The Fall River School Committee Instructional Subcommittee met on Monday, January 24th, 2022, to discuss curriculum updates for ELA, Math, and Science. The meeting served as a review of several curriculum contracts, including Wonders (ELA), Illustrative Math, Carnegie (secondary math), and Open SciEd (science), which had been approved in June 2020 without prior subcommittee vetting. The district is working to establish proper vetting procedures for future curriculum purchases. Key discussions included the implementation and impact of the Wonders ELA curriculum, with a specific focus on a supplemental purchase of teacher manuals for special educators and English Learner (EL) teachers, as well as consumable EL readers for Henry Lord Community Schools. This supplemental purchase, estimated to be significant, was referred back to the full committee with a positive recommendation following a unanimous 3-0 vote. The committee also reviewed the Illustrative Math curriculum, which was largely funded by a DESE Accelerated Math Grant, and the Carnegie secondary math curriculum, noting its AI-powered Mafia platform and 6-year contract. For science, the Open SciEd curriculum, an open educational resource, was highlighted for its alignment with the upcoming innovative MCAS assessment and its inquiry-based approach. Discussions also covered the importance of fidelity in curriculum implementation, teacher support strategies like coaching cycles, and the need for clear internal controls. Administrators provided details on professional development, data monitoring, and the collaborative efforts among teachers and external partners (DESE, Boston College, Carnegie) to ensure effective use of the new materials. Concerns were raised by Mr. Aguiar regarding the initial lack of subcommittee review for the original purchases, the need for more detailed financial breakdowns, and consistent data on program usage and effectiveness across schools. The district acknowledged these concerns and outlined plans to address them, including potential shifts in organizational structure and future requests for additional funding for on-site coaching.
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ready meeting on monday january 24th 2022 instructional committee subcommittee has been called to order at 4 31 uh roll call mr again here ms laravey here ms pereira here salute to the flag i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america into the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all
0:39in pursuance to open meeting law any person may make an audio a video recording of this public meeting or may transmit the meeting through any medium attendees are therefore advised that such recordings or transmissions are being made whether perceived or unperceived by those present and are deemed acknowledged and permissible we have systems input no we do not next on this discussion of curriculum updates
1:11one does this illustrative carnegie and open syed refer to so yeah we'll get started we actually i'm gonna send it over to dr curley but as you know the district has adopted several different curricular materials for different grade levels and the those contracts came before the school committee in june um but one of the things that we did find was that the they were not vetted
1:49through the subcommittee um and although at the june meeting all the directors were there to answer any questions but those contracts were approved without questions and without a presentation as we try to put ourselves in a good place and put some good systems in place certainly we know that anytime there's purchases of that kind or any changes that we're supposed to go through the process of
2:15the subcommittees so we are what we've been doing is setting up subcommittee meetings getting ourselves into a cycle so we're bringing before you uh an update on what we're doing for literacy as well as math and science those are the contracts that were approved in june of 2020.
2:33so dr curley so i'm just gonna start um off with a little bit of an overview sure can i interrupt one second can we do in uh introductions because we do have a new member of the school committee so she's aware of who's in the room if you want to start sure i'm dr kimberly liberty i'm the science director for the district for pre-k to 12.
2:55hi i'm cheryl patterson i'm the principal at warren middle school i'm matt sachel i'm the dean of mathematics at jervy i know you i'm tracy curley i am the interim assistant superintendent chief academic officer i'm stephanie kennedy i'm the director of elementary ela and mathematics and i'm shelley nice to meet you thank you very much go ahead thank you so um we're just gonna i'm gonna
3:19start off a little bit with a um an overview of kind of what brought us to all of these new curriculum purchases um fall river and actually massachusetts is doing a lot of work with um tntp um they they're like most recently you know newly famous for their um a report they did called the opportunity myth and um the tntp the new teacher project started out as i think of it almost like teach for
3:46america they were like they did teaching fellowships bringing qualified people into urban areas they moved their work toward advocacy to get more teachers certified because there were so many barriers and they've slowly become a partner in districts and states and schools really around improving teaching and learning for all students so they they put out their study on the opportunity myth in 2019
4:13and uh really just reported out on what student experiences were like and how those experiences were leading to student success or not after graduation so we um overall um you know they found that students really want to do well in school um they're doing what they're asked to do while they're there they're in their classrooms they're you know taking direction from their teachers they're they're learning what they're
4:42asked to learn but they're still not meeting with success and they're finding overwhelmingly that that's true for students in low-income areas students of color english learners students with special needs and a lot of it has to do with access to grade level standards so a big finding of theirs in this report was really that students are missing out on four key resources and primarily they're looking at
5:12the first thing that they're missing out on grade appropriate assignments and so um we're we're making a commitment um to putting grade appropriate assignments in front of students all of our students and we started that process with an investment in the high quality instructional materials so um mrs ponce referenced the fact that we've we've already started to implement them so back in june of 2020 we you know we
5:38came before school committee we've made the purchases and now we are going through the process of providing professional development to teachers and getting those in the hands of in the hands of students so you know we've set district goals very specifically around these um making great appropriate assignments available to all students so the the focus of our observations as we're going into schools is really
6:01looking at the implementation of the new curriculum where it's available because it's not every content area but we do have it in multiple content areas and across grade levels so we're looking at the implementation of that and the degree to which students are engaging in the rigorous tasks associated with these materials so um these four resources in particular have been a major focus for us um the wonders
6:27illustrative carnegie open cyan and you know we're finding kind of what we knew to be true it's really reinforcing the fact that getting the resources in front of teachers um serves dual purposes certainly it puts it ensures or hopes we're hoping to ensure that the kids are getting access to the materials but another piece of it is just that the teachers aren't spending an inordinate amount of time you know
6:53surfing the web taking you know time out of their planning just trying to vet curriculum materials and trying to be critical consumers we're kind of helping him in that way and then providing professional development around those so we are going to take a look um across these four resources um as the directors and i are going to talk a little bit about how each one of them was chosen and kind of where we are in the
7:16implementation and then we've invited um you know middle school principal mrs patterson and then matt feifel up at the high school to just talk a little bit about the experience as well okay so the process that we took in the elementary level is uh was similar in both ela and math and so um to not sound redundant um we'll i'll just reference that back back to this when i get into the math world
7:44um so when we originally started this process we met with deci curriculum leads and we started talking about review and field testing process that they were recommending for us as a district that they had found effective in other districts so um rather than having a pilot of several programs they suggested field testing which would allow for us to be in more classrooms across the district getting a sampling of
8:13a sampling of teachers in all buildings as a academic lead group we started to look through the resources that we had to get these materials before getting them in our hands and spending the time meeting with publishers and so we sifted through massachusetts curate and ed reports and other research reports to limit our um our field of programs that we're going to be looking deeply at
8:40from there we started to put together a list of district priorities what was important to us as leaders with regard to the um purchase that we were making and then we sent out a survey to our educators to find out what was important to them then we crosswalked those things and we folded them in with the mass curate rubric because that's what deci has found to be top priorities so from there we created our curriculum
9:07our curriculum vetting rubric and then we started to meet with publishers from the short list that we had narrowed it down to at that point um and so after we did that we started to look through materials of the publishers that kind of spoke to our district priority list and from there we started to market out to our teachers um an application as to who would like to do the field testing of
9:33the different programs and we had a lot of teachers that wanted that but then unfortunately we closed due to coven and so we had to switch gears at that point and so at that point um i started to put together a a list of different logins for the for the two programs that we kind of had left at that point and offered that login information out to teachers with some guidance around
9:57how they might attack those and we had um little short videos that would help them navigate the site so that they felt a level of comfort as they went in to start looking at things and then they were surveyed as to which program they felt was the best fit for their situation and their students and 77.1 of teachers at that point voted that wonders was the best fit for our students at that at that time um
10:23and so that's when we moved forward with the purchase for wonders so on the next slide it's the reasons why we chose wonders which are directly aligned to our district priorities that we had surfaced as we did the um the academic leads and the administrators and then finally the teachers um so things like that the program was impactful according to what the research said that was number one
