With the school motto of “自强不息（Continual Pursuit of Excellence）”, SCA sees the ability of Self-management as one of the key abilities of our student outcomes. Self-management is not only one of the Approaches to Learning in students’ daily study, it is also an essential ability and awareness for their future success.
SCA believes that a student’s self-management is built upon the following:
Students have voice and choice in their learning and activities.
Students show ownership and shoulder responsibilities in their learning and activities.
Students act and make decision with reference to the school’s core values.
Students receive support and guidance in school experience.
To develop students’ self-management skills, SCA designed and implements the following so that students develop this skill with guidance and support.
I-Time
“I-Time” is a part of students’ weekly timetable. During “I-Time”, students can book different activities or areas for sports, arts, self-study or reading. They can book time with their teachers to do subject consultation or communicate personal concerns. They can choose to discuss group tasks with their peers or do personal projects. When they are lagging behind on academic study or homework, their teachers will advise them to use their “I-Time” for tutoring or homework.
The purpose of “I-Time” is to provide students with a chance to learn to manage and utilize their own time. In this process, we hope our students will realize that they not only have choice and voice over their own time and energy, they would face the consequences when they don’t manage it well. Through this cycle of natural consequences, we aim to help them better manage themselves.
Student-centric pedagogies
SCA adopts student-centric pedagogies in our daily teaching and learning. With a range of student-centric pedagogies such as Tea House groups, Socratic Seminar, project-based learning, etc, students are given ample opportunities to voice their thoughts, share their feelings and make meaningful connection with their prior knowledge. They are also confronted with challenges beyond mere reciting while they need to collaborate in groups and manage their time. These are all chances and authentic contexts for the practice of self-management.
SCA believes that the key to students’ self-management lies in their ethical thinking -- a mindset for ethical actions and decision-making.
SCA develops and implements a behavior guidance system that helps students learn to exercise ethical thinking. Students will receive demerit points when they demonstrated inappropriate decision-making with their behavior. With the recording, communication and feedback of demerit points, we hope to guide students to make better decision for their behaviors with ethical thinking.
When students have done a good deed, they are awarded with House tickets. These tickets are designed and presented to students who have demonstrated ethical thinking by taking responsible actions based on the school’s core values in their daily life. With house tickets, we provide specific guidance and examples of ethical behavior to our students.
Above all, students will learn about the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People when they are in Grade 7. These seven habits help to reinforce the importance of self-management in the SCA students from young.
