The NIS Mission

NIS is an internationally accredited kindergarten to university entrance International Baccalaureate school in China.

High quality learning thrives in an environment of tolerance, respect and cultural and linguistic diversity.

Our school promotes individual excellence and encourages students and staff to become happy and fulfilled individuals.

There are several professional realities involved in working at Nanjing International School, which are not commonly found in other schools. We are a three programme IB school, accredited by CIS, NEASC and NCCT. NIS offers a serious professional challenge to teachers, which can prove too much for some. Please read the list below very carefully. If any one of these realities is something that you find difficult to accept, it is unlikely that you would be happy at our school.

1. NIS cannot admit Chinese nationals. It can only admit foreign students. This is not school policy, but a consequence of Chinese law. Because we serve expatriate students only, and expatriate families usually have short term contracts of between six months and five years, we have a high student turnover – around 25% per year. People tend not to emigrate to China.
2. NIS is a growing school. This means that we accrue more and more new students each year. This intensifies the feeling of constant change caused already by the regular turnover mentioned above.
3. Following seven years of preparation, the school succeeded in placing a deposit to buy a 70,000 m2 site. With the help of a local bank loan, we have built a world-class multi-million US Dollar facility, which we occupied on August 01 2004. We have a beautiful school.
4. Most students at NIS do not have English as their home language. This means that you will have, in your classroom, students with limited but developing English at all times. Often, students speak no English whatsoever on entering NIS. It is your professional responsibility to find appropriate ways of enabling such students to access the mainstream curriculum. ESL students have high levels of achievement, both within our ESL programme and in the mainstream curriculum. Enabling them to achieve the best is harder work than teaching in a mono‑cultural, monolingual context. ESL is not a subject, but a special educational needs service.
5. ESL is our largest department, after Chinese. It is your responsibility to work with the ESL support teachers to enable ESL students to get the most from your lessons. It is the school's expectation that you will yourself, deliberately and consciously, change your professional practices to meet ESL students' needs more effectively. This means changing the way you have always done things before ‑ the old ways will not work.
6. ESL teachers are there to help you. Their job is not to give you recipes for changing your professional practice. Rather, they are there to help you ask yourself the questions about how you plan and deliver lessons, that can enable you to reach ESL students more effectively. We support all teachers by making it a requirement to be trained in the ESL in the Mainstream Programme – a respected and effective course which requires you to reflect on and amend your current classroom practice, so as to include more effectively ESL students in the classes you deliver.
7. We offer the IB programmes. In offering the IB programmes teachers must subscribe and believe in the underpinning principles that drive these programs. NIS commits to providing appropriate training to teachers with the expectation that you implement the philosophy of the IB programmes in all parts of school life
8. A closed‑door teaching style is inappropriate. You must work and plan collaboratively with your colleagues in effectively delivering our IB programmes. Teachers must develop and work from MYP, PYP and IB Diploma Scope and Sequence Documents (schemes of work/planners/programmes of study), which are collaboratively generated and developed. This can be difficult for teachers who are used only to functioning independently of an established programme, and/or of their colleagues. NIS teachers are expected to use a range of resources, rather than planning and delivering from “the Book”.
9. Full participation in ongoing curriculum development, and documenting that curriculum in great detail, in addition to teaching, preparing and marking, is a professional expectation which is not negotiable. This means there is paperwork, which we expect you to do meticulously, and with a smile on your face.
10. Pedagogical and administrative professionalism are valued equally highly. Disorganised classrooms and missing deadlines are regarded as unprofessional behaviours.
11. Lesson and programme planning, particularly for the IBPYP and the IBMYP, and very importantly too for English as a Second Language, is carried out collaboratively. Time is set aside for collaborative planning. Attending these sessions is a professional expectation.
12. Full commitment to the school as a community school is expected. This includes reasonable attendance at student and parent events, in addition to directed attendance at certain whole‑school events.
13. We report to parents formally in the following ways: written reports (without comment banks) two or three times each year, three-way conferences once or twice each year, student-led conferences once per year.
