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Open Days
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As an adult, you enter one of our special Primary Music classrooms. Welcome to Music room P102! A myriad of instruments fill the room: keyboards, rainbow coloured xylophones, a whole host of djembes, a shiny trumpet… even a huge double bass standing guard in the corner.
Imagine you are there by yourself with nowhere to go and nowhere to be (and no phone in hand!). Would you be drawn to any of the instruments? If you knew nobody was watching or listening, would you walk over and explore the sounds? For quite a few of us I would guess that we certainly would. We are a creative community in Shanghai.
Now imagine that you are in the same room with a group of adults ... Would you feel as relaxed about exploring sounds? Possibly not. In other words, would self-consciousness trump sound consciousness?
Part of our vision for Music at BISS is building an environment where the act and experience of Music drives student curiosity and engagement to the point where self-consciousness is not an issue. This leads our students to be focused and passionate explorers of sound.
A recent example was a student in Year 1 who last week proudly told us “I play the piano”. When offered the chance to perform for the class she, without hesitation, walked smilingly to the piano, placed her fingers on the keys and proceeded to explore sounds on the piano in what was clearly a free improvisation. It was very obviously a performance from an as yet untrained pianist, but the beauty and magic of the moment was in the confidence of a child absolutely believing in and expressing her innate musicality and feeling that our BISS Music classroom was absolutely the right and safe place to explore that. This is what I want for all our students. Music is not for the chosen few and the fact that music transcends language is just one of the pointers to this truth.
Many of us have had the experience of reading a book we almost literally can’t put down. But have you ever experienced or played with sound that you “can’t put down”? I am very confident to say that all of the Music staff at BISS have had (and continue to have) that experience. This is part of why our collaboration with Juilliard has so much to offer us. The carefully chosen core works from great composers across a wide range of genres draw our students into deeper engagement with sound and music in that quest to find those sounds we just don’t want to put down.
A musical challenge for interested families this week is twofold:
Around 66 outstanding students from NAE's global family of schools will be selected for an incredible week at MIT in Boston, USA, in November 2025. Last year, our very own Nadav and Noah from Year 10 were honoured as winners from China! They had an unforgettable week filled with groundbreaking workshops, inspiring lectures, and the opportunity to meet peers from around the globe - forming friendships that will last a lifetime!
We’re thrilled to announce that Nord Anglia Education is continuing its partnership with UNICEF for another three years! Since 2017, this unique collaboration has provided incredible opportunities for our students to engage in meaningful social impact initiatives that raise awareness of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), helping foster empathy, social advocacy, and global citizenship in all our classrooms.
On 21 November, Year 12 and Year 13 students from the IBDP Business Management programme went on a trip to the Swire Coca-Cola Factory in Pudong. The visit provided our students with a unique learning opportunity to observe firsthand the operations of one of the world’s leading beverage companies. Guided by the factory representative Mr. Gu Yanbin, the group explored the state-of-the-art production lines, interacted with the industry professionals, and gained an in-depth understanding of how a multinational corporation functions in a local context.
Students from The British International School Shanghai, Puxi, had the thrilling opportunity to visit the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), as part of the school’s collaboration with the famous institution.