SAS Educational Programs

The week of October 12-16 was an intense week of conversations and observations for the 16 members of the Western Association of Schools and Colleges Visiting Committee that were assigned to visit and review the work of the Focus on Learning Self Study for Shanghai American School.

Self Study visiting team members were:

• Tim Carr, Headmaster of the American School in Japan (Chairman)
• Dr. Ron Carruth, Superintendent, Whittier City Schools, Whittier California (co-chairman)
• Richard Bisset, Mathematics Teacher, Singapore American School
• Diane Bohm, Consultant, ESF Schools, Hong Kong
• Natalie Broderick,Director of Student Services, HKIS, Hong Kong
• Jon Hill, Technology Teacher, Seoul Foriegn School
• Mark Jenkins, Direction of Curriculum and Professional Learning, Jakarta International School
• Stephen Lehman, IT Director, International School of Bangkok, Bangkok
• Joseph Levno, Vice Principal, Brent International School, Manila
• Carole Mondin, Librarian, American School of Guangzhou,Guangzhou, PRC
• Karen Moreau, Director of Curriculum and Staff Development, Taipei American School
• Michael Powell, Mathematics Teacher, International School of Kuala Lumpur
• Isabel Searson, Principal, Taejon Christian School, Daejon, South Korea
• Dr. Deborah Taylor, Deputy Director, Kaohsiung American School
• Ruth Auty, Humanities Teacher, International Christian School, Hong Kong
• James Gerhard, Assistant Principal, Ruamrudee International School, Bangkok

The team spend the days on the two campuses speaking with self study focus committee members, students, PTSA board members and members of the school administration. They also spent one evening speaking with Rick Wang, School Board Chairman and school board members Cindy Qui, William McGrath, and Caroline Yun.  All in all, they were able to meet a broad spectrum of school community members from both campuses and confirm that the self study was accurate and comprehensive.

On Thursday afternoon, the visiting committee members split up to both campuses and completed a simulcast presentation of their findings. The major findings were that the school is to be commended for the following:

• An impressive, thorough, and honest self study which involved all key stakeholders in the school community.
• Establishment and pursuit of an inspirational vision, core values, and long-range planning which has provided guidance, focus and direction for the SAS community during a time of rapid growth.
• Recruitment of a talented, passionate, and committed faculty and staff despite rapid growth and an increasingly competitive global hiring environment
• In response to significant numbers of new faculty the administration has redesigned the orientation process to support professional development and promote ownership of the vision, mission, core values, and the EAGLES.
• Planning and development of excellent purpose-built facilities and resources on two campuses which are clearly designed to enhance student learning and sustain the commitment of “one school-two campuses” to serve two communities in distinctly separate locales of Shanghai.
• Significant progress on curriculum articulation and mapping, which has brought coherence and clarity to the learning program.
• Multiple opportunities and modalities for rich professional learning.
• Effective collaborative structures and communication protocols among community members.
• Ample opportunities for parents to contribute to the learning environment and supportively engage with the school.
• Initiation of an advancement model which has enhanced communication, marketing, admissions, and fundraising potential.
• Profound improvement in the admissions office services, closely articulated with academic personnel, which have increased the recruitment and retention of families.
• A strategic financial plan which is designed to facilitate long-term financial stability.
• Effective and principled management of extremely rapid growth which enabled uninterrupted, quality educational opportunities throughout the time of construction.

