It is hard to believe the 2014-15 year is almost finished. And what a year it has been!

This year we welcomed  10 new families (including mine).  The teachers worked hard to do a lot of in-house collaboration and in addition to their amazing classroom work they completed documentation of all of the standards for every grade. Thanks to the teachers help we relicensed our schools and got our new report card figured out. 

In addition to these accomplishments…

We had our first ever Curriculum nights, with valuable Q&A from parents. Student are safer than ever with students learning how to deal with fire emergencies and many parents participating in first aid and CPR training. Fine and Performing Arts collaborations across campuses has led to increased examples of student creativity inlcuding two outstanding productions which were well attended and supported by parents. The library has been open and busy on the last Sunday of each month with families coming to pick out books and read together. We have two, beautiful buildings that are open and allow our students to appreciate school in the context of  nature. We have had great parent involvement for extra curricular activities and especially After School Activities.  Student Led Conferences were amazing. And we believe that our centralized blog is going well and gives students a chance to reflect upon and showcase their work (you really should see it!)

All of these latter accomplishments have something in commmon, PARENTS. Our partnership with parents makes learning complete. Parent involvement connects the circle between an educational institution and the most important institution of all, the family. Thank you all for a great year. 

NEW YEARS GREETINGS – I was so thrilled to get back to school last week.  I know it’s quite a transition to come back to the rhythm and routine of daily life at school. I hope this week provided order and security for our students  (and a return to comfortable daily norms for their hardworking parents). 

I spent the first part of the week off campus at an ISS teacher-recruiting event.  Following my return over the past few days I have been asked the question, “What is ISS and what does it do for our school.” 

ISS is International School Services and our schools’ expat faculty and I are all ISS recruits. Although we are employees of our school’s board, the faculty and I work under the auspices of International School Services. Based in Princeton and founded in 1955, ISS is the “contractor” for our school and works with our school board to provide educational services for our students and our school. ISS sustains our school in many ways by providing curriculum support, HR and benefits coordination, updates and training for administration and support for school policy, and help with shipping and ordering ordering materials.    Our ISS “Contract Executive” guides and advises Alasdair and me. Those of you who met Charles Gregory at the last board meeting got a glimpse of our connection with ISS.   You may have also met Laura Benson, curriculum specialist, who is an ISS employee and was sent by ISS at my request to review our curriculum goals and practices this year. NEW YEARS GREETINGS – I was so thrilled to get back to school last week.  I know it’s quite a transition to come back to the rhythm and routine of daily life at school. I hope this week provided order and security for our students  (and a return to comfortable daily norms for their hardworking parents).

I spent the first part of the week off campus at an ISS teacher-recruiting event.  Following my return over the past few days I have been asked the question, “What is ISS and what does it do for our school.”

ISS is International School Services and our schools’ expat faculty and I are all ISS recruits. Although we are employees of our school’s board, the faculty and I work under the auspices of International School Services. Based in Princeton and founded in 1955, ISS is the “contractor” for our school and works with our school board to provide educational services for our students and our school. ISS sustains our school in many ways by providing curriculum support, HR and benefits coordination, updates and training for administration and support for school policy, and help with shipping and ordering ordering materials.    Our ISS “Contract Executive” guides and advises Alasdair and me. Those of you who met Charles Gregory at the last board meeting got a glimpse of our connection with ISS.   You may have also met Laura Benson, curriculum specialist, who is an ISS employee and was sent by ISS at my request to review our curriculum goals and practices this year. 

On January 4, Alasdair and I arrived at the ISS recruiting fair in Bangkok to spend four days searching for the best teachers in South East Asia to fill our open teaching positions. During that time we also had an opportunity to meet with other directors and principals, discuss best practices and pending changes, talk about the things that make our schools great and brainstorm ways to make them even better.  I learned a lot about ISS and other schools like ours during my time in Bangkok. If you would like to know more, check out the ISS website at www.iss.edu.

Those of you with children who will spend their childhoods in International Schools might be interested in the founding of ISS.  Arthur Sweetser was the author, educator, and entrepreneur who founded ISS.  He was a journalist during WWII and eventually who began his career by promoting global communication through education. In 1924 he had founded the International School of Geneva and in 1947 the United Nations International School in New York.  Sweetser hoped to create global understanding and communication through education. ISS is the non-profit result of his efforts. It is an institution that serves the needs of the international educational community. ISS helps schools like ours find high-quality faculty, sustainable practices, and access to materials and provides guidance and support for us as we guide and support your children. Meeting new teachers and affirming my commitment to International Education was a great way to start a New Year. Welcome back.

