Hello, everyone, my name is Marta Medved Krajnovic. I'm the head of Western Academy of Beijing. I am delighted to be here again with you. And I would like to congratulate KingLead on the Eleventh Forum on Cultivating Innovative Talent.

I think this is my third time with this forum, and I feel that every time that we meet, we know more about how to cultivate innovative talent, because we share our experiences and learn from each other. This year, WAB will be represented by my colleague Mr. Steven Taylor, who is our Director of Innovation in Learning and Teaching. Mr. Taylor will be talking about "Learning Innovation For A Changing World" and he will be mostly focusing on how to cultivate innovative talent in students. What I would like to do in this brief address is to mention another group that is extremely important in cultivating innovative talent in students and that is our teachers.

In order to have innovative schools, we have to have teachers who are ready to teach in these kinds of schools. The role of the teacher in innovative schools is changing significantly. Teachers are not anymore someone who comes to the classroom, stands in front of the students and delivers knowledge. Teachers are becoming partners in learning, they are becoming mentors to the students, they are becoming that trusted adult who will motivate the student to ask deeper and deeper inquiry questions.

So, what does WAB do in order to get the right type of teachers and cultivate the talent in teachers. We focus on several things, and one of the first things that we focus on is hiring the right type of teachers, we call them "WAB fit" teachers. These are the teachers who are always ready to try new things and they are not afraid of making mistakes in our teaching and learning and then learning from those mistakes. We also hiring very diverse teachers, because true innovation only happens when a lot of different professionals work together and think together. So our teachers come from different types of professional backgrounds and they have all been teaching in different types of schools.

After we hire and have the right teachers in our school another thing that we focus on is professional development of teachers. Teachers can engage in more traditional professional development, such as conferences, seminars, forums. But what we have seen in the past few years that teachers learn best and most actually, from each other. So in our school, a lot of teachers work together, cooperate and collaborate together to teach the students and they also teach together.

A lot of our teachers are working in learning communities, which means that they are all responsible for a larger group of students, and not only one or two teachers work together, but five to six teachers work together.

In order for our teachers to be ready to work in such an environment, they need to feel trusted, so it's very important for a school that the school leadership develops the atmosphere of trust. And the teachers feel ready to try new things, and if the things do not go well, they try again and they feel that trying, failing, trying again, iterating and innovating is just a part of the of the process. So far I've mentioned four important things, teacher recruitment, recruiting innovative teachers, recruiting diverse teachers and professional development of teachers. The trust, that the school needs to build as a culture of the school.

And the last thing that I would like to mention is teacher well-being. In order for teachers to teach well, they need to feel well. The same is for the students. In order for students to learn well, they need to feel well. Last couple of years have been very stressful for the educational environment. In addition to demands on innovation and changes in the curriculum, we also had the pandemic and constant worry.

Whether we will need to teach on campus or online, all of that has brought a lot of pressure on the teachers. We have to be very careful to and be mindful to create opportunities within the school day and after the school day for teachers to take care of their well-being.

With this focus on well-being and actually on joy in teaching and learning, I would like to also congratulate De Sheng Education and De Sheng school (International) on their twentieth and tenth anniversary. And I would like to wish them a lot of success in cultivating innovative talent in their context.

Thank you.

Good afternoon and thank you very much for having us here at the Innovation Talents Forum. We would like to say a big thank you to KingLead for inviting us to speak here. You've heard a short video for my head of school, Dr. Marta Medved Krajnovic. And I have a short presentation about the learning innovations that we have here at Western Academy of Beijing, and how we're looking towards to the future, as the future is very much in a changing state.

My name is Steven Taylor and I' m the Director of Innovation in Learning and Teaching here at WAB. I have the great privilege of working with amazing kids, amazing teachers, amazing community members, and some amazing spaces and innovations. When we think about innovation and learning innovations for a changing world, what we're really thinking about is building on the foundations in an international school that was begun and all the way back in 1994.

