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.