 Welcome, everyone, for being here. I would like to, we're getting ready here to listen to our wonderful Satan music program, Kids for Macquity Elementary. So, welcome students. This is all about you. You make us do what we do, and thank you. We do it for you. So, welcome to Macquity Sacred Music Program. Thank you. Representative Dr. Ferris-Law is here. Thank you. Any other elected officials that are here? Okay, thank you so much. Do you do the program? Okay. So, we're ready to start with our program. I'd like to welcome President Jennifer Holm to give some welcome remarks. Thank you, Ms. Holm, for being here. Okay. Are you for Teacher Boys? Okay. So, what a tumultuous year we have had. When I thought about today and the opportunity I have addressing you, I initially found myself at a bit of a loss. What could I possibly say in a few short minutes that acknowledges where we are and also supports a vision for how TV is being moved forward into the future? And then I listened to an interesting podcast on overcoming extreme political polarization. The heart of it is coming from a place of love and compassion. Compassion is certainly a gift that we give other people, but it's also a gift that we give to ourselves. It's an essential component of creating an inclusive culture. Here's what it does to you. It doesn't mean giving up our ideals. It's not about liking someone. It doesn't even mean that we don't feel anger and frustration at times. We still need to fight for what we believe in and sometimes passionately so. But compassion is about recognizing another person's inherent worth and dignity. I think about some of the significant issues our district has faced, which is still facing, keeping schools closed or reopening them, masking mandates, vaccine mandates, school resource officers, how we use available funds, and so on. However, the biggest challenge that we face in managing these issues is not necessarily the issues themselves, but how we treat one another as we grapple with possible solutions. We all have different perspectives and opinions, and sometimes those come into conflict. That conflict can be a healthy thing that allows us to identify areas of growth. But for us to use the full power of our diverse community, we cannot indulge in contempt for those of whom we disagree. Compassion is the approach that can pull us all forward together. Compassion is what allows us to recognize the humanity in others. What allows us to recognize an opponent without seeing them as an enemy. Even if the pandemic ends tomorrow, even if the chronic underfunding of our public school system was immediately rectified, there would still be other issues to address. Compassion is why I am thrilled about the work I get to do with the Power of Value Education Foundation Board. In partnership with groups like PDUSD students deserve, we recognize that barriers to educational success can take many forms. Therefore, we have started a bridge to wellness fund that is open to PDUSD students and families that are supporting PDUSD students who live in our area, especially in facing emergency situations. We just opened those grants and they are available from anywhere from ten dollars to five hundred dollars. We have a range because we recognize it is a range of needs. Compassion is why I am so excited about projects like the Emerald Lagasse Culinary Garden and the teaching kitchen. What an amazing opportunity for our students to connect the work of growing, harvesting, and preparing food to individual and environmental health. And furthermore, to recognize the value that those roles have in our community. Compassion is how we recognize the hardships that we have each faced in the last year and draw strength from finding what is in our power to give. I said at the start that compassion is a gift that we give to ourselves and I say that because the physiological and psychological effects of taking a compassion approach are profoundly positive. In a time and environment that has demanded so much of so many, compassion is a tool for maintaining our equilibrium. As we wrestle with today's challenges, let us build a scaffolding of courage and grace with compassion as its foundation so that we can face the force, face the future and the force unified in service to the education of our community. Thank you. Wonderful words. I'd like to welcome a couple more electives. First of all, I'd like to introduce myself. I'm sorry. I think my name is our board member. Now, I'd like to introduce our next speakers, River Sensing and Infactual Partnership. I'm Gorgia. And I'm Marcia. Welcome. Good morning, friends. Thank you, Alicia, President Holm, and Dr. Rodriguez for the opportunity to share our gratitude and excitement with everyone today for the expansion of garden-based education in the district. My name is Don Bergett, and I have had the honor and joy of being part of LifeLabs for over 10 years. My name is Rudita Macho, and thanks for Don's dream of co-directorship. I've been at LifeLabs since 2019. And what an extraordinary time to be here. Today, we're going to talk briefly about cultivating love, cuncivanduamo, love of learning, love of healthy food, and love of nature. For over 42 years, LifeLabs has been planting these seeds of love, and envisioning a day when all public schools in Santa Cruz County can have robust garden classrooms ideal soils where these seeds can blossom. The growing PBSD partnership is leading this vision. In fact, PBSD is leading locally and nationally. We survey more than 100 teachers each year at our partner schools about the impact of our PBSD garden classroom program. They consistently tell us that the programs improve their students' scientific knowledge enthusiasm for learning, connection with the natural world, and pride in their school, and as well as having, quote, a positive impact on my students' emotional well-being. The gardens are common spaces of solace when the land needed, which has been particularly important since March of 2020. We were honored to be part of the District Safe Spaces program this year, and students told us how meaningful these spaces were to them. Here, maybe, is a short video? How are we doing this? Video, no video? We'll see. We always want to bring the kids and the gardens into the room with us, so if it works, then we'll get to do that a little bit. In the meantime, I'd like to share with you a few stories and a few experiences, because it's really in the connection of the students with the garden and the students with the instructors of the Magic Counties. And with that love, we get to see it. And we get to witness. One story that we've shared, and we've shared it to the school board, is a student this summer who was doing an activity, a watercoloring activity, and the student wanted to make sure to give a note to the guards and told the instructor, our instructor, Lila, that, is it ready? Okay, then let's see what happens. I'll just say, oh! The student, what they did is they wrote a note and said, this note is for the guard. The instructor