 Let's call the meeting order at 6.30 p.m. Public comments? So consent agenda. Motion, I want to pull a new teacher contract because I didn't see any materials in the package. Okay, can you mine? Can you post? Okay, I've got consent agenda approved. Okay. Board business extended board meetings and retreat planning. So I sent around finalized dates which if memory serves are May 1 and June 5 with the retreat on June 19. And I talked to the VSBA and Susan can come on June 5 to do some communication. She said she was going to get in contact with you as well to hear your thoughts on what it should be. Okay. And so June 5, she's good to go. And then you and I can... Talk about May 1. May 1. I just got some really good stuff today. Okay, perfect. And then we'll also put together a draft retreat schedule and send that around wall in advance so we can all be on the same page about what's on that. So, any other questions on that? Otherwise we'll turn 20 minutes into 20 seconds. Just keep going. Chris, Kaby, Michelle, show up at an empty school at 7.40. We just sat super quick. What was the theme for May 1? June 5 was going to be communication. What were we thinking for May 1? Diversity equity. Yeah. Okay. Can I just ask... Are you hiring someone to come on May 1 to do that? I'm very tired. That's what I was just going to say. You don't have time. Greater on the corner. Greater on the corner. Well, besides that, I'm not sure there's enough time there than anybody that would do training on equity would say you haven't got enough time. Right. I think we have enough materials that we can do a nice opening salva to conversation. Can I ask you a question? I don't think you can get someone internally into who's just had a lot of experience with it. You could? Yeah. Mm-hmm. For future reference, Kaby Johnson is in town and she did do the high school training. Yes. What is the timeframe for having the health curriculum and substance abuse discussion? So we have to plan that either fold into the retreat or make it like a major agenda item on a meeting like tonight when we don't have much else. Yeah. I'm just putting in a vote for it being urgent. Yes. No, it's definitely one of the things we want to... So maybe May 15th? Maybe. Yeah. I would have Mike McCrath there too. Yeah. So maybe May 15th, the reason we didn't extend it is because Libby and I have a BSBA thing. Yeah. But if we don't have anything urgent, I was thinking maybe we could take May 15th and do it or make it an item on the board retreat. Okay. Any other questions about the board meetings or retreat? Do we have times for the retreat? I block out all day for the 19th and we can... We have a meeting technically scheduled that night so we could either do like a noon start and go and do it like after lunch and maybe like have, you know, pizza or something for dinner. Or... Why don't you decide what your agenda is? Decide how much time you need and then send out the plan. I mean, I don't think we want to do more than like a $7 or $8 block regardless. So, yeah. So it's just do we do like an afternoon evening thing or do we like an all day thing and stop at, you know, $4.30 or $5. So we did have public comment but since we have a light agenda and you're here, I'll open it up again quickly if you came here to say something. Yeah. No particular comment. Just your answer. Okay. Thank you. Thanks. So thinking outside board meetings and retreat planning, let me now get more specific stuff together and circulate it after we meet next, which will be, I think after vacation, right? Yeah. I'll be in Florida next Wednesday. Fast. That'll be the first meeting. Maybe we can email somebody before Friday just so we aren't cold. So learning focus and hope and, I'm not here because suggestion on getting a Roxbury person who can certainly, who either could come to all meetings or maybe could just be the Roxbury representative at Roxbury. To be clear, I hope email that she's coaching a soccer team and this is her last time that interferes with the board meeting for the rest of this failure. So, I didn't just say she couldn't have. And before I have to fake that I read this, I'm going to admit that I did not. Super quick. Yes. Super quick board meeting. But I know others did. I just, I just know I've just got to read it on the plane and something came up, but I had to, I had to do something. Like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, it felt weird that we were going to put more readings in front of the board and this is one that has been on my counter in my office for a while with like, posted that said potential board reading. So we pulled this one up again. I went to a guy named Paol Gorski Gorski today. Who has done doing a lot of equity work in Vermont right now. And that was, that was a very good session today in uh, Roland so it was interesting to see him today But just like last time, we can open up to conversation around this article, what popped to us, what we questioned. I have some thoughts about it. One is that my experience with the kids is that it's really working, that this has been reinforced, at least in some. When you say it, what do you mean? I don't know how many years. Just basically teaching children that they don't have fixed potentials or fixed mindsets, that they actually are, that everybody fails before they succeed effectively. And I don't know how many years this has been part of what our teachers have been working with our kids on, but I feel like it has been. So I don't know how the adults are integrating into their own development, but they are teaching our children. And so my experience with the children is it's amazingly powerful. So I hope that our educators are also taking that to heart, too, or that they're feeling that same power for their own growth. Well, I guess that was going to be my question. How well do you think this point of view is being carried out by the faculty? Interesting you say that. Because one of the things Mr. Gorski said today was he was talking about a deficit mindset, and that often being a reason for inequitable systems and how that shows itself. So oftentimes, it shows itself when people say things like, when educators, with all good intentions behind them, and I'm not going to, but with all good intentions, we'll say things like, well, a child can reach, we can get