evening I'd like to introduce uh Jenny Lee our director of early childhood education program Adriana Garcia Medina our director of Educational Services Jeanette Flores principal of Victor Hodge Elementary School Alicia Vargas Smith the resource teacher at Longfellow School and
034last but certainly not least Julie mcgow our elementary math Tulsa this is our third year um of a collaboration with California Ed Partners uh to build coherence between our early childhood and Elementary programs because as we know great childhood Pro Early Childhood programs are not enough for students research shows that the positive effects of early education programs were often not sustained after children enter kindergarten and Elementary School often the results often this results in a lack of articulation and coherence between preschool programs and Elementary programs the pace pk3 alignment report barely calls out the need for PK through third grade alignment in the areas of high quality learning experiences adult Collaborative Learning and assessment of learning work in these Key Systems supports our ausd success drivers high quality learning experiences for students include collaborative practices
035academic rigor and academic discourse this is a theme that you will see throughout this presentation tonight when we create opportunities for adult Collaborative Learning principals teachers and support staff have opportunities to collaborate and have academic discourse which deepens our understanding of quality rigorous instruction the assessment of learning provides feedback or Effectiveness in applying success drivers as well as insight as to how we can deepen our teaching practices in 2020 ausd was selected to participate in the California education Partners p3cc Grant California education Partners brought together districts from across California and expert by Partners from the Stanford Development and research in early math education the Dream Network to work on a three-year process of aligning District systems and resources to provide coherent in preschool to third grade learning systems together we have developed a lens for
036high quality early mathematic reading teaching and learning grow burst at robot bus Surf and thoughtful assessment practices and coherent learning across preschool to third grade after we started this work the state of California identified the native or preschool to third grade alignment and the work of the district in p3cc is serving as model for house district can align their learning systems this mean we have been and are ahead of other states in this world as well as in the implementations of upk at the beginning of this collaboration we defined our team aspiration at the end of three years ausd will have a well-established cohesive instrumental math math plan from preschool to third grade in which adults collaboratively and systematically understand the system use data to drive instruction decisions and Implement continuous Improvement plans to meet
037the needs of all students specifically bilingual learners student with disabilities and social economically disadvantage it was very important for a team to examine all of our system with the land of providing Equity access and inclusion for all members of The ausd Learning Community throughout this process we have remained too to our aspiration and have also been focusing on how we can best meet the diverse needs of our multilingual Learners students with disabilities and students who are socially academically disadvantaged foreign we analyzed assessment data provided by our district assessment system we also looked at what kinds of data were available and discovered that most of our assessments did not lend themselves to Cross grade level conversations and student about student growth we adjusted to the new realities of online instruction not sure if you have to
038click I think what we shared uh learning opportunities with teachers which shifted to an online platform we also uh participated in book clubs and had training with Megan Frankie and her team from UCLA as a result of these learning opportunities teachers wanted to apply what they had learned about counting collections so we learned to do counting collections online and you click I think it's not coming in here doing your three this slide shows you uh how families shared their uh collections uh during distance learning and online uh opportunities students had the opportunity to count objects from everyday life such as their dolls and their Hot Wheels and it was exciting to see our students learning uh together at home next slide one back foot and you're okay in year two uh we piloted counting collections
039um and we also looked at a new problem solving assessment item uh we also in this year we um ensured that teachers were doing counting collections weekly as we explored uh using a high leverage uh teaching practice um and we were also piloting our new PK through second grade um assessment uh based on feedback uh from our classroom teachers our third through fifth grade uh grade levels are piloting a new problem-solving item for uh the assessment this school year and I just add something to this can I speak now yes so I noticed on the counting collection I really enjoyed seeing it when it was online because parents were participating with their child at home and they were learning together and I think it's really important that um you know the parent cannot come to
040school with them obviously but I think at this point they did work with them on this Kanye collection and they were having fun with their child and I think that was great to see absolutely it did give them a window into this the strategy that we were that we're implementing now as they were able to implement it at home with teacher support so one of the first focuses um as a team um was to implement County Collections accounting collections is an opportunity for the children to work together with a partner um to count a collection of objects students use their own strategies to organize their own personal collection some of the high quality learning experiences that children benefit from during the county collection is that students are able to count together with a partner teachers
