Inside China's Newest School Network

Do you collaborate with other schools around your country? Today's episode is going to be a little bit different to the usual interviews I do, but I think it really shows the power of a community. Hey everyone, I'm Shane Leaning. Welcome to Global Ed Leaders, the chat-topping leadership podcast for international schools.

I'm an organizational coach and in this show I get to know the teachers, leaders and innovators, making a difference in education across the world. Before we jump into the conversation today, I'm delighted that this episode is supported by the International Curriculum Association. Stay tuned to learn more. Alright, so I told you this is going to be something a bit different today, and it really is. A few weeks ago

I was invited to a conference, a conference for an organization called NSIC. They are a brand new organization in China. It stands for Network for Enriching Students and Schools in China. So this is an organization that has been set up, a not-for-profit, just for serving internationalized private schools in China.

They invited me along and I thought what a great opportunity to get to know what's so great about bringing people together in this kind of way. What can some sort of community like this provide outside of your school walls? So it's a little bit different today. I've not just got one interview. At the conference, I went around.

I was fortunate enough to present there as well and be on a panel, but I went around with my microphone and I asked people what they were wanting to get out of such a community. So what follows is a compilation of their voices and what people who attend these kind of conferences get out of them. And just so you know, this was their inaugural leadership conference. So this was mainly school leaders who were attending.

So I'm going to shut up now and let's jump straight in. And we're going to start with a theme that came up, which was opportunity. Here's a few ideas from the floor, starting with Abu, athletic director at Daystar Academy, Beijing. I think it's a good opportunity to bring like a staff like us to meet new people, to learn from other schools. And this is a good opportunity to bring all the students around

because after Covid, the students just stay in the school and they don't have any opportunity to play. And now this is opportunity to not even play in their region. They just come national and play with other schools around China and make friends and get this rich experience. Now here's Daniel Williams, same school, but he's also the president of NSIC.

And he's got big ambitions for this organization. The idea was born out of just an idea of connection. So I've been in China since 2010 and I've really felt that the private schools, internationally oriented private schools, the voice and the issues that we were going through, were just not being represented in the current conferences that were available or peer networks. So it's wonderful to have actually got together with like-minded schools to potentially put something on that could grow into something much better.

So it means a lot to me, obviously. Yeah, I think it actually has the potential of being one of the largest networks in the world of its type with connecting schools. But more importantly, I do feel like it has the potential to become a real bastion of innovation and progressive teaching because its locality within China and also the outwardly facing curriculum that a lot of these schools have to really look about the East and the West together. But an extremely important inflection point in both geopolitical history and also technological development.

So I really feel like our job would be to build bridges between those two cocoons. But we think there's so much opportunity there, but not just for staff, but for students. So it's making sure that within China, within these networks, that the students themselves are enriched in a way that we don't really know right now how it's going to look. So the exciting thing about it is this network is really for schools, by schools.

So we're open-minded about how that goes. So I have my ideas as president, but that's not important. We are here to serve our community and reflect their goals and their interests and the students' aspirations and staff aspirations. That was Daniel.

Now on to Greg Smith. Greg feels diversity is right at the heart of communities like this. The event is a fantastic celebration of education. It's the diversity here that really makes the big difference, I think, is that many of the other associations have got a much more common group of people that they bring together.

But the cross-cultural competence, the different outlooks and perspectives. So it's really the diversity that makes this a special place. Enrichment is part of the title, and so it's the diversity that enriches all of us. And I think we've all seen the dangers of being in an echo chamber and hearing the same thing reinforced.

What we've got here is those different perspectives, a challenge that illuminates, that help to educate. It's really what great communities are all about, I think. Now, I spent a lot of time at this conference, speaking to one person in particular, that was Catherine from Yingya St Peter's, just down the road from the conference in Haiku. Here's Catherine.

It's bringing like minds together and unlike minds together to really spark curiosity and spark interest, challenging us to challenge our own thinking. Often as a head of school, you're expected to know what to do, when to do it, how long to do it for, and it's just meeting other people and being able to challenge, oh, you know what, I could do that in a different way. And sometimes it's out of necessity because it's a day-to-day, you've got to deal with certain challenges and you're pulling on your own experience. And it's learning that to take the experience of others as well.

So when you come back from conferences like this, you realize, you know what, ask your staff a lot more about what's going on, listen to them about what they want. And then together, it just helps that teamwork. You're on your day-to-day treadmill. You step out for a little bit and then you can go back and just implement some great ideas, but be careful, don't go to these places and go, oh, I've got to go back and implement this and this and this and this and this.