The areas that the visiting committee directed for follow up were outlined in order to sustain healthy progress towards SAS’s vision for 2012. The visiting team noted that the school must consider its personnel, priorities, and pace in order to effectively address the following areas:

• The administration and faculty develop and implement the technology infrastructure in a manner consistent with the SAS vision that will support and increase the integration of the technology to enhance student learning within the classrooms and for communication throughout the school.
• The administration and faculty continue to promote the implementation of a learning community that utilizes a range of collaborative processes that support an ongoing focus on improving student learning.
• The administration and faculty set in place a consistent, comprehensive school-wide assessment program that measures student learning and aligns with the learning outcomes.
• Further attention should be given to the intentional integration of the vision for learning and the EAGLES into the academic curriculum, co-curricular activities and classroom instruction.
• The administration and faculty should devise ways to track the efficacy of professional development and link it to student achievement, performance evaluation and goal setting.
• In order to realize its vision of 2012, the Board of Directors, the SAS finance department and the divisional administration should continue to identify ways to streamline budgeting in execution of its multi-year strategic financial plan.

A formal finding of the report has been forwarded to the Western Association of Schools and Colleges Commission on Accreditation for review and confirmation. A formal notification of the accreditation term and requirements is expected in the spring of 2009.

The SAS community wishes to thank the visiting for their voluntary effort on behalf of our students and our community.  Their work was of the highest quality and will benefit SAS for years to come.

The self study team slide show used at the presentation of findings is below.

Tuesday, September 30, 2008

celebrations
A high school mathematics Core Pre-Calculus course has been added to mathematics options on both campuses; Contemporary Mathematics and AP Statistics have been initiated this year on the Pudong campus. These additions make mathematics education for students even more exciting at SAS.

This year we plan to further enrich the mathematical education of our students through the integration of an authentic project into each mathematics class. Authentic student work will supplement and enrich the learning both of students and of teachers. The high school mathematics team across campuses has striven for alignment from the beginning. We will continue to work closely with cross-campus colleagues on our 2008-2009 goal by posting these projects on the Pudong/Puxi shared drive. Puxi department chair, Emily Leopold said, “We have all wanted to continue to make our classes more dynamic. New to SAS, Allan Wager brings project-based mathematics experience to us and Clive Russell has also done interesting projects with his students. Even David Surowski, working from stateside, is sending us project possibilities.” The realization of this goal really is a celebration of the talent and dedication of our staff to continually make the learning better for our students.

Announcements and reminders
For anyone looking for a pretty straightforward discussion of what authentic student work is, how to design the tasks, and how to assess them, try this 2008 site by Jonathan Mueller (North Central College in Naperville, Illinois): http://jonathan.mueller.faculty.noctrl.edu/toolbox/whatisit.htm

The Ed Programs 2008-2009 Calendar is up and running in the staff section of portal.saschina.org. This year the calendar is in digital format. Regularly updated, the calendar can help you plan ahead. Watch it for professional development dates, for Wednesday meetings, and for task forces and committees.

You will also find the 2008-2009 Curriculum and Professional Development Handbook in the staff section of portal.saschina.org. Limited print copies will be available after break.

PSU:
Sign-ups for PSU courses, The Reflective Teacher, Classroom Assessment and Teacher Leadership, are open now. You must register by November 1. You may not take the course twice for credit, so if you earned credit last year, don’t sign up again this year. To register, please visit the staff section of the SAS Portal. Fill out the appropriate registration form and the PD form and submit to your principal. Course descriptions are in the PSU Course description guide also posted on the portal and here below this posting.  If you have further questions, please email Alan Knobloch.

ed-5500-classroom-assessment-200980.pdf

ed-5500-the-reflective-teacher.pdf

ad-5560-teacher-leadership-i-knobloch-200980-182.pdf

Links to Look At:
Social studies are on deck this week for sites for teachers and kids. There are loads of good sites, but those below address special topics: archeology, polling of opinions on all sorts of issues including the US presidential election, geography and economics.

http://www.pollster.com/polls/us/08-us-pres-ge-mvo.php At this site find the marriage of social science and statistics. For daily updated information about the Obama/McCain race and an analysis of polls of all sorts, including the current economic crisis, have a look. This sit is particularly valuable for high school students, but has applications for middle school students as well.

http://smithsonianeducation.org/students/index.html Three hands-on lesson plans provided by the Smithsonian Institution enabling middle school and high school students to simulate the work of archaeologists..

http://www.econedlink.org/ EconEdLink is a program of the National Council on Economic Education and offers a source of classroom-tested, Internet-based economic lesson materials for K-12 teachers and their students.

