January 7, 2026 – School Committee – Video & Transcript
January 7, 2026 - School Committee
Hi, everybody. Welcome to the Whalen School Committee meeting on January 7th, 2026. It is 6.03 p.m. We are being recorded by WACAM. We have our school committee members, Christina Rodrigo, Erin Muller, Kate Sambuco, and Erin Gibbons. Betsy Collin is absent.
We also have our administrative team, David Fleischman, Betsy Gavron, Christine Patterson, and Ronnie Kessler. And if I didn't say it already, we're being recorded by WACAM. We are going to take some things out of order tonight that's currently on the agenda. I think we're going to go to the elementary math update first, if that suits you all. But is anyone here for public comment?
And so we will be going. And I would welcome David, if you want to.
Sure. Let's go. We have our elementary math team come to the table. We have new members all over the place.
Sure, too.
So, yeah, I think Donna's certainly new to the table. Matt, you've never been to the table.
Michael, you have.
I have.
And Ella certainly has.
So, I'll introduce.
That's regular.
That's our two roles, assistant principal, Happy Hollow, and leader of our elementary math and science.
So, as they have done here, Matt is also new from Happy Hollow.
Well, and then Ella Walker, Michael Clayton, we're going to hear a little bit about vision, mission, continuation of bridges.
And so, we have a presentation.
And we will kick it to anything else you want to say, Betsy?
Let's have Betsy and then probably go to Donna.
No, it's just that it's been wonderful having Donna to help oversee math and science this year, working real closely with the team.
And I know they're really excited to talk to you about bridges third edition, which the entire district has now transitioned to.
So, we're excited about that.
And I apologize, it's not in your folder.
Diane went home sick, and I'm not sure how to put it.
If you email it to me, I can put it in the floor.
Yeah, I don't think I have access to it.
Can I just share it with you?
Yes.
Or later. It's not, um, because you're not using the white cord, right? I was using this gray cord. Yeah, you can use it. I don't know. Donna, are you going to kick us off here? Sure, I am. Good evening. Thank you to the committee, the central administration, and those that are in attendance, if any, from the community. My name is Donna Krikorian, proudly serving as the assistant principal at Happy Hollow Elementary, and here in an exciting dual role as the math and science curriculum coordinator. A few quick heartfelt appreciations go out to Betsy Gavron for her guidance in the establishment of this additional role. Uh, Nicolette Fondes, who's principal at Happy Hollow for her building-based, uh, leadership and, um, partnership. Sarah Sontag, who is the ELA curriculum coordinator, um, uh, the coach there for her coordination across our two content areas. Um, and Christina Sanzadonovan and Kate Narita for their collegiality, and, um, so many people that have welcomed me, um, to this role. Um, to the, uh, Wayland Public Schools educators, um, classroom teachers, teaching assistants, and support staff, um, that make, uh, math happen with and for our students every day. I can't thank them enough. They are doing hard, hard work, um, to meet the needs of our students. Um, and for that, um, the elementary math department appreciates your time this evening and the opportunity to share, um, first, our math and vision, which I'll be sharing with you. Um, we've introduced our amazing team, um, Matthew Birch from Happy Hollow. Oh, and Michael representing Clay Pit. And Ella representing Wilker, um, amazing team, um, that I, um, have the distinct opportunity to work with. Um, we will be providing, um, the coaches will be providing additional support. A summary of math instruction, an overview of Bridges III curriculum, uh, our coaching models, supports for teachers, and most importantly, um, the supports, um, and care that we offer, uh, to our young mathematicians. Um, before we delve deeper into the presentation, again, I just want to give a shout out to this fantastic team. Um, so, thank you. Um, if we could, yep, that slide's perfect. Um, I have invited you to open the link to read and learn more about our mission and vision statement. Um, you can read it at your leisure, but basically we wanted you to have a message around our why, our instructional progression, the commitment we have to equity, the value we have in our teachers, the mindset as our teams, and our path forward. Mathematics and Wayland is more than just getting the right answer. It's about reasoning, making sense of ideas, and developing perseverance through problem solving. Students learn best through curiosity and discussion where they explore, explain, and learn from one another. Our elementary program uses bridges in mathematics 3.0, we have moved from a former addition into the third, to provide instruction that's connected and purposeful. It is a commitment to continuous learning, the application of best mathematical practices, the anticipation and response to student learning needs, and the unwavering belief in all our students' potential as scholars and mathematicians. All students receive thoughtful core instruction with additional supports when needed. Teachers across classrooms, special education, intervention, and multilingual service work together to make informed instructional decisions. And as we move forward, we will continue to increase the integrity of the curriculum implementation and strengthen interventions and enrichment opportunities. We will rely on the value of teachers' expertise and coaching impact to bring math learning to life. Together through this approach, we will empower our students to see themselves as capable mathematicians who can more readily engage in their learning, reason, persist, and thrive. And with this team foundation grounded in our mission and vision statement that I've shared with you, again, I'm pleased to invite our math instructional coaches to share how these systems support and specifically translate into meaningful learning experiences for our students across all three schools. Happy Hollow, Play Pit, and Little Girl. Thank you. This is our agenda for tonight. So we'll start first with what's new, which is the third edition of Bridges and an exciting pre-K pilot of Bridges this year. Then we'll talk about how, as coaches, we're supporting teachers, as well as students, this year especially, more than ever with the intervention model, which we'll discuss. Then we'll reflect a little bit of what does year three look like. Now that it's our third year, things are looking different in a lot of good ways. Next steps, so glows and grows. So what are the things we need to work on and what are our next steps? And then we'll be sure to leave time for questions and answers. Yeah, so as Ella and Donna mentioned, we moved from second edition to third edition. Bridges second edition has been out for 10, 15 years. And they are a great curriculum who are always invested in updated pedagogy and professional development and new ways of how math is evolving in classrooms and schools. They take a lot of feedback from teachers, which is great. We certainly reach out to them a lot with certain things and questions. And they, the new Bridges, the third edition has a strong new emphasis on diversity, equity, and inclusion, which is really great. If you go to the next slide, Betsy. There's this, again, you can read at your leisure, but it really is trying to elevate the identity, math identities of all students. And that plays out in the curriculum itself. The bottom right corner is more of like a teacher facing material. But you can see over there in the red kind of sidebar is the equity based practice that they've now included within the curriculum. So when teachers are preparing and we're coaching teachers and having PLCs, we highlight these. And again, the top right corner and bottom left are documents we use with teachers as they dive into this new curriculum, focusing on challenging spaces of marginality, going deep with mathematics and really drawing on multiple resources of knowledge. And again, really important just affirming mathematics learners' identities. We want to make sure students see themselves as mathematicians. So the new curriculum also, in addition to this, they've incorporated a little bit more of their technology into lessons. They've updated different instructional routines. They've updated their like intro sections to give more information and professional development to teachers. So they've done, they've done a lot to enhance the curriculum. And I think teachers are, it's interesting because the teachers go from second edition to third edition. They're like, yeah, that game, that workplace is the activity. That one wasn't so great. Like, well, actually they took that one out and there's a new one. So they really like, our teachers are super invested and I guess, you know, right on par with all other teachers across who use this curriculum. Um, so it's great to have a curriculum that is adapted to teachers and new practice. Um, something to add, I guess too, from the transition to the second and third, some teachers were hesitant in first. We're switching again, another new curriculum. I will say the change is subtle, like in the way that it still bridges, it's still the same models. It's not like a new language, but like Michael said, all these new wonderful additions are part of it. So they're not feeling like, oh my gosh, it's a new curriculum. So it's been a nice, smooth transition. Um, for the pre-K we had an exciting opportunity this summer. Betsy found ways to make it happen so that we had some summer days. They were very eager to try new curriculum. Uh, Bridges came up as one of the options. We, of course, as the elementary team were very excited for selfish reasons, for alignment that, you know, now our K team will have a year of more Bridges. Um, I think they were excited too, just to have a psych curriculum that they can refer to. Um, so Michael and I, this summer, Matt was still on boarding. I'm sure in the future he's going to be very involved. Um, we met with them. We did some unpacking. We did some, how do we get ready? It was interesting for us too, cause some things were similar, like our Bridges and some a little different. So we were learning things too. Um, we have a coordinator from Bridges also who consults with us three times. And she's wonderful. She's very adaptable. We're telling her what we need and she adjusts. Um, as well as pre-K actually visited Loper today, which was great. Cause they wanted to see what does it look like in action for Kinder? Um, which I think was fascinating. This was the same, what's different. Like, wow, look at the amount of independence. Or this is where our kids are going. And wow, some things are so similar in terms of the models and the spinners and the visual models. Um, I think anything else, Dad? We do have the pre-K team visiting, um, for vertical alignment, um, with Matt, um, which is in development right now. But they will be visiting Happy Hollow soon, again, to see that progression from pre-K, uh, to Kindergarten. Um, and so that's another exciting, uh, opportunity. So the really, the team is coming together to support, uh, the pre-K pilot. And then if you look at these pictures, you see one of our little friends there who's gluing a pattern. And the teachers have said, you know, just like the bridges, they have a calendar and every day they turn over a marker. When they're little, they actually help color in. You see the little girl coloring the snowflakes. So they're making the calendar themselves. And then the teachers are just amazed how much the kids have gotten into it and how much they're noticing these patterns. So on their own now and just incredible to see what they're doing. Um, the next slide is just a little bit more pictures. Another thing to add about it, which was, which is great, is that we know we have in the pre-K mixed age classrooms. And this was a curriculum that is meant for mixed age classrooms, which is obviously really great to have that differentiation and all sorts of trajectories of progressions of developmentally where they should be with mathematics. So that is something that the teachers will, we've introduced to them, they look at it. And obviously if they adopt it, we'll become more familiar. But it's great that that's part of the curriculum. Um, and then here in that picture, you just see the kids are playing some of the workplaces independently. They're spinning, they're writing the digits. If you can sort of see the spinner, it has the numbers but also dots. So if they don't have recognitions of the numbers, they can count the dots. So it has the support. Something interesting in today's interaction when they came to visit, at one point one of our K teachers shared, just one of her students is having a hard time. And it happened to be a student from a former pre-K. So they're like, oh, we know that student. And they started to talk. And then we even thought like, oh, maybe our K teacher could do some of the pre-K materials here and there. Just the alignment was wonderful. And for them to have the opportunity to connect them with the students was great. So in this next part, we wanted to speak a little bit to like, what we as coaches do to support teachers, particularly with this implementation and transition from Bridges 2nd to 3rd edition. Um, so on the sort of macro or larger level when we're working in PLC, you can see up in the top left there is an example of, now that teachers know the Bridges curriculum, they're familiar with the structures and routines, this transition to the 3rd edition also offers us an opportunity to dig a little bit deeper into the actual conceptual development. So you can see here, we were talking as a first grade team about like, how do students move from concrete to representational to abstract, to have that deeper understanding of addition and subtraction. And so as coaches, we utilize that PLC time often, um, as both the nuts and bolts and the planning that needs to happen, but also as somewhat embedded professional development to support teachers as they're implementing this new addition of a curriculum that they're familiar with. And then another big part of our role is planning with teachers, modeling lessons or co-teaching lessons so that they can both see and watch somebody implement a lesson and also get feedback from another experienced teacher in the room. And so on the right, you can see this is a 4th grade teacher that I work with where we dig into each of the Bridges lessons and try and break it down for ourselves on what is the plan going to look like? Is there a part that I'm going to, that the teacher would like me to model? Are there adaptations or differentiation that we would like to plan for, um, to make these lessons actually come alive? Because whatever's on paper is great. Where the magic happens is what actually is put in front of students. And so this is just sort of a snapshot of some of the many things that we do to try and support teachers in their implementation of. Oh yeah, something else. Sorry. No, it's it. Another part of this which, um, we've done over the last couple years in which I'm hoping to get off the ground in the next couple weeks is, um, instructional rounds. Um, Ella's done them multiple times before. I did it last year with grades K through 2. Um, this year in the coming weeks I'm hoping to get it going with, um, grades 3 through 5. And some of the best practices from, um, around is, is learning from each other. So, um, especially with, um, uh, still, you know, newish curriculum. Um, you know, there everyone is using bridges but does it in their own way. So it's nice to be able to get into classrooms, not only to see different instructional moves ever, you know, some very slight moves that are super impactful. But also for last year it was great to see, you know, a kindergarten teacher see a second grade classroom. And some of the, it will come up later, some of the same models and representations are used in K that are still used in second grade. So, you know, it just, you know, for kindergarten or first grade, a teacher really empowers them to realize that these, you know, the lessons they're teaching, the models they're teaching, the strategies they're teaching, will carry on with these students through the rest of their elementary math, if not for their life. Um, so instructional rounds is just a really great way, um, to see each other teach and learn from each other. So this next slide we put, we wanted to really highlight for you the shift from the second edition of Bridges to the third, in terms of being more asset-based learning. When we say asset-based learning, we're thinking of an approach that focuses more on students and on teachers' strengths. So really focusing on what they can do versus on what they're not able to do. On the left there, you see it's a tracker that teachers fill out when they finish an assessment and they put in the grades. So back in the day, they put in a score for each of them. You can see the different colors and then it gives an overall score. The student is a 40. The student is, he gives you a number and then it helps give you a range of, are they meeting it? Are they approaching? The shift now is instead of looking at the student of like, here's what you can't do, they're looking at each standard separately. Some standards are for mastery, the ones that are involved, like if you see on the bottom right, really bottom, it's like 2083. So that standard they want students to be proficient in. So you're really looking at piece by piece versus like your score is a 40. It's really breaking it down by the standards. What are the things you're able to do within each of them? Which is a really nice shift, just to think of the full picture versus, you know, this was your score. How are you doing on each of the standards? And one last thing to note is you can even see on the third edition, there is no, there's, there is no total score. Like there, that, that's a big emphasis in Bridges third edition is that there actually is no total score. And that, like Alice said, you want to look at the standard that's in bold and if they, that's a good representation is that student got six out of those six points. Of course, you're still paying attention to the areas that they missed, but again, this is more of an asset based shift. And the hope is that then if you're grouping kids, instead of saying you got a 30, you got a 30, let's put you together, you can look at the different questions and see, let's have a question just on place value versus the overall. So one of the things we're really proud of this year is, this is our first year of implementing a district-wide math intervention program at three of the elementary, all three of the elementary schools. Um, and so we've been really intentional this year as we've been building out this program to establish guidelines about what does it mean to provide intervention for students and especially like how are we using data to identify the grade levels and the students who are most in need. And so we've been leaning on our iReady diagnostic testing, our Bridges assessment data, to be able to identify what grade levels and what students would most benefit from intervention. And another part of this that you can kind of hear through our PLC conversations, through our use of the Bridges three trackers is that this is also a shared responsibility of classroom teachers and interventionists. While I might be working with a small group of our immediate students for intervention, those students are in for the core instruction. And so the teacher might be meeting with that same group or a slightly different group of students and providing some of that tier two in the classroom as well. And so it's really essential that like that teamwork still is dominant because across the common saying is you can't intervene your way out of a core instruction issue. So like we need to have high quality tier one and tier two instruction that's happening in the classroom. But we're really excited that this tier two intervention work is also available to students. And on the next slide, you can see, for example, how we work with small groups of students to provide that targeted intervention with a focus on the prior grade level work that's going to allow them access to their grade level content. So that they can fill those gaps and access with their classmates at grade level. And one of our, again, shared responsibilities is progress monitoring how students are doing over the course of our intervention so that we can share that data and that information with teachers so they can pick up the baton when that student's back in class. And also share that information with families too so that they know, here's what my student has been working on, here's where they still need support, and here's some potential resources or a quick game that I might be able to play with them at home that's going to further support their development of fluency, for example. So all of those components really, we're proud of, have kind of come together and that we're still obviously refining and want to improve, but are excited that that's happening this year. And we're able to provide that support for the students who need it most. So some glows as we are in our third year of our Bridges curriculum is students are becoming increasingly knowledgeable and more efficient with the various components, models, and representations and strategies of the curriculum, which is really great. So the first, the current second grade are the ones that have had it since kindergarten, there might be some students in third that were part of a pilot classroom, but that was more of a, just a few units of study, not the whole year. So it's exciting to see that, them get older and become more familiar with the curriculum routines and all the models and whatnot. Students are using higher level math discourse and mathematical vocabulary from my rounds last year with K through two. That was one of the biggest takeaways that all the teachers noticed as we debrief was just the great vocabulary and confidence. Students were talking about, about math and which was really great. A lot of the discourse, which is, which was awesome. Teachers are becoming more knowledgeable in the curriculum and are better, to better able to differentiate the lessons to meet the needs of all their students. They're obviously becoming more comfortable, which is really great. And the coaching for us is now focused more on implementation and differentiation than preparation. We knew going into Bridges that it's a great program and it is very hands on. So that comes with some decent amount of prep for some units. And obviously just wanting people to feel comfortable with all the materials, the website, have everything they needed. So that's a great shift to feel for teachers, I'm sure, in particular. And for us to focus more on the implementation and differentiation. And then, again, the elementary, our whole team has made great strides to better align our systems, our practices, and resources with trust and purpose. So we work super collaboratively, which is great. I have great colleagues and Donna's leadership and Betsy's has been awesome. So we really have a good plan and team moving forward, which is great. And this just kind of connects to that last bullet and what I was talking about with visual models. This is just one part of a bigger document that kind of this is just representing how the number line is used across grade levels. So, again, through instructional rounds, PLCs, and just coaching meetings with teachers, it's really great to kind of see how these models are used in all grade levels. And where it really starts in K and moves all the way through fifth grade. So, it's a great program that I think teachers really see the benefit of all these models. Next are our pros and our next steps as well. So, first, one of the things we've been facing the last couple years, which I'm sure every school does, is just how do we allocate the schedules and the time and the minutes. Most Bridges lessons are meant to be 60 minutes. Currently, in our schedule, we have five times 50, which was also a big, you know, wonderful thing that we were able to fit in. In order to move forward, our next step is the scheduling committee, which Matt can talk a little bit about because he's part of it. Yeah, so, Betsy is leading a scheduling working group, and it is, as you can expect, everybody wants their thing, and they want time for their thing. And the problem is, nobody's wrong. The art is really important. Music and recess and math are really important. And so, from our perspective, we're thinking about when we are working with teachers and seeing like, well, they're so tight on time, they're trying to get this workplace in, it's a really good one. Oh, they got to go to lunch. And it's a reality of the situation, but something that we want to continue to, in our department, we're going to advocate for our things. And so, we're really thinking about how do we have enough time for our, obviously, the core tier one instruction. And also, from the intervention perspective, being able to have the time within the schedule, so that second graders are available at the same time, so that we can meet with whichever second graders we need to. The second point is just around supporting the COTOT classroom. So, this year COTOT is a new model that we're exploring. As coaches, we've explored a little bit, but that's something we'd love to further support and help teachers. How does it look with the different models? One idea we had to, as Michael mentioned, we have the rounds, instructional rounds, where teachers go to see other teachers. An idea we had, possibly for next year, perhaps the COTOT classrooms can observe one another, or other teachers go see the COTOT classrooms. So, just diving a little bit deeper, as well as collaborating more with Ronnie, the director of student services. What does our support look like when we're supporting a Bridges lesson in a COTOT classroom? The next point is just around, how do we better support families to understand the Bridges curriculum? So, as some of you might know, because you've seen it come home, at times, you're faced with strategy, and you're like, I didn't learn it this way. This is a foreign language. How do I help? What does this mean? It wouldn't be me. It's definitely me. And honestly, we as coaches, we had to learn certain things too. It's like, oh, I never learned it this way. But then it makes