041allow students to select their own collection from specific debts for example a beginner beginning counter might select um from bags which might have five ten objects uh in the in the bag whereas Advanced snotters can collect a bag that might have under 200 objects during the county collection the teacher interacts with students asking questions and Reporting the strategies that the children use and another benefit is that the students also learn from the insights of their so we want to give you a chance today to actually try to bring a county clerk so we're going to ask you to find a partner um you are going to work together to select we have quite a variety of items so we'll bring them by for you you need to decide together how you're going to organize your
042collection um and if you decide you need tools such as a 10 frame or 100 grid we have those available as well so we'll be bringing them by for you to come and count some collections okay foreign we need everything foreign oh yeah foreign at first foreign [Music] [Laughter] thank you so you guys chose to use the large time frames which are a favorite of mine um so it gave you a visual I like it the way we said that it up this way because it's easier to count and it's more I'm on hand low learner so visually it's spaced out and it's easier for me to count them and you guys chose to count by twos and also by five you tried it both ways but you had a preference yes or two why
043was because it's easier to count them they're more familiar more familiar but you guys I saw you counted several different ways yeah originally we started uh just putting one in each bucket until we realized that we were definitely gonna need to put a lot more than one in each each bucket uh we ended up with 10 in each bucket so therefore we knew that we had 60 but five left over so we had 65 and then uh were asked over and over to think about other ways to rearrange it and so we think we found a pretty efficient way of arranging that uh where now we have five slots uh with 13 Penny both still at 65. oh we already cleaned up I didn't know um so we um that's all right usually we ask
044you to leave it out so we can see for show and tell but that's all right yeah so we we um we counted by 10. well first we first we had fun just dividing it by the what kind of by the kind of rock it was as much as we could and then we counted by 10. that is something that we see a lot is that many of our students and we as adults really enjoy the Sorting part and that we tend to bite it and kind of sort it out first and then we start now so there's a reason that we're doing this this besides that it's fun and I'm going to go back so when we think about doing counting collections for me it's like having a window into student thinking it gives
045me an opportunity to see if they have cardinality if they have number order uh one-to-one correspondence how they group um it's also a chance for us to see our high leverage practices in action we can actually see our students doing those things there in our classroom it also matches what we've been talking about with our teachers this year these six High leverage mathematical pedagogical practices let's take a look at these did we effectively elicit your mathematical ideas in doing some Counting had an opportunity for that did you get to use tools and representations of your own truth you notice each group did this a different way that's really important that it's not the teacher saying this is how I want it done this is a chance for students to develop their mapping you know I
046liked about it Miss nogal is that you know each every student has the opportunity of participating and it's not only just certain students it's all the students working together I really like that it's really exciting and something I love about you as well as the kids love it but it's also if we're able to differentiate so each of you selected a set that you were comfortable with you selected a different size and teachers help students select the size that's the right stretch level for them did we ask you follow-up questions absolutely were we able to use let's say this was a lesson but I used what I saw in your mathematical thinking to then spread to the next fact yeah I gained a lot of information there how about having Mass conversations this is actually
047a district Focus for us this year that we've selected having conversations in math class where students share their ideas with each other is that what you were doing and then I hope that this one was true because this is very important to me did you feel that you were positioned as a capable method and the question was you asked why did we do it that way so we had an have an answer why we felt it was best doing it by 10s or 20s or by the bucket or whatever you know and that's also great too it gives you a chance to be able to express your thinking and so that you are confident as you do this so as you know um we see our students doing this and you can see some of
048our students here in action this is my favorite thing to be in classrooms to see because really what we see when we see these students doing this is that there is 100 of our students who are engaged it's one of those times where I can walk in and see every single student doing something that that their just right level that's meeting their needs getting them ready laying that strong foundation for all that number sense make them successful as they move forward so accounting collections is really a favorite activity as we one of the clear goals that we have for all of our students is for them to become problem solvers last year we set a goal that 50 of our multilingual Learners would be able to apply a valid strategy to solve a word problem
