Welcome to Shu Ren International School!

After more than a year of preparation, our school finally opened in September 2008! We had our Grand Opening on September 20, which was attended and celebrated by many families from all over the Bay Area. I am elated that we were able to open our doors less than 6 months after securing our site.

Before giving you an update about Shu Ren, I would like to share some of my thoughts with you about why we need a school like Shu Ren. I believe that the 21 st century demands a globally competent workforce. We only need to look at the current financial global market meltdown to see how inter-connected we are with the rest of the world. One may ask what global competency is. Global competency includes k nowledge of other world regions, cultures, and global/international issues, s kills in communicating in languages other than English, working in global or cross-cultural environments, using information from different sources around the world, and v alues/perspectives of respect and concern for other cultures and peoples. At Shu Ren, we thrive to educate students with global competency for the 21 st century through immersion education of Chinese and English languages and through the adoption of the world-renowned International Baccalaureate Organization’s curriculum framework . I encourage parents to come to visit our school, talk to our teachers, students, and parents, and find out how we can h elp your children to be ready for this challenging new century.

Below I will summarize the key updates about our school.

Campus

Previously a furniture store, our school site underwent a significant renovation between July and September 2008. We are very fortunate to have Mr. Twig Gallemore who is a Shu Ren parent and an architect with Elevation Design + Architecture in Berkeley design our school site. Many of his designs have unique features perfectly fitting for a Mandarin/English immersion school like Shu Ren. Parents and children like the beautiful interior designs and colors of our classrooms as well as the playground (see Shu Ren Campus photos).

Our Classes

Now we have well settled into our new campus and our students are thriving in their new school environment. We currently have two classes, one for pre-K and one K/first grade class. Please take a moment to visit our classroom blogs pre-K class, kindergarten/first grade class, and class photos to see Mandarin/English immersion education in action.

International Baccalaureate (IB)

We have begun to explore the International Baccalaureate (IB)’s Primary Year Program (PYP) by organizing both our pre-K and K/first grade classes around the IB principles and themes of inquiry. Our teachers have attended and will continue to attend training on PYP. They are also working together to design the Program of Inquiry across the grades. I have no doubt that our students will benefit tremendously from the PYP curriculum, which integrates the best learning practices from all over the world. More information is available in the Program of Inquiry for our classes.

After-school Program

We also started our after-school program in September. In the coming winter session, we will make some important additions to our program. One change is to establish our transportation program. We will be able to pick up students from nearby schools (Berkeley and Albany). In addition, we will also provide a car pool matching program for parents, so that students from the same school may share a ride to Shu Ren. Parents will be able to send their children to our school for after-school care (3pm – 6pm) during which they will take one hour of Mandarin class, work on their homework, and engage in a variety of fun activities such as Chinese chess, sports games, and arts/crafts. We will provide tutoring in Mandarin, English, and Math. Moreover, students will be able to selectively attend our enrichment classes in Chinese dancing, brush painting, Wu Shu (marital art), and so on. Please refer to our after-school program for more information.

Admissions

We are beginning the admissions season for the 2009-10 school year in which we will be accepting applications for pre-K, K, first grade, and second grade students. Meanwhile, we are also enrolling pre-K, K, and first grade students for the current school year. Please see the Admissions Process for more information.

Thank you and we look forward to hearing from you!

Jie Moore 郭捷

Head of School