Speech @ International Education Exhibition, April 23rd 2016

INTRO & PERSONAL BACKGROUND

THOUGHTS ON GLOBAL EDUCATION SYSTEMS
IDENTIFYING 3 KEY ELEMENTS OF AMERICAN-STYLE EDUCATION:
a. HOLISTIC EDUCATION
b. 6 PRINCIPLES OF ELL INSTRUCTION
c. LEARNER GOALS
st
21 CENTURY SKILLS AND REAL-WORLD APPLICATIONS
CLOSING THOUGHTS ON OUTCOMES

Good morning, everyoneId first like to share a bit more about my personal background as well as my role in the
NCPA community. I am a school counselor at NCPA, which gives me an understanding of
the student experience through different lenses: academic, social, and emotional. These
past 2 years at NCPA are also my first experiences with living in China; I was born and
raised in the United States. Although speaking English comes much more naturally to me
today, my first language, or mother tongue was briefly Mandarin Chinese. My parents are
from Beijing and Jiangsu, Taizhou and they immigrated to the U.S. in 1985. Much like you,
my parents were willing to sacrifice anything even go out of their comfort zone -- in
order to pursue their hope for more opportunity: a better life for themselves and for their
children. Also like you, my parents themselves experienced Chinese education first-hand,
and wanted a different style for their children.

I say different instead of better, intentionally If we take an honest look at all of the
education systems in the world, we must admit that there is something to be gained and
lessons to be learned from all of them. In the U.S. actually, we often hear our American
teachers, principals, district superintendents, and even government officials making
admiring remarks about Chinese education, about the efficiency of its national standards
and national curriculum, as well as its clear structure that includes marked transitions
from one stage of learning to another. In my own life, I find that the most intelligent and
inspirational people I know have all hailed from the Chinese style: my father, my mother,
and even my grandfather, a retired teacher still living on his farm in Taizhou.

NCPA is a school striving to leverage the strengths of Chinese education, while adopting
the best pedagogies from around the world: pedagogies that have withstood the stringent
tests of research. This kind of mindset, an open-minded, flexible, growth mindset, is
championed in Western countries because we know that this is the only way we can be
engaged as active participants of the 21st century. It is no doubt that all of you are here
today with the hope that your children, too will become active participants, contributors,
and leaders of their generation.

So, having established that there are excellent educational practices around the globe,
whats different about them? With Chinas machine-like efficiency, it is often difficult for
schools to be capable of supporting individual strengths, cultivating a diversity of talents,
and fostering the confidence in students to create. Best practices and research-based
ideas these are the core of why U.S. education strives to be different. Research-based
practices are also at the heart of NCPAs mission and values. Let me explain: Our school
was founded due to the growing demand for alternative education in China. After seeing
so many students and families leave China in the pursuit of alternative education in other
countries, NCPA was created in order to provide a more flexible option, a school
environment that provides the very best of Western academic and cultural exposure right
here in our home country. From the first year of our schools foundation in 2012, we have
been committed to providing an American-style education environment, achieving this
with a focus on research-based elements that include: a holistic education program,
Stanford Universitys 6 Principles of English Language Learning to guide all classroom
instruction, as well as adopting Conleys 4 Standards for Success as our school-wide
learner goals. These three aspects represent the framework of our institution.

As for the first element: What does holistic education look like? The term holistic
education refers to educating the whole person in the broad perspective of our life
experiences in the world; in other words, holistic education seeks to develop students
skills beyond simply the academic ones. Rather, we hope they develop to be individuals
capable of success in the many dynamic settings of their lives. According to the Athens

Institute for Education and Research, this wider range of education can include social,
personal, cognitive, emotional, physical and even ethical skills. As a result of this research
and others in this field, the NCPA counseling department strives to create an environment
of happiness, not stress, in order to foster student success at our school. Research tells us
that children need to feel accepted in their community before they can truly achieve their
potential in academic, physical, and socio-emotional domains. Through the roles of
counselors and other school support personnel, American-style school communities like
NCPA provide opportunities for a childs individual characteristics to be both
acknowledged and valued. Every child also needs recognition. In China, we are accustomed
to the mentality that children must be constantly striving to be better than others; on the
other hand, in Western education, we take time to discover the individual strengths of
each child and support the building of these strengths by constantly encouraging their
development of new skills and talents. We recognize and celebrate accomplishments, no
matter how big or small. We believe in building a community in which everyone
contributes and feels a sense of belonging. This means cultivating cooperation rather than
competition, and compassion rather than thoughtlessness. To explicitly support holistic
education for our students at NCPA, we start each academic day with an advisory block
and close each day with a designated time for after-school activities. Advisory periods and
after-school activities are an essential part of almost every public and private school in
America, since they are seen as a way to build positive and important skills for all students
from K-12. The advisory program at our school looks like this: students start each morning
in small, close-knit groups led by 2 or 3 teacher advisors. During advisory, students have a
designated time to set specific goals and reflect on their learning two essential tasks for
positive academic and personal/social development. Advisory time is important because
we know that preparing students to make appropriate college, career, and life decisions is a
process that does not happen overnight; it takes purposeful planning, preparation, and
self-awareness: all skills that are developed with guidance over time. This mentality,
infused into a program like Advisory, is an example of what holistic education looks like.

