We are thoughtful about the individuals we serve and the future they bring. We aim to create authentic, collaborative, and human learning environments that reveal and empower the best in every person. The Harbour School’s mission is illustrated in each unique member of our community.

The Harbour School is a K-12 international school, with an American, standards-based curriculum. 

Our high school is a progressive learning community which redefines the secondary schooling experience by providing different graduation pathways within a respectful and individualised community setting. Our students acquire the necessary attributes to be empowered agents in young adulthood and to cultivate their independence. Having matured within a socially conscious, progressive, and inclusive learning community, they are thinkers, speakers and doers with a conscience. They work well with people from different backgrounds and learning styles because they have been taught to value the advantages of growing up within an international and neurodiverse community.

Our high school curriculum is uniquely student-centred, offering individuals the opportunity to curate their academic program to meet their future goals. THS believes in a personalised approach to learning, where students develop skills by exploring questions that are meaningful to them as learners and citizens. This approach allows students to be invested in the projects on which they work, individually and in groups. The school is an intentionally inclusive environment, with a demographic that encompasses a range of learners. In addition to typically-formulated high school classes, noteworthy features of the THS academic model include: co-taught transdisciplinary courses, Project Development, Independent Study Modules (ISMs), and a robust internship program. THS courses are structured to be thematic, integrated across content areas, and focused on the real-world application of academic content. This variety of offerings invites students to become self-directed critical thinkers who are engaged in their education.

THS opened its doors to participants of the Envisioning Innovation in Education study to observe, ponder and connect to the approaches utilised on a day-to-day basis at this K-12 International School. The focus of the visit will centre around building a collaborative culture, and embedding routine in students’ school lives. Participants will engage in a guided THS scavenger hunt to help with practical observations, while simultaneously being introduced to the See, Think, Me, We thinking routine.

Our team has decided to explore individual innovation foci this year. We work together as a team to discuss our discoveries and provide encouragement and constructive feedback along the way. Our Innovation Foci questions are;

• How is school culture created, sustained and enhanced in practice?

• How do we promote a culture of sharing at a school?

• What does effective coaching look like at an innovative school?

• What defines differentiated, hands-on, minds-on learning in High School Biology?

• How do we give students choice and agency in their learning in the classroom?

Some direct feedback from the session including learnings, surprises and challenges was collected. These have been listed out below:

• How different the learning environment can be to a local school environment

• Low student-teacher ratios in action

• Spaces provided to directly facilitate student thinking 

• Senior mixed-grade learning 

• Freedom provided to students to choose, plan and take action in the school

• Different learning cultures

• Integration of knowledge into real life situations, for example plastic recycling project 

• Ideas for personalising learning in “normal” class setting in a local school

• Ideas for how teachers can collaborate together and build a lesson based on theme, rather than subject area only

• The level of support students are provided in the classroom 

• The various pathways to university or careers provided by the school 

• Possibility of creating individual research projects within an exam-based system 

• Group and individual learning happening in conjunction with one another

It was hugely helpful to have various schools visit us at THS to further enhance our understanding of our mission, vision and philosophy, and in how we are communicating and executing it. We learned that the design of our programs, spaces and relationships are being viewed in the ways we intend them to be executed. 

We were pleasantly surprised by the direction of the conversations that took place throughout the day. While there wasn’t a strictly planned direction we wished the conversation to go in, we covered many interesting topics and concluded the conversation with many ideas to continue cross-school innovation and collaboration. 

The next moves would be in collaboration with interested schools to hopefully set up a system of exchanges amongst students and staff. A topic that really stuck with us after the visit was extending a greater understanding of one another and to really experience what it is like to “walk a mile” in one another's shoes. This could include a group of students visiting one another’s campus and spending a day as a student at that school. Additionally, it could include teacher exchanges shadowing on another for a day (or more). There is a lot more thought to go into this idea but it is exciting to see some traction on important professional development and perspective taking to further enhance ideas of innovation across Hong Kong.