049as part of our goal um we did this work with County Collections and it led us to wonder um if we were to start using planning collections on a weekly basis would it help our multilingual Learners and students with disabilities develop cardinality specifically cardinality referring to this idea that the last number that you said when you're counting describes the size of the set so for example I'm counting five one two three four five and then Arturo asked Julie how many did you count if I understand that that last number describes the set I have cardinality I would say I counted five if I have not developed that yet what you'll see students do is ask them and they would say one two three four five and they would begin again because they don't actually understand
050how to describe that set so what we did was we recruited um teachers who would pilot for us doing the counting collections weekly um for six to eight weeks they would collect data on cardinality specifically um for six students and we wanted them to two students who were struggling with math so we had English Learners with disabilities and students who Associated we also had enough conversation so Mrs Vargas Smith and I would meet with the teachers and look at their data and say let's put our heads together what could we do next to help build the math understands if you take a look you can see after just this six to eight week Pilots we saw some significant results with many of our students who had not made growth in this idea of cardinality throughout
051the school year all of a sudden make a lot of we also saw that this was true with one of our Target groups which is our English learner you can see in the next slide that specifically we saw some good growth in that and as you know the term emergent bilingual is also used for our English learners you can see that they are growing but the Gap still exists and so we want to begin to address that we also saw the Gap continued with our students with disabilities we want to continue to address that so this year we have achievement data from the state testing which we haven't had for a few years so these are um our third grade students socioeconomically disadvantaged students with some comparison data to Los Angeles County and the state
052of California we know that across the state students in California were adversely affected by the pandemic but we are looking forward to the work of the team and continuing to support that growth in mathematics this slide shows some data that compares Azusa unified socioeconomically disadvantaged students with other districts that are part of the p3cc collaborative and now we have um some voices from teachers um and their experience with this work and with counting collections understand [Music] strangers the community I think this is my point because yeah yeah it sounds like it's the mic here [Music] okay it's very helpful so just myself it seems like that's where we're getting the feedback the time and effort to prep it because it pays off in the classroom I was following um about six kids and um I've
053seen so much growth uh with their numbers um Learning Place Value um especially foreign you had an opportunity to hear all right so you had an opportunity to hear teacher voices regarding their experience with counting Collections and you also had an experience with counting collections here tonight um and you see here the the results of our pilot showed that counting collections is an effective practice for all our students and as a result we've selected it as a signature practice for PK through second grade elementary math programs and by signature practice we mean that you can expect to see accounting collections implemented across all all Elementary classrooms we launched it as a weekly signature practice in the fall and we can't wait to see the continued growth that our students will show in fact based on
054the data that was collected from accounting collections our math leadership team replaced the old District assessments with accounting collections data peace in order to focus on problem solving for our students I'm gonna ask a question so when you say across all grade levels so you're talking about preschool or TK to fifth to sixth grade or what what grades you were talking about it would have to third grade it would be up to PK through second grade and they're all doing it it should it's a signature practice so they're doing it at least once a week um and because it's a signature practice and so how how does it look different than as let's say a kid that I could see like this year you have kids doing it new right but what about a kid
055that started in TK and now they've been doing it PK Kinder for a sec so so how does it how will it look different in a couple years when these kids have done been doing this same thing for four years so in in every class you're gonna have varied abilities right and so your little ones might start with the smaller collections so they might be working on zero to five uh objects they might be make make their way up to 10 objects but if you're thinking about maybe a second grade class you're going to have those larger collections or maybe they're counting 50 objects or 60 objects and they may be grouping uh by fives they may be grouping by twos so it just depends on what's what a grade level you are seeing and
