Even though it’s been a bit more than a year since I graduated high school, I can still vividly remember all the complaining that my peers have done about the science and math classes that they were forced to take. As someone who is passionate about STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) and hence decided to pursue an engineering degree, I could only dismiss these complaints as ignorant comments made by lazy people. But was it entirely their fault that they didn’t like what they had to learn? No! When the sole motivation for these students to learn what they were taught in these classes is grades, it makes sense that they would complain. Recently, I’ve put more thought into this matter, and I started wondering about what would make science and math more fun.

Relevance
There’s a common belief that science and math are only for the gifted, but in reality, effort and interest are what really matter. From personal experience, the lack of interest, and thus lack of effort, in these subjects often occurs in students who believe that they do not want to pursue a career in STEM. A lot of people don’t see the relevance and importance of science in everyday life. It’s important to address in classrooms how science affects personal matters. Sure, it’s true that just about everything around us is a result of decades of scientific research, and we do appreciate the effort and time that scientists, engineers, and mathematicians have dedicated to make the world a better place. However, to most of us, it doesn’t matter how black holes are formed or how the classification system for plants works. There should be more emphasis on topics that affect us directly. Learning about things such as how to protect the environment or why it is important to not use antibiotics to treat colds will allow us to make informed decisions.

Not only that, but it would be great if students could learn how to use concepts that they learn in science class in everyday life. For example, when learning about reaction rates in chemistry, a useful life hack to teach would be to refrigerate onions before cutting them to prevent you from tearing up. When you cut onions, you’re breaking open cells, which releases chemicals into the air that makes your eyes sting. The cooler temperature slows down the rate of chemical reactions, so it is less likely that the chemicals would be released and would make their way up to your eyes.

Hands-on learning
It’s been a year since I took chemistry and unfortunately, even though I want to retain all the information that I learned in chemistry class, I can feel it fading away from my memory day by day. What I can still remember are not the things that I learned from a textbook, but those I learned through experiments, and in particular, the ones that I got a chance to carry out on my own.

The concepts of experiential learning and project-based learning is becoming more and more prevalent, but textbook learning is still dominating, especially in higher classes. It’s unfortunate that hands-on learning is considered suitable for children, but not much emphasis is placed on using this method to teach older students or adults. Classroom activities and games should be consistently used to complement lectures even in high school and university, as these would make learning more enjoyable. The hands-on learning techniques used in my 11^th and 12^th grade biology classes, for instance, tremendously improved our interest in biology. For example, we often played Kahoot, a game-based online learning platform. Our competitive nature made us want to win the game, so we were more interested in paying attention to lectures and learning what was on the syllabus.

Learning outside of a classroom
As much as I would like science education to improve right away, I know that it’s not going to happen any time soon. So, for the time being, it’s up to us to help our family members and friends see the importance of the sciences. The following are some ways to make that happen.

– Discussing science news
– Watching science TV – even science fiction is a great way to imagine where science will take us.
– Family science activities
– Museums – these are fun for both kids and adults.
– Workshops and summer camps
– Extracurricular activities – these tend to allow for greater creative freedom than in classrooms.

Photo: Antranias via Pixabay

Upon entering the Futures Academy (FA) at the International School of Beijing (ISB), it seemed like something between an art class and a science lab, and a far departure from the classrooms we grew up in as kids. There was no “sage on a stage” or giant overwhelming blackboard, just a room filled with tech, circular tables, and happy kids. We were very impressed with the colorful and creative atmosphere that filled the room, as students looked very focused, working intently with a variety of the tools that they had available to them ranging from laptops, 3D printers, audio equipment, and cameras.

Now going into its fourth year, FA has a lot to be proud of as it begins the 2017-18 school year, bringing more students into the mindset of 21st-century learning. But, like all movements in education or elsewhere, the ISB Futures Academy started as an idea: an idea based on wanting to give students the ability to become the architects of their own learning, and encouraging them to experience a different form of education that is equally about developing proficiency in academic standards as it is about learning to be creative problem solvers.

