Master schedule for visit

Binders shipped to visiting committee members

NEAS&C Visiting Team Chair visit

Schedule for the day:

All meetings will take place in the Wagner Room

10:00 – 10:30 – Meet with steering committee co-chairs
10:30 – 11:15 – Meet with entire steering committee. This is period 7 in the schedule
11:15 – 12:00 – Lunch in the Wagner Room with whoever would like to stay and central office administration
12:00 – Walk the building and Joe depart when ready

Swank digs!

We visited Dolce to review the schedule and arrangements for meals, snacks, etc. today. Great space! Think the visiting committee will be pleased!

Faculty meeting

The final report passes! and then PD

We passed the final report and selected our critical strengths and needs

Visit coordination meeting #2

Met with PFA President Jill Robey, and Student coalition leader, Molly James about involving parents and students in the NEAS&C visit today.

Jill will meet with her board to coordinate and delegate responsibilities to relevant subcommittees.

Molly will reach out to fellow students to invite them to the reception after the scholarship drive on Sunday, April 7.

Steering Committee Meeting

No fancy pictures today. Just the facts. We went through the preliminary schedule for Sunday, April 7, and created a ToDo list, allocating responsibilities to steering committee members. Our next meeting: January 29, 2013 in library work room.

• Agenda and minutes
• Planned through Sunday of the visit.
• Scheduled another meeting for 1/29/2013
• Handouts

Reports 2-4 sent for review

Meeting with PFA President

We have a meeting scheduled with Jill Robey, PFA president. for Thursday, January 17, 2013 in the library workroom. Any steering committee member who wants to can stop by. We will begin planning for the parent involvement during the April visit.

Voted on three reports!

Three committees presented their reports to the faculty.

1. School Culture and Leadership
2. School Resources
3. Community Resource. 

They all passed :-)

Community Resources

Culture & Leadership

School Resources

Faculty Meeting

Today's work:

Complete evidence form for the evidence you brought today. Please attach the 21st century learning rubric that was used for assessment. Before you fill out your evidence sheets, be sure to review your copy of the four instructional standards indicators (we distributed copies). 
While all of our work may look like it should be classified as assessment, we have a lot of evidence in that category already. 
Give it a hard look to make sure that it can't go into another category.

Link to evidence page on nchsneasc13 website

1. Core values
2. Curriculum standard
3. Instruction standard
4. Assessment standard

Link to notes for this project

Professional Development Day

Instructions for November 6, 2012

12:30-1:00PM - Steering Committee and Committee Co-Chairs meeting

• Debrief on feedback from October faculty meeting
• Determine schedule for approving standards reports
• Overview of this afternoon’s activities

1:00-3:00PM - NEAS&C work

• Overview - What do we need to accomplish between now and January, 2013
• Collect assessments measured by 21st Century learning rubrics (November 15th)
• Vote on standards reports and executive summaries
• December meeting report TBD (as per today’s SC/CC meeting)
• January meeting reports TBD (as per today’s SC/CC meeting)
• Today’s tasks
• Finalize drafts of standards reports for full faculty approval
• Incorporate feedback from October faculty meeting
• Consider areas of redundancy to reduce pages, if necessary
• Ensure that each indicator has a judgment statement (always, never, sometimes, occasionally, seldom, often, etc)
• Check on evidence in the evidence box to ensure all judgements in the reports are substantiated, by indicator
• Use NEASC website as a guide http://cpss.neasc.org/selfstudy_onsite_visit/selfstudy_materials_for_2013_schools/
• If your report is ready, please start writing executive summaries

• Some Suggestions for process
• Do not try to edit the report whole-group.  Instead, split up and revise report in small groups as per peer review from 10/18
• Make it “Ready for Prime Time”

Extension activity (if you have time):
Look for alignment with other reports (now that committee members have each read a different report)

Link to this document http://bit.ly/nchsneasc1106


Core values beliefs and learning expectations - December 20th room #110
Curriculum - December 20th room # 206
Instruction - December 20th room # 222
Assessment - December 20th room # 218
Culture and leadership -  December 1st room # 210
School resources - December 1st room # 224
Community resources -  December 1st room # College, and Career Center

Faculty meeting

Groups for meeting

Standards reports:

• Core Values, Beliefs, and Learning Expectations
• Curriculum
• Instruction
• Assessment
• Culture & Leadership
• School Resources
• Community Resources

Steering Committee Meeting Agenda

NEAS&C evaluation seminar
Review timeline
Committee liaisons updates
Community liaisons
Fun ways to incorporate 21st CLEs into NCHS culture
NEAS&C visit

21st Century Learning Committee

Steering Committee created an ad hoc 21st Century Learning Expectations committee consisting of Jeff Hague, Bill Tesbir and Mike McAteer. 

Jeff: Science, School Counseling
Mike: CTE, English, Math, Health and Physical Education
Bill: Social Studies, World Languages, VPA, SPED

August 27 Professional Development Day

Professional Development

Professional Development Day

We spent three hours in committee working on NEAS&C self-study reports.

Faculty Meeting

Meeting objectives

Changes to nchsneasc13.info

Evidence page:

1. Added links to curricula
2. Added instructions for submitting digital evidence

Step-by-step instructions for submitting digital evidence

Created a spreadsheet for "what to look for" for each indicator. Each standard has it's own tab - navigate trough the standards by clicking on tabs.