then had, was curious, when to go look after the class, when to go look at the note, and was quite impressed with what the student had to tell the garden. The student went home and the instructor came back and said, I wanted to ask permission to read that note and to share it with others. The student gave us permission. It's in my, but it said something like this, Dear garden, I like to be here. When I'm mad or sad, being here makes me good and makes was spelled M-A-C-K. The student certainly, an English learner like myself. And this note was from the garden, there's a relationship with the garden, the garden becomes our teacher. So, thank you so much. I'm glad we could share that story as well. And this is a brief bit of garden time with the kids. This was actually an exciting thing for the Safe Spaces students at the Radcliffe Elementary site. They got to represent Watsonville and PBSD to the nation. So, this was part of a national event highlighting seven communities from Hawaii, across the country and ending in Washington, D.C. Secretary of Agriculture introduced it and the kids at Radcliffe got to share their experience. Hello, how are you? Alejandro here, coming to you from Watsonville, California. Original homeland of the Amalmoutan tribal land. Watsonville has super fertile farmland and produces nearly half of all strawberries growing in the U.S. So, next time you take a bite of one of those delicious berries, remember us and the hard-working families that take care of the land. Hi, my name is Lila and I'm one of the garden educators here at Radcliffe Elementary School. After the students finish their school classes, Alejandro and I lead social-emotional games, nature exploration and garden activities. Since we have such a small group of kids, we've been able to form a close bond with them and explore what they need. I'll pass it off to our amazing students to tell you more. Being in the classroom and the garden is different because you can be outside in the rain and you can plant stuff and you can see animals and insects. We're so happy it's because we always have fun and we always play some games that are new and we also water the plants and we always... My favorite thing to do in the garden is looking for animals such as snails or worms. My favorite thing to do in the garden is plant flowers, catch bees and then just release them at the end. My favorite thing to do is water the plants and catch grow blueberries. I think it would be nice for most schools to have a garden because it's like a space where kids can go to to be calm. Every school should have a garden because it like relaxes you and like calms you down and like zooms stuff. When I'm in the garden, I feel peaceful and relaxed. It's beautiful to see the flowers and the animals that are here. I am Arie and today we're going to do a bed table sit. We're going to use tape to put it in the room with so the sticky part is going to be facing now. Now we're going to just add flowers. Bye bye. But here in the garden, we've been able to find joy, build friendships and connect with nature. We hope you inspire me to connect with nature too. By the end of the program, you wrote this. The reason I'm in the garden is that I'm not scared of anything. I'm not afraid of anything. I'm not afraid of anything. I'm not afraid of anything. The social and emotional benefits of garden classrooms continue to be vital as all students reactivate to this in-person school life. We're also thrilled to get back to our next generation science in the garden lessons and to grow our capacity this year so that we can double up on those lessons on the concepts they missed last year. Seeing these impacts inspire Life Lab and PVSD to scale up our partnership and grow our partner schools program from 3900 students in 7 schools currently to nearly 9000 students in PVSD's 16 elementary schools. Starting next fall, we will have 3 new partner school sites each year until all 16 are on board by the fall of 2024. We're also excited to grow the programs at Sarla Elementary with additional instructors and new facilities there for students, teachers and for the community. PVSD is making a generational investment in garden classrooms as core assets for learning and wellness. To complete and to complement this investment Life Lab is raising $350,000 for for a year for the next 4 years and we need your partnership to succeed. These funds will ensure the curriculum training, evaluation and basic support systems like our main street office just a block away are all there to support our growing team and more schools and more students. If you'd like to learn more and be part of this beautiful work we'd love to connect with you and we look forward to that. Dawn at LifeLab.org who eat at LifeLab.org send us a note anytime or come see us today. Thank you. Thank you. That was so beautiful those students. I don't know if you can inspire them by living in the garden. I don't have a garden but I will get one. I'd also like to welcome so we have Clint Rocker, our CBO he did we thought he was going to shout besides thank you for being here our next guest is a constant PBUSD partner Susan True the Community Foundation of San Francisco Welcome Susan and thank you for being with us today with the Constitutionary Partner it was such a pleasure to be here today and think about everything that we've been through the community and how we're doing now and I could talk a ton about the food that was delivered I could talk a ton about the emotional support that was offered about the internet that got connected there's so many partnerships that happened some people didn't even know each other at the start of the pandemic but I think what I really want to say is this next step with children is that we all learn about our relationships with each other and we've really proven this last year and a half the strength of our relationships and our care for each other and for kids and what I most want to say is that today make sure your interactions with a child somewhere in this community are balanced with the sensitivity and awareness of how they are doing with the encouragement that they need with a chance to learn something new and to develop all their skills we all learn because we have that balance of interactions that helps us to grow and we know our kids are out of balance right now they haven't had those experiences and those interactions and it's up to all of us the reason why we're partners in PBSE is because we believe there's up to all of us to reach out to a child today to give them those interactions to give them that experience that helps them to care for this community as they grow older so I just thank you all so much for the basis in this room and it's like oh my gosh what we did we should feel really good about that and it's so far from over and keep taking care of yourselves and giving those kids those interactions they need thanks so much for all you've done this year I don't like to disagree very much but I think Susan True and CeCe they are a very constant partner