While they were by no means the originators of this concept, as other schools in Beijing and around the world have also started to implement both project- and experience-based learning, ISB had the support from parents and faculty that was necessary to begin in 2014. As Dr. Tarek Razik, ISB’s Head of School, put it; “the atmosphere was right for a change.”

But, with over 1,700 students and 150 teachers at ISB, we were curious about how a redesign like this was initiated. After all, it was necessary that ISB created a program which didn’t completely negate the standards-based curriculum, but would rather complement and reinforce it, by providing a testing ground for educational practices which could later be integrated into the entire school. Also, it was evident to the founders of Futures Academy that if they decided to implement these new learning concepts throughout the entire curriculum, it would have taken years of planning to introduce, and probably be met with some skepticism.

If they chose to start the new way of learning in primary school, there’s a chance that the maturity needed for this kind of academic freedom had yet to surface in the student. On the other hand, if it were started too late, then maybe the benefits wouldn’t have enough time to take hold, especially with the added pressure of IB and college prep. That’s one of the reasons why they chose to start with Grade 7.

So far, with each year the program has been gaining traction and is currently at 88 students in Middle School, and ten students in Grade 9. If the student decides to stick with FA, the complexity and nature of the project-based curriculum mature along with the student.

A day in the life of an FA student is usually broken up into three blocks (90 minutes each), and two half-blocks (45 minutes each). Two-thirds of these full blocks are spent in FA developing projects, and the other is either in Art or PE. The half-blocks, which occur before and after lunch, are when students do their enrichments (Chinese, orchestra, robotics, etc.) with the rest of the middle school. As for the core subjects such as math, science, and humanities, these are all integrated into the projects, though in a less linear way than students are typically accustomed to. So while the rest of the middle school may teach unit 1-6, FA will mix it up a bit to better integrate these lessons into the student’s projects.

Jazzy, a Grade 8 student said; “We integrate subjects into our projects, but it’s not like ‘turn to page 80,’ it’s more about finding things as they relate to the topic of your project.” So while at first glance it may seem that life as an FA student is a huge departure from the standard, these subjects are just presented through more creative and less conventional methods. After all, the plan is not only to gain mastery of core academic subjects but also to engage with individualized learning which is specific to the student’s passions and interests, helping the act of learning to become a more organic process.

One of the essential ingredients of FA, we were told, is something called L21. This is in many ways the academic backbone of ISB that exists in their framework from Pre-K3 to Grade 12, and attempts to layer purpose and vision on top of academics. FA has a particular focus on these concepts, that range from communication and collaboration, creativity and innovation, global and critical thinking, and leadership responsibility. It’s combining these ideas with academic standards, technology, comprehensive assessment, and various types of learning, including project based, experiential, and even learning on a more social and emotional level that ISB believes will help prepare students for the challenges of the future.

Whether it be their Capstone Projects where they explore sustainability subjects relating to Beijing’s hutongs, or Futures Public Radio, which is a platform based on the National Public Radio (NPR) model where they learn the basics of podcasting and journalism, their projects are firmly rooted in this L21 framework while making sure a firm grasp of the core curriculum is maintained. Subjects like math, science, and humanities are integrated into these projects, but using a less linear approach, and expanded upon by the flexibility that is required by both personalized and experiential learning

One Grade 8 student we talked to put it neatly by saying, “In science, if we have a theory we have to prove, we make a claim and if it’s incorrect, the teacher won’t tell us. She just says ‘think what you think is right, and use the evidence that you’ve found from the lab or from research and prove your claim.’ Since we’re finding our own answers, it’s in our minds more clearly, and it stays there.”

Students explore their respective topics with guidance from their teachers, gather data in the field, and probe further to connect their projects to other areas of study. This allows them to get to know their topic, while learning essential skills like writing surveys, interviewing experts, and using the information they have gathered to write a complete analysis of the subject which they will eventually have to defend at the project’s conclusion. To us, this sounded more like something from a university dissertation rather than a middle school classroom, and we were quite impressed by the level of independence these young students were working at.

