This is a speech at the HS Assembly on April 25 2022. It is the second day of the 7th week of online teaching and learning.
Photo taken in Anting New Town in April 2022.
Good morning HS students and teachers,
Happy to see you at this Monday virtual assembly again!
I don't know where you are siting at this moment. I imagine you could be in your bedrooms or your studies. I am sitting on the balcony of my apartment. The window is open so wind can blow into my room. I can hear birds singing in trees in the street. It is a good day for us to think about our learning and work in the high school.
First, let us revisit the education theme of April. The April theme has two parts: Resilient (坚韧不拔) and Self-management skills (自我管理技能). Both are extremely important when we have to study alone at home. I know many students are learning to be more adaptable, more confident, more courageous, and more resilient as the time goes by. I also learned that many students are developing better time management skills, better emotional management skills, and better task management skills when they have to face these matters by themselves.
Please allow me to share two quotes from Dr. Brad Jurica on Resilience. “The only person you should try to be better than is the person you were yesterday.” So, you should believe it will never be too late to build a better self as today will be yesterday tomorrow. “It is not about what happens to you…it is about how you respond to what happens.” So, to whatever challenges you face, you should understand you can always respond positively and bravely.
If you feel you easily give up under stress or if you feel you lack strategies to deal with difficult situations, I would advise to talk with your teachers, especially Dr. Brad Jurica who is an expert on resilience. Or you can chat with your friends because they can always lend you some advice or insight. For example, last week, Grade 11 student leader, Zhao, Zixiang shared his story about how to be resilient scientifically.
With respect to self-management skills, many exemplar students show their good behaviors in the school too. For example, two weeks ago, a few students shared their strategies, including Dora Chen and Helen Cai sharing how to be mindfulness and take advantage of being alone, Ethan Jin sharing how to improve learning efficiency, Angel Chen sharing how to better manage time, and Vicky Qian and Clark Liang sharing how to use sports exercise to improve overall wellbeing.
Today, I would like to mention another excellent student in Grade 11. She not only maintains a good state of learning at school, but also manage to study and participate in many academic contests outside school. With all the efforts, she often brings home outstanding national or international awards. I think besides intelligence, courage and hardworking, these achievements take her a lot of self-management skills to better use her time and energy. This excellent student is Tina Qiu (Qiu, Chuting). Two days ago, I received good news from her again. In the NEC 2022 China Contest, as the captain of the team, her team earned Critical Thinking Top Team in Problem Solving Award and Regional Overall Team Bronze Award. You should remember that it was the same Tina who used to help the high school to create a charts of House Point recognitions for out-of-school contest awards. That is to say, her management skills not only continuously help herself to become better but also benefit others and the community.
Other students should learn from all these students that I mentioned above to improve your self-management skills when you have to study alone at home. They can do it, you can also do it!
Next, I am going to talk about the Theme of May 2022. The first attribute to be developed in this month is of Risker Takers, the second is still self-management skills as it is so important during the COVID lockdown.
• Risk-takers
You approach unfamiliar situations and uncertainty with courage and forethought.
You have the independence of spirit or work with others to explore new roles, ideas and strategies.
You are brave and articulate in defending your beliefs.
你深谋远虑和坚决果断地应对变化不定的事物;
你独立地或通过合作探索新的角色、新的思想和新的策略;
你勇敢并且明确地捍卫自己的信仰。
• Self-management skills
You demonstrate organization skills such as managing time, tasks, learning materials effectively;
你展示组织技能，例如有效地管理时间、任务、学习材料；
You are able to manage state of mind including but not limited to mindfulness awareness, perseverance, emotional management, self-motivation, resilience.
你能够管理自己的心理状态，包括但不限于正念意识、毅力、情绪管理、自我激励、复原力。
The world is always changing, your lives will undergo a lot of uncertainties too. You will have to make many plans and decisions throughout your lives. How high you can reach and how far you can go largely depends on your courage and intelligence. Many times, you will have to take a leap of faith so that you will be able to achieve something that you never believed you could achieve before. If you are willing to explore new roles, test, unfamiliar ideas, and try new strategies, you have the attribute of risk-taking.
There is a huge difference between a prudent risk taker and one reckless one. Being a prudent risk taker is not equal to being reckless. Being reckless means not thinking of consequences or dangers. Taking risk to cheat in the just past mid-term exams is not sensible. It is reckless. Taking on a challenging Economics contest after careful plans and many hours of preparation is the quality of risk taking I am talking today.
I reflect that risk takers should demonstrate a few key qualities, including a good purpose for taking the risk, a good plan for uncertainties, determination for immediate actions, and willingness to accept failures.
Sometimes, people take necessary risks for the good of themselves or for others. For example, a few high school students and teachers volunteered in nucleic acid tests in their communities, including Zhang, Mingyang in Grade 11, Xu, Beihong and Bao, Jingren in Grade 10. They took the risk for the safety and health of others. I believe they had learned how to protect themselves before they served. They determined to take actions when the community needed them.
Today, I also want to talk about a special example of risk-taker. It is the whole high school. The high school took a risk to conduct many mock and mid-term exams in the past a few weeks under COVID lockdown. When teachers could only monitor high stake exams through cameras, no one was able to tell what kind of situations we would have to deal with. Internet problems, laptop shutdown, camera breakdown, microphone off, students forgetting time…you name it, all kinds of problems could occur. To make the exam organization more complicated, both teachers and students could be called to take Nucleic Acid Tests at any time!
Nonetheless, we made it. Please take a look at these statistics. We conduct 125 exams in the past a few weeks, with only several minor incidents. 63 invigilators participated in online invigilation, 29 inspectors supported and monitored the exams. Between the Mock and Mid-term, 233 students sat for the online exams in front of screens. The total hours of exams is 160. What a great achievement of the high school. We should be proud of ourselves.
I think risks only become successes with good preparations and careful moves. We created a complete set of regulations and procedures for online examinations. The timetables that the high school office made contained all necessary details for each exam. To reduce the possibility of human errors, we created a Wechat group for inspectors, constantly discussing and solving problems before, during, and after exams.
I believe the whole process is a good example of taking risk and making a success. The high school management team learned from this experience, our teachers learned from it, and our students also learned and benefited from it.
Students and teachers, we would have never imagined the online teaching and learning now has entered the 7th week. We still don’t know how long we will have to stay at home. Fortunately, all teachers and students are connected by plenty of classes and activities every day and every hour, for example homeroom meetings, lectures, special meetings, etc. With all these happening, each of us is still feeling connected with the encouraging and warm high school community. In the next few weeks, we want to see more engaging classes and activities.
Teachers are still using house points to encourage good behaviors and good participation in online classes and activities. Between March and April, as of yesterday (April 23), R House students have earned 139 points, O House earned 223 points, S House 193 points, while E House earned 134 points. At the points stand now, O is leading the competition. I am going to summarize the March and April competition result at the beginning of May. Let us see which House will be eventually the winner this time.
I will encourage teachers to continue giving points to exemplar students. At the same time, we will launch a Photo Wall House Competition. We encourage all student and teachers to participate. Miss Ann Liu will talk about details of this exciting competition in a minute.
I wish you all a happy and productive week!
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