From Me to We: Our journey as reciprocal teachers and learners

• In Event: Intercultural and International Reciprocal Learning for the Improvement of School Education: Stories from a Toronto-Shanghai Sister School Network

Proposal

This paper tells the story of a West-East sisterhood developed, strengthened, and flourished in a Toronto-Shanghai Sister School network. The two authors of the paper are graduate students who have helped facilitate online and in-person interactions between a pair of teachers from Toronto and Shanghai. The two partnering teachers come from very different backgrounds: one of them is an elementary school teacher working in urban Toronto and the other is a primary school teacher working in suburban Shanghai; one of them speaks English and the other Mandarin; one teacher teaches general subjects and the other teaches Chinese (Literature) and Character Education. Despite differences, both teachers have found much in common through their shared learning journey in the Sister School network. In this presentation, the two teachers from Toronto and Shanghai will share their experiences of developing joint Character Education projects using picture books and delivering these projects in their localized school settings with graduate researchers’ support. Audiences will see how both teachers inspired each other on teaching approaches and lesson planning in spite of schedule and curriculum differences. By highlighting not only moments of collaborative and reciprocal learning, but also moments of unlearning and relearning amongst researchers and teachers, this presentation demonstrates how a collaborative research journey amongst teachers and researchers impacted curriculum, teaching and learning in a Sister School network. By the end of their inquiries, both researchers and teachers are no longer merely a “Canadian teacher” or a “Chinese teacher,” a “language teacher” or a “researcher.” They become friends, sisters, and another self in the mirror, enriching each other’s educational thinking and practices.

Authors

• Lang Qin

• Meng Dai, East China Normal University