Monday October 16, 2006

At the end of yesterday I had to speak along side three other principals from South Africa, Australia and England. The entire International delegation was treated like royalty by our Chinese hosts. The event was well organized and had dual translation in English and Chinese. Participants wore headsets so that they could understand the various speakers. I have to admit I was VERY nervous before speaking. The audience was intimidating because there were so many people from so many countries who are just amazing leaders. The four of us speaking developed a bond of support which held through the remainder of the conference. Maragaret from Australia, Charles from South Africa and Michael from the U.K. all did a fantastic job as they talked about their vision of school leadership in the future. I hope I represented TBA well---we did get quite a few invitations to visit and to be visited:)

The first day of conference session went well. The most difficult part was adjusting to the sleep or lack of sleep piece. The day and night are flip flopped from Boston--but all in all I feel okay. We had excellent Chinese speakers for the first part of the day and then broke into International groupings to discuss issues. It is amazing how similar the issues are around the world: achievement gaps; teacher shortage; old models of education which do not put teachers and students at the center; political mingling in education. I am learning a tremendous amount from my colleagues. I also have an entirely new view as to what it means to come into a country without knowing the language and have to manage. There is very little English spoken here because we are an hour south of downtown Beijing. By the way---if we think Boston is crowed with its 1 million people---try 15 million in Beijing:)

I have attached some pictures of the first day of the conference. There is one of my friend William from South Africa--great passion and heart--and Leona from Hong Kong.