so much sense, and you're like, wow, I wish I learned this as a kid in this way. I'm glad it makes sense to you. Do you travel? Do you come to our campus? So, I mean, we've done a lot with it. We know it's an area of growth, because obviously there is a need. So, one idea is we have the family letters. Most classrooms are sending them by making sure consistently that it's going home. With every unit, it shows examples of, like, here are the models, here are the strategies, here's what you're learning, here's what you could do at home. Also, in conferences, we try to send some workplaces, because those give you an example. Like, here are the games your kids are playing. Some play this at home. If we do more of that, I think that would help. More in-person activities. I know we have math night, and we've tried to bridgeify it in the last three years, just so you get a glimpse of, like, here's what the curriculum looks like, and let's play the games, and let's explore the workplaces. So, those are a couple of ideas we had. It was something I tried a few years ago at Loker. I called it Math Cafe. And the idea was, let's have coffee in the morning, and I'll show you what your kids are learning in each of the units. So, I was like, here's what we're learning in K. These are the models. Here's what we're doing in first. Which was nice, but the turnout was low. Not to say we shouldn't do it, but it's something we should probably explore again. Maybe we can do more of those, maybe not in the morning, as a lot of us know we're working. We have places to go. Maybe there's other opportunities to feature those things. We still do, I do a lot of, like, one-offs, like a family is confused, they need more help. I jump on the Zoom, I take a whiteboard, I show the strategies. But I think we need to do more big picture to support more families and not just individual ones. And next, I have just a few more. Continuing to work with teachers on understanding the vertical progressions across grade levels. So, I think our teachers are becoming very strong in knowing their own models. It's been a couple years. But the question is, like, do you know what came before you and what's coming after you? And they are seeking that. I've had a PLC recently with third grade where the kids were struggling a little with addition and subtraction. And they were asking me, they're like, what strategies did they have in second grade? So, we'd love to do more of that vertical. And PLCs is an opportunity or more PDs. And then the final one is just, as Matt mentioned, this is year one. There's more work to be done. A lot to celebrate, but more to be done around just more streamlining intervention programs in terms of the schedules, as he mentioned, in terms of do we fully have the criteria refined for who are the kids who are eligible? How are we tracking how students are doing? Is our communication streamlined across schools? And just having shared resources help. So, we share a lot with each other, but there is a greater need for more alignment across, as we develop and learn more through this first year, I think. Yeah, and I will say with intervention, I say this to my principal too, and I think Matt and Ella would agree and Donna as well, is I feel like we feel really proud of the intervention program. I think we all feel like we're reaching the kids that need it the most. And that is, you know, and we're taking all parties' input into that, and we're looking at iReady data, we're looking at unit data, we're looking at how they're doing it within intervention, we're talking to their classroom teachers. So we're doing everything, and I think reaching all the kids, and I think teachers would agree too, that I need it the most. And again, with year one, we're obviously open to and ourselves collaborating to refine the whole process to make it as streamlined as possible. But I do feel like we can feel proud that the kids who really need it, and they're fluid, the groups are fluid. So kids now and in the future that would need it the most will get that and are getting it, which is great to feel. And what we have, do you have any questions? I have a question about if you have any data around those second graders that are in their third year of the curriculum and their grasping of the standards against second graders from a few years ago that didn't have Bridges for three years and had the homegrown curriculum that we had for a while. I'm just curious if you have any of that benchmarking. Not that I can think of off the top of my head. I think because it's obviously a non-MCAS grade, it'd have to probably go off of some iReady data, which we can definitely dive into. We can, if we don't have access ourselves, our iReady. Yeah, it gets archived. So we could definitely compare it to that, which would definitely be interesting. We could get back to you on that. Cool. Yeah. I guess I'll have a couple of glows and a question. How about that? You want the question first or the glows first? The question. Okay. The question. I'm just curious how this aligns with the transition to middle school. So a lot of these are the foundational math skills. And how does Bridges help to prepare them? Or how are we tracking their progress and their readiness for middle school? So I think now it's the third year. Last year also we worked closely with middle school. They came to actually see a Bridges lesson, because we said we have a new curriculum, why don't you come see how it works, because your kids are going to be coming in doing all these things, and it'd be great to see. So we worked closely with middle school so that alignment is there. When they came, after I think year one or two of Bridges, they were just like, wow, the fluency is so much higher. The exploration, the visual models, they were amazed by the shift. That being said, we could look at it more closely just to see. But we are, our elementary team is also going to middle school. That alignment is still there between the schools. Yeah, and we always, and Ella's been able to organize it at the end of the month. We make sure any yearly, any new educators, Donna, Matt, a few other teachers at my school who's moved to fifth grade, go to middle school to see math in action. So when they're thinking about their own instruction, and then thinking about students' placement for sixth grade, they have a really good idea of what skills are needed and attitudes are needed to be successful or be placed in the, suggested into a certain level. But yeah, we do, Ella does a great job collaborating with middle school. So we feel pretty good. We haven't heard anything otherwise. But yeah, when they came to visit, they were very impressed with the fluency and the flexible thinking and the strategies, which is great. And I will say, when we went to see middle school, it's very aligned with Bridges in terms of we saw Dan Gorski leading a lesson and all of a sudden, like, instead of being like, here's how you solve it, it was like, here's a problem, try it out. Very similar to Bridges and students doing the learning and owning. So they're not the exact same curriculum, same philosophy. I wonder if those sixth grade teachers are seeing a difference in the students that are sixth grade now who have two years of Bridges under their belt. We are hearing about it, for me, building-based hearing it, even from our K teachers in the building to first grade teachers, just the pleasant surprise they have of their preparedness coming in and having those foundational skills from kindergarten and entering first grade. So we do, I do see and hear that out on the floor and in the classrooms, and I see in action. So the hope would be, again, we have long-term vertical progression for our students to exit elementary, but with the foundational skills that they need to continue on their math journey. I think it's the familiarity, but also the excitement around it. I will say, like, my fifth grade team recently shared that the workplaces, which are the games the kids are playing this year, the kids are so much more into it. A couple were like, oh, last year our kids really were not, they would not play that game, and now it's amazing how into it they are. So I think the engagement also, and the buying in of students into it. And it's so second graders, to your point, Erin, that we're going to watch, kind of go through from kindergarten all the way up, so we'll all be waiting patiently and excited for those second graders. Okay, so my glows, like, I loved hearing about how you're able, based on the data, to group students based on their skill versus their score. You know, many years ago you were either good at math or you weren't, and now you can be great at math because there are so many different ways to be great at math. And I liked that you allow kids to see themselves as mathematicians, so that's really cool. And it's just wonderful to see you're in year three and you've mastered the content and now you can kind of delve into the real fun part, right, of implementing it and personalizing it for the kids. So thanks so much. Yeah, I think that, you know, the fact that they're talking about it and all that discourse you're talking about shows they're absorbing it, they're excited about it, they're, you know, teaching other students about it. So that's great. I was wondering if you could, like, put some of the stuff on the website. You were mentioning the math cafes. I wonder if you can update the website a little bit. Like, even that infographic you had with, like, all the different grades and how a lesson looks, I thought, like, that was like, wow, I can kind of see it. I have been meeting and working with Betsy and sharing preliminary behind the scenes work that I've been doing in my partial role. But starting with a resource hub for this team, we've anchored ourselves so that we know where we've been, to know where we're going, and we continue to do that work together to get that in the hands of teachers, to get that in front of and for our young mathematicians. So when I think of resources right now, we're sharing out and getting links and a hub of information to grab and go for ourselves so that this team can get it quickly to the teachers or they can grab and go for themselves. In terms of web development and resource development out to teachers, we do have shared drives. But again, Betsy's been so helpful and, again, collaborating with Sarah Sontag of looking for where can we find cohesion and consistencies in the information that we share and where people find it. One of the most frustrating things for teachers as a former classroom teacher is you know there's a thing, right? And time is precious and a thief, and you're trying to find what you need. And you do need the support of coaches to guide you in getting to that sometimes. And so that is in the works. I did meet, and I apologize. Can you help me remember the person, high school tech, Bethann? Bethann. Bethann. Bethann. Bethann. Yes, thank you. She met with me two weeks ago because I had the same question. Where does math live in our digital access to the community to students when they're not in school? And then where is that platform for teachers? And then the push from the team of, okay, what will we be facing for our access? What's forward facing for teachers access? What can kids grab? And what do families have access to? So that is coming, and it is moving rather quickly. They are, and I don't know if this premature, I think this thought or talk around redesign of the website. Mm-hmm. If there's drafts, drafts of it out there that we're working on with now. Mm-hmm. So once, again, that becomes established, I do have things at the ready that will be ready to go and be forward facing to the community. But that's very much the work that we're doing. Our current hub has quite a bit happening. And so, again, we're starting with our team, and we're building up from our foundation to make sure that the most essential pieces of information are out there. So thank you. So the, I'm trying to think of what they're called, but Ella, you talked about them being sent out by the classroom teachers for each unit. Family letters. Family letters, yeah. Family letters, yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Is there a way to put those out through ParentSquare? Yeah. Because that's at least, like, you know, everybody carries a phone as much as, and so at least you could, like, pull that out of your pocket and say, while we're doing homework, like, oh, yeah, let me pull that out. Yeah. Because I did get them paper copy, but I don't think we, I've seen them electronic. That would be awesome. Yeah. I think, honestly, I think all teachers share it as just a matter of how we can do both. Oh, yeah. I just, yeah. Yeah. And my daughter doesn't always get the paper home. Home, yeah. So it's not the teacher's fault. It's my child's fault, but. Yeah. We could easily unify and do it in, and now, like, some put it in their newsletter and some put it in the file. Yeah. I'd like to ask a scheduling question, because I know during the year one, we needed to teach it to fidelity, and I believe that meant 90 minutes a day. Is that correct? And last year, we dropped it because we thought, well, that's a lot, and we can make it our own. And I think we talked about earlier in this year that we were considering loving it again. Mm-hmm. Correct? I can speak to that a little bit. Yeah. So when are we with that? Yeah. So in year one, we, we, we talked to fidelity. We had 60 minute blocks every day and 20 minutes of, um. Number corner. Number corner. Yes. Uh, we wanted to make room for more science last year. And so we went to four days a week. Mm-hmm. Um, we, while I think teachers made the most of the four days a week that they had, we felt like it, there was some loss there. So we went back to, well, we still need more time, so can we do five times 50 instead? Mm-hmm. In an ideal world, it's, it's five times 60 plus 20 minutes. There's just so many. Is that what the scheduling committee is, or is that more of intervention? So we're, we're looking, so the schedule committee, um, is made up of, of, you know, lots of different teachers, educators, administrators, um, really looking at best practices in scheduling. We've, we've had an outside speaker come. We've read an article together where we've looked at lots of data that we've collected from teachers over time. We've done a, like a quick carousel around what, what are the best parts of our schedule? Where are the problem points? And, um, so our next meeting will be really developing our guiding principles of how we're going to make decisions. around this and collecting a little bit more data, and then we'll start generating some, some drafts. Um, but you know, one of the things that I think that, um, we're really thinking about is sort of how do you stagger and staircase the core instruction across the day so that interventionists can maximize, you know, time at grade level. So, so really thinking carefully and deeply about that. And, you know, the, the challenges remain things like space, as we've talked about, right? When you have a cafeteria the size of Happy Halls, you have to run six lunches. And so those, those, those things sort of impact on how you can really string together some of the time you want. And, you know, there's, there's lots of, lots of needs and presses and pulls and schedules. You know, we want more SEL time. We want, we want to maintain and preserve some recess time and kids moving around and, and music, you know, all, all of the different pieces, um, come into play. And, you know, scheduling is a series of trade offs too. And, and some days, some years we try, try to tweak in this way and then we realize, you know, we're losing too much so we need to swing back. So, you know, as we're also, as you know, exploring an ELA curriculum actually will come into play. So, sure. I have to think that there's some sort of creative ways though that we could weave together our subjects. I mean, which, um, which we've talked about the, the curriculum. The LA curriculum. Yeah. Are really grounded. So a lot of the literature that they're reading in there are science and social studies focused. That's focused. Yeah. A lot of the nonfiction and they're, they're built around text sets too. So you, you're building lots of knowledge in areas that progress. Not all of them are fully aligned. So for example, in one of the curriculum we're exploring, um, they may have a unit that they're reading about in fourth grade, but they're, they're getting some, building some background knowledge so that when they do the unit in fifth grade, they're going to come in with a whole lot more rich understanding to sort of hang the new knowledge on. So, they'll be getting more science and social studies through ELA and still trying to find ways to, through all the other social studies and science standards. Because it's different learning about and reading about things and then doing experiments and really understanding processes. So, yeah. If I could, um, just address, um, your comment around, um, fidelity in year one. Mm-hmm. Um, year three, um, and the team's been discussing, while scheduling comes with barriers and some concessions, um, so much of the, the backbone here with this team is guiding and coaching the teachers of integrity of the program. Of really looking critically of while we don't want to, um, mistakenly abandon because they know the vertical progression and they're teaching it to teachers. They can guide the teachers of this is where you stay and hold on. And this is where you, again, you can sort of not supplant, but you can either supplement or adjust pacing, um, to either close gaps or expedite, um, and accelerate learning. And so that's very much within the coaching model that's happening. And we're actually, um, for me as an evaluator, I'm also seeing it in the co-teaching model of having those conversations of which model do we need to use to meet the needs of students. And then that way it happens in the math world of teaching the curriculum with integrity and knowing when to ebb and flow, um, from those standards. And while we all want more time, um, the reality is, is we do have scheduling barriers and concessions to make. Um, but that's a testimony to the coaching team reaching the teachers to make those decisions, those informed decisions based on students and data and information and knowledge that they have that they can pass forward. And offer reassurance that the students are getting the instruction they need and the time that they need. Um, there's not ever enough time. Um, that's the reality and, and has been for quite a while and it's not, it's not exclusive to Wayland. Um, so we're, we're trying, I am also part of the scheduling committee. So I feel comfortable knowing that we're grappling, um, and there's much more information to collect. But there's also faith in the team that we're working through with what we have, um, and meeting it head on, um, the best that we can with what we have. Um, and also making the most of not just the materials that we have, but the human resources that we have. And so how do we set up a schedule that meets the needs of students so that Ella can be in the places that she needs to be? Um, and the, uh, in your counterpart, Amy, as an interventionist to, to be in as many places as possible across the day, um, without compromising, um, larger portions. Mm-hmm. Like recess and, and feeding them so much. I appreciate your enthusiasm for the program because that's really important. And also your enthusiasm for supporting the staff, but also the students. And I know that when a parent has a question about a student who might be struggling, um, how it's been really accessible as I'm sure you are too in supporting families about that specific student issue, which is really important. So I just appreciate it. Do you guys do continued, like, um, PD specific to Bridges, the three of you or the four of you? Um, or? Sort of embedded within PLC time is, is that, um, we will continue to offer PD opportunities. We went through, um, Bridges, offered a, a kind of district-wide PD, um, for everyone. And what we found, I think, is that we're at a place where, like, we know our teachers, our teachers know Bridges, and so the more personalized, the better, um, in terms of PD. So, like, I think our plan moving forward is for the three, the four of us as a team to be able to think about, like, what do our teachers need in utilizing professional development time. What's nice, too, with Bridges now, a lot of the PD is also online. So, like, when Matt was first onboarding, there was so many opportunities for him to just, like, let me click on this webinar and learn, like, the models of Bridges. Um, I have a new teacher at Looker, so similarly, as we onboard new staff, um, there's those opportunities that are, and we're also looking at them ourselves. They're constantly updating it. There was a recent one we did just about assessments and how to best utilize the data. Um, so they're becoming more and more tech-savvy and putting everything online for ATTA's coaches, too, to learn new things. Um, we're also part of a cohort. So, within Bridges, um, there's different educators who are, it's, like, their first year, their second year, or third year. So, we have these meetings once a month for us to collaborate with other educators who are using Bridges. And what's also really nice is that, with this third edition, there's an unlimited amount of licenses that we have for login. So, even today, I met with a TA who's in fifth grade and got her all set up and was like, yeah, and even when I go into fifth grade classroom, I have the answer key up. And, like, I have, like, the lesson up. Like, it's, you know, it's, it's rigorous. It's a rigorous, high-quality, um, curriculum. So, there's, you know, no shame in having stuff prepared and reading ahead and making sure you know how to, you know, in this TA, want it to be impactful and supportive. So, um, everything from that is super helpful, um, and we do our best to get everyone the access they need and to coach them even in very simple ways of, like, how they can, um, you know, be supportive in the classroom. Awesome. I guess one thing I forgot to mention was the third edition is just that the Spanish-facing materials now. There's also teacher manuals that are in Spanish, and that's new in the third edition. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, before they had an English manual, but student-facing things were in Spanish. And I remember one year I reached out to Betsy and I was like, can we have summer work days to develop a language? Because there's so many ways to say it in Spanish. And we wanted to make sure that teachers were consistent with the language. But now they have the script in Spanish. That's great. Speaking of the language and the script, that, um, kind of tied into your question, which was, like, getting things out to the community. One thing that I found super helpful from, and I can't remember now what teacher told me this, but my daughter kept saying to me, I'm doing the standard algorithm. I'm doing the standard algorithm. I'm like, I don't know what the standard algorithm is. And so whenever I said that back to the teacher, she was like, oh, well, that's actually the way you would have learned it. It's the other ones that are the other ways to get there. And I'm like, oh, okay. So, like, just that language is helpful to understand. So, you know. It's something we've thought about a little bit when we shifted report cards. I don't know if you noticed in the last two, three years. Um, the report cards have changed slightly to have a little less criteria and more, like, broader topics. But then we realized when these topics for families, like, do they really know what that means? Like, in terms of what we're grading. Um, and we tried to pull resources from Desi to have, like, not a cheat sheet, but like a sheet that explains. Like, here's what this actually means. And here are the standards. Um, we can make sure that that's still being sent. I know the first year we shifted. So this new report card, we sent it alongside with a report card. So families had it as a guide. Yeah. Um, but we should probably make sure it's. Yeah. Yeah, but it's like a foreign language. Well, right. And when, you know, she's telling me, I'm doing this, I'm doing this. I'm like, I don't know what it is. Can you help you? And then the teacher's like, well, you actually do know what that is? I'm like, oh, okay. That's wonderful that you're using that language. Yeah. Yeah, it was, right? Like, and I'm, okay, what is it? Tell me. Um, that was a few years ago. Anybody else have anything else? Nope. Thanks so much, everybody. Thank you. Thank you. It was great to meet you, Donna. And Matt. And Matt. Okay. It never went through, but I gave you editor access for the folders. So you should be able to save it to that now. Okay. If you just organize it. Oh. I shared it with you, but I didn't share it with you. Oh, my God. I don't know. Oh. Okay. Hey, Ella? Yeah. I'm not going to do it right now. Yeah. Can you give me editing access so I can be correct? Thank you. I just know that everybody's going to want to click through those links. Yeah. No, no. It's okay. I was wondering if that's what happened. So. It's fine. It's fine. It's fine. It's fine. That's why I was like, all right, if I give her editing access, she can just move it in there. I gave you access for the folder to edit. So now you should be able to. Oh. Yeah. You could try that. You could always make a copy. I might be able to do it a different way. Sure. Yeah. I've been, like, just taking notes and stuff. And, like, I took pictures of, like, slides and stuff. Yeah. Okay. No. Yeah. All right. Molly's here from WSPN. Does anybody mind? Does anybody mind if she records us? I don't mind. I can also just take notes if people, like, don't want to be recorded for it. We're also recorded. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So, honestly, you do what you want to do. Okay. I will say, just as, like, a point of future learning and education for you. Yeah. When you come to a public meeting, if you're going to record, which I know you weren't. Yeah. You have to notify the chair. Mm-hmm. Which, totally. Yeah. I haven't done any recording yet. I know. I know. So, it's like, I didn't ask it yet, but. Totally fine. I just want to make sure you know that. So. Yeah. But I know we mentioned that. So, I wanted to go make sure she knew we were comfortable with doing that. Yes. Awesome. If she wanted to. That's great. Thank you. You can always go and get it off Wacom. Okay. Yeah. Once it gets posted to. Okay.
