【编者按】：2020-2021学年，又有一批杰出、专业、高品质的教育专家加入我们青苗大家庭，他们带着多年在国际教育领域积累的丰富经验，将为青苗教育事业的发展带来巨大的助推力，并全力支持我们实现卓越教育的承诺！我们将在本学期陆续推出《校长专访》系列，向您介绍青苗这支卓越杰出的领导团队！

继上篇顺义校区新任初高中校长Dawid Bochen先生专访之后，今天，我们将带您走近青苗上东校区新任校长Michael Donaldson先生。

My arrival at BIBS is I think a culmination of my 20 years of experience in China.   Getting to know what Chinese parents want for their children and indeed seeing the growing importance of China in the world has helped me understand what kind of schools are best for children and young adults.  BIBS is well positioned to provide flexibility for parents as they decide what pathway their children will follow in the future.  The global pandemic we are in the midst of only underlines more clearly that we all need to be flexible and be ready to change our pathways to reach our lifelong goals. Beanstalk provides this opportunity for both parents and their children.  I’m both fortunate and proud to be working at BIBS!

Well, just like everything else in China education has evolved rapidly in China during my 20 years.  When I first arrived in China most of my focus was on helping move education from a knowledge or information distribution model to a thinking and inquiry model.  Initially it was not a perfect fit with Chinese education standards but I believe now that the philosophy of most Chinese people is a good fit with the thinking and inquiry model.  This is obviously a challenge with the large population and large class sizes but because China has always been a very literate society, it can definitely be accomplished.

I think the biggest difference between western and Chinese education is that in China parents are much more involved, and this does not stop at any point during a child’s education pre-college career. Parents demand to be kept involved and informed about their child’s progress, and where possible they wish to be able to support their child. This presents challenges but mostly opportunities for the schools and if schools can meet this challenge students will be more successful, and the schools of course will grow and thrive.

My philosophy of education is based around our current reality as well as future needs for humanity.  What I mean is that we need to help our students understand that learning is a lifelong endeavor and that we all need to take responsibility for our entire world, not just our own country or city.  In short, we all need to learn to love one another, care for and support one another during all kinds of situations. this philosophy represents a challenge for the field of education as well as other areas of our societies.

These past weeks have shown me that we do have a strong base for our team here at UES. First of all, we have an excellent leadership team that includes professional educators as well as experienced operation personnel. Our goal is to ensure that we work together, both educators and operations team leaders.  The addition of an experienced Chinese principal, Jane Zhang, also ensures that the quality of our Chinese program will be stronger and stronger. A new and experienced PYP coordinator is committed to helping our parents become more familiar and comfortable with the IB program is also a key to future success.

Our goals are to quickly raise the quality of our IB PYP Program and further integrate Chinese curriculum, language and culture within it.  Our second goal would be to ensure and improve the communication between the school and our parent community so that parents have a clear understanding of their own child’s progress as well as a clear understanding of the program itself.   A third and very important goal would be to see that the school enrollment grows and that our campus is full of happy learners.  We certainly need our families to be proud and happy about what’s happening in the school so that they share their feelings with their friends and that is the best way to ensure our success.  We will revisit these goals with our staff and with our very supportive PTA and implement specific strategies to meet these goals.