The Quest for Growth and Improvement
Feedback is a key ingredient to ongoing growth and improvement. This is true whether you are 15 or 50 years old; a student, parent, or professional. Giving and receiving feedback is a reciprocal process that happens formally and informally at Crescent. It usually starts with setting goals and objectives and then tracking progress with a classmate, teammate, mentor, teacher, or colleague.
Organizations like ours regularly benefit from internal and external stakeholder feedback. For example, our long-standing partnership with Challenge Success to conduct community-wide surveys and with SPARC through the University of Pennsylvania to guide student action research has been critical to observing trends and responding to student voices and lived school experiences.
There is another important type of institutional learning that we practice as a leading independent school and that is through accreditation. There are thousands of private schools across Canada but very few choose membership with Canadian Accredited Independent Schools (CAIS). Good schools offer a program of study that aligns with their mission, vision, and strategic priorities for students; however, great schools commit to a robust assessment of their program and operations for their ongoing improvement, aligning school practices with the highest educational standards through self-reflection and peer review.
Over the past year, Crescent has been preparing for our CAIS accreditation. This process engages all stakeholders in an examination of the School’s strategy, education program, and operations against 12 national standards and helps us evaluate our strengths, areas for growth, and future strategy.
Following our last CAIS accreditation in 2017, the visiting committee recommended a number of items that became the focus of not just our re-accreditation action plan but our past two strategic plans. This process proved invaluable in defining our portrait of a graduate, developing our strategic academic plan, integrating character skills into our curriculum, and clarifying the roles and responsibilities of department/subject heads. The character qualities we are developing in our students today—including self-awareness, courage, and curiosity— are a direct by-product of this important feedback.
In a few short days, Crescent will host a peer review team of CAIS educators and school leaders from across Canada and the United States. We believe their observations and feedback will serve as fertile ground to germinate our next set of strategic priorities with an anticipated 4 to 5-year horizon beginning January 2025. Crescent’s commitment to ongoing growth and improvement is not only a requirement for reaccreditation with CAIS; it is also a process central to our educational mission. The path of forging character, whether personal or institutional, is one that requires asking important questions and remaining open to new possibilities.
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