Could you introduce yourself and your family for us?
My name is Sarah Hilgers and I am this year’s PTO President. I have two children, Henry and En. Henry is a first grader at Shu Ren and En will be entering PreK-4 next year. My husband, Hunter Hubby, is the Welcome Chair this year. We live in Berkeley and love being part of such a muti-cultural community. Besides my roles as the PTO President, mother and wife, I work at Kaiser Permanente as an Occupational Therapist/Certified Hand Therapist. I have been with Kaiser for the past 10 years. When I can catch a moment, I really enjoy reading, and entertaining.

Why is it important to you that your children receive a bilingual education?
A bilingual education has always been extremely important to me as a mother. I think it is important to be exposed to different cultures at a very young age and to think beyond ourselves and see the bigger world. I was not raised bilingual and wish I had been. I have been studying Spanish for many years but have never been fully immersed in the language because of lack of time. When we had our first child the goal was to send him to a Spanish school but since having our second (who is Taiwanese by birth) it made much more sense to send our children to a Chinese school. My husband and I are passionate and committed to maintaining our second son’s cultural heritage. We are grateful to Shu Ren for all of their guidance in blending our bi-cultural family.

What are your goals for the PTO this year?
Our goal for the PTO this year is to continue to build our wonderful parent-teacher community at Shu Ren. I believe that when parents and teachers collaborate, we bring out the best in everyone and our children benefit tremendously. There are a multitude of ways we will achieve this collaboration. For starters, we will provide as much volunteer support as possible to the teachers. Our initial fundraising goal will be to provide $500 to each classroom to cover some of the transportation needs for the increasing field trips in all grades. We will have three main fundraising events this year – the Holiday Book Fair, the Lunar New Year Party and Shu Ren t-shirt sales . We will also have many FUNraising events such as the Autumn Festival, mothers’/fathers’ night out, parents’ night out, coffee break at Bread Workshop and after school group play dates. And finally, we are proud to start our first 6-unit parent inquiry, with Nathan Pope. He will lead the parents in a wine-making inquiry which will not only be fun but will help us all understand how are children are learning.

What do you feel the PTO’s biggest accomplishment has been so far? Biggest challenge?
During this summer, the current PTO Officers worked very hard to improve and streamline our communication systems. We have a new parent Intranet site which allows parents to access all of the vital PTO documents, the newsletter has been streamlined to provide up to date information to the families on a weekly basis, and we set up a Google Group, so parents can communicate with one another in a less formal setting. This is the third year of the PTO and our prior PTO presidents Jacky Carleton and Christine Wu-Dittmar have laid a great foundation for the school. They have done a wonderful job with fundraising, community building and many other things and I look forward to building on that foundation.

I was really pleased with the turnout of families at the Welcome Party and was delighted to see new and old friends at our First Day of School Breakfast. There is a lot of enthusiasm about the school and this is ultimately our greatest accomplishment. We have many more great ideas for the school this year and instead of looking at them as challenges, I see them only as endless opportunities. I encourage every family to join with me to realize these opportunities and create the best school possible for our children.

How would you characterize the parent community at Shu Ren?
I am so grateful to our parent community for their endless dedication to giving our children the emotional and academic support they deserve. We represent a variety of backgrounds and cultures and are united in our primary goal, the well-being of our children. Thank you to all the parents and let’s keep up the great work and have a great time doing it! Thank you for allowing me to work as the President. It is already a great year!

We have already finalized our first unit for our 2nd and 3rd grade class.  We will begin with Migration which will study how people and animals have moved and how those movements have affected culture and the environment.  For this unit we will be taking one overnight trip and one day trip.  There might also be additional experiential learning opportunities outside the classroom. The purpose of these trips is to inspire, excite and stimulate the learning.  For our overnight trip we will go to China Camp SP near the San Pablo Bay and explore a Chinese Fishing Village that began in the 1880s, to study the migration of Chinese people from Canton (Guangzhou) to the bay area.  We will spend the night in tents in the camp ground near the village.  Before the visit we will be studying the settlement in detail.  After the visit we will continue to explore our questions about the village.  For our day trip we will be going to Angel Island to study the migrations of early Spanish explorers and nineteenth century immigrants many of whom came from China.  As with all trips we will spend several days studying the place we will go before the trip and then after the trip we will continue to find the answers to our follow up questions.

We will not settle for mediocre learning, or even good learning.  We must be determined to engage our children in exciting and engaging opportunities to learn.  If we aim for the stars, to be the best school there is, and if we pursue that goal with vision and perseverance, then I know we will achieve it!  Let’s do what hasn’t been done; let’s revolutionize learning.

- Nathan Pope, Assistant Head of School, PYP Coordinator

For further information about the IB and its programmes, visit http://www.ibo.org

The Shuttle Service will provide:
➢ Morning pick-up and afternoon drop-off in San Francisco (downtown close to the Bay Bridge) and in Marin county (close to the Richmond/San Rafael bridge)
➢ Clean&comfortable shuttle vans that can seat 11-13 people
➢ Independently-owned shuttle service with licensed, insured and courteous drivers
➢ $400/month per child (parents need to supply car seats)

Please contact the school at 510-981-0320 or info@shureninternationalschool.com for more information.

For almost ten years he has been teaching the PYP to a range of ages. Many of his years teaching the PYP were in Shanghai, China, where he was able to gain insight into supporting second language learners inside the curriculum. Nathan is fluent in Mandarin Chinese and also speaks conversant German and Italian. He is a firm believer in integrating reading and writing into the unit of inquiry and specializes in a range of techniques to make this possible.

