Dear Parents, Colleagues and Friends of the International School of Boston,
As my 11 month watch at ISB comes to an end, I can report to you all that I am pleased at the progress that has been made at school and in the community this year on a number of fronts:
The work done to bring the first ISB Policy Manual to near completion; the successful Listening Groups and Strategic Planning exercise; the near record estimates for our annual operating surplus for 2009-2010; the successful Gala and best ever Capital Campaign, resulting in the new Science Lab for September 2010; the Board training retreat; the successful efficiency drive in spring 2010; continued curriculum review and documentation via Atlas; a continued, encouraging university admissions record; recrafted faculty evaluation procedure and instrument; a calm and more optimistic ISB community.
There are still challenges ahead and the current economic climate does not offer a great deal of encouragement. However we can take heart in the fact that our numbers are stable and our finances and staffing are steady. Of more strategic note is the growth from 73 students to 90 students in the Upper School for next year, which was one of our goals at the start of the year. Should this trend continue, we could have a thriving Upper School of 100 plus within a year or two. This would have significant advantages for our sports program, as well as elsewhere within the academic and pastoral offerings of that part of the school. The work which we did with Middle School and High School colleagues in the early part of the year to highlight the advantages of an ISB Upper School education certainly seems to have paid off. Very encouraging.
I wish to thank all faculty and staff colleagues across all divisions at ISB for their cheerful industry, good wishes and continued professional attention throughout the year to the needs of each one of our ISB students. I also wish to record my thanks to all the members of the Senior Management Team, whose support I have valued over this interim period, as well as to all our ISB families who have taken the time to stop by and say hello over this past year. I offer sincere good luck wishes and my personal gratitude to all colleagues and families, who, like me are leaving ISB for pastures new in a few days time. As always, my warmest wishes for good health and happiness are reserved for our wonderful students, who have made my short stay and my work here so heart-warming and fulfilling.
I especially wish my successor Dr Richard Blumenthal the best of luck and bon courage as he takes the reins in a couple of week’s time. Richard’s expertise and background are an excellent fit for this school and I am sure the community and he will go on to achieve great things for the school in the near future.
My family and I will retain a fond memory of our interim period here at ISB. As many of you already know, I will take up my new post in the spectacular city of Dubai at the beginning of August. Should be quite a change!
As the school year enters its final quarter, I would like us to reflect a little about how our notions of education and perhaps more pointedly, international education are changing as the new century gets underway.
In our time, an historic synthesis is occurring. We find evidence of this is in the newly emerging international cities; the sharp increase in international and multi-national companies; the movement of vast numbers of people across national boundaries changing the nature and dynamic of countries and cultures; the predominance of English as a second language continuing to spread around the world; and, the emergence of China, beginning to take center stage in business, trade and commerce.
Local economies are now firmly part of a global economy. Science and technology have obliterated local and national boundaries and created an international community. In virtually every field the status quo is being reshaped and rejuvenated from the fusion of international concepts, building what we have, for some time now, referred to as the “global village”.
In fact, the term is already a cliché. Geographical distance no longer separates peoples, when advances in communications and information technology have made neighborhoods of what were formerly regions and states. We care about what happens to the children held hostage in a school in Beslan; about the fate of people displaced by flooding; about the billions of dollars of damage from the hurricanes in the US or earthquakes in Haiti, the persecution of peoples in Sudan and the rising numbers of refugees throughout the world.
In this world with almost zero distance and zero time, the Earth has become not just smaller but in reality, one country with one world community. This is the new era of the 21st century, which requires new ways of thinking, new approaches to educating the young, a new concept of world citizenship, a paradigm shift from narrow thinking to what we might call, “world mindedness”.
Why is it, therefore, we may ask, that only now are we beginning to look at the way we teach our children, in terms of what they actually need to know, in this newly borderless world? In 2000, that is to say more than 25 years after the 1970’s oil crisis had shown the Middle East to be one of the most vital areas of the world, less than 1,000 public high school students in the US were studying Arabic. Less than 2,000 were studying Chinese.
