WCS Artist-In-Residency

Susan Stewart, a teacher of students in grades 3 & 4 at Williston Central School, shared the following about an event that took place this week with all of the third and fourth graders in Williston. 

Our WCS Grade 3-4 teams experienced an Artist Residency! Vermont singer/songwriter, Jon

Gailmor, worked with each class to compose a unique song about Vermont during the week of January 28 - February 1st. There was a performance on the afternoon of February 1.

The purpose of this residency was two-fold. First, the Williston Schools have a deep commitment to integrating the arts and promoting artistic expression as part of our school programs. Songwriting, singing, and performing are well-aligned with this commitment. Our second purpose was to promote Global Citizenship, a goal the district promotes in many ways, including through our Sister School partnerships.

Some of you may remember that Mrs. Parks, WCS building principal, and I are on the Board of an inner city school in Nairobi, Kenya (Africa) called Hands of Love Educational Centre. We have formed a sister school partnership between HOL and grades 3 & 4 at WCS. The Partnership has a number of goals. Two of them are:

1. To expand the cross-cultural understanding between people of Nairobi, Kenya and Williston, Vermont
2. To jointly design and carry out activities between both schools under a cooperative framework. 

Our first jointly designed activity is composing and sharing songs representative of our place and culture. Hands of Love hosted an artist-in-residence last fall. WCS students have had the opportunity to view their work. Our songs will likewise be shared with HOL.

While we want our students to gain an understanding of our Global Community from these songwriting experiences and sharing of culture, there are great differences between our schools. Hands of Love is situated in one of the most impoverished slums in Nairobi. It is funded entirely

through private donors and fundraising. The second annual WCS Shoe Drive will take place later this spring. In the meantime, should you care to make a donation to help the school provide education, food, clean water, medical attention, or to defray any of its other expenses, you may donate online.

Thank you so much for your support of this exciting integration of arts and multicultural project!

Sincerely,

Susan Stewart, Equinox House, Williston Central School

A short video of Jon Gailmor working with students (via Instagram)

The teachers created a song with Jon Gailmor as well and performed it for students and parents at the culminating event. A parent posted this on Instagram. We agree!

Change Coming to CVSD School Buses

Dear CVSD Community,

Over the winter break, while families everywhere enjoyed the holidays, CVSD transportation received a different kind of treat; internal and external cameras for our bus fleet. These cameras, which will provide a new level of safety for our students, are scheduled to be turned on the first week of February. The following protocols will be followed:

• All surveillance camera recordings in the district will be subject to board policy, currently under review by the CVSD School Board. The policy will be posted on the District website.

• Recordings from the internal cameras are not monitored in real time and will only be viewed after an incident and at the discretion of the Superintendent of Schools. As always, incidents on our buses are handled by the CVSD Chief Operations Officer or appropriate school administrator per that school’s procedures.

• Recordings of automobiles which violate state laws regarding the passing of school buses will be turned over to the local police authority.

Cameras in CVSD are used only with the goal of improving the safety of our students. If you have any questions about the use of cameras, please contact your local principal or the CVSD COO, Jeanne Jensen, at 802-383-1234

A Special Visit to Our Schools

Dear CVSD Community,

On January 17, 2019, the Champlain Valley School District will host a team of educators from neighboring school districts, along with staff from the Vermont Agency of Education, as part of our triennial Integrated Field Review (IFR). The IFR is a review of documents, interviews with students, parents and staff, and observations of schools, designed to reveal common practices in a supervisory union or school district. Various members of this visiting team will go to all CVSD schools that day. This is a collaborative and reciprocal process; staff members from our district will visit and review neighboring school districts in the weeks that follow.

This Integrated Field Review process leads to a written report, featuring school district-level commendations and recommendations in the areas of Academic Proficiency, Personalization, Safe Healthy Schools, High-Quality Staffing and Investment Priorities, the five domains of Vermont’s Education Quality Standards. The IFR process is flexible and is not evaluative; the results of a school district’s IFR can be used at their discretion, be it to support continuous improvement planning, to create networking opportunities with neighboring districts, to guide future professional development, or other.

A sampling of students and parents may also be invited to participate in interviews with the visiting team.

Do not hesitate to reach out with any questions.

