Five months ago, I shared with you my preliminary observation about ECNUAS K-12 curriculum. I have asked a few questions and gave a few suggestions at the end of my previous presentation and called for actions from teachers to improve the curriculum. Today I am going to further this discussion, focusing on what teachers have been doing in the first term of this academic year.
Let’s revisit the last two slides that you saw five months ago.
Revisit Areas to be explored
I am seeing evidence of improving in all of these areas. For example, in the HS assessment data, including formative and summative data, are used to inform our discussion and planning in terms of teaching and learning. A few new interdisciplinary learning projects are created for students such as Lego City, Automobile Workshop, and a bridge-building learning activity in the HS English department, in addition to those existing interdisciplinary teaching and learning components such as STEAM in the PS and MS and TOK in the HS.
Revisit: An Overview of the Curriculum of ECNUAS
I recorded some changes or proposed changes according to my new knowledge about our school curriculum and according to our curriculum plan for 2020 September. I won’t have time to touch on all of these changes. Let me just give two examples, one concerning Primary and Middle school academic curriculum, the other concerning Pastoral curriculum.
We will open the Class of Rose, which is an integrated program combining Shanghai curriculum and international elements, from September 2020.
We are building a richer pastoral care system for students including HTs, a growing House system, Psychologists, Dorm teachers, and student clubs.
An overall analysis is not my focus today. I might need 40 hours with you to do it rather than 40 minutes. So I would like to focus on a very small point, which is teacher leadership, in the process of curriculum improvement and development. I would like to answer the following questions,
What teachers have achieved? How teachers achieved it by demonstrating leadership?
Before we grapple with the two questions, let us look at one concept that is teacher leadership.
“The key to creating and sustaining the kind of successful 21st century organization…is leadership—not only at the top of the hierarchy, with a capital L, but also in a more modest sense (l) throughout the enterprise.”
Teacher Leadership
“…teacher leadership refers to that set of skills demonstrated by teachers who continue to teach students but also have an influence that extends beyond their own classrooms to others within their own school and elsewhere. It entails mobilizing and energizing others with the goal of improving the school's performance of its critical responsibilities related to teaching and learning…an important characteristic of a teacher leader is expertise and skill in engaging others in complex work. It also entails an unwavering passion for the core mission of the school and the courage to confront obstacles to achieving that mission.”
Charlotte Danielson,
Teacher Leadership That Strengthens Professional Practice
There are many aspects of teacher development, our school is doing many of them. The development of teacher leadership is one important part of it. Look around you, you can see a teacher sharing his or her practice to improve others performance, a teacher leading a group of teachers to work a project, another teacher leading an academic subject group, yet another leading an educational research to improve the curriculum. As you can see, teacher leadership always goes hand-in-hand with teacher collaboration as you have to work with others when you lead.
So, my today’s focus will be how teacher leadership in our school enhances the development of a robust internationalized curriculum. I am going to tell a few stories in relation to this topic. You will see in each story I will present a team of teacher leaders and describe how they collaboratively improve our curriculum.
I am going to ask the main characters to stand up at the beginning of each story. Please give them a big applause to show our appreciation.
Story 1: Language programs in the KG PYP
Who: Two teacher leaders: Chuanfeng Jin and Ana
Where: KG
What:
As part of the PYP curriculum development, each of them leads a project that builds a Chinese language program and English language program in the framework of the KG curriculum. Lele is working with 18 Chinese teachers, Ana is working 18 English speaking teachers. Interestingly, although they work in the same roof of the KG, they came up with very different approaches to respective language program in relation to PYP Program of Inquiry and all learning activities will be integrated into Units of Inquiry. PYOP
Just to say a few more words about PYP in case you are confused by the terms that I am talking about. IB does not prescribe a PYP curriculum, it only provides a curricular framework and pedagogical principles. It is the school’s responsibility to create its own curriculum in line the framework and principles. Given this approach, on one hand the school has more work to do to develop the curriculum, on the other hand, the school has the autonomy to create a curriculum according to the context of the school. Program of Inquiry outlines main topics that will be covered by the PYP curriculum, and Units of Inquiry further plan how each topic will be rolled out with students in classroom.
Lele envisions the Chinese language program as an integral part of the PYP Program of Inquiry and all learning activities will be integrated into Units of Inquiry. According to the need of each UOI, Chinese teachers design Chinese learning activities of Chinese festivals so that kids not only learning language but also participate in the inquiries of the unit.
Although English learning will be integrated into UOIs as well, English language program creates an additional language teaching component. Under the leadership of Ana, the teachers are creating an aligned English program that can help KG kids systematically develop their language proficiency step by step. More importantly, Ana has also reached out to the PS English department in order to align the KG English program with the PS English teaching and learning.
