Menu

Globally Elite

Efficacy of Guiding principles and values

/ / /

Mission statements can be found everywhere: big companies, small businesses, and schools. They tell the consumer what they are about, why they do what they do, and what they want. Olive Grove Academy in Jordan is no exception. It is clear as an outsider looking in that they promote a certain message and have a set of defined guiding principles and values they hope their students will embody. Their five values focus on the construction of a well-rounded human being relating to respect, responsibility, love of learning, global citizenship, and an integrated life. Quickly looking at these values without going too much in depth, they seem very straightforward. As I continued to further read and analyze each value, they were more nuanced than what appears at first glance. I began to wonder how Olive Grove would communicate these guiding principles and values to their students and how impactful and valuable they are to their students.

 Furthering my attention toward the student interviews we read, there was a surprising similarity between them. Specifically speaking on the interview I read, I learned that the student had a very small awareness and understanding of the values of Olive Grove. She was only able to mention one of the values; the other major values she thought was at the center of Olive Grove was no cheating, effort to get rid of social class and being honest. From my understanding, I think her perception of the school’s values stems from the school environment and how it is being implemented within the curriculum. This greatly increased my concern as to how important these values are to the students. However, personally speaking as a student at Colby, I also have been unaware of certain goals and initiatives endorsed at the school. Only from discussion in our class, did I realize that Colby has a global citizenship program. So, I pose another question, if not the values of the school that motivate students, where does it come from?

https://brodzinski.com/2014/08/practices-principles-values.html

In the interview, she expressed that the way Olive Grove and the teachers within the school carry out the guiding principles and values is not how she would do it. More or less, she agrees with them however, she explained that a major driving force behind her motivation at school comes from her own personal and family values. She takes pride in trying to be the best she can be, being truly herself and setting her own expectations and values. It doesn’t seem that her lack of awareness and understanding of her school’s values have negatively affected her ability to succeed. Does it matter that her motivation and success stems from other influences other than Olive Grove? I think in general elite institutions everywhere feel they need to endorse certain guiding principles and values to create their own status and maintain their position of eliteness between other elite schools. As a result, the ways in which elite schools, Olive Grove included, endorse and implement their guiding principles and values fall short to greatly benefit and affect their students.

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

Social Class Differences within Elite Schooling

/ / , /

Over the past couple of weeks, I have had the opportunity to do research on an elite school in Ghana and gain insight about what the experience is like for students there. The Sankofa International College is a unique school that has a student body made up of half middle- and upper-class Ghanaian students and another half of orphaned children. Through listening to the interviews and reading the transcripts of students at the Ghana school, it revealed many interesting findings about their experiences that reminded me of some of the experiences I went through at my high school. My high school was a private school in the suburbs of Massachusetts composed of a majority of students from well off families and about a third of the students who were from low and middle-class families. The main parallels between the Ghana school and my high school that I will focus on are student pressure and friend groups.

So first, student pressure. By this I mean the pressure that students put on themselves or pressure they may face from their parents. In an interview I listened to from one of the Ghana  students, I found that the disadvantaged students push themselves a lot harder academically than the weathlier students do. This seems to be because they feel that as an orphan, they are at a disadvantage socially and economically. Therefore, by doing extremely well academically, it could get them the “ticket” to further their education and get a well-paying job. There was a similar pressure on students at my high school who were on financial aid compared to the students whose parents could afford full tuition. I felt this academic pressure personally. I remember trying to get in as much additional help from my teachers after class to go over concepts that I was struggling with. However, some of my other classmates would just rush out the door after class as if they were not worried if they understood the material or not. The difference was that those kids had private tutors that would come to their homes and help them with their homework whereas I did not. At both my high school and the Ghana school, it is clear that differences in class status and access to or lack of financial resources, have a great impact on the level of pressure that students place on themselves to perform academically.

The next similar component of my high school and the Ghana school is friend groups and how they are formed. In the student interviews, it was clear that the school put emphasis on limiting the appearance of social difference amongst students. However, it is inevitable for these differences to still show through. Although the orphaned students were not mistreated by the wealthier students, they still seemed to be more comfortable around students like them. It is possible that they felt a bit intimidated by the wealthier students who had many advantages and privileges that they did not have. This was true at my high school as well. Students on financial aid, and especially students of colors, usually had their own friend groups separate from the wealthier, white students. My personal experience with these social groupings was a bit more fluid however. I was friends with minority students that I could identify with, but I also had many friends who did not look like me. I think in large part this was due to my being an athlete and as a result, I was more welcomed into certain social circles that I do not think I would have been welcomed into if I were not on a sports team. 

Nonetheless, these social groupings play a major role in students’ experiences and how they view themselves as a member of the community. And furthermore, pressure that students place on themselves is not something to take lightly as it impacts students’ mental health which has an enormous effect on how they perform academically. It is so interesting to discover these similarities between my high school experience and the experiences of students in an entirely different country. I look forward to seeing what other similarities I may discover as this project continues.

https://media.giphy.com/media/3oEjHIzVGrgmjr9j0I/giphy.gif
https://media.giphy.com/media/3oEjHIzVGrgmjr9j0I/giphy.gif

Who Benefits from Community Service?: Exploring Service Programs at both Everdeen and Colby

