BWYA Newsletter
December 2019
Committees:
Long Term Goals for Sustainable Development – Headmistress
Curriculum Committee – Amira Sadud
PD Committee – Leila Li
Data Committee – Richard Ambler
Safeguarding Committee – Aaron Wise
SLO Committee – Ralf Mayenberger
Long Term Goals for Sustainable Development
Development has taken place in terms of the long term goals we specified to the WASC visiting team, namely:
To procure a stable campus for K-12
Although we are not yet ready to disclose full information at this time, we are very happy with the construction and development of a new school campus. We are looking forward to a teaching and learning environment with modern facilities and an environment even more conducive to teaching, learning and wellbeing.
To finalise the Board of Trustees Policy Bylaw
We have made progress in revising the Board of Trustees Policy Bylaw and defining the roles of the members of the board. There are a few issues to address before we are in a position to publish the finalised Board of Trustees Policy Bylaw to the broader school community.
PD Committee
One of the requirements the WASC visiting team identified was for us to set up a procedure to identify special needs groups within our student body. To feel out this task, we ran a survey past HODs and HOGs to get feedback on what teachers feel predominant student needs are. Although we have some qualitative feedback at this stage, it has proven difficult to come up with a procedure for identifying special needs groups, and we feel we, the PD committee, need to rethink which committees are in a position to contribute to this project.
Another requirement was for us to develop a three-year PD plan in order to ensure our PD sessions are coherent and supportive of school development as opposed to disparate, incomplete experiences. We have so far mainly considered special needs of students but feel we need to get input from the curriculum committee and other committees in order to get a more complete picture of our school’s PD needs. We are currently considering the best means to incorporate this feedback.
Safeguarding Committee
The Safeguarding Committee has already met several times this year and have been ensuring that all of the WASC action points for this year will be completed in a timely manner. A big thank you to the committee members; Robert Wang, Dyson Dong, Lu Li Hua, Nadine Cooper and Aaron Wise for their tireless work as members of the committee. These members will now be joined by Helen Leung to continue their work over the remainder of the school year.
Specifically, the following has been achieved by the committee this year in order to achieve the WASC Action Plan:
- The safeguarding committee are meeting regularly to discuss safeguarding issues and to develop appropriate policies.
- Following BWYA safeguarding policies and practices has been made a criterion for all staffs’ performance appraisals.
- A schedule for ongoing safeguarding training for all staff has been created and was initiated during the recent November PD days.
- Training for students on relevant safeguarding issues was completed and parents were made aware of school safeguarding issues through each campus’ coffee mornings.
- A schedule for ongoing regular maintenance of each campus’ building and facilities is being created.
- Options for a whole school student information system are being explored to ensure that we get the most suitable system which will be put in place from the start of the 2020-2021 school year.
- Separate student and staff bathrooms are now in place at the LPC and UPC.
- The secondary school have reviewed how students arrive at school each day and how the wearing of the school uniform can be used to increase safety at the front gate.
- A student supervision policy has been written and put in place at the primary school.
- A policy for the verification of all people who enter the primary school has been written and put in place.
With all of the above already in place, the safeguarding committee have already completed 5 of the 7 tasks which have been assigned to it for this year. We are confident that the remaining 2 tasks will be completed before July, 2020.
SLO Committee
At the LPC, we have started a Learning Reflection that the students fill out every day. They give themselves smiley faces, straight faces, or sad faces depending on how they think they have done showing the SLO that day. On top of that, we have mini lessons about the SLO’s every day, too. Chantal has written a short unit plan where we introduce the current SLO and then do short activities or have quick discussions about them during our reflection time at the end of each day.
At the middle school, we reworded the reflections sheet to fit with the SLOs in order to gain qualitative data on the students’ progress.
At the high school, we worked the SLOs into the SA and CAS question tab and have students reflect on their activities, projects and experiences in regards to the SLOs. The students identify the SLO or SLOs they connect to their activity, project or experience and justify their choice. Once again, this is mostly qualitative data.
MYP/DP: furthermore, we have discussed bringing the SLOs more front and center through the inquiry questions for the individual units. This way, we can ensure that the students have the SLOs in mind when starting and working on their units.
We also discussed a rewording of the SLOs based on level-appropriate language to ensure every student can connect with the SLOs and grow with them.
Curriculum Committee
The Curriculum Committee is working towards developing a unified curriculum program and review process from primary to secondary, to ensure successful transitions between division and to ensure a coherent program throughout the school. The members of this committee are Jane Xia, Robert Wang, Richard Ambler, Lindsey Devillier, Betsy Greenway, Aaron Wise, Andrew Abbey, Arthur Zhang, and Amira Sadud.
As part of the WASC Action Plan, the existing schoolwide curricula continues to be mapped out and assessed to ensure continuity across the different programmes. The Committee has decided on school-wide standards which were already shared with the staff. The secondary school participated in two workshops during the November professional development days to incorporate the standards into their units in a meaningful way. A big thank you to all teachers who actively participated and have already started working with their standards on ManageBac.
The Curriculum Committee has also formed a Health and Wellness Education Committee. Special thanks to its members Byron Kennedy, Robert Wang, Veronica Ho, Cecilia Peyer, Nadine Cooper, Nabil Zafati, Vickey Zhu, Ralf Mayenberger, and Joyce Zhao, who meet regularly and are currently exploring possible K-12 Health and Wellness Education Curricula for BWYA.
Throughout the rest of the school year, the Curriculum Committee will continue to work on improving and developing the diverse curricula as well as developing a whole curriculum review policy and cycle. We thank all the teachers for their hard work and flexibility in this process.
Data Committee
Although the WASC visiting team was impressed with some of our applications of school data to support students and staff, they felt we did not have enough structure. Specifically, explicit timelines, statements of purpose and systems of evaluation were not in place. Our main task for this semester, then, has been to establish a formal timeline for – and descriptions of – data related projects across the school.
So far we have identified the following projects to be undertaken each year (all of which have been carried out less formally in the past):
Project:
Time:
Led by:
MYP Criteria Data Analysis
A summary of achievement levels across the MYP criteria, by subject and spanning two to three years.
June; November; March
MYP Coordinator
DP Exam Results Reflection Session
A set of analyses and sessions informing DP teachers reflections on the performance of our most recent cohort in the official IBDP exams and identifying potential areas of strength and weaknesses in programme implementation.
July; August
DP Coordinator
Pre-DP Reflection Session
A personal, data-informed session for grade 10 students as they prepare to transition to the DP, during which they reflect on their academic performance so far, and set goals and expectations with regards to DP subject selection, performance and university application.
June
DP Coordinator
For each of these projects we have a detailed description of purpose, data required, analyses to be performed, key beneficiaries and stakeholders, and means of obtaining feedback.
By the end of the semester we hope to be able to illustrate these projects in a timeline similar to that below, and to start actually carrying out the projects.
(Click on image to expand)