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[Van der Kloot]: She did email the team, I believe. OK. Yeah, I just didn't see it. I've not been looking at my phone for that reason.
[Graham]: Paulette, I just sent Paul a message to see if he happens to be available.
[Van der Kloot]: Right, because he might be particularly interested in this one. Thank you, Jenny. Yeah. So let's see here. Everybody else who needs to be here is here though. So I can at least begin by reading our general script. So please be advised that on Wednesday, April 28th, From four to 530 there will be a curriculum subcommittee meeting, which we held through remote participation via zoom. The purpose of this meeting is to review science and fine arts curriculum in the Medford public schools pursuant to Governor bakers March 12 2020 order suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law. chapter 30a paragraph 18 in the governor's march 15th 2020 order imposing strict limitation on the number of people that may gather in one place this meeting of the medford school committee will be conducted via remote participation to the greatest extent possible specific information in the general guidelines for remote participation by members of the public and or parties with the right and or requirement to attend this meeting can be found in the city of medford website www.medfordmass.org. For this meeting, members of the public who wish to listen or watch the meeting may do so by assessing the meeting length contained herein. No in-person attendance of members of the public will be permitted, but every effort will be made to ensure that the public can adequately access the meetings in real time via technological means. In the event that we are unable to do so, despite best efforts, we will post on the City of Medford or Medford Community Media website an audio or video recording transcript or other comprehensive record of proceedings as soon as possible after the meeting. The meeting can be viewed through Medford Community Media on Comcast Channel 22 and Verizon Channel 43 at 4 p.m. Using Zoom, the meeting ID number is 988-447-42816. A mobile number is 1-929-205-0699. Our agenda today is that we're going to begin with a review Well, today we're discussing both the science curriculum and the curriculum Fine Arts. So I don't know, perhaps Superintendent, would you like to start us off?
[Edouard-Vincent]: Yes. So to start us off, we're going to start with Mr. Rocco Sieri, our Director of Science, who is going to present what's happening in science K through 12 throughout the district and then following him, Dr. Riccadeli is going to present on fine arts. And I'm glad to see we have some of our fine arts staff on the board at the meeting today as well. So thank you for joining both of you. And I'm going to ask Mr. Seary to start his presentation, and I'll be monitoring the time so we can try to give equal time to each presentation. Thank you.
[Cieri]: Thank you, Superintendent, and good evening to everybody. Mr. Seary, And I am the director of science for our schools. And today I just want to conduct a review of where we are in the science curriculum at this point. It kind of predates the pandemic, but also goes through the pandemic and hopefully beyond the pandemic as we go through this information. And hopefully it's informative and gives you a sense of where we're going to be. I'm going to attempt to screen share my presentation, the slide deck. I think I have the power to do that, but if I have any particular problems. Oh, it looks like it shares, so I should be okay. Let's see. Right. Should be sharing a screen. Good. pop up a presentation, which I'm hoping everyone can see. Okay, great. Okay, so now just, okay, great. So the outline of this presentation is to go very briefly and quickly through how the state organizes the frameworks and then how our district curriculum and district programs are selected. We'll look specifically at our elementary and secondary grades and in some detail about how these different components take place and how they sort of dovetail with one another. I will review what we do for equity in science and then talk a little bit about the future goals and our next steps as we move forward into the upcoming school year. So without holding any additional pieces, the mass curriculum frameworks are based on the next generation science standards, which were devised by a group called Achieve Inc. And these standards were, I believe, developed in the, I would say, 2013. However, the mass framework was, it approved in 2016. That then became part of our district approved science curriculum. And then we work to adopt science programs from that particular document. So that's sort of the flow in which all the different district programs get selected. We have to sort of abide by the frameworks at the state level. and then incorporate those components into our district curriculum. So really quickly, a couple of things that you might want to know about the curriculum frameworks in Massachusetts for Science is that the content will vary by grade. However, the science and engineering technology practices stay the same for each grade band. I will show you a little bit about what those are and how they stay sort of consistent. They are based, as I said, on the Next Generation Science Standards Initiative that was put together by a consortium of states several years ago. And then Massachusetts made their own version of it, and that was adopted in April of 2016. They're not tied to any particular science program. They're sort of there as a document support what we do in the classroom and hopefully as outcomes for our students across the state. A couple of things that changed from the previous framework to this framework is that there was a clear integration of science and engineering practices that the standards were written in grade by grade, K-8, rather than by grade bands. You may recall in old standards, if you were looking at the documents, that they were written in grade bands K-2, 3-5, 6-8, and then 9-12. That has changed. They go grade by grade. So K has its specific standards. Grade 1 has its specific standards, and all the way up through grade 8. At the high school level, they offer specific grade, sorry, specific subjects, and they give you the standards for each subject. Another thing that changed is that there is the application of science to engineering context. So it's more around the design-based thinking. So once a student goes through some science content and what we'd like to see as the outcome is that they apply the science content to an engineering context. And that it runs through the entire curriculum framework. for all grade levels and all subject areas. The fourth difference that is unique to Massachusetts is that technology engineering is a discipline equivalent to the traditional sciences. So we have four disciplines, whereas across the, in the NGSS, you won't find that distinction. They don't have technology engineering as a separate discipline. Just to give you a sense of what that looks like, the four disciplines are earth and space science, physical science, life science, and technology engineering. And the highlight is really just to bring your attention to the fact that technology engineering is specific to Massachusetts. It's not found in the NGSS as a separate unit. It's very unique to our state. Just to give you an example of what technology engineering might look like, we've recently revived and rehabbed an area of the high school. This is the engineering lab, CTE program at the MHS, MVTHS complex. It sort of is front-facing. There's a garage door that you might notice to the right of our building if you were looking at it. That's where the engineering lab is located. These are some of the tools that are found in that lab. As you can see, they are completely updated. And, you know, this is a pretty unique program at the high school level that we have right in-house. This is what they really mean when we talk about technology engineering. It's a very hands-on kind of place. And we certainly are meeting the expectations of the state in that particular area, both by combining it for the vocational technical school and the students that pursue CTE, but also for the kids K to eight that will eventually want to choose something like this. So these are the kinds of things that they, envision in the framework. So the science and engineering technology practices that I had spoken about, these are weaved throughout the document, K to 12 essentially. You can see that these practices involve some basic things that you do in science, asking questions, or in engineering, you're defining a problem. You're developing and using models, you're planning and carrying out investigations, you're analyzing and interpreting data using math and computational thinking, constructing explanations for science and designing solutions for engineering. engaging in argument from evidence and obtaining and evaluating and communicating information. These are really critical