My presentation today is to think about how do we set some of the foundations at our school to nurture those innovative talents. They come across our students, our teachers, our community, so that we can be prepared for the future as it changes. We'll share more links and examples as we go along. One of the things that we think about a lot is this idea that we're in a very rapidly changing world. We wonder about what are our children going to face as they grow up. There's lots of discussions around the future of education, the future of learning, but also the future of work by technology industry and much more. I was reading recently Kai-Fu Lee and Chen Qiufan’s book AI 2041, and it was imagining a future in 2041 of all the different ways in which artificial intelligences, machine learning and various other technologies would have an influence on the world. I was reflecting on the image perhaps of the child in the photo here. As she grows up into this world, she could be any one of the characters in this story. We think about the influences that this might have on our world as we change. And what do we need to be prepared for? What do we need to be teaching our students? And how do we need them to be able to adapt and embrace and lead in a world where the future might be quite uncertain？

But we think about the anxieties that students carry with them, about the state of the world - things like climate anxiety, the way the world is, the geopolitics and all that the different problems that kids worry about, aside from the financial or future employment stresses. So this world is changing faster than it's ever changed before. And sometimes schools haven't changed as much as we imagine they should. But learning innovation is a really rich field. There were many things that have happened. I think here's an example that people haven't seen before - the HolonIQ, global learning landscape. There's an entire world of different types of learning innovations. One of the jobs of our school, schools like us and people in my role - is to look around, find out what are these innovations that will make a difference. What's the kind of thing that's going help us to move forwards and prepare our students for the future. And we think, most importantly, about learning innovation, we have to think about the heart and soul of our school. Everything that we choose, you can see the missions there. It's up on the screen there. The school was founded on a very, very powerful mission to connect, inspire, challenge, and really make a difference in the world. Alongside our mission, we have these five core values. From the very beginning, WAB has been quite innovative, and ensuring that every learner is in the center and all members of the community are learners.

But this is really putting our child to the center of teaching and learning. There's the WAB spirit, which means working hard and working together - that we can achieve great things if everybody pitches in and takes the risks and tries the new learning. Caring is incredibly important to us, especially now in the world. What type of the role do schools like ours play in the world? Are we making things better? What is it that we can share beyond our walls and into the world beyond us?

A Mosaic Diversity is incredibly important to us, not just diversity of student population or community population, but diverse ways of thinking, talking being, learning, finally, to the China global coherence. Thinking about that role of an effective international school, what place do we play in the world beyond us? How does our orientation in time and place here in China influence the teaching and learning that takes place in our school? To have a whole China Studies Department allows our learning teaching to be connected to modern China and traditional China.

For the rest of the presentation, I'm going to showcase a few of the innovations that we have here at WAB. The photo in this Powerpoint, you can see one of our design STEAM teachers in the elementary school, working on some circuits with the students. That might be a traditional vision when people think innovation is, but when we think about innovation and teaching and learning, we think about those big innovations, and the little things. In WAB, we have many of those examples. Sometimes we have the big innovations like changing schedules or redesigning full spaces. But really what's happened in the classroom every single day with the children, those little iterative moments of bringing the joy in the purpose to teaching and learning is also highly innovative.

Over the last 6 years, the school's been going through the process we've called Flow21, the Future of Learning at WAB, and 21 targets that we set out for ourselves. Now we're in the year 2021 and we're also starting to rethink or to think forwards about what's our new strategic direction, how do we build upon those future learning goals as a school and help them connect to this rapidly changing future of the world. Everybody knows that COVID-19 and all the problems that we currently face in terms of challenging recruitment and movement of all of those things provides new challenges for us, but also for our students. What's the impact this is having on their learning experiences and on their thinking about what's coming in the future.

As we've been going through this journey our accreditation partners have been to. We can see this idea of agency as school is becoming a more and more important.  Agency for the learners involving voice, choice and ownership of what they do. Sometimes the most innovative thinker is in the room. They might not be the loudest kid. They might be the one who's sitting there thinking how do I solve this problem? What's the new way that I can approach this? How do I notice something differently? 

As we make lots of changes and lots of innovations of WAB, we have to make sure that we do lots of clear communication. I'll share on the screen. There's a QR code in the link. And that gos to our various communications channels, such as WAB News, and it's on WeChat as well. But what we have started over the last 2 years is a WAB Podcast. The Podcast is an example of a place where we get guests in every single week from within our school community and sometimes beyond to talk about some of the innovations that we have in teaching and learning. Most recently we think about some of the mathematical innovations that have happened in our grade five. We've had learning communities, ways in which entire spaces change and how we talk about the roles of technology.

