Culture Ends Report 2012-2013

Focus Group Reports: Student Objectives | Program | Culture | Staff | Finance | Facilities

‎CAJ students represent 36 nationalities (37% dual passports, 21% Japanese, 15% North American, 15% Korean, and 12% other).

CAJ strives to have an organizational culture which reflects board-approved values (faithfulness, caring, collaboration, diversity, excellence, and stewardship) and is aware of and responsive to demographic trends:

Measuring self-esteem and high expectations can be difficult. However, I believe that the number of graduates who choose to come back and work at CAJ says a lot about the values and self-esteem that we instill in our students. —Jean Hino, elementary head teacher

• We live out our values by serving Jesus Christ, maintaining a nurturing learning environment, and working in partnership with parents. We respect ourselves and others as God’s image bearers, and we recognize and value diversity in the school community. We use biblical principles and sound, current research and practice; and we carefully use the resources God has provided to educate our students.
• We maintain and increase our awareness of our demographic shift, in part by tracking and analyzing student and staff demographics.
• We respond to our demographic shift in a variety of ways, including translating key documents into Japanese and Korean, clarifying how we are different than other school models, training staff in meeting diverse needs in the classroom, and providing EAL (English as an Additional Language) support in the regular classroom.

This year's parent survey data indicates that...

• CAJ has a safe, healthy, and welcoming environment; that staff treat students with respect; that CAJ responds well to parental concerns; that elementary parents receive the information they need to understand what their children are learning at school; and that principals communicate effectively.
• Less than 75% of parents strongly agree/agree with the following: that middle school teachers communicate well with parents, that high school parents receive the information they need to understand what their children are learning at school, and that the language their children hear from other students at CAJ is not offensive.

This school year, CAJ improved its culture in a variety of ways, including:

• Translating the headmaster's blog into Japanese and providing Japanese translation at Parent Cafes.
• Providing English instruction for parents of EAL students.
• Further developing key performance indicators regarding student and staff demographics.
• Training staff in meeting the needs of English language learners, including training on vocabulary instruction.
• Reviewing admissions policies and practices in light of our demographic shift.
• Helping new students increase their biblical literacy by providing summer school classes.
• Distributing Bibles and Bible storybooks in Japanese and English to new families.

Questions we want to further consider include:

• How can we more effectively respond to our demographic shift?
• How can we increase our students' English language proficiency?
• How can we further involve stakeholders in our school improvement process?