Standard 4.1 Nurturing and Caring for Students: Understanding that every child and young person is a unique image bearer of God, the Christian school personalizes the nurture and care it provides for students.
Indicators for Standard 4.1
4.1.1 School and classroom behavioral management: A school-wide behavior management plan is derived from biblical principles, balancing truth and grace. It respects each student as an image bearer of God and seeks to be restorative.
Rating: 2
Our parent/student handbook states the following: "Discipline is always an attempt to guide students and to help them correct inappropriate behavior." We feel that our policy does that, allowing room for teacher and administrator discretion to handle cases uniquely while still holding to consistent principles.
4.1.2 Academic and spiritual advocacy: Recognizing that each student benefits from a caring adult Christian role model and an academic advocate, the school has a formal program established in which each student is well-known by at least one adult who supports the student academically and spiritually.
Rating: 2
We have recently (2016-2017) added the positions of Spiritual Life Coordinator and an additional resource teacher to our staff, and we can already see positive results from these two positions, but we still need work in this area. Because of growing enrollment in the resource department, our teacher has been overwhelmed in the past. In the last year, we created a Student Success team (resource teacher, counselor, and rotating classroom teacher) to keep track of failing kids and provide better communication among teachers of these students. This has been a positive step in the right direction, as the addition of another resource teacher to meet student needs. We believe that our roles as teachers has to stop somewhere (3-legged stool of church/home/school), and we therefore cannot provide adequate mentoring to all students; however, we have made efforts to improve our small group program in the 2016-2017 school year in order to help students feel known by an adult and be part of a faith community.
4.1.3 Counseling and guidance resources for students: The school provides counseling and guidance services for students and families in the areas of emotional needs, academic planning, and career decision-making.
Rating: 2
We have a crisis plan in place to activate in case of an emergency, which we go over as a staff every fall during our inservices. Students in crisis also have the opportunity to visit with our counselor, although it's difficult to estimate how many choose to do so. The counselor visits one-on-one with every freshman, junior, and senior to get to know them and provide academic and emotional guidance. She also visits with each grade (9-11) during one of their core classes in the spring to register them for the next year. Sophomore and junior students attend career planning events at NCC and Dordt, and juniors and seniors have built in college visit days during the school year. Students can also choose to job shadow, attend specific field-related career days, or participate in mock interviews. We do feel that counseling services run into problems because the job is currently part-time, so our counselor can't meet with every student throughout the year (no sophomore meeting) and has trouble building relationships with students because she can't be in the hallways or have her door open as often. Some of this dissatisfaction can be found in the surveys, especially the parent survey.
Standard 4.2 Practicing Christian Community: Teachers and students demonstrate Christian community, living out their faith together through worship and service in the classroom and beyond.
Indicators for Standard 4.2
4.2.1 Classroom community is structured on biblical ideals: All members of the classroom community are respected and each member has the opportunity to contribute. Strengths are used for the benefit of the community; differences are celebrated, never exploited. Gifts and fruits of the Spirit are recognized and encouraged.
Rating: 2
Our school's values and beliefs are systematically incorporated into our classrooms and discipline framework. We feel our policies and practices reflect students as image bearers. This is clearly stated in our faculty handbook: "Students, God's image bearers, are not merely physical creatures, but are covenant children, belonging to their Creator. And because they have feelings, minds, and souls, they can learn of their Creator in many different ways and serve Him in all of these ways. As they learn about Him from His Word and from His creation, they must work to expose their Creator's power and magnificence." We ask students to lead worship, pray, create art, and write poetry. We have many opportunities for students to get involved and to display spiritual gifts. We can't guarantee this is happening in each classroom every day, but we believe that our teachers are committed to celebrating each of their students as God's image bearers.
4.2.2 Climate/culture: The desire to have a relationship with God permeates every aspect of the school. Both the people and environment exhibit Christ-like characteristics. The climate and culture reflect the mission, vision, and shared beliefs of the school community.