So if you want to see some of the things that are happening, we have a very good communications department and collect audio, and write lots of stories about what's going on. And we share as much of that as we can so that people can see. Another part of communication are these global conversations. 2 years ago, we hosted the Future of Education Now conference. And we were fortunate that this happened just before COVID-19, and we were able to bring people from schools that were really trying out these ideas together. We also had some world leaders on the stage. There's a photo there of Jane Goodall talking to some of the students. At the same time, we have people thinking about AI machine learning for the future of employment and work. But most importantly, those students are really trying to make a difference and share their stories along the way.

Most recently, we hosted the same conversations as the Future of Education Now and that is an online conference. It was co-hosted with AAIE, the association for Advancement of International Education. What made this one special was that we were not limited by geographic location, and participants came from all over the world. They took part in different time zones. We had a steering committee that was globally represented. But in every single session, we put the students towards the front. One of the things that we believe about nurturing innovative talents and nurturing innovation for the future is that the students absolutely must be not just the focus of our conversations, but the drivers of much of this change.

Alongside that, then the relationships that we have with our accreditation partners, they really help take those innovative steps forwards, when the school is established and we're able to think about these kinds of problems. As we move forwards, we'll be using the NEASC and IB collaborative learning protocol, which takes a real focus look on how does the school stretch itself beyond compliance into really rethinking with the global standards, the local context, what makes the future of teaching and learning happen? 

At the same time, working with the Council of International Schools, taking a deep dive into global citizenship and exploring that work of diversity, equity, inclusion, justice. What role is our school playing in the broader landscape? And how do we challenge ourselves and hold ourselves accountable to do the best that we could be? To make all of that happen, though, we really need energized and excited teachers. We're very happy that we have the facilities available here and the ability to recruit teachers who are experienced, but at the same time, also actively growing as they teach and learn. We're a place where we can have teachers who are workshop leaders and, but also to celebrate learning together through innovative ways of sharing practice. We have WAB labs, which is an example of teaching teachers or workshops that are hosted together, as well as more social things using the technologies that we have as well. Our teachers are able to connect to lots of professional development opportunities. And then we plug all of those together trying to make it frictionless.

One of the things that really works in terms of nurturing innovative talent is having an environment that inspires people to learn. And it's a nice connection between modern learning and Chinese elements of design across our entire campus. The image that we have here in the picture is a middle school playground that was designed part by our students as a response to needing more to do in the break times and lunch times. And when the students said we need a place to play, the school was able to say "Yes, let's make it happen." That inspired much more action around designing outdoor spaces and spaces that can give us this inspiring environment in which we can teach and learn. It starts to be used in ways that we didn't quite predict. And there's ways inspired further learning and further questioning.

But at the same time inside our buildings, lots of the spaces have been redesigned and rethought.  At the beginning of some of the work with Flow21 we engaged an architect - Rosan Bosch. Her book here is Designing for a Better World Starts at School. She came and helped us build purpose, build mathematics learning spaces, guided people through a process of using the theory of knowledge, areas of knowledge and ways of knowing to think about how spaces could be shaped.

And since then much more in the way of our spaces are changing and innovative. Everything is writeable, everything is flexible. Students are able to group and regroup. That gives them a lot more agency in their learning, but to be able to use that, we need a high-quality holistic curriculum. We believe the innovation is not just in the preserve of the sciences and design classes. Innovation happens in every single class. There's those ways of thinking and those ways of approaching problems. That we purposely allow students to connect ideas together. The holistic program framework is that we get from the IB. They actually very much encourage these ways of teaching and learning approaches to teaching and learning that are very powerful. That is underpinned, though, by the use of lots of high-quality technologies.

Over the years, especially in the last couple of years with COVID, we've seen a necessity to streamline technologies rather than have things to be too wild, to make sure that our ecosystem of technology talks to each other and it's very much still work in progress. But we find that our technology - our Apple Devices, Microsoft Software and various infrastructure with the office tools is really helping us move forward. They integrate well, but allow teachers and students to ask questions that they want to ask, not just be limited by what the technology tools can do.

