TIS Director's Blog

This school year I’ve been thinking about the impact of cell or mobile phones on our students. I think they are a distraction to teaching and learning and they are preventing our students from developing their face-to-face relationships. The internet is wonderful with so much knowledge, skills, and entertainment to be had, we are all less ignorant than in the pre-internet world. The social media companies (Instagram, SnapChat, etc.) design their software to keep people’s attention. It is not that everything online is bad, I feel the problem is the loss of what students could be doing if they were not staring at their phones.

At a recent Director Coffee, I socialized the idea of a cell phone-free school with a group of parents and it was one of the most animated discussions I’ve led. This is also a hot topic with our fellow CEESA schools, along with the impact of Artificial Intelligence on teaching and learning. In my coffee presentation, I introduced the premise of NYU professor Jonathan Heidt’s new book, “The Anxious Generation”. He thinks that adolescent mental health problems skyrocketed starting around 2012 when smartphones and social media became in common use. He views this as a “collective action” problem and suggests four norms our society implements:

• No smartphone until grade 9 (high school)
• No social media until age 16
• Cell phone-free schools
• More independence, unsupervised, free play to develop responsibility in the real world.

I think 3 of the 4 norms are up to parents, but “cell phone-free schools” is one that I think TIS should implement in our secondary school. The temptation to check your messages and keep up with your friends is too much for young people to handle. It would be a nicer place to have students present for each other, especially during breaks, where they can work on one of our key Purposes, “make connections”. I have not heard any compelling arguments against having students put away their phones from 8:20 to 15:20 Monday through Friday.

In order to make this work, we will need the input of the students and faculty and staff.I hope to drive this effort over the next two months to trial a cell phone-free school program at the start of the 2024-2025 school year. Dr. Haidt is making the rounds on the podcast circuit if you want to learn more without reading his book. The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) interview show Firing Line has a 26-minute interview with Dr. Haidt that is a good introduction to his book and research. (link)

From talking with people from schools that have implemented these types of policies, it is a couple of weeks of tumult, but then everyone realizes that they are happier and appreciate the break from their phones.

Edutopia published a short post aimed at school leaders regarding conflict management. (What Conflict Leadership Style Do You Use?) The article states that 20-40% of a leader’s day is devoted to conflict management. I would say that is accurate as the issues that come to me are usually when there is a difference of opinion on which way to go forward and people are coming to me to find a mutually acceptable resolution that is in the best interest of the students and the school.

My natural tendency is to avoid conflict and to try to make peace at all costs. I’ve learned over the years that this is not good in that conflict is natural in organizations because they are composed of humans and individuals have different values and goals. A leader’s job is to address conflict in a meaningful and respectful way with both sides of a dispute or conflict emerging with respect for each other and the understanding that a leader needs to act in what he/she feels is in the best interest of the school.

Some avoidance methods the article describes are going around an issue by holding too many meetings about it or tackling smaller, less controversial issues instead of the big issues. Aggressive leadership techniques include outright hostility (raised voices, verbal threats), stacking decision-making committees with people who think like an agressive leader, or use appraisal systems, stipends, scheduled to reward or punish employees.

The best form of dealing with conflict is addressing it. Letting people state their concerns and views, understanding these views, and using collaborative approaches to finding solutions. It seems that divisive conflict is on the rise and the courage to address conflict is necessary of school leaders.

Last month I completed Emergency First Responder Primary Care and I wanted to share my 2-year certification on my blog. Rob Tate is one of our Curriculum Coordinators and is heavily involved in our Athletics and Outdoor Adventure Programs. He brought the Professional Association of Diving Instructors (PADI) Emergency First Responders Course to TIS. We are training many teachers and students, including several employees to be trained as instructors so the program is sustainable. Having many people trained in first aid and emergency medical care makes our students and parents safer. Especially as we develop our outdoor adventure program and athletics teams, having staff with medical skills and confidence to administer care may save a student, employee, guest, or parent’s life. I want to thank Rob for his initiative and passion for bringing this to our school.

