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Building Cultural Competency: Essential Skills ...
Building Cultural Competency: Essential Skills for a Complex World
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Middle Schoolers Design Clients' Dream Homes

Middle school students met with clients (many of whom were international and based in China), scheduled their own meetings, and consulted with clients to build their dream sustainable homes. Students then executed these plans by designing and building models of these dream homes - all while learning more about sustainable housing design. This project exemplifies how students learn through authentic interdisciplinary bilingual projects.

Middle Schoolers Design Clients' Dream Homes

Community

Reconsidering What We Know About Native American People, Culture, and History

Reconsidering What We Know About Native American People, Culture, and History

As we read this story, we had one burning question - how can we replace our collective imagination of Native Americans with authentic experiences that increase our understanding? As students realized from the story above, good intentions are not enough. If we allow ourselves to remain ignorant, we can end up causing embarrassment at best, and trauma at worst.

Celebrating the Joyful Moments in Preschool (小朋友的笑话）

Preschool is filled with a million moments of learning, bonding, and most importantly joy. Children approach the world so differently than we do as adults and the things they observe, do, and say help us see the world in a different light. As we approach the holiday season, we wanted to share just a few of the many preschool moments that brighten our days and bring smiles to our faces.

Bringing Preschool to Life

Everyone has their own story. Teachers, like most people, bring those stories – stories that grow out of our passions, our interests, our cultural background, and our personalities – into the workplace. These stories inform how we see the world and how we approach our work. Although teaching is what we do as a profession, it is not all that we are, and it’s those extra dimensions that make each classroom so special. 

Our Growing Home: PKS Preschool Over the Past Decade

In 2009, a year after PKS opened its doors, I felt so lucky to join a tiny but cozy two room preschool in the Presidio with 25-30 students.  Ten years later, a lot has changed, but watching the school (and my first students) grow and transform has been amazing. Although the school may not look the same on the outside, what makes PKS such a special place still remains: our community and sense of family. 

Learning and Growing through Volunteering

As PKS teachers, we are always seeking new ways to practice our Habits of Character (respectful, responsible, resilient, collaborative, globally minded, caring and reflective) and bring them to life for our students within and beyond our school community. My own journey took an unexpected turn this past August as a result of an amazing and transformative professional development experience, an experience I want to bring to my students in the classroom.

Published Authors!

arctic+friends.jpg

During their first grade year, three PKS classmates created a story called “Friends in the Arctic” as part of their shadow show project.

The story follows a group of friends who live in the Arctic. One day, they are unexpectedly sucked into a black hole and need to make their way home. By working together, they find a diamond that helps them escape and return to the Arctic.

After the project was complete, Sinan Laoshi submitted this story, along with several others, to “Xiao Pi Pa”, the only Chinese language children’s magazine circulated throughout North America.

We are proud to share that “Friends in the Arctic” was recently selected for publication. Congratulations Arjun, Jaclyn, and Lucas on being published authors, and to Jaclyn for her beautiful illustrations!

Happy (Chinese) New Year! 新年快乐！

Our community celebration welcoming the Year of the Dog was PKS's largest-ever Chinese New Year event, with almost 900 people in attendance. Organized over the course of several months by a parent-led committee chaired by Monica Savini, the event featured art, activities, food, fun, and at the center of it all, the joyous performances of each PKS class on stage in the beautifully restored venue adjacent to our campus, Saint Joseph's, where we were hosted by proprietor Ken Fulk.