Curriculum Committee Minutes

Wednesday, May 3

Present: Lou Tourmel, Jamie Coleman, Danielle Bourbeau, John Lewis, Jeff Maher, Mike Gilbert, Mae Gilbert, Linda McSweeney

NEXT and LAST meeting for the year: Thursday, June 22 @ 9 am in the library

Business and Finanace Academy

Mike Gilbert updated us on B & F Academy. He has interviewed 16 students for program for next year. He’s going to explore offering some of the B&F Academy courses on an every-other-year basis with guidance—similar to situations in a college setting. The business faculty need time that last week of school to prepare curriculum since they will be offering new courses next year and they need to coordinate their efforts.

Resources for the program were mentions—tech and traditional library resources. Mike and Linda will meet to discuss tech issues—mostly in Room 125 (change in furniture, teaching lap top, smartboard, and networked printers) and Linda will bring issues to next Tech Committee Meeting. Linda will also check with Mike about library and media resources for the academy.

Science/Math & Engineering Academy

Tom McSweeney, John Pandolfo, and Dan Lajeunesse met with Jeff to beginning the planning for this Academy. We’re still several years out in the development cycle with implementation for Fall 08 or 09. The Academy will reflect the workplace where these three academic disciplines are inter-related.

Jeff just heard last week that the Boston Museum of Science has created an Engineering Curriculum with a National Science Foundation grant. Because of a contact he made at the High Schools that Work, the Boston Museum of Science is interested in having Spaulding field test this new curriculum. Tom McSweeney and Jeff Maher will present the curriculum to our committee at our last meeting of the year.

Scheduling Committee Work

Jeff updated us on the work of the Scheduling Committee. Most of the work they are doing will not be implemented next year, but the year after. However, TA will be shortened—it looks like 15 minutes—and possibly moved to a morning time slot—this has not yet been finalized. As far as the schedule is concerned, the committee has agreed in principal to a hybrid schedule of different blocks of time—longer and shorter blocks depending upon whether the course is a year-long course or half year course. This schedule will be able to incorporate music into the day.

Other Business

Linda mentioned she will be back to a full-time schedule next year and will be more organized about scheduling monthly meetings. She will also draft a letter from out committee to be included in the first day of school packet to all teachers, encouraging them to bring curriculum ideas to our committee. This year we have been mostly dealing with “big picture” ideas and we’d like to be a forum for teachers who have creative ideas about individual course curriculum.