to reach their own potential. So who's defining that, right? So right there, you're already in a deficit bucket, potentially deficit bucket. Or the idea of they don't do their homework, so they must be lazy. When you start giving excuses that blame kids or blame something about the kids' life rather than looking at it deeper into the system and structure around it. What would you need to get your homework done? So every one of our teachers, I bet money that every one of our teachers says, yes, I have a growth mindset, and I teach growth mindset to my kids, and I have my growth mindset myself. And we also have this mentality, not from all teachers, but we have a deficit mentality from some. And we actually, as a leadership team, I promise I won't come in here this entire conversation, we did a check, like we did an exit ticket one day, and the exit ticket was something along the lines of, respond to the statement, all kids will learn because of what we do. And so educators responded in many different ways, and the leadership team put their responses on in a continuum. So now we have this learning progression of where teachers' belief systems are along this mindset. With the end, one end being, all kids will learn because of what we do. We will not allow any child to fail. We will make the structure and system in place to work with every child to, every kid has a right to fail. Basically, the idea that I can't drag the horse, what's that saying about the horse and the trough? The water? You can't bring the horse to water, but you can't make him drink. Exactly, yeah. So we have this like, wide, and granted, we are more top heavy. That's where we want to be. We're more top heavy, but we still have some belief that I can't, if a kid doesn't want to do it, I can't make them, you know, like that mentality, which is that deficit mindset. So it's an interesting article. But outing anyone, I mean, is you did this with your whole staff, your whole team. Did you notice any trends in terms of grade levels? Yes. I mean, I almost don't want you to say it. The end size is too small. We analyzed it in multiple ways. We analyzed it by school. We analyzed it by grade level or content level. I was surprised by the results for a couple pieces. I mean, my kids are at the younger end of that spectrum. And I got to say, I don't hear it. I don't see that coming out of, I mean, I hear criticism of my children, but it's not based on that, right? It's other things. I can tell you traditionally, elementary and primary teachers will say, if they're not at the end of, yes, they will learn because of what we do. They are at the position of, all kids will achieve at their level. I will get them to wherever they will, you know, where we're going. Right, that's what an elementary teacher will say. If they're not here, that's where they are. A high school teacher, if they're not here, will say, every kid has an opportunity to fail, right? I can only do so much. So there's definitely themes there. And that's not just with our school district. No, no, no, of course not. That's like across school. That kind of seems to recognize that there's more maturity going on in high school. So assigning more responsibility to the students. For their own failure. I'm not agreeing with it. I'm just saying, that would be an odd thing to say. A really odd thing to say about a six-year-old. Right? Yes, that's true. I can see the words coming out of the map of a high school teacher. Yeah. Yeah, we sometimes forget in high school, they're older, you forget that they're still kids, right? They totally are, yeah. Especially some of our kids, they're pretty darn articulate kids. So it's interesting. I mean, how do you deal with failure? Because failure is, I mean, it's trite, but you learn a lot more from failure, oftentimes in success. Often if you're a kid, somebody needs to help you. Somebody needs to help you. Do that learning. If you fail, it can be devastating. And you begin to think you can't do it. But sometimes if you fail, you can be devastating if you don't know how to fail. If you don't know how to mouse back from the failure and grow from the failure, as you can see. You're right. If you're kind of taught that success is the only result and maybe the only result you're used to, then how do you deal with failure? Well, so that's what this was about. It was a fixed mindset. If you encounter failure, you think that it's because of your inherent qualities that you've reached, you've been told you're smart and if you're not getting it, then maybe you're not really smart. Because you were never told that, oh, it's all right. Sometimes you need to work harder at this or you might need to ask for help in this area if you're not getting it the first time around and figuring out avenues to grow. And so I really felt like that's what this whole thing is about, is how do you approach those challenges and how do our teachers approach those challenges? Yeah, but from my very just quick read of this and from other times I've read her, I think there's another flip thing to it. Sometimes it's not, sometimes I think with a fixed mindset, it's not so much that you can't deal with failure. It's that you put a cap on your own limitations that you operate within a very defined set of expectations and you don't know how to push them because you kind of feel that you don't have the ability to fail and bounce back, that you just, I'm only gonna do so well, I'm only gonna do so much of this or I can only do so well at this. And you don't have, and it becomes reinforcing where you, therefore you just don't push yourself. It's not that you fail, it's just that you don't, you hit what you think is a wall and you stop before you get to it. Right. Well, getting twos kind of repeatedly over many years can also hit you that way too. It's the same, it's a message of not overcoming. It's a very interesting message that happens. So I have a question. So how, you know, when I talk with, so my wife's really, and Carol Dweck in this whole train of thinking and her friends who are teachers or administrators are also very, like she is like the go-to person in education right now, it seems, in terms of like this. In terms of mindsets. In terms of mindsets. But are there teachers who are like, yeah, this is kind of, so I'm not exposed to them, but I