Weihai: 20 Years of Educating with Moral Values, Setting Sail for International Education Journey

Hello, I am Arsenio Summigan,

 I am the principal of Weihai Zhongshi Foreign School,

 And I am from the Philippines.

September 10th is Teacher’s Day,

 And I am here to share with you,

Some of my experiences as a teacher and administrator.

Weihai Zongshi Foreign School is considered an international school. So, right now we have about 156 students, and they mostly come from Korea. About 80% of our students are from Korea. The rest come from different parts of the world like Japan, Brazil, Mexico, and Germany. So, there are ten countries that are represented in our school.

Weihai Zongshi Foreign School also has about 25 international teachers, and they come from many different parts of the world. We have teachers from the Philippines, from the UK, from Italy, from Brazil, and from Mexico. All of our teachers are highly experienced, and most of them have been at the school for more than five years.

We are a Cambridge school. So, aside from the academic courses that we provide to our students, we have special courses like orchestra. Orchestra is taught in primary school and middle school. We have debate, which is also offered from primary to middle school.

And aside from that, we have various electives, and our electives are actually student-led. Our high school students actually choose an elective that they want to pursue, or they want other students to learn, and then they create a program for this elective. And this is very—I think this is particular to our school—because we want our students to have the opportunity to come up with their own electives and basically run them.

Their electives, well, aside from these, we have other special programs. We have what we call the “Accelerate” program. Our Accelerate program is basically for those students in middle school who are not really good at English—their English is below B1. Therefore, we provide them an opportunity to learn English and improve their skills quickly so that they can join regular classes.

We also have the ECC. The ECC is a class that we offer to high school students from grades nine to twelve. Now, the students who go to ECC classes are those whose English levels are not yet good enough to access Cambridge materials in high school. So, we provide them an opportunity whereby they can improve their English by attending special classes.

We also have what we call the “One Plus Three” program. I think this may not be unique to our school, but this is a special program that we have. In the One Plus Three program, we assign one teacher to every three students. So, in this initiative or program, the teacher and the three students meet regularly, usually during lunchtime, and they talk about many things. This is an opportunity for the teacher to get to know more about the students, learn about their problems and issues, and provide them guidance.

We have seen that this program has been very successful because our students have become closer to their teachers. The teachers have gained the trust of our students, so there’s good communication, a strong relationship between the students and the teachers.

So, what makes a teacher happy?  One thing is when I see that the students are having fun in the classroom. That makes me very happy because it means that they are enjoying the lessons. And when they are engaged, you know, you don’t have any problems with their behavior. You will hear a lot of laughter in the classroom when students are working together, when students are engaged in the lessons, and sometimes when they are learning by themselves. Seeing the students working together, having fun, enjoying themselves—that makes me so happy.