One-on-One Theatre

Dinos Explains A Story Fragment

 

I participated in a workshop led by Dinos Aristidou, a free lance theatre professional and the Artistic Director of the Festival. He led us through an “One-on-One” Theatre, or Immersive Theatre experience. I will describe in detail below what we did just for future reference and for those of you interested in the details. Dinos runs an organization called “InSites” that works with schools in poorer London areas whose goal is to connect young people to their environment. The idea started with the youthful, angry rioters destroying their neighborhood. Why would they do this? There are many reasons, but one is a disconnection to their surroundings. This is a trend not just with urban poor as in London, but for most teenagers, with adolescents more connected to the electronic devices than each other or what is located around them. InSites works with students to get them to be more aware of the buildings, people, and their local environment through theatre.

Our group of teachers were taught all of the techniques by experiencing them. We did all of the activities Dinos does with his InSites group. The activities focus people on each other and the place.

I was very inspired after the workshop! This would be a great exercise to do during a PD or orientation day with an international school faculty or students. As with my jazz improv experience last summer in Lehigh, I am getting more interested in incorporating The Arts into my leadership of schools. The immersion theatre could be focused on the campus and the history of the buildings, or the culture of the country or city. Dinos suggested adapting this with possibly giving scripts of plays, excerpts of published works, rather than people making up their own. One can also use photographs, pieces of art, diaries, letters, etc.  I love the idea of place memory and its impact on people. Perhaps the veteran teachers could pick a spot in the school that has great meaning to them, for example, where they signed the contract to work at the school, a great teaching moment, a place they go to relax, etc. They could relate the story to a new teacher and this could help them learn about the school grounds and culture. In thinking of my new school next year, OIS, we could do something with the tatami room (Japanese culture), the bamboo forest outside the soccer field, the renovated courtyard, etc. Japanese could be paired with foreign teachers as well to have an intimate experience and help collaboration and communication between the two cultures.

Dinos Aristidou has a much experience with ISTA and is one of the keynote speakers in next October’s IB World Conference. I highly recommend him for schools looking for an artist-in-residence or a theatre consultant. He connects with teachers and students. He can be reached at dinos.theatre@gmail.com.

People Connecting Activities

  • Whisper Choreography – Person behind whisper instructions of slow, controlled movements to the person in front of them. The person behind mimics the person in front of them. This can be set to soothing music.
  • I Am A Camera – Person A puts shoulders on Person B, who had their eyes closed. Person A leads them to a place on campus, leading them with directions to when they open their eyes, they are focused on an object or view, like a camera.
  • Pass It On – Two people walk arm-in-arm and describing things they see. The other person repeats after them. After three objects, the roles reverse with the command, “pass it on.”

Connecting To Place Activities

“We shape our buildings; thereafter, they shape us.” Winston Churchill

“We locate ourselves in places, and place locate themselves in us” Dinos Aristidou

The second set of activities dealt more with place. We were asked to write three story fragments, starting with a memory of a moment of intense joy, sadness, or fear.  Memory is the anchor of the activity. The next was set in the future and what impact the memory has on the person’s future. The third fragment was to describe the moment the memory came to the person. Dinos told us in detail how we were to use the three story fragments. Each story fragment was associated with a site on campus and “Whisper Choreography” and “I Am A Camera” activities to get the people between the sites.

 

billkralovecLeave a comment

CEESA Basketball Tourney 2014

Roy Shoots for Two

I am in Skopje, Macedonia this weekend for the CEESA (Central & Eastern European Schools Association) High School Boys’ Basketball Championships. This is my last CEESA competition, as I will be leaving ISB at the end of this year. This is my sixth consecutive boys’ tourney. The sport of basketball is very important in Serbia and it shows with our students. We have won the championship three of the five times we have come, and won trophies (places 2, and 3) in the other two.

Here are the links to my articles from 2013, and 2012.

The games are being played in the Boris Trajkovski Sports Center, a beautiful facility built by the Macedonian government. The facilities include an ice hockey rink, a huge arena for ball sports, a smaller gymnasium (above), swimming pool, bowling alley, table tennis room, etc. They are named after the former Macedonian President, who died in an airplane accident ten years ago. He was a moderate, Methodist Minister, that was a force for inclusion in this divided country. The host school is Nova of Skopje.

