In the far reaches of your mind, you may well remember a moment last spring, when we sent out a short survey asking your thoughts on what values we ought to instill in the students of the Lycée Français de New York.
The survey was an outcome of our re-accreditation by NYSAIS, the school’s governing body here in the US, that culminated in a visit from a committee of accreditors from schools across the New York area in the fall of 2015.
“Our school is an accepting and diverse school that encourages students to be creative and love one another. We encourage everyone and embrace our differences.” – Lycée student
You will perhaps remember that the committee loved the school! We received our accreditation handily, but with an important caveat: the committee felt we had evolved beyond our existing mission statement. They asked us to work in an inclusive process to revise our mission statement so that it better aligns with who we are and the “objectives and spirit of the school”.
The values survey instrument we sent out last spring was an essential starting point. What subjects and how we teach our students in class matters, of course, but this survey focused on the shared values we aim to foster in them as a community of parents, teachers, staff and students.
It strikes me that articulating what we value in this global community of ours, coming from 50+ nationalities and speaking so many different languages at home, is a very positive statement indeed. Despite (or perhaps because of) our cultural differences, what you’ll see in the results is a community that shares a significant amount!
Here’s what we asked.
Our survey takers, which included our parents, teachers, staff and Secondary students, were asked to select five from a list of 15 “character or personality traits” that they felt would be most important to foster in students here at school. 526 people took the survey, or about 20% of our community at all levels.
We scoured books, articles, and other surveys to come up with a list that could be easily understood, with as a little overlap as possible, by our community. You’ll note that some traits addressed student performance (work ethic, self confidence, adaptability), others were more generally related to how we are as members of a community (embracing of differences, curiosity about the world).
Some survey takers felt frustrated at having to choose only five values. “All of them are important,” wrote one survey taker. Others were annoyed by the simplicity of the exercise. We found the exercise a fascinating one, if imperfect, and well worth the frustration!
Adult Outcomes
The chart below is a summary of the results of the survey of the parents, teachers and staff of the school. The percentages listed spotlight the five most frequently chosen traits. Of course, all of these values are important. We simply wanted to know, if you had to choose, where would you put an emphasis.
If we look at the top five responses, Lycée adults have a strong inclination toward values that direct us to respect self and others, embracing differences and curiosity about the world. Not surprisingly, and surely the result of experience, was an understanding that having a strong work ethic and self-confidence are important attributes for long-term success.
If we separate out responses from our teachers, we found that the results were similar, except that among the top five responses from our faculty, the most widely chosen was embracing differences, followed by respect for self and others, curiosity about the world, and an emphasis on fostering creativity over work ethic.
For students connecting bilingualism, pluriculturalism and empathy
As with the adults in our community, the majority of our students put “respect of self and others” and “embracing differences” at the top of their responses. We often share studies that make a strong link between bilingualism and fostering empathy in students. Is this openness to others and the choices our students made on this survey an indicator of this tendency? We’d say a resounding, oui!
Also among the top five character traits selected by students in middle school were personal qualities that they may themselves see as essential to their growth at their age, with independence and collaboration, a much discussed topic at the school, figuring fourth and fifth on the list.
Students in 10th, 11th 12th grade were more inclined to focus on “other-directed qualities,” like openness to the world, making the world a better place, perhaps also owing to where they are in their emotional development and their orientation to the future and their purpose in life.
Here were the most frequently selected character traits by grade:
- 6th, 7th, 8th grade: Respect of self and others
- 9th grade: Embracing of differences
- 10th grade: Respect of self and others
- 11th grade: Embracing of differences
- 12th grade: Curiosity about the world
We asked all respondents to comment on values they felt were missing from the list. Here are several that were mentioned more than a few times:
-
- Rigor
- Excellence
- Empathy and openness
- Cultural understanding only attainable through bilingualism
- Citizenship and world citizenship, in the sense of an active civic life
- Generosity and kindness
- Esprit critique
- Creative risk-taking
Does the language we speak affect what we value?
We asked all survey respondents to indicate whether they spoke primarily French or English at home. Language spoken at home had no significant bearing on the results of this survey.
If a survey respondent didn’t speak primarily French or English at home, we asked them what they spoke at home, and we loved reading about the diversity of languages spoken among our survey takers. They responded both (!), Spanish, Italian-French-English, French-Turkish, French-Japanese, French-Portuguese, Arabic, Farsi, Greek, Chinese, Flemish, Polish, Tunisian, Hungarian, Russian, Swahili, Madingo and other African languages.
What’s next?
If you’ve read this far, you’ll be interested in this key end note. We’ll be introducing our renewed mission statement to the entire community at back to school this fall, with loads more information on the drafting process, which started from the results of this essential survey. Along with it, we’ll be welcoming a refreshed visual identity for the Lycée Français de New York, which will mean a new logo, website, and guess who’s having a makeover… Leo. Stay-tuned!
About the Author :
Elisabeth King joined the Lycée team in November 2011 as the school’s first director of communications. A francophile at heart, Elisabeth spent her junior year of college in Paris, and held her first job at the French Trade Office here in New York. She brings to the Lycée over 15 years of experience in media and communications in non-profits, government, news and business. She was previously executive vice president and director of strategy at ABI, Inc., a boutique public relations agency, and she worked as associate editor on two books co-authored by Todd Brewster and the late ABC News anchor Peter Jennings.