Then we come back to this idea of the rapidly changing world. We're not just innovating for innovation's sake. We're not just looking for things that look good. We really want to think about this idea of innovation with a purpose. As the world moves forward, students can see these ideas that environmental degradation and so on happen. They want to be able to make difference. This is an example on the screen of the innovation with purpose from a recent beginning of the pursuit towards precious plastics. One of our teachers here is leading an innovative project, and then the high school students are teaching the younger students about how we can capture this plastic waste and cycle it into other materials. Alongside that, we have an incredible number of service of learning, clubs and organizations. We were all looking for ways in which they can make the difference in the most positive ways possible. Sometimes that involves technology. Many of the times it doesn't. An innovation at that stage is just asking those questions and iterating and paying attention to the impacts that we have and how we do things ethically. Throughout everything, we need to include our parents and including the parents is one of our philosophies of the school. And as much as possible, we open the doors to them to be able to observe the learning and to take part in all types of decision making the school as well as lots and lots of workshops. They understand what's going on. Throughout communication channels, we often share to our parents what's going on with the imagery and the videos. When it comes time to be able to open up ideas and seek feedback, we’re very active in that space. That gives us the reassurance that what we're doing is giving us a baseline of parental support, and then the opportunity to take the next adventure and bring them along the way.

This is an example in the picture of another one of our flexible learning spaces. Flexibility is incredibly important to how teaching and learning can happen. It looks like there's lots of different things happening in that classroom. For that group of students, they're all united to the same goal, but they've been taught along the way about the approaches to teaching and approaches to learning, but also about how to regulate themselves as learners, how to choose and use learning strategies, that allow them to adapt to other situations.

As we aim at this conceptual understanding, this is underpinned by high quality knowledge and skills. We’re really aiming at a world of transfer. How do they transfer their knowledge and skills into new contexts? These kids here were just 11 years old. They're getting themselves well prepared for a future ahead. Just the other day, we had a meeting with a group of students and a group of teachers collaborative planning the next set of units for grade six. And those kinds of empowering opportunities allow the kids to really push things forwards. They show us what they can do. Even up towards the high school we think about the importance of collaborative learning skills. We have elements of competition throughout the academics, sports, and opportunities of the school. But we teach kids how we use the technologies, tools, strategies, interactions in different ways of learning, ways of knowing to work together and make a better outcome.

Interdisciplinary is incredibly important. When we put the learning into separate boxes and we still have a reasonably traditional schedule, it can make it harder for students to make those explicit connections. Teaching for transfer is incredibly difficult. But the most powerful ways in which we can help students transfer their learning, their knowledge skills is through these interdisciplinary connections. When the students know what's happening and they know that the teachers know the connections between what they're doing, then they start to build that connection themselves, and they begin to take those skills from one subject to the next and the learning accelerates because of it. 

To allow for more of this, we change the schedule of the school. We have a 9 day rotation in the middle school and high school. And that 9 day rotation includes eight regular school days, but one day out of that cycle when students build the schedules for themselves. We're exploring what might happen next. If we take that learning even further, how do we put more control into the hands of students? While the expert teachers are monitoring and paying attention to documenting what goes on, they can make learning decisions forwards. Similarly, the use of learning data and paying a close attention to what data tells us allows us to be informed in different ways. It sounds like a very busy place. And it's very exciting, vital place to be. And when we start to learn to let go of control and see the amazing things that happen - it's wonderful, but it doesn't mean that it's all go all the time. We recognize the importance of foundation of literacy, those quiet moments to teach those skills of self-regulation or the ideas that we can stop and read, and that we can look into the world in quiet ways is also an important part of holistic well-being and being a happy, healthy human being.

Now we come towards the end of the slide. It shows the place that we are engaging ourselves in the futures thinking. At the moment, we're finishing up a process of renewal of our strategic plan. At this time, in the design of our strategic planning, we purposely went to the students. They were trained to lead future's thinking, and portrait of workshops. And through these workshops that the students have led and put together, we've collected over 100 portraits of what we're trying to have of the students in the future. Those students are thinking about what might be coming towards them in the future, and how does our school need to adapt and evolve? And that led us to this point. Just recently, our students then took all of this learning data analysis to the board level. And our students are now working with the board and sketching out the ideas of the next strategic plan for the future of the school. We're really excited to see how the next steps of innovation in learning and teaching here at WAB developed, especially when we give more of the control to the students in the direction of the school always underpinned by a mission of core values.

There's a lot going on the WAB. There's plenty to share. I've missed out so much, and it's just my privilege to share the work of all the others across our community. 

Thank you very much. Thank you for everything that you're doing, KingLead, and I hope you enjoy the afternoon.