Space project in Wenzhou Dalton Elementary School

Children in Wenzhou Dalton Elementary School took part in a astronomy project in cooperation with academic centers. The project aimed mainly at giving students a "real life experience" and encourage them to feel like a professional astronaut. The Likeda Education Satellite starts its expedition towards the JiuQuan launch site, and the 'Space STEAM Organization' receiving an award "Members of the Dalton STEAM Space Organization" researching and studying "Cubic Star" knowledge at Nanjing Science and Engineering University. They also successfully assembled a cubic star of their own. All students gazing in anticipation at the 'satellite revealing' ceremony for the launch of the satellite towards the Jiuquan launch site. All the students in the school theater were listening to a speech by the deputy team leader of the overall design team of the first generation of contributors to the "Oriental Red Number 1" Chinese Space project. He was specially engaged by Wenzhou Dalton Elementary School as a consultant expert for the the "Space STEAM Organization". Dalton International is proud and honored to stimulate all initiatives aimed at giving children real life experience and learn the world on their own way.

Sternschule International Dalton School in Austria

Sternschule Deutchlandsberg International Dalton School has once again re-opened its doors after the summer break for its excited students and growing team! Among many known happy faces they have many new fresh ones having joined them this year. Currently in Sternschule there are 89 children and this including ten new first graders. One has to say there is truly something special about starting a new school year. There is always that expectation and vital energy that makes everyone feel the positive vibrations in the air. After a seemingly disruptive and in many ways not easy last school year, due to covid restrictions and several lockdowns, the school team is now looking positively and hopefully that this year will bring everyone health and strenght. That is all the children wish too, to see their teachers and friends and to be able to communicate, play and learn together. It is wonderful to be back inside the walls of the school, such joy for the children to see their friends and greet their teachers. The team was finally able to start the new Erasmus project with a school from Slovenia. The name of the project is Promote Your Neighbour! Children will travel to Slovenia where they will connect with their peers through several activities aimed at improving their IT, language and social skills. Many new faces among the team too, which is also exhilarating for everyone! Children have already settled in after the first few weeks and are ready for their Dalton education plans, organised and productive and very noticeably full of motivation! The school has new subjects rooms set up for the children and this has brought much satisfaction, curiosity and motivation! To see the children learning self-organisation, responsibility and consideration as the progress of their work is rewarding and moving. Here is to a successful new school year! Text: Simone Reichenberger and team

Dalton Bank in Shenzhen Dalton Xinhua School

Raising a team spirit inside the school is a challenging task. Stimulating intrinsic motivation and giving children inspiration are undoubtedly one of the most important factors of everyday school life. Sharing, inspiring, motivating are definitely the most important aspects of Shenzhen Dalton Xinhua School. School spirit is key to creating a positive school culture. It creates school pride, brings together the student body and generates excitement. Most importantly, it makes students feel like they are part of a community that is bigger than themselves. But how to increase school spirit? Amy Lu, the school coordinator together with the group of mentors decided to create a "Dalton Bank" in which children have the opportunity to learn economy and real life situations in their classrooms. Helen Parkhurst vision was to combine a school life with real life situations and to create a bridge between them. Shenzhen Dalton Xinhua School set up “Dalton Bank” as awarding mechanism. The Dalton bank will give out Dalton coins to students as awards by subject teachers, homeroom teachers, family teacher in general. Dormitory tutor, administrative staff and supporting stuff can give timely comments to support the awarding mechanism. All the procedure of a "Dalton Bank" was described in our "Dalton Handbook" in the following statements: overview, purpose and administration area, administration, administrative structure, principle of awarding, storage and recycle, usage, procedures.

Gratitude diary

Last week during our seminar, together with Sophie and Marcy I have worked out the ways of implementing the philosophy of gratitude, highly significant in Chinese culture. We have decided to put it into practice on two levels: individual and social. We also explored the different perspectives of gratitude implementation: as an emotion children feel in response to a gift or benefit, as an act when they perform their thankfulness and as an attitude and act to demonstrate their thankfulness. Just like love, trust and respect it is a way on how children react to other people, for who they are, for what they do. The philosophy was first practiced by Kant and Aristotle, for whom the entrance point were experience by interacting with the world. Together with two Chinese Dalton consultants Sophie and Marcy we designed a special “gratitude diary” for group work and individual work. Everyday children have the opportunity to reflect on positive aspects of their lives. The benefits of our activities are enormous for wellbeing of the children, these are: the philosophy of gratitude encourages positive attitude; promote meaningful cooperation and personalized language use, encourages emotional self-regulation, creativity and critical thinking. Practicing gratitude has been an important point in program training in International Dalton Schools in China. The gratitude diary will be published in the first upcoming magazine of Dalton International in Shanghai.

