Dear All,

Welcome to 2019! I hope that you had quality time with your children over the Winter break. I enjoyed spending time with my family in Beijing and taking advantage of our beautiful city.

On the first day of the new semester, I saw many of our students truly excited to return to school. It gives me great joy to know how happy our students are to see their friends, their teachers, and how they feel comfortable and secure in their school environment. We enjoy seeing them return for more learning in this semester.

As we begin our second semester, we as a staff and faculty have been reflecting back on the first semester and how to learn from our experiences. As quoted by John Dewey (philosopher, educational reformer, psychologist), "We do not learn from experience, we learn from reflecting on experience." Reflection is something that we model, teach, and reinforce with our students from a very young age. We ask them questions that lead them to think about what they are doing and why and, if appropriate, how they could change things for the better next time or further build upon their experiences. As adults, including parents, it is important that we do use our past experiences to understand our successes in order to continue to enjoy that success, as well as to understand where we could improve and perhaps where we made mistakes so that we avoid those in the future. As you talk to your own child, remember that they are well used to reflecting openly and honestly, especially when they know that they are communicating with others who are open to the reflections and place no judgement on them. Try to have some of these reflective conversations with your child!

We have a four-week period of learning before our Chinese New Year holiday, which is of course a significant time in China and one of my favorite celebrations. I hope to see you around the campus, and please feel free to reach out to me anytime.