 My name is Michael Morris, I'm the superintendent of the Amherst Palom Regional School District and welcome to the latest episode of Window Into Arps. I'm so pleased today to be talking about a topic that's of high community interest, which is our grade span advisory group that is looking at options for where six grade students are educated in our community. And with me today, I'm pleased to introduce Juan Rodriguez, who is the facilitator of this grade span advisory committee, and Norm Price, who is a middle school teacher in our wonderful middle school. So thank you both for joining us. And I wonder if you both, I'll start with you, Norm, if you can introduce yourself and your role in the group. Sure. So I have a long history at the middle school. I started there in 1990, so I've been teaching there since then, and I saw it back when it was a junior high school and then transitioned to a middle school. With all that brought with it, which was teams and learning how to work on a team. So I've been there for a long time, seen a lot of changes, and I'm eager to think more about this potential change. Thank you, Norm. My name is Juan Rodriguez, and I have been a principal in an elementary setting and middle school. I've also worked in high school settings, and have worked with being a principal for 29 years in Massachusetts, different communities, and for the last six years I've been working with the Association for Middle-Level Education. That's the National Middle School Association, in which we mentor principals, we do workshops, we do conferences specifically geared to the young adolescent, which is that 10 to 14-year-old window that we're talking about. All right, thank you both for joining. Norm, before we go on to the next question, when you talk about what the middle school looked like, or the junior high school in 1990 when you came, what were some of, I mean, this could take the whole up, but what were some of the differences in terms of student population and grade span at that time? So, when I arrived in 1990, it was a 7, 8, and 9 school, so one year of high school was located at the, it's now the middle school, and so it was, then there was a larger population, so there are a lot of students there, you know, much bigger, I think, than it is now, I don't know the numbers, but it felt much bigger, and so it was that, that was one piece. So we had more contact with the 9th grade class than we currently do, and there wasn't, there was a team structure in 7th grade, but there wasn't one in 8th grade, it was much more like, sort of a, more like a 9th grade, sort of arrangement of classes, so that's, that's in a nutshell kind of how it worked. Thank you, that's helpful context, because I think for many people, myself included, I came to the district in 2000, and really 2001 more fully, and at that point, that change had already been made of, you know, the grade levels that were in our middle school, but it's, I think it's worth noting and interesting that we haven't always been a 7th, 8th grade middle school, that there's some, some differences in our history. Yeah. Matt, also, because there is no recent history, moms and dads are not familiarized with the possibility of 6th graders being included in the middle level, but when you look at it in Massachusetts or nationally, most schools are designed specifically for this age level, but it's not 6th, 7th, 8th only is, that's the larger number, because it does give continuity. The 7th, 8th is two grade levels only, and I think the three grade levels gives it a longer time for kids to get adjusted to that transitional time in their lives. Great. Yeah. And, and we'll get deep into that in a little bit. Before we do, could either of you tell us a little bit about the membership of the Grades Van Advisory, and, you know, kind of not by name, but, you know, what types of folks are on it to, to advise the district about potential next steps? Let me see if I can, certainly you know the community a lot better than I do. From my perspective, I think it's a terrific thing that the district is including moms and dads, including current staff members, community people in the conversation, because you have to look at it from multiple angles and gathering their perspective and collecting their wisdom, and you have a tremendous group of very smart and very committed people who are committing a great deal of their personal time, because this is so important, that it helps the district make the best decision possible when you gather such information from everyone. Fantastic. Yeah, I would just, I would just, I would say that's definitely true. I felt like I've met a lot of new people that I didn't know, and I was eager to meet a lot of the parents who are, who have children at younger, younger ages than I teach currently. And people from all different walks of life in the school district, there's folks from central office, people from the middle school office, there's, I think there's people from other staff members in the school, elementary school. So it's, it's a, it's been a really, I've been, I've found it fascinating to talk to them. And the other, the piece for me is, like you were saying, this point of view, that there's so many different points of view involved, and that's so important, I think, to try to listen to all those, because we all sort of come at it with a particular point of view, and hearing all these other points of view has been very helpful to me. Yeah, and the only thing I'll add on that is that it was important to us that we had invited, and we do have membership, not just for the town of Amherst, but also for