056then based on what collection they're they're using uh teacher would differentiate by asking questions right and so those questions will lead them to organizing some of the questions that you may have heard as you were working on your own collection was can you show me a different way to organize or what might be another way that you count so it's those questions and prompt the students to take their skills to a higher level as as they grow and work on the larger collections the kinds of questions that we ask will change so we might be asking is their younger questions about if we add one more or we take away one but we were asking your group about really division questions and being able to think about if we divided this into these groups um
057and you had these any left over could be divided a different way and have fewer left or if we divide it again so that they're really integrating some multiplication and division as they do that they can also begin to work with much larger bets even sets like boxes that would say I have thousand Staples in this box we only have 500 in this box and a thousand here how would you group those together so there's a lot of different ways that we can change that as they grow so then how are teachers being prepared to have those kind of ask those kind of questions that are really appropriate maybe for the where the level of the child is a great question I'm asking yes um we have been working on this actually for many years
058even before we started our p3cc where we had begun training for teachers um and now we're really shifting into saying we all know how to get this started we're doing a lot of coaching so that gives me an opportunity to be in classrooms a lot um Alicia vargasmith is also in classrooms coaching many of our preschool and TK teachers and we're having opportunities for teachers to collaborate and it's one of the things we are dreaming about is having more opportunities to say Wow Let's sit down and talk about this student work what do you recommend that I do next and making that really part of our PLC conversation so it's going to be an opportunity for us to coach so that we continue to keep in that work and don't just talk about um so
059that they will continue to grow so when we Implement something new we want the teachers um to have the support that they need um we have provided book clubs um build parties where we purchased interesting items than the teachers uh were able to come and build their classroom collections um this for instance is the picture of the Longfellow cafeteria where it was filled with materials for counting Collections and the teachers were able to come in and pick up and choose what they needed for their collections um we have also set up some launch dates um to go into teachers classrooms and get their students started with their accounting Collections and we are also providing Next Step um conversations um with teachers so that they could have a thought partner and consider the next step for
060learning with their students as we deepened our work we realized that we needed a vision statement for our elementary math program as well as descriptors of what we wanted to see across our Elementary classroom would anyone like to volunteer to read our vision statement sure all Aus students are problem solvers who make sense of rigorous real world mathematical tasks and communicate their strategies and reasoning in a variety of ways and inclusive learning communities because all students are able to learn mathematics thank you president Greer and special attention to all students we want to make sure that all students have this opportunity to live through this Vision in our classroom as part of the process of developing a vision statement our team described the qualities that we should see evident in all our classrooms just please
061take a minute to look at these statements that our team came up with that we would like to see across our classrooms at the same time we engaged in learning with our principals our teachers our instructional leaders as we looked at these six High leverage mathematical practices this fall our teachers uh selected two of these uh from the vision statement that resonated most with them they identified with high leverage that pedagogical practices they would bring would help them bring these statements to life in their classrooms we also identified as a district that we would be having conversations in math classes where students share ideas with each other and hopefully you were able to have that experience today we also were able to tie these high level math practices to Our Success hey so as I
062was beginning to say earlier uh we were one of the goals that we had was that all of our multilingual learner students would have a problem a strategy to be able to problem solve and we were shooting for 50 50 of our multilingual Learners would be able to apply a valid strategy to solve a word problem and we piloted a program solving solving idle with our K3 students to provide us with the data about our effectiveness we collected data for Kinder and first grades in the fall and the spring and collected data for second and third grades in fall and winter and that is our data so assessment a and we have assessment B our data shows that 82.4 percent of our students had a strategy to solve and add to results unknown problem and
06375.9 percent of our multilingual Learners had a strategy to solve and add to result unknown problem so we see uh in assessment B that there is growth in in the spring and the fall for all of our students sorry about that we are proud to share um a new goal that has been established by the team um would somebody like to volunteer to read the new Poll for us by June of 2023 100 of PK through third grade multilingual Learners will be able to apply a valid strategy to solve a word problem as measured by district and early childhood assessment P3 PK through three multilingual Learners will increase by 30 and all students will increase 25 in operations in algebraic thinking as measured by our district assessment so we um as a team established a
