Jennifer Bento: [00:00:00] Okay. Good morning everyone. Uh, welcome to today’s MEFA Institute webinar. Learn about my career and academic plan, also known as my ccap. Uh, we’re so glad you could join us. Uh, we first offered this webinar back in October of 2023, and it has since become one of the most highly viewed lessons in the Mefa Institute.

Uh, so given that strong interest in the continued growth of my ccap, we thought it was the perfect time to provide an updated version. So thank you again for being here with us this morning. My name is Jennifer Bento Pinion. I’m director of K 12 Services at MEFA. I’ll be moderating today’s session. Uh, and joining me from MEFA is my colleague Andrea Keenan, who will be managing the QA behind the scenes.

Uh, so we are thrilled to have our amazing presenters today. Experts in [00:01:00] the world of my cap. We have Lisa Harney, coordinator of secondary supports at the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, and we have Jennifer McGuire, who is the College and Career Information Coordinator at New Bedford Public Schools.

Uh, we have an amazing hour lined up for you. Uh, Lisa will be providing specifics around my cap and general showcase the development of my cap in her district. All right, so just a few logistics before we get started. Uh, the chat is disabled during this presentation. Um, if you have any questions, just pop those in the QA and we’ll address those, uh, mostly live at the end.

Uh, if you’d like to see the closed captions, you can enable the live transcript and if you need to leave early, um, no worries at all. We are recording this session and we will follow up, uh, probably tomorrow, uh, with an email with the recording and, uh, the slides that we’ll go through today. All right, just a little bit about [00:02:00] MEFA.

Uh, we are the Massachusetts Educational Financing Authority. Uh, we are a state authority created over 40 years ago at the continued mission to help families plan, save, and pay for college. Uh, we do this through, uh, a variety and a wide range of resources, tools, and guidance, uh, not just financial aid, but through the entire college and career planning journey.

Okay, so it is now my pleasure to introduce Lisa Harney, who will share an overview of my Cap and who brings expertise and leadership in advancing, uh, my cap across, uh, the state of Massachusetts. Okay, Lisa.

Jennifer McGuire: And of course, the big mistake. I didn’t hit unmute as I started talking. Um, hopefully none of you’ll want me to mute myself, but we’ll see.

Um, thank you always. Uh, MEFA is one of the greatest partners that I’ve worked with, um, and it’s been a wonderful partnership for us as we’ve developed my cap. Um, as [00:03:00] Jennifer said, I am Lisa Harney from the department. I lead the My Cap work. Uh, and I think we’ll dive right in. We’re gonna go to the next slide, please.

My cap is based on our college career and civic readiness. Definition. So the framework is really about the three core domains that are critical for development for all students. And I, and, and I can’t stress this enough, because you can’t have, uh, the smartest person in the world have no social skills, right?

And you can’t go to a career if you don’t know who you are and find the right career and find the right match. You’ll be wandering your whole life. So it’s really key. And we want, the definition clarifies that for the schools it’s about providing knowledge, skills, and experiences for all the students in all three domains.

And that’s how they’re gonna be able to identify a pathway to post-secondary success. In addition, we [00:04:00] wanna encourage our students to be searching and looking and planning for a career in a growing field that’s aligned with their interests and, and provides. We’ll provide a family sustaining wage. And above all, we want our students to be active in civic life and be able to make good decisions and be able to be part of their community.

And when we do that, if you go to the next slide, please. We are going to meet the vision of a graduate. I am sure most of you have a portrait of a graduate or a vision of a graduate. If you’re doing knee ask, that’s a requirement. Um, the state also has a vision of a graduate. And if you look at these six pieces to be academically prepared, to be problem solvers, to be effective communicators, navigators, decision makers, those are all the skills that are in those three domains.

So as we prepare students for [00:05:00] college career and civic readiness, we are going to meet those. We’re gonna have students graduate according to that vision of the graduate graduate that we share at the state level. Um, and so the next slide you’ll see that, um, it’s important to integrate these three domains.

And I think for me, this almost seems kind of basic, but really the brain’s crosswired. I think on this slide it says A student cannot engage. I think even as adults, we can’t engage when a problem that’s so big in our personal lives gets in the way of our work life. We know that as adults, the same’s true for our kids kids, they can’t engage in their cognitive learning if they’re feeling unsafe, if their home is disrupted, if their anything fill that blank in and that they don’t see a future that keeps them from seeing a future for themselves.

So by [00:06:00] integrating domains, we really support relevance and purpose for students, but we also will help ourselves in the school situation with efficiency and alignment of all that happens within the school. Everything we do from pre-K to grade 12 should really be about helping students discover who they are, where they’re going, um, and what’s gonna happen in their life.

So my cap becomes that in integration process that ensures that all students will graduate with an authentic plan and they’re gonna do, you can go onto that slide, you can do that through a process and then a platform. Um, obviously our platform, we highly recommend at the state that we use me for, that you use me for Pathway.

Mefa Pathway was created really in conjunction with my cap when we made changes Me for Changed. So it’s been a great tool to work with us, um, through the My Cap process. You wanna make [00:07:00] sure whatever tool you use, we know people use other tools, Naviance and Score, and lots of others. Um, but you wanna make sure those tools, those platforms have those tools.

Powerful search engines. Students have everything at their fingertips, but we want that to be in the tools so the school can help students learn how to use those search engines, learn how to be part of all of this. So there’s search engines and activities and lessons and all of those kinds of things. A resume writer, lots of ways to support students through that one platform.

Um, it’s a whole school process. We want teachers to, to know that they’re part of this. So many teachers report, and you’ll hear from Jen McGuire about how they did this in New Bedford. Uh, but so many teachers report that they actually do lessons that they refer to the kids’ future in these lessons. Uh, or I always use as an example, and you’ll see it in a minute, [00:08:00] um, about an English class where they do character development in a English, um, class.

And, and they, and the end result is, so who do you identify with? We’re helping students learn their skills and talents. So we do all of those. We wanna make sure students have a caring mentor, um, and we wanna connect those three domains and we can go on to the next slide. So I’m gonna run quickly through these, but SEL sometimes at the high, by the time you get to the high school level, you roll your eyes when you hear SEL again.

