Thinking Internationally: French American + International at 60

« D’où venons-nous ? Que sommes-nous ? Où allons-nous ? »

PAUL GAUGUIN

Prologue

Gauguin captures the challenge of history in the title of his masterpiece, D’où venons-nous ? Que sommes-nous ? Où allons-nous ? As the painting suggests, where we come from, what we are, and where we are going are utterly bound up in each other: our history shapes not only our present, but also our future.

This history, then, is important, for it informs our understanding not just of our past, as San Francisco’s first, oldest, and largest bilingual and international school, but also of our future. Six decades ago, our founders set out to create a school that combined the academic rigor of French education with the rich diversity of this American setting, educating students to think critically and communicate across cultures. That vision, sixty years and several sites later, still shapes who we are now—a bilingual international school, almost 1,100 students strong, in the heart of this country’s most dynamic and innovative city.

Our past makes our future possible as we, in keeping with our school’s history and our city’s, think not just about the anniversary we celebrate this year, but the opportunities we will realize in the years to come.

Thinking Internationally

I can think of no one better to tell this story and imagine our future than Andrew Brown, veteran teacher, school leader, and advisor to a succession of French American + International heads of school. Andrew’s rendering of our history in Thinking Internationally complements A Look Back, the 50th year text by our former colleague Dan Harder, which can be found on our school website. This 60th anniversary history retells the story of our origins but shifts the focus to the last ten years, and, as we emerge from the pandemic and undertake our next cycle of strategic planning, poses generative questions about our future.

“What is history? An echo of the past in the future; a reflex from the future on the past,” said Victor Hugo. We know what we are, and we can imagine where we are going, because we know where we come from. Thanks to the generations of students, families, faculty and staff members, and trustees who have contributed to our school’s history, we are not only positioned to celebrate our past, but also poised to shape our shared future.

Warmly,

Melinda Bihn, Ed.D. Head of School

Origin Story

Uniformed students descending a staircase at the Grove Street campus off Alamo Square, circa 1970

Sixty years ago

San Francisco’s French-American Bilingual School was founded in 1962. The visionary founders—fierce Francophiles all—were of their historic moment. Cold War tensions and culture wars loomed. As the tumultuous and divisive 1960s were unfolding, they responded with a vision for a better world.

This brief history is being written to celebrate the school’s sixtieth anniversary, the sexagennial. In the spirit of historical storytellers from Herodotus to Hilary Mantel, we will examine the threads of extant evidence and craft a coherent story. The further we look back, the thinner the school’s documentary archive; and rarer, more blurry, the black and white photographic record. Despite the evidence being misty and elusive in places, it will suffice. So let us plunge in. With a critical eye, and with genuine affection, we will attempt to contextual-

ize and reanimate the origin story of French American + International.

The founders had a particular flavor of education in mind. They desired more academic rigor, and a touch more critical thinking than was locally available at the time. They also wanted an education of and about the entire world; one not blinkered by a singular perspective. And they wanted to instill these habits of mind and heart early, beginning with young children. These were the fundamentals—the institutional leitmotifs. We will encounter them repeatedly as the plot of this narrative unrolls. For now, let’s take a fantastical leap through time’s wormhole and look back at the historical context for starting the school.

The year was 1962: The Cuban Missile Crisis, served up with hubris and folly by Kruschev and Kennedy, plunged the world into 35 days of existential terror. France ended the Algerian War and 130 years of colonial rule with the Évian Accords. That same year also saw the first deployment of napalm during the Vietnam War, the execution of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in Israel, and the formal abolition of slavery in Saudi Arabia.

Buttressed by recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions that moved towards legitimizing integration, and inspired by the Little Rock Nine and the freedom riders, James Meredith became the first black student to enroll successfully at the University of Mississippi. A violent mass riot ensued. In the aftermath, Meredith needed ongoing protection by U.S. Marshals.

The year also provided uplifting moments. In 1962, John Glenn overcame extreme g-force and orbited the Earth in a tiny space capsule called Friendship 7. Albert Sabin refused to patent his polio vaccine, thus making it universally available (and a favorite of young children since it was administered on a cube of white sugar). Ra-

Visionary founders

chel Carson published Silent Spring, her landmark book that exposed the hazards of the DDT pesticide and inspired global environmental movements. John Steinbeck won the Nobel Prize for Literature, and shared the stage with James Watson, Francis Crick, and Maurice Wilkins, who had proposed a model for base pair replication and a helical structure for DNA. Their discovery—hinging on an X-ray crystallography of Rosalind Franklin (who could not be awarded a Nobel posthumously)—revolutionized molecular genetics. Closer to home, César Chávez and Dolores Huerta created the United Farm Workers Association in California; and across the Golden Gate Bridge in Marin, the Point Reyes National Seashore was established.

There were bittersweet and ephemeral moments in popular culture too. Jackie Robinson was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Marilyn Monroe sang “Happy Birthday, Mr. President” to John F. Kennedy at Madison Square Garden. West Side Story won ten Oscars, including Best Motion Picture. Bob Dylan performed “Blowin’

in the Wind” on stage for the first time, and Ringo Starr joined The Beatles. The Golden State Warriors played their first game at the Cow Palace, and the Giants made it to the World Series, a feat they would not repeat until 1989.

Having immersed ourselves fleetingly in temporality; the French-American Bilingual School origin story can now be unfurled. On Valentine’s Day 1962, the nine founders of San Francisco’s first independent bilingual school gathered to map out how they were going to implement their radical vision. They believed that a bilingual education in French, beginning at a very early age, would imbue children with an international perspective, and a rigorous academic curriculum would prepare them to make a difference in the world.

The French-American Bilingual School (FABS) opened in the fall of 1963 at 24 Homewood Terrace in San Francisco, with 23 students in a single mixed-age basement classroom. Jeannette Rouger was the founding Head of School.

A fond look back

In 2012, veteran teacher, parent, and Admission Director Dan Harder wrote A Look Back in celebration of the school’s 50th Anniversary. Dan wove a compelling narrative. He leaned heavily on primary source conversations with the founding administrators, teachers, and Board members, as well as current students and proud alums.

In A Look Back, recurring themes emerge. Foremost is the tenacious unassailability of the school’s founding principles. This is a signature characteristic that persists today. Inextricably bound to the original core values is the enduring French and American bilingual immersion program.

For the duration of the startup, it-takes-a-village, formative years of the school, there was no formal mission.

Founding Head Jeannette Rouger with her first class

The school very much defined itself by what it taught. The what, why, and how of the curriculum was always front and center. To a large extent, this is still true today. In this third decade of the third millennium, the school’s Leadership Team and Board of Trustees still refer to the student learning experience as “the business of the business.”

Other emergent school themes reflected in A Look Back were operational rather than visionary. They can be characterized as steady growth, mounting debt, and a finger-wagging imperative for an ever larger facility. There were scary moments along the way, including some just-in-time, short-term improvisations; but as we shall see, the founding Board members prevailed.

Internal unrest

It was 1967, and while The Summer of Love was flourishing in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district, The French-American Bilingual School was experiencing its own counterculture movement. Internal turmoil was brewing and the school would not emerge unscathed.

There was a growing crisis of identity around what the community cared about most—the precise balance between French and American manifested in its revered taught curriculum. To cut an angst-filled saga short, a significant minority in the community preferred a completely French school. They galvanized and resolved to split away. La Petite École Française à l’Étranger emerged from the furor. This small, breakaway school would grow steadily, and in 1974 would metamorphose to Lycée Français International La Pérouse. In 2012, it was relaunched as the Lycée Français de San Francisco.

The schism was existential and painful but, in the long term, proved beneficial to both schools. Board Chair Jim McClatchy noted at the time, “we were fighting constantly about our identity until we split. After that, they had their thing and we had ours.”

After five years of navigating growing pains, dissent, and uncertainty, harmony was restored at the French-American Bilingual School. The school relocated to 940 Grove Street, a spacious Victorian house off Alamo Square, and opened with 126 students. The game was on!

Two windows to the world

There were now two competing French schools in San Francisco. The French-American Bilingual School was careful to differentiate itself. At FABS, the French educational experience would benefit from a more eclectic and more international parent community than the rival school that was catering to a mostly French national expat crowd. Inextricable from the French-American Bilingual School’s demographic profile were its first overt conversations and positive school culture shifts around diversity and inclusion.

The structure of the bilingual journey was also evolving. FABS adopted a balanced approach to bilingual immersion using the research-based Canadian model. When

Halloween at the Homewood Terrace campus, 1963

children start language immersion early, they gain fluency and literacy in French at no apparent cost to their English academic skills. They hear French phonemes perfectly and articulate them like natives. Given the right setting, the second language comes as a “freebie,” in the sense that children acquire it by living it. The 80% French immersion adopted by the school worked better than a 100% sink or swim approach thanks to the natural transfer of competencies between languages. A synergistic transfer between English and French continues throughout the bilingual journey. For upper elementary students, the school decided to shift from 80% immersion to around 50% to build high levels of literacy in both languages.

Everytime a FABS child entered their French classroom it was as if they had stepped into France. In an optimal, authentic setting they experienced undiluted French language and pedagogy. In the school at large, a critical mass of two distinct cultures side-by-side ensured a healthy, creative tension—an ongoing dialectic. Through their bilingualism, even the youngest children were developing an appreciation that each of their languages carried with it a certain way of thinking and being.

The pedagogical movers and shakers of French-American Bilingual School were well aware that achieving high-functioning academic literacy in two languages

takes time. It is an intricate journey—one that is only fully consolidated in young adulthood. The result is priceless. Students obtain the gift of two cognitive windows to the world.

FABS graduates would be primed for working collaboratively and purposefully with people from different cultural, linguistic, and racial backgrounds. This is empowering—even thrilling—but above all, it goes back to the unassailable founding vision of educating students to make a better world.

It would be hard to understate the urgency for this back in 1968. There was the May ’68 civil unrest in France; the Prague Spring; both the My Lai Massacre and Tet Offensive in Vietnam; Lyndon Johnsons’s landmark Civil Rights Act, Tommie Smith and John Carlos raising their gloved fists in a Black Power salute at the Mexico City Olympics; and the assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and John F. Kennedy. None of this would be redeemed by Richard Nixon being elected as president.

Wer fremde Sprachen nicht kennt, weiß nichts von seiner eigenen. Those who know no foreign languages know nothing of their own.

JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE

The school's second campus at 1881 Vicente in the Sunset District.

Growth

1978–1997: The school's fifth major campus at 220 Buchanan Street

UC Extension

Fast forward to 1978. FABS moved to the University of California Extension at 220 Buchanan Street in the Lower Haight neighborhood. That same year, the school formally established its High School, and the Board moved to adopt the International Baccalaureate. It would be only the fourth IB school in the United States and the first on the West Coast to do so. By offering the IB Diploma, the school could now provide a high school program for non-bilingual students entering Grade 9.

Head of School Bernard Ivaldi had been working hard to consolidate the legitimacy of the school’s French program. Ivaldi had engineered initial recognition for the school by the French Ministry of Education as early as 1972. At first, the French Baccalauréat was offered by correspondence. By 1980, Ivaldi’s efforts finally paid off when FABS was authorized by the French Ministry of Education to offer the full French Baccalauréat program onsite. That same year, the High School was proud to graduate

its first class of seven students, holding the ceremony at San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum.

Sans frontières

In 1984, the school changed its name from French-American Bilingual School to French-American International School (FAIS). The name in French was Lycée International Franco-Américain (LIFA).

During the Buchanan years, the extracurricular offerings at the school burgeoned. Along with Spanish-style architecture, a flock of raucous parrots, and a 1934 New Deal social realist mural, the school now boasted a gymnasium and small theater. Soon competitive athletics and the Back à Dos theater ensemble became cherished aspects of student life, and helped define the spirit and soul of the school. The school's Global Travel program was to provide yet another opportunity for students to learn and feel a sense of belonging beyond the classroom. In April 1986, Grade 8 students took part in the school’s first Paris exchange program.

In 1989, Bernard Ivaldi’s energetic headship ended, but not before the French-American International School school was granted accreditation for its full program— Maternelle à Terminale—by the French Ministry of Education.

Closing out the decade, 1989 was another landmark year globally. The Berlin Wall came down and Mikhail Gorbachev and George H. W. Bush met to orchestrate the end of the Cold War; the student protests in Tiananmen Square were crushed by violent military force; and Alaska’s Prince William Sound was horribly polluted by the Exxon Valdez oil spill. A brochure titled Understanding

AIDS had recently been mailed to every household in the United States. In the Bay Area, the 6.9 magnitude Loma Prieta earthquake struck.

Buchanan campus yard

NCIS

When the French-American International School opened in the fall of 1990, PreK-12 enrollment had reached 500 students. The school was flourishing, but it was plain for all to see that it had outgrown its current site. What happened next was extraordinary!

An unprecedented partnership was forged between FAIS and the Chinese American International School with the aim of locating and developing a permanent home for both schools.

CAIS was a smaller operation than FAIS, but it had also grown rapidly and was in dire need of a larger facility. CAIS was the nation’s pioneer Mandarin immersion school. Both FAIS and CAIS embraced similar educational philosophies but experienced very little overlap in

enrollment demographics. This combination of shared values, genuine collegiality at the leadership level, and almost zero rivalry proved extremely fortuitous. The Heads and their respective Trustees spearheaded an innovative solution to allow the schools to collaborate on the planning and funding of a new (and as yet hypothetical) building project. A formal rapprochement would allow them to punch far above their weight and be bolder in their vision than they ever could be as individual schools.

They set up a separate nonprofit corporation with its own governance consisting of Trustees from both schools. The National Center for International Schools (NCIS) was established in September of 1992 with the aim of locating and developing a permanent home for both FAIS and the Chinese American International School. It would take five more years of bold Head of School leadership and Board-driven, detailed machinations before this project came to fruition.