skills that we believe, you know, have an integral part in our curriculum program. And so when we look at what we seek to offer to students, we really have to be very mindful of including these particular practices as we work through with our youngsters. I just wanna, you know, share with you what the MCAS science and technology engineering standards do. We administer the MCAS at grades five, eight, and the high school. At grade five, it's an integrated exam for all the science domains, earth, life, physical, and technology engineering. At grade eight, it's the same. It's an integrated exam for all the science domains, earth, life, physical, and tech engineering. At the high school level, the exams become more high stakes for the students because the exam counts towards their competency determination for high school. It is subject specific. In years past, we've offered introductory physics and biology as an exam. We have moved to offering biology as the ninth grade course. And so all students at Medford High School and the vocational kids that choose the vocational CTE track start with biology in grade nine that began this year. So the students that are in ninth grade will take the biology MCAS in the spring. And that is for their competency determination for a high school diploma. I just wanna make sure that we understand why that exists and how these exams play a part in the curriculum and what choices we're making moving forward. There are other reasons why biology was placed as the first year course that I'll describe a little bit later on. If you'd like to access our courses, course syllabi, these have been all updated for our high school. They're subject-specific, biology, chemistry, and physics. Physics is still offered as an elective at the upper level. You've seen our engineering, tech engineering lab as a CTE program at the high school at the CTE side. There are other options as well. such as environmental science, anatomy and physiology, exploring forensics, and the AP courses. In particular, I want to highlight the AP Physics C class, which is a calculus-based physics class. It's a fairly rigorous class and it's worth two semesters of college credit. So it's an eight credit If you were to, you know, receive a qualifying score from university, you'd be getting two semesters worth of physics credit from that class. That's a really unusual. a course to offer at the high school level. When I talk to other directors in the state, usually they will offer just one part of the Physics C, which is the mechanics. They believe that's all they can get done in the year with a high school student. We actually offer the mechanics side and the E&M, which are two exams. So the students who take AP Physics C are really getting literally two college courses from participation. Not only that, but students who enjoy physics are getting a real boost and end up doing quite well as they move forward from our programs into either engineering courses or physics majors or science majors because of the course sequence that we offer there. And as I said, the other elective courses are equivalently robust. Anatomy and physiology is a wonderful option. The students that are in the CTE nursing assistant program participate in the anatomy and physiology as a full-time course. Students who are interested in environmental science, If they're interested in taking the AP exam, the environmental science honors course prepares them for that. We just don't have the AP designation for that course. We find that sometimes students, sometimes so many courses with the cost, you know, it comes with a large cost, a large price tag. It's a small number of students who want to take the exam to prove their proficiency. So we don't have the designation for that course. It's something we've thought about for a few years. But at this point, we're still sticking with environmental science honors as our curriculum elective. It's something that we can put through committee as a as a community to think about whether we want to put in environmental science as an AP course. Right now, there isn't strong demand for it. It's a very low demand. But for the other APs, we've got strong demand and students do enroll in it. And CP, sorry, Physics I and CP Physics Honors is an 11th and 12th grade class offered to students. It's a more, I don't want to call it traditional because it isn't taught in the way some of us might remember physics being taught. It's extremely hands-on. We've got all of the latest tools to be able to teach that effectively. We use all Vernier probes and use all kinds of hands-on activities for these courses. It is taught algebraically rather than with calculus. So that's the difference between the Physics I-CP, Physics I-Honors, and AP Physics C. In addition, we've considered AP Physics I and II, which is a different course than the one we offer. It's a lower level algebra trig-based physics. And we have some, interesting perspectives on that particular course. We think our course, as it stands, is almost better, just given the type of content we can go through in Physics I. The demands and the types of topics that are covered in the AP algebra-based course don't really don't necessarily help all students be successful at the upper level once you're looking at college level sciences. So we're sort of looking at it, but often our course seems to be better. It's a little wider and we can do more with it than narrowing our focus on test prep for AP in physics one. So I just wanted to give you an overview of those courses. Access to this particular presentation allows you to click the hot button link and get to the description, the course description, so that you can see what kinds of topics we cover in each one. Currently, I'll just look at the initiatives pre-pandemic and through pandemic, and then talk a little bit about where we're going. At the K-8 level, we've revamped all the curriculum resources. They're all new. As you know, K-5, we've adopted FOSS. That was a couple of years ago. We're coming into the third year of implementation this year, and the final payment for that for that particular program last year during the pandemic. We adopted STEM scopes that has had good success. I think it's a great program. The teachers seem to be responding well to it as well as the students. It allows for a lot of resources. Some of them are being changed into different formats for the teachers given the reality that we have right now. So we've had to sort of digitize the entire program. and make sure that students have access to it when they're learning remotely. It's been not perfectly seamless, but as seamless as one would hope. We can integrate it into our Google Classroom, but it also has its own platform. It has hands-on components, which we purchased, and to the extent possible, when we are in school, we're trying to implement that, as you know, You know, the pandemic has really sort of restricted our ability to offer hands-on given the restrictions on everything. So we're trying to do our best in that area. But K-8, everything is new up to this point. So I really want to thank the committee on being able to support that financially and move forward and get the professional development for both programs in place. And as I said, although it has been largely digital for STEM scopes, The outlook for that as we move into more in-person is great. We have all the materials we need for it, so it should be pretty robust and hands-on more than it is at the moment. At the high school level, as I had mentioned, we revised the course sequence. And I'll tell you a little bit about why we wanted to do that. At grade nine, we currently offer biology. at grade 10 chemistry and then electives. We really wanted to align the requirements for the CTE and students who choose CTE and students who are in a traditional high school track. They were sort of misaligned because students who went to the CTE programs would have to take chemistry their senior year. And when we do that, it's a different course. And we really needed to have students meet the requirements as sort of in our school policy, that they have biology and chemistry completed by the time they graduate, at least biology and chemistry, and then a third year of elective science. In order to do that, we've placed biology first, which I think makes a lot of sense and seems to have given a great advantage and has allowed the students to be able, at least this year and into the future, the opportunity to still take the MCAS in biology. They will take chemistry in grade 10, and the faculty is working really hard at making sure that the The chemistry we offer at grade 10 is appropriate to grade 10 students of very, you know, of a wide and diverse learning. you know, group, and so that it's a really big tent. And then that all of our students, regardless of what track they've decided to take, will have access to our electives moving forward. And some of these already exist, but some we may want to, you know, revise and find some new electives. Computer