But they are so critical, those skills are their workplace habits. Um, castle aligned the workplace habits that the national workforce investment identified as key, um, attributes for students and aligned them with their five competencies. It’s a great way to think about what you are doing in helping students get ready for employment.

And again, [00:09:00] these things happen in the school, not intentionally. You don’t need a specific lesson, but that happens within the school all day long. Next slide. Our career development, we have a spectrum and we begin with self-discovery all the time. We should be helping kids understand who they are, and then once we do that, they can start looking at authentic careers.

They know what they’re matching when they go into those search engines and start searching for careers because they know who they are. And then eventually getting to career exploration and then a work-based learning experience or a contextual learning experience in the academic world. At the high school level, we know that students, you can go on to the next slide.

We know our students need to, um, meet mass core, rigorous course of study. Please always set the bar high for your students. Don’t, don’t, I know we always wanna meet them where they are, but make sure that bar and that goal is a little bit high. Mass Corps is [00:10:00] rigorous, um, but it matches the entrance requirements for our UMass system, um, of colleges and universities.

But this is the place where you are really gonna see where you can choose, um, early college, an innovation career pathway, dual enrollment. These are the options that are gonna really help kids explode in their academic world and really begin to find themselves in the real world as they go through, um, especially their high school experience.

But I wanna say this is all about, this is also about middle school, so everything we’re talking about goes for middle school especially. Um, and next slide. I’m trying to get through this so you can hear from Jennifer, because that’s the one who has a good answers for you. So when we talk about my cap, this is the process.

We want you to create a scope and sequence for every grade. That includes every domain. So every year you’re gonna identify some learning objectives. [00:11:00] Really what students should know and be able to do, what we want our students to do is say, I can do whatever that learning objective is. So say for the personal social, I can show you that I understand my strengths and skills.

That’s what we want our students to be able to do. So we want you to create one, two, I would say two objectives in each domain each year. This is an example, you know, I, this is where I have that character development activity in this particular scope and sequence. And the results might be, uh, completing an assessment might be a reflection, but again, you’re gonna see that in their platform.

So all three domains every year. Creating learning objectives. Again, units, lessons, activities. You’re not putting everything in your whole school in there. This is, uh, where all students will be able to access some activities, some lesson that’s going to have them meet that [00:12:00] learning objective that you’ve set for them.

And so, next slide. So the big question is always how do we do this? How do we get started? And, um, it’s a process. And so please be patient with yourselves. There’ll be starts and stops, there’ll be challenges and all that, but you need to be, begin with a team that has a cross section of roles because you don’t want one person to be owning this.

We want, uh, obviously our school counselors are gonna have a big piece of this in terms of they’re the ones that will have access to the kids platform. They’ll be able to look things up. Teachers too, if you’re, if you district gives you permission. School counselors may become the lead for this, but teachers, special ed teachers, EL teachers, you should have them represented on your team as you begin to develop this scope and sequence.

Because again, remember the scope and sequence should be set for all [00:13:00] students. So you wanna make sure you have in input from all those that are working with the students, you are gonna map your college career in civic readiness activities. I’m gonna leave that up to Jen McGuire to tell you how they did it in New Bed, new Bedford.

It’s a great little assessment that you can do. Then you begin creating the scope and sequence. Begin with one grade, right? And you’ll do each of those three domains. As you create this. Once that’s all done, you’re gonna create an implementation plan. And I promise you, once you do one year, you’re gonna be good for doing the next year’s as they roll out.

And so you’ll concentrate on one year to get started. You’ll start your implementation. You then you’re gonna get going with your other grades. I think in the end, you can go to the next slide When we do all this, um, you’re gonna find that your students are gonna graduate from your school. Being able to answer these three questions, at least for that time in their life.

Because I think we’ve all continued throughout our lives to ask [00:14:00] ourselves these questions when we’ve hit a crossroads and we think about these things. But our students that, can you imagine them all being able to know who they are, know where they’re going, and know how they’re getting there. That’s the goal.

That’s the goal of our education. And I’m gonna stop because I want you to hear from someone that’s been doing it really well in their district.

Jennifer Bento: Well, thanks so much, Lisa. It’s, um, it’s amazing to see how my cap has evolved, um, and the impact on students. So yes, we’re excited to introduce Jen McGuire, who will share the incredible work, um, happening at New Bedford, new Bedford Public Schools, and how my CCAP is being implemented at the district level.

All right, Jen.

Lisa Harney: Thank you. Um, I’m really excited to, uh, be here with everyone and to share a little bit about our, my Cap journey here in New Bedford Public Schools. Um, I’ve been in my role for almost four years, um, as the college and career information coordinator for the district. And, uh, one of the reasons my role was [00:15:00] created was to really help us focus on ensuring that all of our graduates were getting whatever support they needed to both explore and also to access their post-secondary plan.

Um, I happen to have a background working with my cap. Um, I have 21 years experience as a school counselor before I came to New Bedford. And, um, I have always been very passionate about individual student planning, and I was fortunate to be part of a committee back in, I think it started in 2015 to study, um, six year career planning and the, the possibility of rolling that out in Massachusetts.

And that is where, um, that’s the committee that I, um, named my cap. My cap. We’ll go to the next slide.

So just a little background. I imagine most people know where New Bedford is located. Um, I like to describe it as, you know, a small city about halfway between Cape Cod and Providence, Rhode Island. Uh, just a, a few things I think are important to point [00:16:00] out. Uh, the median household income in New Bedford is around $57,000 and.

Um, only about 17% of adults in the community have a bachelor’s degree in our school system. Um, it, it’s a big school system. We have about 12, 12,500 students. Uh, we have one, uh, traditional high school. It serves about 2,800 students, three middle schools and a number of elementary schools, a couple alternative schools.

Um, our students are primarily from low income households, about 77%, and nearly half of our students identify something other than English as their first language.

We can go on to the next slide. So when I started my job, uh, we got right into, uh. Developing my cap there. It really was not my cap happening at all in New Bedford. So we started planning in the, uh, 20, 22, 23 school year, [00:17:00] and we decided to start our work at the middle school level. There were a lot of, uh, factors that contributed to that.

Uh, it happened to be that, uh, Desi was really just starting to push, bringing my cap into middle schools, and we had a lot of things going on at the high school already at that time. So rather than kind of risking that, maybe my cap would just be one more thing. I thought, let’s start this with the sixth grade and build from there and not have to kind of retrofit it to go back to sixth grade.