imagine there are some teachers who are like, yeah, I don't prescribe to this. I'm not sold on this. Are there, do you encounter that ever? To, no. To growth versus fixed mindset. No, no teacher will tell you. No. Okay, I haven't encountered that. They will, like it goes back to what we were saying before. It's masked in different ways, right? So I pulled up the proficiency skill that we made and these are absolute common, like we didn't make these up as a leadership team. We took them right off the paper from what teachers said. So on this end of the scale, we got some of the evidence we got. All kids learning at high levels is an impossible task. 100% is unrealistic. Outside factors are to blame for students not reaching high levels of learning. So as soon as you start blaming something else in a student's life, other than the structures and systems that we create in schools, then already you're at a fixed mindset in some way. Like if you connected to Dweck's work for students. The next level up was we can get many kids there, but not all. Students have to be ready to learn before we teach them. That's another elementary line. That's a big time. That's an elementary line. Labels are necessary to get students the help they need. The students can, so the next one up was students can learn to their level. There is no one definition of high levels of learning that could match every student. Subjective levels of achievement are reached through modifications and accommodations alone. Then the next one. Wait, what was that one? Say it again. Subjective levels of achievement are reached through modifications and accommodations alone. So that means students couldn't reach whatever bar we set. That's where the subjective comes in without modifications and accommodations. The next one up was together we can move more students to high levels of learning. A system of collective responsibility will work to get more students learning at high levels. The system is working for most students. And then at the end we had no challenges too big for our team. Labels are not needed to define students. We will do whatever it takes to make high levels of learning happen for all students. So we had a gamut of responses to this exit ticket. So that comment that says there's no single definition of a high level of learning is interesting. What is your reaction to that? So that was a big debate. Because that's like, so when you become an educational leader, you stand on pedestals, right? That is my pedestal that I stand on. That is the one that I want to get us, Montpelier-Roxbury, to all students learning at high levels of learning. But we had to talk about what does that mean, right? So it means, so in my mind you have to have some sort of drop. So it means that a kid has achieved proficiency in all of the requirements to get to some sort of secondary learning and above, right? So they've learned, they've gotten to that point. So it's usually algebra two. They have quality essay writing. They're speaking and listening is good. They know how to find information from it. You know, like all of those kind of things. But some teachers, right? Well, not everybody's gonna take AP classes. Well, no, yeah, you're right. Not everybody is gonna take it. Like that's not a definition of high level learning for all students. So we had lots of conversation around that. And then we had also conversations around all students. What does that mean? There's a very small percentage of students who have significant needs that have a different plan, that have a different plan for them. And the percentage of those students that we should really be like, that kind of taken out of the all is about 2% of our population. Like it's five students in our entire school district, right? And so when you start thinking about that piece, that's where all the labeling comes in, right? And well, the kids on an IP, they're like, you can't possibly expect them to get to algebra too. It's like, yeah, I can. So we really have some work to do around this piece. That's why I've spent so much time, we've spent so much time this year talking about culture. And what is it? What are our practices and procedures and structures and systems in the school that are helping us get to where they are or hindering us from getting to where we need to be? Would you mind maybe flushing that out a little bit more? I think when I was reading this, I was thinking to myself, like you've talked about system changes and you're like, here's an idea that could be implemented within the district to accomplish something. Like how would that implementation come into action? I can tell you what happened just... We were talking about this continuum right now, like how do we get everybody to one side or the other. Oh, we're working on that, yeah. So I can tell you one piece of evidence that is already starting to shift that happened just last week at in-service at UES. So UES has a lot of curriculum work to do. That's not a secret to anybody. We've all talked about the level of curriculum work that needs to be done there. And they've gotten a lot done in math this year. So they're almost to a spot that's relatively good in math curriculum. And I'd add Roxbury on to that. But this is just a UES example. And at the staff meeting, they have their priority standard and what Ryan had them do was say, okay, so here are your priority standards. When we say it's a priority standard, what we're saying is we are guaranteeing all kids will reach proficiency in these standards. And the list per grade level is six to eight standards. So we've thrown some standards out as nice to know or they're learning targets within a bigger standard, but we're certainly not taking the entire third grade common core in math and saying we're gonna guarantee this entire document because that would take probably three years of schooling in order to get all kids math. It's just not possible, right? So they pick the priority standards for each grade level in math and then Ryan said, okay, so if you were gonna pace this out throughout a year, like how long would it take? Like here are your six priority standards in math, like pace that out, how long is it gonna take to teach kids place value in second grade for your standard, right? And so all the grade levels did that and they all did it in a