As the umbrella organization, NCIS would effectively own campus properties and lease the space back to the two schools. NCIS would also provide for the operating needs of the schools, including construction management, emergency planning, security and traffic oversight, maintenance, and janitorial needs.

Mission-driven

FAIS, as the school was now referred to colloquially, continued to mature and evolve. The school’s unassailable core values had certainly informed all aspects of the institution, but curiously, these had never been formally defined. The time had come for the school to consolidate and clarify its mission. The 1993 iteration was a noble first effort, but was excessively, long-winded—descriptive rather than aspirational. Only in 1999 was it distilled into the succinct, poetic, venerable version still used today.

First graduates

Marie-Pierre Carlotti teaching Grade 1

Change

The front entrance to the school's new campus at 150 Oak Street

In April 1994, the NCIS Board bid successfully on the option to purchase the building at 150 Oak Street—the former Caltrans headquarters in San Francisco. The main building occupied an entire city block in the urban Civic Center neighborhood. Though the seven story building was highly functional and seismically sound, the interior was shabby and institutional, and would require millions of dollars to improve it for school functionality and bring it up to ADA compliance.

Emboldened by some major fundraising, a pioneering bond issuance (a first of its kind encompassing two collaborating schools), as well as the expertise of Cahill Contractors and the schools’ architects, NCIS commenced tentative planning and design work, and the San Francisco Board of Supervisors unanimously approved the project. Then as now, French-American International School was the larger partner of the enterprise, with a 74% share of the eventual footprint.

Head of School Jane Camblin

Moving ahead in our timeline, 1994 saw the end of apartheid with election of Nelson Mandela to the South African presidency; the Rwandan genocide; the Ebola virus outbreak; and the 25th Anniversary of Woodstock. In San Francisco, the first observance of World AIDS Day took place at the AIDS Memorial Grove in Golden Gate Park.

When the school year began in the fall of 1994, Jane Camblin had been appointed interim Head of School. Jane would go on to become the school’s longest serving Head to date. Upon assuming the role, she quickly made her mark. Within a year, the Middle School was designated as a separate section with its own Principal. Another early initiative was branding the high school section with a distinct identity, naming it the International High School.

Mission

Guided by the principles of academic rigor and diversity, French American + International offers programs of study in French and English to prepare its graduates for a world in which the ability to think critically and to communicate across cultures is of paramount importance.

Guidé par des principes de rigueur académique et de diversité, le Lycée International Franco-Américain propose des programmes en français et en anglais, pour assurer la réussite de ses diplômés dans un monde dans lequel la pensée critique et la communication interculturelle seront déterminantes.

Jeannette Rouger, Jane Camblin, and Bernard Ivaldi at the 50th Anniversary Alumni Reunion

As the decade unfolded, a new pedagogical theme gained momentum. Technology was being used with greater frequency to support teaching, learning, and school infrastructure. For FAIS, it was also time to publish the school’s first rudimentary website.

Throughout much of her tenure, Jane was supported by Adjoint au Chef d’établissement, Claude Farrugia. Claude was legendary for his tireless promotion and guardianship of all things authentically French. Claude was also an early entrepreneurial mover and shaker in the use of digital technology in schools. He later would introduce coding and tinkering in the Lower School, where he also served as Principal.

Groundbreaking at 150 Oak

Jane Camblin was the driving force behind readying and moving the school into 150 Oak Street. Of critical importance to the NCIS bond fiscal strategy for subsequent years, Jane also delivered on robust enrollment increases. From this position of confidence and strength, she would soon be empowered to manage a series of audacious campus upgrades.

French-American International School moved to the 150 Oak Street campus in October 1997. The move was a Herculean operation, taking place over the course of a long weekend. Furniture, technology, and all manner of educational resources were relocated by a team of efficient movers; 679 students, 90 faculty, and 32 staff followed in their wake.

Jane Camblin and Shirley Lee, the Head of School at Chinese American International School, spoke at the groundbreaking ceremony. At the ribbon cutting, they took the opportunity to celebrate the diversity and abundance of culture and language in their schools, and the great potential inherent at the new campus.

Shirley Lee and Jane Camblin at 150 Oak groundbreaking

Avoir une autre langue, c’est posséder une deuxième âme.

To have another language is to possess a second soul.

CHARLEMAGNE

The 2002 Varsity Women's Basketball Team with coach Leslie Adams (back row, left), and International's star player Charlee Underwood (back row, 4th from left.)

Members of the Class of 2000 pose for portraits before their graduation ceremony

In 2001, the garage next to the gym at 151 Oak Street was demolished to provide extra recreational blacktop space. Soon after, FAIS and CAIS lower school students jointly commemorated United Nations Day with a boisterous Peace Pole ceremony. The wooden pole mounted at the Oak Street entrance was inscribed "May peace reign upon this earth" in French, Chinese, Spanish, and English.

On September 11, 2001, al Qaeda militants hijacked airplanes and crashed them into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in Manhattan. A third plane hit the Pentagon. The news story broke during the FAIS early morning commute time. When the children left their homes for school that Tuesday morning, it seemed like a routine day. By the time they arrived on campus, their world had changed.

The school’s Leadership Team had to move quickly. Classes were canceled. The crisis situation was announced in section assemblies led by the Principals. High school students and their teachers viewed the harrowing images of the towers collapsing in astonished silence. Since the extent of the attack and identity of the perpetrators were completely unknown during the immediate aftermath, the entire school was evacuated within hours.

40th Anniversary

The 40th Anniversary of the school was celebrated in 2002. Behind the scenes, long-term fiscal sustainability became a Board priority, and all financial expenditures were tightened significantly. In 2004, under the watchful eye of new Board Chair Adam Cioth, school fees were subject to game-changing, one-time increases of 9.7% and 14.9% in the Lower School and High School respectively. The increases proved challenging for many families but were entirely necessary to make the numbers work, and for the first time in the history of the school, build healthy cash flow and reserves.

Call me International

Relations between FAIS and France remained strong. The school now received an annual accreditation called homologation from the Ministry of Education. This affirmation was analogous to the accreditations the school earned as an independent school in North America. In 2002, the school was jointly accredited by the California Association of Independent Schools (CAIS) and the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC). Accreditations entail a self-study report conducted by the school and an assessment visit from an outside group of expert educators.

Oak Street gymnasium

Head of School Jane Camblin was determined that the school should also adopt a leadership role in the international schools arena. Jane was Chair of the Council of International Schools in the Americas (CIStA) Board, the fastest-growing regional association. As one of the few female Heads during that era, she wryly enjoyed the CIStA/"sister" pun. In 2002, she was also elected to the Council of International Schools Board.

In 2004, the school used digital technology to revolutionize communications and the pedagogical infrastructure. New databases and other software innovations streamlined billing, fundraising, report cards, transcripts, schedules, attendance reporting, and curriculum documentation. There was visual evidence of much new hardware and software around the school, especially in the new computer and science labs.

Athletics blossomed in the new gym and the arts were not neglected. Back à Dos was alive and well. During this era, the black box theater was located on the 6th floor of the school building, where the high school library is located today.

Diversity and Inclusion

The years leading up to the 50th Anniversary sizzled with novelty and adventure. Radical change was afoot in the application of digital technology, especially in the classroom. There was renewed emphasis afoot in other mission-driven educational domains, including but not limited to the importance of the social and emotional well-being of students; stewardship of the planet; and, not least, intense heartfelt conversations around diversity and international mindedness.

A highlight every year—guaranteed to fire up the faculty and staff—was Jane Camblin’s Rentrée speech. The annual address could be relied upon to contain provocative literary and philosophical quotes aligned with snippets

from frontier educational research and combined with some unflinching, unapologetic political edge.

Under Jane's watch, it is fair to say that discussions around the principles of diversity tended to emphasize our French and International identity rather than a homegrown, U.S.-centric ethnicity and civil rights approach. Jane also disparaged a “Three Fs” mindset (flags, food, and festivals) which “so often informs the tourist-like encounters with ‘other’ cultures advocated by many monolingual schools.”

The notion of laïcité, which is inextricable from French national identity, was a cultural factor that layered complexity, dissonance, and incommensurability during the school’s early efforts at diversity training for faculty and staff. Amongst other things, laïcité requires that public spaces (including schools) be free of religion. Moreover, being a French citizen supersedes all other aspects of a person’s identity. Through this lens, characteristics like ethnicity and sexual orientation are viewed very much as a private matter.

Yet the fact of the school's U.S. context remained. David Goldberg—FABS alum, Black Student Union founder, and in 2005, the school’s first Computer Science teacher—cautioned at the time, “our students have grown up with the peculiar brand of institutional racism that the United States has fostered (or one of its European analogues). For better or worse, they come to define themselves in a larger context of American class and cultural issues.”

Global Travel Program

Since its inception, the school’s Global Travel Program has provided transformative learning moments for hundreds of students (some as young as ten) and dozens of employees annually. Directeur des Etudes Françaises Jean-Pierre Nagy originated the Global Travel and ex-

The 2013 soccer trip to Malawi

change programs in 1986. Questions were raised even back then. What can we be thinking? Can we keep doing it? What are the benefits? And can the benefits outweigh health and safety, as well as liability risks?

The easy response—at least for the initiated—was, and still is, that not continuing the Global Travel Program would be difficult to imagine (though today’s trip-planners are ever more conscious of the program’s air travel carbon footprint). Quite simply: there is nothing like being there!

The now-signature Tahiti exchange was the first international trip students took beyond France. A subsequent Global Travel landmark was the first India trip in April 2006. India soon became one of the flagship locations of the program, along with the Galapagos biodiversity field trip, and the service learning and cultural trip to Senegal (in collaboration with École Natangué, our sister school in M’Bour).

The India trip is emblematic of the school's approach to global travel. The trip is reserved for juniors who have

the maturity and resilience to transcend the pitfalls of voyeurism and fully benefit from a low-budget, downto-earth, up-close, behind-the-scenes, non-touristic, multi-sensorial, spiritual, life-changing experience.

Children of Haiti Project

A celebrated service initiative involving younger students is the Children of Haiti Project led by Middle School Principal Fabrice Urrizalqui. A school was created just after the 2010 earthquake to welcome mostly orphaned kids who were living in tents. The biggest annual fundraiser for CoHP is our annual Fun Run in Golden Gate Park. Every penny goes straight to the school.

2008 Crash

In 2008, global financial markets crashed. It was the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Market failures, as well as sizable reductions of the bourse scolaire (financial aid program for citizens administered directly by the French government), affected many FAIS families.

The fiscal discipline and fees augmentation adopted in 2004 paid off. The school emerged virtually unscathed from the crash. Families made genuine financial sacrifices to prioritize their children’s independent school education; and the Board approved some judicious extra spending on aid. By the time school opened in the fall it had retained almost all families.

Early Learning

In 2008 the school embraced the full age range scope of French education by recruiting its first PK3 class. The class could have been filled immediately with siblings and faculty children, but spots were also strategically assigned to external candidates who might otherwise have gone to the Lycée Lapérouse.

Lower school students accompanying Haitian dancers

The “petite section” is much more than high-quality day care. It is the first rung on the French academic ladder. Children transition from the security of the home environment and—in a loving and nurturing environment surrounded by their peers—begin their individual journeys towards autonomie. They have so much to learn. The routine is more flexible, more playful and less structured than PK4 or K. The program is child centered, unhurried, and tailored to each child’s age-appropriate, biological rhythms. The playful activities and transitions are planned with intentionality to gently prime the children for the pre-reading, pre-writing and pre-numeracy skills acquisition that lie ahead.

Obama inauguration

The first inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th president of the United States and the country’s first Black president was a festive occasion at French American + International. On January 20, 2009, the entire student body–from three-year-olds in the new PK3 class to graduating seniors, several of voting age–were seated to-

gether in the Oak Street gymnasium to enjoy the historic happenings. The vibe of a vast crowd at the West Front of the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C. was captured on a huge screen and a pristine sound system. The upbeat ambiance was astonishing. The ceremony included Obama quoting from the Gettysberg address and Aretha Franklin singing “My Country ‘Tis of Thee.”

Swine flu

In a chilling foreshadowing of the all-too-familiar coronavirus that would wreak deadly havoc ten years later, the World Health Organization declared that the H1N1 influenza strain, commonly referred to as "swine flu," had been classified as a global pandemic.

Head of School Jane Camblin acknowledged the severity of the outbreak and pointed out that its epidemiology was enabled by globalization. As the school dutifully followed the recommendations of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, nobody could have envisaged the extent of lockdown constraints and deaths that would later unfold with Covid.

Arts Pavilion

In the fall of 2009, school enrollment surpassed one thousand students. Jane Camblin launched the Capital Campaign for the purchase and renovation of the Dennis Gallagher Arts Pavilion at 66 Page Street, and the associated 150 Oak Street Campus Plus project. The new Arts Pavilion added a much needed extra dimension to the high school campus and subsequently aided recruitment.

The 66 Page building had character and a nostalgic feel. It had been San Francisco’s Harley Davidson dealership. The architects were careful to preserve some of the period signage. The design placed the Music and Film suites at the lower level. Visual Arts were located at ground level. Just after the formal entrance of the building on the

Jane Camblin on a forklift during the buildout of 66 Page, October 2008

"Big Love" (2016), the Back à Dos Company's modern interpretation of Aeschylus's "The Suppliants."

MODERN LEARNING: Lower school students with iPads

Page Street side, guests were greeted by a spacious gallery space bathed in natural light. A “black box” theater arts center, with charismatic industrial rafters, filled the Upper Level.

Across the street, the 150 Oak Campus Plus Project provided further upgrades to the International High School facility. The entire east wing of the 5th floor was now dedicated to hands-on science. An extra lab was constructed and equipped specifically for biotechnology. On the 6th floor a new high school library and media resource center, with sweeping cityscape views on three sides, was built in the old black box theater space.