Um, I’m sure like many other communities across the state, you know, we have. Middle school students making big decisions about where they’re gonna go to high school. And we wanted to make sure that our middle schoolers were using information about who they were and where they wanted to go in terms of figuring out how they were going to get there.

So being able to connect what they’re doing in middle school to future opportunities was really, um, a driver for our decision to start there. Uh, one of the things I always like to, to quote Lisa on this, she always talks about, um, these like, [00:18:00] uh, random acts of guidance. I think she used to call them, and she really emphasized, um, to me the importance of shifting from like career readiness events to more of a career development process.

And I think that’s really important to keep in mind, uh, when you’re, when you’re designing your My Cap. Um, so our first year was spent planning and then the following year we started implementation with the class of 2030. Those students are now in eighth grade and they will be our first graduating class to, um, knock on wood, complete a seven year.

My cap.

So conveniently, you know, sometimes there’s just luck in things, but at the time that this was happening, our middle schools were, um, looking to get designated as International Baccalaureate Middle Years Program schools. And so they were already doing some work with students in terms of, um, you know, like some surveys with students about what they, what they knew about careers and what they wanted to know about careers.

So, [00:19:00] um, it was just kind of a great time to get this work going and we were able to sort of connect the purpose of my cap with something that was already on the minds of the leadership and the educators in our three middle schools. So we can go on to the next. So this is just sort of an overview of what that it, it basically almost a year it took to really get us, um, ready to roll out.

We started, uh, with creating the team and I’ll talk a little bit more about that shortly. We attended the professional development that was sponsored by dsi, um, several sessions. And then we, uh, designed and administered a survey. After we got our survey results, we sort of organized the work and focused on the three domains that Lisa spoke of.

We then selected our platform, designed our scope and sequence, produced an implementation guide, and then went sort of back to the district leadership and then started working with the educators and rolled out the following September. So it was a busy year, but um, we [00:20:00] were able to kind of set our goal with rolling out with the following, um, incoming sixth graders that year.

When we rolled out with sixth grade, we started building our seventh grade scope and sequence and we keep kind of chugging along on that path. Um, each year.

So just to speak a little bit about creating a team, I know Lisa mentioned this, um, it’s so important to have different people represented on your team. At the time, we decided to make one district-wide team, uh, including people from our three middle schools. It was really important for us because we wanted to make sure that what students were going to get out of my cap was consistent across our three middle schools.

Uh, the other nice piece about that was that we were able to take staff members to be part of this work from different areas without draining one school of, you know, 10 individuals who aren’t serving in different roles. So we had, you know, um, school counselors, adjustment counselors, uh, general [00:21:00] education teachers, special education teachers.

We had, um, specialist teachers, so whether that’s, you know, uh, everyone calls it something different. Music teachers, art teachers, um, phys ed and health. Uh, and that really allowed us to have a kind of a, a, a lot of different eyes on how this was being developed. We were able to incorporate, you know, best practices from across all three schools and, um, you know, really.

Started by educating the team members on, you know, what is my ccap? Because they weren’t familiar with it at the time. Uh, most of them did not have a background in, um, career and academic planning. The team members, another reason why it’s so important to have a diverse group of, of colleagues working together is that they were able to learn about this and then kind of go back to their own area within their school.

And sh as they were, uh, like adopting this mindset, they could share that with their colleagues and sort of spread out that buy-in across more people. Um, one of the, the challenges we’ve experienced over four years [00:22:00] is, you know, having to kind of redesign your team each year and host for positions and things like that.

There’s a learning curve when you have new folks joining every year, which means you sort of have to back up a little bit and, um. Get them up to speed. But the benefit of that is that over the now four years of my CAP teams, we’ve had so many different educators serving on the Myke team and all those people are out there in the different schools.

Uh, champion championing this work.

So, uh, we can go to the next slide. Uh, so Lisa sort of alluded to this when she was speaking, but one of the things we learned very quickly at our, um, training back when we first started this work in New Bedford was that there’s a real value in doing some sort of survey to kind of collect feedback. From, um, the educators and the, the people in your building.

So we designed a survey for all three middle schools at the time, and we didn’t just include teachers, we included [00:23:00] everyone, you know, administrators, all different kinds of teachers, counselors, paraprofessionals and clerical staff. Because design my cap. It’s not just about the scope and sequence, it’s about kind of changing the culture and really creating this fabric, um, within your building or district.

So we wanted to make sure that, um, everyone in the schools was starting to think in this language and in this mindset. Um, and you can see from our results, you know, we had a pretty good response from across the different schools and, um, from all the different, uh, people who matter to students. Um, one of the, the main purposes, we can go to the next slide.

Was to sort of identify what were the learning objectives that we would start with. So what would jump out to all of the educators as kind of the most important places to start. And one of the things I was really worried about at the time was, you know, what if they respond to, you know, these different objectives and they’re all sort of, they all did kind of mediocre, right?

And nothing really jumped out. But amazingly, we can skip through the next two slides if you’d like. Um, [00:24:00] you can see from each of the, the areas. There were two that really stood out, which was perfect for us. So that’s sort of where we started. Um, in retrospect it really didn’t matter because over the course of time we actually, um, incorporated all of those learning objectives.

Um, so it really doesn’t matter what the results are, it’s really more about getting the adults in the building to start thinking about my cap and thinking about these objectives. The other part of our survey that I think was really valuable was asking the educators to indicate where are you already doing this work?

And that’s a really, um, important piece because like everything, you know, we tackle in schools, people always feel like it’s just one more thing, where can I find the time? And there’s also a misconception with student planning that that’s something that belongs solely to the counselors. So by asking educators to think, where are you doing this?

What, what are your best practices? I think it made folks [00:25:00] realize, Hey, I’m already doing this work. This happens in all different kinds of settings in our school, and it really helped with generating buy-in from, from lots of different people within the schools.

So this is just a, a visual representation of, uh, sort of what this has looked like over the past several years. Um, starting with that first year where we were just doing dev like development of the first scope and sequence. And then every year since then, we’re doing double duty. We’re rolling out with a grade and then we’re developing the next.