10:53complexity of text was worthy of student attention um there were multiple genres and multiples of multiple opportunities for writing for students that were authentic and explicit um that there was a diverse literature base that allowed for different identities different cultural perspectives that there was um supports put in place for teachers in the program to to help students access that core curriculum so
11:23whether those students were at or below or above grade level whether those students had language needs or disabilities that there was an intervention component and that were routines were in place to support all four domains of language plus more and so from there um we made the purchase and pd started and so the pd has been continuous since the launch of the program so in june of
11:55our first year which was 2020 that was the end of the school year that we had decided that this was the right program pd started our uh at that point our k-2 educators were the only educators receiving that pg because we did a slow roll so we started with k2 in sy21 and then adopted in 3-5 this current year and so we were thoughtful about the pd that we were putting in front of those teachers
12:25at that moment in june of 2020 we were thoughtful to include both the launch of the program so the instructional path and the digital teaching tools because we weren't sure as to what was going to be happening that following year um because covet had already started since then we've had a ton of pd offered to that offered whether it be virtual and live for a particular audience or recorded and offer it out to our
12:54teachers and those have been sent out in teachpoint have also been marketed out through principles and leads things from close reading and analytical writing foundational skills engagement in a virtual setting down to finite things like working with l students whether you're the mainstream teacher working with l students or you are the pull out pull-out educator ml educator working
13:25with those l students and so there's been a lot of professional development offered through the company and we have the ability to take ask them to tailor that to a specific thing so their initial launch didn't include anything about ml students but we're aware of what that data is looking like and so we asked them to whether it was designed or not designed because they could have something box
13:52to present out on that particular topic and so just two weeks ago they presented out to um fonsecas fonsecas teachers of students that are l and then that was recorded and sent out to all other principals and leads so that they could then use that reporting to help uh move their own staffs and then in addition to that right now they're designing something to support students with disabilities
14:24our evidence of impact is a change in our data we see changes in teacher practice as we're in buildings all the time um i walk consistently with my leads um dr crowley joins me and we're looking for are we implementing a high quality our high quality core materials and putting those high quality tasks in front of kids any questions about wonders before any questions wonders is that different than what we
14:58have uh yeah mine just has more detail okay i'm looking over there i'm trying to match up to what you're reading i'm saying something let me send it along though if you want that level of detail no i just had question on the purchase and the bridges pricing i've heard now at their last meeting as well that we approved this already without discussion yep which obviously you know that you
15:24know bothers me in one way but what exactly did we purchase so when we was it in a group of kids all a bunch of expenses or is it just the contract or like i'm just trying to figure out what we actually did so in kate in um sy 20 when we started to put together the pricing we only got a quote for k2 it included 45 classroom kits for our classroom teachers that includes everything from
15:56the teacher's manuals to the individual student books to manipulatives and other materials that kids might need or teachers might need that was cater to and so um and then in addition to that the following year is when we got the quote from grades three to five and that two came with the same it also includes um mr aguiar all of the professional development and the consumables for six years um for both grade levels
16:25so the current thing that is on the table um for for your review is to support special educators sorry is to support special educators and l teachers by buying them teachers manuals in the past fall river has never purchased teachers manuals for inclusion um cushion educators such as special educators and ml teachers and what we're finding is that they're the um those teachers are finding such value
16:55in these materials that they are using them um so that they can align their instruction to what's happening in the classroom just becomes difficult for them to navigate the website and on the slide that looks like this these are just some comments from different special educators and um mll teachers as to why they think having the teachers manuals will support their work with with um their students and so you'll
17:23find things like it's difficult obviously to navigate multiple grade levels on a digital site um two it's easy it's easier for them to co-plan it's nice to have the manual there so they can look at those differentiation activities and and the teacher supports as they're teaching their students um and so that's what you'd see on that page yeah i when i asked about this it wasn't because i'm not in favor of it but it
17:51just it seems like we were missing some info as well as i'm even confused a little bit of how we didn't do this originally because it's almost like as if we it looks like we said we're going to do all of these things and then oh by the way we need to get these resources for ell or special educator why didn't that happen but the issue is like how does that happen
18:18i mean obviously i'm not going to be able to speak to people's thinking prior to coming on board but um in the past the history has been that uh if you are an inclusion teacher you share materials right so some somebody's pushing in or what we relied on was that the classroom teacher was going to have her set of materials and the person pushing in was going to be able to use
18:42the materials online or share with that teacher after we started rolling it out people said no it's beneficial for us to have our own materials so that's what this supplemental purchases that as well as classroom libraries i agree it's it was a huge purchase i know that before the school committee when that when the contract came up there was all the materials and all the backup information in regards to moving
19:09to a new curriculum we used to have reading street and then we moved over to wonders typically that's that is what happens and what should happen should be vetted through the subcommittee and then referred to the full committee that didn't happen we're just trying to establish the system for doing it and moving forward for us i know that when i came on board you're going to hear about illustrative math
19:34that was already in my time we went before the subcommittee and brought illustrative math forth but the the the this started three years ago the wonders piece as they prepared to roll it out so that that didn't yeah and it's the i just think systems wise we yeah we have a director of special ed we have a director of uh mlo whatever the new name is whatever but we have then we have administrators throughout like it
20:01shouldn't get to this point where we purchase three quarters of a program and forget about not saying that they did that intentionally but as a committee we're like okay we're going to support this and all of a sudden now we see 400 000 when when we see that we should get a clear one-pager on here's what it is now we can vet it through here and it's probably going to come with that you know explanation of
20:22of why it makes no sense to me i read through the documents we're copying things in black and white with his colors intentional you know what like i'm reading this saying myself this doesn't make any sense so i think it's good that you brought it back and you know i'm in favor of it my concern with the curriculums in general and we've spoken about this is that we spend an awful lot of money across the whole
20:47district and as part-time school committee members we don't get into the nitty-gritty on all of this but we're spending money on things that i don't even know about i hear new ones here and there and then i don't know what is the usage what is the direction what is the fidelity with the usage and i don't think that we necessarily do that as a district very well so we're starting to so i mean first of all
21:10this is uh hard copies of materials etc that we we need consistency across the district right so if i'm a student of fonsica fourth grade if i transfer to latono we're using the same literacy curriculum so we haven't had that in in many years it's been there's been a lot left to schools to make their own decision we know that we have an achievement gap that needs to be closed
21:37and one of the things that one of the ways we're going to do that is by providing high quality materials consistency we have common assessments that we've spent a lot of money on that we invest so we want to make sure that we measure but we have an even you know playing field for everybody right so in the usage piece that you're talking about for the technology i'm assuming the digital
22:00programs that we have we've inventoried them we actually are meeting to look at all the usage i think that we just historically have kept adding programs and not really saying okay we're not using this any longer let's eliminate this before we purchase something else let's look at what is it that we're using what's what are we finding that is effective and what can we let go of so that's a
22:25process that we're going through yeah i mean i look at the was it uh psn the one that we switched trump in here it looks like we had used psn so i would be curious to see did we use it or did we just say it didn't work you know like not that i want to go back to it but when we look at from 2011 it talks about in here that you know
22:48the level of fidelity has waned you know significantly so that's why i'm asking these questions so we did and that's what is the system to just say we are either doing it or we're not doing it and i'm not trying to you know everybody needs a little bit of autonomy but i think what we've been doing here is a lot of autonomy and not sticking to the we spoke about skeletons and those are good questions that's
23:12actually when before you bring out a new curriculum you do have to you know reflect and see what's worked and what didn't work in the previous one right so i mean i was you know i remember when we brought on reading street and when we brought on reading street i was the principal at doran that's one of the things that was part of our turnaround work right you have to make sure that we have consistency
23:33across all grade levels i think that with any new thing we had fidelity in some schools and then we had a lot of a lot of leeway in other schools stephanie just said one of the things that we do is we are she's in classrooms with those leads making sure and we're looking at that and that's how we're going to be able to monitor and support the implementation we're expecting that everybody's using wonders we're
23:59expecting that everybody's using illustrative math i agree the what is what where we need to see consistently across the board then the the the how it's implemented that's going to vary because the way i teach is different than the way she teaches but we do need to have consistency with the what what's happening from school to school so that you know um kids know exactly what to expect and that everybody's using the
