Read part one of The Making of a Global Education here.

A Warm Welcome for Newly Arrived Staff

In September 2020 Shanghai Huaer Collegiate School Kunshan, opened its doors to nearly 600 new students, ranging from ages 2 to 15; the higher grades will fill through natural progression. In a video of the school, Santos sings out, “Good morning,” and the children shout their greeting back. “I am so happy to be here this morning and to see all of your lovely faces,” she says.

The welcome she receives on a daily basis delights her. “Because I’m the principal and head of the school, in US terms I’m like the president of the United States. They think I’m a superstar. If I walk down the hall, you should see how excited they get,” she says. “I just love them.”

It helped that Dipont offered extensive support when Santos arrived, guiding her through bureaucratic processes and helping her find a place to live. (She opted for a hotel rather than an apartment, just eight minutes’ drive from the school.) Even as Santos boarded the plane, she was receiving text messages advising her to make sure her luggage went all the way through to Shanghai. “They just take good care of you, even once you’re here,” she says.

Like many teachers who come to work in international schools, she doesn’t speak the language but says she has found Chinese culture to be warmly welcoming. As a foreigner, she inspires curiosity when she is out on the streets, with parents urging their kids to try out their English with ‘Hello.’

It’s a sentiment echoed by other expatriate teachers. Amy Loveday Hu, Head of Kindergarten at another Dipont school, Nanwai King’s College School, in the neighboring city of Wuxi, recalls a similar experience when she first flew to China in 2004. She bought a return ticket but never used the second part. “I found everybody so very welcoming. I wasn’t scared that I didn’t understand.”

Covid-19: An Unexpected Challenge

The arrival of Covid-19 swiftly imposed a need for resilience in the new school leader. Santos had gone back to Georgia to see family in January 2020 when reports of a new virus began to hit the news. It was meant to be a short holiday, but she found herself stuck in the US, conducting business and running meetings remotely. “I wouldn’t have guessed that I would be there for seven months,” she recalls. “Day one turned into day two turned into day three. It was seven months that I was in the US. And we forged on.”

Now she is firmly set on next steps. The school has a progressive curriculum and is committed to helping scholars flourish both within the classroom and beyond it, aiming to produce young adults who are healthy and globally aware. Its mission is to foster resilience, adaptability, ethical behavior and enlightened communication between Chinese and English cultures. These are qualities the school defines as keys to success, and its leaders want to encourage them not just among students but also in its staff.

Santos’ love of her students is clear — “they’re all special to me,” she points out. She hopes that the school will nurture the positive qualities already nascent in many of the young people she works with. One boy is determined to go to Stanford and develop a cure for Alzheimer’s. He turned down a formal leadership role in the school because he wanted other students to have their chance. “His character is so strong already,” Santos observes. “Clearly he’s a leader and already an active role model for his peers; and he’s already someone who’s an ambassador of the school.”

Santos encouraged another young woman to take part in developing the school’s art curriculum. They were initially introduced when the girl got in trouble for breaking school rules, but Santos understood that kids break rules for a reason. “As educators, we know there’s usually something underneath that.” She looked for a way to connect, and when Santos realized she had a passion for art, invited the student to meetings with Idyllwild Arts Academy faculty where she could share her thoughts on the new art program. “I’m really looking forward to seeing her and what she becomes when she graduates from the school both in terms of her talent as an artist—but more so her voice, her voice as an artist and budding leader,” Santos says.

A Dynamic Community

Internationalized schools like Dipont’s offer unique learning experiences by immersing students in a hybrid environment, says Stephen Keown, from Belfast, Northern Ireland, and a senior leader at RDFZ King’s College School in the city of Hangzhou of eastern China. “You can very much see that our students are exposed to international personalities; and that exposure, even by itself, changes the character — the delivery and the environment — which is very enriching for them,” he says. “That, in turn, is really defining of the young people and how they develop as young adults.”

Since joining Dipont, Santos says her view of what global education entails has evolved, and it continues to develop as she learns more about her students. Essentially, though, she thinks it involves full immersion in another culture than the dominant one, and in which individuals are found in situations where “everybody is giving up something and gaining from each other almost equally.”