This year we have been developing the high school scope and sequence, starting with ninth grade. And this has been really neat because we, we sort of repeated the process. We did the survey at the high school when we pulled together our team for the high school. In addition to getting all these different representatives from New Bedford High School, we were able to incorporate some of the, the middle school, kind of my cap leaders, the people who’d been involved over the last couple years so that they could support the [00:26:00] work and really help make sure our scope and sequence is, um, kind of chugs along smoothly.

It’s it from middle school into high school. So we’re really excited about where that is.

So, just quick couple things about Mefa Pathway. I did a comprehensive search of different platforms, uh, back when we were deciding what to use here in New Bedford. Um, and I was familiar with many of them over the years. We ended up choosing Mefa Pathway. Um, I think it’s, it was a great choice and also a lucky choice for us.

Um, but one of the main reasons, you know, is that it’s free. Um, money is limited for all of us and, um, I’m of the belief why pay for something when there’s a great option that is, uh, free. More importantly though, it’s visually appealing, so it’s easy for students to sort of jump in and get engaged. Uh, this, the image on the screen is showing what it looks like for a middle school student.

It looks a little bit different for high school, but it’s the same idea. It’s, [00:27:00] it’s engaging, it’s a lot of images rather than just words. The technical support that we receive directly from MEFA has been outstanding as well as training, and that’s been really important to me as someone that’s working with my cap across several buildings.

We have a lot of staff who have their hands in our platform and knowing that, um, everyone can reach out directly to MEFA and get quick responses and support as well as their, you know, responsiveness to, if we’re looking for something different, they’re able to help us. I feel like it, it genuinely starts with sixth grade and since we were rolling this out in sixth grade, I wanted to make sure we were using something that didn’t feel forced, like we were retrofitting something that was designed for high school students.

However, it does incorporate the college process and we have started using MEFA Pathway, um, now for a couple years with the college process at the high school. So as we roll my cap into the high school, our counselors and many of our staff members are already familiar with it. So lots of great benefits.

[00:28:00] And of course, I’ll just repeat that. There’s no cost to use MEFA Pathway, so that should be a great selling point for everyone. Um, I think it’s important to share some of the challenges that, uh, we encountered because I, I talk about this all the time, like, oh, it’s so easy and everyone should do this. But for us, you know, we had three different middle schools.

They all had different leadership, but beyond that, they had different schedules At the time, I think one of them had a three day rotation. One had a 12 day rotation. There wasn’t a lot of consistency from school to school. And so it was really difficult to kind of figure out like, where are we gonna.

Place this, where is this gonna live at our schools? Um, another challenge is really identifying how do you have the same learning objectives or the same expected outcomes for students, but also allow for creativity. Whether that’s, you know, in terms of leadership in the building and, and how things happen as well as for the educators that are delivering content to students.

Um, of course time, you know, it’s always how do you find the time, [00:29:00] um, sharing, you know, why are we doing this across the staff? That’s difficult. You know, there’s new educators all the time there. Uh, we’ve actually had a lot of leadership changes and of the three middle schools, there’s only one principal currently that was a principal of one of the middle schools.

When we started this work four years ago, um, we actually had a, you know, this great idea when we were rolling this out that this was really gonna live in all the different. Disciplines in, in the middle school, the different academic areas, the specialists, and as I mentioned, every school had a different idea of where that was going to be.

And then at the last minute, um, really as a result of some of the differences between the schools, uh, it was sort of changed that, that we would start the delivery of my cap with our health classes. And the main reason for that was because we knew all students would have access because they all took health.

Um, but it, it did sort of shift where we were going. And so we’ve been working the last couple years to move a little bit out of health. Um, they’ve been a great [00:30:00] anchor for us, but like to expand it more so students are encountering my cap, um, beyond just the school counselors and the health teachers. We can go on to the next slide.

So some of our great successes, um, the engagement in between year two and three. And so those were our first two years of implementation was amazing. And, um, just the number of students that were actually accessing the platform and, um, we could see that they were engaged in the, my CCAP work was, was really great.

Uh, it’s created collaboration between our school counselors and our health teachers at the middle schools that really didn’t exist before. So it was kind of a, an unexpected benefit. Uh, we’ve had great success each year building our scope and sequence. I’m happy to say like. Soon I can change that to four years because our, our ninth grade one is close to, to ready to go.

Um, and then as I previously mentioned, being able to incorporate Mefa pathway at the high school ahead of time was great. We were using another platform previously that we were spending money on [00:31:00] that had not been implemented effectively. The training hadn’t been there. It was one of those things where, you know, it was nice to have, but it wasn’t rolled out thoughtfully in terms of how are we going to take advantage.

Of what the platform has to offer. So building this really allowed us to focus on, you know, how can we use this in our schools? How can we train the educators that, um, we need to use it with? I do wanna point out a couple of the pictures on my slide. So you’ll see in the lower corner there, it looks like a group of students touring a college.

And those are our seventh graders at UMass Dartmouth. And that’s a, a longstanding program that we’ve had with UMass Dartmouth, where our seventh graders always visit UMass Dartmouth. But as I mentioned before, we really wanted to get away from these kind of random one-off events that, that I think a lot of us do.

We say like, oh, we’re doing, you know, college and career readiness, and here’s your activity. Now we actually have three visits throughout middle school. So our sixth graders go to our community college. Our seventh graders continue to go to UMass, and our eighth graders go to Bridgewater. And there’s. [00:32:00] Free and post-testing involved in terms of the learning.

And each visit incorporate something a little bit different. But now by the time our, our eighth graders are completing middle school, they’ve seen three colleges and they can really start to think like, I could see myself here if that’s what I want to do. Um, the other thing that I think is a really great representation of how my cap.

It sort of grows and changes over time. Um, in the middle is a, a picture from the Steam the Streets assembly. They do a wonderful assembly called, this Can be You. It’s like a multimedia, um, career exploration assembly that really encourages students to think broadly about opportunities and it focuses on, um, individuals who are underrepresented in various fields.