Do you need to implement? So one thing that I've learned and I will do for the next conference that I go on is I will go with my own perceived challenges to look for solutions rather than just listening and then thinking I've got a solution or a problem that I need to go back and solve. The next person you hear is Eun-Yung Park. She's the middle school principal from Beanstalk International Bilingual School in Beijing, and then also Grace Gong from Daystar.

Both of them are in Beijing and both are discussing some of their takeaways. My role is a middle school principal of the campus. So I want to see the overall framework, the structure of how other schools and teachers communicate with their staffs, because as part of a leadership team and my first year as being part of a senior leadership team, I thought it will be a very beneficial and effective experience for me to join part of the team and see what other schools, their environment, the faculty members, and how they communicate, how they respond to situations. So I'm here to learn from various perspectives and I'm enjoying it a lot.

The reason why I joined this conference, first I want to say I want to know more friends and especially to expand my network. The second reason is I always attended some Chinese leadership conference. I want to see the difference, like the lots of Western leaders and this kind of conference was the difference and from the Chinese leadership conference. And from my personal point of view in the future, maybe our school could run some similar opportunity, but I want to learn from different kinds of conferences and I really think I was inspired by this conference, especially the keynote speakers, like this is, I never thought that the keynote speaker, for example, mine is an Olympic game, sports, like this kind of person.

Another is like keynote speaker from Microsoft company, because from my personal point of view, what they are working now directly related to leadership. Yeah. So, but the, what their workshop really is bears also related to our work. So I think this really led me not a limit in my all, like understanding what the workshop should be, what the conference should be.

So I think this is what I take away from the conference. I really, really enjoyed this conference because I had so many people's which had the contact. Yeah. So I really thinking about in the future, we could contact each other and work together.

My name's Ollie Wells. I'm the headmaster at Harahiko and we're the host school for the Vesic conference. And for us, it's been tremendous because we're on an island, slightly isolated from the wider China schools networks. And so opportunities for our students to take part in sport, for our teachers to be involved in these PD workshops has been fantastic.

And so for us, this is tremendous, one to be a founding member, but also to have the opportunity to host. And of course, the speakers we've had, Louisa from Microsoft, Marlon talking about all his experiences have been really meaningful. And I know lots of people are taking things away that will probably change the way they work in the short term and change their careers in the longer term. And that's what these events are all about.

And so I'm tremendously pleased to have been involved. Next, you're going to hear from Ross Cheatham. He's from SCIE in Shenzhen and Ross hits on something I certainly feel. That the power of these kinds of conferences is the actual getting to meet face to face with other educators.

And then you'll hear from Simon Atwood. He expands on this a little bit more. Why I wanted to come and why I was keen was to interact with others and meet other schools and actually see them for myself and talk to them rather than just seeing on a piece of paper or on an email of who's involved in other organizations that we're involved in. And so far, so good.

It's lovely to have those conversations with people from different schools and interact. The sessions have been very thought provoking for me and it's some great discussions, great size. So we spoke at lunch about the size of the presentations and, and allowing people to have those discussions rather than just sit there listening. As I said earlier, you can be lonely at school.

You normally have one or two people that you'll go to at your school to talk about and discuss an idea or an issue that you want to resolve, but actually coming here and meeting someone new that doesn't know anything about your background or about your colleagues, it's quite nice to get their opinion and get their thoughts on it for sure. Useful is the first word that comes to mind. The sessions on AI have been useful and the sessions on leadership and change have also been very useful and very practical and really good range of viewpoints because there are both Chinese and international principals here. So you really get a good holistic view of what's going on in schools so that the style of the conference has definitely been more, for me, more engaging for everybody at all levels.

We definitely want to be a part of NSIC and that's just a matter of time because I think it's a great network and regardless of kind of what curriculum you're doing and that kind of thing, just to be able to reach out to lots of other bilingual schools is a great asset that I really want to grab hold of. This episode is supported by the International Curriculum Association. The ICA have been around for about 30 years now, championing quality, unlocking potential and improving learning in international schools. And what I really love is that right at their core is the model for improving learning.

This is a model focused on the learning experience and they have tons of great curriculum materials, PD resources, and even an accreditation pathway for schools just like yours. If you're interested, head over to internationalcurriculum.com. The next speaker, Adam McCroy, he's a headmaster at Coghdell Cranley School in Changsha.