064lofty goal for ourselves that all of our um pk3 through third grade multilingual Learners will be utilizing a strategy to apply to a soluble word problem so that's what we're shooting for and as we wrap up our collaboration with California Ed Partners we look to sustaining and scaling this work with the district Improvement plan adult Collaborative Learning using student work samples from our new assessments to Anchor our PLC conversations we are also developing accounting collections oh sorry we're also developing opportunities for teachers to collaborate across grade levels in looking at that work through their PLC um team time we're also looking at the high quality learning experiences to deepen our lens for high quality instruction through the six High leverage practices and supporting teachers and coming alongside them with coaching and opportunities for professional learning
065um we also looking to the assessment of learning PK through second grade will utilize our revised assessments next year and we are piloting some new items for third through fifth grade on this year's assessment and we are planning to utilize what the team has learned through this process to refine our learning systems and to focus on coherence in the Upper Grade as well and now we open it up to questions so um I appreciate that this is um that you've taken a strategy and really had people go deep and and really have um adoption you know it is one strategy it's not a complete program I so I guess the analogy that I'll make is that I feel like this feels very similar to where we were when we when we started doing like think
066parashare and we went deep and then we had everyone do that right or we had a different strategy um and now that we're bringing in still and some of the schools are like oh my God we're putting it all together right now it all makes sense I know why we were doing these different pieces and so I just wonder about that coherence right and how we make sure that yes we're giving people deep opportunities to put into practice a really strong strategy and do it well which is important right but at the same time not making people feel like oh this is the answer because now our kids know cardinality and ordinality can can now count up to a certain amount right because math is so much more complex than that so I just I'm
067curious about you know where is that in your thinking in terms of like yes we have a strong strategy where is the risk and what happens the other four days when the kids do this one day a week you know what's happening so in looking at the articulation plan you know the the focus of of this work is to establish some strong foundation and to really maximize and benefit that work and early learning that students are getting in preschool and how do we sustain that as students move from preschool through the grade levels and in looking at how we are weaving these counting collection when we look at those High leverage math practices how do how are we lifting those up throughout the learning that the students are doing on the other four days outside
068of County Collections so what you saw from the responses from the teachers was an understanding of of seeing how students are responding to these opportunities for collaborating around the counting collection but the power and the collaboration and the questioning of teachers has really shifted the instruction that we see in classrooms so for example when we've gone in on site visits we've seen and almost every classroom that I've been in this year during math time I've not seen a teacher standing up in front of the room teaching at the Whiteboard during that I see students in collaborative groups they have manipulatives they might have their math books they might have their math boxes but it's really the the Strat the Highlight leverage strategies that the teachers are experiencing through the work with counting collections were seen
069come alive through other aspects of mathematics and so the team is really looking to how do we continue to focus on those High leverage strategies to continue to lift that up through the other mathematics work that we're doing so oh how are we are are we then how are we exposing teachers like let's say okay this happens once a week right um and those other four days maybe they have shapes and they want to start trying to do like 10 grams right you know how are how are we giving teachers opportunities to expand right what that kind of instruction looks like right because that in my mind that is quality that that is the best instruction we want to see right Hands-On making connections between my brain and my hands and what am I and
070what's happening in my mouth right so so how are we doing Julie do you want to speak a little bit at night [Music] as as Verma stated that it's been really exciting to use this and I agree completely that this is a jumping off point for us to deepen our practice and then we continue to build and it's just like when you have a group of students all of our teachers are in a different place with this so some of them have been doing counting collections for four or five years and they're ready to move on to the next piece so we have them doing choral counting we have them supporting students with Hands-On work with each of the different problem types um we're looking at all of the routines that are called out in
071the proposed new framework because there are a lot of those that are really used to develop number sense and we also still have our very strong number sense based math curriculum from Everyday Math so we're really integrating this within that fortunately Everyday Math was written with one day a week available for students to be able to do these kinds of activities and to differentiate instruction so we're not having to take that away instead we're adding to that so that they they can deepen that practice but it's going to be an exciting thing as we build simultaneously um a lot of different practices as we can continue to deepen that thanks and then my other question is really around um I'm just going to say the kind of framing I'm hearing around English Learners or multilingual
