Xiehe Education | Nurturing Kids through P4C & Literacy Development

Mr. Stephen Walshe

Co-Principal, Fortune Kindergarten Dongfang Campus

Stephen Walshe is from Dublin, Ireland, and for the past 15 years, he has been the Co-Principal of the Fortune Kindergarten Dongfang Campus with Ms. Michelle Sun. At the beginning of the Chinese Dragon Year, we are honoured to invite Stephen to share with us his life experiences and his insights of early-years education.Mr. Walshe hold an MA in Educational Leadership and Management and a post graduate certificate in Philosophy. He has almost forty years experience in education, as a teacher, curriculum developer, assistant principal, and school principal in a number of international settings. He is a registered P4C China & DialogueWorks advanced P4C (Philosophy for Children) trainer, has attended residential school at the Institut de Pratiques Philosophiques in France, is a member of the International Community of Philosophical Inquiry (ICPIC) and Co-director of P4C China.Since 2013, he has been introducing P4C to local and international primary, middle and high schools, leading P4C across the Fortune Kindergarten group, and assisting schools with the P4C Award Program. He has produced two P4C booklets; Philosophy for Children # 1, to introduce P4C to parents, teachers and school visitors to the Fortune Kindergarten and Philosophy for Children Book # 2 – A Resource Booklet by Teachers for Teachers. His hobbies included scuba diving (certified diving instructor), sailing and rock climbing. Now, however, his pursuits keep him closer to home. He enjoys going to the gym to keep fit and loves reading, most especially works by Irish authors.

His Personal Journey to Fortune Kindergarten

I have been teaching in international schools and international organizations all my life. Prior to coming to China in September 1999, I was an International Resource Specialist with the United Nations at the Preparation for America Secondary Schools (PASS) program in a Vietnamese refugee camp in the Philippines. In this role I was tasked with leading a team of 12 teachers for 6 years at PASS. The role also included writing, field testing and implementing a social studies curriculum for eventual use in other refugee camps across Asia.

When I arrived in China, I began working as a school principal in an international school that included a kindergarten and primary school. In this position, as in previous positions I had held internationally, foreign teachers were head teachers and Chinese teachers were assistant teachers. I met my wonderful wife in early 2000 and we married in late 2001. My wife is from Shanghai, and, with my marriage, I became part of an extended family, my wife’s father and mother and grandmother. We had our first daughter in 2006 and my mother and father-in-law moved in with us to help take care of our daughter.Up until this time, I had lived as an ex-pat working in schools and organizations in Thailand, Taiwan and Philippines and spending much of my time with other ex-pats. But the marriage brought me closer to the culture in China. The birth of our first child created a dilemma for us, as an extended family, regarding her schooling. Our daughter is both Irish and Chinese, not half and half but a blend of both and she is proud of her heritage as a blend of East and West. After thinking and discussing this with my wife and family we decided that my daughter needed an education system that respected both parts of her heritage.We wanted an education for our daughter that respected who she was; a blend of East and West, and who she would grow up to be; a proud representative of both cultures. Fortunately, while we were struggling with this, I met the general principal of Fortune Kindergarten and learned about Fortune Kindergarten’s unique East meets West approach to education and child development. It quickly became apparent to me that this was not just a bilingual education but a bicultural experience. It differed radically from schools I had experienced.

▲ Michelle Sun & Stephen Walshe

Fortune Kindergarten has a school structure where school leaders, co-principals, and co-teachers, are visible models of cross-cultural understanding, cooperation, and communication. We decided that this could not happen in a hierarchal structure of a lead and assistant teacher. We wanted a school that promoted an ethos of East meets West for our daughter, by blending the best of East – West teaching approaches, and we found this in Fortune Kindergarten.

The Fortune Kindergarten Way

At the Fortune Kindergarten, our approach to education focuses on the development of the whole child within the context of a lived childhood; we never forget that we are working with young children and endeavor to add to their childhood experiences. Our age-level teams and co-teachers in each class work closely together to provide a well-rounded experience for all children.

When a child joins us, usually in Toddler class, we initially focus on emotional development to help the child feel safe and secure in their new environment. At the same time, we are encouraging the child to socialize to make friends and learn how to communicate with others. Once the child feels emotionally and socially comfortable, we engage the child in exploring child centered activities focusing on continued social-emotional and communicative development, physical, artistic, academic, technological and all aspects of the child’s cognitive development.

In the context of whole child development, I strongly believe in a child-centered approach to learning. But what does ‘child-centered’ mean? Many educators will tell you that it means following children’s interests, or what children are currently interested in. While this is part of the meaning, I believe that it means much more than this. It also means connecting children’s interests, not only to their immediate needs but also to their future needs to give children the best start for success in life.Research has shown that early childhood education is critically important to children’s later success in school and in life (Daelmans et al., 2017; Elango, Garcia, Heckman, & Hojman, 2015; Wechsler et al., 2018). Neuroscience has categorically proven that the first five years of life are the most critical for optimal brain development (Shore, 2003).

How, therefore, do we, at the Fortune Kindergarten, prepare children for ‘… later success in school and in life.’ While at the same time maximizing their potential ‘… for optimal brain development.’?

We believe that developing an approach to education that focuses on developing curiosity is foundational. I would therefore like to highlight two areas, closely connected to each other, from our program at the Fortune Kindergarten that encourages curiosity in our children, to provide children with a better chance for later success in school and life, while at the same time providing opportunities for optimal brain development.

01 Literacy Development

Later success in school and life depends on several factors. However, one factor for success is literacy knowledge and experience.