Appreciatively,

The CVSD IFR Team:

Jeff Evans
Bonnie Birdsall
Peggy-Sue Van Nostrand
Stephanie Sumner
Suzan Locke
Katherine Riley

New Math Offerings at CVU

We are excited to announce a change to the Math curriculum at CVU for the 2019-2020 school year. In the past, most incoming ninth graders have been placed into Algebra or Geometry. While this structure provided an appropriate base for future math courses, it also created a gap in practicing algebraic thinking for the courses students typically take in their 10th and 11th grade years: Algebra II, Advanced Algebra, and Trig/Pre-calculus. Next year, we will be offering two new integrated courses for incoming ninth graders called Math 1 and Math 2. This curriculum redesign will allow us to explore natural connections between Algebra and Geometry content, and add important concepts that are not currently in our curriculum. We are confident that this improved and updated approach will enhance students’ mathematical skills and understanding.

To allay concerns about our transcript and college application process, please know that this is a change that many high schools have made. For example, Mount Mansfield, South Burlington, Harwood, Mount Abraham, and Vermont Commons teach integrated math courses.

Most students will experience a pathway similar to one of these:

Grade 9		Grade 10		Grade 11		Grade 12
Math 1	➡	Math 2	➡	Algebra 2	➡	Advanced Algebra or Trig/Pre-calculus or AP Statistics
Math 2	➡	Algebra 2	➡	Tri/Pre-calculus	➡	Calculus or AP Calculus or AP Statistics
Math 1 resulting in credit for Math 1 Part 1	➡	Math 1 Part 2	➡	Math 2	➡	Algebra 2

CVSD middle school teachers will use district common target data to recommend placement in Math 1 and Math 2 at CVU. There will opportunities to discuss this change and ask questions during the teacher panels on January 24th at CVU’s 8th Grade Parent/Student Night.

CVSD Late Start/Early Release Days

We owe it to the community to keep you informed about happenings in our schools and our district. As parents know, our PreK-8 schools release students an hour early on Tuesdays and CVU starts an hour later on Mondays to allow for deeper, ongoing professional development time with our faculty and staff. We shared information from Williston's perspective in this post in November. In addition, Charlotte Central School shared this piece about the work happening on Tuesdays. 

We asked Jeff Evans, Director of Learning and Innovation for CVSD, to answer a few questions about the late start/early release time.

How is the focus on the use of that time determined?

The district chose to focus on four key areas this year, which are indicated in our continuous improvement plan. They are: Proficiency, Personalization, Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (differentiating supports to ensure success for all students, based on student needs), and Social-Emotional Learning. These four topics drive the design of professional learning.

There are different models for this work in each of our schools.There may be focused cycles such as working on one initiative for a month or so, or others may rotate the focus weekly in a given month. There are consistent goals across the district.

Who facilitates the work?

Depending on the focus, the work may be facilitated by administrators, instructional coaches, coordinators, or teachers. Much of the work is done in professional learning communities (PLCs), smaller groups that are either content-specific or interdisciplinary to address instruction and strategies designed to improve learning.

How does this work build over time?

Professional learning communities spend their time following this cycle: learning about the topic, collaborating and designing, and implementing instructional strategies. They review and revisit the work over time to continually make improvements.

What impacts are we seeing as a result of the work done over the past 2.5 years?

Common learning expectations exist across the district now. You can see the result of this work on our website, https://www.cvsdvt.org/domain/373 Prior to this structure, there were greater differences around this work across district schools. Having this time provides greater depth, common district expectations for learning across all content areas, more consistent instructional strategies, and overall a more balanced, thoughtful approach to professional learning.

Teacher Perspective

A few teachers from our PreK-8 schools provided us with thoughts about the impact of that time on their work with students.

“The early release time gives us an extended, uninterrupted period of time to do the hard work of analyzing assessments, planning differentiated instruction and learning new curriculum and strategies with support and coaching.” - Michelle Lass, HCS

“I like the model of after school PD time because our work is immediately relevant to instruction and I feel like I'm getting important work done that needs to be done at that time, anyway.” - Stephanie Konowitz, HCS

“One thing I really appreciate about the early release professional development time is that we have the opportunity to look at resources for a particular content area, i.e. literacy, and explore them deeply. For example, this fall my colleagues and I did a book study about guided reading. We learned a great deal about specific strategies to support students at various stages of development. Having time to discuss this new learning and collaborate with our colleagues was very helpful and made changes easier to implement!” - Natalie Lodge, SCS

