This interactive and exploratory session will be of interest to those wanting to explore private/bilingual school models within the mainland China educational landscape. The session aims to invite dialogue and prompt collective reflection on future society and culture-building within schools.

In 2021, Daystar Academy embarked on a bold experiment within the Mainland China context: to embed a cohesive Social Innovation Framework across its entire K-12 journey. This was not merely an educational initiative. It was an act of balancing multiple standards and an attempt to reclaim and reimagine our school’s core ethos.

Five years later, we pause to share insights from this complex journey. While we anticipated growth in student projects, the most profound outcome was unexpected: this framework didn’t just supplement our curriculum; it began to quietly transform our school’s very identity. It became the engine for a unifying culture, aligning leadership, teaching, and the parent community around a shared language of care and agency that is unique within the China context.

This session is a story of emerging coherence against a complex backdrop. We’ll share our story with a few tangible examples of how a focused, human-centric vision can, over time, cultivate a resilient and purposeful school community.

You will leave with:

• Reflective questions to consider how a core vision can cultivate cohesion and identity in your own setting, even within challenging landscapes.