[SMOA] Outstanding Student Evelina Shares “The Joy of Thinking Deeply and Creating Freely”
Evelina is an imaginative girl from Tianjin. Since she was a child, she has longed for the vastness of the universe, pondered the existence of the world’s wonders, and envisioned the intelligence of the future era.
In her third year of middle school, Evelina decided to attend high school in the United States. St. Mary’s School in Ohio attracted Evelina both academically and comprehensively. Evelina received an acceptance letter from St. Mary’s School. However, due to the COVID-19, like many of her classmates, she was unable to travel to the U.S. for the time being. So, Evelina chose The St. Mary’s Online Academy (SMOA).
SMOA is a great place for this girl who has always loved imagination. The pure American high school teaching style, which emphasizes the exploration of possibilities and the cultivation of creativity, has introduced her to a deeper level of thinking and the space of free creativity, and she has truly experienced the joy of being a student. Today, let me take you to learn more about Evelina’s experience at SMOA.
Fall asleep in an online class? That's not going to happen!
Evelina’s GPA was 3.6 in the first quarter of her enrollment in September, and by the second quarter it had risen to 4.1. When asked about the secret to Evelina’s improved grades, she actually explained that she “concentrates more in online classes and doesn’t fall asleep”.
What kind of logic is that? Isn’t everyone questioning how easy it is to fall asleep and lose concentration in online classes?
The following are Evelina’s words:
The teacher’s way of teaching is different from that in China. You can discuss with the teacher in class and ask questions if you have any. The class is very interactive, so I won’t fall asleep, and the class is also more interesting. The teacher will also ask some questions in class, most of which I think are creative questions, not something you can memorize or copy down, but more of a hope that the students will think about it and come up with some conclusions, which I think is more conducive to our learning and mastery of knowledge.
Compared with many offline courses, SMOA’s online courses are more interactive and can attract students to concentrate more.
Evelina gave us an example:
The book “The Cottage on Mango Street” is known to many of my friends. The main character is Esperanza, a girl who lives on Mango Street in a Latin American slum. She dances hard in the street every day, hoping to be appreciated one day, earn her own house and live a rich life. In literature class, the teacher’s question is, do you think the main character’s efforts count as hard work?
This question gives Evelina the feeling of a hit to her cerebral cortex. Why? Because she had never considered that it was even possible to ask a question like that. Interestingly, the very process of discussing this open-ended question triggered her to think deeper.
“Although it seemed like a lot of effort, in essence she was just passively waiting, and her dance was only shown to a very limited range of people, which could be fruitless.” Evelina said, “There was an assignment in this class to write about my own friends in imitation of this literary work, which I think is still interesting because I have friends who are indeed quite worthy of writing about as well, and I can be particularly happy about that.”
What we see through the interview is Evelina’s incessant emphasis on how fun and enjoyable her studies are. Her enthusiasm, imagination, creativity, and execution are all fueled by SMOA’s learning methods and classroom environment.
Of course, when she first joined SMOA, Evelin more or less experienced some discomfort. As all the classes are taught live and in person by foreign teachers, it is a challenge to the students’ English proficiency. The teaching style was different, and it also took time to get up to speed. But with hard work, especially asking questions about what she didn’t understand, Evelina slowly caught on to the learning method and had fun with it. This was the key to her rapid improvement in grades.
Pure American high school teaching has greatly improved my overall ability.
SMOA has a wide range of courses to choose from, and depending on the credit requirements, each student can choose a course that suits his or her interests and foundation. A learning coach is available to help analyze course selection.
This semester, Evelina chose courses such as Biology, Geography, Algebra, Creative Writing, and English ESL. In addition, a number of electives and clubs were chosen to participate in.
Although each teacher’s method of instruction varies, the overall approach is that of an American high school. Group discussions, encouragement of questions, open-ended questions, and the development of critical thinking skills were all consistent. For example, for group discussions, each teacher was able to skillfully utilize the Zoom platform’s grouping mode, which allowed a class of 20 students to be divided into four groups for discussion. Teachers were also able to access each group to coach and listen to student feedback.
Over the course of three months, Evelina quickly adapted to each teacher’s teaching style and came up with a few study tips that she will likely use in almost every subject:
- Follow the teacher’s thoughts in class and don’t get distracted, or else you may not know what to say in a group discussion.
- If you have any questions in class, you should actively raise them, it is likely that you raise the issue of other people also have questions, then your questions for other students is a kind of “classroom contribution”, that is, to help other students to obtain knowledge. Teachers love students who contribute to the classroom, and this will boost your GPA.
- Take notes, not like a photocopier, but only key information and questions.
- When speaking in class, the most important thing is actually confidence and not worrying about making mistakes. Because correcting mistakes is supposed to be a learning process, but if you don’t practice expressing yourself, then you can’t progress.