I am in a professional development session this morning led by TIS teacher Claire Van Loon. The topic of the workshop is “Developing a Community of Learners”. Claire challenged us to design our dream school. My dream school’s Purpose is “We will fully realize our individual and collective humanity.” Specializing in boys education “Modern Masculinity – Become an Enlightened Warrior” A broad description of the curriculum is below:

Basic Cultural Knowledge

• Reading Comprehension and an appreciation of reading books
• Numeracy (statistics, understanding risk, financial)
• Express ideas through writing, speaking (rhetoric), video production, podcasting
• Deep understanding of history and world religions
• Deep understanding of local flora and fauna (ecology, climate change, stewardship of the earth)

Personal Happiness

• Be in top physical fitness condition
• How to relate to others
• How to learn new skills and ideas
• Career Guidance
• Self Presentation (fashion, grooming, social etiquette)
• Personal financial literacy
• Power Yoga (meditation, breathing, body flexibility)

Learn By Doing… ie Practical Stuff All students will be able to…

• ride a bicycle
• swim and scuba dive
• play a musical instrument
• literate in a second language
• start a fire and camp/hike in a variety of natural environments
• defend oneself (weapons training, martial arts)
• DIY – Home repair and renovation
• Chef certification in 2 cuisines

During the Professional Development Day today, I completed Emergency First Response Training. The school is using PADI Emergency First Response Training. So far this school year, 45 employees and 20 students received certification as first responders. The course consists of both online and in-person training sessions.

MYP Coordinator Rob Tate is our in-house trainer and he started our workshop by reminding all of us of these key points that are often missed by people taking the course.

1. When you ask a person to go for help, don’t forget to ask him/her to come back.
2. Don’t forget to pinch the nose when you tilt the head when establishing an airway.
3. You are not going to make it any worse.

Above are two key diagrams to keep in mind in any situation requiring delivering medical assistance. The first is the Cycle of Care (AB CABS) and this is a checklist to use in a stressful situation. The second diagram reminds us to immediately call for help and where an amateur first responder can fit in the chain. TIS is fortunate to have an English-speaking family medical clinic on our campus. A doctor is always about 6 minutes away with advanced care Monday through Friday, 8:00 AM to 6:00 PM.

My big takeaway from the sessions is we need to better identify where the First Aid Stations are on campus, especially the first aid stations with AED (Automatic External Defibrillator). It would also be good to have laminated emergency phone numbers placed in all medical kits and ask employees to put the numbers in their phones. Below are my notes from the online portion of the training that I took with my iPad and shared with my computer.

I attended an online conversation between the CEESA Directors and the co-founder of the Truman Group, Sean Truman yesterday. The Truman Group provides online psychological counseling and mental health services to expatriates.

Sean reminded us that the mental health of adolescents is at an all-time low. This is a trend that he has been seeing and the research supports, over the past 15 years and it was accelerated by the pandemic. The number of days of school missed, suicide attempts/completions, hospital visits, etc. are all increasing. Anxiety, depression, trauma, grief, addiction, life transitions, etc. are all issues that I see increasing, not only in students but also in faculty and staff. On a recent visit, our health insurance provider mentioned to me that mental health claims are up from 2% to 13% over the past two years.

Directors shared what they are seeing at their schools. This included the trauma of recent conflicts in Ukraine and Israel. Sean pointed out that we overuse the word “trauma”. Trauma is when a person fears death or being harmed and should only be used in cases of violence. Adults in schools have done a good job in having students acknowledge their feelings, but sometimes, students are over-sensitized. We need to remind ourselves as educators that sometimes, life throws adversity at students and often, an adolescent does not feel good. We need to teach them to work through it and be resilient instead of feeling like a victim for ordinary life events or news.

My one action item takeaway is that I want to make sure we include mental health counseling for our community during a crisis. I will review our crisis response procedures that mental health counseling is on our checklists and we are prepared in case of crisis.