The second element of our American-style program is the implementation of Stanford

Universitys 6 Key Principles for instructing English Language Learners, which
specifically supports the language needs of Chinese students learning a Western
curriculum. These principles created from Stanford Universitys Graduate School of
Education guide teachers to focus on SIMULTANEOUSLY building students
understanding of class concepts as well as English language; in this immersion model,
English language is taught as part of all courses, including art, music, and health &
physical education. In the interest of time, I would like to highlight one of the six
principles, my personal favorite, which says: Instruction leverages ELLs home languages,
cultural assets, and prior knowledge. Students home languages and cultures are regarded
as assets and used by the teacher in bridging prior knowledge to new knowledge, and in
making classroom content more meaningful and comprehensible. Have a conversation
about this principle with any one of our teachers at NCPA, and you will likely hear about
one frequently-used classroom strategy: the turn-and-talk. Dont be misled by this name,
which might sound like it encourages students to be off task. Turn-and-talk in action is
quite the opposite: this strategy provides students the opportunity to engage in peer
discussion using their home language in class. You might be wondering: Why encourage
Chinese in an English immersion school setting? Actually, teachers often find that giving
turn-and-talk opportunities provides students access to their prior knowledge.
Encouraging turn-and-talk has led to students drawing more connections between their
prior knowledge and new learning. Our 7th grade Humanities teacher remarked that giving
students these home language opportunities also leads to more participation among all
students in the classroom all of a sudden you see students empowered and confident,
even students who have more difficulty expressing their ideas in English are empowered to
take more risks.

The third and final element is the incorporation of school-wide learner goals, based on
research developed by David Conley, an American leader in educational policy research. To
prepare students for the rigors of university education abroad, every teacher in our school
regardless of content area, weaves these four intellectual standards or Learner Goals into

their instruction. These are: (1) Examining to infer, interpret, and draw conclusions (2)
Supporting arguments with evidence, (3) Resolving conflicting views encountered in
source documents, and (4) Solving complex problems with no obvious answer. You might
be wondering: what exactly does this look like in the classroom? Heres an example of our
learner goal #2 in action, supporting arguments with evidence [BRING EXAMPLE
PORTFOLIO]: This past week during advisory, students were given time to organize their
backpacks, creating a special portfolio of assignments that represent: their best work,
projects that demonstrate their academic growth during the past semester, and works that
showed the importance of process rather than just the product. By late May, these
treasured portfolios will be filled with evidence of their learning, evidence they will
proudly showcase and describe to their parents during our year-end student-led
conferences event. They will use this evidence to support their arguments about their
growth and achievements this year at school.

Finally, at NCPA our goal is to foster students to develop the following personality profile:
to become successful negotiators, collaborators, planners, and achievers. It is only with 21st
century skills such as these, that students can be successful global citizens. In parallel with
American education beliefs, we foster students to be self-aware and develop in a wellrounded fashion, an active participant of their learning through the three foundational
elements I mentioned: holistic education, principles of ELL instruction in the classroom,
and school-wide learner goals for students. In America, we hope students self-awareness
will also lead to the development of intellectual curiosity, or simply asking why. A
question that crosses the minds of every student, from elementary to graduate schoollevel, is: Why do we need to learn this? Or as my own college professor put, "So what?"
In American-style schools around the world, teachers eagerly respond to these questions
by giving students real-world applications for the content they learn. For instance, in
NCPAs middle school STEM classrooms, students apply their knowledge about electric
circuits and the engineering design process in order to design and construct solar-powered
battery chargers. In all grade levels of high school Social Studies, students take their

knowledge of global issues, English writing and speaking, as well as collaboration skills to
apply them at Model United Nations conferences around Asia.

NCPA represents an international education experience that develops the 21st century
skills necessary to be prepared for university life and the global marketplace. Additionally,
NCPA strives to develop our students as well-rounded, positive contributors and members
of the global community at large. Our current school director, Dr. Moore, once said: In
China, the way you judge a persons success is on their knowledge. In America, the way
you judge success is on how good of a person they are. This goodness, to me, refers
to those intangible traits, traits like integrity, intuition, creativity, perseverance,
compassion... More and more, these social and personal qualities are proving to be
essential traits, essential for all who hope to become a positive contributor, member, and
leader of our global society. In America, we consider outcomes to include achievements in
terms of both college and career. As a Western-trained educator at an international school,
I work together with my colleagues with the commitment to help students find their best
fit when it comes to college admissions, as well as their future career and life paths. In
our college counseling program, our focus is on students finding their fit school and
this is only possible when students understand themselves first: their strengths, their
talents, personality traits, and how they respond in the face of adversity and challenges.
Research is increasingly supporting the importance of holistic education, and universities
around the world are seeking students from these types of programs more and more. This
is evident by NCPAs 100% university acceptance rate this year, which means that 100% of
our current seniors were accepted to colleges and universities around the world
including in the U.S., Canada, Australia, and even Switzerland.
Thank you

[After (ap)p(l)ause] Although our program is very busy this morning, I would like to
encourage you to please seek me out if you have any questions. I look forward to our
conversations this afternoon. Thank you again