At the same time, 175,000 were studying Latin.
A survey by the National Geographic Society in 2002 showed that 85% of 18-24 year olds in the US could not find either Iraq or Afghanistan on a map. 69% could not find Britain; 29% could not find the Pacific Ocean.
The traditional, historical purposes of an American public education (ie to manufacture citizens out of waves of immigrants from disparate corners of the world, to produce a homogenizing, civic instruction which would bind the populace behind a vision of what it meant to be ”American”) may be now in danger of isolating the world’s remaining superpower, with an inward-looking education system at the very moment when ”globalization” has passed from being just a buzzword to a fact of life
Of course there is also another aspect to all of this and that is the way in which modern secular society all too often neglects the importance of faith to strangers and “foreigners”. Indeed peace-loving Denmark found itself a few years ago in the centre of what Danish Prime Minister Rasmussen called “An international crisis”, because of its country’s very open tradition of satire. Those protesters who, having seen and been offended by the cartoons at the centre of the controversy, chanted “Freedom, Go to hell!”, were in fact doing nothing but exploiting the very liberties, whose end they were calling for. Were they asking for respect or just pure submission? On the other hand, does freedom of speech, or freedom to draw cartoons, mean freedom to cause offence to others. Clearly it does not. However as one former Soviet journalist once noted, “If you censor everything, you end up with Pravda”.
So as the movements of peoples across borders continues, the question of how to reconcile the fundamentals of secular liberal democracy with immigrant values of religion and human rights, does not become any easier to answer. But the role of education has a critical role to play in our understanding of the terms of the problem.
The Internet may have given us an information overload, but it has not given us any guidance as to how to use the fruits of this second, modern day Renaissance.
Indeed, we are now challenged to look at the very nature of education, its purposes and delivery systems. In this new era, which has brought about deep and extensive changes that have untold impact on all aspects of our lives, an integral part of the overarching shift remains education, now moving away from its limited 19th and 20th century models and towards a more broadly based, interdisciplinary, and international system.
In looking at education’s role in this, there are still more questions than answers. We know that all effective schools have a shared vision. As far as international schools are concerned, however, there are other issues at play. What does an international curriculum need to do? What is delivered may not be what is received by the students. How should teachers and board members be recruited, prepared and assessed in international schools? What about schools like ISB where you have an international school operating in a national school environment? Similarly there may often be tensions between the ideology of the international school (peace, tolerance, diversity etc) and those concerns of pragmatism (profit motive, local authorizations and accreditations) which may be in operation.
The educational philosophy of The International School of Boston has not changed substantially over the past five decades, although it has evolved and been implemented more systematically over time. We equate the notion of “international” with an individual’s internal transformation of their worldview. We define an international education by what goes on inside the student. It is about the internal transformation of the child. This is affected by the international school’s culture, which is created by the teaching and learning environment, the administration, the overall curriculum content and educational delivery processes which all directly impact the character formation of the child.
The essential point is that cultures and peoples are treated as equal.
However we know that school is about more than just academics and knowledge accumulation. School is a part of the education and socialization process, and in this process our characters are formed, our values are shaped, and who we are in life is greatly determined. A real school teaches students more than sciences, mathematics, the arts and languages. It teaches students to love their fellow human beings, to love the society they are a part of, and to care for the people around them. One has to learn to respect oneself, one’s own people, and one’s own society and culture, and in doing so, learn to respect the diverse peoples and cultures outside one’s own.
Education in this new global era must have one broad aim, and that is to produce responsible and caring world citizens prepared to protect, preserve, and perpetuate the environment of our planet, advance the progress of globalization that will bring together the West and the East, and contribute to the advancement of human civilization.
Looking at international education from this perspective, the cultural dimension becomes extremely important. By becoming fluent in two or more languages, allowing students to absorb cultural perspectives, traditions, values, standards, behaviors, thinking, students learn to move in and out of language or cultural situations, becoming more accepting of other languages and cultures.
