On May 12, 2018, Beijing Kaiwen Academy (KWA) held a school-wide parents’ meeting to allow teachers and parents to fully discuss students’ learning and living situation at KWA during the first half of the 2nd semester. The meeting was also to prepare for the school’s future teaching work and family-school communication.
To let parents have a better and more comprehensive understanding of the students’ performance at school, KWA made scientific arrangements for the parents’ meetings of its primary and secondary school divisions. At the teach-in of the primary school division, Michael Shimshak, head of the division, emphasized that “KWA has followed its holistic educational philosophy in training its students. Whether in terms of curriculum content design or arrangement of practical activities, we have integrated teaching content of humanistic feelings to develop students’ EQ and IQ and gradually train them to become citizens with a sense of social responsibility.” Afterwards, at the class-specific parents’ meeting, parents learned about students’ daily performance and the school’s subject content arrangements through consultations with the Chinese and foreign class advisers.
The parents’ meeting of the secondary school division was held based on specific subject, grade, and administrative class. The teachers of various subjects introduced the subject content, featured teaching methods, teaching concepts, continuity of curriculum content for different grades, and the student performance evaluation standards. They also shared some classroom and practical activity photos. Richard Vong, who teaches sixth graders English Language Arts (ELA), exchanged highly practical English learning methods with the parents. For example, students can describe leading characters of an English movie to practice what they have learned in English classes. The parents all said that they recognize KWA’s family-school interaction educational model, and that the diversified family-school communication channels can help them understand the children’s growth more comprehensively.
At a special briefing arranged especially for parents of fourth graders, KWA Academic Principal Wang Shi explained in detail about how a student can transform smoothly from the primary school stage to the junior high school stage. He also shared the school’s future development direction and answered parents’ questions.
KWA has always believed that education through family-school interaction is one of the key links to help students grow in an all-around way. Family education is the basis and supplement of school education. A good parent-school communication and exchange mechanism must be established to truly realize the important role of family-school education. To this end, KWA is stepping up its preparations to establish a parents’ committee. The school will also organize more family-school exchange activities to help students grow healthily and happily.