International School Community is looking for a group of veteran international school educators to join our new Facebook group. It is called International School Community Advisors.
ISC wants this group to consist of ISC members/Mayors that will actively share their insights and experiences in the international school community.
We would like this group to be an effective way of sharing information and communicating with ISC and each other, discussing important/current issues and participating in requests posted by ISC in this group.
The content that we request you to provide and discuss (your stories, information or experiences) will be intended to be used on our website, respecting your privacy, of course. For example, we might collect information from group members about a certain topic for an upcoming blog article on our blog.
We would also like to improve the user experience on our website, therefore we may discuss about improving our current features and hopefully coming up with some future features for the ISC website as well.
So if you are a Mayor on our website, a long-time member of our website and/or a veteran international school teacher who wants to play a part in the future of the ISC website, then please consider joining this influential Facebook group.
The journey to work is indeed an important one. The journey though is not so clear for international school teachers when they are looking for jobs at schools in cities/countries at which they have never been. So let’s share what we know!
One of our members, who works at the International School Basel (Basel, Switzerland), described the way she gets to work as follows:
The road to International School Basel in Switzerland…
Getting out the door, I walk through a neighborhood in an industrial area, a low-rise concrete jungle. I walk past Decathlon, a fuel station, a building that doubles up as a mosque and a gym. They must have thought “Mensa sana in corpora sana”. This quirky place always brightens up my day when I walk past it. During summer, the hills in the distance are painted red by the rising sun. In autumn and winter, the mist is often too thick to even see the hills. Winter makes you wish you had a car; unless – like several of our teachers – you’re from the North of Canada and enjoy the “rather mild Swiss climate”.
The walk to the Dreispitz tram stop takes me 10 minutes at most, still I rush to tram 11 before realizing over and over again, that I shouldn’t have bothered because there’s a tram every 3-7 minutes. Very Swiss. As I get on the tram which takes me to ISB, I look for other teachers to talk to or chat with some students. When I’m alone, I stare out the window and watch how the landscape gradually becomes more rural.
The tram first passes the Reinacherhof tramstop right in front of the ISB senior school campus − where most of the teachers get off − before taking me to the Reinach Sud tram stop where I get off after exactly 16 minutes. While the tram heads off to its next stop at the ISB Primary campus in Aesch, I walk past a local farm to the Fiechten Middle school campus, which takes me exactly 4 minutes.
Unlike the other two campuses which are purpose-built for ISB, Fiechten is owned by the Swiss “Gemeinde”. The building looks very much like a Swiss protestant church and stands out because of its grey concrete walls and staircases. What is even more unusual is that the sound of the children’s footsteps is muffled by the carpet in the hallways and in the classrooms. Most teachers have plants and colorful displays to brighten up the place a bit.
The large windows and the view is what makes working on this campus worthwhile. Through my window, I can see the Goetheanum building in the distance. This is by far the most unique place in the area. It was founded in honour of Rudolf Steiner as a center for the Anthroposophical movement at the turn of the 19th century in a time when positivism dominated the natural sciences and humanities. People became aware of a growing interconnectedness between different parts of the world, cultures and religion. One of the main purposes of the movement was to create a new universal religion or philosophy which would incorporate wisdom of the major world religions. Rudolf Steiner conceptualized his teaching philosophy (used in Waldorf schools) based on the principles of Anthroposophy. The center has somewhat lost its function of ‘church’ but it is still a sanctuary for creative ideas. Today it offers theater and classical music performances, Steiner school training programs for teachers, art classes for kids, a bookshop (with books in a wide variety of languages) and a lovely tearoom which serves organic food. The entire hill is covered with buildings constructed in a similar architectural style.
This Journey to School article was submitted to us by an ISC member.
What to know more what it is like to visit and live in Switzerland? Out of a total of 33 international schools we have listed in Switzerland, 19 have had comments submitted on them. Here are just a few:
So what is your journey to the international school you work at? Earn oneyear free of premium membership to our website if you participate in this blog series – ‘The Journey to School’. Email us here if you are interested.
In our last article, we defined the CGC’s interactive helix of Conceptual, Competency and Character Learning as the DNA of learning. To extend the metaphor, a DNA does not live in a vacuum. It shapes a body. So another question presents itself. “What body of knowledge is important for these learners, right now?’. As we set out to identify learning that really matters, we framed our DESIGN question like this: ‘What’s Worth Learning and Why?’. Our response to that question works on multiple, connected levels:
It’s worth learning about our human common ground…
As our principal content organizer, we have identified 6 Human Commonalities, which preserve the essence of traditional disciplines e.g. Physics, while opening the door to emergent ‘proto-disciplines’ e.g. Innovation. The Commonalities encourage both deep disciplinary learning and the exploration of broad, powerful ideas that transcend disciplinary boundaries. They provide ‘The Why’ behind the disciplines and are framed by pairings of universal concepts, amplified by ‘We all’ statements expressing our common ground.
Vertical Connections…
The Human Commonalities provide the vertical organizers for a Learning Matrix comprising powerful Learning Modules, organized for connection and coherence.
…and Horizontal Connections
We then add horizontal connections via three Thematic Questions, which spiral through the developmental bands, providing an annual connecting focus:
It’s worth learning to be experts…
CGC develops learning experts, both child and adult. Experts have a deep conceptual understanding of the ideas of their knowledge domain, and high levels of competency in domain skills. To complement conceptual and competency expertise we are committed to producing expert human beings, with strong, positive moral character.
Consequently we identify specificDomain Conceptual and Competency Learning Goals in every Learning Module. We also provide Character Learning Goals. These are ‘domain agnostic’, and used in all Commonalities.
It’s worth learning to be experts in contexts that really matter…
We recognize that it is possible to become a technical expert in a domain without engaging with vital issues like justice, equity, freedom, and the use of power. In order to ensure that CGC learners engage with these issues, we use them to shape the Compelling Questions that drive every CGC Learning Module.
It’s worth learning to tackle complex challenges that demand urgency and agency…
CGC learners become learning experts in the context of modules that matter. These may be grounded in one Commonality but draw from others in natural ways that connect and complement learning.
As a further extension and application of their learning, we have also designed a systemic way for learners to tackle challenges and opportunities that are so pressing and so significant that they demand a multi-disciplinary approach, a collaborative methodology and a commitment to taking action. These are the CGC Complexity Challenges.
We envisage teams of learners, teachers and potentially, external experts, working on these Challenges as a passion project in their preferred domain. They collaborate to find solutions and plan actions, then come together to share their learning with other teams and with other community learning stakeholders in a major Learning Demonstration.
Complexity Challenges are planned using the Compelling Questions model, extended across the Commonalities. Here’s an example:
What’s worth learning and why?
In CGC, we believe that it’s worth learning about our human common ground, that it’s worth learning to become experts in important knowledge domains, and that it’s worth learning how to build our expertise in the context of substantive content that really matters. Ultimately, it’s worth learning how to exercise our agency and work with urgency, to take action on the pressing challenges and opportunities that face humanity, right here, right now.
That’s what’s worth learning…and why.
This article was submitted by Kevin Bartlett. Kevin led international schools for over 30 years in 4 different locations, while working on a number of fronts to systematize international education. This work included designing accreditation systems including ACE, leading courses for the Principals’ Training Center, initiating and leading the IB Primary Years Programme, and co-founding The Next Frontier Inclusion and the Common Ground Collaborative.