thank you our next guest is a tireless advocate in our community Marielena de la Garza we community action work Buenos dias those of you who know me know that I prefer to be out here than back there so bear with me if I walk around the room a little bit I am Marielena de la Garza and I have the honor and the privilege to work in the blue building over there in the corner and the beautiful blue building that's where you want to be because it stands a test of time I represent the community action board of Santa Cruz County and we exist to eliminate poverty and create social change and we do that in a very special way and we've been doing it for you know how many years to the school district it's leadership team it's cheerleaders it's educators it's trustees because we are still standing we are still standing after 20 months of the most difficult time we have ever experienced as a community and as a nation the work that we do at CAV gives us insight to what is happening at all layers of this community we have provided rental assistance to this community for over 56 years and in the last 20 months through our economic relief and crisis response we have been able to facilitate get this 4 million dollars to the community that we serve for economic relief 4 million dollars in mostly 500 dollar checks imagine what that takes imagine what the need is in the last 20 months our team has been responsive to the community to understand what those needs are and to listen to what the community is telling us about where they stand during these 20 months and we learned a lot we just did our community action plan which we do every 2 years to see what property looks like feels like, has it changed, has it shifted and what we learned know how as we know it's going on in our community you can walk out your door and you know exactly what's going on in this community we know that we have rental assistance and that was our number 2 issue that came up from the community number 1, what do you think? food was number 3 housing was number 2 that was a little bit lower number 1 was loss of employment in our community our families told us that they lost employment or reduction of opportunities for employment and that created the stress that we are still dealing with today and so I want to share something that motivates the work that we do and it's a beach up from my mom and you all know that I like beaches and she used to say now that the end is born every person puts their brain of sand or their brain of salt everyone contributes we couldn't do this work we couldn't respond by offering employment services at cab by offering rental assistance at cab and by offering one of our most popular services what do you think it is who said it? yes immigration services we offer free legal services to answer immigration questions from our community did anybody watch when you did see on last night? you missed a great report 5 of 1 family of mom and dad and 3 siblings all became citizens that changes that changes so those are the granitos that we contribute those are the grains that we contribute and we couldn't do it without the contribution of your grains we couldn't distribute food without Willy and his team yes please millions of dollars of economic relief without community foundation and its donors the port of services for our young folks without the confianza of the school district so thank you so I want to say we still stand and we celebrate that I want to say thank you to the young people in our room in the room to help us show up to work every day because we care and we want to support you to success that's what we're here for to be of service thank you for your partnership school district thank you for your leadership for surfing those waves we did it we got more to do we got more to do but if each of us contribute our granito and what we do what we know and what we bring we will make a difference and continue to make a difference in this community thank you so much we are here to be of service so we are standing and I actually believe we are standing so much stronger so much stronger as a community so thank you Maralena for all you do for our families and we now are here we're going to listen now to the Aptas Chamber Choir with the direction of Ms. Holly Anna thank you so much for being with us and we're saying throughout the event welcome students we follow about you so whether it's the pictures that are here or the students when you came in and they're still present or the ones that cheered you in we have that purposely because we want to have a constant reminder that everything we do everything we do is with the students in mind sometimes it's not what's easiest for adults sometimes it's not what people perceive as being best for others but in our heart we know that everything we do is best for students and so this year we have a focus on whole child whole family whole community and we did that because through the pandemic we saw more than ever that we are so interconnected that everything that we do affects those around us and everything that we can do what's possible to do and so we have we've served over 19,000 students we have 2,500 employees that every day come wanting to do what's best for our students wanting to do what's best for our community so that we can really grow and so we have LCAP folks we have 7 of them they're too small to see but they're in your brochure right there is because those are our constant reminders of what are our priorities what do we believe is important and then we have our core values which is how are we going to get there what type of fortitude what type of attributes are we going to have to have as a community as an educational community to make sure that those 7 goals go through and if you were to look at what those goals were and now you'll say they're in the same strand in the same area but they're a lot different they are so much more complex you used to know for example on visual and performing arts our goal used to be that they just had a credential teacher that is what the goal was just get to your credential teacher now through the leadership of Sue Guelty now we have music art throughout the schools in every single middle school in every single high school and by 2024 every element that you saw earlier today you heard from Save the Music and so we're going to talk a little bit more about that but that will allow every child by 2024 to have gardening in their educational experience every single right and so we're really excited about the work that we're doing and we have had a challenging year 2020 was challenging but what I think it also showed us was that we are the center of what our community needs so whether it was food and nutrition where with the support of our Food and Nutrition Services Department and Second Harvest we gave out 7 million meals 7 million meals in one year right so think if we haven't been able to do that how much food insecurity above and beyond there would have been how many more students and families would have been hungry if we