Director's Blog

Below is an article I wrote for the Central and Eastern European Schools Association web site. The link to the article is here.

Earlier this month, the worst flooding in history occurred in Bosnia & Herzegovina and Serbia. An area the size of Slovenia was flooded and thousands of people needed to be evacuated. Here in Serbia, many left in the middle of the night to avoid the almost 2 meter high waters that inundated their homes and apartment blocks. 33 people lost their lives and over 25,000 people fled to evacuee centers in Belgrade or found lodging with friends or family.

The response to the disaster from our school and the entire country was incredible. Thousands of volunteers came out to help fill and carry sand bags, rescue stranded people with boats, etc. I heard immediately from parents, students, and teachers, asking for the school to organize a donation drive. In just a few days, our gymnasium was filled with clothes, diapers, water, canned food, etc. in response to a call for donations. The students helped out by sorting and delivering the goods to evacuee centers around the city. Many of the students held fundraising events like bake sales, theatre performances, donation drives, etc. The high school students asked for a school-wide assembly to explain what happened and to outline the school’s relief efforts. The Board of Trustees and Staff Association are distributing cash donations to our employees from Obrenovac, a city 30 kilometers from Belgrade, located on the banks of the Sava River. We also selected a special needs school in Obrenovac to help. They need everything, from new flooring and paint, to books and school supplies. We also heard from other CEESA schools, asking how they could help.

The city of Obrenovac is covered with mud and some areas are still inaccessible. There is no electricity, water, or mobile phone service. Most people have not been able to get back to their homes. There is much more work still to be done to get the flood victims’ lives back to normal. The school hopes to continue helping and community service initiatives are being planned.

With all of this sadness and tragedy, it has been wonderful to see the kindness and caring of the people of Serbia and our ISB community. It is also nice as an international educator to get the opportunity to help out our host nation of Serbia and make a difference in the lives of those impacted by the disaster.

Below is a report from our Facilities & Security Manager and Director with the donation totals.

Parents and staff brought many bags and boxes of donations, and students were directly involved in the process of  gathering, sorting and distributing these. A joint decision was made to send the majority of the donations to Suplja stena in Avala, due to the high number of children there and the distance of this evacuation center from the city center. (Evacuation centers within Belgrade city limits were received more donations than more remote ones.) ISB students were directly involved in two visits there, and brought the following:

• Clothing (male, female, child) – 850 kilos
• Blankets, sheets, pillows – 400 kilos
• Food – 500 kilos
• Diapers – 20 packs
• Baby food – 30 kilos
• Water – 300 liters
• Toys – 20 boxes
• Hygiene products – 16 boxes

ISB has provided a pump for extracting water from houses along with a generator to citizens of Obrenovac, and trained some of them how to use the machines. We also donated 240 liters of disinfecting chemicals and fuel (120 euros). We intend to buy an industrial-strength dehumidifier as well.The remaining donations that are still in the school gym will be distributed during the following weeks directly to households in flooded areas, especially rural ones. Students are eager to help, and will be involved in making packages for
households and distributing them.

We have set up two funds: one for the money that we are receiving specific for the ISB employees who have personally been impacted by the flooding in Obrenovac, the second for any monetary donations we receive towards our intended longer-range relief efforts. We have identified a school in Obrenovac for special needs students as the primary recipient
of funds from the second account. The school is called Dnevni boravak and we have established contact with the school Director. ISB has had previous connections with this school. We envision not only buying items needed, but also involving our students and community directly in things like painting and building projects, all to be determined according to the
specific needs that are identified.

My wife Nadia and I completed our final Girls On The Move (GOTM) and Boys On The Move (BOTM) program this morning. The idea was brought to us by a friend from Seattle whose daughter participated in a Girls On The Run program.  We wanted something adapted for our international school so she came up with a different version and called it Girls On The Move.  GOTM is a club for young girls that discusses issues such as body image, relationships with boys/parents, happiness, self confidence, intercultural understanding, etc. After each session they train for a five kilometer run. Most of the girls have never done any distance running before, and this opens a new lifelong activity for them. It also is an example of some of the things Nadia is trying to teach them in the club. This year another teacher, Jeff Zollner, joined and did a similar program for the grade 4 and 5 boys.

As you can see above, we had a lot of fun! It is a positive experience for both the parents and teachers, who serve as “running buddies” and the students. She hopes to do the program again in Japan.