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/resources/ngo/education/ideas.html Sponsored by the National Geographic Society, the site provides lessons, units, and activities designed to bring good geography into the classroom. Click on Kindergarten-4th grade,5th-8th grade and 9th-12 grade to find the lesson plans and activities of your choice.

http://www.peacecorps.gov/wws/educators/ The lessons, developed by the Peace Corps for students in grades 3-12, help teachers integrate global education into daily activities.

Setting the Stage for School Improvement

The process began in the offices of the Deputy Superintendent in April and May of 2007 as a team of administrators planned out the processes and committees that would guide the SAS community through the Western Association of Schools and Colleges- Focus on Learning self study. Little did the community know at that time, but the process would have a profound impact on the way SAS will look at itself as a school community and how it does it work over the next 4-6 years.
Dr. Larkin has often referred the self-study as the “stealth study”. The process used through the academic year 2007-2008 incorporated a structures currently in place through the school. In many schools, the self study process results in additional short-term committees being formed. Not at SAS, where the “steering” committee for the school’s self study is the Student Programs Committee, a standing committee that serves as a advisory committee for the educational programs office. Additionally, teaching teams from around the school served as data analysis teams for curriculum and instruction, thus developing a large base of school involvement among the faculty and staff.

Like most self-study efforts, a few specialized, short-term committees were formed, but in comparison to other schools, the number was greatly reduced. Groups from both campuses and in all divisions met 5-7 times through the school year to gather and discuss learning data and to develop lists of areas of strength and areas of follow up. In counting up the names on the acknowledgements pages of the document you will find a lengthy list of names of teachers, administrators and support faculty who made this process real and reflective. From a realistic perspective, information gathered from teachers across our organization has been looked at as we developed the self study document.

Special recognition in the efforts for the self study go to Ms. Lynne Coleman and Mrs. Philippa Curtis. Both ladies put in yeoman’s efforts in building a document from multiple layers of information from many different sources and individuals. Additionally, the members of the Student Programs Committee need recognition for their dedication and time. On many occasions last year, you could find up to 20 individuals reading the self study draft documents, commenting and providing valuable feedback as the process moved forward. Ashley Roukema has served as our desktop publisher and layout expert for the document itself, even working through the summer months to build, and at one point rebuild a document that that the community can be proud of and use as tool for reflection. Our communications department experts completed final touches and one last “look-see” for us! It has been a team effort from the beginning to the end.

What will I find when I read the Self-Study Report?

The document is complete and available upon request (see sidebar). Inside the document you will find a book that is divided into several key sections or chapters. The first key chapters are the Progress on Recommendations, The Self Study Process and the Student and Community Profile all of which outlines current and historical operational data about our school, the self study, and the community that SAS serves. These sections of the document does not contain any specific areas of strength or areas for follow up, but instead serve to provide a context for the rest of the report.

Following the Student/Community Profile is chapters labeled “Organization for Student Learning” , “Curriculum and Instruction”, “Support for Student Personal and Academic Growth” and “Resource Management and Development”. Each of these sections report and evaluate the current operations of SAS in these particular areas and identify areas of strength and areas of follow up.
Summarized in table format are action plans outlining the “next steps” for SAS. These are found in the back of the document and provide broad-based road map for the school’s improvement efforts. I encourage you to request and read our self study and more importantly, set aside the afternoon of October 16, 2008 for the Visiting team report of findings presentation.

If you would like to have a digital copy of the self study, you can do so by sending an email to SASselfstudy@saschina.org.

Printed copies will be available for review in all school libraries and school offices the week of September 16.