Beneath Santos’ vision for the Kunshan school is a wish to ensure that her young scholars learn how to contribute to the school’s culture and take ownership of it. In other words, becoming leaders in their own right. “Inclusion, opportunity, possibility, attention to all, to all scholars, all students,” are key, she says. “Meeting them where they are — but still keeping the same bar high no matter where one is at the time.”

Please note that since January 2022, Shanghai Huaer Collegiate School Kunshan has been known as Dipont Huayao Collegiate School Kunshan.

The post The Making of a Global Educator: Part 2 appeared first on Dipont Education.

Even as a little girl, Carol Santos, the founding head of Huaer Collegiate, gravitated towards education. “I was that kid who went to school and came home and played school,” she says. “Some kids play with dolls or video games. I literally played school.”

So when an opportunity to create a school entirely from scratch in China presented itself, she was thrilled and excited. Dipont Education, a pioneering company in Chinese international education, was launching the school in a bustling province just west of China’s biggest city, Shanghai. Santos would be tasked with developing the curriculum, hiring staff, and creating the school’s philosophy. It was both a daunting prospect and a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

With an established reputation in China, Dipont presented a perfect match for Santos, an experienced educator who also happened to have an appetite for challenge. Over the past 20 years, the company has set up almost 30 programs working with schools across China and has established four K-through 12 independent schools. It partners with leading British institutions like King’s College School in Wimbledon to offer a blended education to Chinese students planning to study overseas. Santos’ school, Huaer Collegiate in Kunshan, would be the first Dipont school to prepare students to follow a curriculum with distinctive American elements.

The company’s ethos chimed with Santos’ personal convictions, honed after decades in secondary education and leadership. For her, global education is the ideal education for any student. Dipont Education originated in China, and the company’s strong Chinese connections ground it in local culture while its vision for contemporary education aims to integrate the best of Chinese and Western practices. “It truly is two worlds coming together,” Santos says.

The Impact of Mentors

Santos has spent much of her career in teaching and leadership positions in top private US schools. Over the past 25 years, she taught at Westover, a private girls’ school in Middlebury, Connecticut, Groton School in Massachusetts, and at Miss Porter’s School, a renowned girls’ boarding school also in Connecticut. Most recently she was head of Centennial Academy, a public day school in Atlanta, Georgia, where she spearheaded efforts to improve the students’ academic performance and embrace a culture of excellence. Her dedication to young people is underpinned by her own early experiences. Although she was a good student, she says, “I didn’t always feel good about being a good student. And I didn’t always feel good about being a black girl. And that had to do with experiences in school and about school.”

Growing up in a working-class neighborhood in Connecticut that was socio-economically mixed, Santos was targeted by others because of her high grades. Later, she formed part of a generation of students involved in “busing”— a policy of bringing black and economically disadvantaged students to schools in white neighborhoods, to encourage integration. Santos ended up being the only African-American student in her class. “We were very much aware that the families who attended that school didn’t want us to be there. As young people we were like, ‘We’re going to stick together.’ But I ended up on my own and isolated.”

As she went through the system, though, individual teachers offered a helping hand at pivotal moments and helped to guide her path. When she moved to high school she initially decided to take less challenging classes so as not to attract unwanted attention and another socially disconnected existence in school. But one day, an English teacher overheard her in the corridor telling another student she would not study Shakespeare. The teacher was astonished that a talented student would make that choice and confronted her—ultimately calling her mom to voice her concerns. “The next thing you know my whole schedule was changed and I was in all these advanced college prep classes,” Santos says. She went on to study business, earning a degree in economics at the University of Pennsylvania and has a Master’s in Education from Columbia University. She is also undertaking a doctorate in educational leadership at UPenn. “That teacher really changed the trajectory of my life.”

Bridging Cultures

Speaking on screen from her office in Kunshan, Santos expresses herself thoughtfully, giving weight and meaning to every word. Leaving her home in Georgia was not a straightforward choice. She has two children who stayed in the US, a 23-year-old daughter and a 17-year-old son, but her son, in particular, urged her to seize the opportunity. She misses them a lot – and hopes it will be possible to return for her son’s graduation. “He may have an online graduation and if he has an online graduation at least I’ll feel as though I have the same experience as the other parents. I won’t feel so far away.”

In spring 2019 Santos traveled to China, meeting colleagues and beginning to assemble a team. It was a daunting task, which she likens to building a plane while also flying it. The process was facilitated by an excellent, smooth-running leadership team. “That was a blessing, that we could trust each other,” Santos recalls. “I think that probably is a key element.”