science, for example, does count as a STEM elective. The student has to choose computer science as their elective, and then it goes through the Councilor-administrator review to make sure that, you know, it's the appropriate computer science course to make that choice, but it does count as, it could count as your third year of science. The biotechnology CTE program at grade 11 or 12 can count as a STE or science technology engineering elective via student selection and Councilor and administrative review. And the same is true for engineering. So this opens up a huge number of possibilities for our students because now we are recognizing the work that's being done at the CTE programs as robust and rigorous and also allowing students to take additional science courses as they move through our course sequence, which is ultimately what we want. We really want to emphasize as much as possible the course taking in science and the course taking of elective sciences. All that this means ultimately is that all the high school and CTE science core sequences are now aligned with this current grade nine class. We still have to work out the sophomores and the juniors so that their core sequences will align moving forward. But I think we are in a good place moving forward that we can do this with everything that we have in place. So those are some of our initiatives. I kind of already mentioned that FOSS is We're in the second year slash year three of adoption. As I said, the cost was about $285,000. We had to purchase additional kits this year for a couple of classrooms just to make sure that everybody had an individual set in each classroom that we were offering. And as we move forward, we will still need to purchase some living organisms and consumables. We are still okay. I think not this year's budget cycle, but next year's will be one in which we need to start considering whether we need a sort of an injection of money to purchase more consumables. The yearly expenses for living organisms will occur starting next year, not this year, because we still have that. We have coupons for the living things. And there's also some things we've done creatively around living things that may make sense for elementary school students that really emphasizes conservation and ecological sort of responsibility, ethical responsibility in our local environment. So we may be able to do some cost savings there. We will continue, we did start learning walks K to five, however, those were paused, we started in January, those were paused because of the pandemic. And we are still looking at trying to find some benchmarks and interim assessments. moving forward. I don't think that's unique to science. I think that's unique to all the disciplines, the academic disciplines. We need to start considering how to move so that we can find some clear data on where students are. So that's to be determined, but something that we are keenly aware we need to work on. For STEM scopes, the current total cost of the program was about $60,000 to get the consumables for this year, which obviously were not used. So we're not completely used. So we have little to replace for next year. We have a lot of things available for the upcoming year. Some consumable and living organisms will need to be replaced each year over multiple years. So these are the ongoing costs. Once you adopt, it's $60,000 the first year, and then the ongoing costs. Right now, we project it'll be about $8,000 a year for consumables and about $10,000 a year for the online subscription for content. The 10,000 a year is the equivalent of a textbook subscription. I've never asked about bundling it for multiple years, but it's something that might be something we want to consider. Professional development was begun this year. It's ongoing. We had two full sessions, one at the beginning of the school year, one in the middle of the year, to go over how to use STEM scopes, all of the tools it has. I've been able to personally use it myself and found it pretty intuitive. There are lots of components that I feel are very beneficial for both the enrichment side and the scaffolding side, which has been very useful to teachers. And teachers have been able to integrate it into other Google Suite tools to be able to make things much more user-friendly for the students. One other thing that we've done that we noticed is The program now integrates into the Google Waffle, where you would click in and go direct to a program. So rather than going through Clever, you can actually just click the link and it will directly have students go into their own personal portal. It's been really helpful for STEM scopes. And as I said, we did start learning walks for grades six through eight as well, and they went on pause and we will resume in September. once school is in session again. At the high school is where the bulk of our attention will be in the coming years. Our current program for biology has a copyright of 2001, which was probably when the last set of frameworks were approved and rolled out. We need to consider, strongly consider adopting a new program. It's my recommendation that the Pearson Biology Program, you see the cost there, is a good program. It's the book we've used in the previous. It's called the Miller and Levine Biology. This one happens to be, I believe it has a honeycomb cover on it. It's the most recent edition of the book. It is a national version textbook. It comes with a six-year digital license and textbooks for every student. That's the cost for textbooks for every student and the six-year digital license. I don't know what the process is for the school committee to recommend adoption, but I certainly would advocate in this meeting that you do so. take this and do that as soon as possible. I think it would be really important to put that in place. I know we had placed funding available last year as earmarked for this. However, the Vendor was generous enough to give us a free year this year, because we weren't able to pilot last year due to the pandemic, we were set to pilot in the spring, and we were unable to, so they let us pilot for this entire year and we're pretty satisfied with what that. program has offered us, we think it will satisfy the needs and make sure that the kids have a robust program. In addition to that, they've offered to give us a smaller, slimmer book called Biology the Core. It's really written for for undergraduates that go to community colleges, but the quality of the text, it is free of jargon and very thin and easy to read where the picture and the content matches. They are just going to give that to us for free, the books themselves. They've already started sending those, and they really can be beneficial to our EL and special education populations. So those are already there. for our students they sort of match up in terms of they will everybody will get the the biology Pearson biology program but these unique texts for special populations are really very supportive to our students with with learning needs of any kind whether it's language based or or other based so I'm sort of sticking on this program because I think I want you to hear me. I know that I'm making it clear that we really need to make a decision here. Chemistry is pretty old, a copyright of 1997, which predates even the frameworks. A review is underway for a new program there. We're looking at SAVAS is experience chemistry program. We've been lucky enough to pick up that as well under the umbrella of SAVAS or Pearson. But they've also provided us with hard copies of the book. It's a soft cover book. It's not a hard cover book. So they have a consumable book, which is new for chemistry. It seems like many vendors are stepping away from a chemistry textbook in the traditional sense. And if they're going to offer a textbook, it's going to be the soft cover version so that students can write in it. I will say that the students that have them and the teachers that have seen them get somewhat excited about it because having something in your hand that you can write in given the preponderance of online instruction we've had has actually been a little bit of a relief for the kids. So it's something different. They have some really unique units, things on climate change, where they connect chemistry to climate change, material science to chemistry. It's very unique and different. It is a significant shift away from what we're used to in chemistry. But I think given that we're moving to tech chemistry at a 10th grade for everyone and the topics that they're covering that are so important to sort of like science citizenship, it would be a really wonderful thing to look at. We're gonna continue to pilot. We're gonna continue to pilot next year as well with this, because we really wanna see that this particular program, chemistry is kind of a difficult subject for anyone who, has any mathematical weaknesses or learning weaknesses. So we don't wanna really make a huge mistake on looking at programs that might miss something. So we're vetting it pretty carefully.