It takes a certain kind of teacher to be able to encourage students in such a way, without just delivering them all of the necessary knowledge straight from a textbook. It’s this kind of teaching style that makes the FA program stand out, as they not only help to deliver individualized learning through regularly checking up on progress, but also connect students with experts to further enhance the level of expertise of these projects. That’s why they are referred to as “facilitators.”

Dr. Tarek Razik explained, “As a teacher it used to be ‘here’s the knowledge, I’m going to give it to you, and then you’re going toggle it back to me on a test’. But now as a facilitator what I’m going to say is ‘here’s what I want you to be able to do, now how can I help you do that?’ While the teachers still need to teach to the standards, how that happens is up to them.” This puts a lot of added responsibility onto the teachers to make sure the students are delivering, but also it allows them to be creative and use every tool at their disposal to make this happen.

This in particular has helped the school to receive input from the teachers on ways that it can further benefit students. Using Futures Public Radio and the grant they recently received as an example, FA facilitator Aaron Moniz talked to us about the motivational factor that comes with ISB actively working to support creative methods to give kids real world skills and hands-on opportunities with technology. He said; “For example, let’s take an individual with a learning difference. Maybe writing isn’t necessarily their forte, but if they know that they can get their hands on a camera and they can do the audio, and instead of getting quotes that they’ve embedded from research they get quotes that are imbedded from a student and they clip it into a video and organize it into a visual essay. Then they are able to express even more than they would be able to if they were asked to write an essay. The more we teach other teachers how to use this kind of technology the more it actually expands what our teachers can do and what our students can do.”

This is how FA became what it is today, an incubator for new ideas about education. Less constrained by the old status quo, the program has become a testing ground for new ideas and teaching methods, which has provided these young minds an alternative way to learn, not to mention a first glimpse at the curriculums of the future. Only time, and full-on implementation of this educational style, will tell if this is the actual direction of 21st-century learning, but from our observations at FA we are excited about the possibilities.

This article originally appeared on p 54-56 of beijingkids August 2017 issue.
Download the digital copy here.

British School of Beijing, Shunyi (BSB, Shunyi) is a wonderful example of how project-based learning can be implemented in a variety of ways. Throughout the school this new approach is engaging students in new ways of learning, which will help them meet the increasing demand for well-rounded learners and the unknown requirements of employers of the future.

Andy Puttock, former principal of BSB, Shunyi and now educational director of Nord Anglia, explained: “For us, project-based learning is about students gaining knowledge, skills, and understanding through projects over an extended period of time, which are multi-disciplinary and that they investigate and respond to problems and challenges which are real world, authentic, and complex. So it takes students and teachers out from their comfort zone.”

One difference we discovered in the way that project-based learning is being implemented at BSB, Shunyi is that in primary school it is used in most lessons, giving these early learners the responsibility of coming up with ways to gain proficiency in core subjects by tackling real world problems. This in our opinion is a concrete way for students early on to understand the benefits of learning rather than it being an abstract activity, to which there is no apparent purpose. This can be an especially daunting time for early learners. If they are given the freedom outside of the classroom with their homework to develop themes and problems to solve in their own time, instead of just using the “complete section 3 of chapter 12” approach, then the effects of nightly homework can become immediately tangible and more appreciated.

The fact that independent and project-based learning is slowly becoming the mainstream in educational institutions around the globe does not mean that the current system is necessarily broken, but in many ways it is in need of some modification to adapt to the new requirements of life in the future.

To this Puttock’s response was that “the true marker for change in educational systems around the globe will come from what top companies are looking for when they are hiring.” These requirements for future workers subsequently trickle down from these companies and are fed into universities, then secondary, and primary schools. For young learners, thinking about your child’s career and their future employability might seem a long way off, but it’s never too soon to start preparing children for the very different world ahead of them, and tech companies are leading the way in mapping out this unknown future.

