20191108: Clever use of event strategies to promote school development

Archimedes once said, "Give me a fulcrum and I can move the whole earth." If this is used as a metaphor, the principal is always looking for a way to move the school forward. Appropriate "fulcrums" and "levers" exert a force of a certain magnitude and direction to achieve the purpose of "leveraging" the development of the school. Some key events in the development process of a school can often become the "fulcrum" and "leverage" for the principal to draw on. From another perspective, if we borrow the perspective of systematics, the school is still a "dissipative structure" - a structure that needs to be maintained by external "energy flow" or "material flow" to maintain an orderly structure. Therefore, within the framework of the school's own theme culture construction, the process of allocating certain human, material and other resources to support its development has become a "systematic project" in which a series of "key events" are planned to be utilized and even created. ”, and then constitute an “energy flow” or “material flow”, which can become an “event strategy” to help the school develop in an orderly manner.

A "lost" stone tablet

On August 24, 2016, I "parachuted" to serve as the principal of Xiting Junior Middle School in Tongzhou District, Nantong City. Xiting Junior High School is a typical rural school. Although it has a history of 60 years, it has not formed a school culture system with its own clear expression and logo. And because of the continuous advancement of urbanization, the number of students is decreasing year by year, and the proportion of left-behind children and children of migrant farmers is increasing. Having just arrived at Xiting Junior High School, I believe that in order to inject excellent genes into the development of the school, the first important thing is to sort out the history of the school and construct the school culture, such as the establishment of the school motto. To this end, I began in-depth interviews with teachers and a search for historical roots.

What the teachers talked about the most was Zhang Jian, the number one scholar in the late Qing Dynasty who studied and lived in the small town of Xiting when he was a boy, and the stele "Xiting East Bridge Inscription" inscribed by him. When Zhang Jian's brothers were repairing and expanding their ancestral home, they followed their father's last wish and converted the wooden bridge in their hometown town into a stone bridge. Because there was also a stone bridge on the west side of the town at that time, this bridge was called the East Bridge. Zhang Jian wrote the "Inscription on the West Pavilion and the East Bridge" for this purpose and placed it beside the bridge. As time goes by, things change and people change. Later, when Xiting Town was renovated and the East Bridge was demolished, the stele "Xiting East Bridge Inscription" was discovered. At that time, people just regarded it as a large bluestone slab, which was carried by the supply and marketing cooperative as a platform for whisking sugar when making Xiting shortbread. Later, someone discovered that it turned out to be the stele "Xiting East Bridge Inscription" written by Zhang Jian. After the stone tablet was rediscovered, it was moved to the campus of Xiting Junior High School and preserved today after consultation with the local government.

What the teachers talked about most was the glorious history of Xiting Junior High School. In the history of Tongzhou education, another major event happened almost at the same time as the eighth curriculum reform - ordinary high schools running private junior high schools. Later, some statistics showed that if there are both high schools and junior high schools in the same town, the junior high schools are almost all "eaten up" by the private junior high schools of the high schools. Xiting Junior High School has become almost the only exception! Although today's Xiting Junior High School is facing certain difficulties due to the social trend of urbanization, it was still able to survive today under the squeeze of Xiting High School, an old four-star high school and private junior high school. According to Darwin's "survival of the fittest" "If you extrapolate this reason, you can imagine the strong survival ability of Xiting Junior High School back then!

Regarding the collection of school mottos, we suggest that you search for them from Zhang Jian’s collected works, based on the stele "Xiting Dongqiao Inscription" and the historical relationship between Zhang Jian and Xiting. I agree with everyone's thinking, but I also clearly suggest that the "school motto" should also reflect Xiting Junior High School's own education accumulation in the past sixty years. After repeated deliberation and screening, we selected the word "diligence" from Zhang Jian's "Be loyal, never bully, strive for excellence" as the school motto, which is fully capable of inheriting and expressing the school history of Xiting Junior High School in the past sixty years. At the same time, based on the current situation of the school, the overall goal of "building an exquisite, modern, and open advanced school" is proposed, which specifically includes "enhancing management, improving classrooms, improving courses, improving classrooms, and improving services, and strives to achieve an advanced life for teachers and students." And because Xiting Junior High School is the Tao Xingzhi Research Experimental School in Jiangsu Province. "Unity of knowledge and action, striving for excellence" has become the essence of the school spirit.

At this point, because a once "lost" stone tablet triggered a cultural encounter across time and space, Xiting Junior High School has its own theme cultural construction direction-"Refined Knowledge".

Calabash Science and Technology has been “established”

On May 24, 2019, an announcement on the website of the Jiangsu Provincial Department of Education made the people of Xiting Junior High School really happy for a while! The "Development and Construction of Calabash Science and Art Curriculum" applied by Xiting Junior High School successfully passed the review of the "Weak Junior High School Quality Improvement Project" and was identified as a 2019 connotation construction project in Jiangsu Province. In fact, "Calabash Science and Technology" was not originally called "Calabash Science and Technology", but "Dongqiao Laoyu"; "Dongqiao Laoyu" was not originally called "Dongqiao Laoyu", but was called "Ghost Town on the Land of Jianghai" Dipper painting". It's a long story...