[Edouard-Vincent]: The other program is- Siri, I just wanna say we have like a five minute warning to leave time for questions. Thank you.
[Cieri]: Thank you. So I'll just go really quick. As you can see, AP courses will need new textbooks. You can see the priorities, anatomy and physiology as well. I've priced out what is there. We'll cover the cost. And then at some point we will want to do some new electives. Given that we're opening up electives, we really want to be mindful and careful about what we choose and be creative about it. We will start that committee next year to start looking at new curriculum electives, it won't just include this is a community wide committee, so that's going to be formed. All right, I just wanna say that we are fully compliant with the Office of Civil Rights regulations. We talk annually, especially recently, of the unconscious bias in our programs and through our practices. And we try to make sure that teachers hear about the different perspectives. We have a commitment to an assumptions-free, all-inclusive teaching and learning model. We also promote the co-teaching model with our EL programs. And we are looking at making sure that our professional development and programs with Tufts University and other programs are aligned to provide more equity when the classroom is not enough. As you can see, we have some work to do. I just wanna make sure that we continue to emphasize hands-on teaching and learning and to integrate technology as we work, move forward. So I wanna stop there so that questions can be asked and answered if possible. I know I went really long, I apologize. It always, if you give me the floor, unfortunately, sometimes I can talk a lot, so.
[Van der Kloot]: Thank you. Whoops. Thank you very much. Um, maybe we could stop screens sharing right now.
[Cieri]: Sure. Let's see if I can figure that out.
[Van der Kloot]: And in the meantime, I'm just going to ask my committee members to do a housekeeping. We did not take the role. So if I could just call attendance, Jenny Graham. Here. Mia is unable to come, so she's absent. And Paul Russo is here sitting in her place for as long as he can stay. Thank you. OK. Yes, Paul, go ahead.
[Ruseau]: Thank you. As somebody with a computer science degree, when I see computer science as a course, I feel like that'd be offering a course called science, which I know we don't offer a science course. So I'm just a little, I mean, curious, what do we mean by a computer science? That's just seems kind of as like, it's like offering a math course and calling it the math course. What do we mean?
[Cieri]: So there are particular courses offered. I can look back and find out in our course sequence, which ones are offered. They really come out of the math department, the courses that are there, but they would qualify like the student would be able to choose whether they want it to count for math or science as credits. That's what I'm sorry.
[Ruseau]: Sorry, Rocco. So it's not that the course is called Computer Science. There's a set of courses. Sorry, I misunderstood you. I thought you were saying there was literally a course called Computer Science. That was very confusing to me. Okay, thank you.
[Graham]: I had a couple of questions. Go ahead, Jenny. Mr. Seery, I remember when the selection of the K to five curriculum was happening. It was sort of noted at the time that the engineering STEM part of the curriculum was like not the biggest strength of FOSS and that we would have to supplement the curriculum in some way, shape or form to like kind of cover those bases. Have we done that or do we still need to do that?
[Cieri]: We still need to do that, however, FOSS themselves are working on curricula that align to their units to make that happen. So at this point, I think it has more to do with the pandemic than anything else, but as students proceed through the lessons in the FOSS unit, it will come to an end point where they have an engineering design challenge that goes along with what they learned. And that's really ultimately what we wanted anyway. In some cases, it's already there. So like composting is one of the ones that are highlighted in the framework and it's already found in the units for the appropriate grades. So that's not something we would have to redo, but there are some units that do not have it that BOSS is working on pretty rigorously right now, because they know that that was a weakness. I will look back and see what they've created, but I think the pandemic and creating an adequate course sequence for digital learning has been their priority, and they had to kind of drop the engineering for a bit. My guess is they'll pick it up again over the summer.
[Graham]: And in terms of like Medford filling the gap that exists, do we think that we will be filling that gap in this upcoming school year or are we some number of years away from addressing that gap?
[Cieri]: I think next year we would probably see what they developed and then the following year we would probably be more more forceful about our needs to be able to fill the gap. So whether it means purchasing additional components for the FOSS program that they've provided, or we go and find something on our own because we don't have something, it's something we'll have to consider. Not this coming school year, but the year after for certain, we'll have to address that.
[Graham]: Okay, so as we think about that overall curriculum catalog that kicked off a lot of these discussions, I think it would just be important for that to land there as a need for FY23 so that as a committee, we can be planning for that need proactively and really not find ourselves in the high school position that science finds itself in needing to replace literally everything. So that should go on the, just on the catalog as such so we can plan accordingly. And then you also mentioned about FOSS, that we were being creative. Are we being creative to save money or are we being creative because it's in the best interest of the curriculum?
[Cieri]: So I have to remember and recall what the context of that comment was. I'm trying to remember.
[Graham]: You were talking about, Oh, some of the consumables.
[Cieri]: Yes. No, it had nothing to do with our, our needs for, um, for, uh, a financial resource. It was more about, uh, preservation of, um, the organisms because once the organisms are used in a classroom, we have to dispose of them somehow. And you really can't release them into the environment, not all of them anyway. And so we have to find some creative way of making sure that we don't make an ecological imprint that's inappropriate. Got it. Does that make sense? Yes. So there are ways to do that and, you know, look at the local environment, get our experiences, but also not make an impact environmentally. Got any gypsy moths? Yeah, that kind of thing.
[Edouard-Vincent]: I want to say thank you to Mr. Seary for presenting the science presentation. And I've been closely monitoring the time. My little went off. So I wanted to just alert you that we're at the halfway point. And I didn't know if there were any other lingering questions, but just to be able to allow time for the next presentation and more questions, I just wanted to
[Van der Kloot]: I actually had a question, Maurice. Perfect. And I can email you on some of the follow-ups, but I'm surprised that you said the demand for AP environmental is low. Do you poll the kids periodically? How do you know it's low?
