On June 6, 2017, the third ‘Shadow Principal’ pairing ceremony of the Faculty of Education at East China Normal University was held in the first-floor activity room in the Physics Building of Zhongshan Campus. Yuan Zhenguo, Dean of the Faculty of Education, Dai Ruihua, Deputy Dean, Han Chunhong, deputy secretary of the Party Committee of the Faculty of Education and the leaders of each department attended the ceremony, along with the headmasters from all over the country and the pairing students. The ceremony was hosted by Liu Ye, the deputy director of Student Affairs Division of the Faculty of Education.
Dai Ruihua made a speech at the begin of the ceremony. Then a wonderful video about ‘Building a Dream with Education’ showed the implementation situation of the first and second ‘Shadow Principal’ to all.
Han Chunhong made a detailed introduction on this project. The Faculty of Education has started to implement this project since 2014 and now there have been 35 pairs of principals and their ‘shadow’. The practice schools have been in 21 provinces and municipalities around the country and the students participating in this project have covered 9 departments including postgraduate students and undergraduate students. During the process of pairing, the students learnt a lot by further understanding the daily work of principals.
As the representatives of the second ‘Shadow Principal’, Mao Pengcheng, a postgraduate student in Class Year of 2016 of the Department of Education, and Liu Yan, a postgraduate student in Class Year of 2015 of the Department of Special Education, shared their gains and inspiration from the past 100 days.
After that, Xu Shifeng, the principal of Xi’an Hangtian Middle School and the representative principal of the third ‘Shadow Principals’, made a speech. Firstly, he concluded the three periods of acting as a principal: being a principal, running a school, and doing education. He
emphasized that the principals should provide students with a good environment for growth, set up various platforms, and strengthen the professional development of teachers. Secondly, he told three stories to show how was a principal encouraged by teachers’ professional dedication, so as to explain that when Shadow Principals are practicing at school, they need not only to “Learn,” but to “Enlighten.” Thirdly, Xu expressed that he would try his best to arrange this project and develop with the pairing students.
In the free discussion part after the signing ceremony, Li Weisheng, the dean of the Department of Education Management, gave several advices about this project.
In the summary speech, Prof. Yuan Zhenguo pointed out that this is a world of the initiative, interacting and creators, not the world of a passive responder. In order to meet the challenges of the new era and the new change, our talents training should be aimed at cultivating the leader-type educators. The leader-type educators should have five key abilities: overall view, responsibility, leadership, cooperative spirit and creative ability. The Shadow Principal is one of the best ways to cultivate the leader-type educators. He thanked all the tutorial principals, and shared his good wishes to all the students in this project.
After the whole pairing ceremony successfully ended, the tutorial principals exchanged contact information and had in-depth discussions with the pairing students. All the participants are expecting the “100 Shadow Principals” Project to produce more plentiful fruits.