Regency Park Campus Newsletter

Nowadays, from a very young age, children spend an extensive amount of time online. There is a vast amount of information at children’s fingertips and almost limitless learning opportunities that were not possible before the internet became so readily available. However, studies show that by the age of eight, on average, children spend 1.5 hours every day in front of screens. Consequently, they are facing unprecedented pressures and wellness challenges. It is, therefore, paramount for families, schools, and communities to work together, recognising the importance of communication between parents and children and helping the youngsters overcome the challenges of life as ‘digital natives.’

At YCIS Shanghai, we are constantly working to address the interplay between technology and wellness, which is even more pertinent in the current circumstances. Recently, the Head of Technology and School Counsellors from both Pudong and Puxi organised a viewing for parents of the internationally acclaimed documentary ‘Screenagers Next Chapter: Uncovering Skills for Stress Resilience’. The film takes a deep dive into how technology interacts with wellbeing and socio-emotional health. Through the voices of experts and young people, the documentary offers strategies and advice for parents to acknowledge their children’s emotions and understand the difference between the technological age their children are growing up in versus their own, different childhoods. This can, in turn, help their children succeed, use technology responsibly, and encourage wellbeing.

Nearly 100 parents and staff attended the event and enthusiastically shared thoughts and ideas after watching the documentary. The parents noted how the event helped them to solidify the importance of children’s mental health. There are times children might isolate themselves emotionally, as they may not possess the knowledge or skills to openly express their feelings, so it is important to maintain open dialogue with young people. The parents recognised the impact the online world can have and the role of communication and empathy in understanding children better.

The importance of emotional awareness and wellbeing has always been at the core of the work we do at YCIS. The viewing was a prompt for more in-depth conversations on how we can work together as a community to mitigate the risks of the online world for children, whilst also continuing to enjoy the benefits digital technology brings. Parent discussion groups have been set up for families to connect and continue these dialogues. Stay tuned for more opportunities to talk about this topic with the school’s experts and other parents! If you are concerned about your child, reach out to the relevant school counsellor through the campus office.

For those parents who missed the school’s special screenings, please click here (https://www.screenagersmovie.com/find-a-screening) to check if Screenagers will be showing near you.

Written by: Sissy Shen, ECE & Primary Vice Principal

On April 21, 2021, YCIS Shanghai, Pudong, and the East China Normal University of Shanghai (ECNU), hosted a special ceremony to formally celebrate and acknowledge an internship partnership between our school and the university. The programme provides an opportunity for ECNU to send training Chinese teachers to YCIS Pudong to work with our school’s experienced Chinese Co-Teachers. As well as providing a potential pathway for the training teachers, our students also benefit from having more adults in the classroom to support them with their learning. The high-quality partnership will further enhance the future of international education in Shanghai.

Mr Damien Hehir, Western Co-Principal and Ms Mary Yu, Chinese Co-Principal, together with Professor Ye, Deputy Dean of ECNU ‘School of International Chinese Studies’ and Ms Anqi, Deputy Dean and Deputy Director of the International Chinese Language Teacher Training Base concluded the ceremony by revealing the commemorative plaque created for this official event.

The School of International Chinese Studies of East China Normal University has a long history of teaching Chinese language and culture, as well as robust scientific research, which emphasises the trinity of Chinese language studies, Chines cultural studies, and international Chinese language education studies, for a stronger development.                                         For more information, please click here.

For more information regarding the ceremony, please click herehttps://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/6myUamX8Po8XBPYFWX41eA

Collaboration is also a distinctive part of the YCIS school philosophy. This partnership is an important step in the cooperation, exchanges, and mutual benefits shared between the two parties. East China Normal University is a prestigious and trustworthy partner. The cooperation between YCIS and East China Normal University has taken place in various forms and started many years ago. In addition to the internship partnership, YCIS and ECNU often exchange their own research and teaching practices, share resources and joint exploration to promote the sustainable development of both parties.

As YCIS educators, we are committed to developing students who are globally competent, with their innate talents nurtured to their fullest potential. So YCIS values each individual teacher’s professional growth. We know that, as key role models in a genuinely effective learning community, educators themselves must be engaged in our own learning in order to instil in students a lifelong love of learning. Professional researchers in Colleges and Universities and front-line educators at school should always maintain positive professional conversations and cooperation, so that we can become more effective educational practitioners to keep up-to-date with current world-wide research in learning and teaching, we are well placed to implement the best educational practices to maximise student learning. By consistently sharing, collaborating, and integrating, we make professional learning an ongoing and reflective process that is built into our school vision, mission and culture.