Rating: 3
Teachers counsel students and model Christ in all activities, in classroom and out. There are exceptions and mistakes, but we feel our faculty and staff as a whole do an excellent job of this. Students do monitor one another; however, we believe when authority is absent, our kids will act as anyone else. When authority is present, they will quickly jump on board with expected behaviors. Teachers incorporate wide range of opportunities for students to broaden their scope of Christian behavior. To illustrate this, our evidence shows that our student body is eager to offer help to those in need through service projects, that 90% agree or strongly agree that their school is "definitely Christian," and that graduating seniors feel as though their teachers provide them with excellent faith examples.
4.2.3 Worship experiences: The school community lives out its faith together through worship and service. Students and teachers have corporate and small group opportunities for worship—wondering at God’s majesty, seeking his face, and growing in discipleship.
Rating: 4
We feel our chapel coordinator does a great job scheduling chapels and getting a variety of speakers and including student-led worship. Classes have devotions 1st period and prayer 4th and 8th periods. Some students will lead devotion times in class, and many will at least offer up prayer requests. Teachers also have weekly devotions, where faculty take turns leading, often writing their own reflections, and we share prayer requests and prayer time. We do believe students are not taught how to provide worship leadership, and this might be a great thing for the spiritual life coordinator to focus on. In addition to chapel and devotions, we feel that our students and teachers also worship in their classrooms. We feel every square inch belongs to God, so even doing classroom assignments, staying on task, and offering our work to God is a form of worship. Finally, we feel our extra curricular activities offer great times of worship as well. Choir and band concerts, Chamber Singers, and athletic teams all have worship incorporated into them.
4.2.4 Service opportunities: Students understand the needs of the larger community and world and are motivated by Christ’s example to meet those needs by creating and implementing plans.
Rating: 2
Students get behind projects once they are presented by faculty and staff and take ownership in the service opportunities, but they don't (usually--some do) create and implement those plans. Our AIW initiative encourages teachers to take learning beyond the classroom in its Value Beyond School (VBS) category. Some examples include the following:
Consumer Economics - takes care of video board and also have a lesson in which students sell an item to raise money for a donation to a special cause
PE classes clean up football fields
Small Groups plan gratitude projects
Art II class paints murals throughout the building
Holiday fundraisers: student council picks a cause and students host a change war to raise money
Stewardship day
Environmental science helped landscape around the school
FFA feeds lunches to farmers during harvest
Student body and staff picked up corn in a field that burned down
All call of students to help out in Rock Valley during the flood of 2014
Football players helped a family whose house burned down
Standard 4.3 Christ-honoring Community: The school is intentional about its operations and stakeholders view the school as a model of a Christ-honoring community.
Indicators for Standard 4.3
4.3.1 Board-administration relationship: The governing body and administration clearly understand each other’s roles in maintaining and nurturing a great school that honors Christ’s Spirit within the community and provides students with an excellent Christian education.
Rating: 3
As a group of teachers, we are not entirely sure about this rating. We don't know what all goes on within the relationship between the principal and the board, but it appears that their relationship is positive and the board expects a lot out of the administrator. Faculty fills out an administrator evaluation yearly that is reviewed by the board, but we notice that there is no self-evaluation by the board (or faculty evaluation of the board--something to consider!). Teachers also have regular contact with the board during contract meetings and classroom visits. We feel the board does support the faculty and staff and we feel they allow us to do our job as Christian educators to the best we can - we feel we received the resources necessary.
4.3.2 Visionary strategic plan: As part of its strategic plan creation (see 1.2.7), the governing body provides a vision and visionary leadership for the school.
Rating: 4
Communication takes place between board, administration, stakeholders, faculty, staff, constituents, etc via the Western Witness, website, school society meetings, school board meetings. A great example of this happening includes the summer of 2012 and the 2012-2013 school year. Board, staff and faculty met and developed a vision for our short and long term goals - Led by Harbor group out of Sioux Center. Our group feels the strategic plan has spurred the growth of the school improvement plan--the board does go back and revisit the strategic plan to see how the school is progressing. We feel the strategic plan is based on our educational goals as an institution and that the administration and board are responsible for implementing the strategic plan. We would like to encourage the board committees to continue looking at the strategic plan to continue improving WC
4.3.3 Facilities: The school can effectively implement its mission, curriculum, and academic program using the current physical facilities. The facilities are considered an asset to both the internal and external community.