Adjoining the library was a new tech lab and college counseling suite. On a large notice board overlooking the cozy student lounge space, a new tradition was born–the placement of college pennants as the year’s acceptances rolled in.

Modern Learning

Beginning in 2011, with high school teachers creating video lectures, and Grade 7 students equipped with iPads, French American + International had piloted a set of initiatives, introducing new technologies and innovative strategies to modernize the teaching and learning in its classrooms. Looking back, with the benefit of hindsight, it is easy to lampoon the ephemeral nomenclature and succession of buzzwords associated with this liminal revolutionary era. The vernacular included: “Modern Learning,” “21st Century Learning,” “Blended Learning,” and the “Flipped Classroom.”

There were downsides and gaffes as well as the obvious net gains associated with introducing digital technologies. For example, sending middle school students home with unrestricted iPads supplied by the school was a point of concern for many parents.

Despite some initial unforeseen consequences, digital

technology was catalyzing pedagogical thinking. Emerging debates about Modern Learning were in essence a continuation of the discourse unleashed by the school’s founders.

At French American + International “Modern Learning” became a much bigger concept than bringing digital toys to the classroom. It was framed as mission-driven and aligned with yet another cognitive revolution–frontier neuroscience.

The teaching and learning landscape was shifting. The role of the teacher was changing. Pedagogy was becoming increasingly constructivist and student-centered. Differentiation, and the critical importance of teachers getting to know the social and emotional dispositions and individual learning modalities of each and every student in the class, became the go-to indicators of best practice.

The pedagogical movers and shakers at French American + International defined blended learning as combining the best of traditional practices with risk-taking, innovative approaches utilizing new technologies. In the High School, teachers were encouraged to adopt an entrepreneurial approach to new technologies. Jane Camblin had encouraged the Upper School Principals and other lead educators to keep the Board of Trustees apprised about the use of digital technology in the classroom. Board Chair Tex Schenkkan referred to these radical applications as “cutting edge, not bleeding edge.”

Before long Jane took the academic technology team on the road. With resplendent new playthings, including Prezi, interactive SMART Boards, and Screencast-O-Matic, they presented to audiences of international school Heads at CIS and other conferences in Brazil, Qatar, Singapore, Denmark, and Nice.

Information literacy and digital citizenship arose as necessary and enduring skills that would prepare students for an increasingly high-paced, ultra-connected

world. Age-appropriately students were asked to reflect upon their own digital footprint, and the potential pitfalls of negative habits online. This was all new; and it is fair to say that educators were navigating the changes alongside their students.

Teaching and learning was becoming ever more handson, creative, and collaborative. Neuroscience affirmed that social-emotional well-being was at one with optimal learning. Teachers were aware that the one doing the talking was the one doing the learning.

After initial flirtations with more or less universal iPad implementation, French American and International teachers soon recognized the limitations of the platform. As things settled, especially for the younger children, devices were used only when they added particular value to learning. iPads came out for discrete chunks of time for carefully selected class activities and projects.

In the Lower School, the blend of old and new was exemplified by the introduction of robotics and an hour of code balanced by the new daily ritual of “Drop Everything And Read”–a real physical book, of course!

Board Chair Josh Nossiter viewed a good book as “the ultimate search engine! It may lack tech wizardry, but it remains practical and low maintenance, it doesn't even require batteries.”

Athletics

Interscholastic athletics has always been a memorable aspect of student life at French American and International. Alumni reflect fondly on the Buchanan campus era. Participation was great fun, but modest school enrollment meant that the small number of teams had to scramble for players. The gym was serviceable but had little room for spectators, and winning results were sporadic at best.

Everything changed after the move to 150 Oak. The program benefited from a succession of talented Athletics Directors, increased participation from a much larger student body, and the inspiring new facilities. As the number of teams grew, so did school spirit and competitive success in the league championships and, increasingly, in end-of-season playoffs. The middle school and lower school programs were also more fully consolidated.

The seachange came with the Men's Varsity Basketball team led by legendary Bay Area coach, Carl Jacobs. In 2005 they became BCL West champions and were finalAlex

Seutin '14, 2012-2013 Men's Varsity Basketball

ists in the Division V North Coast Section playoffs. They repeated this spectacular outcome in 2006.

Next came Women’s Varsity Basketball. In 2008-09, the Jaguar team were undefeated in league play and beat Urban in the BCL West Championship after winning 12 games straight. They earned the #2 seed in the North Coast Sectionals and, painfully, lost in the Championship final for the second year in a row. These successes sealed the school’s reputation as an inclusive and highly-competitive athletics school. In more recent years, soccer and volleyball have risen to the fore and had their share of championship successes.

Excellence in interscholastic athletics is part of a larger commitment to excellence in education and educating the whole human being. Students take pride in representing something bigger than themselves. They build strong relationships with their teammates and develop healthy practices of mind, body, and character–with true sportsmanship and equity front and center.

During the year leading up to the sexagennial celebrations, 212 Jaguar athletes competed on 20 different teams on the playing fields, courts, track, and in the pool. Fan Jams and end-of-season banquets are always charismatic and celebratory, oozing with upbeat school spirit. The program continues to grow. Sailing and skiing are now well-established club sports, and men's volleyball and women's lacrosse were introduced in the fall of 2021.

Margaret Nwabueze, Class of 2013, was one of many college-bound athletes who have written about the International athletics experience over the years. According to Margaret,“Track and field is typically an individual sport, but our team functions as one unit. We support one another fully during competitions, and when one runner does well, we’ve all succeeded. I think the success of our team has everything to do with the guidance of our amazing coach.”

Shayna Mehta '15, 2012-2013 Women's Varsity Basketball

FRENCH AMERICAN+INTERNATIONAL

Transition

FEBRUARY 11, 2012: The Grade 3 Class performing onstage at the Castro Theatre for the school's 50th Anniversary Celebration

50th Anniversary— the Quinquagenary!

The year 2012 saw the re-election of President Obama, the retirement of space shuttle Endeavor, and the deadly mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

In February 2012 French American + International unleashed a series of 50th Anniversary celebrations that culminated in a spectacular event, featuring celebrity cameos and not-a-dry-eye-inthe-house student musical performances at San Francisco's historic Castro Theatre.

98 Franklin purchase

Middle school student quality of life was about to be improved on the 4th floor. School architects had been busy throughout the summer. When the unsuspecting students returned in the fall they discovered a new lightfilled environment with multiple spaces for socializing and hanging out. There were “lots of ahhhs! and wows!”

Behind the scenes, the Board Finance Committee – led by Adam Cioth, CFO Aaron Levine, and Board Chair Tex Schenkkan–was making decisions that would further shore up the school’s fiscal sustainability. They had already built reserves, finally established a robust endowment, and refinanced bond debt. Single paragraph audit management letters were now a pleasurable, reassuring read.

During the post-2008 era the Board had prioritized buying selected properties in the immediate vicinity of the 150 Oak Street campus when they emerged on the marketplace. Although a fixed rather than a liquid asset, San Francisco real estate was the safest, high-yielding investment. Properties could be sold at a later date or re-

tained to provide a blank canvas for future campus enhancements.

A key purchase for the school was 98 Franklin–the surface parking lot across the street from the main campus and directly opposite the new Conservatory of Music. The investment was astute at the time, but even the key decision makers could not have imagined what would serendipitously unfold. The 98 Franklin property was destined to become a gamechanger for the school.

The Castro Theatre marquee

Jane Camblin to UNIS

Leadership transitions were afoot. In 2012, long-serving Head of School Jane Camblin announced that she had accepted the position of Executive Director of the United Nations International School in New York City. Jane had been at French American + International for thirty years, first as a Principal and then for eighteen years as Head. Board chair Tex Schenkkan expressed his sadness for her departure and declared, “Personally, I will deeply miss her indefatigable energy and wry humor. But at the same time there is cause for celebration on her behalf as she moves on to a great new adventure and takes the Big Apple by storm.”

Interregnum

Ellen Deitsch Stern served as interim Head for one year. She guided the school through an extraordinary transi-

tion. After 18 years, Jane Camblin had departed. There was no looking back, and more radical change was afoot. The search for a new Head of School was underway. An ambitious triple CIS/WASC/CAIS accreditation had been unleashed. STEAM and SEL innovations continued relentlessly. Under the Board’s auspices, the endgame for a charismatic new Early Learning Center was being managed.

New Head of School, Melinda Bihn

In July 2014, the school welcomed the new Head of School, Dr. Melinda Bihn. Melinda joined the school from Garrison Forest School in Baltimore, where she was Head of Upper School. She had a B.A. in English with a minor in French, a Master’s in Comparative Literature, a Master’s in the teaching and administration of English as a Second Language, and more recently had completed her Ed.D. in Educational Leadership from the University of Pennsylvania.

Melinda described her appointment as coming home. She had been raised in California and had spent the first decade of her career in international schools (in Austria, Germany, and Portugal).

She had known about French American + International for years. Her new school was big and it was complicated. Melinda was an academic social anthropologist as well as a visionary school leader. She wanted to get to know the stakeholders personally and profoundly, and in so doing obtain a “kaleidoscopic” view of the school.

Melinda met with groups of students, their families, alums, trustees, and every faculty and staff member. In the end she participated in more than 250 open-ended conversations around “What makes us who we are?” and “What would make us better?” She later confessed, “it was a crazy goal–but one of the best things about being a new Head is that you don't know what you can't do.”

Groudbreaking at the new Early Learning Center (later the Maternelle) at 1155 Page Street, November 4, 2013

Melinda Bihn enjoying a visit with lower school students at 150 Oak

Melinda was increasingly visible on campus. Beyond her mandatory, high profile roles at advancement, admission, governance, and graduation events, she took time to greet students and colleagues as they entered the building in the morning. She attended plays, concerts, games, matches, and races. She attended assemblies and shadowed individual students from the various sections for entire days, and even opened car doors for very young students at the new Early Learning Center.

1155 Page Street

In 2011, the San Francisco Unified School District announced that it was considering leasing several surplus properties. Although SFUSD had intended only a shortterm lease on the property at 1155 Page Street, the school campaigned for, and by 2013 had won, a long-term ground lease. French American + International soon replaced the abandoned 1950’s building with a purpose-built Maternelle which opened in August 2014. It became home to

170 Pre-K and kindergarten students. Neighbors, organizations with lobbying influence like the San Francisco Bike Coalition, and the folks in charge of preschool licensing, were cultivated during the construction year.

Influenced by how children learn best, the building’s design enabled the school to deliver its French immersion program in a creative, age-appropriate, nurturing environment. The Maternelle featured nine child-centered classrooms bathed in natural light. Floor-to-ceiling, sliding glass doors provided direct access to the play yards. A central multi-purpose room served as a community space and a gym for the adventurous daily physical education that the French call parcours or psychomotricité. The architect had delivered on a calm, peaceful place for very young children to collaborate, explore and play. Autonomie was encouraged by having amenities built at a child’s level. The ultimate accolade was hearing the school’s own educators use the personification “third teacher" to describe the space during the ribbon cutting ceremony.

Maternelle ribbon cutting, September 21, 2014

Children enjoying recess at the new Maternelle campus, September 2014

Consolidation

Students collaborating on a design in the Tinker Space

Les plaisirs et les jours

In January 2015 terror struck Paris when two radicalized Muslim brothers attacked the offices of Charlie Hebdo, the satirical French magazine. Later in the year the plight of Syrian refugees reached crisis point. Black Lives Matter became a trending hashtag on Twitter in response to

an upsurge in the visibility of incidents like the death of Freddie Gray in police custody. In the civil rights case, Obergefell v. Hodges, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the fundamental right to marry is guaranteed to same-sex couples.

A global populist backlash, not unrelated to these and other historical bookmarks, loomed. There was little fanfare initially, but that was to change when reality TV celebrity Donald Trump announced his presidential candidacy in June 2015.

"Je suis Charlie"

Twelve people were killed when the Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo came under siege. The magazine had previously published cartoons of the Islamic prophet Muhammad.

The school responded swiftly. Teachers guided their students age-appropriately in cathartic discussions about the tragedy. In Grade 5, students viewed the Secretary of State’s expression of condolences to the French people. As students responded, teachers were careful to differentiate between violent extremists and Muslims in general. The conversation explored the freedoms of speech and expression, among les droits de l’homme, which the Grade 5 had recently studied. As one educator observed, “notwithstanding those rights, students observed, it is possible to hurt individuals with particular statements or caricatures.”

While attending to the developmental and emotional needs of students, teachers supported students' critical thinking about the events. This approach also characterized responses to future events such as the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol and the Derek Chauvin verdict.

A student creating a "Je suis Charlie" poster

Learning by Design

Once again world events were validating the critical importance of the education provided by French American + International. Teaching and Learning–the authentic “business of our business”–contlnued to move forward. Modern Learning had metamorphosed to STEAM. This acronym, with its custom license plate feel, augmented its STEM predecessor. STEAM placed the creativity elements intrinsic to the Arts alongside Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. This primed the pump for “Maker Culture,” “Tinkering,” and “Design Thinking” to further enhance classroom practice and expand, yet again, the pedagogical lexicon.

Design Technology was integrated into the high school curriculum by Principal Joel Cohen. It was a successful social experiment. Design Technology would later join ITGS (Information Technology in a Global Society) and Computer Science on the IB subject menu.

The Upper School Design Lab at 150 Oak Street placed traditional workshop power drills and bench saws alongside tech tools—like 3D printers and laser cutters—at the fingertips of our upper school students.

Design Thinking is a process. It seeks solutions to real-life problems (often to budget) by combining creative and analytical approaches across disciplines. To quote a provocative slogan posted in the high school lobby at the time–it is “imagination with constraints!” The human element is important too. Designers must empathize with those for whom they design. Listening skills are as important as being able to pitch ideas and demonstrate experimental prototypes.