Technorati Tags: WASC, SAS Self Study, Shanghai American School

Friday,
September 19, 2008

Celebrations
Middle school social studies and humanities teachers celebrate teaching the writing process. A few examples include the Heritage project at Puxi, interviewing, and writing based on three of the interviews and the Pudong conflict research project in 7th grade. In interdisciplinary units, students respond to novels and use 6 Traits writing rubrics as a guide for feedback to improve their writing; students transform literature and present characters, and themes to make writing more authentic. “These examples and others illustrate integrated, interdisciplinary approaches to teaching the writing process,” writes Dave Cole.

Announcements, Reminders, Points of Interest
PSU: Last call for sign-ups for Social Psychology and Myth across Cultures. Those interested in taking this core masters course – either to count toward your masters or for recertification credit, please pop an email to Maddie Leung (maddie.leung@saschina.org) NO LATER THAN September 25. You will need to fill out the PD form as well as the PSU registration form, both attached. At Puxi: Oct 11 and 19. At Pudong: Oct 12 and 18.

Serving on our WASC Visiting Committee are a grade 5 teacher, 2 IT directors, a high school math teacher, a high school social studies teacher, two curriculum coordinators, two superintendents, 1 principal, 2 assistant principals. They arrive Oct 12.

Students at SAS: 2976
Students new to SAS this year: 605
Parents who attended Coffees in September: 739
Board members: 7
Faculty on Self Study Focus Groups, including the SPC: 48

The SAS Self Study Report is published. It has been distributed to teacher leaders and is available for checkout at all SAS libraries and at Building Offices. Electronic copies are available for download from http://portal.saschina.org

Links to Look At:
Help kids EMPOWER themselves through words . . .

http://www.edina.k12.mn.us/concord/teacherlinks/sixtraits/sixtraits.html At this online writing lab (OWL) for elementary students, you’ll find lots of supplementary resources that align with Lucy Calkins Writers Workshop. Older students can visit the Purdue OWL http://owl.english.purdue.edu/ – some great resources.

The national writing Project folks bring us to http://www.nwp.org/, a website that offers ideas for writing in a variety of subject areas, resources, professional development options and more. Registration on the site is free. It is worthwhile!

As the folks at Oxford University about words, about writing, about global English. http://www.askoxford.com/ Look here for a word a day, for arcane information about language and language change, and for word games.

http://www.etymonline.com/ This one’s fun. Site visitors can search the word histories of thousands of words. It is easy to use and has a nice definition of etymology. But beware, it has etymologies of all sorts of words.Technorati Tags: WASC, SAS, Shanghai American School, Educational Programs

Celebrations…..

K-12 Visual Arts faculty celebrates SAS art facilities, student and teacher access to materials (including online resources), the use of student visual arts journals, and the support they enjoy from their colleagues.

Here Ellen Levenhagen, ceramicist and Puxi HS art teacher works with one of her students.

Announcements and reminders

PD Opportunities:

· Critical Friends Coach’s Institute is coming Sept. 25 - 27:Thursday through Saturday and Sept. 29 - 30: Monday and Tuesday (3 PSU credits). Highly recommended by faculty who have taken it! Pop me an email if you are interested.

· Ask your principal or contact me about taking the Understanding by Design unit planning online course (PSU 3 credits)

· Don’t forget to contact Karen Campbell if you are interested in presenting at EARCOS!

· And while we are on the topic of artistic expression, our own Ginny Sampson and Kate Thornburn will be offering a weekend workshop in November on the creative process. More information to follow.

· Julie Lindsay and Sepi Johnson will conduct leadership training for elementary teacher leaders this Friday, Sept 5.