What is a pump track? I asked the same question when approached by a student for his personal project. In the Middle Years Programme of the International Baccalaureate, students in their fifth year (Grade 10) are required to complete a Personal Project. Students complete a year-long project about something they are passionate about, which can range from making a guitar, writing a play, learning how to code and making a app, planning and executing an overnight hiking trip, etc. It is the culmination of their time in the MYP and is an independent project outside of their school work. They select a supervisor at school to help them and many use their parents or other community members, especially experts in the field they are interested in to help them.

Rafael is young man who spends much of his weekend riding mountain bicycles. He competes in extreme downhill events and belongs to a BMX (bicycle motocross) club. His goal was to build a “pump track” at our school and introduce the sport to other students. A pump track is a dirt circuit with bumps, berms, and jumps that allows students to learn how to ride on rugged terrain. At first I was skeptical like any administrator, worried about student safety and school liability, but as I learned more and saw how committed Rafael was to doing this, I decided to support him and make it happen. We had to go through a lot of convincing, and he made a presentation to the school administration team. After clearing with the school insurance, he got permission to go ahead and design and build a pump track on our campus.

He spent a week constructing it with friends, with the school supplying dirt and tools. This weekend he held two sessions, one for middle school students and another for lower school students. It was one of the most rewarding projects I have seen in my educational career. The boys absolutely loved it and it was good to see how physical challenges really engaged them. Rafael was very patient with the younger students and I noticed how they really looked up to him. I even got into the spirit of the day and rode the course myself. I am an avid cyclist, but only on road cycles, but I experienced the appeal of off-road cycling. It is a great workout and fun! The pump track was another way to “hook” kids into school and I have developed a closer relationship with them.

Rafael’s project was a great example of what is best about the personal project. He learned much about how to get a project from the idea, through a bunch of obstacles to completion. It took a lot of planning and working through school channels to get it done. Rafael learned how to work the system. It also brought the community together and allowed a student to demonstrate leadership ability that would not normally be seen in a school setting. It also made me realize the importance of facilitating students to “discover their passion” and how educational leaders sometimes need to take calculated risks. I am glad we went through with it and the experience of being a personal project supervisor, ended up being one of the most rewarding of my career.

(photo courtesy of The Mirror UK web site)

This semester I have been working with our Grade 8 science teachers, the school nurse, and other Middle School personnel with our Sexual Health and Reproduction unit with the Grade 8 students. With pornography easily available on the internet, this has changed the ways schools need to support adolescents with this topic. This is much different from previous generations and the viewing of pornographyis getting easier all the time with the advent of mobile devices. Almost all teenagers have seen pornography and that is true with the surveys we did with our grade 8 students. I and most parents wonder what the impact this viewing of pornography, much of it violent or unusual, has on the minds of young people. This article in the New York Times by David Segal, suggests that the academic research on the topic is inconclusive and difficult to study. Segal writes,

Neuroscience tells us that young minds are still forming and thus malleable, and they tend to respond to emotionally charged material in ways that adults don’t. Given that pornography is emotionally charged, it would be shocking if it had no impact.

“I have a son,” says Professor Reid of U.C.L.A., “and I don’t want him getting his information about human sexuality from Internet porn because the vast majority of such material contains fraudulent messages about sex — that all women have insatiable sexual appetites, for example.”

With adolescents viewing more explicit forms of pornography at earlier ages than before, it is vital that schools and parents educate children from a young age about sexual health. Explicit instruction on healthy, emotionally satisfying, and most importantly, respectful sexual relationships needs to occur throughout childhood and adolescents. Teenagers need information and support to make good decisions about engaging in sexual behaviors.

One of the best resources for teens and parents on the internet is the site run by Gary Wilson, www.yourbrainonporn.com. His Tedx Talk, “The Great Porn Experiment” is mandatory watching for parents and teenagers, especially boys. Wilson described the effect pornography has on adolescent brains and the problems associated with excessive exposure to pornography before the age of 22. Some psychologists are reporting arousal addiction has serious negative impacts on boys.

All of us involved in this unit have learned a lot from preparing of the lessons, teaching the classes, receiving feedback from both students and their parents. In my opinion, it is one of the most important things schools can do to help young people. I would even expand the program more to combat the ever-growing pervasiveness of pornography in the lives of teenagers. It should be a mandatory topic for all MYP grade levels. Schools need to help parents in communicating about these topics with their children.

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.

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”

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!