Teachers and students in the school maker center jointly study. Photo by Zheng Sanhe
Founded in 1989, Beilun Middle School in Ningbo, Zhejiang Province is a young and energetic ordinary high school. The school has refined the concept of "people-oriented, adaptive development" to meet students’ diverse and personalized learning needs, so that every student can "find what he wants" and "become the best himself".
People-oriented, Create Characteristic Curriculum
Facing the new situation and new requirements, the school has built a high school curriculum system of "infiltrating humanities and cultivating science" on the original basis, and created a number of characteristic core courses with rich characteristics and great potential. The so-called "characteristic curriculum" is not only rooted in the existing conditions of the school, but also based on the internal needs of students, and it must face the future development direction. After careful design, a number of characteristic courses, such as robot education and mathematical modeling, emerged as the times require and became the window of school curriculum reform.
Entering the Robot Maker Center, the competition venue, honor exhibition area, robot building room, robot programming room and other areas are refreshing. Multi-functional subject laboratories can be used for robot course teaching, community activities, competition training and other activities. Since its establishment, Maker Center has been adhering to the concept of "STEAM Education", aiming at improving students’ interest in science, technology, engineering, art and mathematics, and improving students’ teamwork and problem-solving ability by promoting robot education. The school has trained specialized talents by offering "DIY (Do-it-yourself Robot)" elective course, carrying out robot club activities, participating in robot competitions, etc., and many talented students have emerged in mechanical design, program design, operation control, etc., and have achieved excellent results in various competitions at all levels. More importantly, the award-winning students discovered their self-worth through robot education and established their professional ideals.
The school takes innovative laboratories and subject classrooms as carriers to promote the construction of subject-specific courses, and constructs subject-centered characteristic courses that run through compulsory and elective courses, thus forming its own school-running characteristics. VEX (Robot World Championship) robot, programming, mathematical modeling, NS (local storm) street dance and other characteristic courses have been loved and recognized by more and more students from scratch, effectively promoting the development of students’ personal introspection intelligence and interpersonal intelligence.
Establish a school with excellent teachers and build a teaching and research community
In order to promote the development of school teachers, and strive to build a team of high-quality teachers with international vision, domestic leadership, noble ethics and exquisite business, the school has implemented three training projects of "blue", "backbone" and "Excellence" for teachers, and built a teaching and research community based on the trinity of individuals, teams and schools.
The "Blue Project" is aimed at new teachers, and the school strives to give new teachers a "good start", gain a firm foothold and grow rapidly for a period of three years. Concentrate on learning once a week, or invite famous teachers inside and outside the school to present their opinions, or watch the demonstration class of famous teachers collectively, or discuss themselves around the theme. At the same time, each new teacher is equipped with dual tutors for teaching and class management, and the training hours stipulated by the new teachers are implemented, and the tutor responsibility system is implemented; Targeted professional competence plan will be carried out, and professional training and assessment will be organized by discipline teaching and research staff to comprehensively improve teachers’ classroom teaching ability and class management ability.
Relying on the young teachers’ salon, the "backbone" project actively explores the superior resources in the school, integrates the potential strength of the team, conducts activities once a month, and simultaneously implements "please come in" and "go out". The Young Teachers Salon has set up a special secretariat to comprehensively improve the teaching ability of young and middle-aged teachers under the guidance of the Scientific Research Department, cultivate teachers’ sense of identity in education, optimize teaching design, teaching implementation and teaching evaluation, implement differentiated education according to students’ characteristics, and promote the reform of classroom teaching and learning methods by applying information technology.
The "Excellence" project takes the famous teacher’s studio as a platform to enhance the leading role of the school’s famous teacher’s studio and famous teacher’s workplace. According to the working idea of "building a platform, sharing resources, pairing mentoring, integrating teaching and research, basing on the classroom and growing rapidly", focus on curriculum reform and educating people; Expand the educational vision of teachers, help them to concise, summarize and reflect on teaching experience, update teaching concepts and form teaching styles.
On this basis, the school has continuously explored research approaches that are in line with the actual situation of the school and students, built a community of teaching, research and training, actively created brand disciplines at the city and district levels, improved the discipline construction ability, and promoted the discipline construction and teacher development of the school and even the whole region.
Educating people with characteristics and establishing a home-school consortium
The school has continuously deepened the "tutorial system for all students’ growth".
Adhering to the educational philosophy of "caring for every student as much as possible, and making students succeed as much as possible", we strive for a training environment of "all teachers are mentors and all students are cared for" to maximize the overall quality of students. Emphasis is placed on the diversified, developmental and procedural evaluation of students, guiding teachers to actively participate in students’ learning process, and fully stimulating students’ active internal drive and subjective initiative in learning life.
With the development of the times, it has become the consensus of modern education to strengthen the joint efforts of schools, families and society to educate students. The school has established the Parent Development College, actively exploring various forms of family education guidance, and promoting parents to form correct family education concepts and scientific family education methods. Aiming at the content of family education guidance, the school has set up a comprehensive teaching team to undertake the teaching work of the parents’ growth college. Psychological teachers are responsible for the guidance of family parent-child construction, emotional management, self-confidence, personality development and adolescent sex education; The class teacher undertakes the guidance of school life adaptation, academic self-planning and daily relationship handling; Excellent parents’ representatives shall provide guidance on legal knowledge, physical health knowledge, vocational education and future planning. The school actively provides all kinds of learning and training opportunities for teachers, regularly invites excellent family education experts to give lectures, organizes teachers to participate in seminars inside and outside the province, and conducts various forums, salons, online exchanges and other activities in the school to further improve the level of teachers.
The Parents’ Development College carefully designed activities and improved the curriculum system, which was well received by parents. On the basis of offering regular courses, the School of Parent Development has developed a series of required salons entitled "Smart Parents, Youth and Health", covering how to establish a good relationship with children, actively pay attention to children’s needs, and communicate effectively with children. In view of the typical problems encountered in students’ growth, the Parents’ Development College has developed a variety of special salons, such as "Let go of the burden and do whatever you want — — How to help children face the pressure of study ""Goals and planning — — Stimulate children’s inner learning motivation ". All kinds of special salons form a "menu", which parents can choose independently according to their actual needs. The school has been awarded the pilot unit of the national youth health parent training program, the youth health education base of Zhejiang Family Planning Association, and the first-class psychological counseling station of primary and secondary schools in Zhejiang Province. As the position of the school’s family education guidance, the Parents’ Growth College provides an important guarantee for the school’s education and teaching, which better meets the educational needs of parents and creates a better educational ecology for the development of students.
(The author is the principal of Beilun Middle School in Ningbo, Zhejiang Province)
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