Lower School STEAM and Tinkering

The pedagogical flame of the school founders was burning ever brightly. The school's immersion program continued to move forward. In the Lower School, a talented team of curriculum leaders, led by visionary Principal Marie-Pierre Carlotti, introduced an innovative math curriculum, and a differentiated reading program in both English and French that ensured that each child would read at their individual stretch level. The program was based on the Reading and Writing Project at the Teachers College Columbia University. Many teachers went to New York during the summers and benefited from professional development at the Teachers College.

Lower school students were also Learning by Design. In the Tinker Space students were free to imagine and create new worlds. It provided an oasis of wellbeing and collaboration, where students could lose themselves in absorbing hands-on projects using recycled materials. Coding, electric circuits, and Arduino robotics were juxtaposed with humble, low-tech tools like sewing kits and hot glue guns. At the 2014 Design Faire, a lively Grade 4 student grabbed Melinda’s hand and said, “Come see. I made a house—and we made a world!”

The Lower School was also unusual in having a real science lab. The lab was fully equipped with glassware, microscopes, and electronic balances. Students felt special Maternelle Science Fair, February 2016

Lower school students getting an early start on STEM learning

when they entered the lab. They imagined themselves as professional scientists. They were there to observe, collect data, and ask what if questions. In other words, to think like scientists.

The French American + International curriculum was aligned with Mission Laïque Française and the Next Generation Science Standards. Teams of our school's teachers attended the Teacher Institute on Science and Sustainability (TISS) at the San Francisco Academy of Sciences. Teachers were trained to resist simply imparting a body of scientific facts. Their role was to pique curiosity; and physically model arguing from evidence, discussing ideas, listening to others, and asking, rather than merely answering, questions.

Educator and Trustee Judith Glickman echoed these sentiments. She thought it “incumbent upon our faculty to help students develop the questioning possibilities and not look at what the answers are. Because the answers are so much less relevant for now and the future than the questions will be.”

Model UN and TEDxYouth

Arguing from evidence, discussing ideas, and listening to others were precisely the enduring habits of mind that defined the high school experience. Worthy of mention in this context are two club offerings that were soaring in popularity. Model United Nations requires students to research the perspectives of individual countries and for-

International High School student Amir Saleh presenting at the February 2017 TEDxYouth event

A young naturalist on a field trip to the Hayes Valley Farm, 2010

mulate a coherent position on a prescribed geopolitical issue. Students attended MUN conferences in Denmark, Berkeley, Palo Alto, and New York City.

TEDxYouth was conceived by a cadre of high school students and remains entirely student run. Their entrepreneurial spirit is remarkable. Each year, they deliver a licensed, branded TEDx event with a roster of highly polished, topical student talks. Crafting and delivering this logistically complex, charismatic event is another shining example of collaborative design thinking.

Hannah van Alstyn, one of the TEDx student founders, remarked that “our society too frequently doesn’t carve a space for young people to share our thoughts with the wider world, or even take the minds of young people seriously.” She was heartened that “the administration imposed no separate agenda, and did not insist on interfering with any of the plans we made.”

Sustainability initiatives

The 21st United Nations Convention on Climate Change (COP21) in the fall of 2015 in Paris led to a historic international climate agreement, and was also the catalyst for a sustainability initiative at French American + International.

In 2015, the newly developed bilingual science curriculum in the Lower School launched new units of study specifically designed to explore sustainability. Beyond

the classroom there were family and community collaborations centered on gardening for Earth Day, and the Grade 5 Green Team TerraCycle Project. In May, a group of faculty members and students were invited to a special lunch at San Francisco City Hall to receive an Environmental Excellence Award for their sustainability efforts.

NCIS undertook a solar panel project in the summer of 2015. An array of 630 modules now grace six rooftops at 150 Oak Street. The system offsets roughly 32% of utility usage. Over 25 years, the system will save about $2,000,000 and reduce CO2 emissions by some 5,970 tons. That's the environmental equivalent of planting 102.3 acres of trees—or not driving 19,426,676 miles.

Interlude and breaking the 4th wall...

In 2016, Trump was elected. Russians hacked. Brits Brexited. A civil war in Syria erupted. The Zika virus broke out in Brazil. Lead contaminated the drinking water of Flint, Michigan. The 42,000 deaths in the U.S. from opioid overdoses also merit inclusion in this litany of exceptional events.

Breaking the 4th Wall

At this juncture in writing this history of French American + International, I will pause and break the 4th wall. For starters: history is not what happened. What happened has gone. History is the story telling that historians do. The historian selects from the vestigial traces of evidence in order to weave a coherent plot. This involves making judgment calls about what is significant and meaningful and what is not.

This story was composed in 2022 to celebrate the school's sexegennial. By the time we get to around 2016, even dramatic events like, say, the failed coup in Turkey, fall into the realm of current affairs rather than history. It is only with the march of time, and some appropriate critical distance, that such events will become the stuff of history. That is also a truism for more recent happenings at the school.

While we are on the subject of impartiality and critical perspective limitations, I should add that, as the author of this story, I was present in the school as an educator and

administrator–to some degree, able to speak truth to power and be privy to Board business – throughout the second half of its sixty years. There are losses and gains incurred when inviting a living witness to tell the tale.

In later years, another version of this story, encompassing an even longer time period, will be written. It might be in Homeric, Joycean, or Proustian mode. Notwithstanding its genre, what is missing from this current iteration is the full cast of colorful characters. Melinda refers to the 4,000 or so enrolled students, their parents and grandparents, faculty and staff, governance and alums–at any given fleeting instance–as “a village.” Former Board Chair Josh Nossiter prefers visualizing the school as an aircraft carrier–with its relentless steady momentum and monumental turning circle.

The school is much more than an evolving curriculum bound by a core vision. It is a thoroughly human affair. Imagine for a moment a hypothetical assemblage of every smart, adventurous, international teacher that ever touched the life of a French American and International student during the six decades from 1962 to the present day. A potted history would not do. It would necessitate a tome in the mode of an epic, episodic, 19th century novel (Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities comes to mind) to portray this moving cast of colorful characters, working and playing together, and living life to the full – in all its bittersweet capability and fallibility – through tumultuous, changing times.

Andrew Brown presenting at the November 2016 "Being Bilingual" event at SFJAZZ

Strategic Thinking

Three high school students posing for the school's first billboard campaign, September 2017

Portrait Project

From the onset of her tenure, Melinda had a particular interest in building community and school culture. As a trained social anthropologist and literary scholar she relished the human element and recognized the critical importance of language. Getting the messaging right would unite and edify. Attention to language would also serve to give clarity to strategic vision and its execution.

An early example of harnessing language in service of nurturing a shared culture is the Leadership Team Code. The Code is a model of simplicity, utility, and collegiality. It was crafted by the team under Melinda’s auspices at an early Leadership Team retreat. The five bullet points

are: Be better together; Assume good intent; Expect excellence; Say it here; and Cultivate delight. The Code has provided valuable guidance at a number of challenging moments, as well as in the daily work of school.

Imagining the entire school community as a moving cast of colorful characters, was reified in the fall of 2016. The Portrait Project was an esthetically delightful and immersive exhibit that celebrated the diversity of the French American and International community. Fully 150 students, parents, administrators, teachers, staff, and members of the NCIS support team participated. The installation in the Arts Pavilion consisted of photos, written text, and intimate interviews in English and in French on video. The project was conceived by Arts Director Michelle Haner in collaboration with Moïse Touré and Les Inachevés theater company.

Hamlet Mashup

The years leading up to 2016 were high points for the high school Back à Dos ensemble. An ongoing critical mass of acting and tech talent had been secured, not least, by synchronizing the performance calendar with the three seasons of sport in the athletics program. In the black box theater, edgy and often hilarious student-directed one-act plays were guaranteed to provoke and delight audiences. There was a magical quality about the musicals that were staged during that era. Cabaret, Spamalot and Ghost Quartet musicals all had spectacular staging and earthy virtuoso vocal performances. The oft repeated Back à Dos mantra was, and still is, ”we don’t do high school theater, we are doing real theater with high school students!”

The 2016 Hamlet Mashup was a Melinda favorite and deserves special mention. It is hard to imagine a Shakespeare production quite like it at any other high school. It embodied the angst and the uncertainty of the times and

Edouard Mathieu, Class of 2017, as Hamlet in the Back à Dos "Hamlet Mashup" production in 2016

"Cabaret", November 2013

served a pressing need for discourse around diversity and inclusivity. The intergenerational company, cross-gender casting, and a multilingual production blended renaissance with postmodern elements. With its professionally rendered, vivid scarlet and cobalt blue lighting, explosive sword fights, and ghostly shadow projections, the staging alone did justice to Shakespeare’s seminal masterpiece.

A climactic moment was the “To Be or Not to Be'' soliloquy performed by a surprise, overlapping, pop-up chorus of students, parents, staff and faculty, declaiming in multiple languages.

SFJAZZ

Between 2015 and 2018, the marketing and communication team produced a series of showcase presentations of the school live on stage in the Miner auditorium at SFJAZZ. In this charismatic setting with its perfect acoustics, students of all ages, educators and alumni collaborated in three contrasting multifaceted, TED-style talks to appreciative audiences of both current and appli-

cant families.

In the 2015 SFJAZZ presentation, the IB Diploma program was examined both as “a marvel for the teenage brain” and as “unrivaled preparation for the college endgame.” In 2016, the focus was on the myriad cognitive advantages of bilingual immersion, and in 2018, the transformative power of international-mindedness.

The purpose of the IB showcase and the other events at SFJAZZ was to make the extraordinary learning that happens at French American + International visible to the city. This innovative musical venue proved ideal. The presentations embodied, and were utterly true to, the school's identity. Each one was deeply researched, student and learning-focused, and powerfully and professionally presented. These events—especially the IB Diploma showcase—had a strong impact. They fundamentally shifted the view of the school in the eyes of its own parents and of peer schools. We claimed the stage, and claimed the IB and bilingual education in the process!

Taking international-mindedness to NAIS

The school has “International” in its name for a reason. Renewed conversations around international-mindedness and what it means to be a global citizen emerged from the SFJAZZ presentations. Melinda and a team of teacher presenters positioned the school as a thought leader in internationalism at the 2016 NAIS Conference, conveniently hosted in San Francisco that year. "Third-Culture Stories," just one of the school’s presentations at this national conference, addressed how educators can support international students at independent schools. The talk took an intersectional approach to identity arising from Melinda’s doctoral research on this topic and highlighting our international school culture. An audience-pleasing moment was a slide portraying a youthful Barack Obama as “the world’s most famous third culture kid.” In another

presentation, teachers “wowed the participants with firsthand accounts” of the school’s Global Travel program.

The project had several offshoots. Melinda was invited to join the inaugural NAIS Global Ambassadors Advisory Working Group and to present an interactive webinar on global citizenship. The key findings later appeared in our "Cultivating Global Citizens" article in the 2017 NAIS publication Fresh Insights on Issues of Importance to International School Leadership. In the webinar, we began with the assertion that we are all citizens of the world— and we all come from somewhere. The foundation of global citizenship is rooted in one’s heritage and identity.

At French American + International, we address the complexity of identity–age-appropriately–at all grade levels. In the article we stated that we want students “to understand and appreciate identity as a rich mix of na-

tional, regional, cultural, ethnic, religious, gender, orientation, socioeconomic, and other aspects. This keeps the focus on what we have in common so we do not become ensnared by differences, stereotypes, and simplifications that incite conflict.”

Such conversations are yet another reminder of the importance of the human element in the school. The mere presence of an international or global curriculum is only a beginning. What actually counts is how the curriculum is enacted. Seen this way, “international-mindedness” is fostered—and a global education is realized—only when the curriculum comes alive in the daily learning interactions between faculty and students, school and families. International-mindedness and global citizenship are as much about community and values as they are about curriculum.

A promotional postcard for the first IB Showcase at SFJAZZ, September 2015

BEYOND THE CLASSROOM: Middle School Grade 6 students on a team-building weekend in the Marin Headlands learning about nature and the environment, September 2010

Reflecting on what this means for our school culture and the individual human beings involved, we need to ask questions like “what are the dispositions and competencies that will make students true citizens of the world?” and “what qualities do we need to possess as educators in order to cultivate these in our students?

Marketing our Mission

Conversations around identity at the Board of Trustees level were continuing to gather momentum. The Marketing and Communications department in partnership with the Admission team were also in the mix. Key players were taking a pragmatic, data-based, strategic enrollment management approach in service of the school’s long term sustainability.

Throughout the school’s history there was often a dissonance between external perceptions and the school’s internal vision. A non-nuanced example was an oft repeated reflex assumption that speaking French was a requirement to join the high school because the word “French” appears in the school’s name.

In the fall of 2016, the school engaged Neustadt Creative Marketing, a nationally recognized identity and branding firm, to undertake the research in this area. Mark Neustadt was chosen from the pool of consultants because the Board felt that his track record with marketing East Coast colleges (and previous life as a Francis Bacon scholar) positioned him to understand the academic rigor elements of our mission. The Neustadt work set the stage for the upcoming Strategic Plan and catalyzed–with Board Chair Tex Schenkkan and Melinda’s guidance–a collaborative process that culminated in adding a set of Values to the school’s Mission.

The Neustadt research solicited input from students, faculty, staff, parents, and alumni through small focus groups and surveys. Strategic Enrollment Management

data gathering included interviews with applicant and prospective families.

In the end, Neustadt did not advise radical change. Indeed, he validated the legacy of the school’s original founders. He stated firmly that the school’s goal should be “to give greater articulation to its values, so that audiences can understand the difference and weigh whether such values are something they can share.” He proposed “cross-cultural cognition” as the school’s “primary promise.” Cross-cultural cognition was not jargon. Its full articulation encompassed “grappling with challenging and abstract concepts” across the full range of liberal arts subjects, “in more than one culture,” that would culminate in “the ability to navigate the world with confidence, command, and joy.”

