Amesbury Digest - 21 October 2019

Kia ora koutou

This will be a brief editorial. I am writing this as I am rushing out the door to catch a plane. Urs and I are off to China tonight for a variety of activities. In the first instance, we are going over to speak, at the International Confederation of Principals’ Convention being held in Shanghai, about our very successful Coaching Leadership Project. However, we now also have a number of other speaking engagements in Beijing, Guangzhou and Ganzhou. We will be doing workshops with teachers and school leaders, salons with Chinese parents, and visiting a range of traditional and innovative schools in each place we visit. We are going to one primary school with over 4000 students – pretty normal for China.

We are excited to be catching up with Dr Yinuo Li, director for China for the Melinda and Bill Gates Foundation, who visited our school earlier in the year. We will be visiting two of her innovative and modern learning environments – which we are very excited about. Children from her ETU School, Beijing, will take us for a tour of the Forbidden City on Sunday morning; and we have other sightseeing planned at the weekends. We are also going to spend a couple of days with staff from Gannan Normal University, meet with faculty and share about Amesbury School’s learning approaches. Oh, and we will be catching up with the father of one of Amesbury's international students in Shanghai for traditional Shanghai food and talk about education. All in all, an incredibly busy time, but very exciting! I just hope I have the stamina for it! We will be back at school on the 4th of November.

If time and internet tools allow, we will put up some blog posts of our trip. A big thanks to the Board of Trustees for helping to make this trip possible.

Demelza Topp and Lisa Bengtsson will be holding the fort while we are away. So please contact them if anything comes up that is urgent. They will be able to make contact with us if necessary.

Ka kite anō. We will see you again.

Ngā mihi

Lesley and Urs