wouldn't have been able to do that and we said we learned that so let's not stop so now every single child that makes can eat breakfast and lunch for free in the schools right so we knew we said we learned a lot in 2020 so let's now not move back to where we were let's just continue forward and then talking about technical support so our IT team who's been here scurrying you've seen them trying to get the sound going like Alicia said she has a loud voice I have a loud voice no one's listening to talk louder they always say talk quieter we have our tech department was really the backbone of both departments last year they did 15,540 calls they took in one year almost 16,000 phone calls to be out for parents for teachers for students who said you're expecting me to do distance learning I don't know how to do it and so they took those and when they said you know what sometimes the phone call isn't good enough let's have them be able to drive through they took 1,500 people in person and gave them a brand new laptop or fixed it right there on the spot right and so we are continuing that tech support so every single school whether it's elementary middle or high has tech support that families can come and really get that that need from us and we're going to be we're going to continue our work with elevating voices so we used to depend a lot on in person and then when the pandemic hit we were like we can't depend on that any longer because everybody was behind the screen so we said how are we going to continue to elevate their voices so we did multiple surveys, we started doing town calls and we heard what people were asking for right we worked with our partners to hear what they were hearing and then we also heard so we had over 20,249 responses to our surveys alone right and so we want to again continuing those best practices keep doing what we're doing so that people know we are listening to them and so we knew it was going to be a hard year from the surveys we knew it was going to be a hard year we knew transitioning back our bodies get used to doing things one way right it's actually amazing if we realize how quickly we can change our habits so doing 15 months of something else caused us to now when we're trying to go back to in person it's a challenge right and so we knew that our surveys pulled us back and so we did we started we decided to do CARES this year which stands for connect, accelerate, recover enrich and succeed and we're going to go into the classroom in just a minute and but I want you to I want to show them the videos so I want to show you this video on our CARES and and then we will be going into the classroom to see some innovation in action 178 whole child, whole family whole community is an expansion of our original focus on the whole child which began in 2019 as an educational community we are more committed than ever to cultivate the passions, interests and talents of each and every child strengthen our social emotional well being and lift them up through an expanded definition of student success so they reach their unlimited potential we value the support of our families that they give their children every day and recognize the impact of this care on our community's collective well being oh boy oh boy educating the whole child means that we are able to connect with the mind and the body and the vibrancy and the life within us and that we are able to really nurture children through a connection with their own emotions their ability to articulate those emotions and their ability to be able to be agents of their own life to feel that they belong and to feel that their identity is as important as anyone else's as an educator it's immensely important that I have some sort of connection with families because this is what's going to allow students to feel supported not just at school not just on campus but also at home as we grow have our family grow and flourish with us that encouragement is what truly unites us and that's really what's going to uplift our community that's what's going to allow our students to say I want to stay and be the leader that they can be all in being bilingual all in having their accents embracing who they are and their identities and bringing their culture to the table fight on set sound camera okay what I want for PBUSD students is the same as what all of PBUSD's partners want we want our students to thrive we want our students to have the skills they need to be successful we also want them to have the relationships that will encourage them forward we want students to feel connected to job opportunities to understand that college can be for them if they want it we want students to have a sense of incredible opportunity and that happens in an ecosystem PBUSD our students, families and staff are further supported by an ecosystem of over 60 community partner organizations one is our philosophy our philosophy around the whole child, whole family, whole community but also I wanted you to see glimpses of what it's like now to be in a classroom in PBUSD I wanted you to see the engagement that our students are having and now because a video is not quite enough ever you are going to now stream in live to a classroom at Valencia Elementary Valencia Elementary is our first computer science immersion school and they have been working with media and with technology at a higher level than most of our schools and we are going to be going into a sixth grade classroom and seeing them in action working on a social studies and scratch activities and so here we go welcome Karen hold on what did you hear you look beautiful Karen can you hear us hold on can you hear us yes elementary school we are so excited to share our coding work with you this morning three years ago we were so grateful to be invited to bring coding to our students here at Valencia we were provided with all of the devices and coaching support and we brought in more teachers in year two and the exciting thing that happened in year two was that we were able to start to marry our classroom curriculum with the coding work that we were doing and so that's what we're excited to show you today in Mr. Miller's sixth grade classroom so let's go ahead and head on in and we'll ask him his perspective on how coding enhances the educational experiences of our students so come on in hey Mrs. Miller thank you for inviting us today if you can if you could tell us a little bit about how you think this coding work enhances any of your students in their work because a number of years ago I just felt comfortable doing the hour code which we had in December but then when Code for the Future came to Valencia it gave me the ability to have the confidence to introduce coding into the classroom and a couple things that I noticed was one how the kids persevered and when they come across a problem they either solved it themselves or they checked in with their classmates classmates are ready to help and it's been really fun as an extension to the content of the instruction great I know social studies is the main