the other towns in the region. So we do have a staff member from Pelham, as well as one of the towns that I'm not superintendent of in terms of Leverton-Schutzbury, and it was an invitation for any stakeholder in all four towns to participate, because it's, could be seen as an Amherst issue, but it also, there are three other towns in the region, and we want to be as inclusive as possible. So what are some of the, one of the things that, I'm a group member in full disclosure, but one of the things that we spent a lot of time, the first couple group meetings, is better understanding the middle level child, and not thinking so much about grade span or specifics, we'll get to that in a little bit, but really understanding the pre-adolescent mind and the life of a pre-adolescent, and so I don't know if either of you could speak a little bit about what are some of those characteristics that we want to know about, because we have to make the decision in the best interest of the child, of the children, of the students, and so we wanted to better understand, as a group, who these children are, where they are developmentally to best be able to fit them in a matrix of choices, so. And I think that was the first conversation we had, because all the decisions centered around how to best educate this age group, not just about the structure of the school or the grade makeup, it's really what makes the most sense. This particular age group is the Frenland Elementary, it's the Frenland High School, this is the second time in their lives that they grow the most, physically, emotionally, and in a way they learn. The first, the fastest is really newborn to two-year-old, and also they're growing in terms of their curiosity. They have the mental capacity that all of us have as adults to learn. They have the same capacity, however, their brains are not organized as efficiently as ours, and consequently they are practicing some things, certainly moms and dads are realizing that they want to be more independent, but yet they need structure at the same time. The peer group has a tremendous influence in their life, so it's a critical time of transition for them, so therefore their environment in which they learn has to be designed in a way that takes that into consideration, that age group, the way they learn, but also the capacity to learn, that they can do tremendous things. I love working with this age group, I find them to be extremely capable, given certain circumstances, that's why you have to create the context for their learning, and equally important with the context of their learning is the supports that they have from home, as well as moms and dads receiving support, especially if it is the first child going through the middle-level education. Anything you'd like to add from your experience? Well, I mean it's a really, I feel like I have the greatest job, because I get to work with this age, really, and I think everyone who teaches at the middle school feels that way, this age is something about, it's very special, you're catching them at this time of transition, but like you say, their mind is really awaking to all the different things that they can do, and as well as they're really paying attention to the social piece, but they also have this real curiosity and this enthusiasm for learning, so it's a very exciting group of kids to work with, and it is, I think, this idea that they are going through this big change, because I do see, even between seven and eight, I see a large change, because we do this thing where at the middle school we loop with them, we have them for two years, so I get to see them over that span, and it's remarkable how much they change from seventh graders to eighth graders. Developing some of these capacities, learning to have more control over their learning and more control over their concentration, and all of those things, they really grow in all those capacities, but they still are kids at some level as well, so they have that exuberance and that excitement over things, so no matter what you're doing in class, you're always able to capture some of that excitement that they have for learning, so it's a really nice group to teach. Fantastic, and so we'll get into what we've heard in terms of advantages or disadvantages of moving students, but what are some of the considerations, by considerations, I mean, what are the types of things that we've been hearing in the group about how to approach making a decision? What are different variables that the Gradesband advisory members are making as they think about this major decision for the communities to make? I'll start, just because I think one of the challenges of thinking about this is that every, you know, there's sort of these three points of view, student, teacher, parent, and within each of those groups, there's a lot of, they're each very different in terms of how they might think about this and how they might experience it, much less how the sixth graders and seventh graders and eighth graders will experience it, so I think the biggest consideration for me is to just keeping an open mind and listening to the different points of view that come up, because I feel like I'm learning so much about where each of these different stakeholders is coming into this process and thinking about it, and, you know, it's important to sort of think of this as this sort of wide open modeling phase where we're just imagining different possibilities as a, and hearing as many points of view as we can to try to address all the issues and concerns that people might have, but also the exciting possibilities too that might open up and