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Announcing a World-Wide Search for Our Expanding Upper School Faculty

In 2014 veteran educator, inspirational principal, and dynamic leader, Wang Cuijuan, founded Zhongshan International to create a primary school that would inspire passion in young children by being a happy, warm, and motivational place full of singing, laughter, and reading; a school where teachers and students can grow up together; and where students, with their own love of learning, participate eagerly in a mutually cooperative community of knowledgeable and courageous teachers.  From her brilliant vision, she created a primary school that, like the strong Chinese cedar tree which serves as the name (Zhongshan) and logo of the school,  stands tall and survives against the harshest elements in nature. During the first three short years of the school’s history, the primary school has grown very quickly into a truly remarkable and wonderful place to go to school and from 30 to over 1000 students.

In the fall of 2017, using that same indomitable spirit, Wang Cuijuan assembled a team to design, plan, and build from the ground up an entirely new middle and high school to ensure the brilliant education of the primary students could continue through to graduation.  The new $8.5 million USD Middle/Upper School building is nearing  completion with the goal of opening in the spring of 2019 complete with an ice arena, rugby pitch, an indoor basketball court, full-sized theater for performing arts, dormitory, and dining hall.

The upper and middle schools enjoyed an excellent soft-launch in the fall of 2018 with a small number of pioneering students.  This intentional slow start was designed to accommodate both the physical building construction as well as the educational program.  They would start small and build over time just like the primary school. This development plan was selected to allow for the school to evolve properly to meet the expectations of everyone involved with the singular mission.  Toward that, the school embarked on a plan to find and recruit unique and dynamic inaugural teachers eager to be a part of this new school.   That team worked diligently to build the educational model plan for the middle and upper school.  The upper school will run a very unique new curriculum model rooted in systems thinking.   More exacting details than that which follow will be supplied to interested candidates.    Therefore, we are particularly looking for teachers who are versed in systems thinking or are eager to become so — which will require reading several books and articles and preparing in advance with quite a bit of summer work.  The 9th grade curriculum has been designed to ease everyone (pupils and teachers which we call sages) into the systems model by overlaying the linear approach (the current standard world-wide model) with key elements of the systems model.

Initially, candidates should consider the school motto:  boundless • fearless • selfless, and imagine a school that holds these three ideas as central and germane to everything we do.  Likewise, we intend to establish an educational model that shuns ‘boxes’ meaning the boundaries that prevent the interaction and flow between knowledge and students in all ways.

We intend to offer a secondary education that graduates students capable of being  contributors to global society rather than students who are simply prepared for college or university in the traditional liberal arts sense.

To find out if you are a good candidate we would ask all potential applicants to consider the following questions.

Firstly, do you want to be a trailblazer?  Do you want to make a mark and be involved with something truly new and innovative?  Are you open to a whole new way to do school?  We call it a school without boxes.  And we mean it as literally and figuratively as we can.  And by a box we mean anything that contains things and boundaries which prevent them from mixing together.

Ask yourself these straightforward question and answer honestly:  do you want to teach a pre-set curriculum of knowledge, mastery of which will lead to good grades in your class?  Do you think that your classroom is your kingdom and students missing your class for other things like field trips or trips abroad or even to talk with other teachers negatively impacts your course and is very rude and disrespectful?   If  you answered “yes” to any of these questions, then, with regrets, we would probably suggest that you consider other, more traditional schools.

If, however, you want to guide students to build skills they will need to solve global and network problems; to become leaders, entrepreneurs, and innovators; and to emerge from our school as independent yet collaborative, focused yet globally-minded, self-motivated, fearless, selfless students who know no boundaries, then you may be a good fit.

Next, ask yourself, do you want to live and teach in Beijing, the massive capital city of China, in the far western region close to the mountains / Shijingshan District?  Are you comfortable teaching English as a Second Language students who are mostly Chinese whose parents have incredibly high expectations for their children and their school?  Do you respond well to a fluid and ever-changing environment?  If you answered “no” to any of  these questions, then revisit the last paragraph’s ideas and ask a final question.  Can you overlook city and societal challenges because these ideas are more than offset any other misgivings you may have?  If “yes” to either then please apply.

We will be looking only at bilingual or native English speaking candidates preferably with a masters degree and a minimum of two years of teaching experience.  We will be asking candidates to complete some surveys and answer a great many questions to establish fit prior to conducting interviews.  In order to ensure that you will be happy in our school, we politely ask that you be truly honest with yourself in this process because we would rather have teachers who are energized by these possibilities than those who arrive and are then tempted to resort to their past traditions and notions about a school which will lead to consequences we hope to avoid.   In our school, it won’t work to bring suggestions about how you prefer to do things based on your past experiences.  This is a totally different kind of school, and you won’t be doing much of anything that you used to do before in the way you used to do it.  That might sound negative or dismissive of your experience, and we don’t mean it to sound that way.   We just want to make certain that candidates are aware of the differences and ideas before hand.

As for specialties, we are looking for teachers who don’t singularly identify themselves by their subject area or discipline and prefer teachers who view themselves as hybrid teachers who can cross disciplines into more general groups of  STEM / STEAM and humanities.

Lastly, we are looking for energetic, enthusiastic people who value students most and want to teach in a school where students absolutely come first.

If these ideas intrigue you and interest you, please reach out to us as soon as you can to begin the application and interviewing process.

We are presently looking for candidates with strong backgrounds in integrated science and math/engineering and English language arts and communications to begin in the fall of 2019.

Please send résumé and / or C.V. with detailed letter of interest to our attention.

zhongshanis@bjzsis.com

Thank you, in advance, for your time and consideration.