area that you get exactly okay great well we're going to talk to some of your students now I know they're all part of work on their current projects so hi Jeremy how are you nice to see you can you tell us a little bit about what you've been learning about and then what was your task with this scratch project so we've been learning about the Sumerians and our task was to create a project and write their problems and the solutions to what their challenges were okay and so can you take a look at your students here can you show us a little bit about how it works yes so we click the slide and the dragging will give you instructions okay and this drag his name is Joe alright and so if you can show us what some of the other buttons do in your project so this one is the problem about if I control water supply in the river college and then the problem is on top and the solution is on the bottom okay and these are problems for which people the Sumerians and so some of them may be finding challenges at the time and can you show us our next okay and so that was one of the other problems that they faced attached by neighboring communities alright and then that home button will take us back to your main map okay and what is this part this one's about building and maintaining an irrigation system okay so big challenges but there's early things okay and then the little button is about the big shortages in the hills okay so you were the one to to build this from scratch in scratch right okay and can you show us the coding portion so when you're in behind the scenes so here's the first button okay and so how did you learn how to pull these pieces together how did you learn to build this code um the coding and the help we had was a lot of help and I learned how to use the buttons help and then I kind of got used to using the hide and show buttons and how to code it all okay great and what do you like the most about being able to show your learning in this way I like it because we get to like do what we want to do and code the buttons how we want to code them while still showing what we're learning about okay so a lot of chase and yeah right and what do you think is the most challenging part of this probably coding the buttons because the backdrops kind of like switch around a lot so you have to re-switch the backdrops to the right ones when you're coding the buttons so you kind of know what you're doing so a lot of trial and error like the MLA said persevering pushing through right okay well awesome job thank you so much for sharing all right Jack I want to talk to you a little bit about I know you're all looking at your current project your second project tell us about the first project that you all worked on what were you all learning about so we were learning about early humans and prehistoric humans okay and so what were you asked to do we had to make a project with three of the prehistoric species of humans and rate like make buttons and rate fast about that okay so can you click us through your presentation yeah so the first one was the homo sapien and then so you had to pull all of the images you had to create all of the text you had to create backgrounds or find backgrounds yeah okay we need to go and then the next one is for homo eruptions homo eruptions we're in a real school yeah live here we go tell us more about this so this is for homo erectus yeah so that's the school and then there's information about your text yeah and so did you have to do research prior to even starting this project okay great and then this is the last one of homo fabulous okay can you show us the coding part again design here so so is that for first button that was for the home button this is the first button and then okay so tell me when you put a snag in your design what are your strategies sometimes it is like I find which part isn't working and then just throw that away okay are you left on your own or do you have who else can you go to to help you through it Mr. Miller, Ropula and then some other classes alright thank you so much do you like being able to show great thank you alright we have time for one more let's see one more alright okay so you look down the current project and tell us again what that is about it is the the first house file the first house file okay so where are you in your process I am coding my home button so I just go back to my your map and where did that map come from it looks like maybe you created it I drew it and then I took a picture so you can do it, take a picture and then upload it on the background that's one of your options so where where are you are you out of the code right now on your home button and then I am going to copy and paste my text from my writing okay and the end result can you show us, do you have a writing adjustment that you're working from that you're pulling your text from I do okay so you first took notes based on all your learning with Mr. Miller your classmates here, right and then I have a table right here and I have a strategy okay so the problem is the solution but you want to then you're going to incorporate this into your scratch program you know three buttons that I'll incorporate into it okay so how long have you been working on this so far I've worked on it for like I've worked on it three days or four days okay and then how long do you think it'll take you to wrap and do the rest of the coding to add the information in 20 minutes oh my gosh this will take Mr. Blaine probably the rest of the week so that is pretty awesome thing thank you so much for sharing what do you like most about sharing your learning in this way I feel like I need to put my computer and all the work that can be done right yeah it's really cool that Mr. Miller gives you that choice to be able to share what you know in that way yeah I love it thank you so much sir appreciate you sharing your work with us thanks Karen alright partnership that we have so we have many partnerships within the local community as you've seen we also have many national level partnerships one of those is with south con so south con and con academy so we were one of five school districts in the nation that piloted one of his new programs called math accelerator so we're going to be having a live conversation with Sal right now where we're going to be able to talk to him about innovation something that's really important to us here in PBUSE is that we're always innovating and doing new and important things for our students so Sal thanks so much for being here I'm sorry we're running a little bit late you can't see them but you have about a hundred people looking at you right now and then we're streaming as well and so you'll have many more people that probably thousands that are going to be watching so thanks so much for being here at our state of the district and so you know a little bit about us because we were one of the school districts that you selected for math accelerator so you know that we really appreciate innovation and creativity so I just wanted to kind of start off and just ask