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.