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| Educational
Forum Meeting Analysis |
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Educational forum meetings are very important for both educators
and parents since they are focused on questions that are really
important for educators, students, and their parents. In this
respect, the Ward 20 Forum Meeting at David Lewis Public School
attended February 15, 2007 is quite noteworthy as the forum
where the questions and problems disturbing the school life,
parents, students and educators were raised. It is very important
that the forum meeting provided ample opportunities for both
parents and educators to make their suggestions as for the
implementation of possible improvements or changes in the
current agenda and policy.
Basically, the meeting was focused on the most important issues
the school faced at the moment. At the same time, the major
goal of the meeting was to inform the audience with the present
achievements, plans and issues discussed at the moment. It
should be pointed out that in general this goal was met and
what is more important, this was not just a kind of information
simply directly delivered to the audience but the participants
of the forum meeting had an opportunity to make their own
remarks concerning the questions discussed and, consequently,
if there were arguable points they could be openly discussed.
The organization and structure of the forum meeting were quite
logical and well organized. At the beginning, the chairperson
introduced the three superintendents present at the meeting
and than the agenda of the meeting was discussed. As there
were no objections or remarks the first issue, the 2006-2007
budget was discussed. It should be pointed that parents had
an opportunity to protect some special programs and services
and they were amply encouraged to participate in the development
of the budget as their opinion would be taken into consideration.
Moreover, parents were also informed about the details of
the school funding.
After the discussion of the budget, the current situation
in the school, its plans and achievements were discussed.
Notably, among the recent achievements of the school may be
named the fact that it was ranked #1 elementary school in
Canada. Also the school turned to be extremely concerned on
the problem of education and development of both students
and educators as the distribution of special magazines was
planning as well as organization of conferences for educators.
At the same time, there were plans concerning the further
development of Young Leaders’ Forum aiming at the improvement
of leadership skills and abilities of students. By the way,
students education and cultural development are of a paramount
importance for the school since many traditions are highly
honored and, it is noteworthy, that the school is particularly
concerned about Asian heritage and traditions, such as the
celebration of Chinese New Year, that is natural for this
school where Asian community is widely represented.
Moreover, parents are also not excluded from the educational
process since the functioning of the Provincial Parental Committees,
as well as the functioning of board committees, was also discussed
during the forum meeting with the participation of parents.
After that the current problematic issues were discussed and
the problem of students nutrition was discussed as there was
the problem of the lack of lunch tables and of the supervision
of the lunch room. In the process of the discussion, some
recommendations were developed as for the improvement of the
situation, including the change of the lunch room location
and the lunch supervision of older students over younger ones.
At this point it is important to underline that the opinion
of parents was of a paramount importance at this point, as
well as at the point of discussion of the quality of cafeteria
food which was decided to change for better, making food more
healthy and refusing from dangerous food items containing
trans fat. Finally, there were discussed technical issues
concerning the future plans.
On analyzing the forum meeting discussed above, it is necessary
to point out that basically the atmosphere was good and the
general effect was quite positive. It should be pointed out
that the forum meeting was carefully planned and well-organized
but, what is even more important, it was characterized by
wide representation of specialist educators and parents, though
it would be possible to recommend to take into consideration
the opinion and needs of students that could be defined with
the help of special questionnaires, for instance, and than
discussed during the forum. Furthermore, despite significant
achievement of the school it still has serious problems, especially
concerning nutrition, but these problems could be solved positively
judging from the plans and recommendations elaborated during
the forum meeting. Anyway, it is obvious that the academic
and cultural development of students remains the major concern
of educators who readily cooperate and involve parents in
educational process at large and school life in particular.
Bibliography:
1. Minutes of the February 15, 2007 Ward 20 Forum Meeting
at David Lewis Public School.
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