TIS Director's Blog

I value the support of the Central and Eastern Europe Schools Association (CEESA). They offer a lot of online workshops to improve their member schools. One of the main responsbilities of school leaders or leaders of any organization is risk management. CEESA brought Kristi Williams on Wednesday to introduce an easy way to begin thinking about risk. I like that Kristi gave us a structure for a leadership team have a risk management plan in 90 minutes. I found last year in our work in positive psychology last school year, I scored low in “Prevention” trait in my Strengths Profile. This woke me up to the importance of looking ahead and preventing bad events.

Kristi defines RISK as anything could DISRUPT learning, safety, staffing, finances, operations, or trust. She categorized risk into three types:

• Sudden Impact Events (bomb threat, data breach, earthquake, snow storm, measles outbreak)
• Known and On-going Risk (currency fluctuations, teacher rentention, geopolitics, enrollment shift)
• Operational and Reputational Risk
  • Inadequate or failed internal systems (staff misconduct, vendor not delivering)
  • Credibility (mishandle safeguards, poor crisis comms, conflict of interest, community disatisfaction)

Kristi then broke down a 90-minute Risk Management Starter. Step one is to do a 30-minute brain storm on the prompts above. The goal of step one is to come up with 10 to 15 risks.

Step Two is 20 minutes to prioritize the 10-15 risks. Rate risk for potential impact and the likelihood of occuring. Your team is now about halfway through the Starter. The next step is to take 30 minutes for each top risk and fill in the following four details of the risk:

1. What are we already doing to mitigate or prepare for this risk?
2. What else should or can we be doing?
3. What is one indicator to know we are improving?
4. Who will be the owner or champion of the risk?

Step four is to establish a cadence. Kristi suggests to schedule the following semester a meeting to review the progress of top priorities and refresh the list. You will then annually revisit the Risk Management Plan to add domains, a fuller register, or enhance scoring.

I asked Kristi if she is seeing any trends globally and she answered geopolitics at a grand scale impacting schools. Our school experienced the Russian invasion of Ukraine and DOGE cutting USAID as two examples of geopolitics impacting our school.

This Risk Management Starter is a useful exercise for a school leadership team. It may be something I do for me to get familiar with the crisis response program at my new school.

I joined the American Chamber of Commerce Education Committee this year. We held a meeting on January 30 at the British Management University (BMU) campus. The new committee is finding its purpose on how to support English-language, private education in Uzbekistan. Around the table were private university leaders, an Education USA representative, a student recruitment agency, and me, with the TIS university counselor, representing the private K-12 sector. I think the biggest benefit for our school from the work of the committee will be communication with the Uzbek government. It is also good for us to understand what is happening in the higher education sector in Tashkent. With a growing number of English-language university programs and their ties to international universities (Webster, Arizona State, Reading, etc.) they will be a growing option for our graduates.

After the meeting, we took a tour of the British Management University and the Maple Bear International School campuses. They had a corporate headquarters feel as they are new campuses. BMU students from Bukhara, Nukus, and Fergana led the tour. I never thought about students from the regions coming to Tashkent for higher education. They lived in the dormitories on campus. The 1,500 BMU students for the time being, only pay around $3,000 annually for tuition. I don’t see this as a sustainable business model. The investors must have a 10 to 20-year plan to become profitable. The university partnered with Reading University in the UK and is developing a program with Microsoft as well. This is a good idea and strengthens both Reading and BMU.

AmCham always has photographers at its events. I uploaded two that featured me.

One of the responsiblities of leading a school is determining if road conditions are safe enough for the school community to travel to school. When we have snow and icy conditions overnight, the leadership team wakes up early and gets out into the streets to test the conditions. I always travel to school and also check the sidewalks and paths on campus, look for potentially dangerous branches that might fall, and if we the water, electricity and heating gas systems are functioning. We also receive road reports from the US Embassy security team. They send security drivers out in the city and so between the school leadership team reports and US embassy security reports, we have a lot of data to determine if it is safe to come to school. We meet virtually at 05:15 AM to make a call on the schedule. We do this so we can inform the community by 5:30 AM giving people time to plan their day.

This week we had a wet snow storm that dumped several inches during the afternoon on Wednesday. I took the photo on the left of the street in front of my house. The photo on the right is of the campus. We noticed the sidewalks and some side streets were icy, but the main roads were clear and there were puddles of standing water, indicating although it was below zero Celcius, it wasn’t a deep freeze. With no precipitation in the forecast and a slight increase in temperature during the day, we decided to hold school as scheduled.