Links to Look At:

Help kids become LITERATE individuals who can communicate articulately through reading, writing, speaking, listening, and artistic expression . . .

http://www.nga.gov/kids/

The National Gallery of Art’s interactive website invites kids to the art zone to make art online. It currently features still life for kids and the BRUSHster, an interactive online painting machine. Try out the online jungle or the Dutch doll house: you’ll find a myriad of resources and ideas including information about specific artists or works of art that you can tie into lessons in social studies, language arts and English, as well as visual arts.

http://www.teachers.tv/subject Films on a variety of topics ranging from high school-aged Iraqi refugees discussing their future to Exploring the design and construction of cantilever bridges, How the BBC rates films, and Gardner speaking about his new thinking in Five Minds of the Future.

http://www.teachers.tv/artanddesign?order=transmitted&page=0 From the same teachers.tv folks come some 37 15-minute videos filled with ideas, resources for teachers and students in a variety of arts topics including photography, animation, writing opera, and using great paintings across the curriculum.

http://redstudio.moma.org/ The Museum of Modern Art site for teens, and http://www.moma.org/destination/# their site for young students both offer interactive activities for students. The home site, http://www.moma.org/ will lead you to MoMA youtube videos, and invite you to join MoMA on Facebook. It is worth exploring.

Technorati Tags: SAS Looking at Learning, Educational Programs, Shanghai American School

Welcome to the first 2008-2009 edition of Student Success @ SAS.

A huge thank you to everyone for a productive day in conversation with one another in cross campus conversations last Monday.

celebrations are coming in from across the school; the first in were K-12 ESOL, who sent along this week’s photo, courtesy of returning SAS veteran teacher, Jonathan Chambers.

K-12 ESOL teachers celebrate working hard to establish a culture of collaboration both within the ESOL department and with colleagues from other departments. Their aim has been to provide a meaningful, relevant and accessible learning environment for all of our students by integrating the development of academic English language skills into core subject areas and building content.

“We are initiating co-planning, materials development and co-teaching with colleagues.

This intentional practice of professional cooperation helps to improve teaching at SAS

and enriches learning for all students.” - ESOL faculty

Announcements and reminders

• Don’t forget to sign up for the SAS Book Club - there is a reminder in your e-mail this morning.
• The 2008-2009 Curriculum and Professional Development Handbook (with calendar) will be ready September 1

Links to Look At:

This week’s links, discovered while I was working on a homework assignment for Tom Hopkins over the summer, are resources for those of you looking to integrate global-mindedness, adaptable for many subject areas.

High school: http://epi.yale.edu/CountryScores High school students can see how the world’s countries rank in 2008 according to Yale’s Environmental Performance Index. There is a good explanation of the policy topics used as performance indicators in the 2006 web brochure of the project at http://www.yale.edu/epi/2006EPI_Brochure.pdf

Adaptable for grades 5-12: The world seed vault, located in Svalbard (setting for the icy parts of The Golden Compass), keeps endangered plants in the deep freeze: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/18/AR2006061800950.html

http://www.epa.gov/students/ This Environmental Protection Agency site for kids has activities and thought provokers for kids of all ages.

Students can create their own websites on the environment at One Environment: http://www.abc.net.au/civics/environment/03_students.htm

Technorati Tags: Shangahi American School, Student Success @ SAS, Staff Development

Summer School Programs have a new look and we are looking forward to addressing the educational and recreational needs of our students and guests this summer.   See attached documents.

Final Summer Program Booklet

schedule-summer-program-2008.doc

Friday, March 14, 2008

If Jeanie Merrill’s reaction is any indication, Self Study work is helping us gain a greater understanding of the SAS organization and transforming the way we work.  “To see a staff that craves to work together like this one does indicates an impressive level of professionalism” says Jeanie, grade four teacher at Pudong and member of the Curriculum and Instruction Self Study Focus Group. She refers to a common plea found in the areas for follow-up submitted by teachers across the school.

Last Thursday, twelve members of the Curriculum and Instruction Focus Group met to read and analyze the considerable work of the faculty on subject area self study. Through the year, all of you from every grade level and in every subject area have looked at how you deliver curriculum and at how you assess students. You have gathered student work and teacher work to analyze what is actually happening in classrooms. Through judging yourselves against WASC and NSSE (National Study of School Evaluation) criteria on a continuum of progress, you have analyzed what you do well and where you need follow-up work.