In addition to ECNU, YCIS Pudong has also built various partnerships with other teachers’ professional development organizations such as:  the Education University of Hong Kong, Shanghai New York University, University of Bath, Association of China And Mongolia International School (ACAMIS), Council of International Schools (CIS), Principals’ Training Center, EARCOS and Innovative Global Education, etc. Meanwhile, we are also constantly integrating community resources to provide students with unique learning experiences, such as external co-curricular activities opportunities, various musical and sports alliances, Year 11 students’ internship project, YCYW connection activities, to name but a few. It is our mission and goal to look for and make good use of all kinds of internal and external resources, to provide a range of opportunities, including personalized learning for students, collaboration for teachers, and professional support for parents, which will benefit all members of our community and ensure a robust and innovative learning community.

Written by:Kyndra Douglass, University Guidance Counsellor

When it comes to university admissions, this year was altogether the most challenging year for applicants around the world. Due to travel restrictions, many students applied to sites unseen and worried that e-learning limited their education and co-curricular opportunities.

Additionally, highly selective universities revealed that many seats in this admission cycle were already spoken for by the previous year’s applicants, as some had a gap year. Yet, our Class of 2021 persisted and earned their places to prized institutions across several countries. While each offer is celebrated, how the students achieved these offers is what is noteworthy. Throughout their studies at YCIS, each of our graduates remained true to their particular endeavors. Within this class you will find 2 Head Prefects, the founder of our Engineering Club, a Disney sound editor, as well as over a dozen athletes. There are human rights activists, a photographer who climbs to death-defying heights for the perfect shot, and the lead singer of her own band.

There is a student who fundraised money for wells in South Sudan, artists who captured the nuances of emotion in their work, and a student who ran the front desk of an international hotel. There is a  cookbook creator, House Captains, budding rappers, environmentalists, and a small business investor filled our classrooms. Led by their passions, each Year 13 student pushed through their challenges which included quarantines and e-learning; For many, the closure was a time for reflection and innovation on how to continue their commitments virtually or strengthen them when we all came back together in person. These distinctive characteristics, titles, and pursuits were what distinguished our students from the others so that they reached extraordinary heights in university admissions. Their resilience and dedication to their interests has resulted in each YCIS applicant having received offers to competitive universities in their chosen fields and locations. Our goal in the University and Careers Counselling Office is to encourage other YCIS students to create their own unique paths in the same fashion as this outstanding graduating class, because that is what will make the difference.

Written by:Amita Patel, Technology Director

We explore Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Math and Making.

We value everything that involves making, exploring, inquiring & creating.

 

We get amazed by simple science like the magic of a snowflake, yet also crave advanced technologies like Artificial Intelligence. We craft beauty from duct tape and program robots to follow complex code. We design machines to study Physics and we make green screen videos. We make prototypes from cardboard and from 3D printers, and sometimes we make things that fail. Then we make improvements and we learn.

We are the STEAMmakers. We are the inquisitive ones. We are the future.

 

In an ever-changing, increasingly complex world it is more important than ever that our students are prepared with the skills & knowledge to solve problems, make sense of information, and know how to gather and evaluate evidence to make decisions. At YCIS we are committed to equiping our students to become successful innovators in a 21st century workforce. We want our students to tinker, hack, explore, create, invent, design, fail & redesign, problem-solve, code, collaborate, brainstorm & innovate. STEAM & Maker education can foster creative thinking and develop innovative practices. Our STEAM offerings over the last few years have been a diverse mix of tremendous learning activities for students, spread diffusely across both Century Park and Regency Park campuses. We have held STEMist day, Hour of code, STEAM Olympics & summer camps, Pi Day carnival activities, Engineering & Robotics clubs, Bamboo bike project, Fiber craft activities, Mathematics competitions, Green roof project and many more such activities which are embedded within our curricular areas.

 

We are now in the exciting phase of developing further ground-breaking learning experiences for our students through well-equipped facilities at Century Park Campus. We are looking forward to adding AR & VR suite to integrate technology with Project Based Learning in the classroom, additional opportunities for 3D Printing, Engineering, Robotics, Coding, Drone building and a variety of tools and equipment to design, build, and create all sorts of different things.

                                            

 

Written by:  Helen Campbell and Lylia Li, K4 Co-Teachers

As a teacher, when a young child comes and asks you a one of a kind question, what do you do? Do you give them the answer and walk away, or do you pretend not to know and say perhaps this is a question we could ask everyone in our class and see if we can find out? This is exactly what happened in our class.

The discussion of whether we can indeed sit on clouds was the springboard for a whole heap of learning in K4. The children found out that although clouds look fluffy that they are made up of water vapour, this opened up the opportunity to look at the water cycle. Questions were asked – Is the rain clean or dirty? and how does pollution get into the sea?