separate chart paper and then they put it all up together, okay? And one particular grade level, and I'm not gonna single them out because that would be mean, one particular grade level looked at their chart and looked significantly different than the other charts because there were things like, well, we don't start any new learning for the first month and a half of school or we have multiple things coming into, multiple like outside art projects coming into our grade level. So we're not really sure, we'll give place value two weeks, but it was really different than the other grade levels, but they put it up and without anybody saying any word, the grade level said, hold on, took their chart down and then went and had another discussion around, oh, maybe we can't take a month and a half of note, like, wait, hold on, you don't do that? And they started talking to their other colleagues. And so right there, there's a shift in thinking already happening that like, oh yeah, we're required by law to ensure these standards. And so that's a big shift, that's a huge shift for UES. That curriculum work is the beginning. So we need to make sure that we have a K-12 articulated prioritize standards and everything else bumps off of that. So that was just the principal and the teachers. So Mike Berry was not involved in- He wasn't involved, he was involved in creating the curriculum document. He wasn't involved in that particular in-service. But he's been very integral in doing the curriculum work itself. So she used that as an example of a culture shift and more of an adoption, a cultural adoption of the principles you're trying to get across. I mean, I'm trying to understand, I think your question was, what are the tools you're using to make the transition? So I can talk about this at nauseam for a long time. So shut me up when I'm starting to get too technical. So when you have these prioritize standards, right, and we can say these are the ones we're guaranteeing, so now our shift of how we do tier two and tier three intervention, so that learning isn't the variable, but time is the variable. Right now, time is the constant, like I have two weeks to teach this or whatever, and learning is the variable. They may or may not get it in that two weeks. So we wanna flip that, and we wanna have systems and structures in place to do it. Right now, currently the way it is, Jim's a pretty loud teacher. He's got some kids with some reading struggles, so he goes to the interventionist and says, hey, take my kids for, and the interventionist says, sure, I'll take them for three times a week for 30 minutes a day, and we'll do this program. Well, we've been doing that for years. How is it working for us? Right, it's not changing what's happening. So now what we say is, I'm the interventionist, and Jim comes to me and he can say, show me your formative assessments around the prioritize standard, because that's how I'm using the limited resource, the limited human resource we have in intervention right now, to target that, because we're guaranteeing that, right? And so that kid might need more time, they might need more specialized skill instruction, they might need to break it down differently, and so we get our interventionist really skilled at teaching our priorities and our universal skills, and that provides more opportunities for kids, right? So we can actually guarantee things happening. That's just an example, right? PLC time, professional learning time, or professional learning communities that our teachers are currently in, and all four of our buildings, we have these, they are now gonna be focused on, here's our prioritize standard, what's our common formative assessment? How are we looking at our data? What's our instructional cycle look like? Hey, Bridget, what activity worked for you? Cause you got, your kids knocked it out of the park. Like, my kids didn't, so what did you do? Like, let me come watch you, or even let's swap kids, because I can do some enrichment with these kids, but you did really well with that, so why don't you take these kids for the second time around? So now we can start to have those conversations before without a curriculum with the prioritize standards, teachers teaching, like you'd walk into four different fourth grade classrooms and you'd see four different math units going on at one time. So the question becomes what's tight and what's loose? What's tight is you're teaching to the curriculum that we've all agreed upon, right? That's tight. You're giving formative assessments based on the prioritize standards. How you teach it, that's so loose for me, cause I want Ryan to teach it different than Tina, so that they can have a conversation about what really works, you know? Like, that's where like professional growth happens with teachers when they can start talking about that. But the timeframe in which they're teaching it, the what they're teaching in terms of content, that's the tight piece. So all of these things start to stem off of each other, and that's when we start to narrow that gap of learning. So one of the sentences I liked was those who had a growth mindset said that they knew that the student could do better, encouraged the student to try harder, and gave the student specific suggestions for studying and learning strategies. So I didn't get it. If you're my teacher and you just say it again, probably I'm not gonna get it again. So that issue of what do I need to do to learn better? Somebody's, kids are learning how to learn. So somebody needs to give you a clue along the way about how do I study for this if I don't know how? Or how do I read this so that I can get out of it what I need to know? And that's a biggie too, I think. Just pulling up one other doc that we're kind of working on, so this is like total draft. I can't remember where I put it. When your kid comes home with a two and your kid comes home with a three, we actually have a proficiency scale that's gonna be tied to it. So you know what that means, right? The kid knows what that means, and it means the same for you two, right? No matter what classroom you're in. Right, and whether you're a behave student or a not behave student. That's the thing. So all of these things are intricately tied together. And once we have this piece in place, like I, because we do, I already know we do, but we don't have the system in place yet, right? And I've talked about that before. I'm not gonna add people to a system that's broken. So now we can start transforming our system a bit more, and then we can really see where our holes are for that piece. Can you expound upon that behaved or not behaved piece? Yeah, if you're a nudge, chances are you're gonna get lower scores than Steve is, who's a great kid. It's so hard as a teacher, because you kind of also connected to not learning. Let's say you're chronically getting your stuff in late, or missing it occasionally, and you get, you see in the provisions these scores, you get docked, and kid knows everything they're supposed to know, but they just don't play by the rules. Yeah. Well, and that's kind of why I went back to the failing thing, because I think it's, because there's a lot of actually very high achieving people who have very fixed mindsets. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. And it actually kind of goes to, you know, kind of the male, female, and the workplace thing. I mean, a lot of men tend to, even though there's a couple of lower grades and worse academics, they get into certain work environments, and they feel they can do jobs that maybe they can't do, and therefore they get into them. And it's, you know, there's been some studies that that kind of plays into some of the imbalance in the workplace. So like a fixed mindset and not doing well or failing are not always synonymous. I mean, it sometimes comes into those later places where you get someone who appears to be very high achieving and then gets into a challenge situation and that's where the fixed mindset gets in the way. Oftentimes that's a challenge with proficiency based grading too. That a kid who's always played the game of school really well and got an A's has twos, right? Because they're not in proficiency yet. So this is the, this is like total draft. So I don't have it to give out yet. But these are like the stages. So what we're working on right now is what are our focus stages for an effective MTSS model. So the first one is formalized essential learning that gets into the standard work that I just talked about, right? And so what we're doing is we're like our goals and what are the bulleted things that need to happen along that? You know we can't see that. No, I know. I'm just like pointing here. And then the next thing is specialized learning for the faculty. What's the learning the faculty need to do in order to understand this formalized essential learning? Right, because that's on us. We have to give them the, we have to build their capacity to do that. So we need to provide that for them. We being the leadership team and then what are the potential needs of our system in order to make that happen? And then for each of these pieces of our focus stages we're gonna have our own efficiency scale attached to it. So we're building this right now. So when I keep saying to you, we're gonna bring something to you. We're building this right now. The second one is collaborative practices and collective responsibilities. That's where all the PLC work comes in. That's where the data management system comes in. All of that piece. Time. Could you like do an example like horizontally? Sure. Collaborative practices are collective responsibility. So one of the things that we is in here is instructional cycles occurring around our priority standards. So the priority standards that are there, right? And so if we move over to specialized learning for the faculty, these are just like predictions. They may need some work on collaborative goal setting based on data analysis. So they may not need to look at a whole bunch of data that their kids are getting from formative assessments and say, what is it that we can do to make really small, tangible goals for kids to take the next step? And then a potential need is that data management system so that they can pull up data really quickly and don't have to fumble through papers to do it, right? And that I can do sorts at the district level and Mike can do sorts and principals can do sorts really quickly. So that's just an example of like going across, right? The next one is timely system to remediate, intervene and enrich. Right there, we need faculty learning on what those three things are, right? So remediate is the tier three. They've got lots of gaps in learning and they're the universal skills whereas intervene is they're, they need more time with that priority standard and those things are very different. And then to like, we can't forget kids who need enrichment as well, right? Around the priority standards. So in there it's, we need clearly defined roles and tiered intervention and with that, we need to increase our instructional capacity of our intervention as big time and another, and then potential needs might be increased our human resources and core content intervention. So it's kind of working its way across in that way, does that make sense? And then the last one here is high quality first instruction. So in that is we need articulated instructional framework that we can say welcome to Montpelier Roxbury. This is what we believe is high quality instruction and this is how we're gonna train you to get there. And then we have the indicators with that is the connection to the supervision evaluation system and then we're gonna need a lot of intentional professional learning around that piece. So this is what we're building out and what this is not a one year thing. This is a five, six year thing and schools need to come in where they are, right? So again, it goes to tight loose. This isn't a choice, that's the tight part but Pam at Main Street might say we really need to dig into this collaborative practice piece. So that's gonna be our focus at Main Street. I don't know if that's what she would choose but that's like, let's just say she does that. So then at the district level, we can say, okay, what are we gonna do with our professional resources to ensure that we build the capacity at Main Street that they have the resources, the funding, the time and all that kind of thing to make that happen because it fits within our overall goals and we kind of control the money pop, right? So that's all tighter and more defined. So I have thought in the past that the