What have we learned from all this?  Here is a sampling of what Curriculum and Instruction Focus Group members had to say:

• I have learned about what the elementary schools are doing now to link into Shanghai and the China experience, and it sounds great! - Christine Doleman, Puxi HS English
• The diversity of students as well as the diversity of staff is greater than I expected - Mike Williams, Pudong HS Science
• Staff numbers and the growth in student numbers that we are experiencing is very significant, particularly in light of what we are trying to accomplish and the extent to which we are succeeding - Allison Bryant, Pudong ES Kindergarten
• This subject area evidence reflects a lot of hard work and great things happening at SAS - Nicoline Smits, Puxi Parent
• These details show a clear picture of what goes on in other departments. Nice to know what is happening around the school - Ellen Xu, Pudong ES Chinese
• There are a lot of people moving forward with common assessments and the discussions around them. This makes me hopeful for the collaboration we’ll need to accomplish the articulation needs that these reports highlight - Julie Lindsay, Puxi ES Grade 2
• ES and MS reports show that people feel good about the technology and the richness with which the curriculum is delivered - Mary Lane, Puxi ES Principal

Try these links this week!

1. Have a look at Fay Leung’s wiki-under-construction: http://philos.wikispaces.com  Look at the Cities as Classrooms section for some interesting resources for social studies and language arts.

2. The Pudong High School Theory of Knowledge students have a blog that is well worth visiting and responding to. Log on for interesting reads on a variety of subjects. http://blogs.saschina.org/pudongtok/

Cheers from the Ed Programs Office,

Lynne Coleman
Curriculum Coordinator
Shanghai American School
lynne.coleman@saschina.org

At 6:30 pm there will be a presentation on the pilot teacher evaluation program with Q&A.

The board meeting will begin at 7:15 pm.

Location: Vizcaya Clubhouse, 1988 Yunshan Road, Pudong.

The agenda for the board meeting is posted on the school website

Author Michael Thompson, Ph.D., to hold workshops at SAS

The New York Times best-selling author and psychologist, Michael Thompson, will be conducting workshops on a variety of topics, and information on raising children and school issues, throughout the week. He will be on both campuses for two days, SAS Curriculum and Professional Development Department has ordered the Michael Thompson books, Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Lives of Boys, The Pressured Child, and Best Friends/Worst Enemies: Understanding the Social Lives of Children and they are available for purchase in Puxi at SAS Mall or through Maddie Leung, and in Pudong in the Central Office through Jill Du. Each book is only 118 RMB.

Look for Michael Thompson’s schedule next week in ParentTalk. He will be in Puxi on Monday and Wednesday and on the Pudong campus Tuesday and Thursday. You may attend any or al lectures.
Shanghai Student Film Festival S2F2) debuts this spring

This spring will see the beginning of what we hope will become a long standing tradition for international schools in Shanghai. We are proud to announce the first annual Shanghai Student Film Festival, which will showcase the best student video work that Shanghai has to offer. The festival will also be an opportunity for student filmmakers from around the region to connect and help create a forum for sharing the multitude of ways that video is used in the classroom.
Today’s students are using video to create art, collaborate on projects, explain concepts, and promote ideas. The Shanghai Student Film Festival was created out of a desire to give these amazing projects the attention that they deserve.
Our mission is to create a space that is cross-cultural in scope and global in reach where students can share their video projects. We encourage students to participate by watching and responding to the work of their peers, and especially submitting their own work.

The festival will be held on April 18, 2008, at the Shanghai American School’s Performing Arts Center on the Puxi campus. To learn more, including information about categories, rules, prizes, and more, please visit our web site at http://www.shanghaifilmfest.org.

The festival is open to any student in grade 3-12 within the vicinity of Shanghai. All entries must be received by March 21, 2008.