/ / , /

In a class a few days ago, we had a rather heated discussion of who the mentorship program where elementary and middle school students from surrounding schools are paired with Colby students actually benefits. Is it the mentees? Is it Colby students? If the Colby students are benefitting, is it simply from spending time with kids, or is it just a resume booster? Hearing this debate made me rethink my previous notions of the program; perhaps it is more about making Colby students feel good than it is about helping our mentees. I must add that I am complicit in this, as I’m a mentor myself. And so, I recognized the ways in which elite students at Everdeen talked about their community service endeavors: simultaneously framing them as fulfilling social justice work and downplaying their own personal gains. 

https://tenor.com/search/not-helping-gifs

In an interview, an Everdeen student described a similar mentor-mentee program to the one on campus, which prompted my reflection. This student, Jake, had been working with Sudanese students in an after-school program to help them with homework and learning English. It blew my mind that this organization had allowed Jake, a highschool student with no background in teaching or language learning, to teach these students. He participated in this program, furthermore, to get enough community service hours to receive an internationally-recognized award; many of the students from Everdeen mentioned working towards this. In the same way I asked myself “are Colby students properly trained to be mentors? I would adapt the question to this situation: is Jake properly trained to be a language teacher? If the answer is no, and the student is not greatly benefiting from this experience, why does he get to use this time towards receiving an award? It seems to me as if the award is more focused on a performative commitment to service, rather than effective and ethical community service itself. 

The school sends hypocritical messages surrounding service, suggesting that it is not as important as they say it is. An alum recalls one of Everdeen’s three “pillars” that they wanted to focus on being service. Students were separated into houses, which they likened to Hogwarts, which all had specific service projects. They would fundraise, host food drives, and go on international service trips. The school prides itself on creating global citizens, which includes a commitment to social justice and community service. I wonder, however, if this hope to create global citizens is hypocritical, and perhaps reinforces preexisting class distinctions. This same alum goes on to say: “I think [service] was talked about a lot, but it wasn’t really a thing.  I think it was an idea that they wanted us to be very involved in, but when it came down to it, a lot of people at [Everdeen] weren’t super interested in that, because it was kind of focusing more on academics or sport.” The school wants to be seen as a place that breeds conscientious peoples, but they do not seem to be getting the message across to the students; we see that when students talk about their service, they mostly talk about how it affects them, instead of the community. 

When students are asked questions about this topic, they seem to have the right answer for everything: how this taught them to be aware of their privilege, how it feels good to give back, etc.. It is after they get the scripted remarks out of the way that they reveal more problematic sentiments. One student, Violet, said she liked community service because it “makes [her] feel good,” and that “people are so appreciative.” Another said that service and social justice work “makes you better as a person” and that it “ helps [students] to have a well-rounded ability.” It is clear that these students have spent time thinking not only about how this service affects the community, but also themselves. And, they find it to be largely beneficial! 

Returning to Colby’s mentoring program, I think all mentors at heart know that the program could be more beneficial. How can meeting once a week with no direction ever change the structural problems that invite such programs to exist in the first place? How can community service at Everdeen better reflect the community needs, rather than the needs of elite students to feel good about themselves? That is a question that I don’t know the answer to. And while I might not have an alternative, it is clear that the existing model of community service by elites present at both Colby and Everdeen does little for community development, and much for elite well-being. 

Which English do you speak?

/ / /

Diversity was a central theme throughout the interviews and the answers from both alumni interviews I read coincide with one another in one crucial aspect – what is missing from their answers . They were asked about opportunities they had to learn about cultures and values other than their own. One alum said: “most of the stuff was probably focused on the main couple of cultural, religious groups, which was mostly – we had a lot of Chinese students, so the Chinese New Year was a big thing that they talked about.” The other said: “they had Chinese New Year festivals every year, they had other events that celebrated other cultures a lot… even at my campus we had a French day where people got crepes, like it was a celebration of the French language. And then we also had Japanese day where people had bento boxes and sushi. A fair few kids from an Indian, Sri Lankan background, and then pretty much, just all the kind of standard, Aussie, white kids.” Their interviews both point out that was mostly at another campus.

While these seem like inclusionary statements, it is important to note that one of the alums clarified their school “had over 50 or 60 different cultures.” Their responses don’t come anywhere near this number, but both alumni state how important the diversity aspect is to their school. Only a handful of cultures were addressed out of the dozens that make up the student body, grouping international students together in a non-representative way.

The Farnham Writers’ Center at Colby is an incredibly valuable resource, as it provides students with guidance in academic writing. For some international students, this could prove itself to be crucial as writing conventions may vary greatly from country to country, not to mention the necessity of adaptation to writing in a language different than what one might be used to. The Writers’ Center attempted to go to further lengths to provide appropriate help to each student in the form of a few questions on class standing, major, and language proficiency. The language question was: “Are you an international student or a non-native speaker?”, with a click down yes or no answer option. 

This implies an equivalent between being an international student and a non-native speaker, which would require a different level of support in writing. My roommate is from India – she has multiple native languages, including English and has done all of her schooling in English. For me, this would also be a tricky question as I had done years of academic writing in English. Including this question insinuates that all international students might need help regarding their proficiency which can lead to implicit misconceptions that could potentially hinder the efficiency of the tutoring session. It has since been changed to: “First or home language,” which includes a variety of language options, which will allow the tutors to be more informed about how to assist the students.

International students are not a homogenous mass, so diversity is not being appropriately addressed just by its mere existence within an institution. By approaching it as such would be to contradict the very concept of diversity within an institution. Further, it could hinder the student’s progress in their education, as well as the institution’s capability to assist them.

Load More