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.

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, January 25, 2008

1. Our SAS Self Study benefits student learning though a careful look at each subject area, but also through how learning is structured in divisions. This year, there is a special focus on learning and research about middle schools. The Middle School Task Force began their work this past week; they will be looking into what the experts say about elective programs, integrated curriculum and other middle school topics. Want to share in the research? Watch this space next week for links to explore.
2. Grades 6-12 Mathematics Program Review Task Force members are ensuring continued enhancement of student learning through their work. Teachers on the task force, Clive Russell, Bob Gould, Robert Burke, Steve Nakai, Amanda DeCardy, Hank Claasen, Mel Ryan and Kay Saich, are addressing a number of research questions, including

• • • To what extent are the two campuses offering similar learning experiences in Math?
    • What professional development would help Math teachers with differentiation grades 6-12?

In addition, the group is aligning process benchmarks between MS and HS as well as incorporating data analysis and probability benchmarks into the high school curriculum.

Finally, the group is investigating options for a new blended high school course in grade 9.

______________________________________________________________________

Smithsonian Education

If you are looking for enrichment materials for the students in your classes who need more challenge, try this website: Smithsonian Education. The world’s largest museum complex, The Smithsonian Institute, offers teachers, students, and families a wide array of quality teaching and learning materials for students grades K-12 in art and design, science and technology, history and culture and language arts.

Cheers from the Ed Programs Office,

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

As mentioned in earlier articles in ParentTalk, the SAS self-study is in full swing as the end of the first semester has passed. The self-study has involved virtually all members of the faculty and staff at SAS in some way and continues to be the focus of efforts in the Educational Programs office. The organizational lead for the self study are the members of the Student Programs committee, which has met three times this year and has had a full orientation on the effort. While Student Programs Committee’s “heavy lifting” has really not yet begun, the focus groups that have been to the preliminary work have been busy.Three Key Outcomes
Our goals for the self-study focus on three key outcomes. The first is to get an accurate picture of the current operational levels in Shanghai American School. We do this by our community survey, our staff survey, the surveys given to our students and assessment data. We will also be conducting day long “data in a day” activities later in the year to take snapshots of our school for analysis. The second goal is to change the way do our work in significant ways. This change is already seen in many ways, through the cross-river conversations we have held with our teachers and the way we are organizing our curriculum and data through the use of on-line curriculum data tools like Atlas Rubicon. Finally, our third outcome we hope to achieve is the establishment of metrics through which we can measure our success in achieving our school’s vision as we move to 2012. These metrics can be used as benchmark points for SAS and will be used as tools for communications amongst the faculty, administration and staff as well as with our parent community.

Focus Group: Organization for Student Learning
Organization for Student Learning is one of the key areas of focus on the self-study. In this section of the report submitted to the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) focuses on the way SAS is arranged, organized and administrated to meet the learning needs of the students and their families. The self-study, aptly named a Focus on Learning, drives us to take a deep look into the ways we focus our work on our classrooms and our students. Issues such as trusteeship, staffing, leadership, governance, staffing and qualifications is examined and data is disaggregated from the work we do in our school and from the feedback received from the NSSE community satisfaction survey.

Focus Group: Support for Student Personal and Academic Growth
This important section of the self-study report focuses on how SAS supports student in their learning. The areas which are important to this focus group allows the school to look at our ESOL program, our academic support program, our co-curricular programs (after school activities, athletics, and clubs) and our counseling program. Again, like the Organization for student learning, data is analyzed and the committee will draft a report.

Focus Group: Curriculum and Instruction
This, by and large, is the biggest section of the the self study report. The representatives in the Curriculum and Instruction department examine what students are learning, how they are learning the content and how they are being assessed in the learning the content taught. This data is very important to our report and will create a comprehensive snapshot of the classroom activities at Shanghai American School. Lynne Coleman, our curriculum coordinator, along with Pip Curtis, our curriculum consultant, are working long hours to put this part of the report together.

Focus Group: Resource Management
This is the only focus group not to have met thus far in our self study effort, but will be meeting soon to examine how SAS gathers, manages and uses it’s many resources to operate the school. This focus group asks if the resources available to the school sufficient to sustain the school program and effectively used to carry out the school’s purpose and student achievement of the expected school-wide learning results? Again, data will be analyzed and a report is drafted.

Student Programs Committee Oversight
All draft reports from each focus group will be reviewed for content and accuracy by the student programs committee and will take recommendations from each focus group as to the areas in which the school needs to focus further growth efforts in the coming years. From those recommendations, action plans will be created and those plans will be reviewed and finalized by the Student Programs Committee. My the end of the school year the entire process will be complete and a final draft of the SAS self study report will be published for the community and for dissemination to the visiting team. This effort by the Student Programs Committee is key, as the group is representative of parents, board members, teachers and administrators.

