Senate Meeting Minutes
May 5, 2009
Attending: Tony Renouard, Colleen Davis, Sharon Miyata, Jessica Torvik, Rebecca Padilla, Joel Jacobson, Tim Ames, Rob Feigal-Stickles, Linda Overlie, Janet Thompson, Patty Lilly, Ken Tarleton, Jonathan Duyker, Jeffrey Jones, Mark Greenway, Ron Newton, Marni Campbell, Dina Zografos Ruehle
Not attending: Robbie Cambell, Bob Poor, Doug Edelstein
Minutes Approved
Principal’s report – The school board will soon vote on school star times and we are currently listed as an 8:30 AM start time.
Mentorship report – Keep basically where we are now, with a few tweaks for next year and then continue deeper work about Mentorship over the next year. The tweaking would involve giving 11th and 12th grade students a mentor who had been their teacher or would be their teacher. There is another issue with 9th and 10th grade mentorships which have been looping with a teacher who may or may not know those students outside of mentorships.
Senator Feigal-Stickles suggested that we have 9th graders have a 9th grade teacher and 10th graders have 10th grade teachers and 11th and 12th graders have 11th and 12th grade teachers.
Senator Thompson called the question
Senator Jones suggested that mentorship be your 2nd block or 2nd period. An objection to this is that the mentorships would be very large and this becomes a homeroom, which is not the purpose of mentorship for some people. But there is not agreement on what mentorship should be.
Proposal
For the school year 2009/2010 we propose that students be assigned to mentorships from the tenth grade into mentorships that correspond to eleventh grade teachers that they will have or have had when possible. Twelfth grade students may remain with mentorship teachers they currently have or be placed with a twelfth grade teacher that they will have senior year.
A friendly amendment was added: Students could change Mentorships with a signature in and a signature out.
The Vote: Passed in a voice vote with one opposed
Senator Greenway continued the mentorship committee report – they have gotten feedback from many mentorships. They are working on a mission statement for mentorship. There have been many ideas from “experts” in 9th graders, 10th graders, 11th graders, 12th graders to having the same small group for four years.
One issue is, what does it mean for a teacher to know a small group of students well? Is it just that or is it an advocate and academic advisor and Culminating Project advisor
Diversity Day – went very well. It did go for the whole day. With a well done assembly in the morning and workshops. Performances in the afternoon and ending with a discussion in Mentorship. ASB has set aside the money to do a Diversity Day again next year. All in all in went very well, and the organizing student worked very hard and did a great job!
Meeting adjourned 3:55