That is something we started implementing when we actually, the year before we rolled out my CCAP as kind of a trial, and initially we did those assemblies at the middle schools. Now we bring the assembly to the high school and incorporate a field trip to the high school so our students can start thinking as they’re learning about their future.[00:33:00]

Opening their mind to careers. This is my high school. How can I make those connections? And then to take it a step further, this year we invited our colleagues from, um, greater New Bedford Vogue and Bristol Aggie to come and join us. And they, along with a representative from New Bedford High School, following the assembly, spoke to the students about the pathways at each of their schools and how they connected to what, um, was covered in the Steam the Streets Assembly.

So to me, like that’s a great, uh, like representation of what my cap is supposed to be about. It’s making those connections for students instead of kind of having like, oh, we did this here and we did this there, so we can go onto the next slide. This is just an outline of, of kind of our basic, like what does my cap look like in our middle schools?

And these are spread across the three domains, even though that’s not, um, kind of pulled out here on the screen. But, you know, it, it ranges from, you know, assessments in MEFA pathway to what we call field studies, uh, learning [00:34:00] vocabulary and goal setting. And then of course, the, um, the college visits that I spoke about.

We can go on to the next. And then this is what our ninth grade is shaping up to look like. And again, this isn’t quite live yet, but, um, we’ve divided our, you know, our lessons across all three domains and sort of rolled out where they’re going to be delivered at New Bedford High School starting next year.

So just some, um. I don’t know, pieces of advice, uh, don’t overdo it. When you’re starting this work, I think there’s a tendency, especially when you do your survey and you’re finding out about all these things that are happening, you wanna put everything in your My cap, and that’s not the case. You need to sort of figure out what are the artifacts that the team wants students to produce.

Um, focus more on weaving together like a system and changing the culture in your building than on those random acts and be clear about must haves. So what are the basic things you want to make sure students are getting, but also leave room for educators to [00:35:00] be, um, creative and to kind of, to go above and beyond.

So I think we have, for our middle schools, maybe about six things each year. Most of them result in some sort of artifact, but not all. And then of course, there’s all these other things that are happening in the buildings that. Tie into the work that aren’t quote unquote part of our, my cap scope and sequence.

And that’s okay. As far as organizing our work, uh, we created an implementation guide. And what that looks like electronically is Google folders that all of our nothing fancy, so all of our staff can access them electronically. And in each folder is whatever you need to get in front of students and either deliver a lesson or guide students through an experience, um, or direct them in doing some work.

So it includes an, an outline or lesson plan of some sort. Typically a slide deck, um, as needed worksheets or directions. And then a clear explanation for the educator of what are the artifacts that need to be, um, produced, uh, before the [00:36:00] experience is sort of wrapped up.

So I mentioned earlier about our growth from year one of implementation to year two. This is from one of our middle schools, and this is, uh, one of the reports that we get a couple times a year from MEFA Pathway, which sort of, sort of shows us different things. This slide talks about student activity. In our first year of implementation, 78% of our sixth graders were engaged with, um, me a pathway.

So with the platform that was measuring, you know, their involvement in my cap and I was pretty happy with that. And you will see that by the second year, that class they were now seventh graders were up to 89% of students being engaged. But more importantly, that year, sixth graders. So the following class, 93% engagement in that their same first year.

So 78 to 93. And that speaks, you know, a lot to our educators that were responsible for making this, um, come to life in our buildings. So we can go on. This is just another, [00:37:00] um, example of some of the reporting we’re able to look at in MEFA pathway. It shows us, uh, everything from, you know, when students log in, how many times they log in to various, uh, activities that they’ve done or that they’ve logged in, in their, uh, in their own portfolio in there.

So this was just a look at whether students had started their goals and we can go on. And then this is sort of the adult view of, um, looking at my cap completion inside of Mefa Pathway. So I just point this out, you know, I think a lot of times people ask me like, well, are you able to see the work that your students are doing?

You know, um, to make sure that things are as expected or, or what you’re, you’re thinking that is going on. And yes. Um, we certainly can see that. So we can go on. And then this is just, I just wanted to share, you know, one of our lessons built by our, our team or one of our teams that I was really excited about, and I think it shows like kind of sticking to the.

Purpose, but also some creativity. So in this [00:38:00] lesson, students do a quiz in Mefa Pathway about their favorite subjects, and then they take the recommendations and they choose from from that in this, um, activity. And they do kind of like a little research where in Mefa Pathway, where they’re identifying, you know, what are high school courses that I could take that connect to this potential favorite subject.

Um, what are the careers that I could do? What are the potential wage earnings or this career, um, et cetera, kind of degree you need if, if you need a degree for this and things like that. And I just love it. It’s done in a, um, it’s like a Google slide activity. So students can do it, they save it in their drive, they link it to their, um, ME Pathway account.

So just wanted to share, um, one fun thing that our students are doing.

Jennifer Bento: All right. Thank you so much, Jen, that was outstanding. We appreciate, um, you sharing how my CCAP is being brought to life across your district. It’s so meaningful, inspiring for [00:39:00] educators looking, um, to strengthen their program. So thank you so much. Just, just amazing. So questions, let’s check out the qa, pop your, any of your questions in the qa.

Um, I know there was one that was brought forth towards the beginning of the session. Um, and this might be, could be for either Lisa or Jen, I’ll read it out loud. Um, in terms of integrating domains, I have some students who struggle with their personal lives due to, to school stress and no adults who burnout due to work stress going into their personal life.

Is there something in my cap that can help those individuals as well? That’s a great question.

Jennifer McGuire: I don’t know, Jennifer, if you have some experience with that. Uh, you know, I feel like I’m the theoretical person here, and if there’s something happening or if you’ve come across it in New Bedford, I would defer to you. [00:40:00]

Lisa Harney: I mean, I haven’t come across that, you know, that question. Um, and I just wanna make sure I’m understanding what’s being asked, but I, I think they’re wondering like, d does my cap go like deeper beyond just individual career and academic planning?

Does it really give you an opportunity to kind of focus on maybe those other pieces that, that are important? Is Jennifer, do you think? Is that what they’re asking? Yeah,

Jennifer McGuire: I was think, oh,

Lisa Harney: go

Jennifer McGuire: ahead. I was thinking too that it’s about students who may not be as engaged in school. And I, I

Lisa Harney: mean,

Jennifer McGuire: thinking about the fact that I think the platform gives them an opportunity to access at home.

In other places than the school. So there can be that piece that can help students also if they’re not coming to school regularly.

