That Day It Was Bring Your Parents To School Day 那一天，我带爸妈去上学

How did parents feel when told to leave their bags, board the bus, and watch their children fumble and struggle to store them in the luggage hold themselves? “They weren’t comfortable with it at all,” said Mr. Craig Tafel, Director of Menwai Programming at Shanghai American School. “You could tell they had to physically hold themselves back from shouting out instructions or jumping in to help. It sounds like an easy exercise, but was actually incredibly difficult for them.”

当被告知“放下包，上车吧”，然后看着孩子们一晃三摇地拎起包，摸摸索索地把它们塞入行李舱里，家长此时是什么感受？上海美国学校的“门外”项目主任Craig Tafel说，“看得出来，他们一点也不自在，真的要很费才能憋回嘴边的叮嘱，忍住上前为孩子搭把手的想法。管住自己说来简单，但是此时此刻，对作为父母的他们来说，真是一点也不容易。”

This was the first challenge waiting for the students and parents the moment they touched down in Dali, right there in the parking lot of the airport. The students (four from our Pudong campus, and four from Puxi) and their parents were on their way to an eight-day educational trip to Xizhou, Yunnan Province, as part of the school’s first ever Microcampus 5 program.

这是学生和家长在飞机着陆大理时，于机场停车场里遇到的第一个挑战。我们的学生（四名来自浦东校区，四名来自浦西校区）和家长们前往云南喜洲参加为期八天的学习体验之旅，这是学校的首个Microcampus 5教学项目。

An extension of SAS’s award-winning Signature Program, “Microcampus”, Microcampus 5 involves groups of fifth grade students, and their families, immersing themselves in a village in Yunnan, with an emphasis of building student independence and responsibility. “Like its predecessor, Microcampus 5 is designed through the lens of SAS’ Menwai pillars,” Mr. Tafel explained. “The pillars are: Expanding Intercultural Understanding, Working Through Challenges, Awareness of Impact, and Personal Growth.”

作为上海美国学校曾获过奖的特色教学拓展项目，“Microcampus”项目把五年级学生及其家长进行分组，前往云南的一个村庄进行沉浸式体验学习，旨在培养学生的独立性和责任感。Tafel老师说道：“Microcampus 5项目是基于上海美国学校“门外”项目的基础理念设计的，理念内容是“增进跨文化理解，在挑战中工作，树立影响意识，实现个人成长。”

Unlike the original Microcampus program though, parents join in on this trip – but not to act as caretakers or chaperones. “They’re there to learn and grow alongside their children,” said Mr. Tafel. As students head out to interact with experts in their host village of Xizhou, work through interesting challenges and expand their understanding of other communities, their parents take part in parents-focused exercises, designed to help them learn to parent more effectively and efficiently. “As these students learned confidence, independence and how to embrace challenges, their parents learned how to allow their children to absorb these lessons without intervening, taking over or undermining them.”

与一开始的Microcampus项目不同的是，这次家长们也参与到这趟学习体验之旅中来，但他们可不是来照顾孩子的。Tafel老师说：“他们要和自己的孩子一起学习成长。”在学生们去和在喜洲某个村庄的专家汇合的时候，在学生们要解决许多有趣的挑战并拓展自己对其他社区的理解的时候，家长们则要完成自己的任务，学习如何更加有效且高效地担任家长的身份。“在学生们树立自信心，培养独立性，了解如何迎接挑战的同时，家长们也学会了如何让孩子自由学习成长，不再过分干预孩子，全盘掌控孩子，不去动摇孩子的想法。”

“It was tough for the parents in the beginning, but there was a noticeable difference by the end,” said Mr. Tafel. “The best example being when we were getting ready to head back to the airport. With no instructions from me or the teachers, the parents casually set their bags by the bus, hopped on board without a word, and left their children to take care of things. And I could see that as these children were approaching the bus, they were already mentally calculating and discussing amongst themselves what the best ways were to efficiently store these bags in the hold. The trust these parents had learned to give to their children, and the enthusiasm and eagerness the children displayed in the face of a challenge – to me, this really captured what Microcampus 5 was about.”

Tafel老师说：“一开始，这对家长来说很难，但是最后的成效显著。最好的例子就是当我们准备返回机场的时候，我和其他老师一句话没说，家长已经懂得把包随便放在班车边上，自己安安静静坐上车，把剩下的事情都交给孩子去做。如何才能快速有效地把包放进行李舱里呢？我看到孩子们走向班车，不但心里开始盘算，嘴上还就这个问题相互讨论起来。家长学会信任孩子，孩子也在迎接挑战的过程中展现出热情与渴望——对我来说，这才是Microcampus 5的真正意义所在。”

LESSONS. EVERY DAY AT SAS.

成长。就在上海美国学校的每一天。

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Founded in 1912, Shanghai American School (SAS) is the largest and most established international school in China. In short, it's the kind of school you wish you would've attended when you were a kid.

创建于1912年，上海美国学校是中国最大的也是历史最悠久的国际学校。简而言之，如果你能回到小的时候，这会是一所你想要去的学校。

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