   

The children initially looked at Shanghai. The children were able to talk about the vehicles on the road and the factories around the city that made the air dirty, they knew that the polluted air would be absorbed by the clouds and fall as dirty (polluted) rain into the oceans or on the land. This led to an activity about how rubbish and dirty water can pollute the oceans. The K4 teachers made an ocean in a box with beautiful clean water and lots of sea creatures, the box was then polluted with plastic bottles, straws, polystyrene, lentils (as dirt) some things floated and some sank. The children were asked two questions – How does pollution and rubbish get into our oceans? Who pollutes our oceans? Asking these types of thought-provoking questions to young children challenges them to look at the wider world. A key response from these questions really opened their eyes to a global problem. “It’s us, humans, we pollute our oceans,” said one of the children with a look of sadness on his face.

     

This K4 class went on to experiment with water filtration kits so they could see how water is cleaned before being put back into the ocean. As a class they have pledged not use single use water bottles anymore, and have stopped using plastic straws in drinks as so many of them end up in the sea causing harm to animals both big and small. This K4 class looked at the Sustainable Global Goals of 6, 11,12 and 14.

• Display in K4 Classroom showing the learning from the original question.
• The big questions posed to K4.
• Finding out how clouds are like sponges when they get heavy with water it then rains. Shaving foam clouds and coloured rain water.
• Making our mini water cycles.
• Child-initiated diagrams using the display to help label their work.
• Just how do you clean a polluted ocean?
• How do you clean water? Experiments with water filtration kits.
• Child initiated diagram of the water cleaning experiment.
• Using prisms to find out about rainbows and how they are made.
• Planning an emergent curriculum.
• K4’s Water Cleaning Experiments and their pledge to help save pollution ending up in our oceans.

The global annual Earth Day takes place on the 22nd of April as part of Earth Week, where people from all around the world collectively celebrate our planet, fostering an appreciation of the Earth’s environment and awareness of the issues that threaten it. These were the same focuses of our Earth Week here at Century Park Campus and the Student Council and the Eco Committee arranged a number of activities to promote the protection of our environment.

To address the serious environmental issue of single-use plastic polluting our oceans, activities this Earth week aimed to encourage other more innovative ways to reduce our plastic consumption, such as by up-cycling or giving our used plastic bottles a new purpose. Instead of throwing away single-use plastic bottles, students learned how to create a self-watering pot using their plastic bottles and planting magical beans that grew to reveal hidden messages.

In a more long-term initiative that started with Earth Week, every homeroom received seeds for their own homeroom plants that students needed to take care of together as a class. Each homeroom was able to grow a different type of plant, which was decided in a lucky draw. All of this took place in homeroom and was a fun activity to encourage responsibility and collaboration beyond Earth Week.

Finally, to finish a successful Earth Week, students participated in an Earth-themed free dress day, wearing either the colours green or blue, or clothes and costumes representing the Earth or environment in some way.

Written by:Alexandra Saw, Hayley Chu and Oufan Li,Y13 students

The International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme is a two-year programme where Year 12 to 13 students take assessments in six subjects, along with core requirements that include the Creativity, Activity and Service (CAS) component, various project-based assessments (like the Extended Essay) and a Theory of Knowledge (TOK) course. Being a rigorous curriculum, students have all learned a lot from doing the programme. Here are three current Year 13 students sharing what they have learned from the IBDP.

“The IB’s CAS Programme truly enabled me to explore my interests outside of school such as community service work. It taught me the importance of living a balanced lifestyle while encouraging me to enact positive change in our world. It showed me that simply thinking about making change is not enough; our intentions must be supplemented with action. Since, I have engaged in numerous community service projects that have helped me engage with issues important to me. Thus, my experiences with the CAS Programme have allowed me to see our world through fresh, innovative lenses and left me with invaluable memories I will always hold dear.” — Alexandra Saw (13B)

“As you would expect with any education curriculum, us IB students spend the bulk of our time studying content in class. As exhilarating as that sounds, my biggest take-away from the IB was learning how to apply this content to my own interests, with the programme’s various project-based assessments. Whether conducting a literary investigation of hip-hop lyricism, writing a business report about the podcast industry, or compiling a statistical analysis of basketball performance, the IB has provided me with vast opportunities to make use of the knowledge I gained in class while diving into topics I’m genuinely curious about. After all, what good is gaining knowledge if you don’t learn how to use it?”— Oufan Li (13B)