Shu Ren is currently applying for IB Candidacy, the first step toward our goal of becoming an IB World School. Nathan will be instrumental in our implementation of PYP at Shu Ren. He will provide leadership in curriculum planning, teaching the PYP, training teachers, and communicating with parents and the larger community about PYP. Finally, he will be supervising all teachers as the Assistant Head of School.

Please join us in welcoming Nathan to the Shu Ren team.

- Could you introduce yourself and your family for us?

My name is Christine Wu, and I am the mother of Nikolas (Niko/Derhua) in Kindergarten and Lukas (Deran) in Pre-K. My husband is Kurt Dittmar. I was born in Taiwan, but grew up in Texas, having immigrated to the US when I was six. I received a BA in Philosophy from Case Western Reserve University and went on to medical school at UCLA. I trained in Anesthesia at UCSF where I met my husband, but decided to become a full-time mom after my second son was born in 2007. We have enjoyed living in Oakland near Joaquin Miller Park since 2004.

- Why is it important to you that your children receive a bilingual education?

Being a product of failed weekend Chinese schools and finding the ease with which my younger cousins picked up languages from birth, I decided to speak to my son in as much Mandarin as I could, which wasn’t too much. I also researched into language schools and read a lot about immersion language programs, finding that I agreed with almost everything I read. Thus, I became a firm believer in immersion education for language learning and especially early exposure in the targeted language. In fact, my older son was in a Spanish immersion preschool and I was considering public school programs in Spanish for his Kindergarten before I found out about Shu Ren International School. All my past experiences led me to believe that most children will lose the ability to hear and speak the different tones and nuances of the targeted language if not exposed to it before puberty, if not earlier. Since I prefer Mandarin as the target language, it being the more difficult language as well as the language of my heritage, I was very happy when I heard about Shu Ren as a preschool option that would extend all the way to the 8th grade, teaching my children to read and write Mandarin as well as speak like a native. I believe that sending my children to Shu Ren is giving them a gift of language and education that will last a lifetime.

- What are your goals for the PTA this year?

When I accepted the responsibilities of being the PTA President at the end of the last school year, I thought about what I had seen at other established schools that I had visited before, that I wanted for my children’s school experience. I didn’t want the fact that Shu Ren was still a very small school to hinder them from getting the full elementary school experience that I had growing up. In addition, I thought that the fact that we are still a small school could be beneficial in creating a closer-knit group of parents who know each other well and who can help each other out when needed. So, one of my top goals this year is to create this community through activities and events that teach us about parenting, about our school, and about what our kids like to do- have fun with each other. And, if we get to make some money along the way, we can help give our school something lasting to take with them when they expand into their new space in the future.

- What do you feel the PTA’s biggest accomplishment has been this year so far? Biggest challenge?

We have accomplished much more than I hoped for this year, from our beautifully designed T-shirts, hoodies, and book bags, to all our fun meetings where we got to go on a “speed date” or learn about the benefits of an IB education or about positive parenting. However, our biggest accomplishment thus far is really having a successful Book Fair and Fall Festival, where we raised over $1000 for our library and the children all had a blast doing it.

Biggest challenge so far is, of course, getting enough volunteers to help out with our events and finding a good time when most parents can make it to the meetings. But, I believe that this would be a challenge for all schools, not just at Shu Ren.

- How would you characterize the parent community at Shu Ren?

I am very touched by all the parents I have met: by their kindness to each other, their passion for our school, and especially their generosity with their time, resources, ideas, and finances. Everyone is different, from diverse backgrounds and with their individual viewpoints that have widened my perspective, but I have found our parents to be truly compassionate people, talented in a myriad of ways, and extremely dedicated to enhancing their child’s education.

The Wu-Dittmars in Zion National Park

School tours will be offered every other Wednesday throughout the fall and winter. This is a chance to see our immersion classrooms in action and meet with school administrators individually or in small groups. Please register for school tours here.

Parent Information Sessions/Open Houses are an opportunity to hear from teachers and administrators about Shu Ren’s plans and goals, talk with current Shu Ren parents, and learn more about how our unique immersion curriculum is implemented. The first Open House will be held on October 21. Please RSVP and see additional dates here.

Shu Ren will also be participating in the East Bay Independent School Association K – 8 Admissions Fair on Tuesday, October 12, 6:30pm – 8:30pm at the Berkeley Marina Doubletree Hotel, 200 Marina Blvd. Berkeley, CA. Please see the EBISA site for more information.

Please contact the school at info@shureninternationalschool.com or 510-981-0320 if you have any questions. We look forward to seeing you.

- Chinese Brush Painting, taught by Shu Ren’s Kai Yao To, who has many years of experience both as a teacher and as an accomplished artist
- Chinese Wind and Percussion music, taught by instructors from DJ Wind Chinese Music Academy
- Wushu (martial arts), taught by Hao Zhihua, a former national champion of wushu in China
- Suzuki violin, taught by Annette Swarzeuski, who has fifteen years experience teaching the Suzuki method.

Shu Ren will also offer After School Mandarin Chinese for both beginners and intermediate/advanced students. All classes are open to students from surrounding schools, and we can provide transportation from some schools. Classes begin September 7 so register now! Full class descriptions and registration forms can be found here.