10 years of Dalton International in China.

The school brochure of Shenzhen Dalton Xinhua School has been published this month. The school has made a reportage from a history of Dalton International in China celebrating a decade of existence. Apart from the brochure, the school has made a special room in the school building with an exhibition of the development of Dalton International in mainland China. It all started with one philosophy in mind “Combining Dalton education with Chinese Characters”. Two senior Dalton consultants: Roel Röhner and Hans Wenke reintroduced Dalton education after few decades of absence. The Dalton education is flourishing now in mainland China enormously. This includes early childhood education, which has experienced frequent change since the first International Dalton School- Xinhua Dalton School was opened. As a developing philosophy, Dalton education is growing in China not only in the primary education, but also in secondary schools. The Dalton education was first introduced in China over 100 years ago yet remain underdeveloped until 2000’s. Dalton education gained in popularity in mainland China at the beginning of the XIst century. Due to the internal changes and challenges that took place, the idea of Helen Parkhurst is continuously growing and spread by the consultants of Dalton International: Roel Röhner, Paul Bruijn and Agata Röhner. We are proud to spread the Dalton educational philosophy for more than a decade in mainland China. We are continuously exploring and integrating worldwide resources to set a standard for school education internationalization. Today, we would like to wish all International Dalton Schools and International Dalton Schools in progress a meaningful celebration and a good start of the New Dalton School Year. The future starts already now.

Happy New Dalton School Year to International Dalton School in Thuringen, Germany

Dalton International is wishing a brilliant team from International Dalton School in Thüringen, Germany a healthy and delightful New Dalton Year. It is wonderful to see smiling staff and children coming back to school. The energy among the team and children is always amazing. The children seem very happy to be back at school, playing with friends, organizing their own time in Dalton agendas. Seeing new children coming for the first time to school hungry for learning has been inspiring for us. We are confident that a Dalton education is perfectly implemented in your school. Self-motivation, confidence, responsibility and reflection are a base for lifelong love of learning. We are looking forward to seeing you all again soon….

Ways of engaging parents in the Dalton process at school: working session

Yesterday, we have restarted the trainings for Wenzhou Dalton Elementary School. The subject of the session concerned the ways of engaging parents in the Dalton process at school. We have discussed together with the group of mentors and Dalton coordinators the ways of making parents familiar with the Dalton philosophy. With a strong idea of what children ought to obtain from their school experience parents in Wenzhou Dalton School are expected to become active participants in the Dalton process. By building connections between home and school, Dalton education is aimed mainly at reinforcing the learning experience and make transition from preschool to home. In order to achieve this, we have worked out the schedule for parent’s Dalton academy for the upcoming year, including following activities: school community meetings, Dalton “open hours” for parents, Dalton brochures, engaging parents in projects, etc. We firmly believe that by combining our efforts we help children and parents grow into their own Dalton development and look in the same direction. Below some photos

o from our yesterday’s session:

Project-Based Learning based on Piaget's theory of cognitive development

On 8th of September we started a New Dalton Year in Shenzhen Xinhua Dalton School. After summing up the work with 20 agreements of independency, we set the goals for the upcoming semester- both theoretical (we start again with Why?) and practical. Our session with school mentors and Dalton coordinators concerned implementation in practice project based learning based on the Piaget’s theory of cognitive development. We are currently developing with the team of teachers authorial projects, together with parents and children based on the children’s personal interests and experience. Since we are working with children from 6- 11 years old, we divided our project into two stages: pre- operational stage (children 2-7 years old- children learn the world with their own senses); concrete operational stage (7-11 year olds- starts logical thinking). In the project we are engaging all children’s senses (hear, smell, touch, movement) to awaken their intrinsic, natural motivation and to avoid awards and punishments. For older children (7-11) we implement different sorts of projects, in which their curiosity is stimulated by solving together a real-life authentic problem. The project weeks are done twice a year in both Shenzhen and Wenzhou Dalton schools. All the authorial projects will be soon published in our book “The Dalton Plan- a child’s lifetime experience””. The book will be published in China in North East Normal University.

