An Overwhelming Start to Research
When I sat down with my group to analyze the data we had from Olive Academy in Jordan, I had no idea what I was going to find. After reading the interview with my student and alumni, I wasn’t sure what I should be looking for and what was relevant enough to do an entire research project on. After sitting down with my group members it was clear that we all felt one thing after looking through all of the data: overwhelmed. There were so many different directions we could go, but luckily we identified some common themes throughout the interviews which helped narrow down our topic for our proposal including community service, global citizenship, social class, and more. However, what stuck with me the most were the values that Olive Grove Academy held their students to.
Each value holds a different meaning, but together, they make up “five universal values that best express what we strive to impart to our students.” When my group and I spoke about our interviews from the alumni and the students, the interesting thing was that almost all of our students were not able to recite the five values, let alone recognize how many values the school had. Some of our students knew that there were 5 values, but some thought that there were 6 or 7 values, and were unable to name all of them. Most of the students were able to identify global citizenship as a value because this is something that Olive Grove stresses very adamantly, but the rest of the values were hit or miss if students could name them.
Noticing that global citizenship was the most recited value, we decided to focus our research on how this specific value affects students’ perception of the school overall and the students’ role in the community during high school and beyond. Because this value is extremely emphasized by the administration of the school, it carries extra weight with the students and teachers- showing that global citizenship is something that most students take with them.
When reading and thinking further about these values, I thought back to my high school experience. My public high school also had 5 ‘values’ that were used to describe a Fairfield Warde student, and everyone basically had these ingrained into their memory. We even had a spirit chant involving these 5 characteristics that the student section would cheer at football and basketball games. Even now, two years post my high school graduation, I could recite the five Fairfield Warde student values at the drop of a hat: Welcoming, Academic, Respectful, Dynamic, and Ethical. As an alum, I believe that I still carry many of the five values with me through my college experience, both as a student and as a member of society. Our five characteristics may be easier to remember as they make up an acronym for our school, but hearing that students at one of the most elite private schools in the world could not name their five values came as a shock to me. I would have expected the students to know the ins and outs of every single value and how they relate back to Olive Grove, but clearly the data showed the opposite. As I’ve said before, the value of global citizenship has overshadowed the values of the others, which was clearly the standout value to the students we looked into. As my group and I continue into our research project and examining the role of global citizenship on the students of Olive Grove Academy, I want to continue looking into the effects of the other four core values of the school and see how these resonate with students in their time at Olive Grove and beyond.
http://www.wardefocus.com/2017/03/
https://gfycat.com/dazzlingimmediatekillifish