Because there was so much good information. I did too. I was like, be frustrated. All right. Um. Dr. Schuster. Do you want to. And Heather. Yeah. Um. And Laura. Hi. And everybody. Okay. I love it. Welcome. Thank you. Thank you. This is in your folders. Okay. Um. A full PDF. I think this one is. One of them is a PDF. Yeah. And also the presentation. It's full. It's all in there. Yeah. If you can't see it, tell me because I'm seeing it. Yeah. I checked a couple hours before the meeting. I only got it at 520. Okay. So that's why. It would have been that's why. Yeah. I put it in at 535, 534. Do I see it? It's called Wheyland High School Call 20. Oh. I didn't check it out. I didn't check it out. I didn't check it out. I didn't check it out. I didn't check it out. I didn't check it out. They had a presentation. Yep. Got it. Got it. Got it. No, I got it. It's good. I love a nice. We can collect that. Yeah. Hi everyone, thank you for flexibility, and I do not recommend driving from Boston. I'm really good to be back in the room with everyone again, just by way of reintroduction. My name is Randy Schuster. I am wearing a professional hat. Today, but also kind of as a Leland parent, I am a mom of a second grader who tells me often that I should have gone back to school to learn to do that. My last minute was a battle. I have no idea how to show my work, so that's okay. Anyway, so I'm a second grader, I'm a rising kindergartner, and it's worth being a part of this community. The hat that I wear today is not as a parent, but I'm a psychologist by training. I am an associate professor at Harvard Medical School and direct our Center for School Behavioral Health at Mass General Hospital. I've been there for about 13 years out of the Department of Psychiatry. And I know I gave an overview of some of the stuff that we were doing last year, but just as a refresh, we came to Weyland High under the opportunity, with the opportunity of a recent PCORI project, which is a large federal contract that we're now entering. We're in year three of a five-year project. As part of that opportunity, there have been a lot of different experiences in the high school and moving into the middle school, which I'll share about. But the main one that I'll be talking to you today about is our OASIS project, which is our optimizing and advancing SBIRT in schools. So my background work is really around how we can best mobilize schools to support early intervention around substance use and co-occurring of our mental health concerns. For those that I'm sure everyone here is intimately familiar with, but SBIRT is state mandate. So SBIRT is screening, brief intervention, referral for treatment, S-B-I-R-T. This is a Massachusetts mandate that came down the line a few years back. We are the only state in the country that has this as a state mandate. And there are a lot of states that are looking to implement an SBIRT mandate in the years ahead. And I think they're really looking towards how we in Massachusetts are uplifting this model and figure out what to do. SBIRT is, by the way, the state mandate basically stipulated that every public district needs to screen annually one middle school, one high school grade every year for substance use. The way that the mandate was written suggested that this live with nursing and didn't give a whole lot of guidance in terms of what was necessary for the screening, what was involved with the brief intervention, and then what do you do when you have a student who actually is at risk for substance use? What does that RT, that referral for treatment, look like? This, as with many of our mandates, was an unfunded mandate. And so needless to say, we've had a lot of schools really come to us and say, what do we do, right? How do we do this in a way that is actually meaningfully advancing the wellness of students without overtaxing our already taxed staff and system and scheduling? And do this in a way that just doesn't feel like a box to check, right? It's a meaningful activity. So we applied for this grant, and this is actually a unique funding opportunity because we have funding this five-year project through PCORI, and we have matched funding through the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, which is how Hyacinth is with us today. And we'll introduce herself in just a second. And essentially what we are doing through this project is working with approximately 40 high schools across the Commonwealth to figure out different strategies on how we can best improve this screening process. How do we put a little bit more meat on the bones? How do we make this feel meaningful for students, feel worthwhile for the schools? But do it in a way that is actually scalable and sustainable. So the primary strategy that we are really digging into for this effort is around the staffing model. Who is actually doing expert screening? And so why are we thinking about staffing? Well, one of the main reasons why we are thinking about staffing is before we started, if I go back about five to seven years, before we really put pen to paper for this project, we are currently working with about 400 schools across Massachusetts around updating how we are addressing our punitive-based practices around substance. So historically in schools, substance use equals some sort of disciplinary action. I can spend a whole separate conversation talking about why I think that needs some rethink. We know that punishment doesn't address underlying concerns, disconnects kids from the academic environment, and is actually associated with harm. But what we were seeing is that we were hearing from a lot of both schools and kids that, okay, now we've got this mandated substance use screener. Why would I go into this room and share openly and honestly about my substance use when my buddy was suspended two days before for the same thing that you're promising anonymity around or confidentiality around right now? Which makes a ton of sense. And so we have had a lot of students tell us when we were interviewing schools and preparing this grant that, you know, we do it. It's a boxed check. We have to report the data every year back to the state. But, you know, if we get two kids reporting that they're using substances, then that is, I don't want to say that's a miracle, but it's just nobody's reporting anything, right? So they're spending all of this time, energy, and precious scheduling resources when kids aren't actually disclosing use, okay? So what we've been thinking about is what if we brought in people who were deeply connected with the school environment, invested in the school environment, but not necessarily part of day-to-day school life, right? Or not on school staff, to help support both SBIRT screenings as well as the brief interventions, referral for treatments, all of the things that then might fall on the tails of SBIRT, hearing what comes kind of sense, right? So we are, the model that we are evaluating is the value that's basically of bringing in what we're calling usefulness coaches, right? So these are near peers, to be working very closely with schools over the course of the next five years. I mentioned that this is a study. So this is actually a clinical trial where we have 40 schools that are being randomized to either working with a coach or continuing to do SBIRT with their staff as usual. Wayland, two years ago, was randomized to be paired with a coach. What that has looked like, and what that will continue to look like over the next few years, is that the school is being paired with a coach that is hired, supervised, and trained by C4 organizations, working closely with my team at MGH, at no cost to the district. Their funding is actually about what's coming from the Department of Public. So I'm going to pause and give you the opportunity to introduce yourself, and then I can dive into some of the numbers and data that we did for. Yeah, thank you so much. Hi everyone, my name is Hyacinth Toriak. I'm the youth wellness coach at Wayland High School and Dover-Sherborn High School as well. But I've been at Wayland since the beginning of the school year. I started in September. I'm from Weston, so I'm kind of familiar with this area, and what it's kind of like to be in the culture and the environment here, go through schooling here. And yeah, it's been a really, really amazing opportunity to connect with the students at Wayland. I've gotten to work with almost like every single, I think, grade, but I've always really loved working with high schoolers. I love the way that they make sense of themselves and the world and the things around them. The students at Wayland are just so, so thoughtful. I'm almost complete with SBIRT. I've gotten to meet with about 180 or so of the 10th graders, and I'll be finishing up by the end of this month. And something that's, I think, really special and meaningful about being able to fulfill this role and to sort of conduct SBIRT as a younger person is that, even though most students are saying that they don't engage with any substances, pretty much all of them have thoughts about it. And not in the sense of like they're curious, but like they have things to say. And they have ways that they're making sense of it, and they have opinions. And just being able to be a person that's there to listen and be like, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And just for them to know that I'm not there to judge them or evaluate them, but just really want to know how they experience things. But yeah, it's been really great just getting to know them in those brief interactions. I really, really value it. And sort of after I'm kind of done with the whole SBIRT process, I'm just there as like an additional support for students. I am trained in iDecide and Project AMP. And those are two models that are sort of around supporting young people. One more specifically about substance use, and the other about just sort of overall wellness. But yeah, that's kind of my role overall. It's been really such an exciting opportunity, and I've loved getting to know the students. And so, thank you so much. And so, as you've all heard, the way that we're starting with each year, our approach with student engagement is focused on the SBIRT grade, right? The grade that is going to be undergoing SBIRT screening. So at Weyland, it's 10th grade actually costs the school participating in the studies. It's 10th grade. So that's, you know, we start with, and Hyacinth is totally responsible, and has absorbed all the responsibility of screening all of these students over the course of really a few weeks. One of the big changes that we've made, as I mentioned, this is our third screening year, that we made this year is we're really trying to compress SBIRT screening. In earlier years SBIRT screening kind of carried on throughout the year. It was still on the youth wellness group, so it still was off the wellness team and the nursing team. But it did kind of bleed across the year. We're really trying to compress it into the first half of the year, so that the whole second half of the year is really freed up, to be able to be meeting with students in a little bit more natural spaces and settings, to be able to do interventions like Project AMP, which is C4's intervention, and IDECIDE, which is our alternative to punishment for human violation of substance use. I think the other key thing that is really special about this model, and deviates from how school-based approaches for substance use have historically looked, is it really does embrace a co-occurring lens. So it really is not just about the intervention, points of intervention, not just the singular intervention. Points of intervention are not just about targeting vaping behavior, cannabis use behavior, drinking. It is also about really trying to understand the kids, and their context, and the reasons why. And looking for those other opportunities to provide meaningful intervention. If we have a student who says, you know, they're, I run a big project that's focused on cannabis and works for suicide in young people. So if we have a kid who says they're getting high, because that's how they feel safe at night, we need to be providing intervention around safety and suicide prevention. So it just gives us opportunity to actually really start to intervene for the whole kids, rather than intervening on this behavior, which sometimes is the smoke and not the smoke. So alongside this intervention, and this approach, one of the ways that we are evaluating this is through data collection. So we do a biannual survey, which I'm happy to share all 85 pages of that, if anyone want it. You also have some summaries of that in these nice infographics here. We do this survey twice a year, in the fall and in the spring. The fall is just in the kids who just completed SBIRT. And the fall is practically in the host. What I wanted to share here are some key findings. Overall, things are, I have good news to share. I think some areas just for us to keep an eye on and for us to think about ways that we can continue supporting Hyacinth, the students, the schools, as we look into the years ahead. So we can, I went way out of order on this. We can keep going. I don't know why I put slides together. Keep going. Let's see, once we get to our perfect number slide. So pause here. So this is a few days old, but in just year to date, Hyacinth has, when we published it was 163, but closer to 180 students that she has conducted SBIRT screening with just this year alone. About 15% of those students, so this is 10th grade students, endorsed any substance use. It is a strange thing for me to celebrate that this number is so much higher than what we saw in the years past. And I want to contextualize that. These numbers are believable, right? When we had kids from my own high school telling us that nobody in SBIRT screening, none of them had drank alcohol, none of them had used cannabis. It just wasn't, it didn't map on to Metro West data, right? It wasn't mapping on to anonymized data that we were getting in other states. To me, what this speaks to is the value of connection, right? And the value of what, when somebody shows up authentically themselves and able to actually promise some level of confidentiality in that space, that kids feel comfortable sharing, right? And to me, SBIRT is not about discovery, right? It's not about uncovering the kids who are using, but it's actually starting to identify one person at school that they can go to if they feel like they need help or support or if they're worried about their friend or their family member. So it is about just kind of creating that space. So to me, seeing that we are starting to get numbers that resemble what we see in national estimates, what we see in the Metro West region, to me this really speaks to the power of this connection that you're creating in this space. We'll move forward. So those numbers, what I shared in the previous slide, that was from the actual SBIRT screening encounters to date. Now what I'm going to show you are a few numbers that I'll highlight, what's important here. And again, happy to share the detailed report that has all of this and all of this scoring detail. This is from our survey, which we call our SERP survey. This happens, this is our bi-annual survey that goes alongside SBIRT. This is anonymous, confidential. Kids do not have to provide any contact information. This is how we are evaluating across all of our 40 schools whether or not embedding youth wellness coaches in schools meaningfully improves youth wellness outcomes. So here, what you can see is this past year, we did surveying in 10th, 11th, and 12th grade. Surveying in Wayland is an absolute dream. You guys know how to survey. Kids do these are really helpful in getting this off the ground. So there you can just see the breakdown of students, demographics who completed the survey. We can move on to the next slide here. Here's some of the things that I think might be quite interesting to take a look at. As I mentioned, this is our third survey year. We've surveyed 2023, 2024, and 2025. Again, this is not SBIRT screening data. This is the anonymized survey that goes alongside of it. What you're looking at here are the rates of students, the percent of students who completed the survey in each survey year, who are above clinical thresholds on our screener for depression and anxiety. So KHQ-4. So this is the percent of students who, if I were to see them in my clinic and I were to give them the screener, I would want to ask further questions. This isn't diagnostic, but this is to say the percent of students who are exhibiting at-risk symptoms. So you'll see a few things to note here. The overall landscape is one that is not dissimilar from what we were seeing in every other school across the Commonwealth at this point in time, which is kids are struggling, right? So we see that between one in five and one in four over the past three years report at-risk symptoms for anxiety, clinically at-risk symptoms for anxiety. We see about one in three kids report being at risk for either depression or anxiety. So that's concerning, not unlike what we see, again, everywhere else. The good news story here is these numbers seem to be coming down over time. We need to keep monitoring those. Those error bars are big, right? So I can get into the statistics of this in terms of how meaningful the decline this is. But it is certainly trending in the right direction. Forward on the next slide. I'm also happy, I should say, please feel free to jump in at any point and ask questions as I'm going along. What we're looking at here are indicators that are risk factors for suicide. So I'm going far left to right. NSFI is non-suicidal self-injury. So this is self-harm without intents to die. Then we have thoughts. So these are suicidal thoughts. We have suicidal plans and suicide attempts. Again, numbers are not dissimilar from what we see across the state, across the country. Scary for us to see when we're talking about our kids, when we're looking at one in ten kids report having thoughts of suicide in the last year. I will say these are in the last year. That doesn't necessarily mean that there's an acute safety risk. But again, these numbers seem to be trending in the right direction. They are coming down, which these are really important things. We know that around COVID, we saw these numbers really spike. And so from a science standpoint and from a public health standpoint, from a psychological standpoint, we've been waiting with bated breath to see whether these numbers trend downward over time. They are, again, at New England High School, moving in the right direction. We need to keep our foot on the gas. Keep doing what we're doing. Keep supporting wellness with full intention in the school. We can talk about different strategies for doing that. But these are moving in the right direction. Here we're looking at, this says psychotic symptoms. I will say this is a screener for multiple different risk factors. They are unusual experiences that put people at risk for severe mental illness. These numbers are coming down as well as about 5% of kids in this past year reported being above this threshold for unusual symptoms. Let's move forward. I will say this is, I think this is a bit out of order. I apologize. But I'm going to just note it here. I would say this is our point for improvement. So what we're looking at here is, well, I'll say there's good news and some areas for improvement here. What we're looking at here is, in kids, this is this past year, this is just 2025. And these were, I think we surveyed in October. So these are hot off the press numbers. Among kids who were surveyed, how many of them report talking to any one of these people in the past year about their mood or their wellness? Okay? That's the far left column. The middle column is among kids who are at risk for depression or anxiety. How many of those kids report talking to any one of these individuals? Among kids with daily or near and daily substance use. How many of those kids report talking to somebody about their mental health? I'm going to just talk about that full sample because the pattern of findings is not remarkably different when we look across the three columns. But by and large, I see a few things here. I see that about one in five kids report not having spoken to anybody in the past year about their mood or their mental health. I see that there is a lot of kids, there are a lot of kids talking to parents and caregivers, which is great. We are next week going to be rolling out a curriculum called I Care, which is a program that schools can be distributing to caregivers on how to support their kids at home. I'm really excited to bring that to you guys because this is not something that schools can be doing alone. So just like we need to bring some fluency to parents around them, we need to bring some fluency to caregivers on how to talk about substance use, how to talk about suicide, how to talk about difficult things, and how to do it, and also how to manage your own symptoms and experiences. That will be coming out next week, you guys will all have access to that. And so we want to continue to promote that. About 60 to 67, 68% of kids report having spoken with a caregiver about their mental health. And a fair number of kids report having spoken to a friend, romantic partner, or peer. What I really want to see go up in our years ahead is connection to school-based supports. Those numbers, again, not remarkably different from what we're seeing in other schools. So this is not a conversation about something that's unique to Whelan, but just something we're really working on across the different districts that we're working with. It's how we create connection at school. How we help kids identify one trusted adult that they can talk to about their mood, their substance use, tough things that are going on in their life. This is where people's life types become invaluable, and really thinking about how she can be embedded and create those spaces in ways that feel accessible, feel authentic, and feel safe. I'd say that this is an indicator that we want to watch, and I think really want to put some intention around, because we know that having one trusted adult at school is a huge protective factor against progression of mental health concerns. It is a modifiable thing that we can work on. There are a lot of things that our kids are exposed to right now that are existential, that are big and scary, and we have no control over. I'm really struggling with how I talk to my kids about everything that's going on that they're seeing in their community and they're seeing on the news. But this is something we can work on. So that's a lot of the work that we're doing in our center is really trying to think about what are those modifiable factors. We had a report that came out last year that talked about the ratio of school mental health staff in schools, how protective that that is against the adverse effects of neighborhood deprivation and exposure to systemic stressors, and protecting against mental health concerns in young people. So again, really just thinking about what are the little I interventions. A lot of our emphasis in school-based wellness has been on big I interventions, which are great, we need them, but they impinge on schedules, they impinge on resources. There becomes a major issue around scalability and sustainability. So what we've really shifted our focus in is thinking about some of those little moments. What are ways that we can find connection when walking to the lunchroom? What are ways that we can find connection? When Lily, my daughter, my fifth grader, came home or told me the other day that they start each day with a mindful moment. That just blew my mind. I was like, oh my God, yes, that's exactly what we want to be doing. Thinking about those little things that can be infused throughout the day that help kids feel like school is actually a place that cares about who they are, not just how they perform. So I think we've got the makings of something great here and just enthusiastic to keep supporting that work. We can keep moving forward. I don't have too much help here for it. I should have put that as my punchline just really quickly just to talk around the numbers around substance use. Here we're looking at rates of lifetime and past 30-day alcohol use. I do want to watch that lifetime alcohol use number jumped up a little bit. That might be an artifact of sampling because each year we added a grade. So now the 12th graders are included there. So we do know the numbers go up as we start to add older kids into the grade. I want to watch that next year because then we'll have two years life to life. So just my caveat there. Not seeing a remarkable trend though in current or past 30 days, which is going forward one. Cannabis, which is where I spend a lot of time and research around. Those numbers actually, despite us adding seniors into this survey wave, those numbers do seem to be going down over time. We, from a public health standpoint, put a lot of energy into increasing education and resources around cannabis, particularly in our post-legalization era. So pleased to see that things are moving in the right direction. Again, not take our foot off the gas. Continue to watch the legal landscape is still rapidly shifting. Spensaries are opening very close by. We will want to just keep close attention to that. I do think programs like iCare, these caregiver programs, which are going to help give language to parents around, you know, why is cannabis use in a 15-year-old different than cannabis use in a 45-year-old, right? Biologically, it's different. So it's starting to provide some education and renorming to the people that these young people are going home to. I'm hopeful it will help triangulate the first year. All right. Electronic cigarette use. We've been watching this one really closely. And again, very encouraging that this is going down. One of the trends we were really worried about was around oral nicotine tobacco use with pouches. We are seeing initiation go up for that across the board. We are not seeing, knock on wood, a huge uptake in regular use for pouches. Kids aren't really liking it, which is great. And vaping is becoming a lot less cool. So we are seeing those numbers start to come down slowly but surely. All right. I will pause. I have lots more numbers we can talk about but I'm sure there are questions and also been to any thoughts, feedback, or reflections you guys want to add. Thank you. Like I could listen to you all day. This is just really fascinating to me. In the table two, I was wondering, have you talked to, or have you evaluated like the use of chatbots? Like the kids talking to chatbots about them? No, but it's coming. So we are, it's going to be one of the things. So we update our survey every year based off of emergent trends and chatbots for anyone that we need to watch. We are actually thinking about how we can leverage and also educate. So our exploring ways of building AI into some of the interventions and also how you put guardrails on that. There's some really amazing opportunity in creating increased accessibility. But we are also hearing a lot of kids saying, no, I don't need a therapist. I've got, you know, I've got chatbots at my fingertips, which is scary. Scary. Yeah. So we'll be quantifying that in the survey waves ahead. I know it's happening. Understanding what I don't think we have a great sense of is who is relying on that most. My educated guess is that it's going to be the kids who are most disconnected, already disconnected. So a lot of really what we're trying to think about is how we really support the kids who are most at risk by virtue of a variety of different factors. So I think it's going to be the kids who maybe don't feel like they can talk to their caregivers or are already disconnected from, don't yet have a therapist or a psychiatrist or a trusted client. Can you share a little bit more about what the brief interventions and support look like after all of the screening has taken place? Yeah, for sure. And kind of what SBIRT looks like. We go through, it's usually about like five questions long. It kind of depends on the answers that the students are giving. But if a student does indicate that they have engaged in some use of substances, alcohol, nicotine, marijuana, things like that, then we'll usually have a conversation that's, I'm sort of trained in like motivational interviewing, so more like harm reduction sort of style interventions and just having conversations about safety, sort of access, how are you getting things, what are the things that are important to you, to what extent do you want to change certain behaviors, what feels realistic for you to sort of reach that goal. So those are kind of the conversations that we're having. It is a brief amount of time. So a lot of times I'm sort of suggesting myself as a resource if they want to meet again or referring students to, we have like on SBIRT like the last page has a bunch of like hotlines and chat lines that are like peer-to-peer, sort of youth-centered and then also just finding out more about like who they're connected with in their own network, their friends, their guidance counselor at school. So yeah, it's usually like a general sort of conversation about kind of what the behavior is, how they feel about it, do they want to change, what would that look like for them, what do they imagine for themselves, and what supports feel realistic towards getting them there. Thank you. Yeah. Is it very clear for students in the high school that you are a resource for them? Because you seem like such an excellent resource. Is it that you are there for someone who maybe self-identifies that I need help or I need support? How often are you in high school? How clear is it? Yeah. Yeah. That's a great question. Thank you. And thank you for your question as well. I'm at the high school two days a week. I'm there Mondays and Tuesdays. And I kind of mostly just describe my position as community building, which is a really meaningful thing and also takes time. So a lot of times when I'm at the school, I'll be dropping in on like health classes and wellness classes and introducing myself. I spent a lot of time in the beginning of the year just in the guidance office and sort of introducing myself to students as they go through. Just kind of walking around the halls, spend some time in the Metco office with Mark Vidal. So kind of just like the small ways that I can get those interactions. But SBIRT was such a helpful way to like interact with obviously over 100 students and let them know who I am. So it's a slow process, I would say. But it feels like one that happens very comfortably because I am a new faith and that takes time to get comfortable with. So every day is really an opportunity to meet new students. But yeah, I hope I can stay in Wayland and with this project as long as it goes on. And I have a lot of trust and belief that I'll just get to meet and connect with more students as long as it goes on. Great. So anecdotally, I have a fourth grader who just began health class, right? And we got an email from, I think, Christina Sansothonovan saying, Today in health class, Jenny Flynn, who's amazing, was talking about substances, vaping, cigarettes, cannabis. And your fourth graders knew way more than anyone has ever. And they asked and they felt comfortable asking and you really need to be having these conversations. I have an older student as well who does not know any of these things. But kids know more now because in this post-legalization world that we live in. And it was surprising. It was surprising how much they know. So I'm glad that we're focusing on creating these adults. All you need is one adult that you can talk to. So I'm grateful for that. But I'm glad that we're aware that kids know more now because of the world that we're living in. And I'm grateful for this community's openness to that because I don't take that for granted. That, you know, I mentioned through our project, we're working with over 400 schools. And you know one district, you know one district. And there is often a lot of reluctance to teaching about, and I'm actually, wow, that we're talking about it in fourth grade. But there's often this feeling that if we talk about it that we're going to encourage or that we are going to provide, we're going to help enable. Right? But it is exactly as you said. You know, we drive down the highway, and my daughter is reading the billboards of dispensaries. And, oh, what's that? What's that? Or, you know, we pulled up with stuff like someone was smoking a cigarette. She asked questions. We talked about it. Right? It is, we can do that in a way that empowers kids and teaches skills and helps them contextualize. And also starts to talk about alternative ways of managing some of the reasons why people enter into substance abuse. Right? What are other ways of dealing with stress or anxiety? Or if you're nervous to talk to friends, what are other ways of building those skills? Right? There's a way of doing that that isn't encouraging. It's compelling. Right? Yeah. And I don't even think that was part of the curriculum. I think they were talking about general wellness. Yeah. And the kids said, hey, I've got a question about this. And it was a safe space for- Yeah. Which is good. Which is great. Yeah. Didn't we talk about, in the wellness committee, trying to get more exposure for the youth, I want to call you by the right name, youth wellness codes? Yeah. Yeah. So we've worked with Scott about integrating the coach more into the wellness classes. But I think, that was with some of our previous coaches. I think Hyacinth has done an awesome job. She was at the Freshman Orientation Day. This is the first time we've had a coach there. She's been out on the lunch, I mean, she's kind of everywhere, which is wonderful. Where I think, previously, we learned there is an office within the nurse's office at the high school. And so some of the previous coaches weren't, I think, comfortable finding students and being out there. So, I think we're still trying to figure out what post-expert will look like a little bit. But, I mean, there are students that are coming to the nurse's office when I'm there, Wednesday to Friday, and when it's Hyacinth back, I'd like to talk to her. She's certainly built so many more relationships with students and things and opportunities. So I think it'll kind of occur naturally, like working with Scott and getting into the wellness classes. And I think it's always like the math, trying to find time within these classes to ensure the curriculum. But also, you know, introducing staff, so it's a balancing act. But I do think it feels like this year it's been like a seamless year always with students and people know that she's available. So I think we're certainly making progress with the role. That's awesome. You look like somebody I would want to like hang out with. I know. Me too. And like your voice is very soothing and you're very like cool looking and just so I get it. Me too. Totally. Thank you for being here for our students and our kids and that transcends to the family. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. It's really like such an honor. I really love doing this work. So I'm really so appreciative every day. And then winter week is coming up in a couple weeks too. I'm really proud of that, like some of the classes and different things and opportunities across all grade levels to meet more kids too. So I think as the rest of the year progresses will be more opportunities. Awesome. That's great. How do you feel about kids having, you were talking so much in that math section about time and there never being enough time. And we all know it gets so hard, but I'm wondering how you feel about students having the time in their schedules and the appropriate ability to make those connections with that trusted adult. And if there's anything, trends that you've seen perhaps might inform that's a big question. Yeah. I guess, I don't know, but that's something I'll definitely keep thinking about. I know when I'm meeting with students, sometimes they kind of trail in like during lunch or maybe like a little bit before like they should be in a different class. And yeah, and I know I'm allowed to meet with students kind of when they're, for longer periods of time when they're in their freeze. So yeah, I don't know. I think it's definitely complicated and I think if anything, and I feel like this school has been really receptive of like maybe there are students that they're probably meant to be in a class, but they're finding me and they're finding someone that they can, you know, check in with and chat with about kind of what's going on. And I think that that in and of itself is probably a more meaningful space for them to be spending their time. But yeah, that's such a great question. It's hard. I think it's hard to, you know, be a young person and, you know, you want to be with your friends and you want to think about other things and you care about your learning and you've got to be in classes all day and that can be hard. So, you know, it's definitely complicated for sure. I'm glad you're seeing the trend here. You know, along the lines in terms of the model, you know, our goal is not to replace clinical support here, right? It's not to replace school counselors, psychiatric care, psychological care, which sometimes requires, you know, your 50-minute meeting. This is, we're looking to build connection in moments, right? And sometimes that's walking between classes or it's a quick check-in. And sometimes, you know, they're for full sessions for the more structured curriculum, but it doesn't always have to. So, will you come back and report to us after the spring biannual? Yeah. The spring survey, we do a little touch point on, I don't know if I can put this in here. We do a shorter assessment of mental health symptoms. So, we'll repeat the screening for depression and anxiety, suicidal thoughts and behavior, substance abuse. What we will get more detailed information on in the spring is the 10th graders' reflection on the expert screening process. So, we'd love to bring that back. And we can also take a look at how those numbers are starting to compare to the other schools where we're doing the same surveys, but maybe aren't being paired with a coach. So, happy to bring those numbers back and talk to the world. Yeah, that would be great. I would definitely do that. Okay. Awesome. Thanks. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you. I just wanted to quickly introduce Maura. Maura Carter. I work as the public health nurse now for Wayland just since September. Welcome. Maura, welcome. And I know you all know Heather, so. Awesome. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. I'm just going to run to the bathroom really quickly. I actually missed my somebody. Oh. Yeah. I'm so excited to hear this. So, thank you so much for coming. Hey. Sorry. Yeah. No, it's good stuff. I told them too. I'm like, oh. She was just coming and talk to us. It is. It's so, it's so great. Yeah. The output of the information. All the kids are getting in at the same time. Bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing. Oh, for what? From Ski. Oh. They got my first DoorDash to them. Oh. I've never done that before. I forgot I had a meeting. I offered 830. Do you need a 930? My kids, like, don't want to go to sleep at night because, you know, they're used to going to bed at whatever time. Oh, I know. It's so hard. Yes. So, it's like, last night I was like. It's 1045. Yeah. It'll be like, you need to go to bed. Okay. So, okay. Damn, you gotta get up. Right. I know. I'm like, um, hi, it's 1230. Are you up yet? Like, what are you doing? Anybody want this? I know it's . Thank you. Anybody? All right. Um, as we've talked about before and written about to the community, this is a year of planning for the Wayland Public Schools. Um, exciting planning. At our next meeting, January 27th, we'll have another update on facilities planning, where we'll have our team from HMFH join us, um, and we're looking forward to that. Tonight, uh, I want to introduce another planning activity, and that is our, our portrait of a learner work. We've talked about this as one of our system goals. Over the last two months, we've been working with our internal steering committee on planning some of this work. We've also been working with an outside, uh, consultant who happens to be the same consultant. Um, Kate, you met Mike, uh, who facilitated. He's a terrific, really terrific facilitator. And it's super helpful to use the same facilitator for both of our planning initiatives. Our friends in Westwood did the same thing. And, you know, we talk about learning from other teachers and other districts. And, um, Mike did work with them, and they talked about how helpful it was to have some kind of common planning themes. So, a little bit about, um, I, I should say that, um, in talking with our internal steering committee, we really wanted to think about what would work in Wayland in terms of a portrait of a learner. The state DESE kind of has developed a vision of a graduate and different districts do different kinds of work. And we thought a lot about what would be unique and how could we create a unique experience in here. And that's kind of a thread that I want to talk about throughout this, this presentation. Um, because one thing we know as we think about what skills, knowledge, and experiences we want for our kids, we also think this is a really unique time to do this as we enter this fourth industrial revolution and how different this experience might have been just a few years ago. I, I think of, um, my nephew as a senior in college. And, um, when he began his college experience, I said, oh, you'll be a computer science major. And he was really interested in coding. Well, he's now about to graduate from college. And what he was going to do is no longer there, just because of that. And so, like, we can't prepare students in narrow ways because we don't know how the world is going to change in just a few short years. Fortunately, my nephew is also a philosophy major. I was going to say, like, the boom of liberal arts colleges is going to come back. Just saying. That is, um, the Boston Globe magazine has a current story on just that. But that's what I've been thinking about, Erin, is we think about our broad vision as opposed to that. And so I think we almost need, like, multiple portraits of a graduate. So you notice, see that S there in parentheses? We need to be really broad as we think about what it might look like, um, in terms of skills, knowledge, experiences for life, and learning and success beyond school. And that's kind of the language we're using, learning for success beyond school. The jargon in recent years has been college and career readiness. I'm not sure that's as relevant as thinking about need for learning and success beyond school. So as part of our portrait process, we want to think about different archetypes that can be created around how can students see themselves in multiple portraits, not just one portrait, because there's not just one path. The goal in this is to create a blueprint for a district strategy to prepare students for the changing realities of the world. Just think about our earlier discussion about math and the different kinds of thinking we need today. Um, that's true in a lot of areas. So, um, I already mentioned we have a steering group we've been working with. We're also going to put together, um, Kate, I'm going to go back to you, just because you were at that multiple stakeholder group meeting. People talked afterwards in the debrief of how helpful it was to have educators, parents, caregivers, and community members all having the same conversation and how that does not happen a lot. And what our takeaway was from these meetings, we actually need to do this more often. And that was real learning for us in terms of this is another way to engage the community. So what we want to do is offer an opportunity for different stakeholders to come together as part of this process, as opposed to just doing, we're going to have some separate stakeholder groups, but also have extensive discussions of multiple meetings with a set group of multiple stakeholders. So a little bit what we're going to do in the month of January. We also, you know, we were just talking about students. We also want to get students involved in this process. We're thinking about recent high school graduates as well as parents. So again, if you think about our goals to really gather authentic stories about readiness, about growth, about areas of challenge. And so you can see kind of what our goals are there. And also having students to do focus groups with recent college graduates. In October, the high school did it at the faculty meeting. And really recruit recent graduates who have had very different paths to learn about their experiences, but also have them think about the future. So we are also going to do a session for parents, which I wrote about in the newsletter that went out yesterday on January 22nd, and have one for recent graduates on January 28th. Heather was just referring to a winter week. We're going to recruit a diverse group of students as well to have a focus group. One thing we learn about focus groups, it can be helpful to have an outside facilitator, because we think of with our educators, students may report things that they want to please. And so Mike, of course, such a gifted facilitator, he's going to be our common facilitator throughout this process, with different kinds of questions he's going to ask. So you can see we have recent grads, parents, caregivers, as well as students. And then what we're going to do is we're going to synthesize with our steering group after each session. And then we're going to begin, we're calling this, our education forum, our big group session one, two, and three, where we're going to try to identify four to six draft course traits that come from the different focus group data, and think about what we want from Wayland learners, and begin connecting the traits to diverse ways that students show up. So we are looking for 30 people, we're going to do some recruiting. Those sessions will be one at the start of February on the 9th, one later in, earlier in March, and one in late March, to begin to put this together. And then we'll offer kind of an opportunity for some community feedback on this, to engage the community again. And we look forward to bringing the school committee in this process. We would also love to have a school committee member as part of the three sessions. I thought they're really, I don't know, Kate, do you want to talk about how valuable it was? I think what was so unique, as you said, is there were stakeholders from all across the community, and we all had very different perspectives, but we came together with the same priorities. We were often echoing what each other was saying just in a very different way. And it was just nice to have that many people in the room having a very constructive, organized conversation that led to a point that felt very unique to me. And I was just thinking about our two, to make a connection to our two earlier sessions tonight. You know, with the math, we talked about the school, we talked about the student, and we talked about parents. We just did that as well with Randy. And this is kind of a common theme. We are trying to do the same and think about how to engage the community in this process in ways we have not before, about how we think about the future of the district. And I think having people with different career paths and recent college graduates, or recent graduates, not necessarily just college graduates, I should say. We will have people who have been in the military and in different vocations. So we hope to finish this. You saw in our goals, we're going to finish kind of a draft of this by the end of the school year. So then we can develop district goals for next year. As you can see, we always begin our district goal work. We'll start actually when we present to you in probably May. And then think about, given this work, what are the implications for our district goals? We hope to have Mike join us even at our administrator retreat over the summer to facilitate, to come up with some planning based on this work. So, Betsy, what didn't I share that I should have? I guess one thing to note, we have an excellent steering committee group that we're working with, educators in the district, and they really didn't want just another cookie cutter process so that ours looks exactly like any of the others that you've seen or those people. And really kind of wanted to capture not just the idealized end of the product, sort of, but also what's the process look like of learning along the way. So I think Mike was really excited by the thinking in this group and taking this kind of process in a new direction. So this whole archetypes and stories so that kids can see different versions of themselves was definitely a unique kind of spin on this work. That's helpful. Thank you. I don't know how much of, like, the makeup of the steering committee you want to disclose or not, but are we including, I'm assuming, but, like, Caroline, LaToya? Caroline's on the steering committee. And, like, somebody from the METCO program? Well, Caroline kind of does METCO and, you know, Dean and Bee, so she's... Yeah, I just think at least maybe from the perspective of their experience graduating, at least pulling them in. We talked a lot about that at our last meeting and ensuring that in the recent grads group, in our current students group, we definitely are actively seeking people with diverse experiences, diverse learning types, all of... recent graduates who have diverse learning, different learning experiences, current students who have different learning experiences, and parents and community members who have different experiences as well. That's really, really important, Aaron. Okay. And I think, and correct me if I'm wrong, but we want something that's a little bit evergreen here, right? Like, that the way I look at any student coming out of Wayland, and I think this would be a pretty broad supported perspective, would be we want them to be prepared to survive any economic climate, or, you know, be, get those aspects of having a nimble ability to kind of navigate change, right? Like you're talking about with your nephew. Coding, psychology, or philosophy, and, you know, just, I think, getting the perspective of recent grads is important, and current students is obviously important, but having that broader view of, like, just generally what kind of people we want to be putting out into the world. You know, that has that withstand time. Absolutely. So that was kind of my only thing. That's really, that's kind of, we have up there in the kind of our opening, if you look at our skills, knowledge, experiences, knowing things can change so rapidly. What did you say? Well, that also, some of these skills, knowledge, and experiences can lead you in different directions. We didn't want it, like, that you have to have all of these things, and they all look the same way for every kid. So that was part of the idea of portraits, as opposed to portraits. Yeah, like, I see this more as, I guess, in contrast to competency, determination, and graduation requirements. Like, this is more experience, exposure, and, like, those broader things, like, not articulating myself well. But, like, not, you have to take these five courses to be successful in life. Right. It's more, like, we want to teach you to be flexible thinkers. And those types of things, I guess, is kind of like. Right. But I think part of the work is also saying, like, what that flexible thinker could look like in different. Mm-hmm. If you're somebody who's passionate about the arts, what, how does that show up, and what does that look like? What might that look like? Mm-hmm. So that you don't think, you know, every student's working towards fitting in a particular box. Yeah. That was the kind of spin on it that felt a little different. Yeah. I think Caroline was one of the people that really sort of drove that direction amongst others. Cool. I'm excited about this. I think it's going to be really great. Yeah. We're hopeful to get people involved. We've got people interested already, and we'll do some recruiting. We have a little time, but you can see we have a tight timeframe. And then we're also trying to balance this with our other planning work at the same time. But I do think it's exciting to do planning. I mean, that was one of our goals this year, to accomplish that. And we're really lucky to work with Mike and his firm, because they really do excellent. This one seems very tangible, you know, like something that there will be a product, you know, foreseeable at the end of the year that's going to be able to be implemented, like, immediately. The facility seems much more long-term, at least from my perspective. I think so. As much as it's immediate, it's also like we're going to have a product, but it's a long-term implementation fee. Yes, but we are going to present some options to the school committee related to facilities, with perhaps a timeframe. We're going to have some more. We have a meeting the night before, January 26th, where we're going to go. Quick. Yes. Turn around. Before our town around, but we have to meet with the group before, so that'll be exciting. So we'll again report on this as we go. We have it on some school committee agendas. We'll have it, we'll, it won't just, you won't just, we're not just going to show up in May. We're going to have a touch point in the middle of our community sessions. One question I had was, you know, being a young 40-something now, I have a lot of peers that are people managers of new graduates. I wonder if it would be helpful to have one of the parents be a people manager, so that they have that perspective of like, I don't know. I keep hearing it. The millennial? Mm-hmm. What they're looking for. Technically, technically we're them, but we're not really. We're like that gap generation. I'm a very proud millennial, but I remember when people were like, oh my God, save us from the millennials, and now it's save us from the, you know, whatever, Gen X, I don't even know, Gen Z, whatever. But, I don't know, but I hear different themes come up from my friends. And I wonder if it was, you know, for example, like Indy Fragility and things like this that Jonathan Tite has written about. I wonder if that would be helpful to have that perspective of a people manager. A range of experiences, both in the school, but a range of ages. Also, you're talking about Christina as well. Yeah. In terms of that group of third, that would be really good. I guess to your earlier point, I do think a community member that resides in Boston, I think would be really a great addition to the team, too. I know it's tougher travel in the evenings, but, you know, just, I think, I think they'd be well represented when they grow. Yeah. You can just offer it. Yeah. Absolutely. Try to improve. There's a few families. I had a recent graduate that was at my house on Thanksgiving, so I would be happy to ask her if she might be willing to. And the recent graduate session will be virtual to allow people to participate who are in other places. Yeah. And also just, you know, it's easy. I mean, the great part about the world today versus when someone graduated, you can actually find people in different ways. In the old ways, people graduate, you could never see them again or talk to them, but there are ways to find them. In five minutes or less, you can be face to face with them. Exactly. Right. So Mike's going to do, we're actually going to do the parent one virtual only because we want to make this as easy as possible to get people to participate. Good. The only ones that need to be, the group of 30, you can see why we're going to do a similar format. That'll have to be in person. We won't be able to do those sessions. Okay. It is hard to do that, like with bigger groups. There's, it's too much. It's hard. The facilitator. Yeah. The other thing that I was thinking was, you may get this organically just by the groups that you're reaching out to, but reaching out to folks that potentially graduated from Wayland 15 years ago, and potentially what their experience was, how they've navigated, you know. We've debated that quite a bit, actually, this week on the event with the group. Like how, what constitutes a recent grad. And we were also thinking about how much the high school has changed in the last so many years. So if you go back 15 years, their experiences may or may not be as relevant. So we, we decided on 10 is where we. I'm thinking getting someone that isn't from the current high school experience. Like that is definitely outside of the current high school experience to give feedback just on maybe potentially how Wayland has changed, how the high school has changed, what they experienced, what they wish they had had. Kind of. I think that'd be good. You know. I think that'd be good. It's just a thought. Would somebody in town that has moved back. I'm sure there's. There's so many. There's people that have. There's so many. A lot of them. Yeah. There are many. Yeah. I think that will show up. I bet that'll show up. So. As a matter of fact, we have somebody on our steering committee who is a Wayland High School graduate. Would that be Miss Lee? Good guess. No. It's Courtney, our middle school assistant principal. Oh. Okay. So that's. So that's. 20th. Oh. Yeah. So she's super helpful. So she kind of actually. It's great if you can find people that check multiple boxes. But Courtney's been talking. And so she's going to be one of our recruiters who are recent graduates. And so. That is helpful. But you're right. It could be. Sarah. Sarah. I didn't know. Just start going through the yearbook. Yeah. The other thing that I was thinking, and I'm not sure if this would really be helpful, but I'm just wondering if looking at data or having some sort of conversation with like recruiters, headhunters, and I know it's not all about being employed. Right. But just hearing what they have to say about different generations and filling different roles at this time. And I also read an article or a portion of an article because I have a little bit of ADHD. But the other day that was about companies wanting to hire from the higher end universities. They want the higher end degrees again. And that that's kind of circling back. So like, you know, the Ivy's and the. Anyway, just something to think about. I'm not saying that should drive it at all, but a piece that might be helpful. Such as there are themes that come out of looking at recent grads and managing them. There are trends for sure. As a manager, as a. Can you help a little bit at the fall session with the. High school. That we did. All the high school staff. There were. There were a number of folks from different areas. Like there was a midwife. And somebody in higher ed. And. Um. And there was a grad. Were they all of them? No. They weren't all of them grads. But they were. Several were. But they were. Kind of exploring. You know, what. What is most helpful for kids. In. That they're seeing. Right. And all the things that you're talking about. So. We did a little bit of that work back in. Right. And one of the folks actually was on that panel. Who thinks a lot about higher ed. And kind of changes. It was Kirk Carapazza. Oh. Yep. Who was the higher ed reporter for WGBH. Uh huh. Who's really good. And he does a lot of thinking. Not just about higher ed. But about changes in society. Um. And he was on that panel. He's very good. He graduated about 20 years ago. Uh huh. Luke's right. Right. So yeah. We have a lot of looking at. Very busy this month. As you can tell. I'm excited about this. I think it's really important. For like the district. And. Vision. I'm really excited that you're. You moved along. I'm happy to hear. And see it. It's awesome. Thank you. Achieving your goals. One by one. David. We got a good. We got a good steering group. So that's. That's been fun. A lot of time already. Yeah. Sounds great. To be continued. Bye Molly. Thank you. Bye Molly. Have a good night. Good night. Please don't ever share the recording. Cause I hate the way my voice sounds. You're recorded all the time. I'm the worst. I hate it. I hate it. I have a zoom. Got it. Okay. Don't. Do we have. We do have a consent agenda. We do. Anybody have any. I'll make a motion to approve the consent agenda. Thank you. We're approving the consent agenda. I don't want to be here. Oh. Thanks. Have fun. Have fun. Okay. Oh is it Mikey's? Aw. Happy birthday. Thoughts and prayers my friend. Thoughts and prayers. Yeah. That's well. We barely say that. Do you want to sign this before you go? No. No. You guys just do it. Okay. Yeah. Excuse me. Happy birthday. Okay. Uh. Look at the minutes. I uh. Can you defer approval for me? Definitely not getting it. I do. Let me look at that. Can we make an adjusted motion? Mm-hmm. I will make a motion to approve the accounts payable and payroll warrants. Okay. Uh. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? None. And we'll just leave those for further review and potential. Any matters not intended. I would entertain a motion to adjourn. To adjourn. In favor? Aye. Any opposed? None. And we'll just leave those for further review and potential. Any matters not intended. I would entertain a motion to adjourn. To adjourn. In favor? Aye. Any opposed? None. We're adjourned. Thank you. See ya. See ya.