Lisa Harney: Yes. I mean, our students, you know, can access our platform. And I know this is true for other platforms as well, wherever they are. I mean, wouldn’t that be great if our students we’re going [00:41:00] home or, or not coming to school but instead working on, you know, um, individual future planning on their own time.

Um, but I think, you know, one of the things to, to remember I think is that when we talk about future planning, I, I think initially everyone thinks, as I mentioned before, that that’s something that belongs to school counselors or oftentimes that’s something that happens later in high school. And I think what we’ve learned is that, um, when we’re doing this work with younger students, we’re not asking them to.

Solidify their future career goals. We’re asking them to open their mind, you know, to learn about all the possibilities and to not set limitations for themselves based on things that might be immediate in their lives. Perceptions about opportunities, right? Maybe students, you know, are worried they can’t afford to do the training necessary to get into their field, or they think people in my family don’t go to college or, um, you know, go away from home or, or learn professional skills.

So I think, I [00:42:00] think that, I mean, in my experience as a school counselor, the one area that you could always talk to a student about, no matter what else was going on was their future, right? And the positivity and opportunity. And I think there, this is a great way to really tie in the control that a student has over something to the rest of their life and, and to the things that they feel like maybe are just happening to them.

Their own planning and their own goal setting is something that, that they’re doing for themselves. So I, I don’t know if that helps answer the question a little bit, but, but I do think that, you know, my cap goes way beyond just kind of exploring, you know, your, your course choices and, and your future.

Jennifer McGuire: I often think too, uh, of the platform where they can access it from home as being a communication tool with family, right?

That a student, because sometimes, like, I’m probably guilty of this, you know, I have a nurse and a, in a, um, speech [00:43:00] language pathologist and my fam, my two of my three daughters, the other’s an early childhood educator, the speech language pathologist never, never would have picked that for her. Never. And, um, and so I think about my own preconceived notions for my children, but imagine if, you know, she was doing this work in school.

We could have a much better conversation when she could show me in her platform, like, but mom, look at what I did here. Look at this, it matches me. Anything like that. And I think sometimes it’s, it can be a really good, um, neutralizer of conversations, right? As opposed to like me saying, what do you mean you’re gonna do that?

And, but to give my child voice. And, and so I think, um, I, I look at it as being just as valuable as a family engagement tool as it is for the student development. Um, so just for my extra 2 cents worth that [00:44:00] you’re getting for coming to this webinar.

Jennifer Bento: That’s great. Thank you. Um, all right, couple of more questions here, Lisa, this, I think this one is for you.

Um, how many, roughly, how many schools have adopted my Cap across the Commonwealth? Do you have an idea on that? That might

Jennifer McGuire: be you. About two, about 200 schools that are actively engaged in my cap. Um. And that will change at the end of this school year because we have some that are, you know, new to training this year.

And, um, we’ll count them in as they begin their implementation next year. So we have, do have over 200 schools. Um, if I can give a plug, because we’re doing a My Cap workshop on May 7th, and we’ll get you the, the information for that. If you wanna sign up anybody that’s open to the whole Commonwealth, anyone that, um, in a school or district that wants to come.

But you’ll see there almost every presenter is a school of, is involved in a school. Uh, we were originally gonna kind of, you know, bring in experts and help people do different things. [00:45:00] And it came to us that we have so many schools doing such great work. So there’ll be a lot of, um, opportunity to talk to other schools too, if you think about coming to that.

Jennifer Bento: That’s great. And, and shameless plug, um, Andrea and I are doing a, uh, uh, a session on financial literacy at the showcase. So we’re looking forward to that day. It’ll be fun.

Jennifer McGuire: Well, and again and again, we’re touching on some of those potential grad requirements, right? Mm-hmm. You all know those are coming. Um, my cap being one, putting financial literacy in somewhere.

That’s all, that’s all part of these potential requirements.

Jennifer Bento: Mm-hmm. Yeah. All right. We have a handful of questions here. Let’s see. Um, is there any guidance for vocational high schools that service several districts where the middle school students that we receive would be starting the My Cap process in a different district from the vocational high school?

Um, [00:46:00] so, so students coming from a middle school, and then, um, maybe in the case of New Bedford going to the New Bedford Vocational Technical

Jennifer McGuire: School, greater Lawrence. Greater New Bedford,

Jennifer Bento: yeah. Yeah. Rather than New Bedford High School.

Jennifer McGuire: Well, I think one of the biggest pieces, um, that we are combining my cap with is the middle school exploration policy.

That came out last year, the board of, um, DSI board, uh, voted that middle schools had to have a policy to ensure that students are really, really being, um, given the options, being given opportunities to see what’s happening. And so I think, uh, that’s a great piece because whatever is in that policy, whatever activities you’re calling out and, and saying, this is what we’re doing for middle school, that should be reflected in the My Cap.

We should see that in the seventh grade, sixth grade, seventh grade, eighth grade, my cap. Um, and so that’s what we’re, we’re looking for when we [00:47:00] see those policies. And, and then we’ll see that through, uh, through their, my ccap. I think Jen gave a great example, um, of her eighth graders. Uh, and Jen, you might wanna answer this ’cause you were originally in a, um, vo vocational school before you came to New Bedford.

Lisa Harney: Yeah, it’s, and it’s an interesting question because when we designed the scope and sequence at my previous school, nobody was doing middle school, my cap. And I often wondered like, you know, what is our role as a vocational school in terms of reaching out to our sending towns and bringing this work, um, to them because it’s so important.

And, um, again, it’s one of the reasons why we started the work in New Bedford at the middle schools was to give students more information about themselves and their, you know, what they know about themselves and what they want to do before they have to make those decisions about, um, high schools. You know, there’s not really any, any guidance about it.

And I think the challenge is that. If you are at a vocational school and you have a particular platform and a scope and sequence, you may be receiving eighth graders from a variety of middle schools, [00:48:00] um, who may have been doing, you know, various levels of my CAP implementation and using all different platforms.

I think, you know, it’ll be wise to reach out to your sending middle schools, find out what they’re doing, and maybe offer to support them. I mean, I think as a vocational school, you can provide something to your middle school, uh, middle schools in your, in your district that, um, they may not be able to do without you in terms of, you know, learning about what you offer and things like that.

