Assistant Superintendent's Message

According to John Dewey, “Education is not a preparation for life; education is life itself.”  A number of years ago, Carl Rogers wrote a book called ON BECOMING.  A few years later, he said that he got the message of his book wrong and wrote a replacement book called ON BEING.  Sometimes our fast-paced high expectations for students can run the danger of trying to prepare and advance students for later stages of learning before they have had full opportunity to understand the learning in which they are currently presented. 

Within current learning, we hold high value for depth of learning (multiple and different types of learning) and for relevance (how learning connects to their own lives and to the world).  To swiftly and automatically recite, without understanding purpose, context, or relevance misses opportunities for students to be fully engaged in their own learning.  Schools have traditionally used various approaches to generate extrinsic motivation for student learning, but engagement in learning requires effort to also generate intrinsic motivation within students.  This intrinsic motivation is what we refer to in our Singapore American School VISION as “inspires a passion for learning”. 

Yeats said that “Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.”  We know that we could simply load up our students with an enormous amount of content and evaluate their content knowledge on a series of tests and quizzes, but we also believe it is important to see the connections, interests, inquiries, and extensions that our students express in relationship to the content that they learn.  In this respect, we know that all students do not learn in the same way on the same day.  Therefore our educational practices need to continually support the diverse learning styles, abilities, and interests of our students (differentiated instruction). 

While there are frequently conversations about teaching among teachers and administrators, we know that we need to further focus and deepen our conversations about the quality of student learning among our diverse learners.   In this sense, we move toward being more true to the strategic area of our VITAL FEW as it relates to “Extraordinary Care for the Welfare of Each Child” – academically, emotionally, socially, and physically.

As we look at the school-wide structures and systems to help make these learner-focused approaches possible, the school’s 2007-2008 WASC accreditation process provided an opportunity for 500+ teachers, students, parents, administrators, support staff, and board members to provide input into the development of a five-year Strategic Plan for Student Learning.   The areas for growth within Student Learning were categorized within curriculum, assessment, and instruction/learning.

For 2008-2009, the following are the school-wide Action Plans for Student Learning:

Curriculum

• Develop broad-based awareness and understanding for cross-curricular expectations (i.e., Desired Student Learning Outcomes, Core Values, Information Literacy, Technology Standards, Global Issues, Communication Skills), and develop approaches on how to effectively and efficiently integrate, assess, and report them.
• Review current approaches to global issues in the school-wide curriculum and extra-curricular programs, and provide a report on status and possible recommendations.
• “Development Year” (i.e., adoption of curriculum, budgeting for instructional resources, and two-year UbD/Atlas unit development) for Science, Physical Education, and Health.
• “Study Year” for English/RLA.

Assessment

• Develop school-wide philosophy and clarity on “best practices” for assessment of student learning.
• Review the types of assessments that are used in classrooms and for different kinds of placements of students in all subject areas.
• Further develop sources of data collection that can be used on division and school levels for analysis and decision-making, particularly as it relates to enhanced student learning.

Instruction/Learning

• Develop administrator protocols in “Looking for Learning” in classrooms, and support the use of these protocols through weekly classroom walkthroughs by collaborative teams of administrators.
• Clarify and support differentiated instruction “look for’s” in classrooms.
• Support implementation of cross-curricular expectations with students in classrooms.
• Develop a technology vision and plan as it relates to integration of technology in classrooms.
• Develop a distributed instructional leadership model to further support and enhance student learning.

In closing, the research on improved student learning clearly shows that significant improvement is gained when the school, home, and students share in responsibilities for student learning and success.  Singapore American School is blessed with these key constituents who are dedicated to providing an exemplary education for all students.  The opportunity to collectively work from a five-year Strategic Plan that is focused in areas of ongoing improvement promises to increase our success for our students.  In short, these are exciting and energizing times to be an educator, parent, and student at Singapore American School.  The school has garnered considerable regional and international success, and we now have the opportunity to move in directions that can further “light a fire” for our students and help them to understand that “education is life itself”.   It takes a collaborative and interdependent school community to be successful with these approaches, which confirms the comment by the extraordinary educator Dr. Rick DuFour that “The very essence of a learning community is a focus on and a commitment to the learning of each student.”

WASC Executive Summary

WASC School Improvement Self Study

WASC Report Commendations and Recommendations

Updated: August 7, 2008