The Saturday Art Studio is offering a 6-week series of bi-lingual art classes for children ages 5 - 10 beginning Saturday May 10 at WAB.

Over the past week, the WAB community came together and showed amazing support for WAB family member Steve Aldred. For several years, Steve has taught as a substitute at WAB and coached countless soccer teams, for the Tigers as well as Sports Beijing. In February, he was diagnosed with Hodgkins Lymphoma and faced the daunting challenge of covering the costs of treatment and medical care.

WAB celebrates the birth of many new WAB babies!

Did you know that almost every Australian Olympic athlete will be visiting WAB this summer? As part of WAB’s Olympic partnership with the Australian Olympic Committee (AOC), Australian athletes will be dropping by the ES Gym to pick up their uniforms for the Beijing Games. The AOC seeks volunteers to help pass out uniforms, and many other tasks, including greeting the athletes and their families. The WAB community is invited to share the Olympic spirit with the AOC by volunteering. Please note the application deadline: Friday April 18.

Since its inception in 1994, Western Academy of Beijing has been home to more than 4,000 students, parents, and staff members. Today, the WAB community is spread far and wide across six continents and more than 75 countries. We are celebrating this community by starting a new tradition of alumni gatherings around the world, starting with the WAB Alumni gathering in London on February 4.

On Saturday April 5, the 2008 Green Long March officially kicks off with its Opening Ceremony at Beijing Forestry University (BFU). The organizers of the largest youth conservation movement in China, FutureGenerations/CHINA and BFU, will build on last year's success by including national campaigns to reduce energy and protect resources on Earth Day and World Environment Day.

On the last Saturday of March, WAB hosted a workshop on Teaching Chinese as a Second Language for 23 Chinese teachers from seven international schools around the Beijing area. The workshop, which focused on teaching reading and writing, was led by Li Ping of Hong Kong United World College.

A big welcome back to Charlotte Muller, a former WAB Middle School student, who is visiting a classmate in the High School this week.

Are you a parent with a passion and/or interest in design, engineering, inventing, working with your hands, building things, you work for a technology based company, or simply just love working with students in groups to build a joint project?

Last Friday, March 7, a group of 32 rural women school teachers visited WAB. They all came from Suichuan, a poor mountainous area in Jiangxi, a Red Army base area during the 1920s and 1930s. The teachers are up in Beijing for two weeks of professional development, hosted by the Rural Women’s School, a non-profit institution that has been supported by the WAB community for some years. The teachers came to WAB to learn about WAB’s approach to learning.