The tourney is shaping up to be a three-team competition within the event. The top three teams, ISB, Nova, and Anglo American School of Sofia, Bulgaria are clearly well above the teams from Helsinki, Latvia, and Kiev. We lost to Nova in the first game, 49-52 and Nova also beat Sofia 62-55. That leaves the big game this afternoon between Sofia and us to determine who will make the final against Nova. We easily beat Latvia and Helsinki by a difference of 56 points in the two games.

UPDATE (March 8, 2014) 

Our results are as follows so far with two games left to play:

  • Loss vs. Nova 49-52
  • Win vs. IS Helsinki 47-25
  • Win vs. IS Latvia 60-26
  • Win vs. AA Sofia 46-36

UPDATE (MARCH 12, 2014)

  • Win vs. PSI – Kiev 29-22
  • Loss vs. Nova 49-53
Alek Readies for a Rebound

billkralovecLeave a comment

Latest Reading: The Smartest Kids in the World and How They Got That Way

During the February Break I read the book, “The Smartest Kids in the World and How They Got That Way” by Amanda Ripley. Ripley is an investigative journalist who has written for The Atlantic and Time, among other magazines. The book follows three American high school students on foreign exchange programs in South Korea, Finland, and Poland. The author chose to compare the educational systems of the USA with those three countries because they scored better than the USA on the 2012 PISA. She was looking for why those three countries’ students, do better on the PISA than US teenagers.

I would like to learn more about the PISA tests, but at this point, I feel they must be a pretty good indicator to what ninth grade students know, and to predict their future academic and perhaps career success. She writes, “PISA demanded fluency in problem solving and the ability to communicate; in other words, the basic skills I needed to do my job and take care of my family in a world choked with information and subject to sudden economic change.”

I didn’t agree with all of Ripley’s views, but the book was an interesting and valuable read and I recommend it to all parents, teachers, and administrators. She concludes that it is not one thing or one way that educational systems produce students that show improvement or score high on the PISA exam. Each country featured, did it slightly differently. I thought the best system was Finland. Their key is to only select the best students to go into teaching. It is difficult and prestigious to get into a College of Education in Finland. In comparison, there are too many teachers produced by universities in the US and most have very low admission standards. Many schools of education in the US accept students with below average SAT scores. She refers to leadership guru Jim Collins’s view in Good to Great, that having a great vision without great employees, makes the vision irrelevant. Finland has the smartest students going into teaching and hence, they have good schools. They also have a comprehensive exit exam for students, another characteristic Ripley shows improves PISA scores. The tests takes three weeks and students analyze difficult texts and produce long essays.

South Korea has the “Iron Child” mentality to get their students to score high on the PISA. Korean parents are like Educational Coaches and drill their children at home in mathematics. They also send their children to “hagwon” schools, which are private tutoring companies that operate in the evenings, sometimes until the late evenings. Korean students go to school all day and night. The society also places a big deal on the comprehensive exam, with flights shutting down and traffic stopping on the morning of the test to ensure a quiet testing environment.

Finally with Poland, recent educational reforms put rigor front and central in schools and more was demanded of the students. They also extended mandatory schooling for all students, mandating school for all 15 year olds before many of them go to vocational training. Ripley also described the freedom both Polish and Finnish teenagers have during the school day and in the evenings. They are expected to develop learning habits and autonomy at an earlier age than American teenagers.

All three systems spend much less per student than the US schools. US schools Ripley believes spend money on technology, facilities, and sports (and other extra curricular classes) and teachers and parents do not insist on academic rigor and value the child’s self esteem over having them learn from failure and work harder. She also discusses the disparities in education in all three systems between the rich and poor. Ripley does not believe sports and the arts should be eliminated in US schools, but less emphasis should be placed on them.

The book got me thinking about my current school, the International School of Belgrade. Our rigor is put in the curriculum through the International Baccalaurate, which Ripley mentions favorably in the book. The IB features exit exams with high standards and students are compared against other students from around the world as they complete high school. The IB is also adding eAssessments after grade 10, as a further check on the progress of our students.