In short, international schools, indeed all good schools in the 21st century, cannot be confined to their own culture. Direct exposure, interactive communication, and direct involvement within the context of other cultures are the keys to their appeal and ultimately their success.
As barriers of nationality are broken down, as confusion arises about the fear of the Polish plumber by the French mechanic, as the Internet and certain other media prey upon the susceptible and the unprepared, let us remember the central role which education plays in clearing our eyes of the dust of bigotry and suspicion. Without education, 5000 years of poetry become just noise, and the rule of law is reduced to “might being right”. An international education should aspire to celebrate and include, not marginalize and exclude.
In the final analysis, education should be the one thing we have which compels us to simply refuse to hand over our world to those who shout the loudest.
How many Heads of international schools can speak the language of their host country? Most of us, merely by dint of living in the foreign country, will pick up the very basics of courtesy and polite inquiry. However how many schools use their geographical location to provide in-service opportunities in language learning for their faculty? We are all of us rightly anxious to extol the virtues of international education. Yet most of what we do every day in school takes place in a second or third language for many of our students. The same is not usually the case for most of us as faculty members. Therefore an awareness of the demands upon second language learners, including a crash course in the local language at the start of every school year, could effectively raise the profile of language learning within schools, whilst also affording very profitable in-service opportunities for our teaching colleagues. Inevitably, however, the issue of foreign languages in schools goes much deeper than this.
Generally speaking, language learning remains a comparative under-achiever in the pecking order of subject popularity and examination performance at Middle and High School level. There are well-documented reasons for this, the predominance of English as the language of world newsmakers, sportsmen and entertainers, being the most obvious. More importantly, youth culture takes its lead from the world of English: Kobe Bryant and Miley Cyrus do not give interviews in Mandarin (although Kobe does speak Italian). It is highly fashionable to be able to speak English these days. Consider the dour parade of Soviet monolingual leaders in the past beside today’s emerging Eastern European thirty-somethings, crooning mid-Atlantic English into their i-phones. Moreover the command of English often means for young people a potential passport out of linguistic isolation and into the world of opportunity and earning power. Hence in many ways the worst place in which to learn, for example, Arabic is somewhere like the Arabian Peninsula, where your well-meaning question in pigeon Arabic will almost always be answered, with a polite smile, in perfect English. Incidentally the street traders and shop assistants in the Gulf who once used English as their lingua franca, now have updated their linguistic abilities to reflect the changing demography of the tourist trade. Apparently Russian is now almost as widely spoken and understood as English by those in-the-know in the retail trade.
However the cultural hegemony which has followed the oppressive monolingualism of the mass media is beginning to show signs of fragmentation. This seems to be in recognition of the fact that, although the global village is becoming more of a reality everyday (perhaps because of that fact), we nonetheless do not all need to dress in the same linguistic clothes. Unity in diversity; one destination, different journeys ; one human nature, many varied cultures. CNN is used to being either praised and pilloried in the debate about cultural orthodoxy and Western insensitivity. Now the network offers its first-class interactive web page in half a dozen of the world’s languages. Although computer-speak remains essentially English-medium, most operating systems and programs can and do operate multi-lingually. However for Voice Activated Recognition systems it always helps if you have an accent from New York rather than New Caledonia.
The break-up of what we used to conveniently refer to as the Eastern Block (or was it Bloc?), has also led to the triumphant re-emergence of various hitherto subsumed national identities and languages. Language in this context has graduated from means of communication to badge of identification. In pre-1991Yugoslavia, whichever part of the country you came from, you carried your Pasos, whenever you went abroad. Now one’s use of this word distinguishes one as a Serb or a Macedonian, as opposed to the Croatian Putovnica or Slovenian Potni List. Clearly this is more than just an amusing linguistic quirk in the vein of US sidewalk versus UK pavement. In some parts of the world there could be high stakes for the use or misuse of a single word.
