MCCPS Board of Trustees

Minutes

Academic Excellence Committee Meeting

Date and Time

Wednesday March 4, 2020 at 7:30 AM

Committee Members Present

Ellen Lodgen, Jessica Xiarhos, Kimberly Sullivan, Matt Cronin, Michael Condon, Peter Cohen

Committee Members Absent

Emily Westhoven

Guests Present

Meg Upton, Sarah Plymate

I. Opening Items

A.

Record Attendance and Guests

B.

Call the Meeting to Order

Jessica Xiarhos called a meeting of the Academic Excellence Committee Committee of MCCPS Board of Trustees to order on Wednesday Mar 4, 2020 at 7:34 AM.

C.

Approve Minutes from 2/5/20

Jessica Xiarhos made a motion to approve the minutes from Academic Excellence Committee Meeting on 02-05-20.
Matt Cronin seconded the motion.
The committee VOTED unanimously to approve the motion.
Jessica Xiarhos made a motion to approve the minutes from Academic Excellence Committee Meeting on 01-15-20.
Kimberly Sullivan seconded the motion.
The committee VOTED unanimously to approve the motion.

II. Academic Excellence Committee

A.

Dissemination of Academic Excellence to Staff - Update

Humanities and Math Science are the only departments that have met. IA hasn't met, and it will be unique in that teachers are a bit isolated.

Math/Science - Standards for Mathematical Practices, Parker, 
Humanities - "wrapping their brains around the activity" - top-down or bottom-up?
Foreign Language shouldn't be an add on.

We should have a time to look at this as a whole teaching staff- still needs to be uniform in design

How should the document look - Venn diagram? Bullet list? Web? 
Target Categories- break it out by grade level? 

Where do Essential Habits fit? - smaller working group?

Staff evaluates their projects against the rubrics/essential habits.

Shifting us back to true value of project based learning- teaching kids resilience to fail and try again. We need a more standardized/consistent view of process over product. 

Anatomy of an Exhibition project. Formatting of the night. Students introduce the project. Questions for parents in program to ask students. Parents given information before the night of? 

Organization/Executive Functioning

Entry points for parents into the Exhibition projects. - (Step-up day?)

B.

Timeline

Peter - Ongoing for the next year and a half. Target share out June 2021, implement September 2021.

At the end of a 5-year program, students will be able to...
Looking to better align and track student growth. 
 

III. Closing Items

A.

Action Items

Humanities teacher to join Academic Excellence - 
Jessica to attend next Humanities department meeting - 
Foreign Language to go to Humanities meeting when Humanities is further along

B.

Adjourn Meeting

There being no further business to be transacted, and upon motion duly made, seconded and approved, the meeting was adjourned at 8:36 AM.

Respectfully Submitted,
Jessica Xiarhos
Documents used during the meeting
  • 2020_02_05_academic_excellence_committee_committee_meeting_minutes.pdf