Rating: 4
Our facilities are excellent, especially after the most recent building campaign (Second Century of Service)! Our strategic planning in 2012 outlined changes we needed to make to better meet student needs, including ag rooms, new science classrooms, an event center, a student lounge, better security, new office spaces, and updated infrastructure. Constituency support for our building projects has been incredible! We have awesome support from the surrounding communities and constituency--needs are typically addressed by the board and when presented to constituency, the support is second to none. Day to day, we feel administration does a great job asking if we need anything that will help us in our teaching areas. We feel the school is clean, even when all the construction was going on! We feel our custodians are doing a fantastic job. We do have building debt, but also a plan to pay debt off; the faculty was concerned about the building project costing the faculty money, and board has reassured faculty it will not affect salaries. Finally, the community does have access to the school for concerts, sporting events and practices, youth leagues, family/class reunions, and community events (Night of Hope). With the new Events Center, we feel community involvement will increase more.
Standard 4.4 Interaction with Community: The school’s interactions and relationships with its stakeholders and community are intentional and well implemented.
Indicators for Standard 4.4
4.4.1 Multiple methodsof communication with families: The school believes that effective Christian education depends on vibrant partnerships with parents and families. To enhance these partnerships, the school relies on a variety of interactive, on-going, and meaningful communication methods and strategies.
Rating: 2+
The group feels we are a strong 2. We feel most communication is from the school to the parent. We have never reassessed if parents feel we are communicating well with them or not. Our secretary send out the weekly memo (with announcements from the office and the teachers) to all parents that have a listed email address at school, and we publish the Western Witness every other month. Our Facebook page, Twitter account, and school website are also available online anytime. Teachers have recently begun using Google Classroom exclusively to communicate assignments to students, and parents can sign up for weekly summaries of their child's class work. Additionally, they can check their student's grades on JMC at anytime, and they receive progress reports from teachers when their student is performing poorly in a class. We have ongoing 1-way communication as listed above, but we do not take into account parents' schedules, transportation, translation, child care, etc. We feel the responsibility of communication lies collectively with the leadership of the school, teachers and parents. Virtually no data is being collected or analyzed to measure success of various communication tools, so that is an area we can improve on, perhaps through survey items. However, we feel that our constituents, if they would like to communicate, have every avenue possible to communicate with us. Our emails and phone numbers are listed, and we hold parent/teacher conferences twice a year. Because of parents' monetary investment in their children's education, we think they stay very involved. Possible other improvements include sending out an informational packet to new/freshmen parents to inform them of school procedures/policies and putting freshmen orientation material on the website for prospective parents and students to read.
4.4.2 Intentional: The school has intentional, formal channels to listen to and communicate with all stakeholders. The school solicits the opinions of parents, employees, and other stakeholders.
Rating: 2
We do send out regular bulletins to inform parents of what is happening at Western, but as stated in 4.4.1, the communication is often one-way (see examples above). Parents have a vote at the annual society meeting, but few choose to exercise that right. Similarly, the teachers have informal access to the principal at any time and can communicate with board members at the curriculum meeting and during contract meetings. However, the committee recognizes that we need to do more in the area of surveys for parents, students, teachers, and alumni, and also have a system for analyzing and implementing the feedback we receive. The committee also recognizes that teachers don't always feel that they have a voice in decisions that are made regarding instructional initiatives or other items that affect the way they do their jobs. We recommend looking at ways to gather and use meaningful feedback from all of these stakeholders.
4.4.3 Volunteer involvement: A volunteer coordination program is in place. This includes appropriate procedures for recruiting, screening, orienting, and training volunteers.