Countless other examples abound in Eastern Europe and elsewhere to emphasize exclusivity, identity and, in the end, a separate political integrity. Language is a highly political issue in so many parts of the world that it is all the more astounding that, as international educators, we do not pay it the sort of attention, which it clearly deserves. The uneasy mix of the Tamil and Sinhalese languages in Sri Lanka, the residual Russian in the new independent states of former Soviet Central Asia, the place of Bahasa as a force for unity within multi-lingual Malaysia, all bear witness to the fact that the correct use of language, together with a knowledge of its significance at local level need to inform our approach to language learning, especially in schools like ours, which pride themselves upon their celebration of internationalism and sensitivity to cultural diversity.
International schools are powerful cultural places. We need to ensure that our school communities understand the role of languages in contributing to the culture of our schools. It is the pervasiveness of the language learning process, which helps to make the international school a genuine exemplar of the multi-culturalist ethic. A review of our approach to language learning, as aid to staff development, medium of student instruction or culture-shaping tool can add value to reputation and achievement in all our schools.
In recent literature pertaining to international education, there has been much reference to the role and functions of the Board of Trustees (“Directors”, “Governors” etc) in our schools, particularly in relation to the position of the Head of School. Experience and research show that while many Boards may be wholly or partly elected by the parent body and others may be appointed or self-selected, the duties and powers of Boards may usually be condensed to three broad functions: selecting the Head; formulating and adopting policy; and assuring the financial strength of the school. Implicit in this last responsibility is the need to plan ahead and to raise funds for the school (“get, give or go”). With the majority of international school boards varying in size between 9 and 12 members, this fund-raising aspect of the Board member’s role is too often neglected for lack of time or lack of appropriate contacts within the local community, sustained access to which is often sporadic due to Board member transience and transfer.
One effective technique of combating this lack of time and experience is for the Board to appoint an Advisory Board, the members of which would usually be local, as opposed to internationally mobile, probably not parents of the school and who would be selected for their particular area of expertise or endeavour. The Advisory Board can play a critical role in assisting the Board in developing its resources, increasing communication with the local and national community beyond the school and, indeed, advising the Board on specific (usually non-educational) matters. The terms of office of Advisory Board Members may be at the pleasure of the Chairman of the Board of Trustees and, of course, they should play no role in either the governance or the administration of the school.
The transient nature of many international school Boards of Trustees, especially those which are elected to fixed terms, makes it remarkable that more schools have not made a deliberate decision to create an Advisory Board of some kind which can be counted upon for donations of money, resources, skills and influence within the local business and administrative community.
Individual members of the Advisory Board are able to support the school by donating funds and other resources, offering internships, hosting visits and other projects and by underwriting student scholarships and teacher professional development. Members of the Advisory Board need only meet as a group once or twice a year but, if planned carefully by the Head, the Chair and the Development Department within the school, these meetings can be both institutionally beneficial and financially lucrative.
Capital Campaigns and, in the United States especially, donations to Annual Funds and Capital Funds are precisely the areas in which Advisory Boards may be encouraged to take part. If selected astutely, members of the Advisory Board can open doors which regular Trustees could never aspire to, particularly if they are perceived to be short-term contractors or single-issue delegates. Adding a personality of national stature to the school letterhead, even if that person only meets with the Chair or Head once a year can offer immeasurable advantage to a school’s development plans and may noticeably hasten permits, approvals and other dealings with local authorities.
Some schools have in place an “Advisory Council” or “School Council”, which may be composed of representatives of students, parents, faculty, administration and Board. Such a body may focus on assisting or advising the Board or Head on matters such as school policy, educational programs, resources and other areas related to school operation. Other schools have a Council of Foundation or other body which delegates its governmental responsibilities directly to the Board of Trustees itself. However it is important to distinguish both of these groupings from the more development-focused Advisory Board, which has neither a governmental role to play nor an educational mission to serve.
Moreover a few schools, which have established an Advisory Board, then misuse it by treating it as a pool of potential trustees, or worse still, as a consolation prize for indolent or ineffective trustees, rotating out to pasture.