24:23same curriculum so that our as we gather data it's it's a true picture of what we're doing no i appreciate the only thing i would ask is when it comes back that we get it more detailed it wasn't very clear from the original we had last meet meeting that this was mostly for consumables and the piece didn't hear about the color-coded copies like that yeah it might have been in there but once we
24:46knew we were kicking it over i think that would tell us all like what are we actually buying here we're not buying it's like buying textbooks it's like buying something concrete versus when we say we're just going to add another half a million dollars in curriculum that decision was made in a different way okay so if it's if it's five hundred thousand dollars worth of consumables
25:06lay out the rationale so the committee can look at it the public can see it yep this is what we're doing rather than just let it you know we'll be specific with it yeah i just want to clarify so there's actually two parts to the um to the quote that went forward which is the teacher manuals for everyone and i just want to be clear that these are teacher manuals they are not the materials that
25:27go along with those manuals so the mll teacher and the special educator will still have to use materials from the mainstream classrooms on stock meeting if i'm an ml teacher and i need to use student text books for all learners leveled readers i have to get them from my my mainstream classroom um counterpart the one thing that is consumable is the second page which speaks to the l readers so there are two pieces um
25:58this is specific to henry lloyd community schools program they moved this year as you know from our car our model that we've had for um servicing our foundational students to an inclusion model and so these quotes come specifically from that school they have about a third of their population that are considered foundational students um and ml students that are now being in an inclusion setting and so the
26:24materials that come along with the regular classroom set does not include these scaffolded readers for um specific to this subgroup of students and so again like just teacher manuals still have to borrow except in this case um which is that scaffolded reader for the mll student in tdrs yeah i mean this i haven't heard this from the mll department you know we're hearing this through and then when we have a lot of
26:58divisions of people like where's the where's the leadership in that department to be saying this is what we need for our people like so that's lacking i think in unless you guys are all represented so i i have worked closely with the ml department in this um in this specific purchase um the two the group the two groups are coming together like i work alongside tyler and fernanda to um support the
27:24teachers of this program and so um i'm i'm speaking to this because i was part of the decision-making um along with that team yeah i was just referring to that you're not the director that's that's all i was meaning by that the um but the piece that you just said about the it's in here about the colored text and yeah so if it's the you said that's for the elves but is there materials that the special
27:48education students need that would would help them the same way that it's for the for the readers is there are we not purchasing quality materials that are needed you know like this quote here says these texts are not ancillary but rather mandatory to provide differentiated learning experiences when the core curriculum into the language needs of our ml students like i see this as a basic like this is the the
28:20required the required piece is there the equivalent of that for special letters no no there isn't um another text that would be specific to students with disabilities but i would say that a student with disabilities could be reading at below or above grade level it depends on their disability and so if i went into one of those um those inclusion teachers rooms the special educator i wouldn't find the
28:46materials that i need to service those kids what i would see is that that teacher is borrowing those materials from the mainstream classroom to use in that small group so she doesn't have her own set but she has a partner we have enough sets that we're not leaving anything on the table so after we make this purchase next next year we're not coming back with those let's fight for 2000 more
29:08we're good for six years we've been very clear and after six years what happens well i mean we will have it doesn't mean that we only will you'd be using wonders for six years sometimes it's a lot longer but it was just the way we were doing that was the breakdown was for um they broke down that payment for six years kevin chose to pay it forward so that with uh funds so that we could
29:34be ahead but that doesn't mean we're gonna after six years yeah so we can extend it but it won't be as costly probably if we need um additional materials consumables that would be the only thing we would have to reorder thank you thank you mr again i have a question uh is anybody using pearson still at all there are no educators okay we're using um wonders in every classroom in the city um ex with the
30:03exception of foundational um classrooms except at letourneau who who is piloting um and and henry lord as well because they're an inclusion setting in some substantially separate classrooms although they have the materials they have to modify them as they see fit for their students okay thank you uh another question would it be fair to say that if we had a student uh at watson and we all know
30:31about the transient and this watson student gonna try to transfer to fonska in wonders would they be when they got to fond school would they be on the same curriculum as they were on uh absolutely that's a big question that's been asked many times yes they'll be on the same curriculum and likely hovering around the same story because we do have pacing guides and curriculum maps created um
30:56for k-3 specifically we have maps created and for four and five we have pacing created and we're starting that mapping now how's the feedback on the pd the educators so it's really good for wonders um i've heard we see it through the feedback and teach point and then any contact that i've had with teachers if that topic happens to come up they've been highly satisfied yeah you yes as well yes
31:22i yield any anything else yes mr ag so when i look at the presentation on illustrative math which is upcoming one of the things that was very clear at the subcommittee meeting was that our scores are flat for multiple years in a row even though we kept hearing our scores are going through the roof but they were flat what is the equivalent of that is there an equivalent of that type of thing in in
31:45the ela yeah so like i know you look at some of these in here but and this might be something that just throw out to us at a for the formal meeting but to see where there's obviously a rationale for why we changed and i think when you presented at the subcommittee where it was very clear why we were changing the math curriculum it was sort of like two plus two equals four yes
32:05it's the same honestly in ela um we saw it i think i noted in the in that document i spoke specifically to the early literacy skills and how those have remained flawed over the past several years um but i'm not sure that there's any comprehension data in there because we didn't have many years to um of the same assessment to speak to that just yeah just as a point of reference when
32:32we have new members too so we use dibbles we use these terminologies if we can just explain those two like i think you're going to say that the scores were flat and our reading levels are flat a math level basically we're flat across the board and we're trying to do these different things so anything that you it just makes it seem very clear this is why we're changing from one to another thank you are you
32:56thank you so now we move on to what is illustrated still me still you just me um and so the process was the same for of math and again teachers filled out that survey but we did have an unofficial pilot of some of the units happening in classrooms we had them and at the time we were using engaged new york and there was a high level of dissatisfaction with engaged new york i was highly procedural
33:26and so teachers started to mess around with using illustrative so we had that feedback from teachers as well as um a survey that was sent out asking teachers a couple of questions around whether they thought it was the right time to make this move um and 176 respondents um people's people responded in 89 percent of them felt that an adoption was in the best interest of students the reason that illustrative
33:57was selected is because it's highly aligned to how we teach math and fall river this constructivist approach there's a clear learning path for teachers and students it's problem based um it teaches students to think critically it uses high leverage routines again all four domains of language and some of those routines are routines that are already established in fall river um as that is our philosophy for teaching um
34:27for teaching like a constructivist approach and these routines lead to that um it's engaging student-centered and culturally responsive we got lucky because desti offered out the accelerated math grant and we applied for it and we were awarded the money for that and so with that all of our student consumables were paid for for this year our teacher materials were paid for for this year meaning the teacher manuals
34:59and we have one full year of learn zillion which is the digital platform aligned to the allusion of math program it offers teachers a virtual powerpoint of the content for a day for the day that can be modified it also has a student platform um that allows students to complete the tasks online and so this year um the grant is now open for this year and we intend to apply for that
35:35um so that we can get maybe hopefully get another year with that is uh we also got the professional development package um and so we've had all of our educators trained at this point in how to use the program and how to navigate the um the website the lauren zillion page so that they can use it appropriately um in addition to that our administrators are currently enrolled and our math
36:04leads are currently enrolled in how to support teachers through observation and feedback and in february we have another pd with them during the february pd day and it's focused on planning effectively using student work any questions just stagger so if uh i'm looking at the other pages of this thing here when when you look and we've already been through this but the uh public schools uh
36:35not meeting benchmark grades two three four and five this was the telling really telling uh i think in it i'm reading here the third year of the district-wide implementation districts are a low percentage of students meeting grade level expectations so this was like a year ago you know thereabouts is it possible to send the committee details on this data by school so just curious to see how each school was was
37:06contributing to those numbers the numbers obviously are not good so we needed to change that um and i think at the subcommittee we had said we were moving forward with this regardless but we got the grant so we didn't need that is there anything else with the math that needs to be added purchase are we are we holding back on it on any kind of support for the math program not at this point