I think I will miss this next year as I move to a warmer climate. It is fun to get out and early in the morning. I also like the many messages and hints I get from community members, especially students, to call a snow day! We all have laugh at the process and it is a nice way to connect with community members.

I finally got around to completing the TES Develop Child Protection Refresher for International Schools course today. Between completing ICMEC training and adult supervision training for Boy Scouts this autumn, the courses can be a bit monotonous. However, I am glad I pushed through and taking this course this week reminded me of the latest child safeguarding issues that have come about post-pandemic. It reinforced my belief that we did a good thing by banning cell phones in schools two years ago as they impact student wellbeing. The course cited a research study by UCLA professor Gloria Mark, showed people spending an average of2 minutes and 30 seconds before switching screens in 2004 to 47 seconds in 2016 and beyond. The median attention span is 40 seconds. Schools need to explicitly teach students to train their attention through providing call phone-free environments, journaling, digital detox, sleep training, and meditation. I might look up her book,

TES directed people completing the course to a video produced by them earlier this school year.

I attended Tricia Friedman‘s online workshop “Looking at Emerging AI Research” for AAIE directors last night. Friedman is an educational consultant who focuses on helping schools take a “Futures Literacy” approach to artificial intelligence. The idea is that nobody knows for certain the direction AI is taking us. Schools need to explore different ways that teachers and students are and will be using AI to enhance learning and their lives.

My big takeaway from the session is that a critical mass of people in schools are using AI companions rather than tools. I need to learn how to shape personalized AI Bots, as this is the next stage in education. Schools need to move from being worried about students using AI to “cheat” on assessments to teaching students to enhance their learning through personalized AI companions. The other idea that resonated with me is that people like using AI as tutors because they are non-judgmental. Asking a question for a student to an AI Large Language Model is much easier than asking a question to a teacher in a classroom full of peers. All school leaders should think about being more non-judgmental in our interactions with others.

I recently completed Stanford University’s COM 101 “Communication Essentials for Work and Life” as part of my ongoing professional development. Matt Abrahams is a professor at Stanford University Graduate School of Business and the host of the Think Fast, Talk Smart podcast. As the head of school, communication is the majority of my work, whether it be to larger internal and external groups in formal presentations and speeches, leading school teams, and interpersonal communications in all my professional relationships. It was good to rethink how I communicate with others and improve my skills.

Abrahams asked his friends to provide guest lectures, and four stood out in particular. I am using this blog post to consolidate my learning and something I can go back to for future reference.

Jessia Hoffman is a Bay Area leadership consultant (On Deck Workshops) who specializes in incorporating Improvisation in teaching and leadership. My big takeaway from this workshop is that humans are hardwired to tell and listen to stories. Using stories increases student/employee engagement and learning. The Stanford Storytelling Project incorporates storytelling in its community. I don’t know why more international schools have a similar initiative. Teachers and students using stories to learn and create change is powerful! A byproduct is also stronger relationships. Stanford University thinks it is such an important part of a learning community that they have a permanent initiative. I know this was “hot” in education years ago, but Hoffman’s workshop inspired me to bring it back. It would be a great start to my leadership at my new school to do this workshop, for colleagues to get to know one another and improve teaching and learning. She did two activities that I thought were valuable.

The first was “The Story of My Life” which goes like this:

• With a partner, tell the story of your life in 1 minute.
• Tell it again, not using anything you said the first time.
• In the third round, use “What Matters to You” if stuck.
• For homework, write the Story of Your Life ten times using 5-7 sentences per story.

The second activity was “Port Key“. Participants use a random physical object to transport you to another place, like in Harry Potter series. For example, Jessia gave Matt the word “mango” and he told a story of falling in love with his wife while eating mango-flavored “Flogo” yogurt. In his story, the restaurant was “downtown,” and he gave that word to Jessia who told a story. This is a good way to get to know one another and practice your storytelling skills.

The next valuable workshop was led by Joel Schwartzberg, a workplace communications coach, speaker, and speech writer. My big takeaway from his workshop, “Getting to the Point: Simplify, Sharpen, and Sell Your Most Important Ideas” is that to make an impact with your communications, you need to have a crystal clear POINT. Schwartzberg defines a point as a case or recommendation to make your audience feel, think, and/or do. In his consultive work, he says most people are not clear with their main message. He gives techniques to “sharpen” and deliver your point. I will use his ideas of increasing my volume when I speak, not being afraid of pausing, and know the difference btween telling and selling your story.