Most non-profit institutions in the United States, including many private schools, have large Boards of Trustees (more than 25 members is not uncommon) and many also have long-established Advisory Boards. Sometimes they are merged into one body. Arguably the bigger the Board, the better the development opportunities and, as long as the Board is self-selecting, the less potential for political damage to the Head and the school community.
However in the international context where elected trustees may not be able to gain access to key local big hitters, who in turn may not have the time or inclination to devote themselves to serving on a Board of Trustees per se, the Advisory Board provides the key to linking the international to the national, the temporary to the permanent and potentially the new school to the old money of the community upon which it depends.
A belated but sincere Happy New Year to all our readers.
It is often the case that, in deciding whether to send their children to an international school, parents will be faced with a very simple choice. If they are posted to a remote location, the “international school” will be their only real possibility, if they wish their children firstly to be educated through the medium of English and secondly to benefit from a curriculum which is largely Anglo-American or “Western” at least in its structural focus if not in its overall content. The alternative may well be an education in an unfamiliar, foreign language in an under-developed public and private school system.
In the case of those international schools which are based in an English-speaking, first-world, developed country, the question arises therefore as to how and whether these schools might think about adapting their marketing strategy, financial planning, recruiting procedures and curricular provision, when the national school systems against which they must compete, both private and public, can offer good-quality alternatives in English to internationally-mobile parents. Aside from curricular considerations, the international school in such environs can often be seen as just another private school, without necessarily possessing the invested cachet from which it would benefit abroad. To what extent therefore are international schools in these locations faced with differing generic issues of organization, admissions and staffing, compared to similar schools abroad?
Let us start with the Board. In the United States the role and composition of the private, non-profit school Board tends to differ from many international school models. Instead of what is often a small, annually elected body of parent-stakeholders, some of whom may bring a particular, personal agenda to the position, the typical private school in America benefits from a larger, self-selecting group of trustees, some of whom may be parents at the school, most of whom will be happy to limit their activities on the Board to traditional fiduciary responsibilities, leaving the Head to look after the larger administrative, academic and day-to-day financial matters. This is an ideal situation for the Head, although judging from relevant literature and anecdotes, not always the case in the overseas international context. Local trustees will also stay in position longer than transients, leading to greater retention of institutional memory within the school.
Furthermore one of the key functions of the private school Board is to tap into local corporate and foundation support in order to provide development money for the school’s future capital plans. Although the overseas international school board will also aspire to such development aims, local circumstances may prevent real and sustained success. In America the concept of Annual Giving (which is often built into the operational budget), Capital Campaigns using professional consultants, Gala Dinners involving heavy corporate hitters, (as opposed to rather tamer Annual Balls for the school community) are part and parcel of the Board’s development purview. For a private school which is used to having sons follow fathers into the same school, powerful alumni links are developed which aid the process. However international schools, be they abroad or in the United States, with their transient student and adult population will always struggle to keep up.
Secondly enrolment and admissions for the international school in a strong, English-medium, national context are also different. For a start, “private” tends to mean “exclusive”. If parents are being asked to pay fees to go to the international school when there is a perfectly good state school for free further down the road, then the tendency towards ability selection of some kind is at least understandable. Quite different from the admissions ethos of the majority of international schools abroad.
Indeed the existence of a rump, host-nation element to the student body gives a stability to any school. Some overseas international schools are able to attract and retain students from the indigenous population. Elsewhere local conditions may prohibit local students from attending schools deemed to be foreign. In the English-speaking, developed-world context, the existence of local students and parents in the international school certainly has an influence upon fundraising but may also influence curriculum development and other aspects of school life. The school may suffer from being seen as less of a central hub for the international parental community, because there are so many other alternatives in town, than if it were situated abroad. Having said that, the local parents who choose the international school for their children will tend to be more adventurous and less satisfied with just another version of a fee-paying school. Unlike the transients, who may have fewer options, they actively choose an international education for their children.
