It’s here! The annual ShanghaiMamas Talk About Primary Schools is officially online .
For the past couple of years, ShanghaiMamas has organized an event called “ShanghaiMamas Talk about Primary Schools .” The event was very well-attended…in fact, so many people come that we ran out of chairs!
This year, we are attempting to bring the useful information of the event into an online format so more ShMamas members can access it throughout the year- instead of just those who are available for a few hours on a weekday morning.
Our main goal of this session is not to answer every single question about schools in Shanghai…but to share personal insights from parents who have directly experienced the school. It’s also a great chance to be exposed to schools that you might not otherwise consider. We think we have pulled together wide range of schools that reflects the diversity of educational options available in Shanghai- both local and international schools.
Our parent speakers are gracious volunteers and are not official representatives of the schools. They all have children attending the schools and have volunteered to speak from the parent perspective to show daily life as an insider at the school… and for this we are very grateful. We have also given them the option to speak anonymously, though ShanghaiMamas has verified their child’s enrollment for the 2012-2013 school year. If nobody is speaking about the school your child attends, and you would like to volunteer then send an email to Melanie ASAP and she will send you the questionnaire to get started.
It’s also important to stress that everything is based on personal opinions. We all come from a variety of different nations, cultures, backgrounds, and perspectives. Experiences with schools are very subjective so take what you want from it, and leave the rest behind.
We ask that ShanghaiMamas members who may be employed or affiliated with the school (formerly or currently) disclose their affiliations when posting to the thread. Additionally, if you are affiliated with a competing school, please identify this also.
If you have questions, please ask them in the forums- there are no ridiculous questions about this topic…especially since many others probably have same question also. The contributors will be actively monitoring the threads until March 11. After March 11, we will close the topics to further questions and they will enter the archives and remain searchable for the rest of the year.
Please avoid sending PM messages to the contributors since the idea is for all information to be shared publicly. It is also possible they won’t receive the message notification.
Finally, we hope this is helpful for making the difficult choices for primary schools. If you have ideas for improvement of the online format, send us a note with your ideas.
Thanks!
Melanie
ShanghaiMamas Founding Partner