Carol Robin teaches the most popular Masters of Business Administration course, Interpersonal Dynamics, aka “the Touchy, Feely course”. The class and this workshop is based on her book, “Connect: Build Exceptional Relationships with Family, Friends, and Colleagues.” The “touchy,feely” reference is the emphasis on feelings and emotions. Her advice on giving Feedback, was insightful and useful. I created this diagram below in Canva.

Robin’s advice is when giving feedback is to focus on #2 (behavior) and #3 (your feelings) NOT on your guess of the intent. Do not say “I feel that you…”, instead, say “When you (behavior #2), I feel (impact #3). STAY ON YOUR SIDE OF THE NET. She also shared the framework for categorizing feelings below. Often when colleagues are demonstrating Negative feelings that distance relationships, they are masking Vulnerable feelings such as fear or hurt. She also used the word “pinches” to describe those little things that people do that annoy you. It is important to address these before they grow into something larger.

The final workshop I liked was by cognitive neuroscientist Carmen Simon “The Neuroscience of Memorable Content”. She reminded me that audiences forget 90% of what you present within 48 hours. What do you want your audience to remember 48 hours and beyond? CLARIFY YOUR 10%. My takeaways from her was to not be afraid of Repetition. It is OK to repeat your main point in distinct ways several times throughout your presentation. Her other message was the control the focus while “harnessing complexity”. The audience will get board from too simple of a presentation, the human brain likes making sense of complexity. Keep your 10% main message simple and have a large volume, diversity and interdependent concepts/things in your presentation.

The Association for the Advancement of International Education (AAIE) “Friday’s Five Ideas for the Future” is always thought-provoking. This week, they shared six articles about BANI (Brittle, Anxious, Non-Linear, Incomprehensible). This is a tool or framework that leadership consultants and strategists use to help leaders manage and lead their organizations. Jamais Cascio, author/futurist/speaker from the tech management world of San Francisco, came up with this framework after COVID revealed these truths to us about the world. I liked Jeroen Kraaijenbrink’s article in Forbes because he stated how I feel about the framework. The world has always been like this. The Earth and its inhabitants are too complex to entirely understand. Systems breakdown, there are unforeseen consequences of actions, new technologies are always coming, individuals cannot control everything that happens to them, etc. The articles go on to say that BANI has replaced VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous) in leadership consultanting.

I view it as a way for leaders to understand the human response to complexity and unpredictability. It is the psychological state that school leaders find ourselves in when we are confronted with challenges. BANI identifies the internal and emotional reality of when systems fail (Brittle), the anxiety some people feel when facing uncertainty (Anxious), the struggle to comprehend unforeseen consequences, and not being able to understand all aspects of an issue when a decision needs to be made. Forbes’s Kevin Kruse gives good advice for leaders:

• BRITTLE – Do not only optimize for efficiency, but I also need to prepare redundancies to deal with breakdowns.
• ANXIOUS – I communicate and lead with honesty, empathy, and direction.
• NON-LINEAR – I won’t have all the data before taking actions or making a decision. I need to take actions and be ready to modify and adapt as we are going through it.
• INCOMPREHENSIBLE – I need to take calculated risks and lean on my intuition when “the full picture is impossible to see”.

It helps me to think of BANI not as a strategic planning tool, but rather as a tool for acknowledging and working with the human dimension of leading through complexity.

The photo above shows a TIS Search Committee interviewing a candidate for our next secondary school principal in my office. This role puts BANI into daily practice. Principals live on the front lines where systems break, anxiety runs high, small decisions cascade unexpectedly, and the full picture is never quite clear. The best candidates don’t claim to have conquered these challenges. Instead, they demonstrate resilience, lead with empathy, adapt when outcomes are unpredictable, and trust their intuition with incomplete information. The conversations I am having with the committee, reflecting on interviews remind me that BANI isn’t just a framework for understanding our world. It’s a lens for recognizing the deeply human work of educational leadership.

Spending a week with literacy consultant Matt Glover has uplifted my view of the future of literacy, especially writing. I see students and adults reading and writing less and less as video (YouTube, Netflix) and podcasting/social media are taking over from the written world. It feels old-fashioned to sit and write a book. Glover elaborated using scripts and transcripts of auditory/video narratives. I like the idea of pushing students to move from consumers to producers of digital media.