not be limited with current models, but sort of how do we keep an open mind to all the different possibilities? I think that's a big consideration for me. Well, there's multiple issues at play here. One is not only making the best decision for learning for this age group, but you also have to consider enrollment issues, budgetary decisions, staffing decisions, so it does get into other conversations that are more complex and more in terms of the management of the environment, but the best decision starts with what is the best appropriate place for the child, the children to learn? When students are in the sixth grade, they're the oldest kids in the elementary schools, but yet they're ready for more, so have they maxed out their opportunities at the elementary level? Are there restrictions in that environment? Are there benefits to that environment that moms in that cherish? Because they have never had the sixth grade in the middle level in terms of the middle school as it currently exists, their concerns there is that the best decision. So that's one aspect. The other aspect is what would be the best decision in terms of programs for the whole middle school, where it is right now has a seven, eight to seven, but what happens when you introduce a sixth grade? Do you have, for instance, language for three years as a gateway to high school and much more advanced? Can the students get credits earlier in terms of the high school program? So therefore they can go with that to a college perspective. The other aspect is in terms of their learning capacities, can you expand the offering for students during school and after school? Because now you have a range of students. The other part is in terms of enrollment, if the elementary enrollment is growing, is it going to create difficulties at the elementary school that you no longer are able to meet all the students need? You begin to compromise by having the sixth grader at the middle school where there are different opportunities and if that design correctly, then it does create benefits for the elementary school. The other part is in assessments, in terms of the materials and the assessments that are geared right now, they're geared more for a six, seven, eight continuum because in terms of the state assessments, they're really more geared to that range than students in the sixth grade and the elementary school. So that's a consideration and that spawns all kinds of how you teach students, what do you teach them to what degree, et cetera. The other part is in terms of the high school. So that decision impacts on both elementary and high school in terms of the curriculum continuity, which oftentimes may not be discussed, but that is a major consideration that have been discussed in the group. Yeah, thank you. I think the other thing I'll add to that list is the, and it was touched on, but the physical space pieces and I think it's important for me to share that, and we're doing this today, we're taping this on November 18th and our meeting is following this taping, that we already, last year, the region wanted to study multiple grade configurations, primarily for financial reasons and so we had a team of designers and architects come in and take a look at, could kids fit in which configuration and what they were able to develop as a map of where students in grade levels would go if sixth grade would come up and the reality is they can fit what the architects found and there was an advisory group for that group as well. They can fit without structural or financial investment in the school and the school used to have more students than even in the scenario it would have in the future, but I just want to be really clear because I know that's a question that come up in the community and thankfully the good people of the four towns had requested that study to be done two years ago and so we're reaping the benefit of finance committee members and select board members from the four towns saying, do you want to study, could all the middle school or students fit in the high school and the answer was, yes it would cost a lot of money and could sixth grade fit up? Because this is a question that's been going on in our community for a long time. It's being studied more acutely and I think more thoroughly but it's not the first time in your time norm that I think someone's raised that question about sixth grade, how would it go? How would it fit? And we've had declining enrollment in our community because we have fewer children living in our towns and so what's possible now wouldn't have been possible 10 years ago because the populations are different so it is one of the variables that we've actually isolated and have really good information about and that's been great to be able to be passed that and digging into the academic program a little more readily. If I may add to that, is that many communities across the United States are going through this similar conversation what this situation has done is to do a lot more conversation and earlier study to make the best decision and also is that it will give you time to design the middle school program not look at it as it is right now as it is presently configured but it is gonna create some benefits given time and planning for those changes to occur so that to me is where you are ahead where other districts have had to scramble and make quick decisions and then reconfigure the schools you really are looking at that at the same time with the conversations that are being held. I think the space thing too, so when talking to people, one is how do we, because it's new to have the sixth grade in a