[Cieri]: So we often communicate with the guidance teachers, guidance Councilors to find out whether there's any demand for it. Teachers that are in the classroom and are making recommendations to the students for their future courses will also ask. We don't have a formal way of doing it, but informally there hasn't been a huge demand for AP environmental.
[Van der Kloot]: Yeah, I'm just thinking that a student might even know, how would a student know that it's potential?
[Cieri]: So some students will ask, and the thing that we've offered, Ms. Vador is the teacher of it. She will prepare the student for an AP exam if they choose to do so. We just don't recognize it as an AP course. But the student can still get the credit. If we wanted to go in that direction, we certainly could consider it and move forward with it. Maybe we can roll it into the committee next year of elective courses.
[Van der Kloot]: Okay, so in the interest of time, I'll just say it was very clear that there's substantial textbook needs in a variety of not only the ninth grade biology, but which I was very happy to hear that there was a supplement that would be good for our special populations, but also across the board. So I guess unless there's any other thing pressing from Paul or Jenny, We should move on. Jenny?
[Graham]: I have some additional questions, but I will send them to you via email. OK.
[Ruseau]: Thank you. And Paulette, I have to pop up at exactly 5 o'clock, so forgive my just vanishing.
[Van der Kloot]: OK. Thank you for attending, Paul. OK. Dr. Riccadeli, thank you. Thank you, Rocco.
[Ricciardelli]: All right. I'm going to share my screen. All right, I've never shared my screen on this computer, so it's not allowing me to do it. Let me just try one more thing.
[Edouard-Vincent]: I can screen share for you if you'd like me to.
[Ricciardelli]: That would be great. Yeah, I don't think I've ever screen shared on this Mac before. I didn't realize it was gonna ask me to open system preferences. Thank you, Maurice.
[Edouard-Vincent]: Oops. Stop. Let me just bring it to the top. Sorry.
[Ricciardelli]: OK. All right, so. Good afternoon, it is still afternoon, it's 4.50 to everyone. So I'm here this afternoon to present an overview of the fine arts curriculum. And joining me this afternoon are the lead teacher for music. So Haley Rallo is here and the lead teacher for arts, Suzanne Fee is here. So I really appreciate them being here to support this presentation. Go to the next slide. Okay, so the presentation is broken up into five major topics. So we're gonna take a look at the new curriculum frameworks for art. They were adopted in 2019, so they are new. We're gonna take a look at the elementary music, excuse me, the elementary, middle and high school music program. Then the elementary, middle and high school art program. We're gonna briefly look at some of the professional development offerings that have been offered this year specific to fine arts. And then we are going to end with a look forward, not only for this year, 2021, but beyond things that we're looking to do beyond this year. Next slide, thank you. All right, so the fine arts, I should say the arts curriculum frameworks were adopted in 2019. And because of the pandemic beginning last spring, there was a delay in actually formally doing the work to incorporate them into our district curriculum. So that work began this year. And that work has been led by our lead teachers, along with our teachers in our department so I appreciate their work in this area. The new arts framework is focused on four strands. So we look at both the music curriculum and the art curriculum, we see components of creating, presenting, responding, and connecting. So this framework is an improvement upon the previous one, which was a 1999 framework. So in this new one, there's an increased emphasis on the importance of creating original work. There's an increased emphasis on responding to the work of other students and the work from masters with a focus on understanding the context in which artworks were created. If there's an alignment to a consistent structure organized around a common set of artistic practices. They're ambitious standards that highlight the importance of the arts as part of a well rounded education that prepares students for college careers and civic participation. And then you'll see the second bullet here is that there is a focus on social-emotional learning and development. So this is not just true with the arts curriculum frameworks. We see this in other frameworks, that that component of social-emotional learning and sharing with other students, presenting, responding is really an important part of the arts education for our students. There's a focus on cultural proficiency and of course, meeting the needs of all learners. So as I mentioned, our district is in the process of revising the both the art curriculum and the music curriculum so they are they're separate because they're separate topics within the fine arts framework. The work that goes into revising a curriculum is is immense. And it involves unpacking the standards, which is really just a fancy word for taking apart those standards, deconstructing them so that they're in a very clear statement format. And then from there you create essential questions, which is what the team is working on now. Both teams are working on now. And then after the essential questions, the unpacking is done. Then you go in and you create activities and lessons. And you look for identification of support materials. So I would imagine that this work is going to continue probably for maybe the next six months or so in order for it to be where it is. So we started this in December. You know, I'm thinking by the fall, mid to late fall, it will be done. So what we are presenting tonight is, it's kind of, it's a combination of what the old standards were with some best practices that are in the new standards that we've just, we've brought in. But a formal introduction of the new curriculum will be done later in the fall. Next slide. All right, so this is the music portion of the fine arts curriculum. Next slide. All right, so we have our picture here of three elementary students and it's what you would expect when you see an elementary general music class. You see the students, I think they look happy, they are moving, it looks like they might be singing. This is a general picture, they're not actually our students, but these students are engaged in what students in the music class typically would engage in. I will tell you that because of COVID, we really had to pull back on what our students were able to do in the class. With regard to singing, students really couldn't sing. For safety concerns, I mean, they were wearing a mask, but in terms of expelling air, we really needed to be careful. So there's some humming that went along. With regard to movement, limited movement because the students could not exert. Did we lose Maurice?
[Edouard-Vincent]: If you didn't lose me, I tried to do a screen share, so don't mind me.
[Ricciardelli]: Okay, no, I'm sorry. I don't know why I couldn't do the screen share.
[Edouard-Vincent]: I'm just pulling it back up.
