Superintendent Listening Sessions 2024
Superintendent Listening Sessions 2024 Over 15 days and nearly 15 hours, 140 community members convened to consider the following three questions: What is the identity of Raffles American School? What skills, knowledge, and character traits will students need for success after graduating from RAS? How can we achieve these goals? The questions were designed to reveal… Who are we? What do we want to accomplish? How can we make that happen?
Dear Raffles American School, Superintendent ~ Raffles American School My first priority as your new Superintendent is to understand our school community. As one part of achieving this goal, I conducted listening sessions with many groups of our parents, our teachers and staff, and our students. The interactions revealed important perspectives about our school, our aspirations for our students, and insightful ideas about how we can get started on the journey together. My overwhelming impression is how similarly all of us view the posed questions; your answers have more in common than they differ. Paramount among several common themes are: the desire to improve the educational experiences for our students and the desire to accomplish this through the development of a more cohesive school community. Accomplishing these common goals is no small feat; however, it is our shared direction. Moving in this direction will take all of us; parents, faculty & staff, and students. As we move into next school year’s WASC mid-cycle review report, this clear direction will keep us focused. You can expect to see our conversations and initiatives centered on this direction and other salient points that are identified in this report of our Superintendent Listening Sessions. Your conversations are captured, organized, and shared in the following pages. I hope you find this brief report both insightful and informative. How was the report made? We documented the conversations of each session. I then analyzed the statements to develop cohesive themes. For example, comments about the RAS identity such as “we have great after-school activities,” “the CCAs are very diverse,” and “there are great opportunities for students in the CCAs,” were grouped together within the theme of “CCA Program.” The same was done for all the comments. These themes for questions 1 and 2 were then entered into word-cloud software to visualize each conversation. We also added a graphic showing which themes were most common among parents, students, and faculty & staff. The comments from question 3, due to their specific nature, are edited and listed. What now? The leadership team and I will refer to this report when considering decisions regarding the direction of the school and our priorities. Consulting this report will ensure we are grounded in the voice of our Raffles American School community. Dr. Alexander Pethan
Students Parents Faculty Parents Students Faculty & Staff
Listening sessions 5 Question 1 Reflection It is clear that community members see the following as core components of our RAS identity: the American curriculum and educational system, a strong CCA and AP program, cultural diversity and international students, and English as our common language. In these answers, I see an enhanced focus on our extra-curricular activities and the academic program will be appreciated by all. Given we have students and teachers from so many different backgrounds, we should look to deliberately turn that reality into opportunities for improved communication and understanding. We will also explore how to improve interpersonal communication. Many believe a focus on improving English skills and seeing English as our common, unifying language will best support the development of a cohesive community at RAS and all our students’ future aspirations.
Students Parents Faculty Parents Students Faculty & Staff
Listening sessions 7 Question 2 Reflection The skills, knowledge, and character traits seen as most important for our students are communication skills - including strong English skills, interpersonal skills, critical-thinking skills, perseverance, and self-directed learners with high levels of self-discipline. These areas of focus are closely aligned with our RAS GLOs (General Learning Outcomes). It is reassuring that our previously defined GLOs continue to match what we view as crucial, overarching traits of successful students. Given this confirmation, we can confidently move forward by meaningfully embedding these traits into our academic and extracurricular programs. There was also a clear call, especially from students, for us to be more intentional with students about these traits and to provide regular feedback about students’ progress in these areas. While we all know knowledge is important, it is often the skills one develops in the pursuit of that knowledge, and the ability to apply those skills to new situations, that are most valuable in our dynamic world.
Listening sessions 8 Question 3 How can we achieve these goals?
I’ll conclude with a sincere thank you to all the community members who participated. These conversations and this report have helped me, and they will help our school, define our shared goals; we are unified in so many core areas about what makes a strong school. This is the first step toward developing priorities and establishing a clear strategy to move closer to realizing our bright future at Raffles American School. Conclusions These ideas about how to achieve our goals show the diverse backgrounds we all bring to our RAS community. Several of these ideas are already being implemented, and their feasibility is being investigated. Staying solutionfocused and forward-looking, I encourage you to continue developing a deep understanding of this unique moment in time we all share at Raffles American School. This thinking and understanding can help us all move forward together with ideas that meet our students’ aspirations.
Superintendent Listening Sessions 2024 Prepared for: Date of issue: Raffles American School Community 24 May, 2024