CELEBRATING THE CLASS OF 2022 IN OUR EDUCATOR COMMUNITY By D r. J E N N I FE R S PA R R OW Deputy Superintendent
Everything in education hinges on the quality, dedication, and positive engagement of teachers. One of the most important tasks I have as a leader at Singapore American School is to support the hiring and retaining of amazing educators who can help our students become exceptional thinkers prepared for the future. We are blessed to have some of the best educators in the world at SAS. They are the ones who model our core values and learning aspirations, selflessly go beyond expectations to work with students, sponsor a wide variety of co-curricular activities, and continually practice new and more effective ways of improving the learning in their classrooms. As a commitment to our educators as well as our desire to focus on excellence, extraordinary care, and possibilities, we have supported two cohorts of SAS doctoral students with the University of Southern California’s Rossier School of of Education. In May 2018 and May 2023, SAS educators graduated with doctorates in education degrees. Their dissertations ranged across a variety of topics from analysis of our Chinese immersion programme to supporting teachers with math adoption, new math resources, issues of inclusion, causes of anxiety among high school students, and more!
“I am humbled and honored to receive the dissertation of distinction award from USC. Most of all, I am grateful for the participants, our colleagues, who willingly and generously took the time to meet with me for semi-structured interviews as part of the dissertation research process. It is our colleague's open and honest responses and willingness to share their stories based on their lived experiences as teachers of color at SAS that deserve the accolades of distinction for enabling this important exploratory research to be possible and for opening my eyes and illuminating so much that I could not have otherwise seen through my own limited lens. I believe and hope that this recognition underscores just how incredibly important the work that we are doing on culturally responsive practices and diversity, equity, and inclusion is to our community. I look forward to continuing to advocate for the positive cultural changes this work has suggested,” says Dr. Henning. I am appreciative of all of my colleagues who have gone through this program! They have modeled our learning aspirations of critical thinking, creativity, communication, and collaboration for both students and colleagues. They have exemplified our core values of honesty, respect, responsibility, fairness, and compassion through the ups and downs completing the program while being fully committed to their students and teams. Finally, they have helped identify solutions to issues that SAS and the field of education are experiencing. The outcomes we hoped to achieve in having an onsite doctoral program have come to fruition and will have a positive, long-reaching impact on SAS.
*MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THE VARIETY OF TOPICS EXPLORED BY OUR EDUCATORS FOR THEIR DOCTORATES CAN BE FOUND BELOW
2018
2022
Investigation of an onsite doctorate program began in 2013 because we believed that a doctorate program at SAS would have many benefits: a) it would allow our teachers who already had master’s degrees to advance their formal education while continuing to work full time; b) it would provide a retention strategy to keep quality teachers because we would provide a scholarship in exchange for extra years at SAS, and; c) it would allow for rigorous analysis of programs or problems of practice found at SAS, leading to positive changes in instructional and leadership practices. After examining programs at three diffrent universities, SAS chose USC because of their willingness to customize a program for our educators in the Singapore context and for the availability of on-site courses. The first cohort started in 2015 with 16 SAS educators, all of whom attained their degrees in May 2018. That year, topics focused on Reggio-inspired early learning, responsive classroom practices, employee wellness, scaling innovation and change across a system, helping our top math students, deepening our understanding of professional learning communities (PLCs) and PLC leadership, supporting teacher leaders, and mentoring high school students. I was fortunate enough to be a part of that cohort, working alongside my colleagues as just another student. It is an experience that will forever stay close to my heart. This year, our Director of Human Resources Dr. Christine Henning was selected to receive the 2022 Dissertation of Distinction award for the Doctor of Education in Educational Leadership program. Every year, the university selects one student from each of its three educational doctorate programs based on the merits of their research. Dr. Henning’s was chosen out of over one hundred to receive this special accolade for advancements to the field of education. Dr. Henning’s topic focused on better support for our educators of color. She conducted a case study and interviewed several of our educators of color about their experience with moving and working here and then generated themes and action steps to improve our hiring practices and day-to-day practices to help better support our educators of color. 23
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