37:34we can't afford to hold back well right but we are so but we are applying for a grant to extend the um financial support for the consumables for students and things like that but that that original purchase was for teacher materials that you know will last for multiple years but then student materials and the learn zillion platform it was only for one it was only for one year so in the event
37:59that we were not awarded the grant moving forward we would need to make that purchase and learn zillion is uh i know it's a resource but are we do we have anything that what were we using before that came on is there any other math computer programming that we half yes yes so um lauren zillian is is lauren zillion the reason there's even a connection to learn zillion is because illustrative was created through
38:26a non-profit organization and so they don't market and sell their materials um and so they rely on a third party to create those consumables and um and digitize their their work and so that's why learn zillion is involved and they're the ones that actually just make the money off of that so learn zillion is aligned to tier one content it does not go off core it stays aligned to the actual content
38:52and so to meet the needs of kids where they are and move them up we do have other programs in the city so for example dreambox is used in several schools and st math is used in in the other schools and those um those are st math stays aligned to grade level core for the most part you can assign off grade level and dream box stays off grade level but you can assign grade
39:16level so it's a different type of yep i would just ask that we get some data on the usage by school of all of those programs i can do that i do that constantly it's messaged out to princeton i will say that we are actually today we had a workshop for st math we only had limited just a couple of schools that were four schools that started using that i we we used to use
39:40dream box across the board everybody that's again fading away st math we looked at the data it's very strong and we are moving towards st math for school so today we had more people from other schools come in for workshop and um we are looking at the usage and we're looking at okay so has this already filled its purpose is it time to move forward or not we have to have those
40:08conversations with the leads as well as the data and usage on both yeah now i know uh because i've been here to know that the the assignments for the district leads was different like mr kennedy has a different yep like there's uh not one just english like she just did english and math but i think the committee maybe should know that as well like if you weren't here to know
40:33there's a there's a thing to say upon the school committee and that we say you know she's the math lady you know she's in charge of the math so we know the math top to bottom but in is it a little different system i'm not saying one's right or wrong but i think you let the committee know to say that what's the rationale or is there going to be some different things happening just so we
40:54can get a feel for it most times people complain that we hire too many administrators to be quite honest and we look at these meetings and we say here's the reason why we have to pay for but the results haven't been there but people need to be here and then they hold people accountable to do things the right way so you know i'm not putting a plug in for more administrators but i'm putting in a plug
41:16but said to say this legit to say why there is a reason why we have a lot of administrators there's a lot of work that needs to be done but if we don't see that we hear from everybody they hiring too many administrators and you know it gets frustrating you have to like kind of take your word for it or push back if we don't know so i'd rather just say here's
41:37what we have as our organizational structure and here's where we're going and here's how we're going to get there and then when we see the results they get the results so you don't get the results so i we've talked about this too i think yeah i think you're on the right track and whatever you think needs to change you need to let us know so if there's personnel if there's job descriptions and things
41:56just because we did it a certain way doesn't mean it has to stay that way so i agree and you will be there there will be a shift that um i will be speaking with all of you about that um so as we try to really make sure that we're shoring up our our people and maximizing all of our people um we will be looking at that sounds good thank you thank you i have just one
42:19question now i am basically we're going to get there some point to where we are with wonders now where everybody in the curriculum is going to have the same curriculum so every now and then now yeah so we're there now yes we're there now so i i thought we were almost there with still work to do but we are yeah it wasn't a slow roll right we rolled it k to five okay
42:46all right thank you i yield anything on to carnegie so um really on a similar timeline to the original k2 wonders roll out within that same year we were you know we had prioritized early literacy at um at the elementary level and then prioritized math at the secondary level it had been i don't know forever since there really had been like a viable district-wide curriculum more recently we had been
43:20using engaged new york at the secondary level but there really hadn't been like a singular core resource so um as i said on the same timeline uh we started taking a look at um curriculum resources for secondary math um using the same kind of um reference resources the mass curate using ed reports using equip resources and engaged teachers in presentations q a sessions things like that it was we were actually able to
44:00open it up to more teachers during coveted closure we had about 70 teachers who participated in these information sessions and in you know trying out some of the problems and things like that and ended up um landing with carnegie and so of course you know like anything else because it was obviously need to be we looked at something that was aligned to common core standards um really
44:24looked at the research around cognitive science 74 of teachers ended up saying that carnegie was the choice it really was coming down to illustrative at the secondary level along with carnegie and it was a um it was really the platform the mafia platform that is part of the instructional routine for carnegie that seemed to kind of edge out the competition and i would i'll actually defer to you a
44:53little bit just in talking about kind of what what mafia brings into the instruction and what that experience is like but yeah artificial intelligence software and um it's pretty it it's one of these things that it's not an extra it's not uh this is the intervention it's actually part of the instruction that's built into the expectation for the use of the curriculum so do you want to talk a
45:17little bit about how it's looking at durfee yeah so i can tell you so at jerky um i have a lot of things i wanted to say to a lot of things i heard um i think it was right about when we bought this for six years i think was the right thing because so it's my second year back at derby last year was what it was right we tried
45:36hybrid uh ingenuity came into play so we all talk at jeffrey and say this is really our official kickoff of karnaking i can tell you one of the things i've heard over and over is oh matt come on this is going back all the other ones we're going to do it for a year it's going to go away like no this isn't going away we have a six-year deal like
45:55that's made a difference to be able to say that because in past years it's kind of been his peers in one year i've got the other one or the teachers just kind of created all their own stuff right so the fact that we have it for six years is a selling point to get more buy-in from teachers this isn't going away um there's a lot of questions that you guys had before
46:18uh miss ponte made a good point i and the teachers laugh at me at jerusalem when i say listen we must do this with fidelity right so that's the word they hear me use and i come up i'm telling you no we have this opportunity right here but if we don't do it with fidelity how can we really rate this thing because it is different a lot of things are happening
46:39we have we finally have a curriculum that that we put down in front of people and they're looking at it and some of the teachers looking at it going that's my standard because we haven't talked to that high of a level in a long time and i'm not knocking anybody before me i love derpy i was there myself before but things slip little by little sometimes and so this was a big wake-up call to say
47:05like i actually did pd one time i did a pd a couple of weeks ago and we had a vertical alignment and like okay whose standard is this right so we're doing the ap class question we got to the algebra 2 team and they didn't know it was their standard because that's how long it's been since they got through a curriculum that said these are your content standards right so it makes a difference
47:31but ms potts said i think it's true also that you can walk through any classroom at drifting you're going to see carnegie in action i i insist upon it but you're going to see levels right now of variation some people have jumped on board and it is fantastic some people are they're kind of reeling it now and some people i still need to push a little bit but the expectation is in
47:52your room we are doing carnegie mellon the the part that we're trying to get used to is that this online platform mafia it is it's a day it's a day of curriculum but what it does is the the book part or the uh mr calling that they would be on their own but we really didn't mean that so the the classes that you're used to seeing kayak is designed in a workshop
48:19model exactly we want our classes to run they lay it out that way right they lay it so that you are starting with the gym now they're getting a little mini lesson with getting started and then it is exactly what we want kids to do it's me and i release you and you go and as a student you do the thinking you do the heavy load and we come back quick intervention a little
48:39check right we all wait and i release you again so it's designed exactly as we want i'm not saying that it's working perfect yet because right now kids are not really back in that mode of that happening right so it's been i got this brand new curriculum and it's been a little bit of a push sometimes to say that but when i put them out there right it's really not it's really not
49:02doing what we wanted to do yet and so but we don't the curriculum is right we just need to find a way to get the kids to do what we want them to do in our curriculum and then matthew is planned out throughout so matthew is where they kind of get the skills right they have a matthew a day they're all on and tracy saw at one time and she said to me
49:20what were they doing in that class right it doesn't look normal but it's a day of curriculum but now kids are going at their own pace so it's giving them the skills they need to back up what we're doing in class but if a kid needs a little more time the kid can take a little more time if the kid wants to go ahead they can go ahead if they want but it's a planned day of
49:40instruction we plan those days intentionally there's a whole scope and sequence that goes with it that says you should put a matthew a day in here you should put a matthew a day in here and we're learning as we go believe me i made mistakes we made mistakes in the beginning but i think about it all the time and i say i think we finally have something that will help us