“One particularly memorable moment from TOK was after a class at the beginning of Year 12, Mr. Tomochko asked me how I was finding the course. I said that it was quite confusing with all the new terms we were recently introduced to, such as Areas of Knowledge, Ways of Knowing, justified true belief (the TOK definition of “knowledge”), etc. He said it was completely normal to be confused, and that “if your brain isn’t hurting, you’re probably not doing it right.” After almost two years of chronic cerebral pain, I’m grateful that TOK has allowed me to develop my critical thinking skills and made me a more questioning learner, from examining the nature of knowledge to the reliability of statistics about whether doing a superman pose actually makes you more confident.”— Hayley Chu (13B)

As we approach the end of the IB Diploma Programme, we can’t help but reflect on all that we have learned throughout these two years. In addition to the rich content pertaining to our six academic subjects, the IBDP has left us with important skills and experiences that transcend academic fields, the impact of which will likely last long after we have received our diplomas.

Written by:  Roseline Yang, Parent Relations Officer

We often underestimate the power of our thoughts and we may not realize the importance of our intention and how this can influence our actions and the interaction we have with others. Being aware of our thoughts and using the right words to express them to share our dreams and hopes is an essential element to put the right setting for a successful result.

This article aims at sharing with you how members of our school community came together to organize this first-time Global Community Week and reached a common goal by following the principle: “Share, Support, Succeed”.

Share your ideas, hopes and dreams – but also your concerns, doubts and fears

By sharing with others what we think and who we are, we open ourselves to our authentic and vulnerable selves, but we are also allowing others to understand what we need, our limitations, our thinking process and our intention.

When you are able to share your thoughts and express your needs, people are able to be inspired and to think and see if they can or want to help and support you.

This is how our Global Community Week started.

A faculty member and parent volunteer shared their concerns and doubts about how our annual international event would look like this year due to the pandemic situation. Since this event had always been parent-driven, in a meeting with POP Core committee members, we came up with a first concept of an inspiring quote: “Be the candle in the darknessinstead of a star in the sky” with a topic based on the school motto “Love and Charity Around the World” in honour of our school founder Madam Tsang Chor-Hang who was 16 years old when she decided to create a school to ensure that children could have an education during a time of political conflicts. The idea was to explore other charity organizations in Shanghai and around the world and allow students to reflect and identify the qualities of people who are able to inspire others to do good actions that endure in the long run. The final theme was then confirmed after our first Global Community Workshop with parent volunteers: “Take Action to Care”.

Support and Success work closely together, because you need a team of people who are willing to support you and can contribute thanks to their knowledge, skills or network.

 

Thanks to our Artist-in-Residence and her helpers, we had a beautiful installation prepared for the Love & Care activity in each campus and we managed to collect videos from different members of our school community for the Servant Leadership activity together with the “did you know” posters from parents and teachers to inspire students with their “take action to care” story poster competition. From the parent volunteer side, we had a team leader and a designer to work on the 17 Sustainable Development Goals Banners based on the contribution from a group of parents, teachers and students. We also had a parent volunteer coordinating with parents welcoming students every morning for each continent based on the country food prepared by our food service provider Chartwells.

To succeed, you need teamwork but also the tenacity to persevere until the end.

Success or failure can be visible when the project is being carried out. Support was essential at that moment and it was provided because of an existing network of people. In the last part of the project, parents and also colleagues reached out to offer their support for whatever was needed. At YCIS, members of the community are strongly connected with one another and they are able to identify when a member needs help because they care for each other and they know that teamwork is a key for success. This is how, this first-time organized event was able to be such a successful week, allowing participants to enjoy a diverse, rich and fruitful week of learning. Our Global Community Week even ended with an externally organized charity organization where more than 200 members of our school community joined to take action to care for “More Than Aware” and raise awareness for SDG #3 “Health & Wellbeing”.

As Chinese people like to say: “有缘分“ – It was meant to be. There’s no coincidence in the fact that our lives have converged in into this place and at this point of time.

What was the probability that our international event Global Community Day would become a Global Community Week ending with an event where we could actually “Take Action to Care” by supporting a charity organization that was celebrating their 10^thyear anniversary.

As kindred spirits, we have chosen YCIS as a school or organization of which philosophy is aligned with our values and the ones we want to share with the younger generations.

Did you know that the tagline “Share, Support, Succeed” comes from the Parent Organization of Pudong (POP) and that at YCIS, we have hidden talented people because these people are actually humble and usually already have the qualities of servant leaders?

If you would like to review the content of the Global Community Week, please visit our blog: http://blogs.pd.ycis-sh.com/gcd/(password: pudong21)

If you want to be part of the story and take action to care, please join POP to share your wishes, support with your knowledge & skills and succeed in helping make our world a better place! (contact: poppd@sh.ycef.com)

 

Written by: Melissa Shaw,Primary Coordinator

As the Lower Secondary Coordinator, you play an important role in supporting our students in their transition from Primary to Secondary School. What do you find most rewarding about this?