When Puttock first arrived in Asia four years ago, this wasn’t the case and exams and grades were still the primary focus. But, recently he believes there has been a big shift taking place, and educators the world over are beginning to favor new methods that have been making a significant difference in creating the confident and creative employees of the future.

Whether it be in primary school, International Baccalaureate (IB), or the STEAM program, project-based learning concepts are actively being incorporated to grow the next crop of engaged learners. One recent success story demonstrates how presenting students with real world problems in the project-based learning framework is changing things for the better. Nord Anglia Education has just formed a partnership with UNICEF, and they are working with them to help develop their United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Each year now, they’ll be setting a challenge based on these goals which include ending poverty, ending hunger, ensuring healthy lives, achieving gender equality, and conserving and sustaining our oceans.

Tildie, Helen, Sunny and Sabrina, a gang of four brilliant IB students, decided to join in the effort of helping Grade 9 and primary school students develop projects based on these Sustainable Development Goals for UNICEF’s High Level Political Forum 2017. Like all IB students, they needed to complete a Creativity, Action, Service (CAS) requirement, and their supervisor for this very open-ended aspect of the curriculum told them that there was a great opportunity to represent Nord Anglia Education at this UNICEF conference at the United Nations in New York City.

With their combined past experience in Model United Nations and the debate team, they were the perfect addition to help guide the younger students. They worked closely with their schoolmates and developed ideas to creatively respond to these issues related to hunger and health. One was learning about compost bin systems and building one on campus, while the primary school kids created a garden on campus to grow vegetables to be used in the school’s cafeteria.

What started as a simple but worthwhile assignment has turned into a life-changing experience for these students and brought them to the UN, from July 10 to 19. This unique opportunity gave them a platform to contribute to the discussion and influence policies at the highest level. While this sort of cooperation between Nord Anglia and the UN allows students to use their project to learn about these important issues affecting countries worldwide, it also takes these concepts outside of the classroom to provide a channel for young people to communicate ideas and influence policy makers from around the globe through organized debate.

Out of the 87 students present at the forum, Sabrina was selected to address the UN, along with a small handful of other students from other Nord Anglia schools. They presented their ideas on ending hunger globally, along with a plan for how Nord Anglia Education will continue in aiding these development goals in the years to come. Sabrina described how working with this project has shaped her in becoming more aware of these global concerns: “One of the main things is that it has helped us realize the importance of these international issues. So by looking at the sustainable development goals we had to do research, and we had to talk about it, and we also had to cooperate with younger students about it, so it has helped raise awareness about these topics within ourselves concerning these issues and what we can do to help.”

As active members of BSB, Shunyi’s Model United Nations, when they return to school in the fall they plan on using this experience to create a Model UN summit at the school. This will help build another student-led experience that is sure to benefit all who are involved, continuing the enrichment of the student population with the authentic, real world experiences which are the basis for a 21st-century education.

Photos: Courtesy of BSB, Shunyi

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This article originally appeared on p 52-53 of beijingkids August 2017 issue.
Download the digital copy here.

We sat down with John D’Arcy, deputy director at Western Academy of Beijing (WAB), about what sort of innovative education techniques are being implemented at (WAB). Little did we know just how passionate he was on this topic.

Soon after getting settled in for the chat, we pressed record and listened as his ideas just poured out for nine straight minutes, uninterrupted. He started it all off by putting things into perspective for us by introducing the current sphere of education, and why it’s been so slow in adapting to the needs of today. So here it is, your comprehensive introduction to some of the major ideas and concerns that are laying the current foundation for the next wave of trends in innovative education.

John D’Arcy, speaking at TEDxYouth talk at WAB in April 2017.

John D’Arcy: In some ways what’s happening in education happened in most other industries 20 or 30 years ago. As technology impacted our lives, people were expected to lead their own learning for their jobs, and nobody was going to tell you how or what to do, so you needed to just create it. That’s the nature of work now.