50:01move kids to a higher level that we want to move them to we just need to learn how to work with it and get that to happen in the classroom
50:15so i agree with everything that matt said i think teachers have curriculum at their fingertips right during their plc time before they had to spend a lot of time looking at what materials they were going to actually use now they can spend time talking about content and how they're going to facilitate those lessons that are in there they have slide decks so teachers have the option now of using the textbook or
50:40using the slide deck and loading it up to a google classroom so students can work right in google classroom from there they have ready-made assessments for teachers to use they can modify them they can use them for do nows they can use them for exit tickets i also think it allows time for students to be more independent learners over the past couple of years we've done a great job with doing
51:05small group a lot of collaboration but we strayed away from students working independently this allows them the time to do that and i also think with data so over the past couple of years we really haven't had i don't want to say time but resources to look at consistent formative assessments so now there's data every day they can go in in math what they call live lab so if your students are logged
51:32in doing matthew you can actually watch them and pull them over if they need support principals were trained how to analyze data so now we can meet with the leads and talk to them about the data that's coming in to make sure that they are implementing it with fidelity and that all classrooms are doing it at the end of term two we had to reassess as a school and say that we
51:57weren't meeting we weren't up to the hours they really want you i think it's five hours and four weeks to be spending that amount of time in every single classroom every single student so the math department and i had to meet and really just see how we're going to restructure how we were using time weekly in order for them to get that in a whole small group and still stay with
52:21the curriculum and not fall behind so i think it's been it's been great so far not that we haven't made mistakes i will say one thing about the teaching manuals though so when i'm so i'm trying to plan all this out myself too and get used to this curriculum and i always refer to the manual of the online so much easier but the other point i was thinking of when you were saying that if
52:44you go into jerky right now and you go into a regular ed classroom you go into a special ed classroom or you go into an l classroom or a language base they're all doing carnegie now do they need to scaffold absolutely but they are all in every one of those classes they are all starting on grade level content but we have manuals for all those teachers also right that that that piece
53:10is important uh so now they take the and inside the manuals for chronic illness for carnegie it has his scaffolding techniques for elves he has scaffolding techniques for special ed kids so you can just it has everything a person could possibly need inside that inside that menu inside the whole curriculum itself but the manual like people are looking at i can bring it into gene's room she's like man i go
53:35down the side and i'm like you put all these nice scaffolds in your slides right you should i go down the side of the book that has a lot of good ideas for me and it's all built right in there for new teachers they have guiding questions for them to use it gives it gives staff the opportunity to even create their own screencastify so we have some teachers who put hints right
53:56in the slide decks if you click on that you can see a video that they've created so it's just given them time to do the things that we've been asking them to do for the people who are using it and there's different levels right now some people still want i want to make my own slides like why would you want to do that but for the people who are using it
54:15for what the money has bought that's exactly what's happening there's more conversation about the content which there needs to be right now because sometimes we run the course if we run across a question we go there's a geometry the other day okay what's the answer now it becomes a conversation right there's more time for that and that's where the time needs to be spent not building the lesson but looking at a
54:41lesson and saying how do i teach it how do i bring it up or how do i bring it to a level that would bring everybody up that's what we need the time for i think happiness kind of he allows us the time for that more so let's tag you how does it integrate with the a-net in high school you're still using a net as well we are and how does that integrate with uh we are
55:02um it's a little bit better this year last year it was not aligned at all for high school uh we would we were we had a net test that maybe there were two questions on the test that we had already done with the curriculum and the rest wasn't it wasn't aligned at all i worked with sarah for a while and then and cheryl too trying to get that more aligned
55:29i don't see a great i my own personal opinion i don't see a great integration of the two of them the test the the a net test we give a more aligned now because a network to help make that happen so that now it aligns somewhat to kaneki the way the kind of curriculum is laid out i don't see a great integration so far but is it always it sounds like it's on them not
55:52necessarily on the school so it's on with the the gate and the a net got to get on the same page they didn't have uh they didn't have a carnegie track they had a couple of different tracks already created carnegie wasn't one of them i think they knew that we were a good um partner for them like we employed them carnegie is trying to become one of the main curriculums in this area of the
56:16country so i think it really included them to make sure that they started to line up with carnegie and what they were doing but i mean just as a layman if you look at the everything should be aligned to the standards the tests everything so if both of those are two different things but they're both aligned to the standards they should shouldn't they just universally like get it well we wanted them to flow the same so
56:39that the content was out of order you know depending on the scope and see what what's the idea anet will do is they will model um their schedule of assessed standards after a particular curriculum so they could follow you know an engaged new york sequence and they could kind of pull this pull their questions together we're going to assess these standards because they coincide with the scope and
57:02sequence for engage so that they do that what will happen is they'll create it if there's um enough of a need so we have it for illustrative math because there are enough schools um in massachusetts who were using illustrative that it made sense for a net to create an assessment because their customers were looking for it and that's that's general absolutely basically aim that catching up at catching up
57:30yeah and so it really just it and they have to they want to make sure that they have a wide enough network because one of the things that they kind of sell on is you can compare yourself to other schools who are using the same curriculum all over the country kind of thing and then you have like this national this national pool so they're they're looking to make sure that you know they have enough
57:54customers that are looking for it but it wouldn't it be a maths you know you're going to learn this before you learn that to build off each other wouldn't there be sort of a maybe a mid-year assessment that you should for the first six months of in algebra one class or a geometry class shouldn't you be learning almost the same relative standards in those six months you do learn the same standards but you
58:15can like uh some like this curriculum kind of puts uh statistics in the front where the other curriculum would put statistics more at the end so it throws everything up and statistics is a piece where you can kind of play around about where you put that um even though it's a grade level so they don't always line up with the same way but you're still getting the same standards
58:36because we do pay for a net for high school right so we're paying for it that's why i asked is how was it yeah as soon as we knew that it wasn't aligned i had a conversation with them um they worked to align and i think that it's as he's saying you have to have they they want to compare they want to have a pool so that they can say okay you can
58:57compare data to springfield or whatever and and they didn't have enough of that so they're going with the mass but we said that in order for us to stay with them they needed to align it they they we're very clear on that and we'll have yeah it has died off much better this year on the slightest talk so small teams working to create scope and sequence facing guides and units of study but you
59:20had mentioned that the curriculum actually you know indicates those one recommends those it gives you a the book actually the teacher manual actually is the layout of the year and it gives you inside the book it'll say uh this this topic it goes by module then topic then lesson nicely use that module topic and lesson and it will break the lesson down it will tell you by days what you should be
59:43doing uh inside each one and then we'll place it'll tell you this one should be two days here then do a mathy a day then you go on to the next uh lesson this lesson might be a two three day lesson so it does have it it has it paced out um we still need to look more in depth into the lessons to actually find out what we're going to do with them but there's
1:00:04a pacing guide i would say that to try to follow um we still need to do some more work with the override to understanding overall less the overall module itself i think is work we still need to do like you go in the beginning and right now we're kind of going through my lessons but we need we need to work more on the overall picture of what the module is
1:00:25supposed to do but as far as the pacing guidance therefore yeah that just my last question is on the internal controls to be sure of the fidelity of use like what is the system that we have for that at durfee you have me and i'm not saying that to pat myself i'm like i'm i'm i believe that this is a good curriculum and i believe that the only way you can prove that it is or not
1:00:52and maybe because i'm not is that this is what we do right and we give it a shot so i can honestly tell you you can go into any mathematical journey it is kaneki i'm not saying every teacher is going to say they like it if you ask them yeah so we're taking that same question though so like it's you but what it what do you do as a system so like that's you you
1:01:16really even go somewhere else and somebody else comes in what system is in place to so who are you reporting to relative to monthly bi-weekly how many people are actually doing this to your bosses and levels of leadership like what is the reporting structure for the internal control so well i will say that across the district we have a couple of things i mean one is similar to what stephanie
1:01:41mentioned in terms of you know walks with leads and things like that i mean that is happening that's happening in every school it's happening with district personnel um you know on those teams so our in in we have a district goal set around the use of these high quality instructional materials so that's what we are that's what we are monitoring so we can do it through observation going into schools
