2020-05-12 16:05:39
The pandemic changed the way students learn but can’t stop our growth. No matter we learn online or offline, learning is happening everywhere. On April 19th, the 4th USAP China 2020 (United States Academic Pentathlon) came to an end as contests were moved online. MBS made new breakthroughs with three awards won. Tim Yuan from Grade 7 Class 1 won the Gold Award in Science, Li Yixuan from Grade 8 Class 1 won Young Leader nomination and MBS as a school was announced as Holistic Education Rising Star School.
United States Academic Pentathlon is a sister academic event to the USAD, United States Academic Decathlon. Tens of thousands of outstanding primary and middle school students around the world take part in USAD every year and it is known as the thematic holistic academic challenge to the world-renowned schools. This year in China, nearly 2000 contestants from about 200 top middle schools formed over 200 teams competed with each other during this annual academic event.
Each year, USAP focuses on one theme, and goes deep into five academic fields of social science, language and literature, arts, science, and mathematics through an interdisciplinary, thematic and inquiry-based learning approach. This year, USAP's theme is "Disease and Health: The Light and Darkness of Life," which echoes the current covid-19 pandemic and reflects academic concern to the reality.
From its first on-campus information session on Sep 16th, 2019 to its ending on Apr 19th, 2020, USAP China lasted 216 days. 10 students from MBS USAP team made it all the way to the final contest.
Once established, the MBS USAP team faced the online contest in December as the first challenge. For most of its members, this was their first time with USAP. To finish studying of 5 subjects in such a short time is indeed a big challenge.
Therefore, Bob Liu, chief coach of the team, along with other coaches, formulated a thorough and detailed preparation plan: they will use extra-curriculum activity (ECA) time in the afternoon for intensive coaching, self-reinforcement projects on weekends and during Evening Study every Monday, student-led sharing for better improvement of each other.
“USAP is a challenge for holistic academic abilities. Every contestant showed great enthusiasm and did their best. What surprised me the most was, everyone so excited about the school flag parade gave me a strong sense of collective honor of the team members”, said Bob.
Coaches of all subjects contributed with their unique strengths in the preparation: Allen Wu downloaded a selection of papers from CNKI to help the team with system forming in humanities and social science subjects; Mike thought out of the box and created in a short time a set of teaching methods specifically for the English literature contest; Ross managed to illustrate concepts like DNA, RNA and chromosome replication in a way that the team understands the best; Richard Young raced with the time and taught math at a fast speed…
At the beginning of February, USAP moved online because of the pandemic put basically everything offline on hold and the team had the unique experience in preparing for the contest online, during which, Bob referred himself as a cheerleading captain who had to not only supervise learning progress of the members, but also to take care of their feelings, to encourage the students to adjust their mindset and be positive and ready for the contest. Despite all the difficulties, no team members, coaches or parents ever said anything about quitting and made it to the last.
Tim Yuan from Grade 7 Class 1 won Gold Award in Science the very first time he took part in USAP. He recalled being frightened at the sight of five thick preparation manuals with so many unknown stuff to learn and so many more vocabulary and names. But being analytical, he soon managed to find the underlying logic and shared his experience of preparation:
USAP not only led me to many more knowledge outside of the textbooks, but also helped me know how one should learn. Some of the learning methods are useful for future study as well:
A.Take notes while you read and remember the key words.
B.Learn to look for the clues, the main idea of a subject, and everything else around the main idea. For example, in this year’s USAP, social science focuses on Society VS Disease. Identify the relationship between the society and diseases of each time frame and their key figures.
C.Take the initiative to ask questions which is the most important and effective thing. Every subject of USAP is very difficult. Asking questions timely will save your time.
Ross, the Science coach of the team, commented that Tim Yuan did an outstanding job during preparation, always asking questions. In the third week, he handed in a paper about DNA, showing his keen interest in biology. Ross further encouraged him to pursue more advanced knowledge in this field and inspired him to go deeper.
我认为，只有真正展现自己对学科的热爱，学生才会被你感染，受到启迪。如果学生对老师的专业知识有信心，就能和老师建立信任，愿意向老师学习，任何沟通障碍都将不复存在，学生也会受到鼓励勇往直前、求知求索。
——科学老师 Ross
Li Yixuan from Grade 8 Class 1 won Young Leader Nomination, a special award for contestants who manifests outstanding performance in organization, leadership and creative thinking. During preparation, as the team leader, she assisted the team coaches to organize events like sharing and mock tests which won her the award.
USAP is a challenging academic contest where students get to expand their knowledge base and hone collaborating skills during preparation. As the team leader, my duty is to coordinate preparation sessions with everyone. They were so great. Everyone was so self-driven that I didn’t have to push for anything to be done. This award represents encouragement and recognition of my contribution. Hopefully I can do better in future contests like this one.
The organization committee cancelled the finals to be held in the United States due to the pandemic. We firmly believe that we are getting back to normal soon and we will gather together for USAP again next year and fare better.
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