Myself, Jeff Kearns (AAP) and Alison Huang (NADP)( attended Fobisia’s Leadership conference in March 2023. The theme of the conference was ‘reconnecting resilient leaders.’ The conference included a number of high-quality speakers, workshops and exhibitors. During the conference, several useful connections were made which have been useful in supporting SCIE’s strategic goals. One of the […]
FOBISIA LEADERSHIP CONFERENCE Read More »
Last year CJ Rauch from evidence-based education gave us a keynote about the platform. A team of 5 completed the year long assessment lead programme and many staff completed a short course (element). This was piloted with staff being able to choose EBE to support their teaching and learning appraisal target. This Faculties are to
Evidence-based Education Keynote Read More »
Cambridge East Asia Conference at SCIE The East Asia Schools Conference is to create a platform and opportunities for Cambridge International schools in the region to share, reflected, and learned together as a community. Around 400 school representatives from 250 Cambridge schools in the East Asia region gathered to share, reflect and explore ‘Creating a
Cambridge Teachers’ Conference at SCIE Read More »
Ellie Chen, Chief Biology Technician Helen Su, Teacher of Biology We attended a two-day face-to-face introductory training with CAIE in April. The training mainly concerns the IGCSE 2023-2025 syllabus, in terms of what is on the syllabus, how students are assessed, teaching and learning strategies, marking principles, and teacher resources. There are several great takeaways
Cambridge PD Event at SCIE Read More »
At SCIE, the University and Careers Office is responsible for assisting students with every aspect of their university application, from guiding them on how to identify their target and reach schools globally from their first years on campus, to choosing the best selection of A-Levels to achieve their goals, and then helping them complete a
Cambridge and Sciences Po Admissions Conferences 2023 Read More »
EARCOS Teachers Conference Last March, I was privileged to attend the EARCOS teachers conference in Malaysia. The conference focused on “Creating a Culture of Care.” I attended many training sessions that encouraged teachers to interact with students in more meaningful ways. One important session that I attended was titled “Embedding SEL (Social Emotional Learning) and
Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training & EARCOS Teachers’ Conference Read More »
ACAMIS PLN – Secondary Lab Technicians Ellie Chen, Chief Biology Technician Barish Wu, Technician – Biology Mavis Zhang, Technician – Biology From the ACAMIS training course, I learned that different people take in information through different sensory preferences, such as visual, auditory, kinesthetic, and tactual. I realized that different people have different styles of learning
ACAMIS Peer Learning Networks Read More »
I had the privilege of attending a two-day Leadership workshop “Leading Effective Teams for Heads of Department” in Hong Kong facilitated by Michael Iannini, an Acamis leadership facilitator, Council of International Schools consultant, and Search Associates HRM China advisor. This training was designed for aspiring middle leaders to enhance their capacity to lead effective teams.
ACAMIS Leading Effective Teams for Heads of Department Read More »
My essay is on the recent development of China’s mental health care system and how it can help address this question. Though, I actually parried the question raised by the prompt, and I did not in the end emphasise too much that more care should be devoted to the socially vulnerable. Rather, I intended to underscore the complexity and ambiguity in any employment of these two notions — “socially vulnerable” and “responsibility” — in the concrete working of society. Through my study I discovered that the train of legislative efforts made in the 1980s to 2000s to legally recognise, to enhance public knowledge of, and to erect new asylums for, “the mentally ill,” in fact coincided spatiotemporally with government efforts in putting new agendas of foreign policies and city development to work. Thus, the recent development of China’s mental health care, from scratch to full maturity, is not solely the consequence of “humanitarian effort,” but also of some other ulterior motives. In my conclusion, I hinted that any answer to this question would entail empirical investigation into the concrete working of social institutions, and depending on the nature of this “socially vulnerable” group, claims of “responsibility” may be leveraged as veils for other purposes.
Before starting my research I did not by then have a well-formed hypothesis, but I did have Michel Foucault’s intriguing study on madness in mind. Due to the rather peculiar nature of the object of my study, I was not able to apply the sociological theories (Marxism, Functionalism, e.g.) I learnt in class to my own research. I must thank my sociology teacher for his encouragement and provision of many textbook resources and classical studies done in the field of mental health care. In addition to that, he prepared a statement of the school for my application to conduct short interviews at a local mental health hospital — this application, however, though quite expectedly, sank into oblivion — without his help this project would be very difficult.
I made a documentary “The Definition” about the situation of elderly in Shenzhen to enter this competition. As I have some previous knowledge in filmmaking, learning from TBU studio, I though it would be meaningful if I combined my filmmaking skills with sociology knowledge. In the meanwhile, after learning the very first chapter of sociology, The Family, I found out that the situation of elderly in the UK is different from that of elderly in Shenzhen. For instance, elderly have the responsibility taking care of their grandchildren and dance in the park for entertainment is distinctive in China. Therefore, I decided to make a documentary to record the interesting culture.
I learnt a lot during the preparation for the competition. I learned a lot about how to carry out an individual primary research when I was filming “The Definition”, which helps a lot in my current sociology study. Also, I understood sociology theories better. For instance, postmodernism used to be only a vague theoretical perspective for me, yet it amazed me knowing that elderly people participate actively in public activities can be considered as view of postmodernism.
Most importantly, I realized filmmaking can make some impacts on people, portraying problems of society. Experience of BSA opened my eyes and led me rethink about my future major in college. I want use my skills and knowledge to help more people, so I will probably try a major with humanity and filmmaking combined instead of pursuing the dream of being an artist alone.
Learning sociology gives me a new perspective in seeing how the world works, and it also lets me care more about the vulnerability in the society. Thank you to my sociology teacher, Richard Driscoll, who gave me lots of inspiration such as filming the dancing in the park, which is interesting to British people, and recommenced lots of sociological books about the elderly.
By listening to his advice, “The Definition” eventually divides into two parts: one is about the elderly in nursing home and the other is about people dancing in the park. Also, there is many interviews in the documentary to give a more well-rounded perspective.
I would like to thank my Math teacher Michael Jin and my friend Franchaska, who helped me with the voice over. Also, thanks to my family members, especially my dear grandmother, who gave me lots of insights related to the issue of elderly.
I made this documentary just before the deadline, thus it’s not so perfect. I’ll probably elaborate some shots and reedit it in the future.
If you are interested, you can click the link below and watch it.
Teng Xun Video：https://v.qq.com/x/page/u0862usad2v.html
Bilibili：https://www.bilibili.com/video/av38188271?from=search&seid=10452775157822232568
