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One of our key aims at The British School of Nanjing is to create ‘life-long learners’; to inspire our students to continue learning long after they’ve left our campus. We want an atmosphere where students enjoy learning, taking pride in what they know and what they can do and striving to know more and do better.
One of the key drivers of this is how our teachers role-model being life-long learners themselves. From taking Chinese lessons to joining the touch-rugby group, all our staff demonstrate that passion to know more and do better daily. This passion extends to their teaching, where there is often an animated discussion in the staffroom about the latest research or a sharing of new strategies via email. Alongside this, teachers regularly attend training organised through the school or take part in online courses through Nord Anglia University. This year alone, all staff have taken part in First Aid training, with refreshers on CPR, at Guze Clinic and are completing online courses on everything from cyber security to child protection.
In addition, on Sunday 22nd September we had our first training day for all academic staff in school. This included sessions by visiting teams on how to identify and support students with individual needs, hands-on workshops where staff in our primary and Early Years departments got to play with a range of robots and coding apps, and presentations in handling strong emotions in young children.
Feedback from staff will help us plan our next training day with some sessions receiving very positive responses, with comments from staff about “the (Olivia’s Place) presenters knew what they are talking about... The presenters were able to answer our questions in an informed manner.”, “(the) Practical learning with Robotics (gave) useful ideas for the classroom.” and “(the coding workshop was) well planned and I had lots of fun learning how create animations and code learning games.”
Of course, the best teaching – whether it is with children or adults - takes account of learners’ feedback and alongside these comments we learnt that our staff feel they learn best from practical activities and discussion-based tasks – all of which we will be taking into account when we plan future sessions for our own inspiring “life-long learners”.
Communication and feedback are important cornerstones for how we respond to learners and adapt our future plans. From October, all our day-to-day communication will be via the TChat app. Reports and formal messages will continue to be by email and we encourage face-to-face communication where possible. I am, however, thrilled that, as of Monday 23rd September, we have the families of 392 students ‘signed up’ to the TChat app. With just a small number to go, we are confident we will be able to deliver messages and get vital feedback from all our families soon, ensuring every voice is listened to. If you need more information about TChat, please let me know or call in to school and speak to our front desk who can assist with downloading, installation and registration of the TChat app.