middle school setting, to imagine that there's a question of where they would be and how do we, to what degree of the program's matched, how much are they separate, that's a big consideration. Physically, where are they, how do we do lunches and how do we manage the whole situation so that they have enough separation and programming that works for them or how much do they integrate with the program, what's the schedule we pick that all of those things are part of the conversation and it's a pretty, like you say, it's a very complex problem but it's a really fun one to imagine because there's lots of possibilities. So on that topic, what are some of the advantages and disadvantages perhaps that either you personally think of or that you've heard from the group, I know a lot of us so I'll be sure to show on the website for the Gradespan advisory so that people, hopefully it's on the bottom of the screen here so that people can go and look as all of our artifacts, everything that we've been done, all of our agendas are on a website so it's been open and accessible to the public but anything you'd like to share, I'll start with Norm on this one. Sure, I mean, I think the biggest, for me it's like we were talking about the characteristic of this age is that they're going through this big transition in their life and they're really growing and their brain's changing like crazy and I think it's a real opportunity to maybe, one of the advantages I see of a 6-8 model is that we would be able to have them longer at the middle school and have more of an opportunity for them earlier in this change process for them to make a connection to the community that we established there and have them become a part of it and then also just the idea that we're not immediately transitioning them out again which is sort of what seems to happen. It feels like that happens sometimes in the current model because they're just getting used to seventh grade and by the time they reach eighth grade they're beginning to think about high school so there isn't as much time to connect for the students or the parents so I think having that establishing a greater connection to the community I think is a really big piece for me and then of course you mentioned curriculum and I think that's so many of the state standards and for all the subjects I think they have a span that goes six through eight and there's connections that between six and seven that we can't necessarily use or take advantage of in the way we might. Our articulation point just because there's a variety of things that happen at different schools based on what everyone's doing and it's hard to, there's different models of how those things can align. We can do layers like this or we can have a real fully integrated model and it's difficult to do that when people are in different buildings. I mean there's an opportunity for staff to collaborate that doesn't exist now so I think that collaboration over curriculum over that six or eight span would be a real exciting thing that teachers coming from my elementary program would teach us a ton about how to work with young adolescents and I think hopefully we would have things to say as well and I think it would be a really rich, that part of it's really exciting to me is the idea of the professional learning community that the staff would develop. So those are some big pieces for me that I see as big exciting potentials. So there, again I have to look at this from multiple points of view. One is what is the benefit for the student in terms of a sequence of six, seven, eight or if they were to remain at the elementary school? Moms and dads are more concerned with the students in the elementary schools being influenced by the older students. However, in their context as Norm was saying that if you create that community, et cetera that's a very positive influence as opposed to a negative. So that's a concern, but if you organize it correctly it will be something that since there's no previous history it is an unknown and I think that's a hesitancy there. The some of the benefits in terms of the elementary schools in the closest supervision is another part that Moms and dads point to but that's restricted for some students is that they're ready to explore to really engage other adults, engage into other curriculum areas. The physical limitations of space meaning for instance can you design a recording studio in a school? Can you do the expansion of after school programs where you can bring community folks into that? We used to have retired engineers conduct a lot of science and technology after school activities with our staff because the students were ready for that. That was not limited to the older kids. They were really exposed earlier so therefore the students were involved in that. In terms of developing the sense of community with students there's also a sense of community with the professionals in the school where there is again looking at a longer period of time for students to learn then you can make longer connections curriculum wise. The other part is for the students themselves. Can they be excited about this new world, this new environment possibility? But the issue is are they safe? Are they safe emotionally during this change period? That's true of every middle level child going from elementary to middle school. Do they feel safe? But that environment can be safe. It can be done very well. But again there's no history of that so it's an unknown for families. I think the kids are cognitively ready. The question is is the environment of the school ready to bring demand with all of the factors that