Or later. It's not, um, because you're not using the white cord, right? I was using this gray cord. Yeah, you can use it. I don't know. Donna, are you going to kick us off here? Sure, I am. Good evening. Thank you to the committee, the central administration, and those that are in attendance, if any, from the community. My name is Donna Krikorian, proudly serving as the assistant principal at Happy Hollow Elementary, and here in an exciting dual role as the math and science curriculum coordinator. A few quick heartfelt appreciations go out to Betsy Gavron for her guidance in the establishment of this additional role. Uh, Nicolette Fondes, who's principal at Happy Hollow for her building-based, uh, leadership and, um, partnership. Sarah Sontag, who is the ELA curriculum coordinator, um, uh, the coach there for her coordination across our two content areas. Um, and Christina Sanzadonovan and Kate Narita for their collegiality, and, um, so many people that have welcomed me, um, to this role. Um, to the, uh, Wayland Public Schools educators, um, classroom teachers, teaching assistants, and support staff, um, that make, uh, math happen with and for our students every day. I can't thank them enough. They are doing hard, hard work, um, to meet the needs of our students. Um, and for that, um, the elementary math department appreciates your time this evening and the opportunity to share, um, first, our math and vision, which I'll be sharing with you. Um, we've introduced our amazing team, um, Matthew Birch from Happy Hollow. Oh, and Michael representing Clay Pit. And Ella representing Wilker, um, amazing team, um, that I, um, have the distinct opportunity to work with. Um, we will be providing, um, the coaches will be providing additional support. A summary of math instruction, an overview of Bridges III curriculum, uh, our coaching models, supports for teachers, and most importantly, um, the supports, um, and care that we offer, uh, to our young mathematicians. Um, before we delve deeper into the presentation, again, I just want to give a shout out to this fantastic team. Um, so, thank you. Um, if we could, yep, that slide's perfect. Um, I have invited you to open the link to read and learn more about our mission and vision statement. Um, you can read it at your leisure, but basically we wanted you to have a message around our why, our instructional progression, the commitment we have to equity, the value we have in our teachers, the mindset as our teams, and our path forward. Mathematics and Wayland is more than just getting the right answer. It's about reasoning, making sense of ideas, and developing perseverance through problem solving. Students learn best through curiosity and discussion where they explore, explain, and learn from one another. Our elementary program uses bridges in mathematics 3.0, we have moved from a former addition into the third, to provide instruction that's connected and purposeful. It is a commitment to continuous learning, the application of best mathematical practices, the anticipation and response to student learning needs, and the unwavering belief in all our students' potential as scholars and mathematicians. All students receive thoughtful core instruction with additional supports when needed. Teachers across classrooms, special education, intervention, and multilingual service work together to make informed instructional decisions. And as we move forward, we will continue to increase the integrity of the curriculum implementation and strengthen interventions and enrichment opportunities. We will rely on the value of teachers' expertise and coaching impact to bring math learning to life. Together through this approach, we will empower our students to see themselves as capable mathematicians who can more readily engage in their learning, reason, persist, and thrive. And with this team foundation grounded in our mission and vision statement that I've shared with you, again, I'm pleased to invite our math instructional coaches to share how these systems support and specifically translate into meaningful learning experiences for our students across all three schools. Happy Hollow, Play Pit, and Little Girl. Thank you. This is our agenda for tonight. So we'll start first with what's new, which is the third edition of Bridges and an exciting pre-K pilot of Bridges this year. Then we'll talk about how, as coaches, we're supporting teachers, as well as students, this year especially, more than ever with the intervention model, which we'll discuss. Then we'll reflect a little bit of what does year three look like. Now that it's our third year, things are looking different in a lot of good ways. Next steps, so glows and grows. So what are the things we need to work on and what are our next steps? And then we'll be sure to leave time for questions and answers. Yeah, so as Ella and Donna mentioned, we moved from second edition to third edition. Bridges second edition has been out for 10, 15 years. And they are a great curriculum who are always invested in updated pedagogy and professional development and new ways of how math is evolving in classrooms and schools. They take a lot of feedback from teachers, which is great. We certainly reach out to them a lot with certain things and questions. And they, the new Bridges, the third edition has a strong new emphasis on diversity, equity, and inclusion, which is really great. If you go to the next slide, Betsy. There's this, again, you can read at your leisure, but it really is trying to elevate the identity, math identities of all students. And that plays out in the curriculum itself. The bottom right corner is more of like a teacher facing material. But you can see over there in the red kind of sidebar is the equity based practice that they've now included within the curriculum. So when teachers are preparing and we're coaching teachers and having PLCs, we highlight these. And again, the top right corner and bottom left are documents we use with teachers as they dive into this new curriculum, focusing on challenging spaces of marginality, going deep with mathematics and really drawing on multiple resources of knowledge. And again, really important just affirming mathematics learners' identities. We want to make sure students see themselves as mathematicians. So the new curriculum also, in addition to this, they've incorporated a little bit more of their technology into lessons. They've updated different instructional routines. They've updated their like intro sections to give more information and professional development to teachers. So they've done, they've done a lot to enhance the curriculum. And I think teachers are, it's interesting because the teachers go from second edition to third edition. They're like, yeah, that game, that workplace is the activity. That one wasn't so great. Like, well, actually they took that one out and there's a new one. So they really like, our teachers are super invested and I guess, you know, right on par with all other teachers across who use this curriculum. Um, so it's great to have a curriculum that is adapted to teachers and new practice. Um, something to add, I guess too, from the transition to the second and third, some teachers were hesitant in first. We're switching again, another new curriculum. I will say the change is subtle, like in the way that it still bridges, it's still the same models. It's not like a new language, but like Michael said, all these new wonderful additions are part of it. So they're not feeling like, oh my gosh, it's a new curriculum. So it's been a nice, smooth transition. Um, for the pre-K we had an exciting opportunity this summer. Betsy found ways to make it happen so that we had some summer days. They were very eager to try new curriculum. Uh, Bridges came up as one of the options. We, of course, as the elementary team were very excited for selfish reasons, for alignment that, you know, now our K team will have a year of more Bridges. Um, I think they were excited too, just to have a psych curriculum that they can refer to. Um, so Michael and I, this summer, Matt was still on boarding. I'm sure in the future he's going to be very involved. Um, we met with them. We did some unpacking. We did some, how do we get ready? It was interesting for us too, cause some things were similar, like our Bridges and some a little different. So we were learning things too. Um, we have a coordinator from Bridges also who consults with us three times. And she's wonderful. She's very adaptable. We're telling her what we need and she adjusts. Um, as well as pre-K actually visited Loper today, which was great. Cause they wanted to see what does it look like in action for Kinder? Um, which I think was fascinating. This was the same, what's different. Like, wow, look at the amount of independence. Or this is where our kids are going. And wow, some things are so similar in terms of the models and the spinners and the visual models. Um, I think anything else, Dad? We do have the pre-K team visiting, um, for vertical alignment, um, with Matt, um, which is in development right now. But they will be visiting Happy Hollow soon, again, to see that progression from pre-K, uh, to Kindergarten. Um, and so that's another exciting, uh, opportunity. So the really, the team is coming together to support, uh, the pre-K pilot. And then if you look at these pictures, you see one of our little friends there who's gluing a pattern. And the teachers have said, you know, just like the bridges, they have a calendar and every day they turn over a marker. When they're little, they actually help color in. You see the little girl coloring the snowflakes. So they're making the calendar themselves. And then the teachers are just amazed how much the kids have gotten into it and how much they're noticing these patterns. So on their own now and just incredible to see what they're doing. Um, the next slide is just a little bit more pictures. Another thing to add about it, which was, which is great, is that we know we have in the pre-K mixed age classrooms. And this was a curriculum that is meant for mixed age classrooms, which is obviously really great to have that differentiation and all sorts of trajectories of progressions of developmentally where they should be with mathematics. So that is something that the teachers will, we've introduced to them, they look at it. And obviously if they adopt it, we'll become more familiar. But it's great that that's part of the curriculum. Um, and then here in that picture, you just see the kids are playing some of the workplaces independently. They're spinning, they're writing the digits. If you can sort of see the spinner, it has the numbers but also dots. So if they don't have recognitions of the numbers, they can count the dots. So it has the support. Something interesting in today's interaction when they came to visit, at one point one of our K teachers shared, just one of her students is having a hard time. And it happened to be a student from a former pre-K. So they're like, oh, we know that student. And they started to talk. And then we even thought like, oh, maybe our K teacher could do some of the pre-K materials here and there. Just the alignment was wonderful. And for them to have the opportunity to connect them with the students was great. So in this next part, we wanted to speak a little bit to like, what we as coaches do to support teachers, particularly with this implementation and transition from Bridges 2nd to 3rd edition. Um, so on the sort of macro or larger level when we're working in PLC, you can see up in the top left there is an example of, now that teachers know the Bridges curriculum, they're familiar with the structures and routines, this transition to the 3rd edition also offers us an opportunity to dig a little bit deeper into the actual conceptual development. So you can see here, we were talking as a first grade team about like, how do students move from concrete to representational to abstract, to have that deeper understanding of addition and subtraction. And so as coaches, we utilize that PLC time often, um, as both the nuts and bolts and the planning that needs to happen, but also as somewhat embedded professional development to support teachers as they're implementing this new addition of a curriculum that they're familiar with. And then another big part of our role is planning with teachers, modeling lessons or co-teaching lessons so that they can both see and watch somebody implement a lesson and also get feedback from another experienced teacher in the room. And so on the right, you can see this is a 4th grade teacher that I work with where we dig into each of the Bridges lessons and try and break it down for ourselves on what is the plan going to look like? Is there a part that I'm going to, that the teacher would like me to model? Are there adaptations or differentiation that we would like to plan for, um, to make these lessons actually come alive? Because whatever's on paper is great. Where the magic happens is what actually is put in front of students. And so this is just sort of a snapshot of some of the many things that we do to try and support teachers in their implementation of. Oh yeah, something else. Sorry. No, it's it. Another part of this which, um, we've done over the last couple years in which I'm hoping to get off the ground in the next couple weeks is, um, instructional rounds. Um, Ella's done them multiple times before. I did it last year with grades K through 2. Um, this year in the coming weeks I'm hoping to get it going with, um, grades 3 through 5. And some of the best practices from, um, around is, is learning from each other. So, um, especially with, um, uh, still, you know, newish curriculum. Um, you know, there everyone is using bridges but does it in their own way. So it's nice to be able to get into classrooms, not only to see different instructional moves ever, you know, some very slight moves that are super impactful. But also for last year it was great to see, you know, a kindergarten teacher see a second grade classroom. And some of the, it will come up later, some of the same models and representations are used in K that are still used in second grade. So, you know, it just, you know, for kindergarten or first grade, a teacher really empowers them to realize that these, you know, the lessons they're teaching, the models they're teaching, the strategies they're teaching, will carry on with these students through the rest of their elementary math, if not for their life. Um, so instructional rounds is just a really great way, um, to see each other teach and learn from each other. So this next slide we put, we wanted to really highlight for you the shift from the second edition of Bridges to the third, in terms of being more asset-based learning. When we say asset-based learning, we're thinking of an approach that focuses more on students and on teachers' strengths. So really focusing on what they can do versus on what they're not able to do. On the left there, you see it's a tracker that teachers fill out when they finish an assessment and they put in the grades. So back in the day, they put in a score for each of them. You can see the different colors and then it gives an overall score. The student is a 40. The student is, he gives you a number and then it helps give you a range of, are they meeting it? Are they approaching? The shift now is instead of looking at the student of like, here's what you can't do, they're looking at each standard separately. Some standards are for mastery, the ones that are involved, like if you see on the bottom right, really bottom, it's like 2083. So that standard they want students to be proficient in. So you're really looking at piece by piece versus like your score is a 40. It's really breaking it down by the standards. What are the things you're able to do within each of them? Which is a really nice shift, just to think of the full picture versus, you know, this was your score. How are you doing on each of the standards? And one last thing to note is you can even see on the third edition, there is no, there's, there is no total score. Like there, that, that's a big emphasis in Bridges third edition is that there actually is no total score. And that, like Alice said, you want to look at the standard that's in bold and if they, that's a good representation is that student got six out of those six points. Of course, you're still paying attention to the areas that they missed, but again, this is more of an asset based shift. And the hope is that then if you're grouping kids, instead of saying you got a 30, you got a 30, let's put you together, you can look at the different questions and see, let's have a question just on place value versus the overall. So one of the things we're really proud of this year is, this is our first year of implementing a district-wide math intervention program at three of the elementary, all three of the elementary schools. Um, and so we've been really intentional this year as we've been building out this program to establish guidelines about what does it mean to provide intervention for students and especially like how are we using data to identify the grade levels and the students who are most in need. And so we've been leaning on our iReady diagnostic testing, our Bridges assessment data, to be able to identify what grade levels and what students would most benefit from intervention. And another part of this that you can kind of hear through our PLC conversations, through our use of the Bridges three trackers is that this is also a shared responsibility of classroom teachers and interventionists. While I might be working with a small group of our immediate students for intervention, those students are in for the core instruction. And so the teacher might be meeting with that same group or a slightly different group of students and providing some of that tier two in the classroom as well. And so it's really essential that like that teamwork still is dominant because across the common saying is you can't intervene your way out of a core instruction issue. So like we need to have high quality tier one and tier two instruction that's happening in the classroom. But we're really excited that this tier two intervention work is also available to students. And on the next slide, you can see, for example, how we work with small groups of students to provide that targeted intervention with a focus on the prior grade level work that's going to allow them access to their grade level content. So that they can fill those gaps and access with their classmates at grade level. And one of our, again, shared responsibilities is progress monitoring how students are doing over the course of our intervention so that we can share that data and that information with teachers so they can pick up the baton when that student's back in class. And also share that information with families too so that they know, here's what my student has been working on, here's where they still need support, and here's some potential resources or a quick game that I might be able to play with them at home that's going to further support their development of fluency, for example. So all of those components really, we're proud of, have kind of come together and that we're still obviously refining and want to improve, but are excited that that's happening this year. And we're able to provide that support for the students who need it most. So some glows as we are in our third year of our Bridges curriculum is students are becoming increasingly knowledgeable and more efficient with the various components, models, and representations and strategies of the curriculum, which is really great. So the first, the current second grade are the ones that have had it since kindergarten, there might be some students in third that were part of a pilot classroom, but that was more of a, just a few units of study, not the whole year. So it's exciting to see that, them get older and become more familiar with the curriculum routines and all the models and whatnot. Students are using higher level math discourse and mathematical vocabulary from my rounds last year with K through two. That was one of the biggest takeaways that all the teachers noticed as we debrief was just the great vocabulary and confidence. Students were talking about, about math and which was really great. A lot of the discourse, which is, which was awesome. Teachers are becoming more knowledgeable in the curriculum and are better, to better able to differentiate the lessons to meet the needs of all their students. They're obviously becoming more comfortable, which is really great. And the coaching for us is now focused more on implementation and differentiation than preparation. We knew going into Bridges that it's a great program and it is very hands on. So that comes with some decent amount of prep for some units. And obviously just wanting people to feel comfortable with all the materials, the website, have everything they needed. So that's a great shift to feel for teachers, I'm sure, in particular. And for us to focus more on the implementation and differentiation. And then, again, the elementary, our whole team has made great strides to better align our systems, our practices, and resources with trust and purpose. So we work super collaboratively, which is great. I have great colleagues and Donna's leadership and Betsy's has been awesome. So we really have a good plan and team moving forward, which is great. And this just kind of connects to that last bullet and what I was talking about with visual models. This is just one part of a bigger document that kind of this is just representing how the number line is used across grade levels. So, again, through instructional rounds, PLCs, and just coaching meetings with teachers, it's really great to kind of see how these models are used in all grade levels. And where it really starts in K and moves all the way through fifth grade. So, it's a great program that I think teachers really see the benefit of all these models. Next are our pros and our next steps as well. So, first, one of the things we've been facing the last couple years, which I'm sure every school does, is just how do we allocate the schedules and the time and the minutes. Most Bridges lessons are meant to be 60 minutes. Currently, in our schedule, we have five times 50, which was also a big, you know, wonderful thing that we were able to fit in. In order to move forward, our next step is the scheduling committee, which Matt can talk a little bit about because he's part of it. Yeah, so, Betsy is leading a scheduling working group, and it is, as you can expect, everybody wants their thing, and they want time for their thing. And the problem is, nobody's wrong. The art is really important. Music and recess and math are really important. And so, from our perspective, we're thinking about when we are working with teachers and seeing like, well, they're so tight on time, they're trying to get this workplace in, it's a really good one. Oh, they got to go to lunch. And it's a reality of the situation, but something that we want to continue to, in our department, we're going to advocate for our things. And so, we're really thinking about how do we have enough time for our, obviously, the core tier one instruction. And also, from the intervention perspective, being able to have the time within the schedule, so that second graders are available at the same time, so that we can meet with whichever second graders we need to. The second point is just around supporting the COTOT classroom. So, this year COTOT is a new model that we're exploring. As coaches, we've explored a little bit, but that's something we'd love to further support and help teachers. How does it look with the different models? One idea we had to, as Michael mentioned, we have the rounds, instructional rounds, where teachers go to see other teachers. An idea we had, possibly for next year, perhaps the COTOT classrooms can observe one another, or other teachers go see the COTOT classrooms. So, just diving a little bit deeper, as well as collaborating more with Ronnie, the director of student services. What does our support look like when we're supporting a Bridges lesson in a COTOT classroom? The next point is just around, how do we better support families to understand the Bridges curriculum? So, as some of you might know, because you've seen it come home, at times, you're faced with strategy, and you're like, I didn't learn it this way. This is a foreign language. How do I help? What does this mean? It wouldn't be me. It's definitely me. And honestly, we as coaches, we had to learn certain things too. It's like, oh, I never learned it this way. But then it makes so much sense, and you're like, wow, I wish I learned this as a kid in this way. I'm glad it makes sense to you. Do you travel? Do you come to our campus? So, I mean, we've done a lot with it. We know it's an area of growth, because obviously there is a need. So, one idea is we have the family letters. Most classrooms are sending them by making sure consistently that it's going home. With every unit, it shows examples of, like, here are the models, here are the strategies, here's what you're learning, here's what you could do at home. Also, in conferences, we try to send some workplaces, because those give you an example. Like, here are the games your kids are playing. Some play this at home. If we do more of that, I think that would help. More in-person activities. I know we have math night, and we've tried to bridgeify it in the last three years, just so you get a glimpse of, like, here's what the curriculum looks like, and let's play the games, and let's explore the workplaces. So, those are a couple of