Her thoughts on mathematics and the critical role it plays in the lives of people also slightly changed my views. Research shows a direct correlation to math proficiency and future academic success and career earnings. Mathematics forces one to think logically and because so much of today’s jobs require data management, math is absolutely necessary for all students. Perhaps not at the highest levels, but all students should take the highest math classes they possibly can. She mentions that students work up to expectation and a school’s culture, should insist on academic rigor.

There is also chapters on how parents can help their children. She says that it is less important to help out the PTA or attend soccer games, but to demand rigor from their children. She specifically advises the following:

  • For younger children, read to your children six nights per week. For older students, talk with them about their day and about the news of the world.
  • Let their children make mistakes and then get right back to work.
  • Teach them good habits and autonomy. Hold them to a high standard, supporting rigor in schools. Teach them the lessons of hard work, persistence, integrity, and consequences and those lessons will serve them well in the decades to come.
  • One family took their children to a book store on a regular Friday night ritual. Get them in the habit of reading deeply every day, and parents should read books to serve as a model for them.

Finally she mentions the role of the principal and/or director of the school. He/she is the key person in the school, and the act of selecting, training, and retaining the best teachers for a particular school is the most important function of the leader. It got me thinking of revising my methods of looking for teachers and I will look deeper into their university programs. She also suggested to watch them teach a lesson before hiring to get a better sense if they can do the job.

Although she is critical of US schools in general, she does cite many instances where US schools are doing well. The book is not 100% US-bashing. I highly recommend this thought provoking book for anyone interested in education. Here is a link to a book reading by Amanda Ripley at the Politics and Prose Bookstore in Washington DC in August of 2013.

 

billkralovecLeave a comment

What is so Important about the PISA Results?

This past December, the results of the 2012 PISA (Program for International Student Assessment) were announced and I listened to or read several news stories lamenting the performance of the US schools and the acknowledging the excellent results of Asian countries, especially China. I decided to look more into the test and what it means. I will be doing a series of blog posts on my thoughts on what I find out.

The PISA test is developed by Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) which is non-profit organization that “promotes policies that will improve the economic and social well-being of people around the world. It serves as a forum and support network for nations to benchmark and seek feedback in solving common problems. One of the many areas the OECD works on is education, “We compare how different countries’ school systems are readying their young people for modern life…”. They do this through the PISA test. The test is the brainchild of Andreas Schleicher a physicist and employee of OECD since 1996. Working with professors at the University of Hamburg, he made a test that fairly, across cultures, school systems, languages, etc. that “assesses to what extent 15-year students have acquired key knowledge and skills that are essential for full participation in modern societies.” This basically was looking at the output of national school systems, rather than input, like amount of spending in school, teacher preparation, etc, that the OECD measured before. The first test was given in 2000, and every three years, millions of 15-year olds around the world take the test.

In this latest PISA test of 2012, 510,000 15-year olds, representing 28 million 15-year old students from 65 countries, took tests in mathematics, science, reading, and problem-solving. The test focuses on not what they know, but what they can do with what they know. This year’s test featured a new section on financial literacy which I am really interested in learning more about.  The test lasts about 2 hours and it is both paper-based and computer-based, with a mix of questions requiring students to construct their own responses and multiple-choice items. The questions are based on passages that set out a real life situation. In addition to the test, the PISA also does a survey of students and school principals that covers background information.

I read the PISA 2012 Results In Focus: What 15-year-olds know and what they can do with what they know and came away with the importance of mathematic proficiency for all of our students. Inequality in the distribution of math skills across populations is closely related to how wealth is shared within nations. That means proficiency in mathematics is a strong predictor of positive outcomes for young adults, and greatly influences their ability to participate in post-secondary education and their expected future earnings. China and Asia dominated the math assessment, with the top 7 nations being all Asian, with China having four of those spots (Shanghai, Hong Kong, Macao, and Chinese Tapei). Shanghai was in particularly impressive, with overall 13% of students reaching the highest levels (levels 5-6) on the math test, in Shanghai, 55% of students reached those levels. In fact, Shanghai’s score of 613 is the equivalent of three years of schooling above the OECD average score. That means Shanghai’s ninth graders are mastering grade 11 and 12 level work. They also scored tops in Reading and Science.