”As early as kindergarten, ‘meaningful differences’ exist between students’ literacy knowledge and experience.”
——Hart & Risley, 1995

At the beginning of first grade there are already significant differences in students who are successful and those who are struggling with literacy and reading, and these differences become greater and more discrepant over time.

At the Fortune Kindergarten, we have a strong early literacy and literacy development program. Moreover, we have been assessing and adjusting our literacy program, using qualitative and quantitative data, based on internationally recognized children’s literacy assessment tools since 2014 We start these assessments in Pre-K and follow the child all the way through to K2. Continual data analysis from our assessments helps improve our literacy program.We introduce the alphabet in Toddler classes through songs, rhymes and play based activities. In Pre-K children learn the upper and lower cases letters of the alphabet and are introduced to the phonic sounds of the letters. In K1, the children learn the sounds of all the letters, words that begin with these letters, and begin blending these sounds to decode and form words. Throughout Pre-K and K1 we monitor children’s progress of alphabet knowledge with scheduled assessments. At the beginning of K2, we do a benchmark reading assessment to assess each child’s reading level and, based on the results, we send books at each individual child’s reading level home with the child each weekend for weekend reading, We monitor and assess reading levels in the beginning, middle and end of the school year in K2.

Monitoring and assessing our children’s literacy development from Pre-K through to K2, allows us to tailor our literacy approach to the needs of individual children and target individual needs to ensure that all children reach their full potential in this important area of education for life, before first grade.

02 Philosophy for Children (P4C)

I believe that P4C, linked to literacy development, creates an environment where curiosity is encouraged.If we believe that children are at their most curious during the early years when they are in the process of constructing meaning from the world around them, then these formative years, when children’s minds are most flexible surely offer a perfect opportunity to begin channelling this curiosity and wonder in the direction of intelligent enquiry and, as a result, cultivate meaningful learning.

03 Literacy Development through Dialogue

“To my taste the most fruitful and most natural exercise of our minds is conversation. … Studying books has a languid feeble motion, whereas conversation provides teaching and exercise all at once” ——Michel De Montaigne 1533-1592

I do not believe that Montaigne is telling us to avoid reading books, but is saying that if we only read them and do not allow students to identify and engage in discussion, with the concepts, problems or ideas they bring up, we are not fully exercising their minds .

04 Taking a position

At the Fortune Kindergarten, following the reading of a storybook, children are guided by their teachers to identify central concepts from the storybook that interest or puzzle them and, again, with teacher guidance, take the time to unpack the concepts to ensure that they understand them, develop questions based on those concepts and vote for the question they would like to discuss.

05 Discussion

The chosen question, under teacher guidance, is then discussed by the children. Children express their thinking, giving reasons for their thinking, listen to other children’s opinions, respond to children who agree and, more importantly, disagree with them. Over time, engaging with storybooks in this way, helps our children become better at reading for meaning and identifying central concepts in the text.

As we all know, some children do not engage very well with text. Yes, they read it, but they don’t really think while they are reading. Then there are other children who engage to various degrees with text, and develop assumptions based on their interpretation of what they have read. Over time, using this approach, based on dialogue, helps our children who do not engage with text well, to appreciate the importance of engaging with text and, as a result, improves their literacy.Moreover, children’s storybooks are usually related to children’s lives and provide a stimulus for engaging with topics of real-world significance for our children. Therefore, by providing time for dialogue around storybooks, life connections surface, which better help our children engage with the text.In the process, our children not only understand and empathize with the characters more deeply, but also draw connections to their own lives and beliefs, providing them with a space to surface and examine assumptions they may not be aware they hold.

06 Discussion and the habit of shared thinking

The Community of Enquiry, developed over time in shared discussion, then becomes the shared thinking space which allows our children to dig deeper, make real-life connections and engage more meaningfully with literacy, which in turn promotes literacy development.

We become better and better at what we practice, or to put it another way, we become what we do. Developing competencies, in any area of the curriculum, is not an act but a habit.Therefore, helping our children develop the habit of engaging in discussion of literacy topics based on concepts and questions they have developed not only helps them with literacy development, but is also a practice they will carry with them. Moreover, this approach encourages curiosity and develops a love of literacy in our children.

07 The P4C Gold Award

In 2019, the Fortune Kindergarten Dongfang Campus became the first school in Asia to successful apply for and receive the International P4C Gold Award from DialogueWorks UK. The highest P4C Award that schools can be awarded.

Based on the success of the Fortune Kindergarten achieving this coveted award, I was invited to International Conferences in Hong Kong, Egypt, and Abu Dhabi to share the successful implementation of Philosophy for Children in Fortune Kindergarten. During these conferences I shared anecdotal and quantitative evidence of how P4C helped improve literacy development in our Kindergartens over a 5-year period.Over the past years I have published several articles in the International Teachers Magazine (ITM), titles include: A Confident School Start–Providing support During Coronavirus – Dialogue in the Early Years – Philosophy in the Early Years –Values Development and Philosophy – Constructive Disagreement–Philosophy for Children, Preparation for Life.

Education, a gift for Life

I have always believed that the greatest gift a family can bestow upon a child is education. I feel privileged to be part of an educational establishment that provides an educational experience with the aim of preparing children not only for later success in school, but, just as importantly, in life.My eldest daughter is now in grade 12 and my youngest daughter is in grade 10. I feel very fortunate that both of my daughters have benefited from an East meets West approach to education from kindergarten all the way through to High school with Fortune Kindergarten and SUIS (Shanghai United International School) of Xiehe Education.

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2024-02-14 By suiseditor Groupnews