ideas we had. It was something I tried a few years ago at Loker. I called it Math Cafe. And the idea was, let's have coffee in the morning, and I'll show you what your kids are learning in each of the units. So, I was like, here's what we're learning in K. These are the models. Here's what we're doing in first. Which was nice, but the turnout was low. Not to say we shouldn't do it, but it's something we should probably explore again. Maybe we can do more of those, maybe not in the morning, as a lot of us know we're working. We have places to go. Maybe there's other opportunities to feature those things. We still do, I do a lot of, like, one-offs, like a family is confused, they need more help. I jump on the Zoom, I take a whiteboard, I show the strategies. But I think we need to do more big picture to support more families and not just individual ones. And next, I have just a few more. Continuing to work with teachers on understanding the vertical progressions across grade levels. So, I think our teachers are becoming very strong in knowing their own models. It's been a couple years. But the question is, like, do you know what came before you and what's coming after you? And they are seeking that. I've had a PLC recently with third grade where the kids were struggling a little with addition and subtraction. And they were asking me, they're like, what strategies did they have in second grade? So, we'd love to do more of that vertical. And PLCs is an opportunity or more PDs. And then the final one is just, as Matt mentioned, this is year one. There's more work to be done. A lot to celebrate, but more to be done around just more streamlining intervention programs in terms of the schedules, as he mentioned, in terms of do we fully have the criteria refined for who are the kids who are eligible? How are we tracking how students are doing? Is our communication streamlined across schools? And just having shared resources help. So, we share a lot with each other, but there is a greater need for more alignment across, as we develop and learn more through this first year, I think. Yeah, and I will say with intervention, I say this to my principal too, and I think Matt and Ella would agree and Donna as well, is I feel like we feel really proud of the intervention program. I think we all feel like we're reaching the kids that need it the most. And that is, you know, and we're taking all parties' input into that, and we're looking at iReady data, we're looking at unit data, we're looking at how they're doing it within intervention, we're talking to their classroom teachers. So we're doing everything, and I think reaching all the kids, and I think teachers would agree too, that I need it the most. And again, with year one, we're obviously open to and ourselves collaborating to refine the whole process to make it as streamlined as possible. But I do feel like we can feel proud that the kids who really need it, and they're fluid, the groups are fluid. So kids now and in the future that would need it the most will get that and are getting it, which is great to feel. And what we have, do you have any questions? I have a question about if you have any data around those second graders that are in their third year of the curriculum and their grasping of the standards against second graders from a few years ago that didn't have Bridges for three years and had the homegrown curriculum that we had for a while. I'm just curious if you have any of that benchmarking. Not that I can think of off the top of my head. I think because it's obviously a non-MCAS grade, it'd have to probably go off of some iReady data, which we can definitely dive into. We can, if we don't have access ourselves, our iReady. Yeah, it gets archived. So we could definitely compare it to that, which would definitely be interesting. We could get back to you on that. Cool. Yeah. I guess I'll have a couple of glows and a question. How about that? You want the question first or the glows first? The question. Okay. The question. I'm just curious how this aligns with the transition to middle school. So a lot of these are the foundational math skills. And how does Bridges help to prepare them? Or how are we tracking their progress and their readiness for middle school? So I think now it's the third year. Last year also we worked closely with middle school. They came to actually see a Bridges lesson, because we said we have a new curriculum, why don't you come see how it works, because your kids are going to be coming in doing all these things, and it'd be great to see. So we worked closely with middle school so that alignment is there. When they came, after I think year one or two of Bridges, they were just like, wow, the fluency is so much higher. The exploration, the visual models, they were amazed by the shift. That being said, we could look at it more closely just to see. But we are, our elementary team is also going to middle school. That alignment is still there between the schools. Yeah, and we always, and Ella's been able to organize it at the end of the month. We make sure any yearly, any new educators, Donna, Matt, a few other teachers at my school who's moved to fifth grade, go to middle school to see math in action. So when they're thinking about their own instruction, and then thinking about students' placement for sixth grade, they have a really good idea of what skills are needed and attitudes are needed to be successful or be placed in the, suggested into a certain level. But yeah, we do, Ella does a great job collaborating with middle school. So we feel pretty good. We haven't heard anything otherwise. But yeah, when they came to visit, they were very impressed with the fluency and the flexible thinking and the strategies, which is great. And I will say, when we went to see middle school, it's very aligned with Bridges in terms of we saw Dan Gorski leading a lesson and all of a sudden, like, instead of being like, here's how you solve it, it was like, here's a problem, try it out. Very similar to Bridges and students doing the learning and owning. So they're not the exact same curriculum, same philosophy. I wonder if those sixth grade teachers are seeing a difference in the students that are sixth grade now who have two years of Bridges under their belt. We are hearing about it, for me, building-based hearing it, even from our K teachers in the building to first grade teachers, just the pleasant surprise they have of their preparedness coming in and having those foundational skills from kindergarten and entering first grade. So we do, I do see and hear that out on the floor and in the classrooms, and I see in action. So the hope would be, again, we have long-term vertical progression for our students to exit elementary, but with the foundational skills that they need to continue on their math journey. I think it's the familiarity, but also the excitement around it. I will say, like, my fifth grade team recently shared that the workplaces, which are the games the kids are playing this year, the kids are so much more into it. A couple were like, oh, last year our kids really were not, they would not play that game, and now it's amazing how into it they are. So I think the engagement also, and the buying in of students into it. And it's so second graders, to your point, Erin, that we're going to watch, kind of go through from kindergarten all the way up, so we'll all be waiting patiently and excited for those second graders. Okay, so my glows, like, I loved hearing about how you're able, based on the data, to group students based on their skill versus their score. You know, many years ago you were either good at math or you weren't, and now you can be great at math because there are so many different ways to be great at math. And I liked that you allow kids to see themselves as mathematicians, so that's really cool. And it's just wonderful to see you're in year three and you've mastered the content and now you can kind of delve into the real fun part, right, of implementing it and personalizing it for the kids. So thanks so much. Yeah, I think that, you know, the fact that they're talking about it and all that discourse you're talking about shows they're absorbing it, they're excited about it, they're, you know, teaching other students about it. So that's great. I was wondering if you could, like, put some of the stuff on the website. You were mentioning the math cafes. I wonder if you can update the website a little bit. Like, even that infographic you had with, like, all the different grades and how a lesson looks, I thought, like, that was like, wow, I can kind of see it. I have been meeting and working with Betsy and sharing preliminary behind the scenes work that I've been doing in my partial role. But starting with a resource hub for this team, we've anchored ourselves so that we know where we've been, to know where we're going, and we continue to do that work together to get that in the hands of teachers, to get that in front of and for our young mathematicians. So when I think of resources right now, we're sharing out and getting links and a hub of information to grab and go for ourselves so that this team can get it quickly to the teachers or they can grab and go for themselves. In terms of web development and resource development out to teachers, we do have shared drives. But again, Betsy's been so helpful and, again, collaborating with Sarah Sontag of looking for where can we find cohesion and consistencies in the information that we share and where people find it. One of the most frustrating things for teachers as a former classroom teacher is you know there's a thing, right? And time is precious and a thief, and you're trying to find what you need. And you do need the support of coaches to guide you in getting to that sometimes. And so that is in the works. I did meet, and I apologize. Can you help me remember the person, high school tech, Bethann? Bethann. Bethann. Bethann. Bethann. Yes, thank you. She met with me two weeks ago because I had the same question. Where does math live in our digital access to the community to students when they're not in school? And then where is that platform for teachers? And then the push from the team of, okay, what will we be facing for our access? What's forward facing for teachers access? What can kids grab? And what do families have access to? So that is coming, and it is moving rather quickly. They are, and I don't know if this premature, I think this thought or talk around redesign of the website. Mm-hmm. If there's drafts, drafts of it out there that we're working on with now. Mm-hmm. So once, again, that becomes established, I do have things at the ready that will be ready to go and be forward facing to the community. But that's very much the work that we're doing. Our current hub has quite a bit happening. And so, again, we're starting with our team, and we're building up from our foundation to make sure that the most essential pieces of information are out there. So thank you. So the, I'm trying to think of what they're called, but Ella, you talked about them being sent out by the classroom teachers for each unit. Family letters. Family letters, yeah. Family letters, yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Is there a way to put those out through ParentSquare? Yeah. Because that's at least, like, you know, everybody carries a phone as much as, and so at least you could, like, pull that out of your pocket and say, while we're doing homework, like, oh, yeah, let me pull that out. Yeah. Because I did get them paper copy, but I don't think we, I've seen them electronic. That would be awesome. Yeah. I think, honestly, I think all teachers share it as just a matter of how we can do both. Oh, yeah. I just, yeah. Yeah. And my daughter doesn't always get the paper home. Home, yeah. So it's not the teacher's fault. It's my child's fault, but. Yeah. We could easily unify and do it in, and now, like, some put it in their newsletter and some put it in the file. Yeah. I'd like to ask a scheduling question, because I know during the year one, we needed to teach it to fidelity, and I believe that meant 90 minutes a day. Is that correct? And last year, we dropped it because we thought, well, that's a lot, and we can make it our own. And I think we talked about earlier in this year that we were considering loving it again. Mm-hmm. Correct? I can speak to that a little bit. Yeah. So when are we with that? Yeah. So in year one, we, we, we talked to fidelity. We had 60 minute blocks every day and 20 minutes of, um. Number corner. Number corner. Yes. Uh, we wanted to make room for more science last year. And so we went to four days a week. Mm-hmm. Um, we, while I think teachers made the most of the four days a week that they had, we felt like it, there was some loss there. So we went back to, well, we still need more time, so can we do five times 50 instead? Mm-hmm. In an ideal world, it's, it's five times 60 plus 20 minutes. There's just so many. Is that what the scheduling committee is, or is that more of intervention? So we're, we're looking, so the schedule committee, um, is made up of, of, you know, lots of different teachers, educators, administrators, um, really looking at best practices in scheduling. We've, we've had an outside speaker come. We've read an article together where we've looked at lots of data that we've collected from teachers over time. We've done a, like a quick carousel around what, what are the best parts of our schedule? Where are the problem points? And, um, so our next meeting will be really developing our guiding principles of how we're going to make decisions. around this and collecting a little bit more data, and then we'll start generating some, some drafts. Um, but you know, one of the things that I think that, um, we're really thinking about is sort of how do you stagger and staircase the core instruction across the day so that interventionists can maximize, you know, time at grade level. So, so really thinking carefully and deeply about that. And, you know, the, the challenges remain things like space, as we've talked about, right? When you have a cafeteria the size of Happy Halls, you have to run six lunches. And so those, those, those things sort of impact on how you can really string together some of the time you want. And, you know, there's, there's lots of, lots of needs and presses and pulls and schedules. You know, we want more SEL time. We want, we want to maintain and preserve some recess time and kids moving around and, and music, you know, all, all of the different pieces, um, come into play. And, you know, scheduling is a series of trade offs too. And, and some days, some years we try, try to tweak in this way and then we realize, you know, we're losing too much so we need to swing back. So, you know, as we're also, as you know, exploring an ELA curriculum actually will come into play. So, sure. I have to think that there's some sort of creative ways though that we could weave together our subjects. I mean, which, um, which we've talked about the, the curriculum. The LA curriculum. Yeah. Are really grounded. So a lot of the literature that they're reading in there are science and social studies focused. That's focused. Yeah. A lot of the nonfiction and they're, they're built around text sets too. So you, you're building lots of knowledge in areas that progress. Not all of them are fully aligned. So for example, in one of the curriculum we're exploring, um, they may have a unit that they're reading about in fourth grade, but they're, they're getting some, building some background knowledge so that when they do the unit in fifth grade, they're going to come in with a whole lot more rich understanding to sort of hang the new knowledge on. So, they'll be getting more science and social studies through ELA and still trying to find ways to, through all the other social studies and science standards. Because it's different learning about and reading about things and then doing experiments and really understanding processes. So, yeah. If I could, um, just address, um, your comment around, um, fidelity in year one. Mm-hmm. Um, year three, um, and the team's been discussing, while scheduling comes with barriers and some concessions, um, so much of the, the backbone here with this team is guiding and coaching the teachers of integrity of the program. Of really looking critically of while we don't want to, um, mistakenly abandon because they know the vertical progression and they're teaching it to teachers. They can guide the teachers of this is where you stay and hold on. And this is where you, again, you can sort of not supplant, but you can either supplement or adjust pacing, um, to either close gaps or expedite, um, and accelerate learning. And so that's very much within the coaching model that's happening. And we're actually, um, for me as an evaluator, I'm also seeing it in the co-teaching model of having those conversations of which model do we need to use to meet the needs of students. And then that way it happens in the math world of teaching the curriculum with integrity and knowing when to ebb and flow, um, from those standards. And while we all want more time, um, the reality is, is we do have scheduling barriers and concessions to make. Um, but that's a testimony to the coaching team reaching the teachers to make those decisions, those informed decisions based on students and data and information and knowledge that they have that they can pass forward. And offer reassurance that the students are getting the instruction they need and the time that they need. Um, there's not ever enough time. Um, that's the reality and, and has been for quite a while and it's not, it's not exclusive to Wayland. Um, so we're, we're trying, I am also part of the scheduling committee. So I feel comfortable knowing that we're grappling, um, and there's much more information to collect. But there's also faith in the team that we're working through with what we have, um, and meeting it head on, um, the best that we can with what we have. Um, and also making the most of not just the materials that we have, but the human resources that we have. And so how do we set up a schedule that meets the needs of students so that Ella can be in the places that she needs to be? Um, and the, uh, in your counterpart, Amy, as an interventionist to, to be in as many places as possible across the day, um, without compromising, um, larger portions. Mm-hmm. Like recess and, and feeding them so much. I appreciate your enthusiasm for the program because that's really important. And also your enthusiasm for supporting the staff, but also the students. And I know that when a parent has a question about a student who might be struggling, um, how it's been really accessible as I'm sure you are too in supporting families about that specific student issue, which is really important. So I just appreciate it. Do you guys do continued, like, um, PD specific to Bridges, the three of you or the four of you? Um, or? Sort of embedded within PLC time is, is that, um, we will continue to offer PD opportunities. We went through, um, Bridges, offered a, a kind of district-wide PD, um, for everyone. And what we found, I think, is that we're at a place where, like, we know our teachers, our teachers know Bridges, and so the more personalized, the better, um, in terms of PD. So, like, I think our plan moving forward is for the three, the four of us as a team to be able to think about, like, what do our teachers need in utilizing professional development time. What's nice, too, with Bridges now, a lot of the PD is also online. So, like, when Matt was first onboarding, there was so many opportunities for him to just, like, let me click on this webinar and learn, like, the models of Bridges. Um, I have a new teacher at Looker, so similarly, as we onboard new staff, um, there's those opportunities that are, and we're also looking at them ourselves. They're constantly updating it. There was a recent one we did just about assessments and how to best utilize the data. Um, so they're becoming more and more tech-savvy and putting everything online for ATTA's coaches, too, to learn new things. Um, we're also part of a cohort. So, within Bridges, um, there's different educators who are, it's, like, their first year, their second year, or third year. So, we have these meetings once a month for us to collaborate with other educators who are using Bridges. And what's also really nice is that, with this third edition, there's an unlimited amount of licenses that we have for login. So, even today, I met with a TA who's in fifth grade and got her all set up and was like, yeah, and even when I go into fifth grade classroom, I have the answer key up. And, like, I have, like, the lesson up. Like, it's, you know, it's, it's rigorous. It's a rigorous, high-quality, um, curriculum. So, there's, you know, no shame in having stuff prepared and reading ahead and making sure you know how to, you know, in this TA, want it to be impactful and supportive. So, um, everything from that is super helpful, um, and we do our best to get everyone the access they need and to coach them even in very simple ways of, like, how they can, um, you know, be supportive in the classroom. Awesome. I guess one thing I forgot to mention was the third edition is just that the Spanish-facing materials now. There's also teacher manuals that are in Spanish, and that's new in the third edition. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, before they had an English manual, but student-facing things were in Spanish. And I remember one year I reached out to Betsy and I was like, can we have summer work days to develop a language? Because there's so many ways to say it in Spanish. And we wanted to make sure that teachers were consistent with the language. But now they have the script in Spanish. That's great. Speaking of the language and the script, that, um, kind of tied into your question, which was, like, getting things out to the community. One thing that I found super helpful from, and I can't remember now what teacher told me this, but my daughter kept saying to me, I'm doing the standard algorithm. I'm doing the standard algorithm. I'm like, I don't know what the standard algorithm is. And so whenever I said that back to the teacher, she was like, oh, well, that's actually the way you would have learned it. It's the other ones that are the other ways to get there. And I'm like, oh, okay. So, like, just that language is helpful to understand. So, you know. It's something we've thought about a little bit when we shifted report cards. I don't know if you noticed in the last two, three years. Um, the report cards have changed slightly to have a little less criteria and more, like, broader topics. But then we realized when these topics for families, like, do they really know what that means? Like, in terms of what we're grading. Um, and we tried to pull resources from Desi to have, like, not a cheat sheet, but like a sheet that explains. Like, here's what this actually means. And here are the standards. Um, we can make sure that that's still being sent. I know the first year we shifted. So this new report card, we sent it alongside with a report card. So families had it as a guide. Yeah. Um, but we should probably make sure it's. Yeah. Yeah, but it's like a foreign language. Well, right. And when, you know, she's telling me, I'm doing this, I'm doing this. I'm like, I don't know what it is. Can you help you? And then the teacher's like, well, you actually do know what that is? I'm like, oh, okay. That's wonderful that you're using that language. Yeah. Yeah, it was, right? Like, and I'm, okay, what is it? Tell me. Um, that was a few years ago. Anybody else have anything else? Nope. Thanks so much, everybody. Thank you. Thank you. It was great to meet you, Donna. And Matt. And Matt. Okay. It never went through, but I gave you editor access for the folders. So you should be able to save it to that now. Okay. If you just organize it. Oh. I shared it with you, but I didn't share it with you. Oh, my God. I don't know. Oh. Okay. Hey, Ella? Yeah. I'm not going to do it right now. Yeah. Can you give me editing access so I can be correct? Thank you. I just know that everybody's going to want to click through those links. Yeah. No, no. It's okay. I was wondering if that's what happened. So. It's fine. It's fine. It's fine. It's fine. That's why I was like, all right, if I give her editing access, she can just move it in there. I gave you access for the folder to edit. So now you should be able to. Oh. Yeah. You could try that. You could always make a copy. I might be able to do it a different way. Sure. Yeah. I've been, like, just taking notes and stuff. And, like, I took pictures of, like, slides and stuff. Yeah. Okay. No. Yeah. All right. Molly's here from WSPN. Does anybody mind? Does anybody mind if she records us? I don't mind. I can also just take notes if people, like, don't want to be recorded for it. We're also recorded. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So, honestly, you do what you want to do. Okay. I will say, just as, like, a point of future learning and education for you. Yeah. When you come to a public meeting, if you're going to record, which I know you weren't. Yeah. You have to notify the chair. Mm-hmm. Which, totally. Yeah. I haven't done any recording yet. I know. I know. So, it's like, I didn't ask it yet, but. Totally fine. I just want to make sure you know that. So. Yeah. But I know we mentioned that. So, I wanted to go make sure she knew we were comfortable with doing that. Yes. Awesome. If she wanted to. That's great. Thank you. You can always go and get it off Wacom. Okay. Yeah. Once it gets posted to. Okay.