The message of President of Dalton International to all International Dalton Schools

What an incredible year is in front of us. The year of new opportunities, new initiatives. In front of us the year of sharing our work, our passion, our vision and our achievements. Thanks to the Dalton Plan we still find ways to connect across the world, we are grateful to all International Dalton Schools for their commitment, engagement, sharing their Dalton experience and expertise. Thanks to you, we can continue Parkhurst legacy. Undoubtedly, we have recently met some challenges because of a global pandemic, which has forced us to adapt the online way we train and teach. Although the pandemic period, we are providing continuous support for the schools and parents. Our focus is to ensure the Dalton education accessible for every child in every corner of the world. Dalton education remains the inclusive, accepting education for children and adults of all abilities, and all cultures. To achieve this, we remain open to learning, listening and understanding the needs of all communities that are struggling to implement Dalton education. We are honoured to spread the legacy of Helen Parkhurst across the world. At the same time, we bear in mind that thanks to her strong character and will she was able to achieve a huge success as just one individual, spreading her ideas and ground breaking work in universal education on a global scale. We are pleased to continue to support her work and demonstrate the amazing impact of Dalton education. Every human being has the power to make a difference and if we can do it together – cooperating, sharing, supporting, learning from each other, listening to each other, the difference and impact may be enormous. As a Dalton International community, it is our solemn duty to cooperate, share and spread the legacy of Helen Parkhurst. Today, we are pleased to wish all the International Dalton Schools across the world a meaningful school year, full of hope and good initiatives. May this year be for you special and full of success. We wish you all, a healthy and successful school year with the same motto as always: Go forth unafraid! Roel Rohner, President Dalton International

Evaluation of the school year in Wenzhou Dalton School

Evaluation of the school year with Wenzhou Dalton Team was all about summarizing our work within this year. The implementation of responsibility in the school was based on 20 agreements of responsibility. Children are able to demonstrate responsibility within the Dalton environment. Responsibility begins with choosing one’s own work during the day, working independently, and being a contributing member of the collective classroom community. Contributing members of any community help nurture and maintain the classroom. Within the Dalton environment, children become responsible for the environment by learning to care for the classroom as well as for themselves and their friends. For the last year, together with the team of teachers we were working on shaping the attitude of openness and freedom, self-organization and self-directed learning. We have worked out authorial projects, contracts and visualization adjusting the vision of responsibility to a Chinese community and culture. We are looking forward to see the effect live when we are there.

The new edition of Dalton Visie

In the newest edition of Dalton Visie, the magazine of Dutch Dalton Association the article about history and genesis as well as current development of Dalton International. The article was written by René Berends and Roel Röhner.

The 5th anniversary of Shenzhen Xinhua International Dalton School

Message of Dalton International to Shenzhen Dalton Xinhua School on the occasion of their 5th Anniversary: Our warmest greetings to the Shenzhen Dalton Xinhua School as you celebrate your 5th Anniversary as an International Dalton School. The development of education is vital to Dalton education mission and vision. As an educational institution, it is your responsibility to ensure that your children become self-reliant, cooperative and reflective human beings. May this event reaffirm your commitment to implement in our children a thirst for knowledge and a culture of innovation that will drive their ambitions and set their path to success and fulfillment, as well as empower them to become more dynamic, responsible citizens of 21st century. We in Dalton International are proud to create the community of innovative, progressive Dalton education for all. May you instill the values of hard work, excellence, responsibility and cooperativeness of the school in your children and allow them to express themselves in the way they would like to be. We wish you a happy and meaningful celebration. Dalton International

Teacher Training in Shenzhen Dalton Xinhua School

International Dalton Consultants and all educators of all Dalton International Foundation believe that developing ownership is one of the most important issues in the Dalton model of education. The Dalton philosophy is all about developing holistic approach to every child. We strongly believe that much of the children´s question can be answered by children themselves. Dalton children should be filled with a love for learning, should be thoughtful, with a creative and inquisitive mind. Following this, engaging children in a real life discovery raises the interests, intrinsic motivation by self-discovering for the answers and sharing their work with others. That type of learning is also making the learning process more effective. Children are encouraged to take up their own initiatives and investigate the topic. Consequently, children become owners of their own learning process, they move from being receivers of information to becoming active participants in their own learning. However, we should remember as teachers, how important it is to differentiate the levels of support and providing guidance adjusted to the needs of every child. Dalton teacher is so much more than only a gardener, they are inspirators and artists of education. Dalton education is based on a strong belief that whenever children are given responsibility for their learning they instinctively search for the best way to achieve it. In the photo, teachers in Shenzhen are creating their own vision on independent learning on the basis of twenty agreements developed by Dalton International. The school is guided regularly by Dalton International.