In looking at the results of the countries I am affiliated with, the USA scored around the OECD average on all three tests, which it usually does. The highest US state, Massachusetts, finished equal with Germany , in 16th place. Serbia, the country I currently live in, scored significantly below OECD average, and Japan, the country I am moving to this summer, scored in 7th place, just behind Korea. Some of my other thoughts on the test are as follows:

  • I guess the OECD chooses 15-year-olds because it is too late by the time a student reaches that point to “catch up” to where they are supposed to be. All the data indicates early intervention, like the school systems in Finland, and pre-primary education, help students from fall below the standards of world excellence.
  • Boys show better math skills at the highest levels than girls, but more boys than girls are in the lowest-performing students category. Education around the world needs to do a better job in engaging more boys in education and school.
  • A problem in Serbian schools are a lack of punctuality and truancy and these are negatively associated with student performance on the PISA, up to one full year of formal school difference. Over 33% of students in OCED countries reported arriving late for school during the two weeks prior to the PISA assessment and more than 25% reported that they skipped classes or days of school during that same period. School stakeholders need to try to prevent this from happening.
  • High expectations from parents for their children result in more perseverance, greater intrinsic motivation to learn math, and more confidence in their own ability to solve math problems than students of similar socio-economic status and academic performance, but whose parents hold less ambitious expectations for them.
  • Better teacher-student relations are strongly associated with greater student engagement with and at school.
  • Political, Social, and Religious leaders need to promote parents in valuing education more than other areas of national interest.
  • Teachers and School Principals need to be able to identify students who show signs of lack of engagement with school and work with them individually before disengagement takes firm root.
  • Recommendations for math teachers are to assign projects that require at least a week to complete; ask students to present their thinking or reasoning at some length, give frequent feedback on their strengths and weaknesses, and give problems that require students to extend their thinking.

Why to some countries do better on the test than others? I’ll be blogging more about this.

billkralovecLeave a comment

A New Education Podcast: “Schooled” by Slate

One of my favorite on line magazines has a new podcast about education that is excellent! Slate is kind of a National Public Radio / Public Broadcasting System, but they are private and have a bit of a pop culture edge. They have a range interesting articles and more importantly for me, a variety of podcasts. Below is the introduction to the first episode of the new podcast on education, “Schooled”

Welcome to Schooled, Slate’s new podcast about education. One of my frustrations as an education journalist is that there are so few opportunities to highlight interesting new research in a way that’s actually helpful to the consumers of K-12 education—parents and kids. That’s why producer Sally Herships and I have structured this podcast to do exactly that: To have a dialogue between a teacher of gifted kids and a researcher on giftedness; to interview one teacher who fled a high-poverty high school alongside another who stayed; and to talk to instructional experts about what parents should look for when they visit schools in which they’re considering enrolling their children. We’ll be tackling some of the thorniest debates in school reform, from whether middle-class kids suffer in classrooms with poor students to whether American schools are anti-intellectual. I hope you’ll listen regularly over the next six weeks!

Our first episode features Amanda Ripley, a fantastic reporter (and sometimes a fellowSlate contributor) whose book The Smartest Kids in the World is about what American parents and schools can learn from the best educational practices of high-achieving nations like Finland, Poland, and South Korea. Plus, find out which American states are on top educationally, and who’s smarter: The average Canadian kid or the average kid in Beverly Hills, Calif.

I am downloading the book on my iPad and will be reading it for the next couple of weeks. Hopefully I can get some blog posts out of my reflections on the three educational systems featured. It is good for an international educator to have a wide perspective since I work with families from all over the world. We do have families from all of three of those countries in my current school. Below is the pod cast that is hosted by Sound Cloud, one of my new favorite sites on the internet!