Values

A collaborative process lasting several months, involving students, families, faculty, staff, and Board members, resulted in a set of Values to complement the school’s long standing Mission. The integrated Mission and Values were framed and displayed prominently in every classroom and office. The newly formulated Values were grounded in the school’s history and culture, and were also aspirational. They reflected the school’s multilingual, international culture–the human element. The Values were launched with aplomb, were invoked often, and soon became second nature. They were to form the basis for the Strategic Plan.

The final iteration of the set of school Values established a shared language about how we were to go about the what of our Mission. This was something that every stakeholder group had identified as a need during Melinda’s extensive entry conversations. The Values have contributed to school culture and shaped our response to recent opportunities and crises alike.

Strategic Plan

In 2017, the role of Board chair transitioned from Tex Schenkkan to Josh Nossiter. Tex had been busy. On his watch the school built and opened the 1155 Page Early Childhood Center, purchased land parcels at 98 Franklin and 84 Page, and secured Melinda as our Head of School. As Tex oversaw the Values initiative, Josh and Melinda were readying themselves to lead an ambitious Strategic Plan.

The Strategic Planning process involved stakeholders from the entire school community throughout the 20162017 academic year. The early phases overlapped with the Neustadt consultation and Values wordsmithing. Tex had provided oversight, and Josh built on this bedrock, leading a Strategic Plan framed as “an affirmation of our strengths, a vision of our promise, and a commitment to realizing it through the strategic work of the next five years.”

Andrea Kennedy, Chair of the Strategic Planning Committee, noted that community participation was so “infectious and inspirational, yet made the trustees’ role even more difficult: we had the unenviable job of having to focus the strategy on a few big ideas.”

The Strategic Plan had five Strategic Goals. The first was named International Program Promise. It fused “preparing students to be adept users of evolving technologies in a global workplace” with Neustadt’s “grappling with challenging concepts in the sciences, mathematics, humanities, social sciences, and arts in more than one culture.”

Cross Cultural Cognition came next. It was defined as “the ability to think, feel, and act in more than one culture.” This augmented Neustadt’s “navigating the world with confidence, command, empathy, and joy.”

The Cross Cultural Cognition goal stressed the implementation of the school values in classroom interactions

Values

Our international community brings together people from many backgrounds. Together we strive to create a shared culture that develops compassionate, confident and principled people who will make the world better. We base our community on these values.

Respect Integrity Inclusion Collaboration

Curiosity

Notre communauté internationale rassemble des personnes de toutes origines. Ensemble, nous contribuons à créer une culture qui forme des êtres altruistes et déterminés. Dotés d’un sens moral, ils œuvrent à un monde meilleur. Notre communauté repose sur les valeurs suivantes.

Respect

emphasizing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) and social and emotional wellbeing.

Vibrant Urban Campus was the third initiative. This strategic goal introduced the Urban Engagement Program. Feedback from stakeholders indicated that the school had privileged “thinking globally” over “acting locally.” Urban Engagement would complement the Global Travel Program and connect to our city with initiatives like Grade 10 internships, schoolwide Days of Service, and a Community Salon series with expert talks from members of the parent community.

Proud, Engaged Community followed. It framed school culture as a long game; with special emphasis on cultivating families throughout the whole school journey. A subgoal was the transformation of the Parent Association and parent volunteer experience. The Parent Association is now a singular, harmonized, schoolwide structure with two co-presidents and section vice presidents.

Culture of Giving was the final strategic goal. It highlighted the essential role of the Board of Trustees in leading the charge in “giving and advocacy," as well as “participation and absolute giving levels for all constituents," and alumni outreach.

In recent years the school has made remarkable prog-

ress in building the community's understanding of its financial model and of the power of giving to realize our mission, values, and commitment to equity. Parent engagement has grown significantly–annual giving was doubled in five years! By harnessing our community's belief in a culture of giving, we are able to do extraordinary things for our students and families–from providing aid to a third of our families, to ensuring every student has access to every part of our program, to supporting families during Covid, to funding the capital campaign for 98 Franklin.

Alternative facts

The day after the January 2017 inauguration of President Donald Trump a huge crowd gathered in San Francisco for the Women's March. Many were wearing knitted pink “pussy hats.” This was also the year of the Rohingya refugee crisis, the grisly Las Vegas shooting, and the United States withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accords. The women of the #MeToo movement collectively would be named Time magazine’s Person of the Year.

Reports showing photographic evidence of a smallish crowd at Trump’s inauguration prompted the addition of “alternative facts” and “fake news” to the Twitter and

cross-cultural cognition international program promise vibrant urban campus proud, engaged community culture of giving

Facebook repertoire. These two enemies of critical thinking joined the ranks of bot-driven, personalized internet feeds, modified user behavior, seductive and time-sucking kitschy memes, cultish conspiracies, banal scams, cruel anonymous trolling, hard sell porn, deep-fake videos, enticing clickbait with ads, ads and yet more ads, and the downward gravitational pull of junk-infested rabbit holes… but I digress.

The Mission and Values of French American + International School stand out from this buzzing confusion as oases of sanity. Respect, integrity, inclusion, collaboration, and curiosity have never been more urgent.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

In the fall of 2017 the school hired its first Director of Diversity and Inclusion. The hiring of a director was the culmination of an intentional strategy that evolved over an extended period of time. The decision to move in this direction echoed best practice in peer schools at home and abroad but also focused on the particular characteristics of French American + International. The process involved surfacing the importance of our U.S. context, acknowledging the power of our French and international school culture to inform and strengthen this work, and building commitment among school constituencies for the effort.

A pivotal moment occurred in 2014 during the first weeks of Melinda’s tenure. Unarmed Black teenager Michael Brown had been killed by a policeman in Ferguson, Missouri. A group of International High School educators sat around the table in Melinda’s office to frame a response to students’ distress and outrage at the event. Melinda emphasizes that she will never forget that moment. There was little formal infrastructure in place in the school at the time beyond a hardworking High School DEI coordinator, but we nonetheless harnessed our long-

standing commitment to justice and the resources of our talented faculty and held a town hall meeting. The work grew from there.

Melinda took great care in spearheading and fully socializing this work. Earlier in this narrative we had touched upon the complicated and nuanced history around DEI during the school’s earlier years. Discussions around the principles of diversity emphasized in the Mission tended to emphasize a French and international identity rather than a homegrown, U.S.-centric ethnicity and civil rights approach. Tensions between the principles of laïcité and the social reality of the U.S. context persisted. What is certain is that DEI work was, is, and always will be, part of the school’s DNA.

Later in 2014 high school students were asked to complete a DEI survey. Faculty analyzed the responses. Hiring a Director of DEI, building stronger affinity group culture, and developing greater representation of persons of color in the faculty and staff were seen as the most pressing needs emerging from the qualitative data.

The Head and principals looked for institutional allies and partners who would appreciate the rich international culture of our school, to support our DEI learning and initiatives. In response to student feedback, we partnered with Stanford's Center for Support of Education and Teaching (CSET) to dig deeper into the student experience and bring Culturally Responsive Teaching to the High School. We also partnered with Responsive Classroom to bring Social Emotional Learning (SEL) skills (which are inextricable from DEI skills) to the Lower and Middle Schools.

In response to the urgency for hiring more faculty and staff of color, Melinda worked with longtime board member Orpheus Crutchfield and other professional recruiters on strategies to build practices that would support more diversity on our faculty.

The DEI work had also fed the strategic planning process. It was surfaced formally and overtly in the published Strategic Plan. The new Director of Diversity and Inclusion was a full member of the Leadership Team. This high profile position would enable the school to more fully realize its Values and implement its strategic goal of Cross Cultural Cognition. For DEI at French American and International, this represented a new era. Small pockets of resistance at diversity training workshops were a thing of the past. Laïcité was still a cultural facet to be grappled with, but it was now tempered by Black Lives Matter and other civil rights epiphanies that made it performatively impossible not to address DEI and identity work in a U.S. frame.

The new Director of DEI set to work, consolidating previous good practices and leading change with an all-ages, whole-school mindset. The school had already been sending faculty and staff teams to the People of Students of Color Conference (POSOC) with groups of students simultaneously attending the Student Diversity Leader-

ship Conference. Building on these initiatives and more, a Parents of Children of Color (POCIS) group was soon launched to further enhance the school’s affinity group culture.

The Director of DEI characterized affinity groups as “spaces where people could feel at home, where they could learn to summon their bravest voice, feel kinship and comfort, share their personal stories, inquire into others’, and collectively reflect out loud about their shared experiences. For many of our students, their affinity space is where they learn to embrace their stories before opening up to others who may not share a similar lived experience. It is where many of our students learn to tell their truths.”

During this era, the school's SUCCEED program was formalized and made more transparent to ensure that all students thrive and have access to the full school experience once they are enrolled. SUCCEED provides systematic financial assistance with computing devices, commute and lunch costs, as well as ensuring universal participation in our flagship Global Travel program.

In March 2017—on International Women's Day—the International High School Student Diversity Council organized a Day of Action for Diversity and Inclusion. The entire student body engaged in multiple workshop activities and discussion groups. District 5 Supervisor, London Breed (soon to become Mayor of San Francisco) was our inspirational plenary session speaker. The Director of DEI also championed the full gamut of LGBTIQA+ issues. In an early gesture of solidarity, the Leadership Team placed their pronouns in their email signature settings.

Student Diversity Council

A New Look

anced and had just a suggestion of movement whilst being firmly rooted. In other words, it convincingly symbolized the school.

The folks giving final approval at Chen Design’s final pitch knew their decision had little to do with rationality–they simply knew it when they saw it! The turquoise triangle represented the school’s French Foundation. The bright red globe atop the gestural swoop of the blue triangle figurine made explicit the intersection of French American + International.

Branding International

Building on the Neustadt research and the larger strategic effort to speak clearly to our market about our school, Director of Marketing and Communications Keelee Smith was tasked with rebranding the school. In 2019 we lauched a new logo and visual upgrades to the lobbies and hallways of all seven floors of the 150 Oak main building in vivid, in-your-face, brand-disciplined color! The dynamic new look had been developed in partnership with Chen Design. As with the Neustadt, Values, and Strategic Planning projects, the new branding had been guided by ongoing stakeholder and leadership feedback.

The new logo was universally appreciated. The design went through multiple iterations, some in the “almost but not quite right” category, others mawkish fiascos. When the final version was presented it just popped. It was elegant in its bold, cheerful, unfussy simplicity. The logo’s colors and figurative composition were perfectly bal-

The logo and branding colors were another example of the school taking deliberate steps to nurture and enhance school culture with carefully chosen messaging. The vision was to cultivate a meaningful and engaging whole school community rather than disparate, sectional, or grade level enclaves. The logo further reinforced the school’s identity, this time introducing a non-linguistic, complementary graphic element.

The branding initiative also augmented the school’s marketing lexicon. “Think Internationally'' became the new tagline. The branding guidelines also framed the school as “an intellectual home for our students and families.”

Responsive classroom

The Values now informed much of the school’s intricate, interconnected ecology. Respect, Integrity, Inclusion, Collaboration and Curiosity were alive and well, especially in the “business of the business.” The five Values hold up as veritable signposts for best practice in the critical realm of student-centered, differentiated social and emotional learning.

The anachronistic, austere formality of a one-size-fitsall, teacher-center-stage classroom was long gone. The wisest and most effective teachers had always known that you can’t really teach your class unless you get to know them. The task is not the delivery of a curriculum. It is about making it stick.

At the beginning of each academic year the teacher must begin anew. The essential responsibility is the learning experience of each and every student in the class. Curious works in progress all–they arrive wide-eyed, preconfigured with idiosyncratic emotional dispositions and learning modalities. To appropriate Walt Whitman, they “contain multitudes.”

What the best practitioners knew all along was now backed up by frontier research in neuroscience. Cognition is inextricable from social and emotional well-being. Bringing differentiation to designing and executing classroom activities is perfectly doable. It is not solipsistic customization. That would be no fun, and also performatively impossible. Extreme differentiation would also sabotage the all important social dynamic–a sense of co-

hesiveness and belonging in a lively class collective.

What seems necessary is a “just right” Goldilocks approach to differentiating class activities. An approach that goes way beyond teaching to the middle. One that keeps not just the liveliest and most active kids engaged, but also the quieter and dreamiest. Keeping everyone in the room as much as possible in the flow of their own stretch learning zone. Not so challenging as to bewilder and shut down learning. Not so trivial and routine as to stultify and have half the class distracted by what's going on outside both the actual and metaphorical window.

Social and emotional learning had evolved over the decades. It was now being addressed in the lower school using Responsive Classroom, a set of research-based practices that provides a shared language and approach to building an inclusive classroom culture – including teaching skills essential to peaceful conflict resolution. The program’s goal is to help students develop self-awareness and a greater understanding of others. Students learn to recognize and control their own anger and to communicate their feelings in a constructive way. These gentle steps encourage self knowledge and the beginnings of metacognition.

Habits of mind cultivated in Responsive Classroom, aligning with school Values, include encouraging others when they make a mistake or lose in a game and saying you’re sorry if you’ve hurt someone’s feelings. A heartwarmingly beautiful sign was posted stating, “You are not allowed to say you cannot play.”

Conversations about Responsive Classroom were an enlivening feature of faculty meetings and professional development days. An analogous evidence-based approach was extended age-appropriately in the Upper School with the implementation of Culturally Responsive Teaching.

Culturally Responsive Teaching takes an overtly conBiotechnologists

structivist approach, intentionally connecting students’ cultures, languages, and life experiences with what they learn in school. “It’s easier for our brains to learn and store information when we have a hook to hang it on.”

That hook is lived experience. Students are in medias res. There are no blank slates in the room even when a brand new idea is being introduced. Also implicit in this approach is the transformative nature of learning. A shift in understanding literally changes who we are.