Matt Glover is an internationally recognized literacy consultant. He focuses on nurturing writers, early childhood reading, language composition, and supporting children’s intellectual development. He has plenty of examples and research from his over 20 years in Ohio (USA) elementary schools. Glover is the author

“Published Stacks” Glover is a big proponent of exposing students to published works of the types of writing they are learning. In PS to grade 3, the dominant “published stack” is storybooks or picture books. That is the majority of what elementary students should be writing during this time of their lives. He points out teachers ask the students to write single paragraphs or informational reports when these are not published works in real life.

“Genre Study vs. Craft or Process Study” He sees schools only doing genre studies year and year, instead of focusing on the craft and process of writing, so students can choose genres that matter to them. (ex – What are the three most powerful revisions you made in this work?) “craft” is punctuation, illustration, “process” is revise or talk with others about writing

Schools need to look at the entirety of a student’s writing units over time to avoid over-repetition. School writing programs that schools can buy off the shelf do not have craft and process studies.For example, one student was so happy that there were no Memoir Writing classes, because she had studied memoir for four years in a row. The student was the only one to know.

“Reading Like a Writer” Isabella’s page below in her book is the “page you never read”. This is her interpretation of the copyright page. The teacher never explained what it was to the students. Isabella included it in her books because she saw this in all the books the teacher read to the class. A subtle difference is “reading like a teacher of writing”. Matt took a text and asked, “What do you notice?” “What did this author do?”

“dialogue tag” This indicates who is speaking. Glover’s point is adults overlook or take for granted the writer’s craft. Dialogue tags can be quotations or Jabari said either before or after the quotation.

“stack considerations” The process of a teacher determining what published examples to share with a class. Matt categorizes the stack with ALL / MOST / SOME. “ALL” means most important idea, central to the unit “Most” important for most of the students in the class “SOME” have an example of a particular technique/characteristic All teachers have a “go to” example book that they know extremely well and they don’t have to flip around to find a teaching point example. Students are co-constructing the success criteria by looking at what ALL of the stock examples have.

I would like to thank Matt and the TIS elementary leadership team that brought him here and organized a great week of professional development for the faculty.

Students in the Tashkent International School Adventure Program recently returned from Tanzania, where our school’s purpose, “Challenging Ourselves, Exploring Boundaries, Making Connections, to Create a Positive Difference” was their daily reality. 

🌊 Earned their scuba diving certifications and immediately put their skills to work on coral reef restoration by cleaning artificial coral beds and constructing new growth structures

🌿 Studied coastal mangrove ecology firsthand, understanding these critical ecosystems’ role in our planet’s future

🦁 Identified mammals and birds in Mkomozi National Park, connecting classroom learning to real-world conservation

🤝 Bridged continents at United World College of Moshi, where the students exchanged Uzbek and Tanzanian cultures and perspectives

The trip further strengthened my belief in the power of experiential learning. The students didn’t just learn about global challenges, they actively contributed to solving them. With more of students’ lives moving to the digital world and who knows how much artificial intelligence will be doing for us in the upcoming years, immersive experiences like these are becoming more important than ever for student growth. The students overcame their fear to learn a new skill and learned they have the capacity to make a difference. 

#ExperientialLearning #InternationalEducation #ServiceLearning #CoralRestoration #TashkentInternationalSchool #GlobalCitizenship #AdventureEducation

One of my favorite events at Tashkent International School (TIS) is the United Nations Day. This annual tradition highlights the school’s diversity. A parent commented that it was amazing for his children to experience so many cultures in one day. The event makes it clear to our community that diversity is our strength! I went from wearing a necklace of Russian sushki to taking a photograph with Korean parents in traditional Korean gat, to eating a delicious Indian samosa.

UN Day 2025 was the biggest ever in the school’s history and the best one I’ve experienced in my seven years. There were a record 33 different delegations with booths in the “Global Village” and 64 countries in the Parade of Nations. The planning committee wanted something different this year, and two students came up with ideas of a World Cup Football Friendly Tournament and an Art Exhibition based on this year’s theme, “Building Our Future Together”. Both enhanced the day for our families. It was a perfect early autumn day to celebrate our global reach and connect with each other. With so much conflict going on in the world, it was nice to focus on our shared humanity.

I would like to thank the UN Day Planning Committee and all faculty and staff who played a part in making the day memorable. Especially the work behind the scenes from the maintenance, groundscrew, security, and housekeeping who were at school until 11:00 PM on Friday evening.