The Thanksgiving holiday gives us an opportunity to introduce the habit of gratitude and reflection in our children’s lives. Studies have shown that gratitude and reflection are key elements to mental health and happiness. A daily dose of counting one’s blessings is a great habit to start early with children. We have so much to be thankful for! 

What is assessment?

Assessment is the collection of information about the learning and teaching process using a variety of strategies and tools.

We use assessment to…

·      improve student learning outcomes by providing meaningful and timely feedback

·      provide students with information to reflect on their own learning

·      give students opportunities to demonstrate their knowledge and skills

·      ensure students understand what has been taught

·      assist teachers in adjusting teaching and planning according to student needs

·      provide data to evaluate and improve the effectiveness of our programs

·      assist in communicating accurate and accountable evidence about student learning to parents, community and board members

Philosophy of Assessment at ISR

At ISR we believe that students have a right to

·      worthwhile (engaging, educative and authentic) intellectual tasks that are validated against real world problems, roles and situations

·      clear, published and consistently applied teacher criteria in grading work and published models of excellent work that exemplifies standards

·      ample opportunities to produce work that they can be proud of and thus ample opportunity in the curriculum and instruction to monitor, self assess and self correct their work

·      genuine feedback: usable information on their strengths and weaknesses and an accurate assessment of their long-term progress towards a set of exit level standards

·      the freedom, climate and oversight policies necessary to question grades and test practices without fear of retribution

At the meeting I announced that the progress report we have been using will give way to a new style of report in November. This is important because WASC (our accreditation agency) has asked us to make this change. It is also important because the school truly wants to find a way to communication accurately with you about your child’s progress. The new format will link our reporting to the current standards and will be directly related to your child’s progress through those standards. This “Standards Based” reporting is now the norm in the US. It is designed to let parents know how a child has progressed toward mastery with regard to the educational goals set by the standards. The most common mark we look forward to reporting is a mark that indicates that your child is “developing” with regard to the standards they have encountered in class. If most students are “developing” then our school is doing a good job of challenging students while moving them forward. When students master a standard it is time to move on to a more difficult level.  As students move forward, the target changes to a new and more challenging level.

If most students are “proficient” in their standards, there is a question as to whether they are learning and growing. If most students are emerging or have not been presented with a standard then we need to question “why?” We expect and hope that most students will be significantly challenged and will all have a few areas of mastery and a few areas where they are just starting out. Parents can expect to see the “developing” level reported instead of “proficiency” or “mastery.”

The school will continue to offer the nationally normed “MAP” tests which offer us a look at our children’s progress with regard to other children in the U.S. and in international schools.  We will also have student-led conferences in elementary where students do the most important thing of all, reflect and honestly report their progress.  The combination of these three types of assessment and reporting will give us a more accurate picture of your child’s progress so that you can make the best decisions possible regarding your child for the future.

Right now, Mr. Johnson is working with a team to pilot two possible standards based reporting models. Suzie Nileshwar has also agreed to be on this pilot team to provide a parent perspective. Stay tuned and enjoy your traditional format for Friday’s progress report. We will keep you posted. 

One of the top skills identified by the “captains of industry” is the ability to do creative problem solving using collaboration.  ISR’s Expected School wide Learning results list includes the statement, “An ISR student is a CREATIVE PROBLEM SOLVER.” You have probably seen the little mouse hovering over the cheese in a poster that graces all of our classrooms.

Children are, by nature, creative problem solvers. Anyone who has ever come into the kitchen and found a preschooler with a chair pulled up to the counter wrist deep in the cookie jar is a witness to this. The question is: what can we do to foster this trait and to help children learn to collaborate with others while they solve problems? Too often we thwart creative problem solving and collaboration by offering easy answers.

At home and at school we can foster creative problem solving by answering children’s questions with additional questions that will lead to the child’s own discovery of a solution.  “Why do YOU think it doesn’t get cold here in the winter like it did back home?” When the child comes up with a hypothesis, wrong or right, helping him or her to test and their idea is a great way to respond (although it is much easier to just give an answer).

“Can you build a model of the earth and the sun using this ball and a flashlight to check this out?” Inviting children to research and collaborate (Can you look this up yourself and let me know what you find? Can you ask your sister for help with this?) is also a great. Knowing and using specialized resources in the world (including other people), and being willing to share the discovery process with others is a key component to creative problem solving.  The “how and why” questions won’t stop coming and we don’t want them to. But responding with a thoughtful pause and another questions goes a long way to helping children find their own answers and will keep that curiosity alive while building skills and confidence.

For more information on 21^st Century Skills please check out http://www.p21.org.