you what do you rely on how do you gain inspiration for all of the creative and innovative solutions that you have for students and the community yeah well first of all thanks for having me and I definitely want to give you all kudos we see a lot of school districts around the country and actually around the world and y'all are actually one of the most innovative and capable districts that we have seen around so we're honored to be here but on the issue of creativity my view and I think this affects education but it also affects us as adults I think all human beings are inherently very very very creative and I think the secret is how do we make sure that we don't stifle it and how do we make sure that there's space for that creativity and so even in my day today you know I try to have three hours where it's less structured I think many folks I'm sure you're in the same position it's easy to get your whole day scheduled you're dumping from one these days Zoom meeting to another Zoom meeting and if you're constantly running from one to another it's very easy to not have space to take a step back to make dots connect the forest with the trees the other thing I do is and I've been doing this a lot lately I did it mainly to manage stress but I found it's actually helped my creativity a lot and it's a great way to meditate you know there's the adage if you don't have time to meditate for 10 minutes you should meditate for 20 I definitely take that to heart because not only does it not only does it make you a little bit more aware of yourself but I find that when you just try to steal your mind your mind actually will create some pretty interesting connections and for me there's different types of creativity different types of entrepreneurship if there's an idea I'm eager to try it out experiment learn from it as quickly as possible and then iterate from there I don't know if that's helpful but I just have to think about it so we know that you are one of the one of the key innovators on personalized learning one of your with Khan Academy and MAP Accelerators really looking at what the student needs and then trying to as accurately that instruction what do you think are some of the next steps on personalized learning where do you see we're trying to get an insight scoop here where do you see things going in terms of personalized learning and learning and personalization yeah first of all the word personalized learning is used a lot in education it can mean different things to different people some people associate personalized learning with if we're going to get a word problem you like baseball I like basketball but maybe we see a word problem that's personalized to us there's other forms of personalized learning too but the version of personalized learning that we believe strongly in and it's connected to this idea of mastery learning is that everyone has a unique set of things that they've already mastered and things that they might have forgotten or they just never learned in the first place and everyone is ready to learn at different paces and actually even though oftentimes we try to judge people on how quickly we learn something I always point out that slow does not actually necessarily mean not smart in fact to some of the people who take the most time to learn something is because they are really internalizing it and then they can make some creative leaps to our previous conversation and we know in a traditional academic school system and it's at no fault of the system because it's really a compromise that had to be made if you wanted to be reasonably economic and we've been doing this for 200 years is we'll put students together 25, 30, 35 students and then we try our best as educators to give them lectures do practice, in class practice out of class practice but every teacher will tell you that those 30, 35 kids are all at different levels all with different gaps and oftentimes the things that's holding some kids back it isn't that the instruction they're getting and say sixth grade isn't good, it's because they have some gaps from third grade the number of classrooms I've visited around the country where there's a handful of kids who just haven't mastered their third grade multiplication tables or whatever else, that becomes really hard for that sixth grade teacher to be able to address that and so what we've always focused on and I've always been very clear about this if I had to pick between an amazing educator and amazing technology I would pick the amazing educator every time and then when you talk about technology it should never be technology for technology's sake that's a temptation that a lot of folks in Silicon Valley where I am tend to do here's something cool, now let's figure out something, it should be the other way around what's our pedagogical goal so the pedagogical goal is 30 kids, 35 kids in a room 25 kids in a room how do you reach everyone where they are and then actually how do you unlock in classroom experience so it can facilitate more human to human interactions and so that's where Khan Academy has been very focused that's where Map Accelerator has been very focused in terms of what's coming up next we're just continuously looking at the data seeing how we can make our content better more engaging for students how we can improve the recommendations how we can make the teacher dashboards more actionable and how we can extend these ideas to mastery learning to more and more subject areas math is where we are most deep right now but we're doing a big push in science now and I hope over the next few years we can go into things like reading comprehension and other things another thing that I'm really excited about right now it's early days is how can mastery on Khan Academy connect to opportunities in the real world at the high school level we're actually embarking on a pilot with Howard University many of y'all probably know College Algebra major dating factor for so many kids most kids in America when they get to college don't even place into College Algebra they place it into remedial math and College Algebra really is just 10th or 11th grade math and so what we're doing is we created a mastery based course called Howard College Algebra configuration of Algebra 2 and we're taking it to Title I high schools mainstream high schools these are not the kids interested to take AP tests and we're going to see if the students get mastery on that Howard's going to give them transferable college credit so whether or not they go to Howard they will get that college credit out of the way before they frankly even have a chance to drop out of high school so that's just the beginning of it if it obviously works for College Algebra it could work for many other things also exploring ways that kids can help them for college admissions there's obviously a lot of debate about standardized tests but can that mastery on Khan Academy be a signal that college admissions or even employers can index on? piece of advice to the community that's out there too we have community