[audio https://soundcloud.com/slateradio/schooled-the-smartest-kids-in]

billkralovecLeave a comment

Visit to The Knowledge School of Helsingborg, Sweden

During the October Break I visited the Kunskapsskolan, or The Knowledge School of Helsingborg, Sweden. My friend Maria teaching Humanities at school which has grades 6 – 9, and is approximately equivalent to an American middle school. The school is very different in that the student controls his/her own education and they do not have regular classrooms. Students go through 35 “steps” in each subject and keep track of their progress on line and in a log book. There are regular lectures for groups of students, but most of it is self-paced. I was given a tour of the school by two ninth grade students. It was fascinating to see how the system works. The two boys really liked it and felt it prepared them quite well for high school. I was impressed with one of them, who showed me he needed to complete two more steps to gain enough points to get into the high school of his choice. The students go as fast as they can through the steps and must pass a written and oral exam at the end of each step. One complaint from the boys was that it was relentless and there was always another step and not enough time to rest. They also mentioned Gustav, the smartest boy in the school who completed the steps in this grade 8 year and has spent the last year working on independent projects.

When I asked them, is this the future of schools, they were quick to say no. They mentioned that since sixth grade, about 50 students left the school because they could not handle the independence and left to attend more traditional schools. For those who can however, it is the best. I would have loved to attend a school like this because I remember being bored to death in many of my classes. The ability to work at my own pace and vary up the rooms or my schedule would have been wonderful for me, as I was quite active and needed to move quite a bit. I wonder if I would have had the maturity to handle it?

The teachers too enjoyed working in this system and I saw many working 1-0n-1 with students or in small groups. Typical Sweden, the Principal was not at school that day as this year he is working part-time so he can finish building his house! This would never be the case in the USA.

The architecture and design was stunning! Sweden and Denmark are known for this. The photo above was taken from the third floor looking down onto the cafeteria. There were also some great study nooks in the stairwells of the school.

I was happy to have the opportunity to give two lectures to grade 9 classes about the United States political system. They were very interested in the recent government shutdown and the differences between the Democratic and Republican parties.

This particular school is one of 28 schools run by the non-governmental foundation Kuskapsskolan. They are also expanding into other countries including the UK, India, and the USA. The global web site has a lot of information.

The visit really inspired me to try to incorporate more of this Mastery Learning or Individualization into more traditional schools. I see schools moving more to this model, especially with the proliferation of on line learning. It just makes more sense to have the student himself/herself control the time of learning instead of a predetermined yearly calendar or timetable. As good teachers know, there is a wide range of abilities and interests in any class. This excerpt from the New York Times gives an American perspective of Mastery Learning.

One of the advantages of mastery learning is that the student, not the teacher, leads — and we know that people learn far better when they are actively involved. The teacher provides materials, tools and constant support. Students set their own goals and manage their own time.

In a traditional classroom, the teacher must aim the lecture at the middle, leaving the faster learners bored and the slower ones lost. Differentiation and personalization are big challenges. But the mastery system allows each student to learn at her own pace.

Mastery also rewards students for actual learning. A student cannot simply turn in a shoddy paper, take the D and move on. If she turns in shoddy work, she can’t move on. She has to keep trying until she demonstrates she fully understands.

Despite these advantages, mastery learning never caught on, mainly because it was a nightmare for teachers. One problem was how to do direct instruction; a teacher can’t give five different lectures in one class. The other was how to test students. Multiple versions of a test were needed so students couldn’t pass them to friends who would be taking them later.

I would like to thank Maria and the students for their hospitality and allowing me to spend the day with them!

 

billkralovecLeave a comment

Engaging With Serbia

I really feel it is important that international school faculty participate in the host nation’s culture. To celebrate the end of our Orientation and preparation for the school year, we invited the Abrašević Folk Dancing Ensemble to give us a workshop at the school. The dance troupe was famous during the time of Yugoslavia and still tours today, being founded in 1905. Folk dancing is common here in the Balkans and some of our local faculty, when they were younger, participated in folk dancing groups.

They put an exhibition of dancing for us and more importantly, explained to the faculty what the different costumes from the different regions of Serbia symbolize. They then tried to teach us some of the basic steps and it was sooo much fun. As you can see from the photo above, we all had a great time and shared many laughs. Dancing makes one feel good and it was nice to end such a hectic time with an experience that was so relaxing and entertaining.