Undergirded by the school Values, Responsive Classroom and Culturally Responsive Teaching incorporated the best bits of Blended Learning and Design Thinking. Certain invaluable Mission- and Values-driven dispositions emerged. For example, a growth mindset is an inevitable consequence of healthy curiosity. Curiosity as a disposition extends far beyond what is being studied in class. It is also being curious about oneself, what others might be thinking. This not only enhances collaboration and teamwork, but also spills over into being intrigued by viewpoints from other backgrounds, places, and cultures. It encourages perseverance spurred on by the ultimate generative question–"What else is possible?"

Urban Engagement

The Vibrant Urban Campus strategic goal introduced the Urban Engagement Program. Urban Engagement complements Global Travel. It contains three strands: a high school internship and mentorship program; a salon series for adults; and schoolwide days of service in which whole families can take part. The focus is on engaging with our San Francisco community, learning with and from our city, and providing our international school students and families with opportunities to benefit from and contribute to our local community.

Internships help students develop work skills and define their interests, sometimes with the participation of

parents in the program sharing their professions. Salons highlight the rich expertise and diversity of our school community, with parents and alums sharing their work with others. Family service days at GLIDE have been deeply powerful, and a number of families continue to volunteer on their own as a result.

Exploring nature and the world

Our lower school students have always learned locally beyond the classroom. The foundations of a global mindset and international mindedness begins unhurriedly close to home. A Maternelle child’s journey to becoming acquainted with the world around them, away from home, begins in kindergarten, when students travel one hour north of San Francisco to Marin's Slide Ranch for an overnight trip. They participate in a variety of outdoor activities, including hiking, gardening, making bread, feeding animals, making s'mores, and camping in tents.

Maternelle sandbox

The mind-expanding voyage continues throughout the lower school years–with trips gradually increasing in length, scope, and distance from home, further cultivating autonomy and self-confidence. The adventure continues with the Strasbourg exchange rite of passage in Grade 5, third language linguistic trips in Grade 7, the Grade 8 Paris exchange (the one we started in 1986) and the gorgeous smorgasbord of Global Travel in the International High School.

One school identity

A major initiative emerging from Neustadt research and the Strategic Plan was the need to forge a “one school” identity. This was deemed essential both for coherent branding, and to provide clarity and help stakeholders anticipate the stages of the school’s international curriculum as they move seamlessly–“En Route"–through the various sections of the school.

In recent years the school established and ritualized En Route programs for kindergarten families moving from the 1155 Page campus to enter Grade 1 at 150 Oak, Grade 5 families graduating from Lower School and moving up to Middle School, and Grade 8 families continuing their bilingual journeys at International High School. At each stage, Principals focus on the excitement of the immediate changes associated with each rite of passage, but they also keep the big picture in mind, informing families about the endgame–our two baccalaureate programs!

International Program Promise endgame

During En Route sessions families learn about the two parallel programs in our International High School. The French Section culminates famously in Le Bac. The International Section (including more than half of each Grade 9 class welcomed from multifarious middle schools) leads to the International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma.

The two baccalaureates have much in common. This is especially true since the French Bac reforms of 2019, when traditional fixed menus of studies, known as séries, were abandoned, and much greater emphasis was placed on continuous assessment throughout the final two years of school, rather than everything hinging on a dozen exams taken within a few short weeks at the very end.

The French Baccalauréat has a distinct pedigree. The Napoleonic reforms of 1808 revolutionized the French educational system—embracing Enlightenment ideals, and moving away from religious dogma and feudalism. The IB was launched in 1968. It was strongly influenced by the French Bac. It focused overtly on education for a better world. The ideals that inspired the baccalaureates when they were launched were ambitious in 1808, and in 1968, and remain so today.

Both Bacs

Both Bacs are prestigious, two-year mini-degree programs undertaken during the final two years of high school. Both Bacs are highly customizable. Students choose combinations of subjects that reflect their strengths, future college aspirations, and passions. Both Bacs culminate in a substantial research project freely chosen by the student. In the IB, the research project is known as the Extended Essay. In the French Bac it is the Grand oral presented live.

Both Bacs include philosophy. International Baccalaureate students take a critical thinking class called Theory of Knowledge. French Bac students study text based philosophy in their final year.

The Bac philosophy exam has become so iconic that the exam questions for the year are published in national newspapers. Millions of French adults look forward to this day—the questions are discussed at length in the media by public intellectuals and celebrities!

College Admission offices across the U.S. and the world build ongoing relationships with schools offering the French Bac or the IB Diploma, knowing that their students have not been burdened by busy work or rote tasks. Colleges know that French or International Baccalaureate students come already prepared for the upper level thinking, sophisticated writing, global-mindedness, and independent research skills that lie ahead. Compared to their peers, baccalaureate students tend to go to university at higher rates, go to more selective universities, and perform better once there.

The French Bac is the program of choice for our students who feel completely at home in a French approach to teaching and learning. French Bac students form strong bonds with their teachers and experience a tremendous sense of camaraderie. For these students, Le Bac is the natural culmination of a bilingual immersion journey that began in kindergarten or preschool, and not necessarily through exposure at home—many of our highest performing Bac students come from Bay Area families where French is not spoken.

In the International Baccalaureate, students have the opportunity to select six subjects unique to their interests. Students further play to their strengths by selecting at least three of their chosen subjects at higher level for in-depth study. In addition to their six core subjects, IB Diploma students also take Theory of Knowledge, and complete their Extended Essay. The Diploma experience is rounded off with the student’s personalized array of extracurricular activities blending Creativity, Activity and Service. In recent years the school has extended the menu of

IB subjects to include: Film, Psychology, Global Politics, Environmental Systems and Societies, Design Technology, Computer Science and Information Technology in a Global Society.

Senior Walk

Along with familiar PK3-12 identity rituals like the Kermesse fair, Move-Up Day, and bringing in Grade 1 reading partners at the end of Grade 5 promotion; Senior Walk has become a school coming-of-age tradition. After their celebratory senior lunch, which takes place on the day their baccalaureate classes conclude and they enter into exams, Grade 12 students make a final promenade passing through each floor. Teachers and younger students line the hallways and greet the graduates with boisterous applause, cheers, and high fives!

Senior Walk 2018

Better Together

Veteran PreK Teacher Jenny Sandelson and students at her annual Tea Party at the Maternelle

In 2019, the iconic Notre-Dame de Paris Cathedral was severely damaged by fire. Later in the year the celebrated Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison, author of Beloved and The Bluest Eye passed. Greta Thunberg made headlines at the 2019 UN Climate Action Summit. In her speech she exclaimed, "This is all wrong. I shouldn't be up here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean. Yet you all come to us young people for hope. How dare you?"

The year also heralded the banality of the college admissions cheating scandal, the Mueller report, and levying of the first of two distinct impeachment proceedings arising from the conduct of Donald Trump.

Bises

The 2019-2020 faculty Rentrée was launched with the usual upbeat aplomb. The ambiance in the gym was charged with hope and renewal. It was loud. It felt good. Calins and bises abounded. Old and new faces were speedily and raucously re-acquainted, fueled by flaky croissants and strong coffee. It took several minutes for Melinda to quell the excitement and settle the crowd. She did this with good humor with her signature teacherly quip about available seating at the front.

Of course this was all pre-pandemic. For now it was business as usual. Nobody could imagine the lethal global pandemic that would force school closure half way through the second semester. We were blissfully unaware. The first known case of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China would not appear until December 2019.

In an uplifting opening speech Melinda extended her vision of “Better Together.” She, quoted Montaigne and

Dewey in the context of the school’s tripartite identity and education of global citizens. Montaigne had affirmed in his 1575 essay On the Education of Children–written in France at a time fraught with conflict, as is our own–the experience of diversity is at the heart of any education: we must learn ‘of the humors of [other] peoples and their manners… knocking off our corners by rubbing our brains against other people’s.’ in order to build our own understanding of the world.”

Melinda went on to welcome new faculty and staff by name to the sound of warm applause. Next she delivered an appreciation of the previous year’s endgame metrics. Data points included robust Brevet, Bac, and IB Diploma examination results; college matriculations; enrollment successes; and some record breaking fundraising.

The moment Melinda thanked her faculty and staff for their partnership, and wished one and all a bonne rentrée, marked the start of what would become the most notorious and storied year in the history of the school.

Calm before the storm

Covid was looming. It would cause school closure before the end of the academic year. At this juncture, however, we were all oblivious. Nobody could anticipate the virulence and the baneful disruption to come. The Rentrée was upbeat business as usual. Business as usual at the French American and International–notwithstanding the unseen RNA menace offstage–included yet more game-changing innovation.

In 2018, we welcomed new Director of Teaching and Learning Julie Strong to our school. Her role soon morphed into an Assistant Head role leading the four Principals in the Instructional Leadership Team. Julie would

lead strategic work on curriculum and instruction and coordinate accreditations. She also held overall responsibility for oversight on our faculty’s learning and growth, leading the school’s robust professional learning program. This program encompassed individually-designed learning aligned with goal setting and school wide initiatives, as well as leadership development.

A further enrichment to professional development, championed by Melinda herself, was the introduction of a summer Experiential Learning Grant. In its first year, the program funded six faculty members from various levels of the school for projects encompassing restoration and research in the Peruvian Amazon, translating for immigrants in Florida, attending the Bard Institute for Writing

and Thinking, teaching music in Ghana, and volunteering at the Children of Haiti Project! During the year following each project, recipients would present to their colleagues on their experience and learning and share the impact of these on their practice.

Campus developments

The Vibrant Urban Campus strand of the Strategic Plan included: establishing more visual connection between the separate physical spaces at our Oak Campus; building additional flexible activity and athletics spaces; and designing and developing improved learning spaces for our adolescent students, including a dedicated building for International High School and more flexible, innovative spaces for our middle school students.

In the summer of 2019 the school built a new and inviting library for Grades 3 through 8 students on the third floor. The overwhelming emphasis for the library is the pleasure of reading physical books from its well chosen collection. There are numerous attractive and comfortable niches for doing just that. Structurally, the library is situated in the very heart of our academic program on the third floor. The design brings additional natural light to the lobby and hallway, just as the panoramic window overlook project had done previously on the second floor.

In June 2019, the school began the construction of a new playing field at 84 Page Street. The facility encompasses a 6,600 sq. ft. turf field for use by our physical education department and athletics teams. It would open just before the Covid lockdown. Attentive readers of this narrative will recall the purchase of the 98 Franklin land parcel. This site will become the dedicated building for International High School. No spoilers here. The project is astonishingly well underway. All will be revealed at the very end of this sexagennial history!

Melinda Bihn cutting the ribbon at the opening of the new 3rd Floor Library, September 11, 2019

Covid

March 2020 was the beginning of the COVID-19 onslaught. Before lockdown, the Senate acquitted President Donald Trump of impeachment charges.

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg passed. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris defeated Donald Trump and Mike Pence convincingly in the U.S. Presidential election.

George Floyd’s death provoked bitter outrage. Protesters around the world took their anger to the streets in support of Black Lives Matter. A grand jury acquitted the police officers who shot and killed Breonna Taylor in her own Kentucky home. Pivotal events like Juneteenth 1865 and the Tulsa Race Massacre could no longer be downplayed as a divided nation reckoned with its history.

School closure

On March 16 2020, in response to the Covid pandemic and to the orders of the San Francisco Mayor and the Department of Public Health, French American + International moved to remote learning.

On the first day, a strategic in-service meeting for all faculty and staff was called before unleashing remote teaching via Zoom the very next day. The Leadership Team met daily during those first weeks of lockdown to monitor and develop a measured and effective response to the changing Covid landscape. Clear, candid, and reassuring communication to all community stakeholders would be essential.

Messaging from the Office of the Head praised the adaptability and dedication of the faculty. The transition

to remote learning illustrated that “no matter how good the technology, nothing can replace the care, compassion, and connection teachers provide.” They were “accomplishing amazing feats” while teaching, planning, and working from home.

Enrollment was initially adversely affected by Covid. The admission season was closed a week after school closure with a record projected enrollment. As shelter in place unfolded 49 students withdrew, mostly in the younger grades. Many families relocated entirely; others established temporary learning pods. Further melt due to covid-related hardship for families already enrolled was mitigated with the school providing $350K extra financial aid and with the extraordinary measure of the Temporary Childcare Support Program, which helped families with the cost of childcare during remote learning.

Lower School Soccer Camp on the new turf field, August 2020

High School Diplomas delivered to homes

Everone was affected in 2020, one of the strangest of years. Our youngest students found extended remote learning difficult. Our graduating seniors experienced an anticlimactic endgame. IB and French Bac exams were canceled and results were based on continuous assessments.

Seniors had no prom or in-person graduation ceremony. Nevertheless, IB and Bac results came in strong; and families appreciated the Head and Principal delivering their hard-earned graduation diplomas directly to their homes. Melinda and High School Principal Joel Cohen were masked, but hopped out of their cars in full graduation gown and hood regalia.

Leadership, faculty, and staff worked through much of the summer break. Travel was limited, and international colleagues, in particular, could not return home to family and friends far away.

Board Commitment to Equity

Melinda’s communications were grounded in the reality that we were now confronted with two pandemics–the coronavirus and racism. Over the course of the previous year, the Board of Trustees had developed a Commitment to Equity.

The Commitment to Equity was timely. Launched shortly before the school shifted into shelter in place mode, it accompanied and rounded out the Mission and Values and set the frame for the school’s response to the murder of George Floyd and the work that followed.

COMMITMENT TO EQUITY

“We commit to advancing equity and social justice in our diverse, urban community. We fulfill this promise through our programs and practices, and we inspire and equip our students to live this commitment locally and internationally. “

History is watching

History was in the making. In the wake of recent anti-Black violence in the U.S., and fueled by powerful conversations about race and racism within our own community, including legacy parents and alumni of color, there was a renewed urgency and momentum for DEI work. Melinda pledged an overt commitment to “making antiracism, social justice, and equity the bedrock of policies, practices, and programming.”