072Learners about like oh this is going to help them right um they they don't have mathematical problems right the problem is maybe how the teacher's delivering language and how they're understanding right and so I worry about that connection thinking about oh we're going to group special ed and El students because they're so far behind they're they're behind probably because what's happening in the classroom and how the teacher is either differentiating or scaffolding right making it accessible to those students and so I just wonder about that and how you're framing that so that your teachers understand you know how to decide the kind of support students need right I think this is intimately tied to this idea of we have dual language Learners how are we supporting them in early years and supporting their primary language
073right but I'm just wondering about that as well because I I I'm kind of hearing that undertone about like oh we have the El and the feds and we're going to be focusing on those two groups so in terms of identifying those groups to look up or to lift up is really to really focus on the achievement of those groups and to ensure that those groups of students aren't left behind but particularly um through the work that we see um posted here with the high leverage practices and the tied to success drivers we have been very intentional about how we are looking at language for all students how we are tying the work that we are doing during our instructional um leaders meetings um and our coaching um and support of principals and their instructional
074leadership um we had an opportunity to to weave um I believe it was in our last IL um with our Ela toastas and with Julie how do we lift up a language function through a small group of mathematics lesson and when we think about the counting collection it really lends itself to that opportunity for all students to engage um through the multiple modalities that you described you got to you know you said you were a Hands-On learner having you know the various tools and students are able to express all of those things but we really lift up those groups of students because we want to ensure that the work and the instruction that is being provided in the classroom is giving them that access that entry point so that they are successful yes my question
075was you know I like how you have set goals where you're going to be at in June 2023 so um how can you tell if these students understand I mean do they take like a test or is it by their test taking how do we get to know if they're getting it right so we developed some assessment that I that are correlated directly to this work um be able to pull that data to to know whether or not we have met those and plus the teachers walk around the classroom to listen like Mr Gold did and you know just let us listen to what the rationale behind why we wanted where we got where we're at right so you ask these questions of the students so you know they understand right because we have the
076Third no that's really good I I really like this um yeah when teachers are walking wake up questioning they're able to differentiate their questions for students um based on where they are and and moving them to the next level so if teachers are doing like they're like a lot of data about students and student learning and what am I doing that well it's like the teachers asking the question not telling them because you know this was asks a question and um Natasha and I will look at each other like you know who's going to answer but you know I I think it's good because you answer what you see or why you got where you're at and that's problem solving and I think that's really great to start the kids so young in math because
077I know math is one of the hardest for myself even in um grade school going on and to start so young and and to it's more about understanding it not just doing the problem but problem solving is understanding why you got where you're at so I really like this whole method here for student learning yeah and the questioning is key because the teacher isn't telling the student the information they are asking the students the question drawing that learning from no I want to thank you all for the great presentation it was really good and just a couple comments yeah great great presentation thank you for sharing uh this with us and giving us not only a descriptive Glimpse but even giving us the opportunity to experience it ourselves Hands-On kind of along those lines I
078know I personally for one would even love an opportunity to even get in a classroom and see some of this in action so if something like that could be arranged I know I would love to please on that up we are planning some learning walks very soon so we will absolutely okay I love it I love it thank you any other questions are coming thank you all very much well that then brings us to the next item on our agenda which is 7.0 and specifically excuse me 7.1 adjournment is there a motion to adjourn I'll make a motion to adjourn just for you Adrian a second and just the comments uh just want to again wanna say thank you philanine as we are are signing off here um this again grateful it's been an honor
079to serve and sit here on the support service but I'm coming to Adrian welcome back all right then we will go ahead and are you all signed in we'll do a vote yeah we'll go online yes so uh Boardman Rodriguez Pena is a yes foreign yes and I ordered Mercury I'm also a yes and so therefore the motion to adjourn passes three yes to two absent and we are formally adorned at 7 10 p.m thank you so much everyone