With education, we’ve been able to avoid that disruption that has happened in most other industries because we are working with pretty precious cargo, our students, and it’s important not to just adopt fads or things that look good to push the institution of learning faster than it has the capacity to handle. So we’ve been slower. But now it’s here, and teachers, schools are no longer really in a comfortable place to say we’re not going to change. We’re not going to innovate. Parents are expecting it, kids are expecting it, and teachers of quality are expecting it. So it behooves us to do so.

The great thing about WAB and probably some other schools in Beijing is that we actually like it. We are really excited about it. We started asking parents, students, teachers, our board, how can we better realize our mission of core values, and how can we better prepare our kids today to be more successful in the future? So we went to all the stakeholder groups and got all this feedback, and what was interesting but not surprising in hindsight is that they kind of had the same beliefs. This is that we want our students to be capable. We want them to be engaged, knowledgeable, and skillful, but not at the expense of their holistic development, not at the expense of them becoming people who can make the world a better place, and not at the expense of them being people who care. We aren’t just going to drive towards high grades at the expense of developing kids who are not holistically well-balanced.

We want to create a school that suits the needs of every single learner, but what does that look like? Currently, many schools as you know, aren’t designed for every single learner. They’re designed for the average 8-year-old or the average 15-year-old, and that has always been a broken model. It has always rewarded kids who learn more quickly, and by Friday who gets it. Those kids who don’t fully comprehend, it doesn’t matter because they are starting the new thing on Monday.

What we’ve had so far is an organization of education where kids have been moved up through the model having only partially completed knowledge development. So they move forward on partial knowledge, and then they begin to develop a belief system about themselves as learners, believing things like I’m not good at math, I’m not good a drawing, I’m not good at writing. We have institutions of learning that have developed in many people the belief that they’re not good at stuff, as much as they’ve developed the capacity for what they’re good at.

I think the conversation now in education is how tragic it is that we who pride ourselves in learning have developed people who don’t believe they’re good at what they’re doing. So we need to change that so that it’s no longer about whoever learns it best by “Friday” is going to get the best score, because we know from research that sometimes the kids who struggle the most with the learning actually get it better, and the kids who it comes to easily forget it more quickly.

Realizing that learning is messier than this concept of whoever gets it on “Friday,” we decided that we need to change it up so that “Friday” is no longer what we’re using to measure kids. What we’re saying is, what do you need today. For example, you all need to learn how to read, you all need to learn how to write, we need numeracy, and what do you need to get there? We also should recognize that we all need something different because each of our brains are as different as our faces and they learn differently. It’s not about making sure you meet the curriculum and then judging you against this curriculum; it’s making sure we know who you are as a learner so that you can be successful with the curriculum.

It’s a huge mind shift. So how do schools work then if it really becomes about individual learning? Schools have been talking about a thing called differentiation for a while now, and so the idea is in your classroom you need to differentiate between groups of kids. The reality is we struggle with it. Teachers struggle with doing that really effectively because still “Friday” is the test day and it’s really hard for a teacher to manage 20 kids and differentiate to meet all of their needs. So we need to come up with an educational system that allows kids to have access to the resources that they need, to get the content they need, and to develop the skills that they need.

In many places, in the 70s open classroom spaces were supposed to fix education, and it didn’t work. What happened was teachers just started getting plants, bookshelves, and sofas and dividing up their spaces. Because all they did was change the space, but not the relationship of teachers to the learning or the kid’s ownership of the content, it didn’t work. They didn’t change the curriculum, and they didn’t change how people were organized. They didn’t change the expectation of what school was. All they did was change the space. Some people have changed the curriculum, but they haven’t changed the space, or some have changed what the notion of teaching is but none of the other things.