It might be a great way for you to make some good connections, but I haven’t seen any specific, like, directions on and how do you handle receiving students, and, and I think that’s, you know, unless there was some, a more formal requirement of what it looked like at every middle school, I don’t think you’d ever see that, um,

Jennifer McGuire: you

Lisa Harney: know, seamless.

Jennifer McGuire: But I, I think the other piece of that middle school p exploration policy was really to. Try and, and have the middle schools talking to their vocational schools to create this, this policy, having asked their, whoever is there, [00:49:00] sending, whoever they’re sending schools, whichever technical school, you know, that the hope would be that through this policy that there was better communication opened up, up between the two.

Always hopeful.

Jennifer Bento: Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Um, this, this one’s for Jen. How much time per school day, week, or year do students in New Bedford spend on my cap?

Lisa Harney: Yeah, that’s a, that’s a great question and I think the best way to answer that is that, um, it really varies and, and I wanna go back to something I think I said earlier, which is that.

Everything you’re doing around this work isn’t necessarily part of your scope and sequence. So, you know, I could go through, I, I think I mentioned we have about six lessons or experiences that happen as part of our scope and sequence in each of our middle grades. Um, you know, ma, many of them are like delivered in a class period.

So based on that, you know, you could count up the number of [00:50:00] hours and it’s not that high of a number, but it’s really more about how you space them throughout the year and how they tie the work together. So, you know, if students are receiving lessons on, you know, goal setting, right? It’s how does that impact what’s happening for those students in, say, the academic classes where they’ve set goals about improvement or, um, in their personal lives in terms of, you know, basic maybe whether it’s study habits or some sort of personal growth they’re trying to experience, and how do those things tie together?

So it’s not that I. I would say that like, if you wanna show how much time they spend plugging things into MEFA pathway, it’s probably, I don’t know, maybe six hours a year. But it’s not really about the, the, the time that they’re recording their experiences, it’s really about that culture that you’re designing, um, which kind of like flows under everything else that’s going on in the building.

It’s gonna look a little different at the high school. We’re actually rolling [00:51:00] this out more into classes. I know some high schools are lucky enough, um, to actually have a class in the schedule that is like, it’s probably not called my CAP class, but it’s designed to hold this work. And so those students are probably getting hours and hours of my cap.

We are, um, rolling out with our ninth graders. We have an exploratory class that all of our ninth graders take. And so my cap is being added into the work they’re doing there. ’cause it ties in to what’s something that’s already happening. But I’m not gonna say that, you know, every hour in that class is dedicated.

My cap. So, and I think it varies from school to school. What you really wanna do is think about what are you hoping students produce and know as a result of your, my cap scope and sequence. And it’s more about like, what is that than how many hours it takes to achieve that. If you, if you have a field trip or an assembly as part of your scope and sequence, that’s gonna add hours, but it, I don’t know that that’s, you know, those hours are more valuable than less time spent doing something different.[00:52:00]

I don’t know if that helps, but

Jennifer Bento: That’s great, Jen. Thank you. Let’s see. Um, here’s a, here’s probably a quick one. Does every school have a college and career coordinator?

Jennifer McGuire: No.

Lisa Harney: No, no, no. I mean, I, I think, um, I think the title can be misleading. I think a lot of, I’ve, I’ve seen a lot of high schools add. Some sort of like college or career counselor, in addition to the school counselors, what that looks like seems to be different from school to school.

Um, sometimes they’re, you know, managing a, a, a career center or college center and working with all students. Um, in my particular role, it’s, it’s actually an administrative position for the district, but we’re a much larger district than most of the towns in Massachusetts. So we’re ver, you know, we’re very lucky, I think, um, to have somebody that’s able to do that.

But, you know, Boston has somebody that’s solely focused on my cap alone. So, uh, I think you need to, you know, if, if you’re able [00:53:00] to advocate, I, I love my role. I’m happy to talk to anybody about it. And so they can help advocate for, um, adopting a role like that in your district.

Jennifer McGuire: I think what we’ve found too at the state level is, um, you know, always, there’s always, uh, many, many titles, right?

So there’s a career readiness person or, you know, um. A college support person, but there’s also with the explosion of pathways that uh, there’s often a pathway coordinator who ends up taking on some of the My CAP work because pathways generally require, uh, if you’re doing designated pathways from the state ICP and um, early college chapter 70 fours, they all require my cap.

Um, so sometimes it’s just a natural piece to have a pathway coordinator that can also help, um, fuel the My Cap work, uh, throughout the school. Yes.

Jennifer Bento: Thank you. [00:54:00] Alright, here’s a good one. Um, who, well, they’re all good, but, um, who, who is responsible for monitoring and ensuring students upload artifacts in their whatever college and career planning platform?

They’re using? Homeroom, homeroom teachers, content teachers. Um, do they have specific my cap groups that may be responsible for this?

Lisa Harney: I think that’s gonna look different in every school and district. Um, I, I’m not gonna lie, I think probably in many cases it, the sort of management of the platform probably falls to a school counselor or someone in that, um, area. Um, but you know, to some extent, wherever it’s being rolled out is probably the adult that’s responsible.

And it may be. You know, like for us, I mentioned that in the middle schools, our health teachers have a big part in this. So our health instructors are the ones that are working throughout the year with the students in their class. So ensuring that [00:55:00] students are doing, you know, what’s assigned would be their responsibility, but it’s the school counselors, for example, that make sure that when we enroll a new student, that the student, um, is able to access their MEFA pathway account and that they’re sort of quickly onboarded so they can jump into whatever’s going on in the rest of the school related, um, to this work.

So I think that’s part of the design and that’s part of what’s nice about this, is that you can create your, my ccap to match what works best in your building or district. And that’s where having, um, administrators involved in your My CAP team is really important. That’s where having different roles on the team can be really valuable and speak with other schools that might be similar to yours.

Reach out to people. And if you don’t know who those people are, maybe Lisa can connect you to somebody that might be, maybe they’re not near you, but maybe they have a similar population and find out, um, you know, how they’re making that happen. I, I think, you know, kind of take the approach, like many hands make light work, isn’t that the expression?

And so [00:56:00] if you ha, you know, if you have lots of people involved, it doesn’t feel so overwhelming than if one person or one department feels like this is all falling, um, on them.