[Ricciardelli]: Thank you. So I'm just going to talk through this part. So we see the picture of the students, you know, happy. One of the things that we, we brought into the district and we started a review of this in the summer was a program that was going to make a remote instruction with students this fall and on into the winter. and spring, fruitful and doable for what we were faced with. So remember, the kids were home, then they were hybrid, so you had half the kids in, half the kids at home, and now they're all in. We needed to take in mind that they couldn't sing, their movement had to be limited. So we looked at a program that one of our newer teachers had used in a different district, in a different state. So we brought in Quaver Music after checking out a few of them. And this program, I think, really helped our students, helped our teachers engage in music in a way that was safe and was entertaining. I really like Quaver Music. I spent a lot of time in music classrooms, actually for six months, between October and April. I was there monitoring the class along with The, the online teach the teacher, our teacher who was projecting from her home. And I thought it was a really it was a really nice program this great music, it's, it's, you know, culturally attentive. It's a nice, fun program. And you're going to see at the end of this presentation, the recommendation is that we continue with this program, even though the hope is that we're going to be in school full time next year. I think there are a lot of great things that we can continue with this program. I've identified some of the major topics in each one of the grades. you're gonna see that there are a lot of commonalities. Again, the singing, the performing, the choreography, the percussion instruments, the movement activities, all are really important to a music education on the elementary level. If we can go to the next slide. if you can go to the next slide, what I've identified is some of the instrument exposure that the students have on the elementary level. So we can see grades K through five, they are experimenting with percussion instruments. They're tapping, they're using the xylophone, they're using instruments in which there is motion, mostly with their hands. When we get up to grade three, they have the recorder. They actually engaged in recorder activity this year, even though there were safety concerns with air. So I was in the classroom when the students at home were actually playing the recorder. And the expectation in the classroom with the kids that weren't at home is that they actually were fingering the instrument and not blowing into it. That's a highlight of grade three. I think the students really appreciated that they were able to continue that and not lose that experience. With regard to the strings, that occurs in grades four and five, and then they have the opportunity to do band in grade five. Our ability to engage in a lot of instrument work this year has been very limited. There were guidelines from the Department of Education with regard to the sharing of instruments, the cleaning of instruments. So even if they were not instruments that you blow into, there still were concerns about handling. So again, moving forward, our intent is to go with what we have done in the past and perhaps enhance that. But this year was an anomaly and it was so in the interest of safety, health and safety. Next slide. Themes in middle school general music. So again, you're seeing some of the same themes, the singing, the playing of instruments, competitive games to develop rhythmic skills. They study melody, rhythm patterns, they use drumsticks. Grade seven, again, you see some of the same things. We have the introduction of guitar playing in grade seven and eight. which is really an exciting thing. Even before COVID, I remember going into middle school music classes and before I was overseeing the department and just being on at the at the level of obviously it wasn't mastery, but the level that they were able to play the guitar with the instruction that they had. You're gonna see a little bit later on that we are recommending the purchase of some more guitars and ukuleles, and that is specific to middle school music. We have them, but we think, not that we think, we need more instruments to make it a more fruitful and complete experience for all students instead of having to share. Okay, we can move on. All right, so just identifying what's available to middle school students with regard to instruments, band, chorus, and orchestra are open and available to grades six, seven, and eight students. When we get to high school, we have several opportunities for students. So the students in the access program engage in the adaptive music class. Our music teacher is highly skilled and is licensed in special education. So she not only has the content knowledge, but she has the skills, the great skills to work with the students that need the adaptive music and the special attention. We have option, a band option, chorus option, guitar one and two. We were able to buy some guitars this year for our students who were remote on the high school level. And I vividly remember the teacher standing down at the corner waiting for parents and students to come pick up their guitars in September. So I think that was a, that was a great thing that we were able to option, that we were able to offer students. The kids really look forward to playing instruments, and in this case, guitar. With the music technology class, percussion, orchestra, and theater options open to students. So again, you can see that these are open to all grades. This year we had to pull back a little bit. Not a little bit, we had to pull back a lot because of the safety concerns around the sharing of instruments and the wind, the blowing into instruments. Okay, we can go on to our next slide. All right, so we have our art curriculum. So again, our art curriculum is part of that, the new arts framework. So, you know, we're remembering that much of art is creating, it's presenting, it's responding, and it's connecting. It has that social emotional component that is so important to learning and functioning as a, as an adult eventually, and just becoming a good citizen, someone who can communicate. So in our K-5 elementary art curriculum, actually, if you can go back a little bit, I probably don't need to go over all of these, but you can see that there are a variety of materials that they use. They use crayons, they use paint, they use colored pencils, they make two-dimensional, three-dimensional artwork, they create different types of landscapes, portraits. They learn about artists, so they learn about art history. They learn to talk about their art, that's really important. They learn proper use of supplies and tools, and they develop criteria, language, and behavior for informal class discussion. They learn to be good citizens in the classroom, and they learn to care and to clean their supplies in the art room. So like music, the sharing of materials was, was a safety concern this year. For the materials that were shared, there was a cleaning protocol. So our teachers, both in art and music, between sections, there was an immense amount of cleaning that needed to take place. And I'll speak for myself. In between music classes, each time, those chairs that the students were sitting in needed to be cleaned. And that took time. So there were three minutes between class. And I think, you know, for art, it was even more involved than it was for the general music in terms of cleaning. Okay, next slide. With regard to the middle school, and again, Suzanne Fee is a middle school art teacher. She is here, so when it comes time to questions, she might be able to answer some of the more specific questions. In all three grades, the principles of design and elements of art and art cultures and color theory are really, excuse me, sorry. The principles of design and elements of art are embedded in each one of the grade levels. So color theory is important in grade six, developing basic drawing skills in grade seven, and the role of visual arts play in our lives and careers is a focus of the grade eight curriculum. So again, we have the 1999 frameworks, we had our existing curriculum with the new frameworks that we are in the process of embedding, We don't anticipate major changes, but more tweaks to what we're doing. Again, focused on creating, presenting, responding, and connecting. Next slide. On the high school level, we have various courses. We have Art and Ideas, which is actually an interdisciplinary course that is taught with one of our social studies teachers. So there's a lot of philosophy that goes along with that art history and philosophy. We have AP Studio Art, Art Appreciation and Practice, Comprehensive Art 1 through 4, Drawing, Design, Ceramics, and Sculpture. So