Montpelier faculty, as good as they are and I believe they're very good, have not had quite so specific a curriculum. So how are they doing with that? They're good at developing. Oh, they haven't been pushed to do yet. So I'm talking from the elementary, middle school level. They're very good at developing and talking. We're starting to formalize on paper. However, they have not actually put it into practice, like put a tight curriculum into practice yet. They have curricular stuff that they're doing of course but it's just very different regardless or depending on which classroom you go into. So with all the essential work you're doing around the curriculum, getting your curriculum down for let's say math, is there ever time to go work on the curriculum for part or? Yeah, they're doing that work too. They are, or the curriculum for like social studies which is so hard sometimes. Social studies they haven't, we haven't touched at because the state adopted a year and a half ago, two years ago, C3, which is a new standards document and it's like the worst written, I mean, I don't think the standards are bad in it but it's like a very hard, that's gonna be the last work we do quite honestly. Art, PE, music, all of the, whenever Mike is in front of the whole staff doing an in-service, they're working on their curriculum as well. And we're working on how do we get it vertically articulated across, that's much harder than you think and that's not unique to us. It's hard in every district to get our teachers all sitting down and talking across K-12. Well I mean vertical and social studies is brutal. Social studies is one of the hardest curriculum areas to do this work in. It hands down because you get into debates of things like as an American what do you have to know, right? And it gets to content versus case study, it's hard. Social studies is hard. That's why their document is so bad. Yeah, it is because they couldn't make those decisions so they're like we'll just let the schools make those decisions, thank you very much. To be noted, to go back to Steve's point about the arts, there's some discussion in here about how the brain, the brain growing, the scientific basis for the growth lines have been brain growing new connections and I was thinking about how so much of that research involved music, yet in some ways music is one of those areas where there's so often that reaction of you're talented. Awesome. Yeah. You're not. Yeah. It's a very, right? It's a good language too. And for a long time. Yeah, it's a good language. Yeah. Whether you're enabled, whether you can do it or not. I was told by the third grade music teacher that I had no musical talent and she'd stop taking it. Oh, don't tell me that. And then I did. And that's a good point though because when we talk about growth and fixed mindset, every one of us, like I'll say, I have a pretty growth mindset, right? I make a whole lot of mistakes and I admit to it and then I learn from it, right? But I am so fixed in certain areas. Art, for me, I don't even know if a teacher is that, like I don't want to be better at art. Like I have a very fixed mindset. I'm fine with my stick figures. Thank you very much. You know, so we all have areas where they're growth and fixed, right? And it's not. Well, you don't have to put yourself that high. Yeah. And like. That helps our relationship. There's no competition for us. Yeah, and let's be honest. I mean, to some extent, the growth mindset thing is a bit of a fiction. That's a helpful tool. I mean, you just, yeah, there are, I see it was running all the time. I mean, there are just people who, without training much at all, can go out and effortlessly at a six minute pace. I'm sure. Huh? I think it's a little bit different though that you're talking about racism. But I think even, yeah, I mean, not everyone is going to be an Einstein, as it was pointed out in here. Oh, you're going on the low end of the low end. A deficit model. A deficit model. But, you know, people are going to excel in different areas and have different interests. And the reasons you talked about those guys excelling just before with the fixed mindset is an example of them. They have the growth mindset, right? No, no, no, no. I'm talking about the example you gave of people with the fixed mindset guys excelling, who didn't do well in school excelling. They're beneficiaries of societal power structures and gender dynamics that have advantaged men over women. Oh, I totally agree with that. I totally agree with that. I totally agree with that. That's not like, I don't view that as a very good example of how a fixed mindset can help you excel. Those are other societal elements that help them excel. No, there are definitely other excelling elements, but there are definitely some gender studies that, and I think this is part of kind of how we, and I think it plays into those societal things where oftentimes women are more likely to say things, if they don't do all the tests, that it's because they weren't smart enough or as the men will say, yeah, they didn't try hard. So the men are the ones with the fixed, the growth mindset you're saying generally. Well, I'm saying that fixed mindset, that learning how to fail, kind of going back to learning how to fail, is important to a growth mindset, that getting past that point, that you can be high achieving in an academic setting and have a fixed mindset, and you can be low or medium achieving and have a growth mindset or at least not have the impediments. And I think you're right, I think it's societal messages we send to men and women that I think it probably goes to some bigger issues about how our education system is set up and some gender-based disease there, too, because right now women are performing much better in school and they're going to college at much higher rates and that's not yet reflected in the workplace power structure. I was listening to a podcast today and the card down back from Rutland and the person on the podcast said something like, success and failure are the same coin. Like it's not, those two things go hand in hand with learning, which is really interesting. And I always think about this thing, these kind of ideas of how are we going about our own learning? I don't care if you're a kid or a teacher, right? So my kid really, my oldest really