14. We expect you to be computer literate. The ability to use Microsoft Word, and Excel, Outlook, experience using a local area network, the ability to use the internet for research purposes, and the ability to use email, are an absolute minimum requirement. The school has taken a decision to move to a Macintosh base from a PC base. You will be given a laptop and will be expected by the school administration, by your colleagues, and by the students, to use it in your teaching practice, in the classroom, with students.
15. School hours are currently 08.00 to 15.00. After school, teachers are expected to attend two scheduled meetings per week, and any other directed meetings. Additionally, a minimum one‑hour per week contribution to the activities programme after school is expected. Participation in the supervision schedule is compulsory, and means work during lunch and break times once per week. School hours are being reviewed this year, and may be extended from 2007/8.
16. The school’s November 2006 accreditation visit could not fault the school on its resources provision. Centralised resourcing is practised, for the purpose of cost efficiency. This means that resources do not belong to individual teachers. Many resources are stored centrally, and are booked out on a needs basis. Similarly, ordering new materials and resources is a collaborative act. Unnecessary purchase duplication is audited out.
17. The school is a non-profit organisation of parents, governed by the school board, which is elected by parents. The Director manages the school, and the Board governs it. We have only tuition and development funds as revenue sources – we are a completely independent entity, financially speaking. This means that sound financial management is an important management responsibility, and requests for resources or other cash requests can only be met within the context of the agreed budget for the year. Responsibility post holders are responsible for managing their expenditure within the budget allocated to them.
18. Teachers are responsible for training and directing classroom assistants (PYP) and technicians (MYP/Diploma Science, IT, Physical Education.).
19. Teachers are expected to gain an understanding of all three programmes in the school ‑ just teaching your subject or age group well is simply the start. You must relate what you do to the whole work of the school.
20. Contractual contact time is 80% (32 out of a notional 40 lessons of 40 minutes weekly).
21. MYP/Diploma teachers will be expected to teach all ages from 11 to 18. This means a lot of preps for a lot of different classes.
22. MYP/Diploma teachers and specialist PYP teachers will not necessarily have their own dedicated classroom.
23. Teachers are expected to understand that NIS is a developing international school in an economically developing communist country. Processing overseas orders and dealing with bureaucracies can be very slow. We do not accept poor advance planning by teachers as constituting a justification for an emergency purchase.
24. Teachers are expected to respect the nature and purpose of NIS in contributing to its development. If you do not identify with the school’s mission, then NIS is not the school for you.
25. NIS is an international school. We do not seek to mimic the system of another country. Some international schools follow a British, American or Australian model. NIS has aspects of these, but seeks to be international in its curriculum, its student body, its broader community, and in its staff. Working in such a school is more difficult, but also more rewarding, than simple replication of a professional system or institutional procedure which worked in another context. We are international, and we need our staff to fully support that facet of our school.
26. High standards of personal organisation, personal presentation, and workplace presentation are expected.
27. NIS is highly managed in order to maintain institutional development. All employees are accountable to a manager. The school has a pyramid management structure. This can be surprising to teachers who are used to a flat organisational structure, with only one boss and lots of teachers. Subject Area Coordinators are managers as well as being teachers. They are expected to participate fully in the less palatable aspects of management, such as dealing effectively with under-performing team members.
28. Flexibility is highly valued. Respectful attitudes to colleagues, students and parents are of paramount importance.
29. NIS welcomes families with children to join its staff. It is easy to find an ayee to look after young children and babies at home, when both partners work. The school does not offer a crèche. Staff children are enrolled in the school free of charge.
30. Our school is a growing school. Founded informally as a playgroup by expatriate mothers in 1990, the school grew to 35 students in 1997. Now in 2007/8, we have 455 students.
31. The school is located in a suburb on the outskirts of Nanjing. From September 2004, all staff are housed in the vicinity of the school in school-provided housing for the first year. Thereafter, an optional housing allowance is available. Taxi transportation into the downtown of Nanjing costs around five US dollars each way. Public bus transportation costs around 12 US cents each way. The journey can take between 25 and 45 minutes, according to prevailing traffic conditions. The new Nanjing Metro does not yet have a line to our suburb, but this is planned by the city government for 2009. The school provides bus transportation to and from work for teachers living in school-provided accommodation only.

Gez Hayden (Director)

eviewed and amended November 07 2007