In order to promote students' interest cultivation, I vigorously carry out club activities in the school, especially the club activities for the first grade of junior high school are included in the curriculum. Every Friday afternoon, the first , the second class is divided into classes. Because the time was guaranteed, the traveling club was very successful. However, due to the school's funding constraints and the financial conditions of the families of Xiting Junior High School students, children's interest cultivation is mainly focused on "low-cost, easy-to-use" projects. In order to expand the content of club activities, I also actively consulted experts and scholars. For example, after an art teaching exchange activity, I asked researchers and trainers at the city and district levels to help me with ideas. After learning that our school’s art teacher Ye Chun’s hometown is in Chongqing, the researcher suggested that Teacher Ye could try to organically integrate elements of Bayu culture and Jianghai culture, and perhaps find a new way out.

In this way, the "Ghost Town Ladle Painting" from Fengdu, Chongqing, whose "ancestral home" is Fengdu, Chongqing, entered the art class of Xiting Junior High School. But Teacher Ye encountered two problems. One is that Nantong people don't like "ghosts"; the other is that the gourds are too expensive. Teacher Zhai from the physical education group gave it a new name - Dongqiao Laoying. "Dongqiao" comes from the stele inscribed by Zhang Jian, and the word "ying" is extremely elegant. Later, Teacher Ye picked it up from Taobao. I found a paper scoop, a substitute for painting scoops, on the Internet, and thus the two problems were solved. The gourds are made of gourds. After leading the children to draw on the paper gourds for a while, Teacher Ye started painting and pyrography on the gourds with the children. A new problem has arisen. In the face of large quantity demand, gourds are quite expensive!

Once, Dr. Kuang Hongjun from Beijing Normal University passed by Nantong, and I invited him to come to campus. After listening to my introduction about students painting on gourds, they asked me "Why don't you plant a piece of gourd?" What a "Why don't you plant a piece of gourd?" Yes! As a biology teacher, I can lead students to plant a gourd on campus! The life of green flowering plants allows students to seriously "participate" in it, and their ideas can be opened up. I remember that night, the sudden inspiration made me so excited that I couldn't sleep all night. Early the next morning, I discussed with teachers from biology, chemistry, physics, music, art and other subjects, and a multi-disciplinary school-based curriculum gradually became clear. “A child, in three years at Xiting Junior High School, can grow a gourd by himself, use the gourd to carry out certain scientific experiments, make a gourd silk instrument, carve or paint on it, or use this gourd to The Hulusi played a tune..."

Obviously, "Dongqiao Laoying" was no longer enough to cover all aspects of the Hulusi course, so everyone started thinking again and named it "Dongqiao Laoyu". Later, during the process of data inquiry, we found that many schools were doing things like making false claims, but it was just that there were not many "curriculum formats" structured in a systematic way like ours. Later, I met Gu Zhigang, the principal of Nantong, who suggested giving "Dongqiao Laoyu" a more understandable "name" - Hulu Science and Technology. In fact, curriculum organization includes two dimensions, namely "vertical organization" and "horizontal organization". "Vertical organization" refers to organizing various curriculum elements in a vertical development sequence, such as Chinese, mathematics, English, physics, chemistry, politics, history, geography, music, sports, and aesthetics, etc.; "horizontal organization" refers to organizing various curriculum elements in a horizontal relationship. get organized. The "Calabash Science and Art" course with "Calabash" as the carrier organically integrates various curriculum elements in the vertical dimension in the horizontal dimension, and becomes a comprehensive practical course under the leadership of "Educating People with Aesthetics".

Six issues in a school

Someone once asked, what is the most important job of a principal? The more focused answer is to lead teachers’ professional growth. Xiting Junior High School does need the professional growth of teachers, but in the face of a team of teachers whose average age is over 45 years old, how can we promote the professional growth of teachers? When I first arrived at Xiting Junior High School, I did an inventory of the teaching staff. In fact, Xiting Junior High School did not have “nothing”. The school has a teaching team of more than 60 people, including more than a dozen senior teachers, as well as several key teachers and subject leaders at the district level. Although the proportion of outstanding talents is very limited compared with big universities and prestigious schools, it is still my supporting force!

Teachers’ professional growth requires motivation. One is from the inner desire and the other is internal. In this case, it only needs to provide a platform and support. The other is guidance from the outside world, which is caused by external factors and requires "catalysis" from the outside world. Since the introduction of job competition, many teachers have had limited channels for professional title promotion due to quota restrictions. However, the education authorities in Tongzhou District have taken a new approach and vigorously broadened the review channels for famous teachers and granted certain subsidies to outstanding talents. To encourage. The opening of the second channel allowed me to find external motivation to promote the professional development of teachers. Through this, I targeted teachers under the age of 45, studied with them the conditions for evaluating outstanding talents, and helped them conduct comparative analysis - what honors, papers, open classes, lectures, competitions, etc. are needed. It was found that among various indicators, project research is the most lacking shortcoming of teachers. In August 2016, there was only one district-level project in the school and the 12th Five-Year Provincial Planning Project "Research on the Application of Event Strategies in Middle School Biology Teaching" that I brought.