He's a long time listener of the podcast too, and he sums up one of the core feelings really well. He's then followed by another, another Adam, actually, Adam Newfield from Shanghai United International School, Qingpu. So let's jump into Adam McCroy. I can sort of be in one word, basically collaboration.

I think as schools, we all need to collaborate and communicate with all the schools. We need to practice what we preach. So we always talk to students about how and why 21st century skills are important. It's the same for teachers as well.

And even with schools like ours that have other schools in China, it's sort of like a bubble in a way. And we need to step outside that bubble and talk to other educators in other schools, in other cities. So collaboration is really key in just learning from other schools. And I've been to some great sessions over the past couple of days and spoken to some of the middle leaders and teachers. And I've learned a lot, you know, and I've been in

China for 22 years, but even I know that I can learn a lot just from coming to a conference like this and being a part of NSIC. This is really helpful and powerful and useful for us because it's going to connect our school and other schools like us with each other, again, internationally minded East meets West. But whereas if you're working in a school like, for example, Shanghai American School or Dulwich, etc., the needle, if I may, is way over to the West, Western perspective, etc., very much they might have Chinese

language program, but they're looking at things from a very much Western perspective. There are a lot of organizations out there where the needle is very much to the East, and you'll go to a conference and everything is in Chinese language. And it's really focused on perhaps local education or very much Chinese focus. We needed something in the middle. And that's where

NSIC, I think, really meets our needs. So the needle we want, yeah, it might swing a little bit to the left or to the right. But we really want to be in the middle. The vibe, if I can use that word, is that they're thankful for this opportunity to connect at this conference. They've been waiting

and waiting for something like this to happen. So there is a lot of excitement out there. And I'm excited about it. Now, the next voice you might recognize, because it's Julian Fisher from Venture Education. He's been on the podcast

before. And he has a great bird's eye view of education in China. Here's what he was thinking. So look, before COVID in China, the sector was booming, right? You know, you were seeing schools opening all the

time. And then obviously, during COVID, you had a double whammy, you had a tough time for schools, you know, that was global. But you also had the private education or in 2021, which really put a lot of restrictions and boundaries around how schools could operate. And, you know, since then, you've seen a lot less new school openings. But also, I

think there's been a hangover since that time where schools have become increasingly competitive with one another. If you talk to any school here, as much as they will talk about all the good things they're doing, underlying all is enrolment. That is the number one topic for schools, and especially for school leaders. So I think something like this appearing at this time is actually a really big sign of confidence. Because when you've got admissions team

basically saying, look, let's not engage with other schools, we're worried about losing students or students visiting their schools, but you've got a group of schools here saying actually, it's fine, we can share resources, we can have joint PD, we can have, you know, students going from one school to another, I think that's a real sign of confidence for these schools. And I think moving forward, that's going to extend to the broader market that if you're confident enough to be part of these kind of networks and to contribute, that says something about you and your school and how confident you feel about the future. So there's sort of three pillars to what's happening here. There's the student enrichment side, there's the PD side, and then there's the leadership connection. I think it tends to be that they fall into

one of those three, you know, certainly for a lot of the schools, they'll say, look, we just want our kids to play competitive sports. But then I've been hearing a lot about this notion, especially for a sort of single site schools, that getting really good PD, especially from overseas, it costs a lot of money. And if you can share that cost with 20 other schools, 30 other schools, and then honestly, I think for a lot of the heads, you know, coming down to beautiful Hainan, especially from the north of China was probably quite appealing at this time of year. After Julian, I spoke to Michael Ayanini, who also operates slightly outside of the school walls, providing a lot of PD through PD, academia and peer sphere. Here's Michael.

I've always had a belief that you have to give to get, you have to be generous. And what this means to me is being a part of it, number one is appreciating and having true empathy for what it means to the schools that we're serving, because you have to be genuine when you're bringing people together in a network. And if you have any other sort of motive, they're easy to sniff out. And that was something that was instilled in me in all those years at Akimis. I couldn't worry

about what the bottom line was. All I could do is continue to find what was the value for others. And as I continue to push at that, that's how you develop the more meaningful relationship. So I had 12 years of experience through that. So what it means to me now is

really in this type of market context, there's a lot of things I knew, but this market changes every year, every policy. And so it forces you to engage and get closer to it. And as many people know, the more you lean into something, the more you become to love it, the more you become to really want to see it succeed. And I think that's at the stage I'm at now. But at