Because there was so much good information. I did too. I was like, be frustrated. All right. Um. Dr. Schuster. Do you want to. And Heather. Yeah. Um. And Laura. Hi. And everybody. Okay. I love it. Welcome. Thank you. Thank you. This is in your folders. Okay. Um. A full PDF. I think this one is. One of them is a PDF. Yeah. And also the presentation. It's full. It's all in there. Yeah. If you can't see it, tell me because I'm seeing it. Yeah. I checked a couple hours before the meeting. I only got it at 520. Okay. So that's why. It would have been that's why. Yeah. I put it in at 535, 534. Do I see it? It's called Wheyland High School Call 20. Oh. I didn't check it out. I didn't check it out. I didn't check it out. I didn't check it out. I didn't check it out. I didn't check it out. They had a presentation. Yep. Got it. Got it. Got it. No, I got it. It's good. I love a nice. We can collect that. Yeah. Hi everyone, thank you for flexibility, and I do not recommend driving from Boston. I'm really good to be back in the room with everyone again, just by way of reintroduction. My name is Randy Schuster. I am wearing a professional hat. Today, but also kind of as a Leland parent, I am a mom of a second grader who tells me often that I should have gone back to school to learn to do that. My last minute was a battle. I have no idea how to show my work, so that's okay. Anyway, so I'm a second grader, I'm a rising kindergartner, and it's worth being a part of this community. The hat that I wear today is not as a parent, but I'm a psychologist by training. I am an associate professor at Harvard Medical School and direct our Center for School Behavioral Health at Mass General Hospital. I've been there for about 13 years out of the Department of Psychiatry. And I know I gave an overview of some of the stuff that we were doing last year, but just as a refresh, we came to Weyland High under the opportunity, with the opportunity of a recent PCORI project, which is a large federal contract that we're now entering. We're in year three of a five-year project. As part of that opportunity, there have been a lot of different experiences in the high school and moving into the middle school, which I'll share about. But the main one that I'll be talking to you today about is our OASIS project, which is our optimizing and advancing SBIRT in schools. So my background work is really around how we can best mobilize schools to support early intervention around substance use and co-occurring of our mental health concerns. For those that I'm sure everyone here is intimately familiar with, but SBIRT is state mandate. So SBIRT is screening, brief intervention, referral for treatment, S-B-I-R-T. This is a Massachusetts mandate that came down the line a few years back. We are the only state in the country that has this as a state mandate. And there are a lot of states that are looking to implement an SBIRT mandate in the years ahead. And I think they're really looking towards how we in Massachusetts are uplifting this model and figure out what to do. SBIRT is, by the way, the state mandate basically stipulated that every public district needs to screen annually one middle school, one high school grade every year for substance use. The way that the mandate was written suggested that this live with nursing and didn't give a whole lot of guidance in terms of what was necessary for the screening, what was involved with the brief intervention, and then what do you do when you have a student who actually is at risk for substance use? What does that RT, that referral for treatment, look like? This, as with many of our mandates, was an unfunded mandate. And so needless to say, we've had a lot of schools really come to us and say, what do we do, right? How do we do this in a way that is actually meaningfully advancing the wellness of students without overtaxing our already taxed staff and system and scheduling? And do this in a way that just doesn't feel like a box to check, right? It's a meaningful activity. So we applied for this grant, and this is actually a unique funding opportunity because we have funding this five-year project through PCORI, and we have matched funding through the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, which is how Hyacinth is with us today. And we'll introduce herself in just a second. And essentially what we are doing through this project is working with approximately 40 high schools across the Commonwealth to figure out different strategies on how we can best improve this screening process. How do we put a little bit more meat on the bones? How do we make this feel meaningful for students, feel worthwhile for the schools? But do it in a way that is actually scalable and sustainable. So the primary strategy that we are really digging into for this effort is around the staffing model. Who is actually doing expert screening? And so why are we thinking about staffing? Well, one of the main reasons why we are thinking about staffing is before we started, if I go back about five to seven years, before we really put pen to paper for this project, we are currently working with about 400 schools across Massachusetts around updating how we are addressing our punitive-based practices around substance. So historically in schools, substance use equals some sort of disciplinary action. I can spend a whole separate conversation talking about why I think that needs some rethink. We know that punishment doesn't address underlying concerns, disconnects kids from the academic environment, and is actually associated with harm. But what we were seeing is that we were hearing from a lot of both schools and kids that, okay, now we've got this mandated substance use screener. Why would I go into this room and share openly and honestly about my substance use when my buddy was suspended two days before for the same thing that you're promising anonymity around or confidentiality around right now? Which makes a ton of sense. And so we have had a lot of students tell us when we were interviewing schools and preparing this grant that, you know, we do it. It's a boxed check. We have to report the data every year back to the state. But, you know, if we get two kids reporting that they're using substances, then that is, I don't want to say that's a miracle, but it's just nobody's reporting anything, right? So they're spending all of this time, energy, and precious scheduling resources when kids aren't actually disclosing use, okay? So what we've been thinking about is what if we brought in people who were deeply connected with the school environment, invested in the school environment, but not necessarily part of day-to-day school life, right? Or not on school staff, to help support both SBIRT screenings as well as the brief interventions, referral for treatments, all of the things that then might fall on the tails of SBIRT, hearing what comes kind of sense, right? So we are, the model that we are evaluating is the value that's basically of bringing in what we're calling usefulness coaches, right? So these are near peers, to be working very closely with schools over the course of the next five years. I mentioned that this is a study. So this is actually a clinical trial where we have 40 schools that are being randomized to either working with a coach or continuing to do SBIRT with their staff as usual. Wayland, two years ago, was randomized to be paired with a coach. What that has looked like, and what that will continue to look like over the next few years, is that the school is being paired with a coach that is hired, supervised, and trained by C4 organizations, working closely with my team at MGH, at no cost to the district. Their funding is actually about what's coming from the Department of Public. So I'm going to pause and give you the opportunity to introduce yourself, and then I can dive into some of the numbers and data that we did for. Yeah, thank you so much. Hi everyone, my name is Hyacinth Toriak. I'm the youth wellness coach at Wayland High School and Dover-Sherborn High School as well. But I've been at Wayland since the beginning of the school year. I started in September. I'm from Weston, so I'm kind of familiar with this area, and what it's kind of like to be in the culture and the environment here, go through schooling here. And yeah, it's been a really, really amazing opportunity to connect with the students at Wayland. I've gotten to work with almost like every single, I think, grade, but I've always really loved working with high schoolers. I love the way that they make sense of themselves and the world and the things around them. The students at Wayland are just so, so thoughtful. I'm almost complete with SBIRT. I've gotten to meet with about 180 or so of the 10th graders, and I'll be finishing up by the end of this month. And something that's, I think, really special and meaningful about being able to fulfill this role and to sort of conduct SBIRT as a younger person is that, even though most students are saying that they don't engage with any substances, pretty much all of them have thoughts about it. And not in the sense of like they're curious, but like they have things to say. And they have ways that they're making sense of it, and they have opinions. And just being able to be a person that's there to listen and be like, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And just for them to know that I'm not there to judge them or evaluate them, but just really want to know how they experience things. But yeah, it's been really great just getting to know them in those brief interactions. I really, really value it. And sort of after I'm kind of done with the whole SBIRT process, I'm just there as like an additional support for students. I am trained in iDecide and Project AMP. And those are two models that are sort of around supporting young people. One more specifically about substance use, and the other about just sort of overall wellness. But yeah, that's kind of my role overall. It's been really such an exciting opportunity, and I've loved getting to know the students. And so, thank you so much. And so, as you've all heard, the way that we're starting with each year, our approach with student engagement is focused on the SBIRT grade, right? The grade that is going to be undergoing SBIRT screening. So at Weyland, it's 10th grade actually costs the school participating in the studies. It's 10th grade. So that's, you know, we start with, and Hyacinth is totally responsible, and has absorbed all the responsibility of screening all of these students over the course of really a few weeks. One of the big changes that we've made, as I mentioned, this is our third screening year, that we made this year is we're really trying to compress SBIRT screening. In earlier years SBIRT screening kind of carried on throughout the year. It was still on the youth wellness group, so it still was off the wellness team and the nursing team. But it did kind of bleed across the year. We're really trying to compress it into the first half of the year, so that the whole second half of the year is really freed up, to be able to be meeting with students in a little bit more natural spaces and settings, to be able to do interventions like Project AMP, which is C4's intervention, and IDECIDE, which is our alternative to punishment for human violation of substance use. I think the other key thing that is really special about this model, and deviates from how school-based approaches for substance use have historically looked, is it really does embrace a co-occurring lens. So it really is not just about the intervention, points of intervention, not just the singular intervention. Points of intervention are not just about targeting vaping behavior, cannabis use behavior, drinking. It is also about really trying to understand the kids, and their context, and the reasons why. And looking for those other opportunities to provide meaningful intervention. If we have a student who says, you know, they're, I run a big project that's focused on cannabis and works for suicide in young people. So if we have a kid who says they're getting high, because that's how they feel safe at night, we need to be providing intervention around safety and suicide prevention. So it just gives us opportunity to actually really start to intervene for the whole kids, rather than intervening on this behavior, which sometimes is the smoke and not the smoke. So alongside this intervention, and this approach, one of the ways that we are evaluating this is through data collection. So we do a biannual survey, which I'm happy to share all 85 pages of that, if anyone want it. You also have some summaries of that in these nice infographics here. We do this survey twice a year, in the fall and in the spring. The fall is just in the kids who just completed SBIRT. And the fall is practically in the host. What I wanted to share here are some key findings. Overall, things are, I have good news to share. I think some areas just for us to keep an eye on and for us to think about ways that we can continue supporting Hyacinth, the students, the schools, as we look into the years ahead. So we can, I went way out of order on this. We can keep going. I don't know why I put slides together. Keep going. Let's see, once we get to our perfect number slide. So pause here. So this is a few days old, but in just year to date, Hyacinth has, when we published it was 163, but closer to 180 students that she has conducted SBIRT screening with just this year alone. About 15% of those students, so this is 10th grade students, endorsed any substance use. It is a strange thing for me to celebrate that this number is so much higher than what we saw in the years past. And I want to contextualize that. These numbers are believable, right? When we had kids from my own high school telling us that nobody in SBIRT screening, none of them had drank alcohol, none of them had used cannabis. It just wasn't, it didn't map on to Metro West data, right? It wasn't mapping on to anonymized data that we were getting in other states. To me, what this speaks to is the value of connection, right? And the value of what, when somebody shows up authentically themselves and able to actually promise some level of confidentiality in that space, that kids feel comfortable sharing, right? And to me, SBIRT is not about discovery, right? It's not about uncovering the kids who are using, but it's actually starting to identify one person at school that they can go to if they feel like they need help or support or if they're worried about their friend or their family member. So it is about just kind of creating that space. So to me, seeing that we are starting to get numbers that resemble what we see in national estimates, what we see in the Metro West region, to me this really speaks to the power of this connection that you're creating in this space. We'll move forward. So those numbers, what I shared in the previous slide, that was from the actual SBIRT screening encounters to date. Now what I'm going to show you are a few numbers that I'll highlight, what's important here. And again, happy to share the detailed report that has all of this and all of this scoring detail. This is from our survey, which we call our SERP survey. This happens, this is our bi-annual survey that goes alongside SBIRT. This is anonymous, confidential. Kids do not have to provide any contact information. This is how we are evaluating across all of our 40 schools whether or not embedding youth wellness coaches in schools meaningfully improves youth wellness outcomes. So here, what you can see is this past year, we did surveying in 10th, 11th, and 12th grade. Surveying in Wayland is an absolute dream. You guys know how to survey. Kids do these are really helpful in getting this off the ground. So there you can just see the breakdown of students, demographics who completed the survey. We can move on to the next slide here. Here's some of the things that I think might be quite interesting to take a look at. As I mentioned, this is our third survey year. We've surveyed 2023, 2024, and 2025. Again, this is not SBIRT screening data. This is the anonymized survey that goes alongside of it. What you're looking at here are the rates of students, the percent of students who completed the survey in each survey year, who are above clinical thresholds on our screener for depression and anxiety. So KHQ-4. So this is the percent of students who, if I were to see them in my clinic and I were to give them the screener, I would want to ask further questions. This isn't diagnostic, but this is to say the percent of students who are exhibiting at-risk symptoms. So you'll see a few things to note here. The overall landscape is one that is not dissimilar from what we were seeing in every other school across the Commonwealth at this point in time, which is kids are struggling, right? So we see that between one in five and one in four over the past three years report at-risk symptoms for anxiety, clinically at-risk symptoms for anxiety. We see about one in three kids report being at risk for either depression or anxiety. So that's concerning, not unlike what we see, again, everywhere else. The good news story here is these numbers seem to be coming down over time. We need to keep monitoring those. Those error bars are big, right? So I can get into the statistics of this in terms of how meaningful the decline this is. But it is certainly trending in the right direction. Forward on the next slide. I'm also happy, I should say, please feel free to jump in at any point and ask questions as I'm going along. What we're looking at here are indicators that are risk factors for suicide. So I'm going far left to right. NSFI is non-suicidal self-injury. So this is self-harm without intents to die. Then we have thoughts. So these are suicidal thoughts. We have suicidal plans and suicide attempts. Again, numbers are not dissimilar from what we see across the state, across the country. Scary for us to see when we're talking about our kids, when we're looking at one in ten kids report having thoughts of suicide in the last year. I will say these are in the last year. That doesn't necessarily mean that there's an acute safety risk. But again, these numbers seem to be trending in the right direction. They are coming down, which these are really important things. We know that around COVID, we saw these numbers really spike. And so from a science standpoint and from a public health standpoint, from a psychological standpoint, we've been waiting with bated breath to see whether these numbers trend downward over time. They are, again, at New England High School, moving in the right direction. We need to keep our foot on the gas. Keep doing what we're doing. Keep supporting wellness with full intention in the school. We can talk about different strategies for doing that. But these are moving in the right direction. Here we're looking at, this says psychotic symptoms. I will say this is a screener for multiple different risk factors. They are unusual experiences that put people at risk for severe mental illness. These numbers are coming down as well as about 5% of kids in this past year reported being above this threshold for unusual symptoms. Let's move forward. I will say this is, I think this is a bit out of order. I apologize. But I'm going to just note it here. I would say this is our point for improvement. So what we're looking at here is, well, I'll say there's good news and some areas for improvement here. What we're looking at here is, in kids, this is this past year, this is just 2025. And these were, I think we surveyed in October. So these are hot off the press numbers. Among kids who were surveyed, how many of them report talking to any one of these people in the past year about their mood or their wellness? Okay? That's the far left column. The middle column is among kids who are at risk for depression or anxiety. How many of those kids report talking to any one of these individuals? Among kids with daily or near and daily substance use. How many of those kids report talking to somebody about their mental health? I'm going to just talk about that full sample because the pattern of findings is not remarkably different when we look across the three columns. But by and large, I see a few things here. I see that about one in five kids report not having spoken to anybody in the past year about their mood or their mental health. I see that there is a lot of kids, there are a lot of kids talking to parents and caregivers, which is great. We are next week going to be rolling out a curriculum called I Care, which is a program that schools can be distributing to caregivers on how to support their kids at home. I'm really excited to bring that to you guys because this is not something that schools can be doing alone. So just like we need to bring some fluency to parents around them, we need to bring some fluency to caregivers on how to talk about substance use, how to talk about suicide, how to talk about difficult things, and how to do it, and also how to manage your own symptoms and experiences. That will be coming out next week, you guys will all have access to that. And so we want to continue to promote that. About 60 to 67, 68% of kids report having spoken with a caregiver about their mental health. And a fair number of kids report having spoken to a friend, romantic partner, or peer. What I really want to see go up in our years ahead is connection to school-based supports. Those numbers, again, not remarkably different from what we're seeing in other schools. So this is not a conversation about something that's unique to Whelan, but just something we're really working on across the different districts that we're working with. It's how we create connection at school. How we help kids identify one trusted adult that they can talk to about their mood, their substance use, tough things that are going on in their life. This is where people's life types become invaluable, and really thinking about how she can be embedded and create those spaces in ways that feel accessible, feel authentic, and feel safe. I'd say that this is an indicator that we want to watch, and I think really want to put some intention around, because we know that having one trusted adult at school is a huge protective factor against progression of mental health concerns. It is a modifiable thing that we can work on. There are a lot of things that our kids are exposed to right now that are existential, that are big and scary, and we have no control over. I'm really struggling with how I talk to my kids about everything that's going on that they're seeing in their community and they're seeing on the news. But this is something we can work on. So that's a lot of the work that we're doing in our center is really trying to think about what are those modifiable factors. We had a report that came out last year that talked about the ratio of school mental health staff in schools, how protective that that is against the adverse effects of neighborhood deprivation and exposure to systemic stressors, and protecting against mental health concerns in young people. So again, really just thinking about what are the little I interventions. A lot of our emphasis in school-based wellness has been on big I interventions, which are great, we need them, but they impinge on schedules, they impinge on resources. There becomes a major issue around scalability and sustainability. So what we've really shifted our focus in is thinking about some of those little moments. What are ways that we can find connection when walking to the lunchroom? What are ways that we can find connection? When Lily, my daughter, my fifth grader, came home or told me the other day that they start each day with a mindful moment. That just blew my mind. I was like, oh my God, yes, that's exactly what we want to be doing. Thinking about those little things that can be infused throughout the day that help kids feel like school is actually a place that cares about who they are, not just how they perform. So I think we've got the makings of something great here and just enthusiastic to keep supporting that work. We can keep moving forward. I don't have too much help here for it. I should have put that as my punchline just really quickly just to talk around the numbers around substance use. Here we're looking at rates of lifetime and past 30-day alcohol use. I do want to watch that lifetime alcohol use number jumped up a little bit. That might be an artifact of sampling because each year we added a grade. So now the 12th graders are included there. So we do know the numbers go up as we start to add older kids into the grade. I want to watch that next year because then we'll have two years life to life. So just my caveat there. Not seeing a remarkable trend though in current or past 30 days, which is going forward one. Cannabis, which is where I spend a lot of time and research around. Those numbers actually, despite us adding seniors into this survey wave, those numbers do seem to be going down over time. We, from a public health standpoint, put a lot of energy into increasing education and resources around cannabis, particularly in our post-legalization era. So pleased to see that things are moving in the right direction. Again, not take our foot off the gas. Continue to watch the legal landscape is still rapidly shifting. Spensaries are opening very close by. We will want to just keep close attention to that. I do think programs like iCare, these caregiver programs, which are going to help give language to parents around, you know, why is cannabis use in a 15-year-old different than cannabis use in a 45-year-old, right? Biologically, it's different. So it's starting to provide some education and renorming to the people that these young people are going home to. I'm hopeful it will help triangulate the first year. All right. Electronic cigarette use. We've been watching this one really closely. And again, very encouraging that this is going down. One of the trends we were really worried about was around oral nicotine tobacco use with pouches. We are seeing initiation go up for that across the board. We are not seeing, knock on wood, a huge uptake in regular use for pouches. Kids aren't really liking it, which is great. And vaping is becoming a lot less cool. So we are seeing those numbers start to come down slowly but surely. All right. I will pause. I have lots more numbers we can talk about but I'm sure there are questions and also been to any thoughts, feedback, or reflections you guys want to add. Thank you. Like I could listen to you all day. This is just really fascinating to me. In the table two, I was wondering, have you talked to, or have you evaluated like the use of chatbots? Like the kids talking to chatbots about them? No, but it's coming. So we are, it's going to be one of the things. So we update our survey every year based off of emergent trends and chatbots for anyone that we need to watch. We are actually thinking about how we can leverage and also educate. So our exploring ways of building AI into some of the interventions and also how you put guardrails on that. There's some really amazing opportunity in creating increased accessibility. But we are also hearing a lot of kids saying, no, I don't need a therapist. I've got, you know, I've got chatbots at my fingertips, which is scary. Scary. Yeah. So we'll be quantifying that in the survey waves ahead. I know it's happening. Understanding what I don't think we have a great sense of is who is relying on that most. My educated guess is that it's going to be the kids who are most disconnected, already disconnected. So a lot of really what we're trying to think about is how we really support the kids who are most at risk by virtue of a variety of different factors. So I think it's going to be the kids who maybe don't feel like they can talk to their caregivers or are already disconnected from, don't yet have a therapist or a psychiatrist or a trusted client. Can you share a little bit more about what the brief interventions and support look like after all of the screening has taken place? Yeah, for sure. And kind of what SBIRT looks like. We go through, it's usually about like five questions long. It kind of depends on the answers that the students are giving. But if a student does indicate that they have engaged in some use of substances, alcohol, nicotine, marijuana, things like that, then we'll usually have a conversation that's, I'm sort of trained in like motivational interviewing, so more like harm reduction sort of style interventions and just having conversations about safety, sort of access, how are you getting things, what are the things that are important to you, to what extent do you want to change certain behaviors, what feels realistic for you to sort of reach that goal. So those are kind of the conversations that we're having. It is a brief amount of time. So a lot of times I'm sort of suggesting myself as a resource if they want to meet again or referring students to, we have like on SBIRT like the last page has a bunch of like hotlines and chat lines that are like peer-to-peer, sort of youth-centered and then also just finding out more about like who they're connected with in their own network, their friends, their guidance counselor at school. So yeah, it's usually like a general sort of conversation about kind of what the behavior is, how they feel about it, do they want to change, what would that look like for them, what do they imagine for themselves, and what supports feel realistic towards getting them there. Thank you. Yeah. Is it very clear for students in the high school that you are a resource for them? Because you seem like such an excellent resource. Is it that you are there for someone who maybe self-identifies that I need help or I need support? How often are you in high school? How clear is it? Yeah. Yeah. That's a great question. Thank you. And thank you for your question as well. I'm at the high school two days a week. I'm there Mondays and Tuesdays. And I kind of mostly just describe my position as community building, which is a really meaningful thing and also takes time. So a lot of times when I'm at the school, I'll be dropping in on like health classes and wellness classes and introducing myself. I spent a lot of time in the beginning of the year just in the guidance office and sort of introducing myself to students as they go through. Just kind of walking around the halls, spend some time in the Metco office with Mark Vidal. So kind of just like the small ways that I can get those interactions. But SBIRT was such a helpful way to like interact with obviously over 100 students and let them know who I am. So it's a slow process, I would say. But it feels like one that happens very comfortably because I am a new faith and that takes time to get comfortable with. So every day is really an opportunity to meet new students. But yeah, I hope I can stay in Wayland and with this project as long as it goes on. And I have a lot of trust and belief that I'll just get to meet and connect with more students as long as it goes on. Great. So anecdotally, I have a fourth grader who just began health class, right? And we got an email from, I think, Christina Sansothonovan saying, Today in health class, Jenny Flynn, who's amazing, was talking about substances, vaping, cigarettes, cannabis. And your fourth graders knew way more than anyone has ever. And they asked and they felt comfortable asking and you really need to be having these conversations. I have an older student as well who does not know any of these things. But kids know more now because in this post-legalization world that we live in. And it was surprising. It was surprising how much they know. So I'm glad that we're focusing on creating these adults. All you need is one adult that you can talk to. So I'm grateful for that. But I'm glad that we're aware that kids know more now because of the world that we're living in. And I'm grateful for this community's openness to that because I don't take that for granted. That, you know, I mentioned through our project, we're working with over 400 schools. And you know one district, you know one district. And there is often a lot of reluctance to teaching about, and I'm actually, wow, that we're talking about it in fourth grade. But there's often this feeling that if we talk about it that we're going to encourage or that we are going to provide, we're going to help enable. Right? But it is exactly as you said. You know, we drive down the highway, and my daughter is reading the billboards of dispensaries. And, oh, what's that? What's that? Or, you know, we pulled up with stuff like someone was smoking a cigarette. She asked questions. We talked about it. Right? It is, we can do that in a way that empowers kids and teaches skills and helps them contextualize. And also starts to talk about alternative ways of managing some of the reasons why people enter into substance abuse. Right? What are other ways of dealing with stress or anxiety? Or if you're nervous to talk to friends, what are other ways of building those skills? Right? There's a way of doing that that isn't encouraging. It's compelling. Right? Yeah. And I don't even think that was part of the curriculum. I think they were talking about general wellness. Yeah. And the kids said, hey, I've got a question about this. And it was a safe space for- Yeah. Which is good. Which is great. Yeah. Didn't we talk about, in the wellness committee, trying to get more exposure for the youth, I want to call you by the right name, youth wellness codes? Yeah. Yeah. So we've worked with Scott about integrating the coach more into the wellness classes. But I think, that was with some of our previous coaches. I think Hyacinth has done an awesome job. She was at the Freshman Orientation Day. This is the first time we've had a coach there. She's been out on the lunch, I mean, she's kind of everywhere, which is wonderful. Where I think, previously, we learned there is an office within the nurse's office at the high school. And so some of the previous coaches weren't, I think, comfortable finding students and being out there. So, I think we're still trying to figure out what post-expert will look like a little bit. But, I mean, there are students that are coming to the nurse's office when I'm there, Wednesday to Friday, and when it's Hyacinth back, I'd like to talk to her. She's certainly built so many more relationships with students and things and opportunities. So I think it'll kind of occur naturally, like working with Scott and getting into the wellness classes. And I think it's always like the math, trying to find time within these classes to ensure the curriculum. But also, you know, introducing staff, so it's a balancing act. But I do think it feels like this year it's been like a seamless year always with students and people know that she's available. So I think we're certainly making progress with the role. That's awesome. You look like somebody I would want to like hang out with. I know. Me too. And like your voice is very soothing and you're very like cool looking and just so I get it. Me too. Totally. Thank you for being here for our students and our kids and that transcends to the family. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. It's really like such an honor. I really love doing this work. So I'm really so appreciative every day. And then winter week is coming up in a couple weeks too. I'm really proud of that, like some of the classes and different things and opportunities across all grade levels to meet more kids too. So I think as the rest of the year progresses will be more opportunities. Awesome. That's great. How do you feel about kids having, you were talking so much in that math section about time and there never being enough time. And we all know it gets so hard, but I'm wondering how you feel about students having the time in their schedules and the appropriate ability to make those connections with that trusted adult. And if there's anything, trends that you've seen perhaps might inform that's a big question. Yeah. I guess, I don't know, but that's something I'll definitely keep thinking about. I know when I'm meeting with students, sometimes they kind of trail in like during lunch or maybe like a little bit before like they should be in a different class. And yeah, and I know I'm allowed to meet with students kind of when they're, for longer periods of time when they're in their freeze. So yeah, I don't know. I think it's definitely complicated and I think if anything, and I feel like this school has been really receptive of like maybe there are students that they're probably meant to be in a class, but they're finding me and they're finding someone that they can, you know, check in with and chat with about kind of what's going on. And I think that that in and of itself is probably a more meaningful space for them to be spending their time. But yeah, that's such a great question. It's hard. I think it's hard to, you know, be a young person and, you know, you want to be with your friends and you want to think about other things and you care about your learning and you've got to be in classes all day and that can be hard. So, you know, it's definitely complicated for sure. I'm glad you're seeing the trend here. You know, along the lines in terms of the model, you know, our goal is not to replace clinical support here, right? It's not to replace school counselors, psychiatric care, psychological care, which sometimes requires, you know, your 50-minute meeting. This is, we're looking to build connection in moments, right? And sometimes that's walking between classes or it's a quick check-in. And sometimes, you know, they're for full sessions for the more structured curriculum, but it doesn't always have to. So, will you come back and report to us after the spring biannual? Yeah. The spring survey, we do a little touch point on, I don't know if I can put this in here. We do a shorter assessment of mental health symptoms. So, we'll repeat the screening for depression and anxiety, suicidal thoughts and behavior, substance abuse. What we will get more detailed information on in the spring is the 10th graders' reflection on the expert screening process. So, we'd love to bring that back. And we can also take a look at how those numbers are starting to compare to the other schools where we're doing the same surveys, but maybe aren't being paired with a coach. So, happy to bring those numbers back and talk to the world. Yeah, that would be great. I would definitely do that. Okay. Awesome. Thanks. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you. I just wanted to quickly introduce Maura. Maura Carter. I work as the public health nurse now for Wayland just since September. Welcome. Maura, welcome. And I know you all know Heather, so. Awesome. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. I'm just going to run to the bathroom really quickly. I actually missed my somebody. Oh. Yeah. I'm so excited to hear this. So, thank you so much for coming. Hey. Sorry. Yeah. No, it's good stuff. I told them too. I'm like, oh. She was just coming and talk to us. It is. It's so, it's so great. Yeah. The output of the information. All the kids are getting in at the same time. Bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing. Oh, for what? From Ski. Oh. They got my first DoorDash to them. Oh. I've never done that before. I forgot I had a meeting. I offered 830. Do you need a 930? My kids, like, don't want to go to sleep at night because, you know, they're used to going to bed at whatever time. Oh, I know. It's so hard. Yes. So, it's like, last night I was like. It's 1045. Yeah. It'll be like, you need to go to bed. Okay. So, okay. Damn, you gotta get up. Right. I know. I'm like, um, hi, it's 1230. Are you up yet? Like, what are you doing? Anybody want this? I know it's . Thank you. Anybody? All right. Um, as we've talked about before and written about to the community, this is a year of planning for the Wayland Public Schools. Um, exciting planning. At our next meeting, January 27th, we'll have another update on facilities planning, where we'll have our team from HMFH join us, um, and we're looking forward to that. Tonight, uh, I want to introduce another planning activity, and that is our, our portrait of a learner work. We've talked about this as one of our system goals. Over the last two months, we've been working with our internal steering committee on planning some of this work. We've also been working with an outside, uh, consultant who happens to be the same consultant. Um, Kate, you met Mike, uh, who facilitated. He's a terrific, really terrific facilitator. And it's super helpful to use the same facilitator for both of our planning initiatives. Our friends in Westwood did the same thing. And, you know, we talk about learning from other teachers and other districts. And, um, Mike did work with them, and they talked about how helpful it was to have some kind of common planning themes. So, a little bit about, um, I, I should say that, um, in talking with our internal steering committee, we really wanted to think about what would work in Wayland in terms of a portrait of a learner. The state DESE kind of has developed a vision of a graduate and different districts do different kinds of work. And we thought a lot about what would be unique and how could we create a unique experience in here. And that's kind of a thread that I want to talk about throughout this, this presentation. Um, because one thing we know as we think about what skills, knowledge, and experiences we want for our kids, we also think this is a really unique time to do this as we enter this fourth industrial revolution and how different this experience might have been just a few years ago. I, I think of, um, my nephew as a senior in college. And, um, when he began his college experience, I said, oh, you'll be a computer science major. And he was really interested in coding. Well, he's now about to graduate from college. And what he was going to do is no longer there, just because of that. And so, like, we can't prepare students in narrow ways because we don't know how the world is going to change in just a few short years. Fortunately, my nephew is also a philosophy major. I was going to say, like, the boom of liberal arts colleges is going to come back. Just saying. That is, um, the Boston Globe magazine has a current story on just that. But that's what I've been thinking about, Erin, is we think about our broad vision as opposed to that. And so I think we almost need, like, multiple portraits of a graduate. So you notice, see that S there in parentheses? We need to be really broad as we think about what it might look like, um, in terms of skills, knowledge, experiences for life, and learning and success beyond school. And that's kind of the language we're using, learning for success beyond school. The jargon in recent years has been college and career readiness. I'm not sure that's as relevant as thinking about need for learning and success beyond school. So as part of our portrait process, we want to think about different archetypes that can be created around how can students see themselves in multiple portraits, not just one portrait, because there's not just one path. The goal in this is to create a blueprint for a district strategy to prepare students for the changing realities of the world. Just think about our earlier discussion about math and the different kinds of thinking we need today. Um, that's true in a lot of areas. So, um, I already mentioned we have a steering group we've been working with. We're also going to put together, um, Kate, I'm going to go back to you, just because you were at that multiple stakeholder group meeting. People talked afterwards in the debrief of how helpful it was to have educators, parents, caregivers, and community members all having the same conversation and how that does not happen a lot. And what our takeaway was from these meetings, we actually need to do this more often. And that was real learning for us in terms of this is another way to engage the community. So what we want to do is offer an opportunity for different stakeholders to come together as part of this process, as opposed to just doing, we're going to have some separate stakeholder groups, but also have extensive discussions of multiple meetings with a set group of multiple stakeholders. So a little bit what we're going to do in the month of January. We also, you know, we were just talking about students. We also want to get students involved in this process. We're thinking about recent high school graduates as well as parents. So again, if you think about our goals to really gather authentic stories about readiness, about growth, about areas of challenge. And so you can see kind of what our goals are there. And also having students to do focus groups with recent college graduates. In October, the high school did it at the faculty meeting. And really recruit recent graduates who have had very different paths to learn about their experiences, but also have them think about the future. So we are also going to do a session for parents, which I wrote about in the newsletter that went out yesterday on January 22nd, and have one for recent graduates on January 28th. Heather was just referring to a winter week. We're going to recruit a diverse group of students as well to have a focus group. One thing we learn about focus groups, it can be helpful to have an outside facilitator, because we think of with our educators, students may report things that they want to please. And so Mike, of course, such a gifted facilitator, he's going to be our common facilitator throughout this process, with different kinds of questions he's going to ask. So you can see we have recent grads, parents, caregivers, as well as students. And then what we're going to do is we're going to synthesize with our steering group after each session. And then we're going to begin, we're calling this, our education forum, our big group session one, two, and three, where we're going to try to identify four to six draft course traits that come from the different focus group data, and think about what we want from Wayland learners, and begin connecting the traits to diverse ways that students show up. So we are looking for 30 people, we're going to do some recruiting. Those sessions will be one at the start of February on the 9th, one later in, earlier in March, and one in late March, to begin to put this together. And then we'll offer kind of an opportunity for some community feedback on this, to engage the community again. And we look forward to bringing the school committee in this process. We would also love to have a school committee member as part of the three sessions. I thought they're really, I don't know, Kate, do you want to talk about how valuable it was? I think what was so unique, as you said, is there were stakeholders from all across the community, and we all had very different perspectives, but we came together with the same priorities. We were often echoing what each other was saying just in a very different way. And it was just nice to have that many people in the room having a very constructive, organized conversation that led to a point that felt very unique to me. And I was just thinking about our two, to make a connection to our two earlier sessions tonight. You know, with the math, we talked about the school, we talked about the student, and we talked about parents. We just did that as well with Randy. And this is kind of a common theme. We are trying to do the same and think about how to engage the community in this process in ways we have not before, about how we think about the future of the district. And I think having people with different career paths and recent college graduates, or recent graduates, not necessarily just college graduates, I should say. We will have people who have been in the military and in different vocations. So we hope to finish this. You saw in our goals, we're going to finish kind of a draft of this by the end of the school year. So then we can develop district goals for next year. As you can see, we always begin our district goal work. We'll start actually when we present to you in probably May. And then think about, given this work, what are the implications for our district goals? We hope to have Mike join us even at our administrator retreat over the summer to facilitate, to come up with some planning based on this work. So, Betsy, what didn't I share that I should have? I guess one thing to note, we have an excellent steering committee group that we're working with, educators in the district, and they really didn't want just another cookie cutter process so that ours looks exactly like any of the others that you've seen or those people. And really kind of wanted to capture not just the idealized end of the product, sort of, but also what's the process look like of learning along the way. So I think Mike was really excited by the thinking in this group and taking this kind of process in a new direction. So this whole archetypes and stories so that kids can see different versions of themselves was definitely a unique kind of spin on this work. That's helpful. Thank you. I don't know how much of, like, the makeup of the steering committee you want to disclose or not, but are we including, I'm assuming, but, like, Caroline, LaToya? Caroline's on the steering committee. And, like, somebody from the METCO program? Well, Caroline kind of does METCO and, you know, Dean and Bee, so she's... Yeah, I just think at least maybe from the perspective of their experience graduating, at least pulling them in. We talked a lot about that at our last meeting and ensuring that in the recent grads group, in our current students group, we definitely are actively seeking people with diverse experiences, diverse learning types, all of... recent graduates who have diverse learning, different learning experiences, current students who have different learning experiences, and parents and community members who have different experiences as well. That's really, really important, Aaron. Okay. And I think, and correct me if I'm wrong, but we want something that's a little bit evergreen here, right? Like, that the way I look at any student coming out of Wayland, and I think this would be a pretty broad supported perspective, would be we want them to be prepared to survive any economic climate, or, you know, be, get those aspects of having a nimble ability to kind of navigate change, right? Like you're talking about with your nephew. Coding, psychology, or philosophy, and, you know, just, I think, getting the perspective of recent grads is important, and current students is obviously important, but having that broader view of, like, just generally what kind of people we want to be putting out into the world. You know, that has that withstand time. Absolutely. So that was kind of my only thing. That's really, that's kind of, we have up there in the kind of our opening, if you look at our skills, knowledge, experiences, knowing things can change so rapidly. What did you say? Well, that also, some of these skills, knowledge, and experiences can lead you in different directions. We didn't want it, like, that you have to have all of these things, and they all look the same way for every kid. So that was part of the idea of portraits, as opposed to portraits. Yeah, like, I see this more as, I guess, in contrast to competency, determination, and graduation requirements. Like, this is more experience, exposure, and, like, those broader things, like, not articulating myself well. But, like, not, you have to take these five courses to be successful in life. Right. It's more, like, we want to teach you to be flexible thinkers. And those types of things, I guess, is kind of like. Right. But I think part of the work is also saying, like, what that flexible thinker could look like in different. Mm-hmm. If you're somebody who's passionate about the arts, what, how does that show up, and what does that look like? What might that look like? Mm-hmm. So that you don't think, you know, every student's working towards fitting in a particular box. Yeah. That was the kind of spin on it that felt a little different. Yeah. I think Caroline was one of the people that really sort of drove that direction amongst others. Cool. I'm excited about this. I think it's going to be really great. Yeah. We're hopeful to get people involved. We've got people interested already, and we'll do some recruiting. We have a little time, but you can see we have a tight timeframe. And then we're also trying to balance this with our other planning work at the same time. But I do think it's exciting to do planning. I mean, that was one of our goals this year, to accomplish that. And we're really lucky to work with Mike and his firm, because they really do excellent. This one seems very tangible, you know, like something that there will be a product, you know, foreseeable at the end of the year that's going to be able to be implemented, like, immediately. The facility seems much more long-term, at least from my perspective. I think so. As much as it's immediate, it's also like we're going to have a product, but it's a long-term implementation fee. Yes, but we are going to present some options to the school committee related to facilities, with perhaps a timeframe. We're going to have some more. We have a meeting the night before, January 26th, where we're going to go. Quick. Yes. Turn around. Before our town around, but we have to meet with the group before, so that'll be exciting. So we'll again report on this as we go. We have it on some school committee agendas. We'll have it, we'll, it won't just, you won't just, we're not just going to show up in May. We're going to have a touch point in the middle of our community sessions. One question I had was, you know, being a young 40-something now, I have a lot of peers that are people managers of new graduates. I wonder if it would be helpful to have one of the parents be a people manager, so that they have that perspective of like, I don't know. I keep hearing it. The millennial? Mm-hmm. What they're looking for. Technically, technically we're them, but we're not really. We're like that gap generation. I'm a very proud millennial, but I remember when people were like, oh my God, save us from the millennials, and now it's save us from the, you know, whatever, Gen X, I don't even know, Gen Z, whatever. But, I don't know, but I hear different themes come up from my friends. And I wonder if it was, you know, for example, like Indy Fragility and things like this that Jonathan Tite has written about. I wonder if that would be helpful to have that perspective of a people manager. A range of experiences, both in the school, but a range of ages. Also, you're talking about Christina as well. Yeah. In terms of that group of third, that would be really good. I guess to your earlier point, I do think a community member that resides in Boston, I think would be really a great addition to the team, too. I know it's tougher travel in the evenings, but, you know, just, I think, I think they'd be well represented when they grow. Yeah. You can just offer it. Yeah. Absolutely. Try to improve. There's a few families. I had a recent graduate that was at my house on Thanksgiving, so I would be happy to ask her if she might be willing to. And the recent graduate session will be virtual to allow people to participate who are in other places. Yeah. And also just, you know, it's easy. I mean, the great part about the world today versus when someone graduated, you can actually find people in different ways. In the old ways, people graduate, you could never see them again or talk to them, but there are ways to find them. In five minutes or less, you can be face to face with them. Exactly. Right. So Mike's going to do, we're actually going to do the parent one virtual only because we want to make this as easy as possible to get people to participate. Good. The only ones that need to be, the group of 30, you can see why we're going to do a similar format. That'll have to be in person. We won't be able to do those sessions. Okay. It is hard to do that, like with bigger groups. There's, it's too much. It's hard. The facilitator. Yeah. The other thing that I was thinking was, you may get this organically just by the groups that you're reaching out to, but reaching out to folks that potentially graduated from Wayland 15 years ago, and potentially what their experience was, how they've navigated, you know. We've debated that quite a bit, actually, this week on the event with the group. Like how, what constitutes a recent grad. And we were also thinking about how much the high school has changed in the last so many years. So if you go back 15 years, their experiences may or may not be as relevant. So we, we decided on 10 is where we. I'm thinking getting someone that isn't from the current high school experience. Like that is definitely outside of the current high school experience to give feedback just on maybe potentially how Wayland has changed, how the high school has changed, what they experienced, what they wish they had had. Kind of. I think that'd be good. You know. I think that'd be good. It's just a thought. Would somebody in town that has moved back. I'm sure there's. There's so many. There's people that have. There's so many. A lot of them. Yeah. There are many. Yeah. I think that will show up. I bet that'll show up. So. As a matter of fact, we have somebody on our steering committee who is a Wayland High School graduate. Would that be Miss Lee? Good guess. No. It's Courtney, our middle school assistant principal. Oh. Okay. So that's. So that's. 20th. Oh. Yeah. So she's super helpful. So she kind of actually. It's great if you can find people that check multiple boxes. But Courtney's been talking. And so she's going to be one of our recruiters who are recent graduates. And so. That is helpful. But you're right. It could be. Sarah. Sarah. I didn't know. Just start going through the yearbook. Yeah. The other thing that I was thinking, and I'm not sure if this would really be helpful, but I'm just wondering if looking at data or having some sort of conversation with like recruiters, headhunters, and I know it's not all about being employed. Right. But just hearing what they have to say about different generations and filling different roles at this time. And I also read an article or a portion of an article because I have a little bit of ADHD. But the other day that was about companies wanting to hire from the higher end universities. They want the higher end degrees again. And that that's kind of circling back. So like, you know, the Ivy's and the. Anyway, just something to think about. I'm not saying that should drive it at all, but a piece that might be helpful. Such as there are themes that come out of looking at recent grads and managing them. There are trends for sure. As a manager, as a. Can you help a little bit at the fall session with the. High school. That we did. All the high school staff. There were. There were a number of folks from different areas. Like there was a midwife. And somebody in higher ed. And. Um. And there was a grad. Were they all of them? No. They weren't all of them grads. But they were. Several were. But they were. Kind of exploring. You know, what. What is most helpful for kids. In. That they're seeing. Right. And all the things that you're talking about. So. We did a little bit of that work back in. Right. And one of the folks actually was on that panel. Who thinks a lot about higher ed. And kind of changes. It was Kirk Carapazza. Oh. Yep. Who was the higher ed reporter for WGBH. Uh huh. Who's really good. And he does a lot of thinking. Not just about higher ed. But about changes in society. Um. And he was on that panel. He's very good. He graduated about 20 years ago. Uh huh. Luke's right. Right. So yeah. We have a lot of looking at. Very busy this month. As you can tell. I'm excited about this. I think it's really important. For like the district. And. Vision. I'm really excited that you're. You moved along. I'm happy to hear. And see it. It's awesome. Thank you. Achieving your goals. One by one. David. We got a good. We got a good steering group. So that's. That's been fun. A lot of time already. Yeah. Sounds great. To be continued. Bye Molly. Thank you. Bye Molly. Have a good night. Good night. Please don't ever share the recording. Cause I hate the way my voice sounds. You're recorded all the time. I'm the worst. I hate it. I hate it. I have a zoom. Got it. Okay. Don't. Do we have. We do have a consent agenda. We do. Anybody have any. I'll make a motion to approve the consent agenda. Thank you. We're approving the consent agenda. I don't want to be here. Oh. Thanks. Have fun. Have fun. Okay. Oh is it Mikey's? Aw. Happy birthday. Thoughts and prayers my friend. Thoughts and prayers. Yeah. That's well. We barely say that. Do you want to sign this before you go? No. No. You guys just do it. Okay. Yeah. Excuse me. Happy birthday. Okay. Uh. Look at the minutes. I uh. Can you defer approval for me? Definitely not getting it. I do. Let me look at that. Can we make an adjusted motion? Mm-hmm. I will make a motion to approve the accounts payable and payroll warrants. Okay. Uh. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? None. And we'll just leave those for further review and potential. Any matters not intended. I would entertain a motion to adjourn. To adjourn. In favor? Aye. Any opposed? None. And we'll just leave those for further review and potential. Any matters not intended. I would entertain a motion to adjourn. To adjourn. In favor? Aye. Any opposed? None. We're adjourned. Thank you. See ya. See ya.