we have discussed and given the time of planning that you have done you do have time to be able to do that. Yeah. I think there's also for me this access to the facilities and talk about programming as a science teacher. You know we have these big labs with lots of equipment and lots of lab tables space and it's a really good space to do hands-on science. So I think having more access to that is a good thing too because it allows you to potentially do more things because you have more storage, you have again more access to materials potentially that you can store there and have a really large space to do the activities in with sinks and all of that. So I think that sort of that sort of plumbing issue and having large space available for the labs is for me a very important thing when it would be hard for me to imagine doing science in a space that wasn't designed for it. So I think that you know as a science teacher I'm sort of selfishly wanting sixth graders to have access to that sooner because I know that they would enjoy it. One more thing is that this is a time where students have their attitude shaped about what their future careers are whether they go to college or they're heavily influenced at this age level. So if they're able to expose them to all of these possibilities it is gonna open their world to options that they may not have considered and can bring in the community to enhance that learning environment. Once the students go from the middle level to high school they already have some very deep perceptions of where they wanna go. In particular if they're students who have some confidence issues in terms of developing their confidence over three years on a particular field where some students may not feel confident in math all of a sudden you see them blossom by the eighth grade because they're given all these other options. Yeah, I'll share some of the disadvantages that I've heard just in the interest of time. So there are a lot on my end frankly there's a lot of logistical challenges that come with this there's governance challenges because we have the elementary schools and the secondary schools are different districts. There's questions about busing and could kids just hop on the seven through 12 bus and what does that look like? And the answer usually is it's much quieter than on the elementary bus but I know that may not be the perception but in terms of the bus reports I get they're very frequently elementary in nature. But I understand that concern but more seriously it would be a lot of transition we have staffing questions that would come up with the sixth grade teachers come. One of the things the group is working on now is what would the schedule look like? Would there be truly the middle school model or would it be sort of halfway which a lot of districts use for sixth grade where one teacher teaches math and science one teacher teaches social studies in English? Would it be an exploratory model for world language or would it be a full model for world language? And I think the biggest thing that I've heard is that the transition at any age where students leave the elementary school where many of them have been there since kindergarten and they go to middle school is a really hard transition for the kids but also for the families. And we have some neighboring districts where that transition happens in fifth grade and that's a hard transition no matter what age the students are in or what a work grade level it is. And the thing of that doing that transition happening one year sooner is a real challenge because it is true that middle school and high school students with that independence many of our students make good choices, right? But there is the potential for not making the best choices and I think that's our real challenge for us to be able to talk about and understand where families are coming from and see whether this community chooses one way or the other based on the opportunities and then the challenges that come with that. The social emotional functioning is certainly something that's come up a lot in our group as a concern and I don't wanna overplay but I think it would be remiss not to acknowledge that. We are wrapping up this episode because there was so much content in this maybe we should have done a double episode because there's a lot to talk about but I really wanna thank you both both for coming on and sharing with the community but also for your work on this committee having Juan having your experience working in multiple districts districts somewhat of ours demographically has been invaluable and Norm having the middle school lens on things we rely, we lean on Norm a lot in our large group but for good reason and our next steps are that our group is supposed to wrap up in January and we'll have a report of some format that goes to the school committees and then the school committees are gonna have to wrestle with how they wanna do this what their next steps are and advise the district on further pursuing this idea or not but I'm excited to see how the group finishes work and the next turn for the committees and I'm just so appreciative that we have this group doing real work not wondering philosophically about the sixth grade question which has happened for a long time but actually digging in, doing homework and coming up with something for the community to respond to. So thank you for both of your roles in that and thank you all for viewing this and again the website for the Gradespan Advisory Group will be on the bottom here and we'll come back next month with another episode of Window Interrupt so thank you for watching.