the same time, I just know inherently that every year is going to be a new year, drawing me in further and further. Here's a leader who I respect a lot. This is Richard Driscoll. He's academic deputy at SCIE. And here's his thoughts on the

importance of collaboration. Often some schools can be in silos and they don't have the opportunity to talk to other people in their similar positions and find out maybe they've got the same issues to deal with and there's like different insights and how they can tackle it. And we know that like when we're at school, we're like really busy. And it's the time when you go to a conference, when you can have the time to reflect, have the conversations. And then

hopefully the good thing about SCOMS is there's takeaways so that we're going to then put the changes into our workplaces so that we can have the biggest impact to give even better opportunities for students so that they're even more enriched. Now networking was a really big theme that also came up at this gathering. Here's Mel Fitzgerald from Green Oasis School in Shenzhen and Sisi Zhang from Dohong. I'm here today to learn about AI in education and network with other professionals from throughout China.

The theme of the get together is forging creative futures. And I think it is very much about sharing ideas and also meeting new people that can help you implement your ideas as well. So finding out information but also finding out how to solve problems which is really exciting opportunity here. I think the important thing with attending conferences is the reflective time you take after the conference to actually read through your notes and reach out to people that you've met so you don't lose the information and the context that you've made. Today is

more learning opportunities for me and also I'm looking forward to the keynote speech. I'm not really a sporty person so understanding somebody else's journey will be really interesting for me and what I can learn from that particular experience. Yeah so more learning. Brain is ready to burst and then just touching base with a few people that I've met so far.

It's a great opportunity of platform for all the leaderships and also you know the teachers and then also the support staff get together exchange ideas and then also sharing experience. Before that you know I remember a long time ago that we used to go to this like Acomus conference and now you know since the COVID was here and after that I mean it actually is the very first time for me to feel like we're back in the old days you know where like right now you know like people just you know spend a lot of time like on phone they don't have a really like interaction with you know the people right and then no more like communication but now this thing happening and I feel like we are reconnected and then which is brilliant you know I really enjoyed it and then the meeting the conference the keynote speaker and then it was really like inspiring. Now at these events there's always someone who absolutely nails a description and I think this has to be Natalie Petrie from Dupont King's College School in Chengdu. Have a listen in.

If I were to capture the essence of my experience at the conference in a few keywords I'd say it was refreshing rejuvenating inspiring empowering moving and deeply impactful the atmosphere felt so welcoming one of belonging co-creating and taking risks the small panel discussions were the perfect setting to share our experiences as leaders dive into topics that we really care about and learn from each other. It felt like the kind of conversation you could lose yourself in for hours with everyone genuinely invested in hearing our stories one highlight for me I would say and I'm pretty sure for everyone in the room was hearing Olympic champion Marlon Devanish deliver his keynote on succeeding in the face of adversity the energy in the room during his address was palpable it was as if the very air was charged with emotion you could almost touch the collective empathy in the space as Marlon shared his remarkable journey of failure hardship adversity and ultimately triumph I could see people crying as well was really moving its stories like Marlon's that inspire me to keep pushing to make a difference every single day and being a part of the Nesit community and working together to forge creative futures is an exciting opportunity to keep championing the growth in success of our students and each other and the next voice you hear is Sarah Wang she's a principal at St. B's Dongguan and she picked up on something I felt too that feeling that spirit and the atmosphere of a conference like this I love it I find it is such a energizing atmosphere and also the driver and the thirst for learning exchange network and that the all the educators are longing for and that community feeling and what touches me most is the contribution the spirit of doing services and all coming from the educator themselves so it's very much a self-led self-driven kind of a community rather than like those commercially organized events so that's the biggest difference and also I think it's a well sourced through what our needs are so for us especially like leaders we want to hear feedback we want to share problems we want to discuss challenges and having that inspiration energy from each other I think that's what I got from here so I couldn't help myself in this episode but get a teeny tiny full interview in and that was a conversation I had with Tom Ulmert he's the CEO of Nesik it's really important to hear about the reasons behind this conference now Tom he is one of the good ones doing really good things and I know you're going to like what he shared his Tom I think new things always have a scary dimension to them there's always an unknown and most of my life I've been in positions where I've had to take risks so risk taking was the biggest step to take but probably not the least impactful on me I'm never worried about success or failure in the normal sense that you would if you were very visibly out there in a race like Marlin was and you finish second and you feel like you've lost in education we're dealing with building blocks for the future stepping stones and the part I liked about this venture is the fact that I'm not alone so when I shared the concept with other visionary leaders I mean experienced visionary leaders and every one of our advisory board members is that then suddenly it's a shared task and ideas abound encouragement abounds identification of the pitfalls and the possible sand traps are more prominent so we can avoid a lot of things that might lead to setbacks but for me the challenge was to create an infrastructure in such an infinitely small time fundamentally we had three months what you see now from an essay through this event has been a pretty substantial event with content that is relevant to the China context with experiences that help people to grow with opportunities for people to share their own experiences and mostly with opportunities for people to connect because we see two main types of heads at a conference like this heads of schools who are in the outlying areas and as one had told me she feels she lives in a silo and has no means of connecting with anyone in her region and then you have the schools in the big cities that are numerous and they are loath to interact with one another because they're competitors and this prevents connecting so an organization like this where everybody has something to share everybody has something to gain in a non competitive way that makes each school's own individual philosophy and program have the opportunity to be even better is what we're all about. I grew up in a small farming community in southern Illinois. My father

