Emily Chen: Strong Leadership Enhancement, First President of the Student Council
Emily Chen is a current 11th grade student at SMOA. Last year, due to the COVID-19, she returned home from a high school in California and chose to study at SMOA, which offers real-time classes in the Asian time zone with no time difference.
During her one year at SMOA, Emily has not only maintained a 4.0 GPA in her academic studies, but also overcame the difficulties of the COVID-19 by founding the first SMOA Student Council, and becoming the President of the first Student Council, the leader of hundreds of students at SMOA from all over the world.
1. No more jet lag, only endless good classes
For Emily, the period of time when she first returned from the United States under the epidemic was particularly hard because she was still taking school-provided online classes with her original American school in California. In order to get her graduation credits and not fall behind in her homework, she had to struggle with the 15–16-hour time difference (Daylight Saving Time/Winter Saving Time) and follow her classmates in the U.S. on Pacific Time.
At 8:00 a.m. in California, schools in the U.S. are just getting ready to start a new day, while it’s already 23:00 p.m. Beijing time in China, which makes you sleepy and sleepy. The classes started at 11:00 or 12:00 in the middle of the night, and it was often not until dawn the next day that you could rest, completely disrupting the biological clock, and the upside-down routine for teenagers not only had a serious impact on their bodies, but also did not study efficiently.
Under these difficult circumstances, Emily decided to transfer to SMOA, where she could attend classes in the Asian time zone without jet lag, and where the student’s work schedule was guaranteed. In addition, SMOA’s U.S. high school courses are taught by foreign teachers from St. Mary’s School in the U.S., which guarantees the purest U.S. high school teaching system and teaching quality. Not only are there many AP courses to choose from, but you will also be able to obtain the authoritative St. Mary’s diploma, credits and transcripts recognized by U.S. colleges and high schools, so that your four years of U.S. high school study can continue without interruption, and it is very convenient for you to either go on to college or transfer back to the original U.S. high school in the future.
At SMOA, Emily’s situation quickly improved, her learning efficiency and learning status were ensured, and her academic performance steadily improved.
2. The real straight A student is a note-taker.
In addition to the lack of jet lag, Emily was very pleased with the teachers from many prestigious American institutions and their extensive AP courses. Upon enrollment, Emily took five AP courses: AP Calculus, AP Chemistry, AP English and Composition, AP U.S. History, and AP Fine Arts, covering different disciplines of literature, science, and art, which shows her broad interest in learning and her desire for comprehensive development of the whole subject.
For AP U.S. History, a subject that many Chinese students are afraid to take, Emily has no fear and even likes it very much. She said, “I really like AP U.S. History very much, learning U.S. History allows me to understand more about American culture and traditions, and our AP U.S. History teacher is especially passionate in class, which makes me even more interested in the subject of history. “
AP English and Composition is also a difficult course that many international students whose native language is not English don’t dare to challenge easily, but Emily’s grades in this class are also very good. She likes the fun games like kahoo that the foreign teacher often brings everyone to do in class, and she likes to cultivate and improve her writing techniques and skills through this innovative, lively, and interactive way of learning.
When asked about Emily’s learning experience in the field of liberal arts, she told us that in addition to listening attentively in class, she should read the reading list assigned by the teacher before class and must summarize and take notes after class.
Emily believes that all online students should work closely with a one-on-one bilingual learning coach, who plays an important role in assisting their learning and improving their learning efficiency. Because in the whole process of learning and in all aspects, the learning coach will play a crucial role as a bridge to help students communicate smoothly with the foreign teacher, deal with all kinds of problems in learning, and also monitor the students’ learning efficiency, supervise the homework and exams, to ensure the learning progress.
Emily loves her one-on-one learning coach, Ms. Mia, and commented, “My learning coach, Ms. Mia, is very approachable and has a lot of tutoring experience, and we have learned a lot from her in our regular chats. At the beginning of the school year, we were not very familiar with the process of the online course, Ms. Mia has been helping me to promote the whole learning process, and at the same time, she will also explain in detail to me the homework grading system and how to run for the student council and so on. At the same time, Ms. Mia also organized some materials for me to assist and help me with my study. With her help, I became more familiar with SMOA’s grading mechanism, the instructor’s teaching platform, and so on, and my study status got better very quickly.”
In addition, Emily feels that the practice and Q&A sessions provided by SMOA teachers for students taking AP exams are very useful, and she suggests that you should also make sure to attend the info session before the exam, as these extra Q&A sessions can help you better avoid the pitfalls during the exam and help you get a better score.
3. Bold and courageous, founded the Student Council and became its first President.
For Emily, being in SMOA was a very rare and special experience, and it was also a valuable opportunity for her to enhance her leadership skills – as a founder, she created the first SMOA Student Council and was successfully elected as the first Student Council President.
Emily said that it was very difficult to go from having an idea to actually starting to promote it, to actually setting up the student council and keeping it running well, because there are hundreds of students in SMOA and they come from different regions with different cultures and backgrounds, and they all take different classes at different times, and even though they are all in the Asian time zone, there are also students from South Korea and Vietnam, and they all have jet lag.
“Communication is actually the biggest challenge, after a period of time to find out, I and the classmates agreed on a time to communicate online every day, which pushed the student council to first develop rules and regulations, and slowly formed our online student council’s unique management style. The students were also very positive and cooperative, and after that everything moved forward very smoothly.” As the founder, Emily summarized a unique working and management method.
This year, she also led other members of the Student Council to continue to forge ahead and create quite a few new student clubs, such as Music Club, Photography Club, E-magazine Club, and so on, in order to enrich the online learning life and help everyone find like-minded partners to make progress together.
Now, more and more students are joining the student council and club activities founded by Emily. Everyone’s after-school life is getting richer and richer, and it also promotes communication and cooperation among students, which has become a widely sought-after and popular topic. Many students also took the initiative to publish their works and articles in the SMOA e-zine to express their opinions and feelings and responded to her call to submit photographs for an online exhibition. The students also organized an online concert, using the online music platform to record and eventually synthesize a lot of exciting music pieces to share with each other.
Managing the student council and clubs online was difficult, but it also demonstrated Emily’s communication and leadership skills, both of which will play a huge role in her college applications later on, Emily says, “It was a challenge and an opportunity to improve my leadership skills. The process of overcoming obstacles was originally a growth process.”
Emily will be entering 12th grade next semester, and she hopes to get into one of the top 30 universities in the U.S. to major in international relations. For her, SMOA is a big family with students from all over the world, and those who live in the same city often get together offline to promote friendship, which is very similar to the life of a normal international student in the U.S. high school. Emily is looking forward to the end of the epidemic soon, and with her excellent grades and leadership skills at SMOA, she will return to her original high school in California to study for her dream school.