This means, thirdly, that the recruiting of staff in an international school in this context can tend to be tricky, in the sense that there is a very strong urge to appoint locally from professionals already in the national system, instead of bringing in mobile, international educators. Costs are lower and quality is certainly comparable. Adequate provision for staff development in such situations then becomes key; firstly in order to retain a professional group focus on internationalism in the classroom; and secondly to keep everyone current. The locally-engaged teacher can commit many years of his career to the school, sometimes leading to possible inertia. International curricula are under constant review. We all need to be on the same page.
As many observers have pointed out at some length, there is often a great disparity between various concepts of international education as well as between one international school and another, in terms of curriculum, governance structures, admissions policies, staffing and a whole host of other operational criteria. That is what makes this particular field of endeavor so challenging and attractive. Its evolution remains current and constant. However given the fact that most schools which call themselves “international”, end up teaching a recognizably US/UK curricular model, through the medium of the English language, this means that the place of the international school in these particular countries is somewhat distinct from that of their sister schools abroad. It is therefore highly encouraging for us all to note that the bilingual context of the education offered here at ISB is able to provide, not just a distinguishing badge of curricular cachet (very attractive in the largely monolingual local school context) but also a communicative and cultural framework which other self-styled international schools might do well to emulate. The central vision of our internationalist ethic remains common. The organization of our multi-lingual mission towards it may not.
On behalf of all of us at ISB, may I take this opportunity of wishing all our readers and families the warmest compliments of the holiday season.
Kind regards
Dr David Watson
Interim Head of School
Posted
by Alex B.
on Thursday December 3, 2009 at 05:10PM
If an institution wishes to survive in the long term, one of its chief aims needs to be the constant improvement of the quality of service, which it provides to its customers. The reasons may seem obvious. However up until quite recently many schools were content to remain aloof from the necessary stresses of business culture, where marketing, quality (or sometimes Quality) and performance were matters of high import and individual responsibility within the collective corporate structure. These days an awareness that the customer is the ultimate decision maker in the survival of schools as well as businesses, is an important weapon in the armory of every school Head. Yet who exactly are our customers: our paying parents or our students? If the answer is parents then which role in the model do our students play: raw material or product? Tempting as these questions may be for some, it is clear that schools do not fit neatly into the corporate model of performance evaluation. A simple calculation of productivity or profitability is very difficult to make. How therefore should we judge the quality of the school from the point of view of service provider?
In both the national and international context, a number of quality-assurance mechanisms are of course available to school managers and Boards, via OFSTED, MSA, NEASC, CIS and others. Most of these inspection or accreditation instruments (the distinction is important) are rightly education-specific. After all the essential purposes of a school are teaching and learning. The simple fact is that good schools excel in both of these areas.
Nonetheless as the competition between schools grows in private and public sectors, so the need for school managers to take some time to review their own standards of customer service and administrative effectiveness, becomes more acute. Nobody would dispute that learning outcomes and academic results are probably uppermost in most parents’ minds when they assess the worth of any school. However some parents may also take into consideration other secondary factors like the overall feel of the school, the welcome they received, the ease of the application process, the speed and efficiency of follow-up correspondence. It is in these areas that schools can learn from the expectations and standards of the business world.
In one school I know, a conscious decision was taken to measure and evaluate the administrative, non-teaching arm of the school in much the same way that the academic side of the school was used to subjecting itself to periodic inspectins from educational officialdom from the host country as well as from abroad. The result was the eventual certification of the school by the United Kingdom Accreditation Service (UKAS). Shortly afterwards, having used the UKAS process as a dry run, the school then applied itself to begin the more academic accreditation of the institution by an educational consultancy. In this way the school was recognising that its overall reputation could be enhanced by complementing the maintenance of high academic standards (improved product quality) with improved service performance on the non- academic side of its operations.
The recent practice of hiving off small numbers of state schools in Europe to be run by private, non-education-based companies to some degree acknowledges the fact that schools could do more to enhance their name by adopting the service attitudes of the business sector. Nobody would dispute that the impetus behind most of these initiatives is usually budgetary efficiency, however a more slick approach to customer service and marketing within the school is usually the result, in addition to the expected financial economies.