partners and also administrators staff here what's one piece of advice that you would give them about supporting students I think the biggest piece of advice is it's very involved in these things the growth mindset the growth mindset is this idea that you have a fixed or growth mindset fixed mindset folks say I'm either good at math or I'm not I'm either good at running or I'm not while some of the growth mindset says well this is where I am now but I really won't know my potential unless I step out of my comfort zone be willing to fail and failure should not I should not take that heavily I should view that as an opportunity to learn look at the failure and then keep going failure should not be stigmatized it improves their academics it improves their life outcomes and it's good to reinforce students remind them that failure nothing wrong with failure that's actually when you grow the most your brain is like a muscle the more you use it the stronger it gets so even though we adults say this to students I think it's very important for we adults to model this for students so this goes into the it's very important for us to be willing to take experiments and if we happen to fail that's a good sign that's a sign that we're pushing ourselves from this failure and then we keep going and then the students will see that and say hey okay I can start to internalize this growth mindset as well and also as the more that we work with students the more that we can push ourselves to give students a second or third chance if a student gets an 80% on a test and wants to get to mastery it's not cheating to give them another opportunity maybe you need to give them a different test and that's what we try to do in Khan Academy as well we can give different items from 90 to 100% that's actually the exact right behavior that we want to motivate it's consistent with the growth mindset so I'd say model it ourselves as adults and make sure we have a lot of space for students to actually be able to live in it great thank you for your partnership thank you a few other innovative practices that we're doing here in PDUSB as we as we move forward into the 21-22 school year which if you can believe is almost a third over already so time has been flying by as we as we move it forward do you guys like the interaction that we had we try to keep it lively for you guys we show not tell what we're going to do so we have been doing quite a bit of tours for the Imla Lodaki Foundation and one of the things that we've been starting to see is that we're really aligning our district vision to community aspiration so whether a community has been asking of us we are finally moving in that same direction so whether it's life lab that you already heard about where we're going to ensure that not just a fortunate seven have it or nine have it but 16 schools have that support for them you also saw part in the video in the CARES video you saw a little segment of CESAC Chavez students doing Latino Youth Film Institute so that's a process in which it starts at Starlight Elementary goes to CESAC Chavez Middle School and then on now to PBHS so we have high schoolers all the time that say let me learn what I want to learn what I want to learn why do I have to do English 9 why do I have to do biology and so what we're now trying to do is really ensure that students are able to follow their passions and interest in talent and so Latino Youth Film Institute is one example of that so no longer does that set of students have to do English 9 they don't have to now get themselves on a pathway that leads them hopefully to be able to follow their passions interest and talent and you heard about the Emeril Lagasse culinary arts kitchen so we were our one of five in the nation these five seem to be a good number four we were number four but it's now number five that received a half a million dollar grant from Emeril Lagasse in order to be able to have an industry level kitchen at one of our elementary schools and so students will be able to learn and cook within a 1500 square foot kitchen that's almost the size of my condo so that's a big location and then they're going to be able to go out into an enormous garden that allows them to be able to understand the community in which they learn be out into the air and really be able to not only have math science involvement but also be able to nourish their hearts and souls as well at the exact same time and so CT expansion so career technical education so sometimes these people aren't hearing the words ROP much anymore they're like they don't do things that are practical it's actually the opposite it's actually the opposite of that so Julia Gertz who is here is our coordinator of CT and two years ago she took this project on she took this initiative on and we have thousands and thousands of high schoolers who are now in programs that allow them to do and learn what they want to learn right and so we are really fortunate you saw some of that in the video so you might not have thought oh wow you have forensic science going on yes you have biotechnology classes yes you have computer science classes yes right so all those classes are mint so that students start we're going to keep going down the let we have it at high school we're doing some at middle school and then now we're going to be going into elementary so that kids they can see all possibilities right we don't want children to only see the possibilities that currently in front of them but actually see the enormous possibilities that out there and they try things on so my son is currently just he's going to be graduating this May and he was all pre-med ready to go guess what he's doing his internship now 41 years old doing his internship now and guess what he's selling me I'm not so sure mom that's where I want to do right so four years of college later right he's making that aha moment I guess I'm glad that he's having a aha moment but it probably would have been great if he would have been able to do that during high school and said not really right so our goal is that we have students that can try things on right that can try things on but the most important thing is regardless even if they switch courses like even if my son switches courses he still has all these skills and knowledge that he can transfer to somebody else that's really important to him so it's all not all for not or at least that's what I say as a mom so we are so fortunate because we do have we do have over 60 partners who daily engage with us and our students and sometimes guess what our partners are the ones that connect with the families our most vulnerable families that we don't actually see so it's so important for us to recognize the work that all of our partners do because some of them whether it's at cab or second harvest food bank they go to them and they won't come to us but if we're partnering with each other then we will make those connections and then the families eventually will wind up coming to us and so last year at this very time I did a call to