An Oasis in the Chaos
In a time when the consensus is that the education system is broken, I found a flourishing land inside a public school in Beijing. This is how it happened.
I heard about Beijing Academy last fall when I was working on The Compassion Project, searching for innovative methods to educate youth. I finally had a chance to visit this place in January, and everything I found out about it makes me want to travel back in time and become a student at the school.
It was a cold-winter day, below 15C. At 9 AM, I checked in with security and got picked up by Ms. Xu, a teacher at the school and my tour guide for the day. Stepping into a four-storey building, I was immediately attracted to the photos on the wall. Each one captured a moment in students’ daily life.
Unlike any other schools I had visited in China, my first impression of this school was that it had an amazing environment. Beijing Academy is an integration of the best of Eastern and Western education. It provides a space to foster innovation while preserving Eastern classics and philosophy.
I didn’t realize the vastness of the school until I stood in the courtyard. There are two four-storey-high buildings, a 400-person ceremony hall that can also be used as an indoor gym, a cafeteria equipped with technology to streamline the purchasing process, a soon-to-be-opened Chinese quadrangles (四合院) for classics study, and a two-leveled library with a quiet learning space on the first floor. I did not even have time to fully examine every building. It was that breathtakingly big.
Beijing Academy has converted a whole classroom into a maker’s space called the “Crowd Innovation Center.” This space is filled with digital components, tools, and materials that students can use to build their technology products. Following the STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math) education model, the school further uses this space as a way to connect students with the digital world. I like to think of it as the MIT Media Lab for middle school students. The school even has a visiting MIT professor teach a physics class to 14-year-olds, which is not uncommon considering there are many elite educators who come and teach frequently.
The school keeps a small class size with a ratio of 25 students to 1 teacher. So, teachers now can pay attention to every student in the classroom and play an advising and guiding role to support students’ goals.
And grades are no longer the single measurement for success. At Beijing Academy, students are given choices and personal responsibilities in their learning journeys. They set their own learning goals, and their teachers help them to meet these goals by employing various personalized instructions and academic strategies in the classroom.
Learning through experience is also another highlight of the school. Students have opportunities to plan trips to other cities, and they can ask a teacher to assist them in the planning process if they find they need help. As a highlight of this travel program, many students have enjoyed getting to experience camping in the woods or exploring historic sites. What an amazing way to learn leadership, teamwork, and citizenship!
Founded in 2013, Beijing Academy is built around the vision of “Better Me, Better World” (世界因我更美好). It reminds me of the Stanford GSB motto, “Change Lives. Change Organizations. Change the World.” 270 students from diverse socio-economic backgrounds are currently enrolled in the school, and expansion of the campus is underway. I am excited to see what will happen to the students in the future.