Moving to a new culture brings its benefits and drawbacks. Santos has acquired a love of Chinese cuisine – noodles, and stews in which meat falls off the bone. But if you ask what is lacking, the answer is simple. “I’m from New England, very close to New York, we’ve got good pizza where I’m from,” she says. “I have to tell you I’ve been missing pizza since I moved to Atlanta because their pizza is not as good as it is up north in the States. But their pizza is better than Chinese pizza.”

As an American woman heading an establishment in China, Santos has brought fresh ideas to overseas schooling. Typically, in private international schools, girls wear skirts or dresses as part of the uniform. But she pushed for the idea that girls could wear pants, sending photos of family friends to suppliers to convince them the right cut was possible. Despite its novelty, when winter fell, parents were clamoring. “I’ll tell you the parents and the girls are like, ‘It’s cold! Where are the pants? We want these pant options.’”

She finds her Chinese peers inordinately polite and respectful—sometimes excessively so. When colors for the school uniform were being discussed, Santos made her choice and presented it to the school’s leaders. She soon sensed that something was amiss. “They gave me a palette and I made a choice, ‘Okay, that one.’ I could have picked that one or another one within that shade or family. It really was not that big of a deal to me.”

She could tell they felt uncomfortable about openly disputing her choice. But they didn’t need to be. “All they had to say was, we like this shade better than that one because it looks better on Chinese skin. I could tell it was a heavy thing to them and I think more so because they were concerned about offending me.”

Please note that since January 2022, Shanghai Huaer Collegiate School Kunshan has been known as Dipont Huayao Collegiate School Kunshan.

The post The Making of a Global Educator: Part 1 appeared first on Dipont Education.

Hundreds of children and their parents arrived at the school gates in excitement, as new teaching faculty and staff welcomed them.

Faculty have been arriving from around the world over the last few weeks, experiencing challenging journeys and compulsory quarantine to arrive ahead of the school opening.

Strictly following all health protocols during this period of coronavirus, not one teacher wanted to miss this important milestone in the school’s history.

The arrival of students marks the culmination of three years of work in establishing the school, which has been developed by Dipont in collaboration with the No. 2 High School of East China Normal University.

Opening initially from preschool to 10th grade, by 2022 Huaer Collegiate will grow into a full upper school through 12th grade. The school has developed a blended Chinese and American curriculum, combining a drive for academic excellence with a whole child education program designed to nurture healthy, well-adjusted young adults.

The school’s state-of-the-art campus, which is located in the Kunshan Economic and Technological Development Zone, includes modern classrooms, a large multi-purpose sports hall, a 50-meter indoor swimming pool, a fitness center, playing fields, a running track, a performing arts auditorium and boarding facilities.

Huaer Collegiate, which is located just west of Shanghai in eastern China, is the third K-12 school to be developed by Dipont in a unique partnership model with local government and a leading Chinese school. It follows the successful opening of Nanwai King’s College School Wuxi and RDFZ King’s College School Hangzhou in 2018.

Speaking ahead of the school’s opening, founding head Carol Santos said: “I hope the school will reflect its Chinese and American cultural backgrounds as well as offer a collegiate, high-achieving environment with limitless possibilities for students.”

Huaer Collegiate strives to educate two-to 18-year-old Chinese and international scholars to be innovative and collaborative while appreciating their own and others’ cultures and traditions. As a result of the education at Huaer Collegiate, scholars will understand the importance of having a worldview and be able to make a positive contribution to our global society.

Please note that since January 2022, Huaer Collegiate has been known as Dipont Huayao Collegiate School Kunshan.

The post Huaer Collegiate welcomes first students appeared first on Dipont Education.

The team at the school is composed of more than 100 Chinese and international teachers. Each new faculty member has been carefully selected from thousands of applicants.

All are highly educated and experienced in international education, whether here in China or abroad. Teachers come from a diverse range of cultures and backgrounds, collectively bringing a wealth of knowledge to this innovative new school.

Throughout August, inductions and training sessions for new staff are taking place, while finishing touches to the school’s environment and teaching program are ongoing. Staff in departments such as operations, finance, HR and IT are also joining the new campus, ensuring vital support systems are put into place ahead of the official opening.