We welcomed a new Director of DEI at the beginning of 2021. He was soon leading the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee. He was soon leading the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee. His team included counselors, deans, assistant principals, and six (stipended) faculty members. The mission of the new committee

Melinda Bihn delivering diplomas to the Class of 2020

extended to all four sections of the school.

DEI initiatives continued with a critical examination of systems for recruiting faculty, staff, Board members, and enrolling students, to bring more Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) into the community. It is a social fact that students flourish when they see themselves represented by the adults on campus. Representation was also deemed critical in the taught curriculum and in library collections. These were reviewed to integrate the authentic stories of BIPOC, and other missing voices, in ways that avoid deficit narratives.

Affinity groups were expanded beyond the High School to include a wider age range and to serve as a safe space for students who identify similarly. Students and parents articulated how microaggressions can undermine a sense of belonging. Addressing these microaggressions and creating a caring school culture where everyone is made accountable for their actions has been central in our ongoing DEI work.

Student voice has been critical in DEI initiatives. In 2020, Student Council Vice President Kennedy Academia felt compelled to “represent the 38,000 anti-Asian hate crimes that have taken place all over America over the course of the pandemic.” She made a watercolor painting of a Chinatown street layered with 38 red crumpled lanterns to evoke the victims, many of them elderly.

Cami Smith-Dahl of the class of 2020 was forthright in her 2021 La Lettre article. She wrote “I had been subjected to compounding microaggressions at International; small and nagging at first, but quickly piling up into something suffocating in its brazenness, something profoundly wounding.”

She continued in a measured, defiant tone, perhaps best described as “loving accountability.” She declared, “I don’t write these words to instigate or blame. I love my high school. At International, I served as the President

of the Black Student Union (BSU), participated in TEDx and spoke about my experiences, and co-moderated a Community Salon about Criminal Justice Reform as an alum this fall.”

She is bold in her conclusion, “I see progress at French American and International, but I know that it could be better. I am asking every single member of the French American and International community to be revolutionary in your actions… Act with a swiftness, with an undeniable sense of urgency and justice… History is watching!”

Return to in-person learning

We cannot escape the contingency of history. We cannot jump out of its one-off, here-we-are-and-this-is-howit-is, roulette wheel, specificity. The epidemiology of the COVID-19 global pandemic is a case in point. It could have been quite different. Unlike in the case of previous plagues like polio or swine flu, little children and young people mostly fared well. Covid was so much worse for adults. Just imagine if it had been otherwise.

In California, good science and good thinking about societal consequences converged. Child care facilities were urged to stay open and, where possible, give priority to the children of essential workers. Cohort sizes were reduced. Social distancing, hand-washing, and masking routines were imposed for all but the very youngest, wobbliest toddlers. From the beginning, Melinda and school leadership were clear about our intent to return to campus as soon as this was safe and permitted. This intention was clearly communicated in the Head’s messages, and the Leadership Team held a number of webinars and meetings with families, faculty, and staff throughout the spring. The French American and International K-12 faculty had dispersed in June expecting to meet their new students in person in the fall. This was not to be. On July 17, 2020, Governor Gavin Newsom announced that California

K-12 schools would be delayed in reopening for in-person learning. San Francisco County remained on the state watch list based on its virus transmission thresholds and hospitalization exigencies. The incremental return to school would be based on a strictly-regulated, school-byschool waiver basis. Melinda’s subsequent message to the Leadership Team, and then to the school community, acknowledged the new challenges but reaffirmed our commitment to returning to campus.

The Leadership Team had prepared in advance for this scenario over the summer break. As San Francisco’s international school, we were uniquely positioned to learn from the experiences of our global network of peer institutions around the world. Many schools in Europe and Asia were weeks or months ahead of us in their return to in-person learning.

Over the summer, NCIS had been busy at work on campus modifying the physical plant in accordance with SFDPH directives. We delineated 100% physical separation with the Chinese American International School. We outfitted new instructional spaces to facilitate smaller class sizes and physical distancing. We purchased extra classroom technology to support students at home, installed new sinks and handwashing stations, updated air circulation systems, and installed myriad arrow signage, directional floor dots, and plexiglass barriers. We developed a comprehensive, user-friendly SFDPH regulation-driven health and safety plan called Better Together.

Assistant Head of School for Teaching and Learning

Julie Strong was formally designated to lead the safe return to in-person learning as Pandemic Response Coordinator. Julie’s Ph.D. in Immunology from UCSF proved a most favorable contingency. Better Together began with the declaration of a set of unassailable principles that had guided our response to the pandemic from the start. The school would hold tightly to its Values, and the advance-

ment of equity and justice, as it prioritized the health and well-being of all members of the community. It would be unswerving in its commitment–whilst strictly observing SFDPH regulations–to moving as swiftly as possible to in-person, on-campus learning, especially for the youngest students.

Better Together contained a carefully-crafted Community Commitment. All school stakeholders were expected to buy-in to this written covenant and do their part. The point was not only to act in a responsible manner at school, but also away from school, including when traveling. The understanding was each individual making their own health and safety a top priority protected everyone.

While faculty were engineering Zoom breakout rooms and imagining asynchronous activities–honing their repertoire of new skills with Padlet, Flipgrid, RazKids, Google Docs, Whiteboard, Quizlet, and more–Melinda had written to Mayor Breed, indicating her intention to apply for a waiver to open Grades K-6 in person. With unswerving determination and diligence along the way, the school team ensured that the waiver process eventually played out in the school’s favor.

The school seized every opportunity to return safely to in-person instruction. We held a short summer camp for Grade 1 students and allowed faculty and staff children back to campus. However, when school actually started in the fall, only Maternelle Principal Sirika Yong’s preschool team were teaching in person.

Darkened orange skies

Wednesday, September 9, 2020 was a day of environmental and meteorological infamy. Plumes of acrid smoke from huge wildfires combined with late summer fog to darken the skies for the entire day. An eerie, apocalyptic, dirty orange glow smothered the city. At noon on Market Street it was as if day was night and night was day!

Melinda Bihn and High School Principal Joel Cohen conferring diplomas at the June 2, 2021 Graduation Ceremony at Oracle Park

The International High School Graduation Ceremony at Oracle Park, June 2, 2021

All was not lost. A few days later, a SFDPH team inspected the Oak campus for in-person learning for Grades K-8, and our faculty and staff turned on a dime again to welcome K-2 students back to campus on October 1, joining our PK3 and PK4 students. Julie exclaimed, “by then we knew that, yes, students could wear masks all day—our three-year-olds had been doing it for weeks!”

We were one of the first schools in San Francisco to welcome students back to campus in-person, and continued to be one of the first to do so each time new sections were approved for in-person learning, returning Grades 3-8 to campus throughout October. We welcomed the first high school students on November 9, becoming one of just ten in-person high schools in the city at the time.

Oracle Park

After a most challenging year, the High School Graduation took place–masked, distanced, and outdoors–at Oracle Park, home of the San Francisco Giants. This was a considerable upgrade from the home delivery of Diplomas the previous year. The spectacular venue more than compensated for the masking and social distancing. In-

ternational was the only high school using the stadium that year that obtained permission to perform live music!

Appreciation

Throughout the return to school, the Head’s office and section Principals received daily communications from parents. Initially many were anxious, but as the year unfolded, there was an outpouring of feedback expressing genuine gratitude. One parent wrote, “We are truly so grateful to you and to our teachers and to school staff for shepherding us through this trial of a year… What a marathon this has been - ugh. I hope you too can see some glimmers signaling the end of our dark Covid tunnel."

Here is another, “To say that FAIS absolutely knocked this pandemic year out of the park under the most difficult of circumstances would be an understatement. You kept our daughter happy, educated and safe. We are so grateful for the school, its teachers and administrators.”

Spontaneous notes of appreciation also began to surface from the faculty. One colleague wrote, “I want to very sincerely thank you for keeping the ship afloat this year and making it possible for us to go back to teach in person as early as October. I cannot imagine the amount of work, persuasion, and courage it must have taken to get everybody on board.”

The value of in-person learning was a recurring theme. A high school teacher wrote “having a full class of students in front of me on Monday with no need for my computer for the first time in 13 months and 10 days (yes I am counting) felt so great that I teared up a little and I felt how much each one of us, teachers, students, staff, administration, and leadership has gone through to get to this very moment.”

At the end of 2020-2021, all faculty and staff received a formal commendation, signed by Board Chair Amy Baghdadi and Melinda. This was followed by a timely and cathartic end-of-year celebration in the Arts Pavilion.

The view from the High School office on September 9, 2020

Looking Forward

The Hill We Climb

The insurrection on January 6, 2021 was a stark erosion of democracy for the whole world to see. A mob of Donald Trump supporters attacked the Capitol Building. They attempted to stop formal sanctioning of Trump's defeat in the 2020 presidential election. Five people were killed. More than 130 police officers were injured. Four officers died by suicide soon after.

The failed coup was banal in its deadly chaos and ineptitude. What beggared belief, as it unrolled before the eyes of the world, was that it had been encouraged by an outgoing President. The insurrection will go down as an abysmal low in the history of the United States of America.

A few weeks later at the Biden and Harris inauguration, Amanda Gorman, the nation's first-ever youth poet laureate, read her poem The Hill We Climb. Her hope-filled,

higher-ground counter to entrenched partisan division was to portray a “nation that isn't broken; but simply unfinished.”

Other notable events in 2021 included a spectator-free Tokyo Olympics, and a guilty verdict for the murderer of George Floyd. Juneteenth, which commemorates the end of slavery in the United States, became a federal holiday. In Afghanistan, the Taliban returned to power in the blink of an eye, following a hurried and harried withdrawal of United States troops.

The Covid landscape continued to shift in 2021. The Delta and Omicron variants surfaced. By the end of the year Covid had caused five million deaths globally, with 800,000 in the USA.

As these and other key world events unfolded we continued to address them age-appropriately and cathartically in classes with our students. Our educators never wasted an opportunity to encourage them to think critically about democracy.

Le temps retrouvé

Melinda launched the 2021 Rentrée with a set of resonant truths about the pandemic. “We had all learned to mask our smiles, to wash our hands, to stay apart when we longed to be close. We learned to live without restaurants and travel, museums, and live music. We learned to work from home, and then to come back to work. We learned to teach students online, in class, and both at once.”

We had certainly learned a lot from the Covid experience and now we were back! We were still masked, but classes were now sized normally and all students would be learning in-person. Another huge boost to faculty and staff morale was the return to a full calendar of in-person community events.

Things kicked off with a swag-adorned, highly demonstrative crowd—oozing school spirit—at the Fan Jam at

Classmates gather at the 3rd Floor Library

Kezar Stadium. Songs for Senegal also returned, with its rapt audience filling the bleachers in the gym. Jaguar athletes competed fiercely against peer schools in three seasons of sport. Team sports were thriving again and resulted in league and play-off successes.

The Back à Dos ensemble had a triumphant year that culminated in a meta-cognitive, thought-provoking, jarringly beautiful musical based on the Old English epic poem Beowulf. The opening night performance was staged audaciously on the Oak Yard play structure.

Live Lower School theater also returned with three high quality productions. Contes sens dessus dessous, a raucously costumed, Cleopatra-themed Asterix! and Le Petit Nicolas were performed by Grades 3, 4, and 5 respectively. Our teacher director, David Valyre reminded appreciative parent audiences that “theater is a fantastic tool to socialize the children, develop their imaginations, help them overcome their fears, and teach them to internalize a foreign language."

One-on-one Conservatory music lessons resumed. Large and small instrumental ensembles and the faculty/parent choir were back. Concerts were performed live. Both the Lower School Art Show, with its Earth-themed

monoprints and stop-motion movies, and the Maternelle Festival des Arts, were attended by hundreds of appreciative parents.

Other community events included but were not limited to: the Progressive Dinner, the Moveable Feast, multiple Parents of Students of Color (POSOC) gatherings, and, of course, Hollywood Nights–a rollicking live auction that broke attendance and fundraising records in support of our school.

High school students were able to dress in their idio-syncratic finery for the Winter Formal and Prom. Faculty and staff partied at Melinda’s home at Thanksgiving. The year ended with en masse Athletics and Back à Dos banquets, and the return of the Senior Walk, and a restorative, “old normal” High School graduation at historic Herbst Theater.

For the 2021-22 academic year international travel was still covid-restricted, nevertheless, students were able to enjoy Washington D.C., New Orleans, Hawaii and a music tour in New York.

Soon after the Rentrée the Admission folks worked closely with a professional film company to make an International High School recruitment movie consisting entirely of student voices. The script was edited down from more than 15 hours of candid interviews conducted over two Saturdays. The students stand together at the very end of the movie and declare, "We know who we are… we are International!"

The film crew quickly became quite enamored with the school; especially the authenticity and the smarts of the students. The very same professional crew later collaborated with Advancement to produce a Financial Aidthemed movie for the Auction. Sometimes a Values-driven crew and cast ensemble artistic project just gels and really works. We think this is evident in the final cut of both movies.

60th Anniversary Picnic, August 27, 2022

Further empirical evidence that our sixty-year-old, venerable institution was alive and well included robust enrollment despite a hybrid Admission season, terrific Brevet, Bac, and IB results, and yet another impressive college endgame.

The Advancient team, led by Director Stephen Dini, had an excellent year. Total annual giving has topped $2 million for the past four years, setting a new record in 2022. This includes #GivingTuesday and an auction that raised $350,000 and $850,000 respectively.

