International School Parent Magazine - Autumn 2023

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and allow students to enjoy the wonders of what it means to be a young person in school. The idea of flourishing is important to me. But not only for students, but for adults as well. On human flourishing, we are developing an appraisal system that is really going to be much more geared towards bringing out the gifts and potential of colleagues, while our alternative transcript is a rewiring of approaches to assessment so that students’ non academic gifts are recognised and celebrated alongside more traditional intellectual constructs. To sum up, it is curriculum relevance and human flourishing. Those are the two drivers for next year. Long term, we are entering into an exciting phase of Ecolint history. In 2024- 25 we will celebrate our centennial (100 years of Ecolint) and it will be the first year of our 24-30 strategic plan. What are the most pressing challenges you are facing and how are you addressing them? It is interesting because there is the what and then there is the how. There is, for example, the use of technology. We believe that technology must be used in a creative and ethical way. We have to be much more innovative and INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL PARENT AUTUMN 2023 | 10
creative in the way we integrate technology into pedagogy, especially generative open source artificial intelligence. We have to be constantly aware of the ethical implications of the use of technology as it becomes increasingly powerful. We are very lucky at our school to have world leaders in technology and excellent ICT campus partners. So, That is the what. But to answer your question, the how is equally important. It is about being clear and being kind. You might have heard of Brene Brown’s statement “Clarity is kindness”. I think one of the problems that many teachers face is the perception of initiative overload. That comes from a lack of roadmapping. It is easier said than done, but the better you plan things the more secure people feel. The more prepared they are, the better they can fold that into their day-to-day work. Then there is the question of kindness per se. It might sound trivial but it is actually quite important because it can really lift people in their work. It is something I think we all need to face in schools, not just for students and the way that they interact with each other, but between parents and the school. It is how we can continually show up as our best selves. We need to focus on being kind to each other because if we do that, a lot of the other objectives fall into place naturally. I surveyed a lot of people and had focus group discussions and what was coming up a lot was, “we just want to get together. We want to reconnect after years of pandemic”. We are making a concerted effort to celebrate cultural events together, to bring more students together around these events and rallying points. These are the things that make school memorable I think. You have worked very hard to build a robust school community. How do you keep that community going, especially in this post-Covid era? Some of the important themes that we are going to be looking at next year will be driven by design teams and those teams will have students, parents, staff and board members on them. It is about distributed leadership and getting everybody involved. Remember the old African proverb “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” Every person in the institution - everyone - has to understand the values of the school and feel united by them. We are not separating teachers from the extracurricular activity coaches, or from technical services. We are all in this together. My job will be to ensure that everybody understands the apex of our pyramid because that will unite us. And it also gives a renewed sense of energy to everybody in terms of what they are doing - the higher moral imperative is why we are here. What is going to keep you at the forefront of innovation? The word innovation, I think, is very important in education today. Why? Because we essentially have the same assessment model that we have seen since the late 1800s, despite the rapid evolution of the nature of work. Schools have remained fairly change resistant and one of our important projects is the Learner Passport, which is a broadening of assessment. We have put together a group called the Coalition to Honour all Learning with over 50 different schools and INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL PARENT AUTUMN 2023 | 11 universities - they have joined us and are interested in what we are doing and what we are seeking to reform. What does it mean to be educated? What does it mean to be a gifted, thriving person who can contribute to society? It is much more than your ability to perform on a handful of narrow, high-stakes assessments. We know that and yet our school system is not really doing much about it. Not in terms of summative assessment, not at the end of the student’s journey. We are presenting the world with Ecolint graduates who carry with them a passport that describes everything that they have done in school, outside of school, extracurriculars, academics, social impact work, arts, sports and so on. We have separated the Ecolint Learner Passport into seven competences that we call Global Competences. This is a project that we have designed with UNESCO’s International Board of Education, who are our historic partners since 1924. Excellence remains at the forefront of innovation and education with this very important project.
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International School Parent Magazine - Autumn 2023

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