I’ll start by sharing a little bit about my teaching experience. This is my 11th year as an international educator. In 2012, my wife Corinne and I moved to Doha, Qatar where we spent the next six years teaching for Qatar Foundation. I was a classroom teacher for the first 3 years and then I moved into an EAL coordinator role. In 2018, we moved to China to teach at Shanghai Community International School (SCIS). We absolutely fell in love with the city and Shanghai’s international community. In late 2021 we were considering whether to stay or leave China when we had the opportunity to interview with Concordia. Concordia was a school that had been on our radar for several years and we jumped at the chance to join the school. Corinne and I both couldn’t be more excited to teach at such an outstanding institution.
I first started seriously considering a career in teaching a few years out of university. At the time I was working in a corporate setting, and I wasn’t finding the work particularly fulfilling or interesting. I started thinking back to part of my gap year when I tutored and worked as a volunteer at a school in the Dominican, Republic. I remembered how enjoyable it was to be part of an international education community and how satisfying it had been to see student achievement in reading, math, and English. I began taking education courses at a local university and my hope was to eventually move overseas to teach as a career. Corinne and I were married around this time and thankfully she shared a similar vision!
One way I inspire my students to be Active Global Citizens is to first reflect on what a privilege it is to attend a school like Concordia. We are blessed with so many world-class teachers, resources, and facilities, as well as a beautiful and supportive Jinqiao neighborhood and community. I often reflect on the verse that says, “To whom much is given, much is expected.” These words not only inspire a desire for personal achievement, but also help shift our focus and efforts outward to be an actively engaged, faithful presence in our neighborhood, city, country, and world.
One way to encourage student interests in reading literature is through outstanding mentor texts that bring the lessons to life. My fourth-grade class and I just finished reading The Tiger Rising together. The students were so engaged and kept pointing out various lesson elements as we would read: character motivation and patterns, external and internal traits, repeated details and reoccurring settings, connections between characters, etc. Telling students how to interpret a text is only so effective. A good story with multidimensional characters help illustrate the lessons and allow students to develop a rich appreciation and understanding of literature.
One way to support students’ social-emotional development is to take time throughout the day to reflect on learning experiences, relationships, daily schedule, and transitions. I find that when students dialogue and share opinions about routines, attention strategies, teamwork, etc. they begin to form a better understanding of themselves which helps to foster agency and personal advocacy. For example, after not being in a classroom setting for many months, many of my students were feeling a bit unfocused and fatigued in the afternoon after lunch and recess. We discussed as a class what strategies we could employ to make the afternoon learning sessions as productive as the mornings. The students had insightful ideas on how to increase stamina and focus from both a personal perspective (ex.- changing seats, drinking water) and classroom perspective (ex. – playing a learning game, having a mix of learning activities/choices).