“In fact, these skills themselves are an improvement in my overall ability. Jumping out of the traditional Chinese learning model is itself a leap of growth by stepping out of one’s comfort zone. The most important feature of American education is that it guides me to take the initiative to learn, think, and apply what I have learned. For example, presentations and group discussions are the process of digesting and absorbing knowledge and teaching it back to others.” Evelina said, “Teaching here (SMOA) emphasizes a process from the basics to digesting and absorbing to creating. In the end, it’s something that will fall into application, not rote memorization.”
Take the writing class as another example. The writing teacher will begin by teaching the basics about the way writing hits the basics, such as metaphor, personification, and so on, and spend one or two classes mastering them. Next, the writing teacher analyzes a classic, such as The Cottage on Mango Street, and spends a class or two reading and analyzing it. Finally, students are given the opportunity to create their own work in conjunction with the writing styles, etc., covered in the foundational lessons.
“Of course, it’s not just writing, it’s the same with other subjects like biology classes, where you start with the basics and eventually it all comes down to how to apply it.” Evelina said, “That’s one of the joys of learning here for me, to be able to use it in order to feel like I’ve really learned.”
Online and offline activities to build skills and earn community service credits
For American high school students, growth is multifaceted, and academics are only one part of it. Beyond academics, there are many opportunities for growth, such as participating in community service or school activities.
At SMOA, community service is also available online. Just recently, Evelina attended a parent-teacher conference and provided two hours of translation work as an interpreter for the conference, which counted as community service credit.
“First of all, you can find out about opportunities yourself and apply for them. Learning coaches also recommend them to students, and for this parent-teacher conference translation, it was my learning coach, Ms. Mia, who recommended it.” Evelina said.
Although Evelina is only in 9th grade, her English is already quite good, and the immersion learning environment of SMOA’s all-English classes has allowed her to rapidly improve her listening and speaking skills. At the parent-teacher conference, Evelina acted as an interpreter for all of the 9th and 10th grade parents who attended as the foreign teacher spoke in English about this stage of the school year.
“It was my first time translating for so many people, so I was a bit nervous, but I did pretty well. I hope there will be more opportunities to practice and improve myself in the future.” Evelina said.
Club activities, show your talent to the fullest
Apart from her strong academics, Evelina has not missed out on club activities either.
“SMOA is quite rich in club activities, Mock Trial, Model United Nations, Media Club, Culture Club, Finance Club, etc., and the learning coaches will recommend them to me according to our situation, and then we can also create our own clubs and develop them.” Evelina says, “There is also a wealth of offline activities where students from all over the country can get together to brainstorm and train their skills based on specific topics.”
Evelina participates in the Society Magazine Club. This is a publication that is entirely planned, interviewed written and typeset by the students and is released every month.Evelina, as a key participant in it, contributes to the team’s ideas, provides the topic selection, writes the copy and even typesets it.
“I especially like this club, being able to apply what I usually learn while also learning new things.” Evelina said, “In the club, there are students from grade 9 to 12, so I was able to learn from a lot of upperclassmen about how to plan a topic, how to write a manuscript and layout it, and things like that. Also learned how to use some software.”
The ability to work as a team is a particularly big bonus for Evelina in the club. American high schools and colleges emphasize teamwork through class discussions and group work on the one hand, but on the other hand, getting involved in concrete work through projects in clubs is a very good way to develop teamwork skills. SMOA’s clubs provide students with the opportunity to do just that.
Learning Coach makes us the happiest students
If SMOA’s foreign teachers helped Evelina improve her grades and develop her abilities. Then the learning coach helped Evelina to make the whole learning process systematic and smooth as possible.
“In fact, online academy involves quite a lot of things, such as software for classes, credit policy, foreign teachers’ teaching style, homework requirements and so on. If you just rely on communicating with foreign teachers, there will be communication problems and information lag among them. But with a learning coach, none of these problems exist.” Evelina said, “My learning coach is Ms. Mia, who is like helping me optimize my learning, so that the learning process is smooth, and the learning efficiency is improved.”
In addition to this, the Learning Coach also helps students with course selection, college counselling, and stage-by-stage feedback.
“In fact, it doesn’t just help me, but also my parents, because I’m usually still quite busy with my studies, and I don’t have time to tell them a lot of things about my studies. If I do, it’s just a simple sharing. Ms. Mia will make a summary report of my recent study to my parents, and they will have a good idea of my situation. Usually, they have all kinds of questions, such as how grades are calculated, how this class helps with the total score, etc., and Ms. Mia has patiently helped them with all of them. Thank you so much for her efforts.” Evelina said.
▲（Daily Communication between Learning Coach and Evelina）
People often talk about joyful education in the United States, and many do not understand why learning can still be joyful. In fact, this kind of joyful education emphasizes the joy of the learning process itself, and the motivation for continuous learning and lifelong learning that comes from stimulating students’ interest in learning. Happy learning has nothing to do with reducing students’ burden or assigning less homework. In Evelin’s words, happy learning means being busy and happy at SMOA.