Director's Blog

If you go to the 9:22 mark of the video, you can hear my interview as I discuss ISB’s relationship with the Central Trades School. Our Diploma Programme students are volunteering at the school to work with the students. Below are some of my thoughts from the visit.

It was an uplifting experience to visit the Central Trades School (Srednja Zanatska Škola) in the Belgrade suburb of Rakovica. The school is a government initiative that focuses on social rehabilitation and job training for vulnerable students in the Belgrade metropolitan area. Single mothers, refugees, victims of domestic violence, people with disabilities, Roma children, etc. are the target population. Most of the students are from ages 17-20 and include about 30% Roma.

The school was hosting a school year culminating fair, called, “We Can Overcome the Boundaries Together.”  There were food stands, music and dance performances, judo exhibitions, craft bazaar, etc. I toured the school and met with the teachers and students. I was invited as the representative of the International School of Belgrade. This year our students through the Community Action and Service Program at our school have been regularly working with the severe special needs students in the garden and green house program of the school. The idea stemmed from one of our students, whose parents through their work in the diplomatic community, became aware of the school.

The school’s goal is to train and find job for their students. To that end, they have working auto mechanic garages, welding workshops, beauty salons, and even a small restaurant. Students also do internships with local businesses to help them make the transition into employment. An article in the Studio B web site stated that 40% of their students find jobs.

It is nice that the Serbian government supports these kinds of schools. A society can be judged on how it treats its most vulnerable members. I was also impressed with the positive spirit of the students and teachers and especially, the dedication of the faculty. Everyone I met was very dedicated to students and felt good about making a difference

One of the characteristics of the “Generation M” students is they are less active than previous generations of students. Much of this is caused by the advent of the internet and personal electronic devices. With the world of entertainment and communication at their fingertips, it is tempting to be in front of a screen a big portion of the day. The purpose of the ISB Upper School Fitness Week was to get our community moving and finding a balance between a healthy mind (academics) and a healthy body.

Everyday this week our Physical Education Department, led by ISB PE Teacher, Mr. Igor Šaljić, gave some opportunity for the students and teachers to be active or learn a new sport. The photo above shows a school-wide Zumba session. Both teachers and students felt energized at the end of a long day of study, with the Latin rhythms and dance moves featured in a Zumba workout. Earlier in the week, the students were introduced to the sports of judo, fencing, and archery, three activities that they normally would never be exposed to. The culmination of the week is our walk/run in Košutnjak Park today. The event will not only get our students walking in nature, but it will also raise money for the local Drinka Pavlović Orphanage. CAS Coordinator Vladimir Stanojlović is leading an effort to collect funds to buy sports equipment for the kids at the orphanage. Donations are being accepted anytime at the school reception desks or directly with Vladimir in the library.

We hope the mantra of get away from your screens and get moving will resonate with our students.

 

 

Yesterday it was the most exciting tree planting I’ve ever experienced. The Class of 2013 planted a tree in front of the middle school during the hail storm. The Senior Class Awards Assembly was timed perfectly with the rain, and by the time we got out to the spot in front of the new building, rain had filled the hole dug for the tree. The boys persevered and it was a good lesson – things in life do not always go as planned, and one has to make the best of any situation. Tree planting ceremonies in schools symbolize planning for the future and long-term thinking, stewardship of environment, and the value of education, sowing the seeds for future success, etc.

It is an emotional week for the senior class and their parents as their high school education career is coming to an end. The community is invited to come to Saturday’s Commencement Exercises. It has been a memorable week so far, and a tree planting the young men will not forget.

The tree is a Sweet Gum (Liquidambar styraciflua) so named because the seed pods resemble “gum balls” and the leaves have a pleasant odor when crushed. The tree was selected for its beautiful autumn colors of orange and red, and it will look nice against the backdrop of the building. It is also a different species of tree and will add to our campus nature “laboratory” that the science classes use to do field studies.

 

As part of the IB curriculum, students in the final year of the Middle Years Programme, which is our Grade 10, complete a personal project during the school year. Today we held the public exhibition of their projects. I really enjoy sitting down with the students and talking about their projects. I feel the biggest benefits for my work as a principal, is to learn what interests and talents our students demonstrate. This could lead to new courses, workshops, or after school activities.

