Background of the school

Hong Kong Student Aid Society Primary school is a Christian school founded in 2002. Ms Cheung Ching Han was appointed as the principal in 2018, and Ms YU Tak Chi, Christine arrived at the school in 2017 as a PSM, she became the curriculum coordinator in the following year and was promoted to vice principal in 2019. Ms WOO Mei Ling, Crystal was hired by the school as curriculum coordinator in 2019. Two more PSMs joined the school during the same year as panel heads of English and Mathematics. The school's middle management team includes teachers familiar with the school’s operation. The relationships and communication among old and new colleagues needed to be established. This challenged the middle management. Principal Cheung first focused on the administrative structure, setting up a professional development group for teachers with the curriculum coordinator as group leader. The aim was to strengthen the professional growth of teachers and implement the Hong Kong Student Aid Association's visionary belief that "everything is for children". This vision allows children to “learn how to learn, learn to live, learn to create” and teachers to support them in their growth and learning around this belief.

Re-starting benign interaction

The school is facing multiple challenges, including the differences between teachers understanding and experience in terms of the school curriculum; the coordination of administrative work among old and new coordinators; the leadership style of old and new vice-principals; the adaptation of the old and new systems; and the new normal of leadership brought on by the epidemic.

We know that it is essential to strengthen the communication between peers so that the teachers can come together as a team, understand the needs and vision of the school and establish common goals. Teachers need to be involved in creating a teaching team that is innovative and build the resilience of the school.

Creating opportunities

In the Service Leadership 3Cs for Entrepreneurial Teacher Leaders training, we have learnt cognitive crafting, relationship crafting, and task crafting. We made the following strategic arrangements at school by applying the 'doing things right and doing the right thing with the right heart' principle.

Introducing external forces – arranging regular meetings

Since the COVID-19 outbreak, the school has arranged "Monday co-planning meetings" online so that new and old teachers can work together to prepare teaching materials. These meeting help our teachers to establish a solid co-planning culture. The epidemic has also reversed the old teaching paradigm. The curriculum coordinator promoted school-based, cross-subject whole person development and updated content in line with the school’s transformation. The new curriculum content is designed to help students cope with the needs of the future society and help equip teachers with the skills to make this happen.

Learning for teacher growth

We took the opportunity to promote new plans in response to the school’s major concerns by setting up different communication platforms and arranging for teachers to participate in training and school visits.

Training and school visits

Participating in programmes organised by different institutions (2020-2021)

Internal optimisation: Collaboration for curriculum development

We must optimise the curriculum in the school. This entails updating content at each level in line with the curriculum, reviewing and adding curriculum content for each subject-based curriculum, and organising activities for students to experience the knowledge learned, as mentioned in the 3Cs programme. Organising activities not only enhances students' interest but also unites teachers to run school activities. We also encourage our colleagues to interact and share by inviting teachers to conduct professional sharing and celebrating their birthdays in our meetings. In addition, the school has built additional facilities to enhance its competitiveness of the school. The following are some examples of our optimised school curriculum and additional facilities.

Optimising school curriculum

In the 2019-2020 school year, the curriculum coordinator re-examined the school curriculum. With the direction of learning with joy, the curriculum coordinator promoted the revitalisation of school-based curriculums and cross-subject development planning, aiming to create opportunities for teachers to create and learn together and have a sense of ownership of the curriculum.

Celebrating success as positive reinforcement

To enable teachers to learn more about the new education policies and curriculum over the past two years, the school has introduced various out-of-school support programs and school-based teacher training. These measures aimed to enable middle and top-level management to better to understand the strengths and weaknesses of each other and learn to complement each other. The occasional birthday celebration, staff meeting, professional sharing, and visits allowed us to understand each other better and build better relationships.

Conclusion

Our middle management colleagues still have shortcomings and we have to face the problem of low student intake. However, we are still grateful because the Heavenly Father arranged for us to become a family in this school, and we will work hard to lead the school in the spirit of Christ's love.