Story 2: Aligning KG English program with PS English teaching and learning
Who: Ana and Amy
Where: KG and PS
What: We have clearly seen the differences between our KG and PS curriculum, one that is international and bilingual, and the PS curriculum, one that is primarily local and Chinese. We couldn’t change the whole PS curriculum, but we definitely need to modify parts of it to make it more internationalized. The PS English program has already been using international teaching materials such as Wonders and one phonics resource. The KG English program didn’t have a unified teaching resource before. In collaboration with KG English teachers, Ana decided to bring Jolly phonics into the curriculum. This information has shared with Amy when they meet. As a result, Amy and PS English teachers decide to align their phonics resource with the KG.
It is just the start of this collaboration and alignment. Yet, I have already seen they are on the right track. Using shared One drive folder, they can constantly share their ideas and resources so their planning can be aligned.
Story 3: Aligning MS English program with HS English program
Who: Christine and Wade
Where: MS and HS
What: Wade has been raising this to me before the school year started. The main concern is the HS English department needs to understand more of MS English teaching and learning and its exit standards. The reason for this concern is obvious. Most of our own G8 students would come to the HS and study IGCSE English. How to help these students transit from MS local curriculum to the HS international curriculum is the key. At the first meeting, Christine let Wade know the configuration of MS English language program including textbooks, reading materials, and assessment. More importantly, she shared with Wade the Literacy Standards that the MS has been referring to. This document is extremely helpful for HS English teachers to understand new G9 students in terms of English language ability, and hence to consider an English transitioning program for these students.
Similar to the KG-PS English alignment project, this collaboration is also at the preliminar stage. Yet, I have already seen they are on the right track. Using shared Onedrive folder, they can constantly share their ideas and resources so their planning can be aligned. Both of the two English projects will make our K-12 internationalized curriculum more coherent.
Story 4: Creating the curriculum of Class of Rose
Who: Carol and Rain
Where: PS and MS
What: We surveyed parents of K3 kids and parents of G5 students. It became clear to us that about half of parents would like to enroll their kids into a more internationalized curriculum in the PS. Hence, we decided to embark on an integrated program named as the Class of Rose. In the creation the new program, Carol and Rain play crucial role to bring all resources and information together. Both of them are at the divisional principal position, yet they are also teachers as they still teach in classroom. Both of them drafted the new program outline.
The key consideration they made is how to differentiate the new Class of Rose with the existing Class of Beech, which is the name we use to label the existing curriculum. For the Class of Rose, a few key elements are discussed and to be implemented, including approximately 50-50 English and Chinese language allocation, incorporation of English taught mathematics, sciences, music, arts, and PE, incorporation of IPC/IMYC, use of international textbooks or teaching materials, the inclusion of an international assessment GL-assessment.
It is certain that Carol and Rain have been discussing with many teachers and promoting this new program with parents at various venues and through different channels. Their leadership is crucial to ensure the success of the class of rose. This class will be implemented from September 2020 under Carol and Rain’s directly supervision.
Story 5: Implementing a House System in the HS
Who: HHs and AHHs
Where: HS
What: I clearly remember one conversation between me and Maggie, who is the HS principal assistant. It happened a few days before the new semester began. We encountered a huge problem in creating a usable timetable due to unexpected changes and the use of the new Smart Campus system in the HS. I said to Maggie that probably it is not a good idea to implement the House System this year when we were facing so many uncertainties. With this thought in mind, I still called a meeting with a group of potential Heads of House on August 29th. At that meeting, I introduced the House system as a driver to improve HS learning environment. To be honest, I couldn’t know what kind of reaction teachers might have. However, I am very pleased by positive responses of the participants. It is at the first meeting, we gathered a team of HHs and AHHs who are willing to work with me to experiment with the House System in the high school.
After the four months of implementation, now we can proudly say House has become an integral part of HS culture. House banners were designed by students and are in use at various school and House events. Each house has an assembly on every Monday; Houses has presented their work at HS assemblies; cross-house competitions have been organized such as football matches, basketball matches, Chinese poem competition, and photographing competition. House points have become a tool for teachers to record students’ behaviors, improvement, and excellence. House captains have demonstrated their leadership among students and participated in the revision of HS student behavioral norm to create a better learning culture in the school. All the work I mentioned above are supervised and guided by these HHs and AHHs. I would like to say many thanks to this group of teacher leaders who made great contribution and will continuously make contribution to the pastoral curriculum of ECNUAS.
I know AHHs in the PS and MS are following the fashion that the HS has established. We look forward to seeing more interesting and educational activities offered the growing house system.
Story 6: Building a cohesive and rich HS curriculum
Who: HS SGLs and CAS coordinator
Where: HS
What: SGLs make contribution in many regards such as internal PD and curriculum planning, implementation, and documentation. CAS coordinator contributes to the high school programs in a different but indispensable way. I will only focus on their contribution to curriculum development today.