1:02:03um there's also mafia the use of that mafia platform is something that is monitored kind of externally because we can see the uses usage at each school um carnegie as a partner i think has been pretty phenomenal so they're here monthly getting into schools doing walks so they you know they partner with school-based teams i've been on walks you know we observe we debrief um they're doing planning sessions with
1:02:30teachers and really taking like i was at one um earlier late last week where sat down and took a look at one of those um one of those modules and getting into those individual lessons because there was a teacher at the school who was kind of struggling to make sense of it all and and was kind of thinking like i could probably skip this it's not that important but we sat and we looked
1:02:54through you know how the thinking is developed around the particular concept so that she could understand why we're not skipping this we have to make this work so i think that um you know school-based structures in in within the district and then that look from the external partner just met with principals right do you want to talk a little bit about that there's one-to-one coaching like tracy
1:03:14said so they're in there walking with the department heads and then i know that we're talking about it in our school where i'm looking at the data because we were all trained so you can pull it up we have access working with the leads within the building and then the data was brought to a principal's meeting where they showed the usage for every single school for workspaces completion of the course and we had
1:03:37discussions around that so every principal has the capacity to go and look at their data individually by school on a local level at the high school aside from maps you guys have dean meetings and there's an ap in charge of curriculum and instruction that you meet with her regularly and you guys every week every other week we have the meetings we talked about it um we have to we report out sometimes about what we're
1:04:11doing in our plc's how we're planning for the curriculum that we have from the outside i've also invited from the end of and she's done a walk with me to check out the new curriculum with a focus on house of course but we went to a lot of different classrooms so i think there's a i think it's kind of like stretching out into different places right where you got you got you got the
1:04:34teachers in the school you have made changes with me in the school you know you also have outside people coming in and all looking at the same thing we're saying this is our curriculum and and now if tracy came in she went into a room that's what she would expect to say if hernandez came in she would expect to see carnegie happening no matter where we are yeah i just think if
1:04:54we could get something maybe on an explanation from you across the district of internal controls for fidelity of use i think that would be uh important we don't want to get to the point of ten years from now or six years from now when this is over and we say well we didn't you know do it some did it something and i get that you have varying levels but from administration if we say this is
1:05:15what we're going to do here's the expectation it makes your job a lot easier because there is no well i'm going to go try and go off on my own and i'm not saying that's happening yep but i think what's happened in the past was that happened and nobody was really pushing it to say no this is what we're going to do and this is why we're going to do it with
1:05:33some research so i get all that i'm just thinking three four years down the road we want to be saying we all implemented it like you said or of course you know you're only one middle school whatever all the middle schools do you're looking at all so fidelity would be yeah i think we didn't touch upon that either the beauty of it is that it is in all middle schools
1:05:53so now if you have fatality there now they all come to me and they all come from the same curriculum and the kids are all used to it like that i can't wait to see two more years from now when we get to sixth grade who started right now they come to ninth grade but it doesn't matter what school they came from now because they're all doing all right thank you thank you
1:06:15anything good yep open psy ed so open syed is an open resource i just want to start from that point it's not a for purchase curriculum anybody can go onto openside.org and see any unit at any any of the three middle school grade levels right now they could see units for kovid for elementary middle high that are all um freely open available at no cost the cost for openside right now comes from us needing to
1:06:56with what got approved in june of 2020 was what we needed to buy in terms of kits and durable materials to establish that we had the equipment to do this high-tech science really and that's the the money that was allocated and the kits that were purchased two years ago how we came about learning about open syed is that i would say at least four maybe five years back in massachusetts there was recognition that
1:07:32the majority of what was being done in massachusetts in all districts not just ours was not working for kids scores were not where they wanted them to be on mcas and so desi put a lot of time in looking over mass curate looking at ed reports looking at equip reports and the majority of materials available were not meaning standards that just it's just that the landscape of science going desi became part of 10
1:08:07partnership states that worked with these developers at openside and open syed work goes back probably 40 years of research and built upon a next-gen storylines curriculum that's been around for several years to get the materials and the lessons that we're now using in our classrooms um we when i came on board i made sure that i communicated through the joint labor management committee through building plcs and cpts
1:08:41what information i was getting when i met with the science leads at deci and science leads from other districts to have people start to consider this new approach that was coming open syed is the framework that's being used as a model for the next generation innovative mcas that's coming for grades five and eight so we're we're kind of we're aligned in fall river in a very good position to be
1:09:12aligning our curriculum and our instruction in the way that massachusetts is gonna assess students so that's like the grand view and the vision that desi had is what i really tried to communicate to teachers building leads and everybody throughout the district so that we were making sure we were making the right strides in the right areas openside comes with a huge instructional shift
1:09:40it comes with a huge design shift from our previous curriculum maps and it's been aligned by desi to the mass frameworks for the scope of sequence that makes sense for massachusetts on how students are ultimately assessed on mcas it is based on state and national standards it looks different than other science curriculums out there because it it requires a storyline that incorporates
1:10:13different grade level standards so a unit at sixth grade might be built around how a two-way mirror works for light and matter like you see in the in the in the fbi rooms and stuff when they when they interrogate somebody at the police station students learn how that mirror works and in doing so they're learning about the design of the mirror the engineering behind it how the brain processes the image
1:10:43all together in this big picture storyline to solve a problem and the curriculum and the lessons the unit is based on what's called an anchoring question and every lesson within it has its own question to be answered that so what students are doing is learning um how to develop and practice their inquiry skills and learn science like a scientist would like a researcher would so it's it's a
1:11:11very different approach than anything that we did in this district prior and so with that took a lot of i think consideration and buy-in i started with actually virtual plc's because we were in the middle of trying to learn about this and figure it out when covid hit and we went remote and teachers at the middle school and at durfee spent a lot of time with me and weekly plc is all the way through the summer
1:11:39trying to just figure out what this would mean for them and what it would look like in their classes so i had that buy-in from the teacher level and i had that buy-in from the building lead levels because building leads like not part of that early work matt was at cost at the time it provides hands-on inquiry-based science where students learn to really develop their sense making they notice
1:12:06and wonder and ask a whole lot of questions right up front before they're given any kind of content and then they work through by doing investigative tasks to develop their own meaning in that content and build their understandings and so what it requires are these instructional shifts that teachers are now facilitating and they're promoting inquiry they're promoting depth of knowledge they're promoting high skills
1:12:33proficiency which all results in a lot deeper of learning um how we've kind of gone about this journey is that we're actually at the middle school in year two of our implementation because we did begin this implementation in that first year of of cohid starting in the classroom and then remotely we applied for a three-year adoption program through desi it's funded by the 1-8 foundation through the mass stem hub
1:13:08and we have all of our schools with middle school grades except our pa right now are part of that cohort one and so we have funding that came about after our initial district investment we have funding through this this three-year grant program for every one of our schools that are heavily involved with it now so that all teachers will get between four to six units of pd there's six
1:13:38units per grade level and at each grade level in the larger schools there's a grade level champion they'll be trained in all six of the units for that grade level as are the building lead so the science leads in the building those those those admin that that lead the science team have that opportunity for that training and then all grade level teachers will get at least four units of pd
1:14:03and then they also supply the funding for us to buy the durable equipment we had that nice beginning of our durable equipment through the school committee approval from a few years ago but the increased adoption of new units is funded through those grants along with that we have a mentor to our district who is a former boston public schools teacher who's now working through boston college they
1:14:32have boston college has a group that supports this implementation in the districts that are part of the cohort one and they work with me and the teachers directly to be able to come into the schools do learning walks they provide the pd we were in the process of the first in-person pd cycle for teachers summer pd had been virtual and all the teachers have been going through a two-day
1:15:03in-person pd for the next unit they're going to teach but they are readily available i'm in contact with that group and that mentor almost daily and they are also in contact with the buildings with or without me and just keep me informed we've done walks with that mentor in all of our buildings that are part of cohort one and have teachers have been able to get direct feedback from that mentor ask
