3 countries in one week

Tangshan No 1 Middle School, Hebei Province, China

This week I am travelling in Asia with a group of international marketing directors and school principals from Auckland inner city schools.The first school we visited this week was Tangshang No 1 Middle School. which is a highly prestigious public in Hebei province, China. It was established in 1902 by the Yong Ping Government (Tangshan Government) during the Qing Dynasty, known as the Yong Ping Zhongli High School.  This school has a strong international focus and is very innovative. While the Youtube clip is about their Canadian Teacher recruiting programme it does demonstrate the schools modern approach to curriculum and their outstanding facilities. They really do have a push for their students and staff to have partnerships with schools in other countries all over the world. This encourages dialogue and sharing of ideas about teaching and learning and promotes an understanding of different cultures through exchange.


Dr Liu Changsue spent time with us on the visit and explained his thinking and recent school innovations. 
These innovations  include an indoor zoo. This is a display of many creatures from all over the world and Dr Liu is hoping to extend this exhibition in the near future.They also have created a hill out of trash. This has been landscaped and planted with over 1000 varieties of trees including fruit trees. 


The school has established relationships with many schools and universities overseas and continues to build new relationships to support their future focused curriculum which has a strong focus on globalization and research. While we visited they signed a Memorandum of Agreement with St Mary's College in Auckland. St Mary's College is a neighbouring school to Freemans Bay and we collaborate over marketing strategies for international students. We hope to see some students from Tanshan No 1 school in Auckland in the near future.

Ørestad Skole, Copenhagen This school was built in 2010.  The school is located in an entirely new area  of  Copenhagen called Ørestad.    Currently the student intake is  5-9 year olds and  is planning to take older students in  the near future.  They are one of the Copenhagen’s specialist schools – the school  vision is to deliver a curriculum that is  virtual and aesthetic. There is a local library next door as part of the premises. Orestad Gymnasium is also  next door. I was impressed  with  the variety of specialist spaces such as art, music,  science, robotics and making models.

   I was interested to find out that  Denmark schools  basically work  in two shifts - the more 

   academic subjects are taken in the morning and in the afternoon they are taught by 

   professionals  I called the "happy life teachers". 

   This is where the programme becomes truly personalised with students choosing from a 

   range of learning  activities including art, dance, robotics, outdoor building and cooking - 

   basically following their interest and passions.

   However this 'free play way" is about to change following resolution of a major dispute 

   between the local authorities and the teachers union. Teachers were locked out for 4

   weeks!     I hope that the strong focus on personalising learning, innovation and creativity 

   will continue as I found the students engaged, motivated and very passionate about

   their learning.

  

Visits in Scandinavia Schools via Lene Jensby Lange

The visits in Scandinavia were arranged by Lene Jensby Lange. Lene is founder of Autens which is an educational consultancy that works with schools, local authorities, charities, architects and others to innovate learning spaces dedicated to personalising learning. www.autens.dk   

Lene and her family hosted us in Copenhagen - we had a great time sharing philoophies about curriculum and school design.

Lene took us on a tour of schools that she has been involved with in design. The next few posts are a synopsis of the schools visited in Copenhagen and Stockholm.

Utterslev Skole is a  new school with a focus on nature and science. Their curriculum encourages  project based learning to encourage creativity, curiousity and innovation. The school has regular classroom spaces – whole class teaching with some break out spaces. The curriculum is subject centric – teachers are subject teachers and have their own classroom spaces with breakout spaces that can be used for independent learning.  Creative and personalised teaching based on student choice happens when the students are  with the pedagogs. Their primary department has an integrated after school club – run by pedagogs. Pedagogs are trained to teach creatively with a holistic whole child approach. The science facilites at Utterslev Skole were very impressive. It is an honour for students to be selected to look after the range of animals in the science laboritries.