WASC Visiting Team
Shanghai American School has requested a large visiting team to examine our school for a full week in October. The team will consist of educators from other international schools and from schools in the United States. The team members will be teachers and administrators who have received special training from WASC and are considered to representative members of school communities that are accredited by WASC. Special consideration is made to ensure that there is no conflict of interest with any visiting team members and Shanghai American School. The process has a very open feel, and a public report will be made to the school on the last day of the visit.

Re-accreditation is not the end of the journey
After the process is all finished, the school will have a set of action plans and a set of recommendations to follow for the next 3-5 year period of time at which point the school will begin preparing again for the re-accreditation process, and for renewed school improvement efforts.

Marilyn George, Ed.D. paid a two day visit to the grades 11 and 12
classroom at the high school, Pudong campus, last week.  Dr. George is
the Associate Executive Director of the Western Association of Schools
and Colleges, the accreditation association that works with many of the
Asian region international schools, and provides the assurances of
accreditation to schools that meet their rigorous standards.  She was
pleased with the progress that the high school has made in the
development of the programs.

The WASC organization has been working with schools in the East Asia
region for many years now and continues to provide support for
accreditation efforts.  Accreditation can be considered a stamp of
approval of sorts, in that outside educators from not only the
international setting but also the United States review the programs of
the school and the impact the school improvement efforts that have been
undertaken by school administration and teaching faculty.

As mentioned in earlier articles in ParentTalk, the SAS community is
involved with a self study process.  Currently, we are gathering data
about our school. This data includes the responses from our students,
parents, faculty and community on the satisfaction survey that has
recently come out to all of us via email.  The NSSE survey has allowed
us to take a snapshot of the feelings of all our constituents.  We will
continue to collect survey data and analyze student learning and school
organizational data through late March.  During Dr. George’s visit, the
progress of the SAS self study was discussed and helped Curriculum
Coordinator Lynne Coleman, Curriculum Consultant Pip Curtis and Deputy
Superintendent Andrew Torris with the details of the upcoming visit in
October.

We have set up an informational web site for our self study which I
updated regularly by the SAS Educational Programs office. The address
is http://teachers.saschina.org/edpro/.

Technorati Tags: WASC, SAS, Shanghai American School, Pudong High School

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I, like many of you, received an important email from me, Deputy Superintendent Andrew Torris regarding our Teacher or Parent Survey. My guess is that it came to your email box as a “gentle” reminder to complete the survey.

I this blog entry today not only to remind you to complete this survey, but also to reinforce the importance of this data gathering tool.

I realize more than anyone that the plethora of online surveys that we are now asked to complete from not only SAS but also the many other organizations from which we belong is sometimes overwhelming. These surveys have certainly increased my screen time significantly and I often wonder, as you probably do, if my time is well spent. I ask myself if this is just another way to put my opinion into a numerical box for somebody to count. In this case the National Study of School Evaluation survey, which is juried and evaluated by an independent organization, provides SAS with a gauge of satisfaction for the overall operations of the school.

The information from this survey is vital to the WASC self study which we are working with this year. As we move through this important data collection phase, I ask you for your time to complete it with seriousness and honesty.

We really do value your opinion.

Technorati Tags: NSSE Survey, SAS, Shanghai American School, WASC, Self-Study

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This week Shanghai
American School
launched its National Study of School Evaluation survey (NSSE).

This web-based survey will help us to gather data in order
to guide our school improvement process. You should have received an email with
an access code allowing you to log on to the NSSE web site and submit your
opinions about our school. If you have
not yet received an access code, please email philippa.curtis@saschina.org

You may complete the survey anytime during the period of
November 7 – 26, at home or at school.
Many of you will have taken advantage of the computers available at the
parent teacher conferences on November 8 and 9.
You may also choose to take the survey at SAS after school using the
computer labs available on each campus.

Computer labs available Mon 12, Tue 13 and Wed 14, November from 3 – 4 pm

NSSE does not allow us to translate this survey but we do
hope to have language support available in the computer labs, for Korean and
Chinese speakers, with the help of High School volunteers and our Korean
liaison staff.

We would like to take the opportunity to thank you for
completing the NSSE survey. SAS values
your feedback.

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

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Plans are moving ahead for launching our National Study of School Evaluation (NSSE) survey, a US based, nonprofit educational research company which will poll the opinions of students, teachers, parents, support staff and community members. The information gained in this survey will allow us a broad based reference point from which to examine the data we are gathering as part of our SAS Self Study. The survey will be launched in mid November and plans are underway to support parents with both language and technical assistance at SAS campuses.

