High aspirations for a brand-new academic year at Hiba

After a wonderful summer holiday, teachers and pupils are all in high spirits and are fully prepared for the new academic year. As Hiba Academy Shanghai steps into its second year, we warmly welcome back every founding member as well as all our new arrivals.

In early August, we welcomed more than 30 new teachers who have brought with them new energy to our school. This year, our Chinese teacher team’s experience and knowledge continues to deepen as 60% of our new Chinese teacher arrivals have previously held the leadership positions. The average teaching experience of our Chinese teachers continues to exceed 10 years.

Over 80% of our new international teachers come from the UK, and a third of them were recommended by our present teachers. In our second academic year, the average teaching experience of our international teachers is also above 10 years.

At Hiba, we place great emphasis on our teachers’ enthusiasm for bilingual education which is regulated strictly according to our high standards. Thus, our teachers strive to explore new and existing ways to practise it well. If they lack such passion, it’s not possible for them to improve themselves or encourage pupils to tackle any difficulties that they may encounter during their educational journey.

In the process of interviewing new international teachers, we know that some of them received offers from both international schools and bilingual schools. However, they chose to pursue a career in bilingual education by joining Hiba. This enables us to proudly say that we possess an outstanding teaching team who strive to achieve their vision of bilingual education.

If I am asked to describe our teachers’ traits, I would say that: professional, confident, open-minded and inclusive are the perfect words to use. On the one hand, they are all talented teachers meticulously selected by us and who are all confident in their respective teaching fields. As always, we advocate a highly professional teaching attitude and strive to put them in the right positions, believing in them and giving them space to develop their own abilities.ery open-minded and inclusive. In the multicultural environment, they are willing to explore and learn new things while expanding their own knowledge. This process makes them better adapted to the educational requirements of a new era. Only when we combine the qualities of confidence and inclusiveness can we truly leverage the advantages of both the Chinese and Western education systems.

Along with welcoming more teachers in the new term, we also have more pupils joining us at Hiba. Our Primary and Junior High pupils now occupy every corner of our campus and continue to be full of vigour and vitality. Grade 1 pupils, who finished their nursery schooling, will now embrace their primary school life independently and will shoulder their due responsibilities as a primary pupil.

Equally importantly, Hiba’s founding pupils return to encounter new schoolmates, new learning challenges and new opportunities for self-improvement. We expect that these pupils will become role models and will pass on the Hiba values of Courage, Integrity, Respect, Kindness and Responsibility to their new peers. Meanwhile, we also believe that new pupils will acclimatise themselves to the school with the help of their teachers and schoolmates.

We look forward to witnessing the bravery of every pupil as they challenge themselves at Hiba school and show that they can continuously focus on becoming better versions of themselves.