“Having a weekly time to collaborate with colleagues across grade levels and content areas has allowed us the opportunity to engage in long-term professional learning that has had a positive impact on our teaching. We are able to more regularly look at data and use this information to drive our instruction and better meet the needs of all of our learners. We have also been able to explore new programs and initiatives and implement them in our classrooms in thoughtful and effective ways.” - Miranda Johnson, HCS

“We are grateful for the early release time for two key reasons, consistency and collaboration. First, we love that every week our routine is consistent for our students, instead of the random professional development days. Secondly, it is so powerful to have two full hours to connect and collaborate with our colleagues. This is an essential time when we are able come together as a school to address our students needs.“ - Katie Fraser and Natasha Grey, CCS

Middle School Students Attend Empower Youth Conference

This post was written by Hinesburg Community School educator Mary Muroski. It's a follow up to this post from July of this year. 

On December 6th, 2018, ten of Hinesburg's 6th, 7th, and 8th grade students attended the Empower Youth Leadership Conference at the Holiday Inn, Burlington. They were joined by 40 other students from towns in Vermont, including Shelburne, Charlotte, Williston, Winooski, Burlington, Grand Isle, and South Burlington. The students participated in workshops designed to build personal leadership skills.

The day started with middle schoolers working with student facilitators to establish their hopes and dreams for the world. These ideas were shared with students in Uganda via a live Skype conversation. As the day progressed, students engaged in activities aimed to enhance communication skills. Highlights included creating vision boards that identified future goals and learning about the power of nonverbal communication. In a workshop on money smarts, students learned about credit, debt, investing, and compound interest. The day ended with students learning how to practice and express gratitude as a way to bring abundance and positivity into their lives.

The event was organized by Hinesburg Community School teacher, Mary Muroski, and Charlotte Central School Counselor, Kathy Batty, and co-sponsored by the Children’s Legacy Partnership through a grant from the NOVO and Education First Foundations. Local sponsors, who helped with the event, included Larkin Realty, Holiday Inn Burlington, New England Federal Credit Union, and Lantman’s Market in Hinesburg. Another conference will be held in March and more of our students will be invited to attend. It was so heartening to see the insight that these future leaders have to make the world a better place for all!

Hour of Code in CVSD

This week marks the 5th year that schools in CVSD, the United States, and the world participate in Hour of Code. The premise behind the Hour of Code is that sometime during this week, schools will provide an opportunity for students to learn about coding, or computer programming, for an hour. The CVSD schools have all participated since the inception. The momentum continues this year in our district, along with about 120 other Vermont schools and nearly 700 million participants globally.

From the Hour of Code website:

What is the Hour of Code?
The Hour of Code started as a one-hour introduction to computer science, designed to demystify "code", to show that anybody can learn the basics, and to broaden participation in the field of computer science. It has since become a worldwide effort to celebrate computer science, starting with 1-hour coding activities but expanding to all sorts of community efforts. 

Why Computer Science?
Every student should have the opportunity to learn computer science. It helps nurture problem-solving skills, logic and creativity. By starting early, students will have a foundation for success in any 21st-century career path.

Most popular during this week are the offerings on the code.org website. There are opportunities for all ages and abilities. Many have popular themes, such as Minecraft or a connection to a recent animated movie. They are all very engaging.

The excitement is not limited to this week; many classes have other things scheduled and will engage in the Hour of Code sometime over the next two weeks. There are opportunities for coding year-round in all of our schools, such as Lego robotics clubs, coding in design tech classes, CVU’s computer programming classes, and CVU’s Computer Club, which participates in CyberPatriot competitions. There’s a competition today - perfect timing! Plus, the resources from code.org are always available.

Here are a few examples of how the Hour of Code has been a focus this particular week in CVSD:

Younger students used iPads apps such as Hopscotch, Scratch Jr., Kodable, CodeSpark Academy with the Foos, or Daisy the Dinosaur. They have explored offline coding through games, small robots (Beebots, Dash & Dot) and physical activities like providing directions for classmates to go from one part of the classroom to another.

CVU students engaged in code.org activities and some were challenged by the Advent of Code. One student tried out an app created by another. Last week, 9th graders in Nichols Core were given choice in how to show their understanding of Neolithic Evolution. One student created a multi-level game to share his learning in a unique way. (see the end of the video below)

There are a myriad of ways in which coding, problem-solving, collaboration, and critical thinking are integrated into our daily work with students. This week’s special focus brings it to the forefront and connects these skills to real life.

We hope you will explore the code.org site and try out a few of the activities on your own or with a student. Let them teach you. And watch out, it’s a lot of fun!