At WAB what we’re doing is we recognize that it’s a whole ecosystem. We work within the features of our spaces, our time, physical spaces, our curriculum, our assessment practices. They’re all the features of our ecosystem. All of them have to be redesigned if we’re going to be successful.

So our work leads us to engage everyone in the community, parents, students, teachers, board members, in moving this massive thing forward, so that it all stays aligned, so it’s all in sync, and it better meets the needs of every single student.

After we had picked our jaws up from the floor following this illuminating talk, we had a much better understanding of what was in the pipeline for WAB, and any other school that wanted to remain relevant throughout the 21st century. Whether it were things that WAB are currently in the process of implementing or trends in innovative education that are bound to happen, D’Arcy had a lot to say on the subject.

That being said, changes like this are a lengthy process and these shifts in innovating sometimes come slowly. We felt this transcript was a worthwhile window into the mind of someone who is a big proponent of these changes and drumming up the support necessary to enact these concepts, in big and small ways, steadily throughout the WAB curriculum.

Photos: Courtesy of WAB

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This article originally appeared on p 50-51 of beijingkids August 2017 issue.
Download the digital copy here.

Educational trends are a major focus of beijingkids and the families that use our publication as a tool to learn about what schools are doing in this city. Without our magazine, many would lack access to this information, and it would require a lot more digging for expats to find the right educational institution for their young learners.

Within this domain, few topics have been more fervently discussed than that of innovation, and for a good reason. We want our children to do well in school and eventually be a well-rounded and ultimately employable adult.

At first glance “innovative education” may seem like a simple concept, but believe us when we tell you it is anything but. Many of the ideas for moving forward and changing the ways curriculums are structured are a result of decades of neurological and behavioral study, or trial and error enacted by brave educators wanting to better suit the needs of students in the classroom. As new educational techniques spread, we can’t help but watch in amazement and hope that they will soon become an essential ingredient to the learning of the future. It is an exciting and sometimes scary time to be alive as the pressure to remain relevant grows with the advancements being made in areas such as artificial intelligence.

On a lighter note, exploring these topics has been a way for me to gain a deeper insight into these changes so that I can start planning the academic development of my child. Granted he’s only nine-months-old, it’s never too early to start mulling it over.

These are just a couple of reasons why this issue has been so exciting to work on, and it’s the culmination of these revelations and advancements being made that are reinforcing our belief that Beijing is truly an advanced center for education in China and possibly the world. Whether it’s the curriculums, facilities, or faculties at these schools, we have it all, and the students here are motivated to use these resources to do amazing things.

This issue explores some of these examples of how and where education is advancing to in the future (p48). Just to give you a hint, it is very different than what we grew up with as kids. Along with this, we explored ways that summer camps are creatively stimulating learning to help prevent that undesirable summer slide (p28), and the merits of holistic child development in a rapidly changing world (p36).

We hope you find this issue as fascinating as it was for us creating it. We can say with some certainty that this won’t be the last we will be addressing these topics, because the future is undeniably here today, but will forever also be tomorrow.

Sisi Chen had an enormous influence over the direction of beijingkids throughout her tenure (2011-15), and her impact can still be felt to this day as many of the ideas she initiated echo throughout these pages almost two years after her departure. Covering critical topics like postpartum depression, bullying, same-sex parenthood, and support for LGBTQ students, it was under her guidance that the magazine continued expanding its scope to reflect the diversity of Beijing’s expat community. Now, she’s completing her Master’s Degree at Columbia University, and currently finishing up a summer internship in sunny Yerevan, Armenia with the Social Protection Section at UNICEF. The project is helping professional members of the global Armenia diaspora connect with local NGOs and communities for mentorship, training, and long-term capacity building, which dovetails nicely with her own experience of being part of the Chinese diaspora. Thank you Sisi for doing your part in building up beijingkids, and continuing to make us proud throughout all of your current endeavors.

Photos: Dave’s Studio, Sisi Chen

This article originally appeared on p 5 of beijingkids August 2017 issue.
Download the digital copy here.