60th Anniversary

At French American + International, preparations were underway to celebrate its sexagennial. Festivities were set to kick off on August 27 with the 60th Anniversary Back-To-School Picnic at the Civil War Parade Ground at the Presidio. This would be followed by a 60th Anniversary Party at the Four Seasons Hotel on September 24. The third and final opportunity to honor the 60th would be the Cercle du Proviseur gathering at the St. Francis Yacht Club on December 8.

Documentation of the 60th Anniversary would include the very book you are now reading (which, of course, complements Dan Harder’s A Look Back, written for the 50th); as well as an interactive timeline on the school's website.

Sexagesimal numerology

The school’s sexagennial is a worthy landmark. Sixty years is a long time–several human generations in fact. Certainly long enough for a school to come of age and go from good to great.

But what of the number 60 itself? It feels a certain way. It has a symmetry and austere beauty all of its own. It is conveniently composite with its 12 perfect factors. The ancient Sumerians appreciated this and adopted a sexa-

gesimal number system five thousand years ago. Sixty is a familiar friend for counting minutes and seconds and–especially in the cerebral cortexes of budding geometry and trigonometry students–for manipulating equilateral and standard right angle triangles.

And you don’t have to be a chemistry nerd to appreciate the structure of buckminsterfullerene, the sixty carbon atom C60 allotrope. Every soccer ball has a similar truncated icosahedral, Archimedean configuration.

Whatever next?

Soon the dust will settle on 60th Anniversary celebrations and French American + International will launch the first stage of its next Strategic Planning process.

The following big picture call to action was written by Melinda for the 2020-21 Rentreé. It was used verbatim to conclude our recent CIS/WASC and CAIS accreditation

Self Studies. In this author’s not-at-all-humble opinion it should be required preliminary reading for all Strategic Plan stakeholder participants, including students of all ages.

Former faculty member and 50th anniversary historian Dan Harder at the 60th Anniversary Party

As we begin this new school year, it’s important to pause and think about what beginning school again means—despite, and perhaps especially because of, these strange circumstances. At this historic moment, as we witness the fight against Covid and the fight for racial justice in this country and across the world, what does it mean to be a school—and what does it mean to be this school, French American and International, in particular? A school community is defined not by its circumstances, not by its buildings, nor even by its curriculum, but by its ideals. They make us who we are, and they guide us toward who we can be. They explain our past and they point to our future. They tell us what we must do, and how we must do it.

Best and worst of times

The relevance and urgency for what education means at French American and International–“in particular”–is glaringly obvious. There can be no let up in preparing our young citizens to make a difference in the existentially-threatened world they did not create but will inherit.

If this sounds like scaremongering or hyperbole–especially in the context of Stephen Pinker’s reminder that “we live longer, healthier, safer, wealthier, freer, more peaceful and more stimulating lives than those who came before us”–reflect for a moment on recent events. This 22nd year of the third millennium has already been a year of living dangerously.

On the 26th of February, Russia invaded Ukraine. On the 14th of May in Buffalo, NY, ten, mostly elderly, Black people buying groceries at their local food market were massacred in an overtly racist shooting. Ten days later the Uvalde Elementary School shooting left a child body count second only to that of Sandy Hook. At the end of June, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

Extreme weather events continue to raise climate consciousness. The now familiar catalog of wildfires,

droughts, floods, storms, and soaring record temperatures provide an in-your-face foreshadowing of climate catastrophe. These events are not just inconvenient; very often they are deadly truths. It remains to be seen whether this year’s COP27, climate crisis conference–hosted in Egypt in November–will shift ongoing carbon and methane emissions pledges to meaningful action.

Microcosm

No need for a spoiler alert. Predicting even the chapter headings of the 2023 Strategic Plan is performatively impossible. The Strategic Plan will be Mission-, Values-, and Commitment to Equity-driven. It will prioritize the long term sustainability of the institution and the sustainability of our shared planet. It will build both on the legacy of the past and the momentum of current projects. It will be aspirational, but doable. It will be the foundation of our yearly action plan for the foreseeable future.

There is much more to say about the Strategic Planning process than merely listing these best practice prerequisites. Strategic Planning is an inherently creative and emergent enterprise. It will be puzzling and intriguing. It will be argumentative, tense at certain junctures, but also positively uplifting. It will cultivate delight. It will be a safe, discursive coming together of invested, connected stakeholders who will bring a hybrid, vigorously diverse portfolio of perspectives. In short: a microcosm of the school itself.

Reflecting on the return to school after lockdown, Assistant Head Julie Strong declared that, “change is still with us, as we move not back to our old ways of doing school, but forward towards a new reality, one which takes the best of what was created this year and adds the human interactions that we have all been craving.”

And, as we move forward in this spirit with the 2023 Strategic Plan, Melinda’s call to action is that “our tra-

Rendering of the street level for the proposed new high school campus

dition of critical thinking requires us to examine the gap between our aspirations and our actions, and our mission and values call on us to do more.”

Fusion of horizons

It is a fair wager that some of the big picture themes emerging from this slim sexagennial history will feature in the Strategic Plan. It is highly probable that we will be invited to engage our signature critical thinking to address gaps between aspirations and action in curricular and school life domains such as: the balance between

urban and global engagement; the relationship between grassroots attitudes towards sustainability and what it means to be internationally-minded; evolving blended learning and design thinking post-Covid; the ongoing holistic wellbeing and mental health of all of our students, and, not least, a renewed vision for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.

There is more to crafting a visionary Strategic Plan than developing a soldierly action plan for implementation in the medium term. The Board of Trustees know they must adopt an unblinkered, longer-term view. What will be their vision for the school for the looming semisesquicentennial in 2037, and the fanfare centennial of 2062?

Long-game Board thinking will be imaginative, but rooted in the real world, pragmatism in service of the long term sustainability, and the kudos, of San Francisco's premier international school. How might this be diluted, or even usurped, by existential threats from up and coming peer schools? It is wisdom, not sacrilege, to take stock and do some meta-thinking–to critique and, perhaps, hone the mission and values, and even reassess how the school should be named?

98 Franklin

Shifting now to firmer ground, the one Strategic Plan item that is punningly concrete (rather than merely speculative) is moving forward on building the new stand-alone high school.

We own the large corner parking lot adjacent to our main building at 98 Franklin Street. In 2020, the San Francisco Planning Department altered their zoning map to allow substantial height increases on select parcels close to public transit in the Market & Octavia Hub–98 Franklin was serendipitously included. The Board of Trustees responded with its characteristic boldness and vision, designing a plan that will shape our school’s fu-

Veronica Parks, from the first FABS class, at the 60th Anniversary Party

ture, and our city’s as well. The plan for 98 Franklin was initially developed under Josh Nossiter’s leadership. New Board Chair Amy Baghdadi has continued to advance it and the Capital Campaign, while stewarding the school through the pandemic.

As a consequence, we will soon build a pristine, distinct International High School. In partnership with our architect, Skidmore, Owings and Merrill; our developer, Related Companies; and the City of San Francisco, we will construct a mixed-use tower project that will house our new high school on floors 1-5, and apartments on the 31 floors above! The project will dramatically enhance our visibility in the city, and will strengthen our prominence as a global leader in international education. The project will enhance student recruitment and retention.

The capital campaign for this project has been hugely

successful. At the time of writing Campaign for a Bold Future stands at $14.4 M, the largest campaign in school history. The campaign’s remit also includes providing expanded space for our middle school students at 150 Oak Street. This campaign will also serve future generations of students. It enables the school to retain ownership of the 98 Franklin building, extend a ground lease to the developer, and receive a revenue stream for the next 99 years!

The new high school design is “spatially dynamic… inspiring and surprising–with 86,000 square feet of community spaces and flexible classrooms that are easily reconfigured.” A 4,000 square feet auditorium will serve as a marketplace of ideas–a focal gathering and events place. These innovative architectural spaces will support current and future advancements in education.

Maternelle students lining up for afternoon pickup, 2016

Lower school students applauding the traditional release of the doves on Peace Day, October 2010

Où allons-nous ?

Full circle

Long live verb conjugations! We rely on them to navigate living in time. Our default tense seems to be the subjunctive. It feels like we live each fleeting, waking moment, where a flickering remembrance of things past meets an imagined future of what ifs? Gauguin's great painting D'où venons-nous ? Que sommes-nous ? Où allons-nous ? gets straight to the point. Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?

Our revels now are ending

As this affectionate, at times very nearly-reliable, historical narrative edges towards closure, we can be confident that the school’s Mission, Values, and Commitment to Equity are alive and well. We have been unassailable in educating for a better world and thinking internationally.

Pick your mental map to get your head around the autopoetic, shifting territory that was… is now… and will go on to be... the most astonishing French American + International.

The aircraft carrier; the village; the storied San Francisco nonprofit; the pioneer mover and shaker and legitimizer of bilingual education; the thought leader in the international schools arena; the cross-cultural cognition incubator; the oasis of critical thinking where facts and evidence really matter; the seeker of unforeseen truth; the all-too-human, capable and fallible social experiment; the linguistically bound and bounded, Better Together, proudly engaged culture; the shifting cast of colorful characters, the urgent and relevant antidote to tumultuous times; and those doggedly persistent, unassailable, origin story core values–that never stopped moving to stay the same.

In the end–and this really is the end–it has always been about the kids. It's about hope and positive renewal and the simple, sweet, empowering pleasure of learning and being together; and it doesn't really get better than that. Returning full circle to those erstwhile visionary founders–fierce francophiles all–let’s just say, this is where the story stops this ti…

High School Graduation Ceremony, June 4, 2016 at Herbst Theatre

Acknowledgements

First and foremost, I thank my friend and colleague Dan Harder most effusively for A Look Back. Dan’s book was published to celebrate the school’s 50th Anniversary. In crafting this sexagennial narrative, I leaned heavily on Dan’s careful primary and secondary source research and delightful prose.

Thinking Internationally is a different beast. As a 60th Anniversary quasi-sequel to A Look Back, it moves very swiftly through the first five decades and takes a closer look at 20122022. The main source material for the current project was a bulky collection of archival copies of La Lettre, the school’s signature magazine produced with aplomb by Director of Publications, Rick Gydesen. I am grateful to Rick for this charismatic source material. The work also leans heavily on accreditation documentation, Head and Principal communications, scripts of Marketing and Admission events, and the school website. The details and chronology of the relentless march of tumultuous global historical events that pepper the narrative were multiple tertiary source websites that included: The Atlantic, The Smithsonian, Department of State: Office of the Historian, The Economist, and the BBC.

Thanks are due to the school’s entire shifting cast of colorful characters. A list of thought partners and influencers who contributed directly and indirectly to this work includes, but is not limited to:

Barbara Abecassis · Kennedy Academia · Lesley Adams ·

Mauricio Albrizzio · Katia Aouat · Amy Baghdadi · Nathalie

Barclay · Allen Basbaum · Peter Bell · Howard Berman · Frank

Bessone · Melinda Bihn · Kathleen Blamey · Christine Bois ·

Katherine Boucher · London Breed · Betsy Brody · Mara Lea

Brown · Ellen Burge · Jane Camblin · Minakshi Capur · MariePierre Carlotti · Val Casilang · Philippe Charpantier · Adam

Cioth · Malcolm Clark · Dereke Clements · Andrew Cohen ·

Joel Cohen · Marion Levesque Cohen · Josh Cohn · Brad

Cooreman · Erin Cronin · Orpheus Crutchfield · Ellen Deitch

Stern · Antoine Delaitre · Pauline Dides · Stephen Dini ·

Coumba Diouf · Donatella Donovan · Nhlete Donovan ·

Sébastien Dufresnes · Marie Duverge · Denia Ebersole · JeanPierre Fauré · Claude Farrugia · Grant Garland · Azeb Gessesse

·

Judith Glickman · David Goldberg · Jerry Goldberg · Kate

Goldberg · Gregor Guy-Smith · Rick Gydesen · Christopher

Hall · Alistair Hamilton · Michelle Haner · Mouna Harifi ·

Esther Hernandez · Laurence Hills · Aïcha Idelcaldi · Bernard

Ivaldi · Carl Jacobs · Dee Johnson · Sara Johnson · Chad Jones

· Academia Kennedy · Andrea Kennedy · Scott Kennedy ·

Isabella Ketchen · Daniel Klingebiel · Alioune Kone · Susan

Le Corre · Pierre LeCorre · Shirley Lee · Françoise Lejeune ·

Benoit Levet · Maxim Levet · Aaron Levine · Paul Loffler · Niris

Lui · Elsa Lundy · Netta Maclean · Tunde Martins · Edouard

Mayoral · Marianne Merle · Catie Mudge · Charlene Murphy

· Jean-Pierre Nagy · Mark Neustadt · Josh Nossiter · Margaret

Nwabueze · Scott Paton · Matthew Perifano · Nathalie Plecy ·

Marcus Porchia · Ken Ralston · Florence Richard · Jeannette

Rouger · Nathalie Roussille · Catherine Santos da Silva · Roger

Schactel · Tex Schenkkan · Johann-Caspar Schilling · Laurent

Scotto Di Uccio · Martine Sheppard · Cami Smith-Dahl · Chris

Spano · Dina Srouji · Martha Stookey · Julie Strong · Hilary

Sy-Quia · Elijah Tanumyrosghi · Richard Ulffers · Charlie

Underwood · Fabrice Urrizalqui · David Valeyre · Elena Vlad ·

Edie Wexler · Olivia White · Laetitia Wilcox · David Williams

Fearless Founders

Francis Carmody, Balthasar Cermakian, Andrew Cole, Richard

Ham, Claude Reboul, Murray Richards, Henry Potter Russell, Germaine Thompson, Michel Weill · Pierre Basdevant, French

Consul General · Jeannette Rouger, Founding Head.

RAY CHARLES, ONSTAGE IN STOCKHOLM 1972

"I love that word ‘International’— it’s so big!"

“When you are taught that the world in all its iterations is yours to apprehend, nothing is foreign.”

ALEX SZOTAK, CLASS OF 2013