1:15:32questions about his experience in implementing these same lessons and he's been part of our science league meetings that i run monthly and part of even individual school cpt and plc meetings so the level of support that we have through deci and through boston college for the middle school program is extremely high financially in terms of pd and and materials but also support and
1:16:00implementation so that our teachers have resources of people with experience in in utilizing this whole new pedagogy and whole new approach to science teaching the work that we've done at durfee and and now stone is dorothy as part of their turnaround and year my first year in the district they initially adopted next-gen storylines which is the precursor to open syed and had restructured
1:16:28their their curriculum approach based on the pedagogy that's part of open science and so dorfy and catherine waldron the high school teacher at stone are part of the field test of the open science units for high school so that's happening now and they again have structure and supports through deci through a team of districts where we have a champion from our district the other participants have
1:16:57champions from theirs and they support each other through this implementation and they gain a lot of pd from this consortium of openside desi and dana center experts to help with with pd implementation and rollout for elementary elementary is the third in the open syad plan so they will be looking to field test openside in the coming fall once those units begin to be developed and this field testing involves getting
1:17:32student and teacher feedback once the units are field tested they will update them based on needs that they identify before they're formally rolled out so we're we're a partner in this work as one of 10 states and hundreds of thousands of kids and teachers that are implementing that the evidence that we have for the impact of this work that we're doing is that within open syed are daily formative and
1:18:04strategic summative assessments that all teachers are using and we're and they're available without teachers having to develop anything they can they can access as matt said with the math they can access the assessments digitally so we're working to take those digital assessments move them into illuminate so that teachers will grade them and they don't and they can manage their data and use it
1:18:27as real-time formative to help them support their students and to make sure that instruction is aligned where students need it we've also seen in the work that we've done through through district-based built benchmarks that student constructed responses are deeper and thorough in a way that wasn't their open side and next gen storyline so we've seen some changes happening and we saw
1:18:59some of that change even in some of the mcas items from last year's results and then we also have our teacher and student feedback that we've gotten some solicited some not um and one that i really think is worth sharing is that um on a a deci meeting last week one of the eighth grade teachers from cuss had shared with the other districts that it was really interesting to see that particular teacher has regular ed
1:19:29periods they have a gate group and they have an l group that's mainstream and fells and that teacher shared that it was really cool to see students across those three different kinds of classrooms engage model and apply their thinking and the concepts that they were developing from the same same exact lessons so it it's providing opportunities to kids in ways that some of the previous materials didn't and
1:19:58that's part of why those materials don't pass on any of the end report and equip and the mass curate ratings because they just didn't meet needs so we finally found something that is meeting those needs which is really wonderful looking ahead we will have this ongoing pd for the next three years for our leads and our teachers and that's not just sending one or two teachers from a building it's sending
1:20:27every teacher that's teaching with this open science so that they can learn the pedagogy and and this whole new shift in how they instruct it's it's very different looks very different than before um we've i've applied for rpa to have to be part of cohort 2. so we're going to go through that interview process with rpa and hopefully next year we'll have them receiving the same kind of professional
1:20:54development and funding for their durable equipment as the rest of the district we will ongoing have to like any science program replace some consumables over time but for right now we have everything we need from the funding that we have we are looking for full high school open side implementation in what is currently like our college prep repertory courses it wouldn't replace pre-ap or the ap program that
1:21:28would still exist but this would be another option for certain students to be able to choose which depending on what their their their future goals are and their career paths might be to choose which which way to go in the college board way or the open science way and we also will be doing a gradual adoption of the elementary osc units we do have currently henry lord and sylvia have some fifth grade
1:21:58teachers that are using the next gen storylines um units to try to like just pilot those in our classrooms to just start to make the shift our elementary teachers and our middle school teachers have been also engaged in innovative mcas professional development through decian and wpi to start making the instructional shifts that go with the pedagogy that are based on open science so we will be working
1:22:28with our elementary teachers on the february 4th pd to take the mystery science modules that we're still investing in while open side is being developed and help teachers to use the story lines that just rolled out from mystery science and start to get the routines in place so that students are doing the heavier lift and not the teachers so that students are sense making and making meaning about
1:22:54what they notice and wonder and they'll learn how to actually practice science that's really where we are with open science i don't know what questions you have for me who's field testing first is we're field testing in 22 correct so we we currently so we're we're in at the middle school grade 68. this is our second year of using those those lessons okay at the high school level for biology chemistry and physics
1:23:25there's a group of teachers that are using open science materials right now for those three courses at durfee and the physics lessons are being used at stone with their population there with a lot of interest in success so that's happening right now at durfee and the feedback is they're as excited as you are yeah honestly it is like it's really really neat to see and hear the students thinking and their questions and
1:23:56just to see how they they tie it tie it all together it's definitely different than it was and it's establishing this there's a lot of sel in it it's establishing this community where there's a high respect for other people's thoughts and ideas and there's a lot of engineering and modeling that goes in it it also is paralleling as i said the innovative mcas development so in a few years forward from now
1:24:24students are going to experience mcas in a whole different way they're going to get like a almost like a comic book story line of information that has some data and graphs and things but it looks cartoonish they'll get be given a problem to solve and they'll have to use a computer simulation to set the parameters for an experiment generate data and then use the data they generate to answer a series of questions
1:24:51so that means that mrs ponce and i could be sitting side by side taking the same mcas working on the same part of it she could choose one set of parameters i might choose another so we'd have different data that gets generated and then we each use our own data to answer a series of questions so it looks a lot different than even the updated m test that our kids are taking now that whole design
1:25:17was um kind of just founded upon open syed so like when desi started rolling this out four or five years ago and to get districts to understand what this phenomenon-based learning was and how we needed to get students to do all this sense making they were very strategic in not just high quality curriculum not just instructional pedagogy but also in the way that our students are going to be assessed so any questions
1:25:48just again just a question on the you had mentioned at the beginning it's not similar it's not the same as the other curriculums but then later on you said that the there is materials that the teachers don't have to they can utilize the materials of the program you're speaking of right like the nice thing about it is it will if there's a teacher guide a teacher like a handbook for every unit
1:26:10it's readily available right on the internet anybody could register and download it within there it gives a lesson overview every lesson has a has an overarching question and it tells the teacher right in like a 29 day sequence of what's going to happen every day some lessons are one day some are up to three and they might be doing a traditional lab and making sense and meaning out of what
1:26:38they they they figure out um but they're following a story like the first one that i trained on when i when i learned about this through desi was a middle school student who wasn't feeling well she was always having an upset stomach and so the students then start to follow through this journey of what could possibly be wrong with this student and they look at doctor report data they look at internal intestinal
1:27:08data they look at just student report information they they do a whole bunch of analysis of actual tests like the doctor would run and eventually they learn that this is this student has celiacs but nobody tells them that they figure it all out through this this journey and so every unit is a journey like that and and with that plan come all the daily assessments they come all the formative assessments like the
1:27:38midpoint and the end of the unit so that all teachers would be using the same assessments and the same the same flow of things whether they're at morton or cost or henry lord because we started this like i really did start this kind of grassroots through plc's in the pandemic our teachers had formed networks within our district so it's not uncommon that a teacher at talbot might email somebody at morton
1:28:08and say i'm on this lesson i'm doing this tomorrow i noticed that your you did it yesterday i've got this question is there something you can help me with our teachers at every friday log in in a excel spreadsheet where they end for that um that week and i set that up not not really so that i could track it but so that teachers could look and and reach out to each other for support because we
1:28:35started this work as i said when a lot of teachers were teaching hybrid and remote it was pre-cohort one with all this state support that we got involved in later and our teachers collaboratively using the open source ware had readied things so that if we were trying to teach virtually they had access to what they needed i was really worried about about just everything that they were going to have
1:29:02to lift through covet so teachers have worked really hard on supporting each other and now we have this added benefit of all these boston college and dusty supports through the three-year pilot that we're part of yeah i just was curious that english and math is always focused you know we focus our resources and everything in science it begs the question that we do we have anything similar for social studies is there