action to where I wanted us to really have all the community partners come together to work with the greater possible value counter compact and so we had over 30 partners who said we're going to do it we're going to sit down together and we are going to decide what is best for our students and community and how each one of us can be a piece of that and so you'll see we had an activity where people did different quotes and stickies and you'll see everything from bridging the school family divide is essential right collective impact we are stronger together or define an audacious unifying vision of the future which will align the resources and energies of the community right and so we as part of that are continuing the work with our first ever family engagement and wellness center which is going to open in December we want to open in December because we're going to be closed for three weeks the schools are going to be closed for three weeks and you know what we said earlier today we are the hub of the community so we want to make sure that our resources are available to our students and families before we shut down and so this wellness center is going to be open in the afternoons and it's going to be open on Saturday so that our families can have access to the two wellness center we're going to eventually have three maybe more our partners are like let's do more than three but we've committed three at this point this one will be at E8 Hall so there's seven portables there and we are going to be transforming that into a wellness village right and so PVUSP is going to be happy we're doing a phase approach so when December comes we're going to have this and then we're going to keep expanding but you'll see everything from mental services and intake through PVUSP, PVPSA which is a really extremely important partner to us and it's going to be doing the valour program and mental health services Community Action Board is going to be supporting us through the Luma and Soul Family Center services is going to be providing supports as well second harvest food bank through the USDA food pantry and then we have so many other community partners whether it's prepared meal kits right hot prepared meal kits so that people can come and pick them up or computer center support right and all that in one location so one stop shop in order to be able to support our families and so my call to action today is for us to recognize that together we can elevate the experience of every every student so I ask that if you haven't already joined the team at the Greater Pajano Valley Town Compact to do it because we're working together help us reach out to families to tell us of the supports so many don't know what is at their fingertips the services that we can provide them right so any contacts that you have please help them to know start talking about the wellness center let them know it's going to be up and running we are going to be doing a massive campaign around it and then just acknowledge our your collective power because together all the students that we are supporting and we're going to see they're peeking at us trying to come in the students that we're going to see right now they need our collective power and so thanks we're going to hear students and then we'll be done so thank you so much I'm going to introduce Susan Rossi our coordinator so she can introduce our students who are going to join us thank you I would like to thank Dr. Rodriguez and the Board of Trustees for really supporting the whole student and the arts are part of that you want so many more things than just art in arts in the arts the students who are coming to the program today I had the opportunity to get to listen to them and then hearing them talk and sing and all of that what a great way for them to be able to bond and become more confident in themselves and just getting up there and singing for a group of people that they don't know is another just my skill that we get so I really appreciate the growth of the program we as you can see five years ago when we first started this we had about a 30 second piece of music then we had band now we had choir we had Save the Music we have our students have the opportunity to have visual performing arts from early on and by 2024 as Dr. Rodriguez said they'll have the opportunity to have that from student art from 12th grade we are very very well lucky to have community partners if you have a chance in every floor of this building there's over 450 pieces of visual artwork that the PDA helped us curate and put up and so that's another beautiful show and there like I said it's on every floor of this building so take a second to walk down the hall if you can as our students grow our programs are growing and we're very happy to be able to provide that for our students the group that you're going to hear right now is El Sistema they run through extended learning and we are so fortunate to have them as a partner as well this fall in the next few weeks we'll be starting a community orchestra for a student community orchestra at EA Hall and that's going to give students the opportunities that want to deepen their musical skills they'll have an opportunity to do that through the community orchestra and it's just another way that our district is really embracing the partners that are coming to the table to work with our students and to grow it we're growing the Latino Youth Cinema project as well to acquire today if you guys brought tears to my eyes thank you and we're just so fortunate to have leadership that really wants the whole child to thrive I'm giving them a second and so these students are from Radcliffe Elementary this program's been going this is the fourth year now and it's a lot of the students from this program are now going to be a meet of the youth symphony that's starting and it's just been great to watch the change in the students last year during the pandemic I had the opportunity to go to a lot of art classes and art and music classes every day and it was just really interesting to see the students to hear them talk as they're doing whatever they were doing and to hear between each other and it was it just really made my heart happy to know that they had something that they could do every day to enrich themselves and to make themselves feel whole and I think that's one of the things that the arts provides that other curricular areas might not always have the chance but there is so much to do this I also have the opportunity to talk a lot to some recently and which has been great because as I was working with some flutes the other day I was like so how do you think that sound is developed where is that coming from what is it and why when you go high what's happening to the air when you go low what's happening to the air and then we started talking about the physics of sound and how that comes through and so there's so many things that you could connect and it's just been really a pleasant surprise Amalia you you're ready great thank you guys for having me thank you very much