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I completed Greg Shove’s online workshop “AI for Personal Productivity” from the education company Section recently. It really motivated me to start using Artificial Intelligence (AI) in my daily work as a school leader. He gave practical advice on how to use it. I think of AI as my personal superpower that will augment my work. My ears perked up when Shove said that AI is the antidote to cognitive decline due to aging. At age 56, I want to continue leading schools for many years to come and it sounds like AI will help me greatly. I highly recommend taking the course for yourself to get you started. The next offering will be on November 15, 2023.

In the workshop, he suggested what Large Language Models to use and how to organize your chats and prompts. We then audited our workflows to see how AI could help us in our daily and weekly tasks. Greg sees AI serving as a Personal Assistant, A Creator, or A Strategist, depending on the task. I was reassured when he said we should not be concerned about uploading our work to an LLM.

Shove thinks that by using AI, we will get time back by reducing drudge work and spending more time interacting with others and weighing decisions instead of prepping for making decisions. AI will help me make better decisions and improve my confidence.

I’ve been seeing a multitude of Artificial Intelligence courses being offered to educators. I want to be on the first wave of school leaders using AI and hope this course puts me on my way.

I attended the first Central and Eastern European Schools Association (CEESA) Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice (DEIJ) Speaker Series this evening. International school educators Justin Garcia and Kristina Pennell-Göetz led a workshop about “queering” the curriculum. I interpret queering as a verb means to challenge society’s thinking on norms. An example from the workshop that got me thinking was the idea of a “normal” family. It is relatively common in international schools to have families with adopted children. When adopted children are a different color from the parents, how does that impact how they feel about our norms about family.

In breakaway groups, we discussed the principles from a framework promoting gender and sexuality self-determination, especially for LGBTQ+ students, parents and educators from the National Council of Teachers of English. Below are the principles.

My big takeaway from the workshop and from a conversation I had last week with IS Helsinki Director Kathleen Naglee is for me to find subtle ways of giving the message that our school, Tashkent International School, is a safe space for all students. I hope through my language, listening, and enthusiasm that LGBTQ+ students, parents, and employees will feel free to communicate with me and feel they belong at TIS.

At the start of every school year, we require all employees to attend a child safeguarding workshop and to take an online refresher course. As you can see from the photo above, we held an introduction to our child safeguarding and protection program. We covered the basics, like who are the Designated Safeguarding Leaders, how to make a report, among other major aspects of what we do. We also introduced our new online reporting system. TIS is using cPOMS to help us organize our documentation and to make it easier for people to make reports. This week we will be spending some more time learning the software.

I completed the TES Develop Child Protection Refresher course during Teacher Work Week. Above is the final checklist as a summary of the course. It is a very good reminder that keeping our students safe so they can develop to their potential is our first job. All children deserve a good start in life. Educators have a special role in giving children that good start.

Professor Scot Galloway from New York University is one of my most inspirational thinkers. I recently attended an online workshop hosted by him and his friend, Gary Marcus, the retired psychology professor and one of the leading voices in artificial intelligence. The workshop was entitled, “Threats & Opportunities of AI” and they gave an overview of the field as of July 2023.

The main threat of AI was in the field of misinformation and interference by bad agents in America’s democratic elections, especially in the run-up to the November 2024 presidential election. They proposed having a six-month to 30-day moratorium on election advertisements before the big day. They see an absence of governmental regulation of AI as being a big problem. Companies focus on profits, not the better interests of society.

Professor Marcus is not impressed with the Large Language Models (Chat GPT). They are clever at putting together a “pastiche of human language they do not understand” and the software makes many mistakes. In the short term, AI is not reliable enough to take over most jobs. Perhaps occupations like voice-overs will be done through AI, but there will be more job creation than job destruction. As Scot Galloway put it, “Someone who understands AI will take your job, not AI will take your job.”

In regard to the field of education, it is almost impossible to replace teachers and professors. The magic of education is getting students together in discussion to learn how to present their opinions and ideas, take an argument and give importance to the material they are learning. Professor Marcus advises teaching kids a “healthy skepticism” of AI and to think critically about AI tools. AI will improve rapidly and students should learn how to add AI to their tool box of skills.

I am seriously considering taking their AI for Personal Productivity course on September 13.