To recognize the success and achievements of students from all corners of the school, Minarets gives the title of Minarets Exemplar to those who exemplify Minarets’ values. At Minarets, recognizing students has always been a part of our community, but formally recognizing Exemplars is a fairly new system that started in the spring of 2017. This system falls under the quarterly portion of Minarets student recognition which includes daily compliments, weekly shout outs, monthly Wagon Wheel picks, quarterly choosing of Exemplars, and yearly Best of the Best winners.
To get more insight on the process we interviewed Mr. Wilson, the Director of Charter. In that interview, he spoke about what Exemplars really are: “Exemplars are people that demonstrate our six C’s in the classroom and the Minarets themes of going big, going pro, and going now.” The Minarets six C’s include creativity, critical thinking, competency, community, collaboration, and communication, and are the characteristics that Minarets wants students to embody. When we interviewed Principal Daniel Ching on the topic, he talked about the traits for which teachers are supposed to recognize students; “It has to be random acts-- just being a good student and going above and beyond and helping other people.”
These students are given Minarets Exemplar shirts, food- usually pizza or ice cream- a certificate, a school wide announcement of their success and a call home informing their family. Each quarter, a Google form is sent out to the teachers, with sections for the students name, the specific C they were nominated for, and the details as to why they were nominated. The teachers do not see the spreadsheet created by the Google form, and as such sometimes the same student is nominated twice, leading to the teachers being asked to nominate a different student. Further in the interview with Principal Daniel Ching he told of us of a list that has been kept of all the Minarets Exemplars over the past two years. This ensures that these students can be recognized for the Minarets Go! award at the end of their senior year.
According to the Minarets Go! roadmap a requirement for this award is to be chosen as an Exemplar at least once. Principal Daniel Ching also spoke of the difficulties in selecting these criteria; “The two criteria on the Minarets Go! that are a little tricky are being nominated for Best of the Best and Exemplars. So we've looked at those two steps and thought, ‘okay, is this fair?’ There's a chance that you could be a really great student, do a lot of great things and then not happen to get nominated, not because you didn't do well, but because it just didn't happen.”
This system is progressively being worked on and improved. The original goal was for Minarets Exemplars to be named quarterly, but this has sometimes fallen through. Mr. Wilson, during the interview, spoke on the time pressures the staff faces; “We don’t have a full-time activity director. It’s a time thing. What we need to do is probably have somebody in charge of these recognition processes other than us,” he said, “We’ve got to be better at our dates.” Having a full-time activity director would allow for a more polished system to ensure this process happens routinely. Despite the lack of this position, this system still recognizes exemplary students. Minarets students should embodied the qualities represented within the six C’s inside and outside the classroom no matter the recognition they might receive.