In addition to K-5 students winning scholarships with their artwork at 2017 Beijing International School Expo (BISE), students grades 6-12 entering or transferring to a new school had the potential to win money for school with the written word.
Students randomly selected an essay question and then poured their thoughts out on paper. Fifth, fourth, and third place winners took home RMB 1,000 to put towards school tuition. The second place winner received RMB 3,000 while the first prize winner received RMB 5,000.
In fifth place, Michael Yang, 9 years old, Year 4 at Wangfu International School (王府国际学校), wrote about a very different school. We appreciated his creativity.
In my dream school there will be a cloud creating so even if it’s a sunny day there won’t be Phys ED. Also, there will be driving lessons in it. Starting from 3 year old students can have driving lessons. The students can choose their car like SUVS and trucks and stuff. They also can choose if they want a brake on their cars. If they don’t want a brake they’ll have to drive straight and drive back.
There also will be shooting lessons. The students can pick their guns like a match lock pistol or a M1 Gar and. Then they could go into the shooting range. They can choose to shoot targets or cardboard people.
There will also be a special class: dancing in the toxins. The students can wear a gas mask and a hazmat suit. Then they go into a room. 10 seconds later the room will be filled with gases but the students won’t get hurt.
For lunch they will have an all you can eat buffet for FREE. The students can eat anything they want until they’re ready to burst. This is the type of school I want to go to.
In fourth place, Tian Ningyuan, 11 years old, Year 7 at Beijing Capital Normal University affiliated school (北京首都师范大学附属育新学校), envisioned a school where the teachers and administrators would have the time to delve deeply into each subject.
School is very important for kids, and there is many kind of school. In my head there is a wonderful kind of school, and that is what I’m going to describe. If you say about school the no.1 thing is classes there are many subject I know, PE, English, science …. But I think they are as same as important. One school day will have 1.5 hours for sports. And 1.5 hours for English study, and the same for art, science, computer study… For a day, apart from learning time there will be every 1/6 hour for each ¾ hour. In the school, there will need a garden, a gym, a swimming pool, 2 main building, a club house, a football field, a basketball field. For every class, there will need a main teacher for keeping order at eating time, and the time the teacher was not in the class. The kids will not work well in a school if the teacher well help them. So in this school, the was a room for helping center, if you need some help, there is the right place. If there were a school like that, then it will be the best school in all. That school, will be wonderful.
In third place, Li Jingxuan, 11 years old, Year 6 at BFSU Extension School (北外附校), dreamed of a school with a lot of clean air and very little homework.
My dream school is a beautiful school. It do not need any air purifier, because it has many trees can make clean air. And all the teacher are kind and nice. And all the class mates are friendly and helpful. In my dream school there a lot of PE class, cause I am a active person. And the teacher will give less and less homework, and let us do some sports. I wish there’s a swimming pool in the school, because most of the people like to swim right? And they’re many delicious food such as some pizza drinks… And I want my dream school have iPad and computer because I like programming. That’s my dream school what is your dream school like?
In second place, Muhammad Rao,11 years old, Year 7 at Pakistan Embassy College Beijing, made a great point about schools that are not based on real life skills.
Well I have studied in a lot of schools and none of them is my ideal. It’s not that I hate to study, in fact my hobby is going on the internet and learn new things and verify them. The problem is that we learn a bunch of things in school and we should scram it for the exam and after that, forget what you’ve learnt. In my dream school I want each individual to learn what they want. I want them to practice what they are learning. I also want debates, speech competitions, spelling bee, Quiz competition ect. I also think that each student should choose a sport and practice it as will because co-curricular activities are very important skills in life. Basically I want the schools to teach us skills needed in life not the skill of scramming and I think students should also graded by their performance in extra/co-curricular activities.
And our grand prize winner, Sean, 11 years old, Years 6 at Shijia Primary School (史家小学), was straight to the point and allowed a ton of flexibility at his school.
In my imagination, my dream school is a “combination” of my old schools. First, I would imagine it as a half-day school, where you go to school at 7 o’clock every morning, and come home at 2 in the afternoon. Secondly, I hope that there won’t be too much homework, so that we gave some free time to enjoy ourselves and do things we like at the end of the day. Thirdly I would like to learn as much as possible with the available time, so that we won’t be wasting our precious time at school. Lastly I need the school to be a fun school, you can learn in fun and learn to think creative, think “out-of-the-box” and at last, have enthusiasm about learning!
More stories by this author here.
Email: vanessajencks@truerun.com
Twitter: @vanessa_jencks
WeChat: vanessajencks