was in the army during World War II away from home. We had very little when he came back his opportunities for education had already passed him by but my mother and my grandmother always said do good for others and throughout my life that's been a motivating force. Seeing the void that existed for private bilingual schools was like a light that went on inside me and I thought wow what an opportunity to do good to do good for others. Let's do it. The only problem is that

I was gainfully employed somewhere else and had to end my career with them. Another very very good organization that I've been involved with from its origins. So that's the association of China and Mongolia International School is better known as Akimis. I gained so much from that organization that it was easy for me to imagine ways to share here and ways to be different. It's

not just a matter of taking one thing from one organization and planting it into another one. It's an opportunity to explore brainstorm, create, develop and implement new things for different people. That's what motivates me. When you think about starting something new, you started something new. You

went off in a totally new direction and you know now what it took to do that. And sometimes you look back and you say, wait a minute, did I do that? Or why did I do that? Or wow I can't wait to do this next thing. Yet when

you start a company in China, you go through a name selection process. And our advisory board was so good and so patient and so creative. We started with words like association, consortium, group, anything that would represent a togetherness. And every one of those was shot down by the government agencies. You cannot be a

group. You can't be an association. You can't be a consortium. So we had to go back and redesign the whole thought process. And that's

how we came up with the network for enriching students and schools in China, NSIC. Well, when we then realized what we created as a title, it was then that we began to think about the meaning of the words. First we just had to have a name and have it be fitting. So when we looked at enriched and realized that enrich means improve the quality of something by adding something else, we thought, bing, we've got it.

There we go. That is a purpose. And when we talked about students and staff, we were really talking about extension and how we can extend their experiences, their learning, to challenge them in other ways. They can come in and do their student job, do their homework daily and think they've gotten the job done. Teachers can go

through the preparation of a class, but there's so many more things they can learn and do that we use the word not in the title, but in our philosophy of extend, to stretch people beyond their self-perceived limits. And that's what makes champions. That's what Marlon Devanish was telling us today. To do that, he had to have a coach who believed in him, a coach who provided encouragement, someone who provided support and someone who knew more than he did.

With this collective of experienced China heads, we have that opportunity. And I think the last part that we all gleaned from Marlon's presentation this morning was inspiration. And personally, when I go to an event, I like to leave inspired. It lifts me to another level. It sends the

blood flowing. In this case this morning, the tears flowing also. So we touch the emotions. And when you reach people's emotions, you motivate them. So

inspiration and motivation are two key factors that we want to occur in every NSIC event and send people back to their schools, fired up, excited about education. I can't wait to get back to my class. I can't wait to go to the next team meeting and share or learn. It opens people's minds. That's what

motivates me. Thanks for tuning in today. To me, there's four key themes that really emerged when I was talking to people. That was opportunity, collaboration, learning, and inspiration. I

want to just say a huge thank to the team at NSIC for inviting me along to their inaugural leadership conference. I can't wait to see good, not-for-profit organizations like this grow. The connections we make between our schools are essential. And in China, it's fair to say things have been pretty tough recently. And

this gives me a lot of hope. Global Ed Leaders is hosted by me, Shane Leaning, thanks to the show editor, Pete McGill, and for original music by Guillermo Silver. Thank you so much for tuning in today. And as ever, if we don't speak before, I'll see you here next week. If you want to

improve learning in your school, don't forget to check out the ICA at internationalcurriculum.com