struggles in math and had the I hate math, I can't do it kind of thing. So we sat him down, wouldn't you love to be my kid? We sat him down with YouTube videos, showing him how synapses form across multiple tries. And you know, like, he could talk to you about brain synapses because that's where we went with him, but it changed his mentality about math. You know, like, okay, I get this, like things are far apart in my brain right now and they need to come closer together. And I think it's, I think that's really helpful for kids to know, especially, well, I'm not even gonna say that, kids who are really good at playing school need to know that because oftentimes the things that they're rewarded for their synapses being really close to might not be the things they need to be talked to, you know? And then you got Jakey who's struggling with math and you know, that really helped him persevere through some challenging math content. There's a beautiful TED talk that you probably know that some educational professional talking about using skateboarding as the explanation of this and he's showing the skateboarders in a park missing the trick, missing the trick, missing the trick, falling on their butts. And he's like, now, how we do this in education is we give them an F every single time they fall on their butt. And he goes, and then one day they nail it. And then we give them an A. And he goes, that is, what is wrong with that picture, right, and that's how we reward children in a sense. And you know, you fail, you fail, but if you think of it like a skateboarder, it just clicks and you just have to keep trying. And I can't remember what it was, but it's just a beautiful thing. And skateboard culture doesn't have that sense if I can't do that trick, right? Right. I just want to say one thing about, to give props to the teachers in this district, I have a daughter who struggles a lot literacy and it's not in her vocabulary that she can't do it. And it's just not part of, you know, it's hard. It's hard, you know, it's discouraging. It's just, she does not say I can't do this, ever. It's great. And that means that she's never been getting that message. Right, right. So it's, you know, I think that it'll, she will overcome the fact that you said that time is the variable is really important. Yes. And when we think about the continuity of the curriculum through the grades, you know how important that's going to be as you keep your two up to the end, right? And then you move into the next grade and you still got that, you started at the deficit, right? So anyway, just, I mean, I think that there's a lot of great stuff going on. Yeah. You know, even if it's not fully permeated, right? Yeah. And we, and I agree with you, Steve. There was, it was during, I wish Michelle were here, because she's, she heard this, during the principal interview with our two students who were on the interview committee, they, without talking to each other or anything, it was one of the candidates said, what's great about your school? And both of them talked about the exact same teacher in a different context about how this teacher sat with them during that summative week, you know, where kids, there's a typical school and one guy said, I sat with that teacher every single day and she got me through it. Like she, she sat there with me for six hours a day for five straight days. And then the other students said this, yeah, that same teacher, I would have never taken this AP class, but she said I could do it. And so I tried it and I love it. And I'm thinking about going to school for it now. You know, like it was, like those kind of things are what gives you goosebumps, you know? To touch upon what these three were, we're saying, I feel like welcoming failure and teaching our students to welcome failure and learn from failure and put yourself out there and be okay with failing and understand that failing is part of making ourselves better and realizing a better version of ourselves is something that, I think we talk about regularly fostering even, helping students foster their interests and passions. It's really important, but really kind of looking at it head on as, failure is an important part of the learning process. I think it comes in with music and in foreign language especially because you really put yourself out there. Other people are hearing you. And so if you put yourself out there and you fail, you pronounce something incorrectly, you hit a wrong note, whatever, it's really apparent, but it's those opportunities that allow us to learn and allow us to grow and allow us to pronounce those words and string together those sentences and other languages and play those songs and hit those notes. And how are we modeling it as adults? How often do we admit to our shortcomings? It just takes myself on a regular basis right now. Or we can get out of your comfort zone. Yeah. The kids are like, let's dance or try the hulu if I'm right, I ain't trying the hulu. I think that's a wrong message. I think it's a hulu. Yeah. Anyway, good conversation. Although singing sometimes it might be okay to have that. I don't know. Yeah. I can grab that. It smells like my son. Yeah, I thought that you re-educated it. I could probably do the re-educating of you. Sat in the room with me for half an hour. You want to move on to policy? Yes. Do you want to jump in? Yeah, so I brought this to Jim's attention. This came from my principals, particularly Pam and Mike in the upper grades. So we have a high population of students who are identifying as transgender. And one of the things they're coming to, and this actually is happening a little bit at the elementary school as well, they're coming to the administration asking for a school to call them by different names. Which is absolute, and our school, our social workers have been working on a policy to ensure that that's, or a procedure to ensure that that's okay. And our school staff has jumped to the, I mean they do it regularly. And so, but one of the challenges that we were talking about in our leadership team was, is the parent, so where does it go for official school business, like progress reports, report cards, that kind of thing. So, and if both parents are married or divorced or they're not living together, or they're just not around and progress reports go to both