I was so inspired by the instructor and the troupe that I want to have the students involved as well. Hopefully in the second semester, we can have the troupe come and work with our students.

billkralovecLeave a comment

Student Bonding Trips

Team-building With the Grade 7 Students

This year we built into the calendar and established as a tradition, the student bonding trips. Especially this year, with 42 new students and 4 new teachers to the ISB Upper School, it was important to get them to make connections with each other and the returning students and faculty. Every grade level went to a different place near Belgrade and the idea is for the groups to learn about Serbian history and culture, be active in the outdoors, and spend time getting to know one another.

I went on the Grade 7 Retreat and had a lot of fun. I wish I could have bottled the energy of the 155 students on Thursday morning in the gym, as we took attendance and sent them out to their buses! They were so excited! We kept them busy with sight seeing, lots of hiking, and time for playing sports. In the evening, we did some group activities, like the one above, where they had to sit on each other’s knees. If the group does it at the same time and slowly, it can be done and they can support one another. After a few attempts, the group finally got it. We also made a Harlem Shake video among other things.

Making it to the Fruška Gora cave

One could see the social groups breaking down during the trip. It is a challenge for our school to get the long-term local students to connect with the transient expatriate students. The Serbians have seen many friends come and go and can get a bit wary. Also the big differences in culture sometimes need to be understood.

I think next year we can make it better by working funding of the trip into the tuition, thus lowering the amount of logistics that needs to be worked out.

 

billkralovecLeave a comment

2013 ISB Board of Trustees Retreat

On Saturday I participated in our annual ISB Board of Trustees Retreat. Every September, the Board gets together along with the Senior Administration Team of the school. The goals of the day are to orient the new Board Members, give everyone board training on their roles and responsibilities, and to plan out the school year. We also bring in a consultant. Below are my non-confidential notes on the training aspects of the day. I always learn something about excellent governance.

I also have worked quite a bit with our consultant, Mrs. Adele Hodgson, and it was good again to spend the day with her. She has worked with so many schools and I appreciate being able to benchmark our school with the many she has experience with.

 

 

 

billkralovecLeave a comment

ISB Classroom Observations – September 6, 2013

Periodically I like to post my classroom observations. As a principal, I feel it is important to understand what is going on in the classrooms so I can help and support the teaching and learning. I always enjoy learning new things!

The Grade 9 English class has an Outside Reading Requirement (ORR) theme of “Let Freedom Read”. ORR books are like book clubs and the students work in groups and get together to discuss sections as they read through the novels. The focus are books that have been banned in certain parts of the world various political or social reasons. Some of the books the students can choose from are as follows:

  • To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee (USA)
  • One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (Russia)
  • Slaughterhouse Five – Kurt Vonnegut (USA)
  • The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini (Afghanistan)
  • Frankenstein – Mary Shelly (UK)
  • A Wrinkle in Time – Madelaine L’Engle (USA)
  • The Golden Compass – Philip Pullman (UK)
  • Ender’s Game – Orson Scott Card (USA)
  • Animal Farm – George Orwell (UK) 

The Grade 6 Mathematics students were practicing rounding decimals. Half the class was working on the board (below) and the other half were working at their desks. A sample problem was to round the number 78290 to the nearest hundreds place. My answer – 78300, which was correct.

The seventh grade science class was listening to a lecture. Science teacher Janice Medenica was sharing a student cartoon on how fungi spread spores through insects. The idea was to demonstrate good note taking skills, dividing the paper into input and output. The output shows the teacher that the student understands the material. The input side are the notes from the information source (lecture, video, reading) and the output is showing how this information fits in the student’s schema. This could include a rap song about fungi or a cartoon.

The grade 12 psychology class working on presentation on a knowledge issue in the field. For example, Sreta (below) chose Doping in Sports because he is a hockey player and learned from a former National Hockey League player that many of the players use performing enhancing drugs to keep up with the rigors of an 82-game season. When he participated in the world Under-18 hockey championships, several of his teammates were tested. He was looking at sources when I sat down next to him. It looked like it was going to be an excellent presentation.

The grade 11 English class was discussing the DP Classroom Without Walls trip to Bosnia, with stops in Višegrad, Mostar, Sarajevo, and Trebinje. The trip will concentrate on the history and literature of the region, including Nobel Literature Prize winner Ivo Andrić’s book, Bridge Over the River Drina  and the origins of World War I.

billkralovecLeave a comment