Added that spreadsheet to each standard page on the nchsneasc13.info website

Housekeeping:

• If you need help arranging meetings with central office/other stakeholders, please complete this form.
• Community Liaisons list is up, but not final. Feel free to convey concerns and/or tweak. We will send the final letter out on May 24, 2012. Please review by then. 
• Next meeting, we wil hear about collaboration, healthy living, respect and communication rubric pilots.
• Endicott Survey - special thanks to English Department

Today's work:

• Look for the gaps in evidence collection. What are we missing?  Using the evidence spreadsheet, record existing evidence (if not already done) to identify gaps by indicator and department. 
• Where to report for committee work this afternoon. COWS are available.

Committee	Room	Assigned Laptops
Steering	211 or 212	English COW A
Core Values, Beliefs…	230	Math COW A
Curriculum	206	Math COW A
Instruction	204/205D	Math COW B
Assessment	218	Math COW B
School Culture and Leadership	210	English COW A
School Resources	224	English COW B
Community Resources	223	English COW B

Interestingly, co-writing the “rough daft” for the NEASC report on Assessment, Indicator 4 was easier than I thought it would be because of New Canaan High School’s responsive and collaborative culture. It was amazing to review the many Indicator 4 documents and artifacts. Teachers are integrating NCHS Core Values, Beliefs and Expectations, as well as Partnership for 21^st Century Skills (P21).

Faculty Meeting

• The Counseling department has an update about piloting the contribution rubric.
• CTE & Math have an update about piloting the problem solving rubric.
• Met with committee co-chairs and department chairs last week. If you need help arranging a meeting with anyone from central office, town organizations or community members, please let us know. We made a form to facilitate requests.
• Visiting committee opportunities in June. Please let us know if you are interested.
• Timeline: Last PD day 1/2 TEPL, 1/2 NEAS&C - Goal: Have very rough draft complete by the end of of day on June 22. 
• Endicott Survey 
• http://www.endicottresearchcenter.net
• Code: T126649 
• Scroll down
• Click BEGIN SURVEY
• Committee meeting time

Committee Co-Chairs meeting & Department Chairs meeting

We have a joint meeting this afternoon with the Steering Committee and the Committee Co-Chairs. This is our agenda.

• 3rd quarter call for evidence
• Evidence cover sheet
• Explanation of where to submit evidence
• How is digital evidence collection going? 
• Are there problems? What can we do to facilitate?
• The importance of transparency - having a living, breathing document, "showing our work"
• Articulate meeting needs
• survey of committee needs
• Endicott Survey
• Parent & student committee members
• Game of NCHS Life

After that, we will duck into Department Chairs meeting, which will already be in progress. We will share the outcomes of the Steering Committee and the Committee Co-Chairs meeting. Our preliminary outline follows:

• Rubrics
• Curriculum
• Endicott Survey
• Requests for meetings
• Evidence collection, round 2
• Evidence cover sheet
• Explanation of where to submit evidence
• Game of Life

A Day with with Janet Allison

Janet Allison, Director Commission on Public Secondary Schools met with steering committee, committee co-chairs and the entire faculty. Here are our notes, and here is Janet's presentation.


Big takeaways from meetings:

• The self-study report should reflect a common understanding of school-wide assessment practices. One suggestion was to use the same student evidence for Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment, which we are in the process of doing.
• Prior to the publication of the final draft, these three committees will share their finding to look for alignment.
• Steering committee will facilitate meetings with central office, support staff (NURSES!) and other stakeholders. A form will go out on Friday, March 16 prompting committees members to articulate their needs. The steering committee will schedule requested meetings.
• Each committee will go through the exercise of self-assessing using the NEAS&C rating guide as a group (these are now on the nchsneasc13.info website).
• We’ve appointed an editing committee for the final draft.
• We will be creating a student work portfolio for the visiting committee to review on Sunday night once they return to the hotel, Examples should be assessed by the 21st century learning expectations rubrics.
• Steering committee will appoint a coordinator to liaise with Endicott and track parent participation. May require some “nudging”. Student participation is scheduled for April.
• Would like to encourage faculty to update their committee’s self-study document (the one embedded in your standard page on the nchsneasc13.info website) with in-progress indicator work. We are aiming for transparency in this process. It is important for the committee to see drafts and revisions (document history) as you acquire evidence and apply it to the self-study as measured by indicators.
• School-wide rubrics and 21st century learning expectations: The visiting committee will expect to see that these are bring used throughout the school and across disciplines.
• The steering committee is compiling a list of community stakeholders to participate in committee work - not necessarily face-to-face, but certainly as a part of the the committee's electronic correspondence.

About Your Friend, the Rubric

Ever feel shackled by a rubric? Like rubrics are trying to drive a wedge between you and your students? NCHS teacher, unchain yourself! Rubrics don’t have that kind of power.

Rubric is one of those words that has a bum rap; just ask any teacher who knew that a project was a C+ when the rubric insisted it was a B. But perception isn’t reality, and rubrics aren’t just for assessment anymore.

More importantly, rubrics are for communication.

Think about it: we want kids to be effective problem solvers, clear communicators, responsible and productive collaborators, among other things. We also need to teach our course content. How do we know how to connect the important content we teach to the important skills they need to learn? Simple: listen to the rubric.

The bullet points in those boxes are the places where our learning expectations reside. They articulate skills that we have always assumed we were teaching, and they show us something we might not have known: that social studies teachers are asking kids to collaborate the same way they do in an engineering class; that science teachers are demanding the same clear communication as English teachers.

By breaking those skills into their constituent parts, and naming those parts, what we teach becomes clearer to us. And by sharing those expectations with students, they know exactly what they should know. That’s communication, baby.

Then, when students hand in their work, we use the rubric to let them know where they are in their understanding of our learning expectations, and give them a chance to tell us how they plan to improve. So the cycle of communication between teachers and students, with the rubric as common ground, continues to clarify and specify exactly what we want students to achieve.

And we all live happily ever after.