it's a nice selection of art options on the high school level, again, including the AP Studio Art class. Next slide. So segwaying over to professional development. So what we were able to accomplish this year involves Quaver Music. So not only did we adopt this program that helped our students learn and feel like they were really enmeshed in the music and the videos that had this really nice dancing and music. But the program also provided us with some professional development. So we had the representative from Quaver work with our teachers on a couple of occasions. And if we're able to continue with this program, that PD will continue also. We also use the art of education program. So I didn't put this in the art part of the presentation, but we also brought in this year an art online program to help support our teachers and our students in the classroom. So that included a curriculum component that they used and it also included a PD component. And I think they really liked this program. I enjoyed it when I sat through the session. I think it's high quality PD. The request came from a teacher who had experienced it through a professional development opportunity that she had, and she had colleagues, so she highly recommended it. And I think it's been really helpful, not only for in the classroom, but also for teachers to continue with their own learning. The Music Curriculum Review and the Art Curriculum Review are those committees that are engaged in the review of the new frameworks. So whenever you adopt a new curriculum, it's important that PD come with it. So there's no better way of people learning about a curriculum than by them engaging in the creation of it by unpacking the standards, creating those essential questions and creating the activities. So once the new curriculum is formally adopted, we will need to continue with the PD, but I'm very happy to say that most of the teachers in the department have engaged in these curriculum review committees. So I think we're a step ahead. And then lastly, a course that's not solely open to arts teachers, but it is an arts course. It's a culturally responsive teaching through the arts through Lesley University. So many of our fine arts teachers are engaged in that course, it is a, as the title indicates it's a culturally responsive course so it's, it's about being, you know, equity aware, and there's a good anti-racist component to it, but it focuses around the arts. This is a course that, as you probably know, each year we need to offer a one credit course for our entire faculty so that they can earn, if they want, one increment towards salary, to increase their salary. This is that course. It's just this year, it focused around the arts. And I think the last class is actually tomorrow. There were a series of classes. And again, it was through Lesley University. We're really trying to solidify that partnership with Lesley. And this was one of the two courses through Lesley that we're offering this year. The other course doesn't have anything to do with art. It's an EL course. And okay, so with regard to our needs and what we're thinking of, right? So we're thinking about 2021, we're thinking about the fall. So we're thinking about the art that our students create. needs to be displayed, it needs to be highlighted, it needs to be celebrated, right? So when we go back to those strands in the frameworks, again, creating, presenting, responding, connecting, being able to display this art allows kids to do that, allows their artwork to be displayed, to be presented. Other kids can look at it, it can be responded to. So Those cases would be for all schools. The collective cost is approximately $10,000. The second item, the art of education, which is what I just described to you, that is the program that we adopted for online learning and also for professional development for our art teachers. That collectively is 7,000. It's actually a little bit less than 7,000 this year. I think it was 6,800, but the rough estimate is 7,000 for that program. The Quaver program, which I described to you that we use for online learning and also has a PD component to it that I'd like to continue with is also 7,000. And then with regard to an instrument inventory replacement, we've identified some areas that we think would be really helpful. When I talked about middle school, I talked about ukuleles and guitars. We do need to increase the supply. So a couple of years ago the director at the time did buy some, we would like to, to add more so that teachers can do a whole class of ukulele instruction instead of having half the class do it. um so collectively that court that that cost would be about seven thousand dollars for the ukuleles and the guitars sound systems for all schools is roughly six thousand dollars so that would be for all of of our schools in the district so right now there are a couple of sound systems and there is sharing that is occurring so if there is a If there is a need at one school, as I understand, Mr. Zigney would run down to one school and then bring it to another school. We would like to see all schools to have the same options and not have it housed at one school and then have to borrow. We've identified the need for amps and microphones at a cost of 2,000 and bases for 1,000. Okay, so that's in a nutshell, I tried to keep it short and relatively broad, but at this point, if you have comments or questions, I certainly will answer. And if I can't answer them, our two lead teachers, I'm sure we'll be able to help.
[Van der Kloot]: So let me start off with one Bernadette typically in the music program we start our fifth graders with violin. Can you tell us what What ability did we have to start kids on violin. I mean, I can't this year and also beginning instruments in the sixth grade? And what impact is that going to have on our future band and orchestra programs?
[Ricciardelli]: So we need to recoup. We've talked about this, how we need to reach out. And we do have a plan to reach out. There was a presentation that was created. We need to reach out to the students to get them back on track. Because right now, because of safety concerns, we were not able to safely offer an extensive instrument program because of the issue of sharing, I will say because of health concerns.
[Van der Kloot]: So did fifth graders start violins at all or no?
[SPEAKER_03]: Haley, I do not believe that they did. Hi, Bella. Hi. Nice to see you, Hayley. Nice to see you too. I wish it was at a concert, but... Me too. We did not do fourth grade strings this year, or fifth grade band. The way the schedule worked out, they were only available to fit it in the schedule on the Wednesday, which was our remote day. And a lot of parents working from home, a lot of siblings working in their homes on Zoom remotely. It just wasn't a good environment to set students up to be successful in order to move on. We just, there was a lot of frustration. So we will be missing two grades of students. So we won't really have a lot of incoming sixth grade band students this year, or a lot of incoming fourth or fifth grade strings, but the Department of Instrumental Teachers has gotten together and we are going to make a series of videos and we're gonna do some outreach in May and June in order to rebuild those programs and get students back on board. So, yeah.
[Van der Kloot]: So in other words, we are hoping that we will be able to provide some opportunities for the kids who missed out, if you would, in the fourth and fifth grade.
[Ricciardelli]: Yes. Yes, yeah, I believe, I don't, I have to check the Department of Education site, but they have lifted some of the restrictions. So unless there is a restriction, our intent is to move on and to grow that program, to try to recoup what we lost, but it's gonna be a lot of work.
[Van der Kloot]: Right, because right now you're gonna have in essence two years of beginning strings. Yes. And I know that we've always kept some instruments aside or some violins for students who can't afford it. I think as the committee as a whole has been addressing some of the needs of transportation throughout the city, the rental program becomes a question too. And so I think I don't expect you to have all the answers for this right now. And I certainly know that there was Mr. Zigny in the past had done everything he can to provide instruments to students who wanted to continue but couldn't necessarily afford it. But I think, you know, I'd really like you to be looking at that question saying, you know, are we able to provide students with the instruments so that we're not losing students who might be talented musicians, but simply because they can't afford it. Also, next question, just one more. The Quaver Ed that you mentioned, is that a series of lessons? Or I went online as you were speaking to take a look, but I just wanted to know what we were using it for.