1:29:27curriculums that need to be enhanced for the other subject matters even the electives as we go through the in the next cycle we will be bringing forth um we did talk to um siobhan ryan who leads our social studies and she um said that we would have better information for the next meeting first too but that's what we're going to do look at all of our curriculum for all subjects so that we can
1:29:54make sure that the committee is well aware of what's happening in all schools yeah and i wouldn't want one teacher you know if i'm teaching a class and i have all the materials and all the resources and then you're teaching a different class and you have nothing that's not fair either so trying to keep it equitable that's right would that ideal thank you uh can i just yes wonders that was part of the appropriation
1:30:18that was tabled first to and referred back to the subcommittee so it would have to be referred back to the full committee so that we can make a motion to approve and forward it with a positive recommendation second second okay yeah yes miss laravey yes it's pereira yes anything else okay sorry so my only the only thing i was going to say i reviewed this material and i took time to research
1:30:49the different curriculum we're using so i don't have any questions really in regards to the curriculum but i do want to sort of reiterate what mr aggie has said in terms of maybe the math curriculum not being used as aggressively by all teachers equally across the board and i do understand how you are monitoring that or tracking that but my question would be when you discover that's happening what are the
1:31:12strategies that are you know assisting or supporting that that instructor and are we looking into the reasons why and i do agree with you i think when this is happening um you know now that we're rolling now that this is happening in middle school you will see possibly teachers more engaged in the curriculum because students are coming in already you know having a strong understanding of the curriculum
1:31:38but what strategies are used right now when you see teachers maybe struggling with fully engaging so i can give you i can give you three different ones and one's just starting one's been happening um and one is gonna start so the use of the carnegie coaching so pg came with them with the packaging boy so i was lucky enough to get this woman my name is carrie we have a fantastic relationship um
1:32:06when we first started coming we decided that we needed to have some model classrooms right because people were not used to teaching this curriculum teaching this way so we chose um and we chose a teacher who taught else mainly and carrie worked with her and what she would do is like sometimes i was lucky enough to have her come to my school two days in a row so they would sit down and
1:32:26they would plan a lesson together right then the next day i would set it up so when carrie came back she'd watch that lesson and then i would give them time to debrief at the end so those two days together really works well so she's done that with a couple of different people for me in the school she worked the most with gene because i wanted gene to be like the model classroom but she's done
1:32:46that with some other teachers she also sits in plc so i'm learning as i go also uh maybe three weeks ago the last time she was in we sat in an algebra two plc because algebra 2 was a team that needed a little bit of a push um and when she sat down with them like said to them you don't need to follow this to the exact t if you want to
1:33:09change to do now because it makes more sense if you want to take a piece of this lesson and make it go to now so you're for the sake of time you're saving time time seems to be the thing right so she's a good resource i've gone in with a special ed teacher we've gone to a special ed room and we modeled her night she was a special ed teacher i was a regular teacher we
1:33:32modeled what carnegie would look like we were doing two things we were trying to model the carnegie because the to me the spent the regular teacher just wasn't getting it the way it should and she was modeling like we were co-teaching how do we co-teach in carnegie so we've done that we wanted to do more of that we also hired a math interventions coach at durfee this year we filled one of
1:33:55those positions and him and i just sat down maybe two weeks ago and said i think that job's been evolving as we go along um and we just gave it another evolution that uh he has four teams he's going to work with and there'll be three things i want to come out of it one is the implementation of khan you have a couple of teachers i i think some two of them are new
1:34:19um nearly a teacher also so they they still need help understanding this flow of what it should look like and the release of the kids that's hard and it's hard for a new teacher because i feel like all my strength is when i'm at the front and i can control everything it's the complete opposite right but they don't understand so we've just set him up actually starting this week where he's going to work with these
1:34:43four groups of teachers they're all spent they all our inclusion groups so his goal we set three goals for him one the implementation of carnegie and how that works with fidelity with these four groups two setting up what it looks like for special ed right and the regulated teachers to work together in that environment and three to make sure that the accommodations for those kids are also being met through
1:35:08them working together through carnegie so that was a big one for us but the goal is at the end we have some very solid we have more solid people with the fertility of carnegie but also solid co-teaching at the same time it's like those three things happening to try to where i see a problem we try to look at it but kind of approach them in different ways sometimes thank you i can
1:35:31speak to elementary so we have building-based academic leads in all of the elementary schools except for stone um and so in those buildings you'll find those academic leads providing pd you'll find them in classrooms constantly providing feedback you'll find them in plt the plts are facilitated by that coach so they can be very um or by that lead it could be a department head so they can be very targeted to
1:35:58what the needs are of that team um and in addition to that they have embedded coaching cycles so if there's a teacher that's really struggling to matt's point um that coach or department head will go in and model and potentially go further and have a full um coaching cycle with that teacher in addition we go in we give feedback to principals and academic leads so that they can from there
1:36:21share that feedback in the way that they seem that they feel is best so it's safe to say between the high school and middle school elementary school everybody's kind of doing the same thing in regards to uh supporting the teachers in regards to to foster well the structures are in place right it's that fidelity also from our part so we just need to make sure that we monitor and support the structures
1:36:49and one thing that i would just mention um matt was just talking about the the support that we get from um carnegie um in with those on-site visits if there's one thing uh i think we'll end up coming back to the school committee for it probably will be additional funding for those on-site visits we did contract out quite a bit of money i think the initial contract had about 300 000 in professional development
1:37:19and i think that going into next year um we will probably require some additional funding so that we can maintain what we were able to do this year that would be that would be one of our asks for sure can you just define for the edification of the public in the community what a coaching cycle is so a coaching cycle is when um the coach when a teacher either elects to be coached or there's something
1:37:47happening in the classroom that requires coaching to happen whether it be pedagogical or content knowledge um and then a coaching cycle can be anything from one day um there's a collaborative conversation that happens with the coachee and they come up with a goal in some criteria for success that they've met that goal so for example if it's around a small group instruction maybe the teacher is
1:38:10struggling with that particular thing the coachee and the coach will have a conversation about what it would look like in the ideal situation like what would small group look like examples based on student data example all students are highly engaged in the content of that small group the teacher is prepared et cetera and then coaching could be that a typical coaching cycle starts with modeling
1:38:35where the coach will go in and model the strategy or model whatever it is that's being uh whatever the goal is and then from there there's usually some collaboration where they're co-teaching that particular in that particular situation and then the coachee takes on more of the teacher role and the coaches there to give feedback so it can last anywhere from a day to six weeks and potentially
1:39:00beyond depending on the needs of the koji so our plan was so our plan is that dave will go in one day and he will take on the role of the regular ed teacher and work with the special ed teacher as his partner and the regular ed teacher will just observe and we're going to have a log going and then the next time he goes into a lesson he will take on the role the special ed
1:39:21teacher and work with the regular i teach up front as a special ed teacher to observing the third time the two teachers in the room will do as he watches them the same but we've already talked about the fact that you know sometimes sometimes we we think like a one and done is good enough right that's not always most of the time that's not the case so we've already talked about the
1:39:41fact that you may need to go in and repeat that cycle again right because we're some of these people are brand new teachers right and so a lot of this stuff is new to them never mind this teaching this type of content right the way in the way that they like to talk about the release part so that may need to happen a couple of times before we
1:39:58get what we want but it will be worth it the long run yeah i don't disagree with any of that i just when i ask that it's because like i said before we we hire coaches we hire interventions we hired apartment heads nobody in the community knows what they do and i don't think we are we highlight that enough that the quality of the instruction in the classroom is what's going to make a
1:40:17difference to our scores and stuff so if we don't highlight these things the school committees don't know this is why we're spending this money so when somebody in the community says we what do coaches do they're a waste of money or an interventionist we we have the evidence on conversations like this so many of those things need to be highlighted more not even here just across like what do we do to help people
1:40:39new teachers yeah so there's no teacher you want to do it for three months and get out of the field no you're going to work your butt off to try to get them to be coach them up do what you got to do but people that just don't see that piece of it so but we made like thank you his goal like dave and i sat down we said okay we want to switch
1:40:56what's happening here and we made this his goal for the second semester to take these four groups and get them where where we want them to be comfortable so they do come back right but also it's also what's best for the kids all right thank you appreciate it motion to adjourn the naming business adjourned