Transitions are challenging, but it is often through navigating these challenges that we grow the most. Beyond students’ initial excitement at the novelty and newfound independence of Secondary, what I like most is seeing students try new things, learning to fail well in a relatively safe environment, and starting to slowly figure out who they really are and what they are passionate about. That is when you see them get excited about learning—not because their parents expect it or because they want to get a good grade—but for themselves.

For parents with children entering secondary school, and also as a parent yourself with a child who will soon be in secondary, what would you like our primary parents to know? 

Secondary is an important part of your child’s overall learning journey, but every student has their own path and there is not one perfect path for success. We work really hard to ensure our students are comfortable in our Secondary learning community, developing positive relationships with peers and with teachers, giving them the confidence to take advantage of the many opportunities available to them, often pushing them that extra bit that makes a big difference. But in order to truly learn, students must have opportunities to make mistakes and fail from time to time. It is important to remind our children and ourselves that none of us are defined by a single failure or a solitary success.

The best part of my job is literally seeing children transform before my eyes into these amazing human beings over the course of a few years. But that is hard to see when, as a parent, you’re in the daily struggle to get your child to do homework, tidy up their room, or practice piano…#itgetsbetter!

You teach Spanish as a language course that is offered in Lower Secondary! What other areas are you passionate about?

I absolutely love languages and thoroughly enjoy teaching Spanish—learning languages opens up a whole new world of ideas, literature, music, food, people and more. However, I studied History and Latin American Studies as an undergraduate at Dartmouth and later pursuing my MA at Georgetown. Throughout my career as an educator, I have loved teaching History and Comparative Politics from Lower Secondary to IGCSE to IB and AP. Coaching Model United Nations allows me to tap into this passion for history and politics with our students at YCIS as they creatively craft and debate policy solutions for complex global issues.

The recently-launched YCIS Parent Ambassador Programme has been a school-wide initiative which you have been involved in establishing, alongside the Pudong21 Parent Engagement Committee. Can you tell us more about this?

Parents are such an important part of our broader YCIS Pudong learning community. Parent Ambassadors are committed to representing our school’s values and mission; by connecting, influencing, and building partnerships within the YCIS Community and the broader community in Shanghai. Our YCIS Parent Ambassadors hope to leverage the vast knowledge, creativity, ideas, connections, and resources of our YCIS parent community to enhance the learning opportunities available for our students.

  

It seems that the entire family loves the ARTS with your daughter, Chiara, loving stage theatre and singing, mum being one of the lead singers in the school staff band and dad, Nick Adgemis, our Performing Arts Director is a keen musician! What is that like at home?

Well, it doesn’t mean we just burst into a choreographed musical theatre song number at any given moment…although, I can’t help but think that would be really fun and must admit this happens periodically inside my brain. What it does mean is that we might not be the best neighbors! We have a lot of musical instruments and sound equipment at home, so often there is jazz, rock, or Chiara’s latest favorite pop songs playing or someone is practicing an instrument.

Some people may not know that you LOVE all things Zumba!! Are there any other hidden skills or talents that we don’t know about?

I do love Zumba. Dancing—especially to Latin music—makes me happy!  I’m also a politics junkie and love to write, speak, and engage with people about political issues around the world. In my 20s, I worked on various political campaigns. I also love to cook, bake, eat, and share good food with others. I blame my mother—that’s how we show we care.

If I were to ask someone to share three words that would describe you, what would you hope they would say?

Globally-minded, passionate, fun.

Written by: Andrea Griego, Character Education/ Life Skills Coordinator

Ethan Jin in Year 1A has been having the time of his life preparing for a big show. Aside from doing his best in class and on the playground during school hours, Ethan is also doing his best to prepare for the show Moana, a Disney musical that will be performed at the Oriental Theatre just down the street from Regency Park Campus.

Ethan says,” I will perform three songs and have already learned two. I’m still learning the last song called We Know the Way.” Ethan says this is his third musical and that he loves acting and singing. He exclaimed that he even has to wear makeup for the big shows.

Ethan has a great time acting and believes it is so great because his drama and singing teachers are funny. He says he never gets tired during rehearsals because he enjoys himself thoroughly. Although Ethan plans to be a scientist when he grows up, he believes he will continue with drama for many years to come.

We wish Ethan luck in his upcoming performance and hope to see his skills, in the years to come, in the Drama and Musical experiences here at YCIS.