Topic research is a long-term work that requires long-term planning, including topic selection, application, review, project establishment, several years of research, and project conclusion. In order to prepare for the supplementary application for the 2018 annual topics of the 13th Five-Year Plan, I combined the school’s development needs and conditions, the teachers’ perspectives and expertise, and the academic norms and hot spots of the topic application. I invited experts and teachers to have multiple discussions to collide, refine and focus. We organized everyone to start "sprints" from three levels: district-level projects, municipal-level projects, and provincial-level projects. We were successfully approved for two provincial key self-funded projects, two municipal projects, and one district-level project. At this point, after the original "event strategy" project was completed, Xiting Junior High School is now responsible for two and six planning projects of the province, city, and district. The research content covers curriculum construction, classroom reform, student growth and other fields. In this case, both quantity and quality are among the best among all schools in the district.

The successful application of the project is the first step in the long march, but the dozens of teachers who have already ridden on the back of the "tiger" have no way out. The project requires mid-term evaluation and final demonstration. Yes, project research needs to be rooted in the practice of classroom reform and curriculum construction. In the following time, I only need to supervise the research progress of the teachers in a timely manner and provide guidance and help for the smooth advancement of their project research. In fact, organizing everyone to apply for projects is directly to prepare for the review of outstanding talents. When completing the project, you can also obtain papers as research results; indirectly, it is to guide teachers to participate in classroom reform and curriculum construction from the perspective of researchers; In the final analysis, it achieves the professional growth of the teaching team and promotes the development of the school.

The essential meaning of "event strategy"

I remember that during the final thesis defense of a principal training class, a professor asked me, "Now there is a newly built school with students from all over the country. We have recruited enough famous teachers, and the student supply is not a problem. How can we make this school run the fastest and best? "My answer is to use the "event strategy" to build the school's theme culture. Xiting Junior High School covers the cultural construction of the theme of "Exerting Knowledge" from multiple dimensions such as school management, classroom reform, curriculum construction, teacher-student growth, and logistics services. It takes the school motto "Expense" as the core and "unity knowledge and action, improvement The overall idea of ??school culture construction is to pursue "cultivating people".

In short, the construction of school theme culture is to systematically plan the overall framework of school culture construction, clarify the development goals and promotion sequence, focus on the core direction of school culture, and realize the school concept through a series of themed events such as role model leadership and activity development. and the externalization of core values ????in form and internalization in heart.

Taking advantage of "events" is the "ontology" of event strategy. What is an event strategy? In short, it is a strategy that focuses on the theme of school culture construction, actively uses various "events" that exist in school development, or even creates "events" that do not originally exist, and uses "events" to promote cultural construction and ultimately achieve school development. . The direction of Xiting Junior High School's cultural construction with the theme of "Exercise in Knowledge" was determined because the school motto "Exercise" was determined, and the original source of the school motto "Exercise" was the "Xiting East Bridge Inscription" stele. One person, one thing, and one thing can become an "event" resource that can be utilized in the development process of the school. The "event" here is like the fulcrum in the leverage principle. Once the fulcrum is found, the matter will be solved.

Acting in accordance with "things" is the "methodology" of event strategy. All things have their own internal basis for development. The event strategy emphasizes conforming to the original laws of the development of things, or in other words, acting in accordance with "events" actually means acting in accordance with "trends". From the origin, development and initial shaping process of the "Calabash Science and Art" course construction in Xiting Junior High School, we can see that things are never smooth sailing and require constant accumulation and adjustment to achieve the final desired results. From the introduction of ghost town gourd paintings to paper gourd paintings, from buying a batch of gourds to planting a gourd, from a single art subject to a comprehensive course covering biology, physics, music, art and other subjects, we have experienced from simple to complex, from low to low High spiral process.

Making the most of "events" is the "practical theory" of event strategy. If viewed in the macro-background of school theme culture construction, the event strategy also plays a "task-driven" role. Xiting Junior High School encourages and guides teachers to actively apply for projects and participate in project research, which is a clever use of the role of project research in teachers’ professional growth. This is very similar to the "material flow" or "energy flow" in the "dissipative structure" that maintains the order of the system. "For the project research", "through the project research", "in the project research", it is the "artificially created" "event" of the project research that constantly drives teachers to run forward, thus achieving the purpose of professional growth of the teaching team. .

Having said this, it is not difficult to find that in order for the school to continue to develop forward, the construction of school theme culture itself is the application of "event strategy".

This article was published in "Teacher's Way" in September 2019 (first half of the month)