Discussion+of+the+minutes

Feb. 1, 2009

Welcome to our first WIKI Discussion. I would like to begin this process with the discussion of our minutes from our first meeting. In looking over the minutes from that meeting, I noted that we had made several "Action Plans." I am wondering where we are with these plans. I also had some new thoughts and questions that I want to bring to the group.

First, let's review the Action Plans we made:
 * I said I would contact PEJE to see if other high schools have done any surveys of their graduates. I will do this this week.
 * Others said they would be contacting other schools (Cranbrook, Country Day, Roeper) to see if they survey their graduates and see what their surveys look like. Has this happened?
 * Everyone committed to writing 3 or 4 questions that they would like to include on a survey of graduates in order to determine if their education at FJA helped prepare them well for their college experience. Has anyone done this yet?
 * Someone (Jordana?) was going to look into "Project Join" to see if we can get interns to help us conduct the survey.
 * Eric, I believe, committed to looking at our website to make sure the ISACS symbol is prominently displayed.

My new thoughts: I have been giving the purpose of our committee a good deal of thought recently. More and more, I feel that my real interest is to look more closely at our Judaics curriculum and instructors and then try to determine if we are both delivering the product we promised as well as providing the type of information our students will find most helpful in their future. As stated in our minutes, it has been found that most students come to our school because of the class size and relationships between teachers and students. In the past, after graduating, they instead spoke about the knowledge of Judaism they gained. I want to be sure this is still true. Inquiry and critical thinking, along with the ability to effectively analyze a body of material and communicate thoughts about it in writing, have been the overall goals of this school. Are the Judaics classes providing opportunities for these things in meaningful and effective ways? Are students seeing these classes as "important" and "real" as their other classes? If not, why not? I think most would agree that our general studies curriculum is strong and on par with other private schools (though we probably need to verify this), and our adminstistration does an excellent job of monitoring this. But, what sets us apart from other schools is our Judaics curriculum. Is it as good as can be? How can we know? If necessary, how can we help the school improve it? Do we need to look at our criteria for hiring Judaics instructors? Should an education background, or at least classroom experience, be a requirement? Does anyone else see this as a concern?

Now, lets look at some plans for the future:
 * We need to begin compiling the list of questions for graduates who have been out of high school for 2-5 years.
 * Perhaps we need to look at whether or not improving writing skills as a goal across curriculum is happening.
 * Let's talk some more about the idea that general studies teachers could perhaps work more closely with Judaics studies teachers for two reasons: 1. General studies teachers need to understand and appreciate the methods and content of the Judaics classes, and 2) mentor those Judaics instructors who need help with deliviering curriculum in an organized and meaningful way.
 * Please welcome FJA board member and parent, Jeff Devries to our committee. I inadvertently left Jeff off of my first email list so he did not receive a notice of our first meeting. Jeff will be an active contributor to our committee from this point on.
 * Set a meeting date for our next //actual// meeting. Please indicate if Feb.23 or 24th would work for you. Would the first week of March be better? What day?

Please respond by going to the DISCUSSION tab and post a comment. Thank you for your time and thoughts! Robin