Energy on the campus is high, as staff come together to prepare for a major landmark in the school’s development – the arrival of students in September. With the vision of being a world-class learning community, Huaer Collegiate will integrate the best of international and Chinese education to maximize each student’s potential in life.

Carol Santos, founding head of Huaer Collegiate, said staff have come together at the start of the school’s journey for one common purpose: “the success of hundreds of Chinese scholars.”

Guangyuan Lu, the school’s Chinese principal, added that the school will embrace a “special blend” of Chinese and American languages and culture.

Huaer Collegiate is the third K-12 school to be developed by Dipont in a unique partnership model with local government and a leading Chinese school. It follows the successful opening of Nanwai King’s College School Wuxi and RDFZ King’s College School Hangzhou in 2018.

Please note that since January 2022, Huaer Collegiate has been known as Dipont Huayao Collegiate School Kunshan.

All our independent schools will be seeking to appoint a number of vacancies for the 2021/22 school year, from preschool to G12, across a range of subjects and disciplines. If you would like to be considered for a role, please apply via our website to be kept informed of suitable opportunities.

The post Teachers arrive at Huaer Collegiate, ready for Sept. opening appeared first on Dipont Education.

Oliver Knapman, recruitment manager for Dipont’s Shanghai Huaer Collegiate School Kunshan, talks about his career and his role in recruiting staff to our exciting new school development.

Dipont: Can you tell us a bit about your professional background and role with Dipont?

Oliver: I have been in teacher recruitment in China for a decade and have lived in Shanghai since 2007. I joined Dipont in 2010 to support teacher recruitment for our international high school programs, which were going through a period of dramatic growth. Since then, I estimate I’ve been involved in bringing over a thousand expat teachers to schools in China.

Since 2017, I have managed the teacher recruitment for Dipont’s independent schools; Nanwai King’s College School Wuxi and RDFZ King’s College School Hangzhou. As these schools are bilingual and require large numbers of Chinese teachers, I was joined by Emily Wang, Effy Qin and, later, Yini Zhang. These schools are now going into their third year of operation and we have so far recruited close to 300 Chinese and expat teachers for our King’s College partner schools.

D: Tell us about your work on recruitment for Huaer Collegiate…

O: Since the summer of last year, a large focus of my work has been on Dipont’s new school project, Shanghai Huaer Collegiate School Kunshan. This school is similar in size and scope to the King’s schools. A key difference, however, is the blend of the American independent school curriculum and ethos with a bilingual Chinese National Curriculum.

Recruitment for Huaer Collegiate has been a huge project, coordinating advertising, agencies and events locally and internationally. For this, we have been supported by Stephen Woolbert, a former center principal with Dipont, who is now based in the US as our director of academic programs. We have received interest from many thousands of candidates across a variety of platforms. Between myself, Stephen, Explore CRS (Dipont’s subsidiary recruitment company) and the Chinese recruitment team here, we have spoken with hundreds of teachers about working with Huaer Collegiate.

D: How many of these candidates have been interviewed and offered a position?

O: To date, more than 250 of these candidates have gone on to have formal interviews with the founding head of the school, Carol Santos, and her senior leadership team. Carol has also been interviewing throughout the US and meeting teachers at conferences such as the National Association of Independent Schools.

We are close to completing faculty recruitment, which will consist of approximately 50 expat teaching staff, 30 Chinese teaching staff and 30 Chinese graduate teaching fellows.

D: What will the faculty of this new school look like? What qualities have you looked for in candidates?

O: The faculty at Huaer Collegiate is incredibly diverse. There isn’t a typical successful candidate, though there are some things that they have in common. We certainly value years of teaching experience. When building a strong team, however, it is important to have a good mix of experienced staff and teachers nearer the beginning of their career, who will bring the energy and flexibility that is essential in a newly established school.

All of our teachers, whether they have five or 25 years of experience, should show a demonstrated desire to continually develop and refine their practice. Similarly, we do look for teachers with excellent academic credentials. Huaer Collegiate boasts a faculty with an extremely impressive collection of degrees, although an Ivy League or Oxbridge degree does not necessarily guarantee excellent teaching. Subject knowledge is vital, but it must be combined with a talent for sharing that knowledge.