The big theme for this year’s cohort of 12 students (our smallest class in the Upper School) was technology. Most of the projects in some way integrated the use of technology. It confirmed my thinking that eventually we should offer programming classes here at ISB. Below is a list of Personal Projects of some of the students I had a chance to learn about:

• Connor spent 3 days and nights alone in the Fruska Gora National Park camping with a minimum of supplies. He read Thoreau’s On Walden Pond and made a documentary of his experience.
• Two students made Apps, the first by Ilija was a “super-duper” calculator for the iPhone and the other was an App for an Android phone that lets the user know when the battery is fully charged. The student, Sima, went on to calculate the energy savings his app would accumulate if people stopped charging their phones after the battery was full. Both boys had to learn programming languages (Java, Csharp). Ilija also went to a science center here in Serbia (Petnica).
• Two students made websites, one for his father’s business and the other for the German Soccer League.
• Alex made a 6-day crash course training video on Mixed Martial Arts.
• Rea wrote, played, recorded, and uploaded an original song to and uploaded it to Bandcamp.com. The link to the song is here.
• Christian, shown above, wrote 5 short stories set in New York City that follows the cases of two private detectives during World War II.
• Anze wrote a screen play based on Arthur C. Clarke’s 1972 science fiction novel, “Rendezvous With Rama.” The movie script covers the first half of the book. Actor Morgan Freeman is actually trying to make a movie based on the book.
• Svetlana researched the state of women’s soccer here in Serbia and spent a couple of days with the Serbian Women’s National Team. It resulted in a web site on women’s soccer and a video of her experiences.

“When I was grounded for a couple of months and didn’t have my phone, I got done extra early with homework.”

This is a student quote from the article, “With Tech Tools, How Should Teachers Tackle Multitasking In Class?” from the KQED Educational Blog, “Mind Shift: How We Learn. The article brings up points that many schools and families are challenged by regarding Personal Electronic Devices (P.E.D.).  The increased speed of wireless internet and phones able to do much more than just a few years ago, students and adults are being distracted with social media, text messages, and games available on line. I myself find I am reading less books than before, as there are so many interesting articles on line that take my attention away from my reading of books on my iPad. I can imagine what teenagers must be tempted by.

In Anne Murphy Paul’s article, “How Does Multitasking Change the Way Kids Learn?” she describes a study done in a California university that tracked 263 students doing homework.

Although the students had been told at the outset that they should “study something important, including homework, an upcoming examination or project, or reading a book for a course,” it wasn’t long before their attention drifted: Students’ “on-task behavior” started declining around the two-minute mark as they began responding to arriving texts or checking their Facebook feeds. By the time the 15 minutes were up, they had spent only about 65 percent of the observation period actually doing their schoolwork.

“We were amazed at how frequently they multitasked, even though they knew someone was watching,” Rosen says. “It really seems that they could not go for 15 minutes without engaging their devices,” adding, “It was kind of scary, actually.”

In other studies, professors looked at university students. One large survey found 80% of college students admit to texting during class. In another study involving spyware, professors at the University of Vermont found students multitasking with their laptops, including non course related software applications open and active about 42 percent of the time. Another study of law students showed 58 percent of second and third-year students who had laptops in class, were using them for non-class purposes over half of the time.

How does this apply to us at ISB? I think we need to look carefully at our P.E.D. policies in the classroom. Are they too much of a distraction? What classroom management techniques do we need to be aware of to help students focus on a task when a world of entertainment is just a tab away. Not only should we be concerned about in-class multitasking, but also at home. We should be addressing this with students and teaching them to concentrate and manage the demands of a buzzing phone or an active Facebook news feed. I suggest all of us read the second article, “How does Multitasking Change the Way Kids Learn?” and collect data from our students and teachers regarding multitasking.

The article ends on a positive note, however and I think this reflects the situation at our school.

Parents shouldn’t feel like ogres when they do so, she adds. “It’s important to remember that while a lot of kids do media multitask while doing homework, a lot of them don’t. One out of five kids in our study said they ‘never’ engage in other media while doing homework, and another one in five said they do so only ‘a little bit.’ This is not some universal norm that students and parents can’t buck. This is not an unreasonable thing to ask of your kid.”

So here’s the takeaway for parents of Generation M: Stop fretting about how much they’re on Facebook. Don’t harass them about how much they play video games. The digital native boosters are right that this is the social and emotional world in which young people live. Just make sure when they’re doing schoolwork, the cell phones are silent, the video screens are dark, and that every last window is closed but one.

The faculty celebrated yesterday our final Early Release Professional Development Day. Throughout the year the Upper School and Lower School collaborated to discuss and align the curriculum from a PK to Grade 12 level. Each department presented their work to the faculty as a whole. This blog post outlines my big “take-aways” from the presentations.