Indeed if the school is viewed as a significant service provider in the international context, then perhaps the attitude of home-country governments might also be changed, with regard to the recognition or even the funding of schools abroad. Companies are limited in their ability to send expatriate employees to locations where there is no suitable school for the children of those employees. The international school therefore provides a secondary service support to expatriate business and ought perhaps to receive more recognition than it does as a significant aid to business development abroad.
Standards of instructional excellence and professionalism among our teaching colleagues must remain the focus of all good schools. There is no substitute for outstanding classroom practice from dedicated teachers. All the smooth publicity and urbane telephone manners will never replace good teaching in the pecking order of performance indicators, relevant to the world of schools. However the advent of the market economy mentality into all areas and levels of education has led to the increasing independence of schools, as well as more exercise of parental or consumer choice. School managers need to be aware of the changing rules of competition among rival schools, with service, courtesy, efficiency, marketing and codes of conduct, beyond the classroom often tipping the balance in favor of one school rather than its equally academic. Most schools neither consider themselves as businesses, nor are they run as such. Our focus is on the students and on the standard of instruction they receive from colleagues in the classroom. However, if at least part of the modern Head’s role is to be devoted to strategic issues of development and identity, then there are lessons of consistency and culture from the corporate world to be learned by all of us who are interested in maintaining the highest of standards in an increasingly competitive environment.
Kind regards,
Dr David Watson
Interim Head of School
Posted
by abaez
on Tuesday November 3, 2009 at 04:23PM
In the increasingly competitive private school market, the search for a good school can be a complex endeavor. We all have some individual idea of what constitutes a good school. This may be based on personal preferences or family traditions and experiences. Certainly good teaching and learning are key aspects in the equation. Examination results and college placements may be an important factor for some; sense of community and friendly organization for others. However this is not the totality of the school experience for either parent or student. In an era when the range of skills required of school graduates is becoming both broader and deeper, how do we judge what makes a good school?
At the top of my personal list comes a philosophy which says that all children can learn if they are taught, together with a set of high expectations for all students. If learning is seen as the single most important reason for attending school, then it follows that everything else should be geared to reflect this. Lessons should offer an appropriate challenge, with rewards for good work, support where needed and a continuous emphasis on maximizing learning time in class and improving individual student achievement.
Secondly the climate in school should be conducive to learning, where students feel a sense of belonging, feel they are safe, known and valued by those who teach them. Good organization can help here with clear guidelines on everyday routines and expectations at school from administrators who are visible and available to students, teachers and parents.
Thirdly, in order to support good levels of learning, the school's assessment system, measuring the levels of student achievement, needs to be varied in methods but consistent in message , with clear paths and objectives which are known by the students, who are then taught (not to the test# but in a way which reflects the goals of the test. Good teachers also know how to use assessment to diagnose the strengths and weaknesses of particular classes and students, as well as to examine the effectiveness of their own teaching strategies.
Fourthly, a good school offers a curriculum which recognizes the varying needs of the students; places emphasis on numeracy, literacy, and essential skills, including language learning and technology ; which is enriched by extracurricular offerings and which keeps abreast of the requirements of tertiary institutions and the broader workplace.
Finally a good school enjoys high level of community support, with parents who speak well of the school, who listen to their children and who actively participate in supporting the school, its mission and its policies. The school and its community are closely tied, emotionally, educationally and financially. The child spends two thirds of his/her time away from school #i.e. at home# The process of learning is therefore very much a joint effort.
I do hope in reading my comments above, that you will easily recognize many aspects of our own school. There is much we have to be proud about at ISB. The multi-lingual, multi-cultural mix of nations in our classrooms and in our hallways; the community support and genuine affection for the school from students, parents and staff; the individualized attention from Maternelle to Grade 12 from which our students benefit; our growing numbers, even in a time of economic uncertainty. All of this is very encouraging.
