International School Parent Magazine - Autumn 2019

skills, for example, in research, presentation,
and writing.
Children, of course, don’t develop at the
same time across all disciplines. Sometimes
because of such an obsession, they will
leapfrog over their peers because they’re
studying on YouTube or they’re reading
voraciously. Ideally, schools engineer for
those experiences and know their students
well enough to encourage them to lean into
their own passions.
Research in education has grown
exponentially, and today we know a lot
more about what constitutes highly effective
teaching and what compels learning. We
know that children learn best when they’re
in a learning relationship with adults and
with each other, and when they care about
what they’re learning about.
What do you find particularly special
about the teaching process at ZIS?
Our teachers are very reflective about
their teaching practice. They know that
their professional obligation is to optimize
learning for every child. The focus has
shifted from, “This is how I teach” to,
“This is how children learn and it’s my
job to foster the conditions for learning.”
Our teachers are willing to take risks and
try different approaches. It has definitely
evolved from my school days, when if you
got a good teacher you were lucky, and if
you had a bad teacher you had to just live
with it.
These days students have access to
a lot of information, sometimes more
information than adults, because they’ve
been doing interesting research. We
encourage this curiosity, and teach our
students to be respectful but engaged
actively in the conversation. It is clear
that the students at our school have great
relationships with their teachers.
Apart from the amazing campuses and
beautiful facilities, what makes ZIS
special for students?
During the interview process for this job,
I was lucky enough to be interviewed by
a number of students at the school. To a
student, they were all multicultural and had
lived and traveled in a variety of contexts
and spoke multiple languages. They were
well prepared, and their questions were
insightful and probing. They were respectful
but diligently curious. As they spoke with
each other they would reference what
“The key difference from what I have observed
with international and independent schools is that
we have the time and the budget to explore the
particular interests of the child more closely, whether
that means finding them an extra book on a topic of
their interest, or seizing learning moments that stray
from an endorsed curriculum.”
another student had said earlier, showing
they were good listeners and compassionate.
Those were great interviews!
On meeting our students, it was
immediately clear to me that they are
comfortable with adults. When I asked
them what they valued about the school
they all seemed to love their teachers. They
were the product of a school environment
where there’s significant respect between
adults and children, yet they weren’t too
deferential.
It’s not a school that works on the basis
of “come to school, go home”; students are
very engaged and deeply value the extracurricular
experiences that complement
the academic day. It’s great that this is the
case, as busy kids make for happy, engaged,
vibrant kids.
Because of the central location and
the network of international schools, the
students are actively engaged all over
the place, for example, to do academic
competitions and educational trips in
Madrid, Stockholm, Prague, to name
just a few. They have a close relationship
with a school in Ghana, which one of our
teachers set up, and every child is aware of,
has fundraised for, or done service for the
school in Ghana, which is fantastic.
What do the parents value about the
school?
Parents want their children to be prepared
to make an impact in the world, wherever
they are. Particularly in this international
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