Rating: 1
We don't have a parent-teacher organization, and our volunteers are not screened, but we do have people that come in and help us. Booster club ladies do all of the clothing and t-shirt orders, and we have an office helper who makes copies and does administrative tasks. There is a sign-up to help with the concession stand at games (on the website). Our promotional director has retired constituents help with stuffing envelopes for alumni newsletters and foundation announcements. Athletic events also utilizes long-term (over many years) volunteers who do parking, tickets, announcing, line judging, officiating and keeping books. We also have volunteers speak in chapel or classrooms or help with mock interviews, project judging, etc. Our volunteers are almost always parents and constituents. While we don't have a formal process in place, our committee feels there really isn't a huge need for volunteers here at Western since our needs are being met.
4.4.4 Broader community: The school has effective communications and relationships with the broader community: area churches, alumni, neighbors, community organizations, and others with legitimate interests in the mission of the school.
Rating: 3
We think we do a good job of this. We host and (sometimes) help coordinate class reunions. Additionally, we will welcome alumni ideas but don't necessarily seek input from them. They are encouraged to attend the Foundation banquet and contribute to the Foundation fund, and they receive an alumni newsletter. There is also an alumni board meeting to coordinate the 100 year celebration in 2019. Communication to the broader community takes place through the Western Witness, a weekly radio address, and our Facebook page. Communication with area churches happens with regular bulletin announcements, distribution of the Witness, and Pastor's Day here at school. Local pastors are also frequent chapel speakers. Our committee would suggest an expansion of Pastor's Day to involve pastors in more communication with teachers and students (instead of only the administrator and spiritual life coordinator). We also think our communication, especially with alumni, can focus heavily on seeking donations.
Strand 4: Summary of Self-Study and Potential Areas of Improvement
Which indicators provide reasons for commendation? What blessings can we identify?
We feel strongly that we have seen and are benefiting from standard 4.3, Christ Honoring Community. We feel the relationship between the board and administration, implementing a visionary strategic plan, and the updating of our facilities is truly a blessing.
We also feel strongly about standard 4.2, practicing a Christian Community. We feel we have provided worship experiences for our students and constituency that are consistent with the standards set forth by CSI accreditation.
Which indicators provide reasons for concern or further action and review?
We feel that we need to address areas found in standard 4.1, Nurturing and Caring for students. This standard scored the lowest of all our standards. We feel that (at the time of this study), the resource department is overwhelmed with the number of at-risk students they see. We also feel that our counseling department needs to make herself more readily available for students. Kids would like to see her in the hallways and feel she is approachable due to a relationship built, not just a mandatory meeting freshmen, junior, senior years. Finally, we feel that our new teachers need to be inserviced more with our discipline plan, and we would like to have a faculty committee set up to look at rules and make recommendations for change.
We feel we need to look at standard 4.4.1 and 4.4.2. We believe valuable information could be gained through regular and thoughtful gathering of feedback from stakeholders (through surveys, etc.).
Are there patterns of concern?
At the time of this self-study, we were concerned about the increasing number of students being enrolled in the resource department. The hiring of more resource staff in 2016-2017 has alleviated that concern somewhat, as has the implementation of Student Success Teams. Our spiritual mentoring has also improved with the re-structuring of small groups in 2016-2017, but this is an area we continue to be concerned with (Strand 4.1). Parent, student and teacher surveys can provide pattern of concern for counseling department, mostly shared concerns.
Again, we feel like valuable information could be gained through regular and thoughtful gathering of feedback from stakeholders (through surveys, etc.).
Do we see potential areas for improvement that might become goals in our school improvement plan?
Would like to see better communication between constituency and school. We could make monthly board minutes available to our public. We suggest sending out exit questionnaires to graduates (5 years after graduation) to receive feedback from former students to check if we are nurturing them academically/spiritually/socially/physically. We also propose to continue the surveys we conducted for this accreditation process (student, parent, teacher).
We would like to continue to improve and measure the effectiveness of the resource and the counseling departments. Our resource teacher needs more help supervising and intervening for at-risk students. Also, as evidenced in parent, student, and teacher surveys, the effectiveness of the counseling department needs to be looked at carefully.