Of course there are some areas where we would wish to improve, as would any school. Even the best-funded, beautifully manicured and academically sound institutions have wish lists for their own improvement. During the course of this year and next, as we approach the 50th Anniversary of the school in 2012, ISB will be taking stock of our achievements so far and will be looking at our future strategy, in order to set the course for the next five year period. Interestingly enough our most recent Strategic Plan #2005-2010# called for an ambitious ideal total enrollment at ISB of 570 students by 2010 - a number which, as you know, we reached this year. There are other aspects of our then planning which have also been achieved ahead of schedule. Our task now is to build upon these achievements and move forward as one of the premier international schools in the United States.
Good schools #and I count ISB as definitely within that grouping, as both a parent and an administrator here), establish their goals, cherish their past, lead, care for and support their students and teachers, communicate with their community and plan their future. From a position of some success, we all feel encouraged at ISB, therefore, to dream and plan for more. Watch this space.
Kind regards Dr David Watson Interim Head of School
Posted
by abaez
on Wednesday September 30, 2009 at 03:27PM
As the school year gets into its stride, we as a school have been reflecting upon our goals for the year and the importance of performance in a service-based industry, like education.
Teaching and learning obviously constitute the core business of schools. In international schools like ISB, the experience is enhanced by the cosmopolitan environment in which our students work and play together every day. Moreover it is clear that the traditional model of learning - memorizing isolated facts and being a passive receptacle of the knowledge imparted by the teacher - is no longer the optimal way of getting the most out of each student and out of the learning experience as a whole.
To be properly effective, learning and the acquisition of knowledge and skills have to be active, relevant, connected with previously learned material and readily applicable to new situations. I am sure that most school students have known this for many years. For example, when you are in a situation where you have the opportunity to talk to the class about your favorite pastime, hobby or passion, the very act of communicating your knowledge and your engagement with your subject does two things. Firstly it organizes and deepens your own understanding of your subject; secondly your enthusiasm for the subject matter is infectious and your audience becomes engaged, often in direct proportion to your own knowledge and passion for the topic.
At ISB, our small class sizes, commitment to our mission of "Shaping Global Citizens" and to the individual needs of your children, means that our approach to teaching and learning is at once global and local, macro and micro, institutional and individual. Allowing our students the latitude to develop within a supportive and familiar environment, whilst extending their reach, linguistically and experientially, to the world beyond ISB: as educators and parents in this community, these are our constant aims. I hope be able to enlarge upon the centrality of our international mission and the importance of service to our families in these pages over the months to come.
As I may have said on more than one occasion, the International School of Boston is a well-kept secret. I hope to see many of you at our Back to School Nights, coming up later this month when, hopefully, we can start the process of spreading the word more widely of our children's happiness and success at this school.
Kind regards,
Dr David Watson
Posted
by abaez
on Tuesday September 8, 2009 at 07:24AM
On behalf of all faculty, students and parents, allow me to be the first to bid you a sincere welcome to the International School of Boston. As a potential new parent or student to the school, I extend to you a particularly warm welcome to our international community here at ISB. As a newcomer to Boston and a new ISB parent myself, I am looking forward to learning more about this beautiful, historic region of the country, as we learn and grow together in the new school year. Most good schools share certain basic aims: to nourish individual ability within a responsible community and to encourage academic success, physical health, moral stability and imaginative alertness. Yet every school is unique in its emphases. With over 550 students from over 45 nationalities and faculty members from many national backgrounds, we feel that the International School of Boston provides an ideal setting in which children can learn, grow and develop into the kind of responsible and responsive self-starters, which the new millennium is seeking. It is my hope that you and your child will find the information contained in the pages of our website will prove both useful and informative. Should you have further questions about any aspect of school life, please feel free to contact me or any member of my staff. My colleagues and I are all here to help you in every way we can. We are all delighted that you are considering our school for your family. My colleagues and I look forward to meeting and chatting with you further about all aspects of the school in general and your child in particular. Until then, please accept my warmest good wishes for a happy and successful school year.
Feel free to stop by and say hello. You will be made most welcome.
Kind regards,
Dr David Watson
Posted
by abaez
on Wednesday July 1, 2009 at 10:45AM