[Ricciardelli]: It's a series of lessons. There are resources. There's PD. There are about 10,000 schools in the country that are using it. It is a very popular program. There is the ability to even get students signed up with an individual account, which we did not do this year. There are lots of options that we can use with that program.
[Van der Kloot]: So you think it's $7,000 for K-8? So it is a K-8 program, however,
[Ricciardelli]: The professional opinion of the music department is that it's most appropriate for K to five. Some of the activities are really kind of young and that, you know, maybe in some areas of the kind of some schools it is appropriate K to eight, but we thought K to five, it was most appropriate. And the cost of this year, I believe was $6,720. For all of our K to eight. K-5. We used it for K-5.
[Van der Kloot]: Okay.
[Ricciardelli]: Yeah, it would have been more money if we said K-8 because they charge per school. So we did our four elementary schools.
[Van der Kloot]: Okay. Jenny, do you have some questions?
[Graham]: I do. I thought so. Have we asked the students if they prefer Quaver to what has happened in music at the K to five level in the past? Do we know how students feel about it? I would be really interested to know if they prefer this.
[Ricciardelli]: So we have not, I will tell you my, My observation, my anecdotal collection of data, having been in an elementary music class from again, April to, excuse me, from October to April, is that the kids really enjoyed the music. They enjoyed the lessons. It was fun and it was exciting. That's not scientific, it's not a survey. However, I think, you know, observation is, It's one data point, it is my data point. I certainly can reach out and try to construct a simple enough survey, depending on surveys, depending on age level for that.
[Van der Kloot]: But it's a supplement, right?
[Ricciardelli]: Not- It's a supplement, yes.
[Van der Kloot]: Okay, so a teacher would use it now and then, not every lesson.
[Ricciardelli]: Yeah, we used it a lot this year because of the remote instruction. That was the point. So in July or June, when I found out that I was When I would be overseeing this department, and we convened a number of meetings over the summer, the thought was we need we need a resource right they the music teachers really wanted to be. They wanted people to see their work. Last spring, they didn't have the option because of scheduling. So I think they felt, we want people to see our work and we need a tool. So we investigated tool. So again, there was a teacher, a newer teacher in the department who had used this program previously and thought it was a good program.
[Van der Kloot]: Okay, we'll have to look it up to learn more about it.
[Graham]: Yeah, and the reason, Bernadette, the reason I was asking is because when I think about The feedback I get in my household about music, I haven't received nearly as many complaints this year as I have in past years. And I'm just gonna be really honest. So having said that, like, I just don't know if that's just because in the pandemic, like it just hasn't floated to the top of our conversation or if the students are enjoying it more. And, you know, so I just, I do feel like From my own personal experience, we have opportunity to engage and pull more students into music at the elementary level. And as we talk about the pipeline that grows into the middle school band and the high school band, I think there's a lot of opportunity to make sure that the elementary school kids really love it because it should be a topic that they love and look forward to. So, and I think there, at least in my experience, there's a lot of untapped opportunity there for us. And I think the other couple of questions I had around the rental program, like do we have the same rules in place for instrument rentals as we do for athletic user fees? So if I'm on free and reduced lunch, do I get an instrument rental for free? Or if I'm on free lunch, do I get instrument rentals for free? Or is that just an atlas?
[Ricciardelli]: I would think so. But because we didn't rent instruments this year, I don't know. Haley, do you? I would think. I would think that would be the case.
[SPEAKER_03]: So the way, it's yes and no. The way that it works, so like for fourth grade, we own violins, the school owns them, and we are able to rent them to the fourth graders for a fee of $25, and that allows fourth graders to try the instruments, and if anyone is on free and reduced lunch, they can fill out a waiver, and we can waive that fee and give them a violin to use for the year for free. And they give those back after fourth grade. And for fifth grade, we do offer multiple rental options for strings. For fifth grade band, we do not, it's all outsourced through David French Music. And it is a company that we provide. We don't have any real connection to it. Other than the students are given a link, they go online, they provide a credit card, they work it out with the company. So there is no, There is no program there. We have looked in the past at purchasing instruments and trying to set something up. Unfortunately, band instruments are significantly more expensive than string instruments. However, we do have a lot of donations. So a lot of people will be like cleaning out their attic and say, you know, oh, my son played clarinet and we still have it. Can you take it? So we do take a lot of donations and I do fix them up. and we do have a very small amount, so if a student is really interested, I will talk to the teachers, and if they can't afford it, we do, we so far have been pretty successful with being able to hook them up with an instrument so they can at least participate for the year, and if they would like to do more than that, we usually can make it possible, but there really isn't like a formal program in place.
[Ricciardelli]: Okay, yeah, so I'm just, that's good to know, I'm just thinking about our guitars, so our high school guitars that we bought this this year, We did rent them out, I believe it was the $25. And I think there may have been one or two students who couldn't afford it and we just, we let it go. We just let it go.
[Graham]: Yeah, okay. I actually have seen a good number of, a good amount of chatter among school committee members across the state who are pursuing, you know, parity between fine arts programs and other student, extracurricular activities like athletics, which is why that was sort of top of mind for me. And just, you know, I just wanted to make sure I understood what our current program looked like right now so that I could think about, you know, how that fits into our overall goals of equity and accessibility and all that stuff.
[Van der Kloot]: My personal experience has been that it's, been something that if anybody knew of a student and it was brought to Mr. Zigney's attention, magically it happened. So it's been an informal rather than a formal. I don't think kids were cut out, but it was never formalized. So, okay, it is 529. Jenny, do you have any more questions that you can do in 30 seconds? Nope, that was my last question. Great. Do you want to make it? Thank you, everybody.
[Graham]: Motion to adjourn.
[Van der Kloot]: I appreciate you being here. I'll call the roll. Jenny? Yes. I'll let, yes. Thank you so much. Right under the wire. Jenny and Superintendent, and if Susie is still on, just if you guys could stay on for a second. Sure. Okay, just so we can talk about the next meeting.
[Edouard-Vincent]: Thank you, everyone. Thank you.
[Van der Kloot]: Is Susie still here? Yep, I'm right here. Oh, great.
[Edouard-Vincent]: Okay.
[Van der Kloot]: So Jenny, just while you're here, so at least there's two.
[Edouard-Vincent]: Can we ask Dr. Cushing to stop the recording? Sure. Thank you.
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