Ultimately, we are looking for candidates with a clear passion for working with young people – inside and outside of the classroom. The school’s extensive advisory and co-curricular program mean that teachers will be taking a much broader role in the development of their students than just subject teaching, so we look for candidates who will be role-models in their behaviors and attitudes. In Carol Santos’ words, they should be “a resilient scholar, adaptable ambassador, enlightened communicator and ethical visionary”.

D: Why is China a popular destination among international teachers?

O: Teachers choose China for a variety of reasons. The culture, food and lifestyle attract people initially but, in my experience, it is the students that keep educators here for much longer than their initial contracts. Teachers love to work with respectful and ambitious Chinese students who value the opportunities that this type of education gives them.

We have brought in several teachers who have already been working with leading schools in China. There are a lot of options for teachers who want to work in China, so the school’s excellent facilities and mission to combine the best of Chinese and international education has been an important factor in attracting the best talent.

Please note that since January 2022, Nanwai King’s College School Wuxi has been known as Wuxi Dipont School of Arts and Science, while Shanghai Huaer Collegiate School Kunshan has been known as Dipont Huayao Collegiate School Kunshan.

Are you a teacher or education professional? Check out our vacancies page for the latest teaching jobs in China.

The post “I’ve brought over 1000 expat teachers to schools in China” appeared first on Dipont Education.

A new bilingual school in Kunshan, China, that is being developed by Dipont Education, has had its name confirmed.

It will be called Shanghai Huaer Collegiate School Kunshan or Huaer Collegiate for short. The name reflects the school’s location near the metropolis of Shanghai and honors the project’s Chinese partner, the No. 2 High School of East China Normal University, commonly referred to in Chinese as Huaer.

Huaer Collegiate will open from preschool to 10th grade in September 2020 and development is fast progressing. The campus in Kunshan’s Economic and Technological Development Zone is entering the final building stages and when complete will provide an outstanding learning environment for 2,800 scholars. The purpose-built campus will feature state-of-the-art science laboratories, a performing arts center with an 800-seat theater, and first-class sports complexes.

The school’s senior leadership team is now in place, including the founding head, Carol Santos, and Zhicong Li, who will serve as board principal. Other senior appointments include:

• Bett Alter, Dean of Student Life
• Jacqueline Speer, Preschool Principal
• Zoe Zou, Elementary and Middle School Principal
• Abanish Sharma, Upper School Principal
• Sharon Wan, Associate Principal
• Erica Curry, Associate Principal
• Mark Saunders, Director of Academics
• Nimo Shi, IT Manager.

Work on developing Huaer Collegiate’s unique curriculum is ongoing, while recruitment for a range of teaching positions has begun.

Whole child education

Initially, Huaer Collegiate will open from preschool to 10th grade. By 2022, the school will grow into a full upper school through 12th grade, offering AP classes and advanced specialized electives in all subject areas over the following two years.

The school will employ a blended Chinese and American curriculum, combining a drive for academic excellence with a whole child education program designed to nurture healthy, well-adjusted young adults.

Scholars will be encouraged to explore a broad range of interests outside of the classroom while developing the social skills and strength of character that will empower them for a future of resilient, ethical leadership anywhere in the world.

“Huaer Collegiate will be a community that embraces a special blend of Chinese and American cultures,” says Carol Santos, founding head. “It will empower each scholar to develop a voice and identity as an ambassador for China.”

Highly talented faculty

A range of teaching positions, from preschool to 10th grade, will be available to highly talented educators who embody the same high standards that will be expected of Huaer Collegiate graduates.

Every educator will be expected to contribute actively to the whole life of the school, working with scholars beyond the classroom in advisory, co-curricular and residential programs.

“It is my hope that Huaer Collegiate educators will enjoy coming to school so much that their curriculum will extend beyond the book, classroom or bell,” adds Carol. “We are building a diverse, enthusiastic and highly supportive community of teachers who are committed to academic excellence and the creation of opportunities for scholars to take charge of their learning with daring optimism and drive.”

Please note that since January 2022, Shanghai Huaer Collegiate School Kunshan has been known as Dipont Huayao Collegiate School Kunshan.

If you are a passionate and talented educator, keen to share in Huaer Collegiate’s ethos, please see our vacancies for the latest positions available in Kunshan.

The post Name confirmed for new Dipont school in Kunshan appeared first on Dipont Education.