Focus on academic development, pursue excellence, and build a better tomorrow for future education

Buddhist Yip Kei Nam Memorial College Focuses on the all-round development of students, not only focusing on academic achievements, but also on cultivating students' moral character and establishing positive values. The school believes that every student has unique talents and is committed to providing them with rich learning opportunities. They can build confidence and empathy through experience, reflection and internalization in diversified learning experiences, learn different knowledge and skills, and find their own interests and strengths. The new principal Lam Chi Wai, Jimmy has served as the deputy principal of a direct subsidy English middle school for many years. He has accumulated rich experience and insights in English learning. He is able to lead the teaching team to formulate comprehensive teaching policies to help each student pursue excellence. The school positions students' future, broadens their global vision, cultivates world cultural literacy, absorbs more extracurricular knowledge, and uses multi-dimensional thinking and analysis to lay the foundation for them to become future global citizens.

Build an English environment and deepen English application abilities

Principal Lam Chi Wai, Jimmy said: "The school attaches great importance to creating a school-wide English environment, hoping to strengthen students' ability and confidence in learning English." The school helps students improve their English skills unconsciously by formulating different learning themes and combining them with a series of interdisciplinary English collaboration activities that are both interesting and life-like. The school also encourages teachers and students to interact in English, gradually establishing context in the most "relevant" way, allowing students to learn vocabulary and language usage skills from daily conversations. Principal Lam Chi Wai, Jimmy believes that the most effective way to learn a language is not to memorize it by rote, but to provide a large number of opportunities to use English in a targeted manner to expand its learning space, so that students can first understand how to use it and then fall in love with it, thereby deepening their English reading and writing communication skills and solidifying their language foundation.

In addition, the school will also create learning opportunities through interdisciplinary multicultural exchange activities. Assistant Principal Chen Zhizhong first took the traditional festival Mid-Autumn Festival as an example. He pointed out that the school’s foreign English teachers will work with Chinese teachers to hang lanterns and guess lantern riddles in the school. In addition to promoting traditional Chinese cultural festivals, students can also understand the English terms related to the festival and the cultural differences between different countries. Principal Lam Chi Wai, Jimmy continued: "In fact, the relevant English vocabulary is quite difficult for Hong Kong students who have always studied 'academic English'. Therefore, students should first learn these daily life terms and consolidate their English foundation."

Expand overseas exchanges and broaden international horizons

The school is well aware that learning should not be limited to the campus, so it reallocates school resources and uses additional resources in a timely manner to organize overseas exchange study groups. Taking "classrooms without walls" as the general direction, it breaks through the classroom restrictions and allows students to go out of the campus for exchanges, participate in different competitions, and serve as volunteers. Through non-classroom learning, students can personally plan, experience and reflect, conduct cultural exchanges and comparisons with peers from different backgrounds, accumulate and internalize relevant knowledge, skills and attitudes, broaden their horizons and network, and cultivate them to become future leaders.

Assistant Principal Rong Xiaojing mentioned that the school had earlier organized the "Malaysia Exchange Visit 2023" program for in-depth exchange of youth dreams through the "International Youth Exchange Funding Program" of the Home Affairs and Youth Affairs Bureau and the Youth Development Committee, allowing students to go to the Petaling Catholic National High School in Malaysia for exchanges, classes and interactions, broadening students' horizons, enriching their learning experience, and adding to their foreign life experience. Students who participated in the program were full of praise for the study habits or words and deeds of Malaysian students, and then thought about their own shortcomings and explored room for improvement. The program promotes students' communication and social skills, stimulates their motivation to learn, and encourages them to learn independently. Since this plan is an exchange visit activity, the teachers and students of the school are also looking forward to the above-mentioned Malaysian students visiting Hong Kong and visiting the school in November 2024.

Principal Lam Chi Wai, JimmyIn addition, the threshold for participating in overseas and overseas exchange groups is actually not high. The key is whether students are willing to participate and learn, so all students can sign up. Based on past experience, students are very attentive and active, both in the early preparation and in the later reporting. They often produce impressive and high-quality works beyond expectations; this coincides with the school's belief that learning should be based on students' interests.

The school has planned a number of overseas and overseas exchange projects this year, including 2 Japanese exchange groups with different themes, 1 British and Danish science and technology exchange group, 1 Korean exchange group and multiple mainland exchange groups. The school hopes that every student can participate in at least one exchange group during their schooling. In addition to learning to take care of themselves, they can also broaden their horizons, stimulate their desire to explore life through personal experience, continue to pursue excellence, and set higher goals for life!