Jennifer Bento: That’s great. Thanks Jen. Um, this one may be for Lisa. Will my cap become a requirement? I know we hear this one often.

Jennifer McGuire: You’ll have to ask the committee that’s, that’s weighing these options.

Um, you know, the, the, there’s a, a large committee, the graduation council has over 35 members representing every aspect of life, um, from schools to. Community partners to students, and there’s representation. Teachers is rep, great representation on the graduation council, and they came out in December with seven recommendations for the new, um, grad requirements.

Right now, all these groups are doing work. We are doing some [00:57:00] work internally, uh, to, to try and think through what will this look like? Um, but the final report is due June 30th to our governor. So I can’t say yes, that absolutely will be a requirement, but there’s a lot of chatter around it. And, um, at the department, we totally believe in student planning.

It’s so important because it’s not just planning, it’s engagement, right? It’s engagement, it’s helping students know who they are, and planning is just critical. So with the department, we certainly, um, would be in favor of seeing student planning of some sort. And for us, obviously it’s my cap ’cause that’s the work we’ve been doing.

Um, but June 30th, watch for the report to the governor and we’ll all know what those new requirements will be. Right?

Jennifer Bento: Thank you Lisa. Um, all right. Here’s one, uh, from an educator that has, um, their school is grades five through [00:58:00] seven. So the question is, do we have a, a, a sample, so scope and sequence for, uh, fifth grade that’s about that maybe available?

Jennifer McGuire: Um, we are, I am awaiting the final stamp to be able to, um, share out our pre-K through grade five, my cap. We have that done. We are just waiting for final approval from above. I am waiting for final approval from above, uh, to be able to share that out. So then we will have a pre-K through 12, um, scope and sequence for my cap.

That can help because this comes up a lot. The reconfiguration schools are doing all kinds, every school has different reconfigurations for their students and their buildings. So, um, we will have that be before the end of the year for sure. We will have our pre-K through 12, um, scope and sequence available.

Jennifer Bento: That’s, that’s exciting. Thank you. Um, and one more, uh, we just have one more minute here. Um, in our district, it has been challenging engaging teachers [00:59:00] department heads and seeing my cap as a full school initiative. Any advice?

Lisa Harney: I, I think it ha like it has to be driven by the building leadership or whoever.

The, the point person is that, um, that guides the, the rest of the leaders and teachers in the building. Um, without that, it, it’s very difficult. Uh, and it’s one of those things, it’s so important because if the students, if the people in front of the students. Don’t seem to be buying in. If they are doing stuff in the kind of like, in a passive way or not showing the engagement on their end, the students will pick up on that so quickly.

And that’s really the, that’s like the, the downfall of your my Cap. So, you know, I think it’s important like include administrators on your My CAP team, make sure that, you know, your, both your building and district leadership is on board and, um, you know, maybe share some of what Lisa just mentioned in terms of the graduation requirements [01:00:00] as a reason why they, they ought to be moving towards this now if they haven’t yet.

Um, but yeah, I think that’s a not an uncommon struggle. I think there’s probably a lot of, um, individuals who feel similarly in their buildings.

Jennifer McGuire: Yeah. And I couldn’t say it any better than Jen just did because we really believe, you know, we, we know, we’ve seen, we’ve been doing this work for 10 years. Um. We know that it’s key for administrators to come on board.

So, um, keep plugging away. Uh, and you know, I’m gonna give my final plug. Ask your administrator to come to the showcase on May 7th. They’ll meet other, they’ll meet other administrators, um, and be able to, uh, have some better conversations with people, their own peers. It’s really about peers, right? We all respond to our peers, and so, uh, we have to try and make some connections there,

Jennifer Bento: for sure.

Okay, so I fibbed we have [01:01:00] one, one more question. If you have a couple more minutes. There’s one lingering question. Um, is there a feature in my cap that can be used to support parents guardians in helping students plan for the future and understand their different post-secondary options?

Lisa Harney: So I can jump in on this.

Um, so the nice thing again about my CCAP is that you are designing your scope and sequence. So if you are in a, a community where you feel like family engagement, you know, is there and maybe that, that your parents could use some prompting or, you know, create lessons that are to be done at home. You know, maybe you can’t require them, but you can create, um, you know, lessons, conversation, research activities in your platform that will encourage, um, students to do this with their parents and share that out with parents and guardians in whatever way you normally do that.

If you use, you know, like if, if you send emails home or you have a website or however you engage with your [01:02:00] families, you can build that right into your, um, your my cap scoping sequence. Um, and I’m sure you know, as you start building these lessons, um, the school, school counselors often have. Activities that they’ve done with parents and guardians during, you know, presentations around post-secondary planning and things like that.

So you, it would actually be great if you put together like an entire, almost a scope and sequence for parents across the years of what can you be doing at home to support your student and make that accessible, uh, to parents I think would be, um, really kind of great.

Jennifer McGuire: And part of my work with our family engagement specialist at the department is we are beginning to create some guidance for family engagement.

And, uh, you know, things like if you do a career fair, are your parents, are your family members invited? Ask them to come to the career fair, make that available to them with their student so that they can see where their student’s going and what they’re looking at. Have an [01:03:00] have a, um, welcome to my Cap Family night.

Maybe you do an open house, but part of your open house is a session on family engagement with my. Starting to build that piece of my cap, that becomes part of the fabric of the school so parents can come in and find their place in there. Uh, so those are just a few of the ideas that we’re, we’re gonna be putting out guidance for.

Jennifer Bento: That’s great. Thank you so much. This has been an amazing session. Thank you both, Jen and Lisa for sharing. Um, all of, all of the great. Things going on with my cap. Um, up on the screen now you’ll, you see, um, two QR codes, one for, um, registering or any upcoming MEFA Institute webinars. And then of course we have our QR code to register for the, uh, my cap showcase that Lisa mentioned.

So you can use those codes, register, um, right here from the screen. And if you have any lingering questions [01:04:00] following this webinar, um, feel free to reach out to, to Jen or Lisa here. I’ll put the contact info back on the screen here. Um, you could always reach out to us at MEFA as well, so we appreciate your time today and uh, have a great one and take care.

Jennifer McGuire: Thanks Jennifer. Thanks everybody for coming.

Thank you for including me.