Palette Investigates Changes to Minimester
AJA High School faced the lowest attendance for Minimester in recent history last year. In total, seniors, juniors, sophomores, and freshmen were reported missing from their Minimester classes 60, 29, 31, and 41 times respectively, according to Dr. Stephenson and Mrs. Brand, the directors of Minimester, a short period of the school year when students learn new topics in lieu of their typical year-long classes.
Low attendance was only one of the factors that Mrs. Brand and Dr. Stephenson kept in mind when designing this year’s experience. Although many students and faculty appreciated the chance to explore new and exciting topics and take a break from the routine schedule, they also reported a lack of investment on each other’s part. In response to the negative feedback, Dr. Stephenson and Mrs. Brand made modifications. Instead of the three full days before the annual Ramah Shabbaton, as was the case in the most recent years, Minimester is now two partial days (bookended by regular classes in the morning and afternoon) on March 17 and 18, nearly a month after the regularly scheduled time. Faculty and students hope this shift will improve attendance, engagement, and the overall effectiveness of Minimester.
This is not the first time that Minimester has adapted. According to Mrs. Brand, at one point Minimester was a week long experience before it was discontinued entirely due the same kind of “absenteeism and lack of engagement” that occurred last year. Throughout the 11 years that Mrs. Brand has run the program, Minimester’s length and position in the school calendar was subject to change, though it had previously always been full days of learning.
Feedback from a form sent out to faculty and students highlighted other fundamental issues that cropped up during last year’s Minimester.
Feedback from a form sent out to faculty and students highlighted other fundamental issues that cropped up during last year’s Minimester. Mrs. Brand reported that student responses highlighted that “skipping Minimester gave them a nice chance to rest and recuperate before the Shabbaton,” and that students felt “bored after the second day,” preferring instead to have a shorter Minimester to “accommodate for other things like color war.” Mrs. Brand also noted that some students questioned whether meaningful learning could take place in three 45-minute periods, viewing Minimester as less valuable than expected.
Faculty survey responses were no better than students’. Teachers complained that students were “not invested in their classes,” as many were “cutting classes, left, right and center.” Based on student attendance and investment, teachers could not justify the “time, effort, [and] energy,” put into designing and executing a class for three days on top of their already busy schedule for students that “don’t even show up, or when they do, they won’t buy in.”
On a similar note, some students also complained about their Minimester teachers’ lack of investment, with several claiming that their “teacher didn’t do anything after the first day” or that they “didn’t seem like they wanted to run a Minimester class” to begin with.
Others, like senior Avigail Gadelov, attribute the lack of engagement to the larger classes that are easy to “slip away” from and tend to have an “awkward atmosphere” because there are so many students, who are not all good friends with one another.
Mrs. Brand said that it does not matter whether the lack of investment comes from teachers or students; ultimately, “everybody needs to buy in or the system fails.”
Still not all of the student responses were harsh. Sophomore Zemorah Coon told Palette that she enjoyed her “engaging” Minimester classes because they provided a nice break from her regular schedule while also allowing her to be “productive” and to “connect” with her teachers, by “learn[ing] some new skills” and “getting to know what my teachers like, too.” Moreover, Avigail emphasized that last year’s Minimester was “the most fulfilling” she has ever had, with her favorite class being Corpses and Curiosities.
Despite the incredibly “harsh” and “overwhelmingly negative” feedback they received, Mrs. Brand and Dr. Stephenson agreed that the feedback was not “unrealistic or unreasonable.” With the “responsibility to… deliver an effective program to the students and the faculty or not,” Mrs. Brand and Dr. Stephenson saw this past year as a “failure” and sought to make changes.
After combing through the feedback form’s data, they created a presentation entitled Minimester: The Good, the Bad, and the Systemic Failure, which summarized the positives and negatives of the program that year and suggested changes to address both the lack of attendance and the responses they received from students and faculty. After a “tough conversation” about Minimester that year, said Mrs. Brand, they concluded that Minimester would be a two partial day experience later in the school year.
This change and adjustments to the kinds of classes offered, as well as the addition of time for teachers to plan their classes has Mrs. Brand “cautiously optimistic” and “hopeful” that attendance and student investment will improve.
For invested students like Zemorah, the change in schedule is a “decent solution” as she is “hoping that more people [will] show up” this year as a result.
Sophomore Avi Wasserman is skeptical that he will be able to get “as much done” in the shorter time frame and that there will be “less variety in classes” with the fewer number of Minimester periods.
Still, nothing about next year’s program can be determined until Mrs. Brand and Dr. Stephenson receive the data from this year’s Minimester attendance and feedback forms.
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