At the Student Programs Committee meeting on October 18, parents, board members, teachers and administrators were asked to give their feedback on the survey questions. The group also gave considerable thought to how the survey access codes should best be delivered to parents.

The NSSE is a highly reputable company used extensively by both US schools and international schools particularly during WASC accreditation. The company has offered to email the access codes for our online survey directly to our constituents. The company undertakes to keep all email addresses confidential. We trust the professionalism of this organization and we ask that you do to. If you would prefer that your email address is not provided to NSSE to please don’t hesitate to inform us.

If you have further questions about the NSSE survey, please email Pip Curtis (Curriculum Consultant – WAS Self Study) at Philippa.Curtis@saschina.org.

Plans are moving ahead for launching our National Study of School Evaluation
(NSSE) survey, a United States based, nonprofit educational research company
which will poll the opinions of students, teachers, parents, support staff and
community members.

The information gained in this survey will allow us a broad based reference
point from which to examine the data we are gathering as part of our SAS Self
Study. The survey will be launched in mid November and plans are underway to
support parents with both language and technical assistance at SAS campuses.

At the Student Programs Committee meeting on October 18, parents, board
members, teachers and administrators were asked to give their feedback on the
survey questions. The group also gave considerable thought to how the survey
access codes should best be delivered to parents. 
The
NSSE is a highly reputable company used extensively by both U.S. schools and
international schools particularly during WASC accreditation. The company has
offered to email the access codes for our online survey directly to our
constituents. The company undertakes to keep all email addresses confidential.
We trust the professionalism of this organization and we ask that you do to. If
you would prefer that your email address is not provided to NSSE to please don’t
hesitate to inform us.

If you have further questions about the NSSE survey, please email Pip Curtis
(Curriculum Consultant – WAS Self Study) at Philippa.Curtis@saschina.org.

By Lynne Coleman, Curriculum Coordinator

I listened to snippets of conversation from pairs of teachers – all about learning and all about students in their classes. They were sharing ideas about how they could use self-reflection to help their students know more about their own learning.
Last Thursday afternoon, Chinese faculty who teach grades 6-12 on both campuses, explored how to empower students in a number of ways: through self-reflection, through use of choice in interactive assignments that give students authentic experiences that draw upon their Chinese language learning and through designing portfolio assessment that encourages students to keep track of their own progress in learning the language.
The Chinese department in grades 6-12 will pilot portfolio assessment this year, with the dual aims of helping teachers to make more precise placement decisions and of empowering students. The conversations of Chinese teachers were among many we heard last Thursday and Friday, as teachers participated in two professional development days. Faculty members from across the school looked at the SAS EAGLES and discussed how to integrate them into coursework at all levels.

EAGLES
In May of last year, the Student Programs Committee, a committee of parents and teachers, adopted the EAGLES, based on the SAS mission, vision and core values. The EAGLES are school-wide learning results that call for our students to be Empowered, Adaptable, Global-minded, Literate, Ethical and Skilled Inquirers.

Last week, while students and their families enjoyed a full week of October holidays, teachers shaped what the EAGLES will look like in their classrooms – for students from Pre-K to grade 12 and from visual arts and Chinese to Physics and IB English.

Empowering Students
This space is too limited to provide a snapshot of all the work with EAGLES, but here is a sampling of what it looks like for our children to be empowered in classrooms at SAS:

• making choices about what materials to use in middle school art projects;
• working collaboratively in research groups in grade 2;
• ?opportunities to self-assess learning in science, and English and humanities;
• using Chinese language to take a taxi or order a meal;
• creating safe environments within which to take risks to try new ways to find solutions in mathematics classes;
• choosing from an array of projects to demonstrate mastery of skills in high school English;
• ?using a wiki book review site that celebrates interaction with readers around the world in Middle School literacy;
• writing persuasively and writing to learn about what they think;
• ?previewing vocabulary in grade 4 and using new vocabulary with confidence.

Empowering Teachers
And we looked at empowering teachers as well. Faculty members recorded what they are teaching and how they are teaching on Atlas Rubicon, web software that makes unit planning and teaching strategies transparent to all teachers. It gives teachers from different subject areas an opportunity to work together to make the learning richer for students.
It also allows teachers to trace what students learn and experience in all their classes from grade to grade which will help us to keep closer track of both content and delivery across grade levels and across campuses.
An added benefit is that the software also proves valuable for collecting data for the SAS Self Study and accreditation process. The theme is – in this case teachers are empowered as is our organization.
Professional Development days offered educators the time to reflect on their practice, to design experiences for their students, and to learn.

And that is empowerment for everyone.

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