entities and one parent doesn't know. And so then it's an opportunity for a conversation and that kind of thing. But when I was talking to Jim about it, I think we're doing the right thing right now with this and following student wishes and that kind of idea. However, I could foresee and the principals could foresee if we would like to request the board to write a policy around this. And there's a voluntary policy on the VSBA website. We'd like to request the board to dig into that and to perhaps have a policy because we have the right procedure in place, but we don't have the board backing from it right now. So we feel like it would put us in a stronger position for supporting all students and what they're doing if we had a board policy around this particular issue. And so this is an issue that strikes me as one that isn't necessarily specific to transgender students. Is that correct even though that might be where you're seeing the issues right now? Because if you have a student name, you know, if you have a student who's not transgender, let's just take an example of a student named Samantha who wants to go by the name Terry. Wouldn't that be a similar situation? Good, we're not experiencing that right now. I know we're not experiencing that, but I'm wondering if the policy should be broader. I think that's something for the board to discuss. I would say that's something the board to discuss. We're experiencing it with students who are working through their gender identity and that piece. That's what we're experiencing. We're going through this in my work and taking care of transgender people in the community and in our own employment, too. And it's a very different whole. It's actually even different from your policies on LGBT, your broader policies, you know, working with a transgender person is actually separate from recognizing and respecting there's definitely a more public identity change. Wait, can you go into that a little bit more? Well, the healthcare needs are different from people going. So in my work, that's what we're focused on, is the healthcare needs. But we have employees undergoing transition, too, and who would wish to go by a different pronoun. And we have other employees who struggle with that. So we're working on it real hard entirely. I don't know what that... A policy would also state it so, theoretically, everybody would know it if they read the policies. So if we say we're going to honor a child who says, I wanna be called X, and in honoring that, we send all official documents by that name, it's up front. So if you as a parent didn't know, well, we have the policy that said it's not our responsibility to tell you it, we've said we're going to send them in this way. You know what I mean? It's written down. Now there's nothing written down. It also helps us protect the kiddo, too, who may not recognize, in that moment, of all the different legal pieces that are connected to that as well. So I think it... And I did take a look today at the VSBA model policy on this issue, and it really did focus almost entirely on this name piece. The Title IX laws help things can be proactively and reactively changed with names, who has the authority, the child, the parent, et cetera. Who does have the authority? Well, Libby's right, and again, I'm not the lawyer or the expert on the front, but from what I read and from what I understand, the district should honor whatever the student chooses to be called by. And then let's see, I think it does... It's up to the parents, still, to come back with the legal documents, I think. Libby, I'm sure you know more about it than I do, but... I don't at this point. I mean, this is new for us. Well, it's legally, it's a process for changing. Yeah, yeah. Until that policy would apply to any age child? Yes, and... To the child's wishes, well, I think that's what this board would wanna discuss once everybody has something in front of them, yeah. And what if you have a situation where there is a tension between the desires of the child and the desires of the parents or the parent? That's gonna have to be addressed. Part of the policy. I said if you have a tension... Yeah, I can pick what you say. It's going out to be addressed directly. In my work situation, we haven't yet had a child that we had to take care of with this. It's always been an adult making the decision, but I can imagine. It's even more than name, even so much as Sam could be a boy or a girl. It's about the pronoun, in my experience, it's about the pronouns that people use. He or she is very important to the person undergoing transition. And getting that right is really important as well. Surprisingly hard. Yeah. Yeah. A challenge. It seems like this probably goes very smoothly until you have a question of trust between parents or trust between children and parents in terms of privacy. Yeah. And then all of a sudden, everything falls apart in terms of how you communicate. Yeah. You just get a tacit agreement, I assume. Okay, what are we going to do here? Okay, let's all use that term. And then it starts to fall apart when people are nervous about their own safety or privacy. That's true. Thus far, our amazing principals and social workers have helped families have the conversation, which is what we want them to do. Of course. So thus far, it's worked out. It's been a little anxiety producing in the beginning, but the conversations are generally supported by our amazing staff. It's as it is possible, a child would feel more comfortable having this discussion at school than they would at home because they know what the reaction's going to be. So they have it at school and then home. Yeah. Sometime they have to have it at home. They're minors, so at some point, they just have to go home. Yeah. Is there anything else besides the name as far as that the policy that would be good to address in the policy? I would want Pam and Mike here and maybe the social workers to engage in that question with you because they are closer to the front than I am. So I would want them to, or I would want to have a good in-depth conversation with them before I talked about it. And do we have, we already have, gender neutral bathrooms, gender neutral locker rooms, et cetera, right? Mm-hmm. Actually, because this was on the agenda, it did come up and I asked Mike, so I would...