• Many of the groups stressed the importance of vocabulary development. That reemphasized the importance of building vocabulary with our students.
• Most groups categorized their curriculum to look for gaps and overlaps. For example, technology had the categories of Materials, Info, Systems, and Design. Humanities divided the field into Civics, Economics, History, and Geography. Language B looked at Writing, Reading, Oral, and Visual Interpretation.
• Several departments emphasized the cyclical or spiral nature of their field. The same concepts and skills are repeated from year to year, but increase in complexity as the students get older.
• I sure learned a lot about the PYP, a program I didn’t know in depth. All of our departments do a good job in covering the curriculum, and only “tweaks” or minor adjustments were needed. For example, the Fine Arts wanted to add drama to the LS and more music to the HS. Language A (English and Serbian) wants to put more non-fiction texts into the book list.

It was a good use of our time as a school. I’ve been thinking a lot about next year’s use of the Early Release Days. I am not sure we need to collaborate PK-12 again so much next year. In the Upper School, we would use the time to more horizontally align the curriculum and look at ways teachers at the same grade level can work together. I would also try to come with a list of key vocabulary for the staff.

The New York Times Magazine this week published a story (“The Best School Money Can Buy?” ) about new private school in Manhattan called “Avenues: The World School.” Reading the article helped me put our school in perspective. The school is planning an interesting model of building 20 campuses all over the world so their students can study abroad during their years of study at the school. I will be looking at their web site to gain ideas to help our school. The link to their web site is here.

 

 

In discussing our units in the lens of the four science disciplines (Earth/Chemistry/Physics/Biology) we made several changes to our units.

1) We were concerned of when the Human Sexuality and Reproduction unit is taught. We currently teach puberty in grade 5 and everything else in Grade 8. We changed it by adding a more extensive Human Body unit in Grade 6 and keeping more of the Human Sexuality aspects in Grade 8.

2) Stewardship of the Earth should be a focus on every year. We went through the Reduce/Recycle/Reuse and global warming/climate change focus for each grade level.

3) We also made some specific unit moves, like moving general ecology unit from grade 7 to grade 10 as an addition to the cellular respiration and photosynthesis unit. Simple machines are covered in Grade 4 so do not have to be done in Grade 6. We swapped Electricity/Magnetism in grade 9 with Evolution in Grade 8. We take alternative energy out of Grade 9 and into Grade 10.

In the PYP we added Electricity and Fire Safety and Waste Management to Grade 4. To help understand Rube Goldberg Machine unit, we added magnets, nanotechnology, and work. We moved Newton’s Laws from Grade 6 and put into Grade 5, taking out Light and Sound and the Scientific Method. We also added “Then and Now” to Grade 1 and made three science units for the new PK-3 class.

After we completed re-arranging the units we put forth a plan for 2013-2014. The three priorities will be to look at the skills of science and when and to what extent they are taught at each grade level and comparing our Curriculum Overview Map with the National Science Digital Library (NSDL)  science literacy maps. This will get us some conceptual balance. Finally, are the PYP Science Strands and the MYP Concepts enough substance for our curriculum or do we need another curriculum tool.

This weekend I had the pleasure of participating in a workshop entitled “Civics 101” with our students. The National Democratic Institute (NDI) and the International School of Belgrade (ISB) are partners in delivering workshops this spring. NDI was founded in 1983 by the United States Democratic Party as a non-governmental, non-profit organizations whose mission is to spread and support democratic principles throughout the world. NDI is closely working with the Serbian government during its process toward possible European Union membership. NDI targets impoverished areas in Eastern Serbia and so this year our students are working with students from Kladovo High School. Kladovo is a small city located on the Danube River, about 4 hours north east of Serbia.

The goal of the workshops is for the students to learn leadership and advocacy skills and jointly execute projects in the communities of the two schools. This weekend’s workshop was held in Kovačica, a city in the south Banat region about 30 minutes outside of Belgrade.

I would like to thank the NDI workshop leaders and our staff members who participated in the workshops!

 

 

 

ISB is using its six early release professional development days for each discipline to align its content and skills from Pre-Kinder to Grade 12. As a former science teacher, I am working with the science department. Earlier in the year, we completed putting together the official documentation in a form called a Curriculum Overview Map (COM). Now we are looking at the content in each grade level and seeing which units can be classified as biology, chemistry, physics, or earth sciences (astronomy, geology, weather).  We will be able to see where there are gaps and where there are redundancies. The process is causing us to re-think how we do things, what units we are doing and when. The goal is for a student to complete our science curriculum with a solid understanding of the issues, mastery of the skills of science, and most importantly, an enthusiasm to study more science or an appreciation of science. I will blog after our next early release day with our findings. I am really enjoying digging into the science units again and wish I had the time to teach a class.