Interview
Q:
What will be your biggest challenge as Dean of
Student Life at Keystone?
A:
Every school has challenges. There is a lot that I have to
learn about China and the culture here. I am trying to do
that by living here in Beijing, throwing myself into the community,
and exploring the sites around Beijing. Some of our colleagues
have taken us outside of Beijing to explore the hills and the
mountains. The challenge in starting the school is to infuse the
ethos of your community in all you do. What are your standards?
What are your goals? We have come up with a great covenant of
shared values – Compassion (仁 Ren)，Justice (义 Yi)，Respect
(礼 Li)，Wisdom (智 Zhi)，and Honesty (信 Xin). These five
values infuse everything that we do academically, residentially,
in student life, across programmatic lines and they will be the
foundation of the learning that we want our students to have at
Keystone.
Q:
Keystone requires all of its staff and teachers
to make their best effort to care for and guide
students, and build a safe and healthy academic and
living environment. What specific measures or policies
will the Keystone boarding program implement to
ensure that these requirements are met?
A:
Our teaching staff will arrive on campus at the end of July.
We have a lengthy four-week orientation program planned.
The orientation includes a welcome to Beijing, opportunities
to learn about Chinese culture, time to settle in, curriculum
design, and classroom time. Another part of orientation focuses
on student life and residential life and what the roles and
responsibilities of our teachers are for afternoon programming,
evening supervision, and weekend activities, etc. First and
foremost will be getting to know each other as colleagues and
coming together to establish our culture as a school. We talked a
little about the boarding school experience being a lifestyle. This
will be laid out to teachers well in advance because they have
to buy into this. We have an excellent safety and security group
working with us. We will have thoughtful and thorough plans and
policies around safety and security.
Students will know very clearly, in the course of their orientation
at the school, our policies about where they are able to be, what
the boundaries are, and where they are not allowed to be without
adult supervision. We will have an elaborate system of sign-in and
sign-out during the evening study hours and on the weekends.
All of our trips will have adult supervision and students will not
be allowed to come and go from campus, whether during the
36
The Keystone Magazine
Wendy Bradley speaking
at Keystone’s Chinese
New Year celebration
weekday or weekends. Trust is an important aspect of our school
culture. We share this responsibility - students and faculty. We
need to know where the students are, and they need to let us
know where they are. We will always share this responsibility. But
ultimately, it is our responsibility to know where they are 24 hours
a day.
With regards to clean air and water, I know that in the construction
and design process, this is all being taken into consideration.
The air-filtration and water purification systems will be top-notch.
In each hallway of every dormitory there will be drinking water.
Students cannot cook in the dorms, but for tea and noodles
they will have access to clean water. Air-filtration systems in the
dormitories and in buildings on campus will be top quality. It is a
very important aspect of community life that we are all concerned
about; for ourselves, for our students, and for our guests.
In the dining hall we will provide three meals a day, breakfast,
lunch and dinner, for boarding students. We will use a catering
service who will work with us and a student group to make sure
the food is nutritious and enjoyable. This student group will have
the opportunity to have a voice. They can tell us what they like and
do not like. Students need to have a voice and know that they can
be agents for change. For our day students, the lunch time meal
is provided. We are looking at our dining services from a health
standard first and we will enjoy local Chinese cuisine infused with
some international dishes.