Promote interdisciplinary collaboration and stimulate learning motivation and potential

Principal Lam Chi Wai, Jimmy said: "Learning has no divisions!" The school hopes that students should be based on the pursuit of knowledge, so it has been cultivating students through interdisciplinary programs, using different themes to attract students to conduct academic research and discussion, from shallow to deep, hoping to inspire their thirst for knowledge, cultivate their communication, independent thinking and problem-solving abilities, and equip students to cope with various challenges in the future.

For example, Vice President Lang Huiying pointed out that the Biology and English Department organized a special study program called "How to keep healthy". Students must learn how to set correct research directions and strategies through systematic verification and research, and finally report their research conclusions in English. They must also point out the limitations of their research and possible future research directions, etc., using real experience to improve students' interest in research and problem-solving abilities, inspire their creativity, and pave the way for their future.

Principal Lam Chi Wai, Jimmy I firmly believe that with the rapid development and application of science and technology, people will be unable to work without information technology in the future, and the concept of talent will bring about earth-shaking changes. He quoted analysis reports from different international professional organizations: "Compared with today's need for people with strong memory and the ability to apply knowledge, the future society will need talents with high analysis, problem-solving skills and creativity." Therefore, if schools still insist on following the same rules and educating today's students with yesterday's methods, they will deprive them of their future.

Create better than standard facilities and launch future classroom project

In recent years, the school has updated many classrooms and multimedia teaching equipment, such as adding electronic interactive whiteboards as needed, to improve the quality of learning and teaching. The school has also added library facilities and organized activities such as reading clubs and small lectures to strengthen the reading atmosphere in the school and thereby strengthen students' language skills. In order to allow students to quickly adapt to the future group-based work model, the school has invested in building a multimedia information room and group learning conference room to provide a corresponding environment for students to gradually become accustomed to the co-creation and learning model, and to equip them to meet future industrial and commercial needs.

Extensive reading is of great benefit to students in learning Chinese and is also beneficial to their study. At present, the school library has a collection of Chinese and English hard copies of 18,000 books, and is continuing to expand. The school has also ordered different types of journals to encourage students to explore different levels of knowledge and information. By adding e-books, students can also browse the "Cloud Bookcase" through the Internet and become an important member of the "Wallless Classroom". At the same time, the school library holds book fairs for a long time, starting from students’ interests, regularly updating and recommending diverse reading materials to them, guiding them to explore and discover knowledge, cultivating good reading habits, and equipping them to face the future "learning society".

Introducing a team of experts to implement teaching in accordance with aptitude and improve the quality of learning and teaching

In terms of school-based curriculum, the school is not only a member of the Education University of Hong Kong Quality Education Fund’s “Caring for the Diversity of Junior Secondary Students (Reading and Writing) through Online Learning” network project; it is also a pilot school for the Education Bureau’s (Language across the Curriculum) and (Reading across the Curriculum) courses. It practices learning and teaching in Form 4 and 5 to broaden students’ reading breadth and depth of learning, so that they can truly “learn to learn”. At the same time, the school is a member of the "CUHK Jockey Club "Intelligence" for the Future Program" and has introduced advanced artificial intelligence (AI) courses to allow students to apply what they have learned and keep pace with technological development. In addition, in order to strengthen home-school cooperation, the school is also a community sharing project school of the "Jockey Club Computational Thinking Education". Through the creation of a community "Parent School", it is based on parent education and shares the latest and most appropriate technology education arrangements and deployments with parents.

At the same time, the school attaches great importance to the development of the whole person. In addition to knowledge, attitude and skills, students also need to have a strong body. Multiple research findings have shown that continuous exercise can improve students' learning ability. As a member school of the "Hong Kong Elite Athletes Association-Elite Athletes Charity Foundation Jockey Club Dynamic Campus Project", the school fully promotes interesting professional sports training (including emerging sports) and organizes whole-person development activities to inject vitality and positive energy into the campus, allowing students to enjoy the benefits of sports while improving their self-confidence and maintaining physical and mental health.

In addition, the school has also introduced expert teams and resources in different areas. Taking the academic field as an example, the school has introduced a data analysis system to track and monitor changes in students' performance, allowing the teaching team to better understand students' learning progress, adjust teaching arrangements and arrangements in a timely manner, and improve the overall quality of learning and teaching. The school also used additional resources to hire two more English teachers, significantly reducing the teacher-student ratio. Classes are taught in groups according to students' English proficiency, taking care of the learning differences of individual students and ensuring the provision of high-quality teaching.

Whole-person development, pursuit of excellence, and response to future challenges

Principal Lam Chi Wai, JimmyIn summary, the school comprehensively improves students’ English learning and communication skills, and provides different learning activities to broaden their horizons and develop a global perspective. The school continues to provide students with diverse learning opportunities, aiming to cooperate with the school's high-quality holistic education, allowing students to learn from experience, gradually build a positive attitude and a positive outlook on life, and lay a solid foundation for their future excellent development!