Let me begin with the CAS coordinator Ann. Before she came, the high school had a weak CAS program that was failing our students in this component. In the last a few months, Ann managed to involve all teachers to provide educational advice to students in terms of CAS learning. She also managed to mobilize all students to engage in lots of interesting and meaningful activities and events. You must remember those CAS pavilions on the Founder’s Day. You probably saw those Wechat articles about the three CAS trips. During the CAS trips, a few teacher leaders emerged including Scarlett and Liping who led the trips to Yanshan and Qufu respectively. Ann herself led the trip to Huangnan in Qinghai. In collaboration with Ann, they completed a rather complicated task that provided students with tremendous learning opportunities outside the school.
In terms of academic curriculum development, constant discussions take place in SGs in HS led by a team of dedicated educators. I have received recommendations from almost all groups on how to build a more coherent, cohesive, and focused high school curriculum. Some groups took actions. For example, Group 6 began to design an Arts program that will better fit students’ needs. The new program also takes student recruitment into consideration, targeting Arts talents into our HS program. Group 5 math teachers began to align with Shanghai G9 math curriculum with IGCSE teaching and learning and align IGCSE curriculum with IBDP math teaching and learning in the higher grades. Under the leadership of Scarlett, two teachers Marris and Ally have produced curriculum mapping documents to layout alignment between these curricula. Next step the math department will plan the teaching and learning in G9 and at the end of G10 in light of these mapping document.
We just had a Curriculum Review meeting with the all HS staff yesterday afternoon. A lot of constructive ideas. I believe this is culture of open discussion must be first cultivated in all SGs.
Story 7: Guiding HS students through transitions
Who: HS HT team
Where: HS
What: Being a homeroom teacher is a difficult job. Being a homeroom teacher in an international high school is even harder due to the complexity of job. Most of our HS students came from a local system. They were not well prepared for English medium teaching and learning; they only had a very vague imagination of what international curriculum is; they hadn’t established a clear developmental goal; and most of their parents don’t understand international education but still would like to contribute to their children’s education in different ways, sometimes quite strange ways. In addition, each teacher of this HS HT team has multiple responsibilities in addition to the HT job. Not all of them are experienced HTs before they came to ECNUAS. It was learning journey for most of them.
Luckily, they have a very good collaborative environment in which they share concerns and practices and support each other. Here come the teacher leadership. The team meets once a week to discuss emerging issues and share useful techniques when they work with students and parents. There is HS HT Wechat group, in which we share information and ideas that can improve this work. I believe through this kind of collective and shared leadership, everyone in this team is engaged and is learning and growing. They understand the task in the face of them is complex. But with the collective support and engagement, they believe they are improving our education. Another aspect of leadership has something to do with leading the group of teenagers in each class. How to create a supportive learning environment in the class and how to sustain the culture throughout multiple transitions is a difficult task that each HS HT has to face. To succeed in this job, you not only need curriculum knowledge about IGCSE, IBDP, and A-level and knowledge about international universities so that you can provide advice when you are asked by students and parents. You also need to know how to work with teenages, whom are not easy to work with.
HT’s work is an important component of the HS curriculum. It belongs to pastoral curriculum, focusing on each individual student and making connections to other components of our education so that the education can develop well-rounded graduates.
Story 8: School based research projects
Who: research project leaders
Where: All over the school
What: We have eleven school-based research projects that are all led by teachers or leaders in different divisions. This kind of effort pushes our school practice to a higher level as these teachers are trying to synthesize what they have been doing and share the results with the larger community of education. It also pushes teacher leadership to a higher level as the influence of these teachers will go over the wall of the school.
We look forward to seeing outcomes of these studies. Also, I learned that a few other teachers are considering to submit action research proposals based on their practices. For example, our Psychologist Miss Lucky Yang is working on proposal about students’ motivation; the two English alignment projects led by Ana, Amy, Christine, and Wade will likely become research projects; the HS math department led by Scarlett will also likely work on a research project focusing on math curriculum alignment. We look forward to seeing more expert teachers and more academic teacher leaders emerging out of this community.
There are definitely more stories about teacher leadership in this school. I am not able to tell all of them as I wasn’t able to see them all. What I told today were just some samples of the stories of teacher leadership. Using these stories today I hope to acknowledge all the work that teacher leaders contribute to our curriculum and education. I also hope these stories inspire more people to stand up and lead.
Let me finish my talk today using two quotes.
“Many of the same kinds of organizational attributes required to develop leadership are also needed to empower employees.”
John Kotter, Leading Change
No matter what you do, so long as you can “mobilize and energize others with the goal of improving the school's performance” you contribute to the school work by demonstrating your expertise and practicing your leadership.
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