Connections Magazine Annual Report 2022/2023

Connections The International School of Amsterdam Magazine

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2022-2023 ANNUAL REPORT EDITION

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Contents

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Mission, Vision and Beliefs

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Financial Overview

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Agents of Change - 21st Century Learners

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Week in the Workplace

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Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at ISA

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Class of 2022 College Matriculation

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One Year of After School Care at ISA

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25 Years On Campus

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Girl Up Secures Gender Equality Win for ISA

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The PTA and the Pandemic

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Class of 2022 Graduation Ceremony

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CDLT: A Year in Review

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Mission, Vision and Beliefs Our Mission To educate for international understanding.

Our Vision To create a community of lifelong learners who value inquiry, critical and creative thinking, take informed risks, and act with integrity and compassion.

Developing Minds

Developing Character

Developing Communities

Inquiry and Reflection

Respect and Collaboration

Uniting in Diversity

Critical and Creative Thinking

Integrity and Compassion

Sustainable Futures

Curiosity and OpenMindedness

Choices & Risks

Strong Connections

Balanced Lives

Empathy

Professional Development

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Financial Overview The financial strategy of the International School of Amsterdam is set to assure the long-term viability of the school. The financial operational activities ensure that the income received is effectively allocated to support student learning. At the end of each school year, an independent Dutch audit firm audits the school’s financial records. The results of this audit are approved and authorized by the Board of Trustees and the independent auditor.

Total Nationalities 2021-2022

Enrollment During the 2021-2022 school year, a total of 1,327 students were enrolled; this is the total physical number of students enrolled during the academic year, regardless of the start date of matriculation. We ended the year with an enrolled student FTE (full-time equivalent) of 1,287 students.

Revenue The International School of Amsterdam generated an income of 34.2 million Euros in the 2021-2022 school year.

The school has been able to keep the increase in tuition fees in line with the official Dutch rate for the cost of living. The average tuition increase approved by the board of Trustees for the school year 20212022 school year was 3.5%.

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Allocation of Revenues

The focus of the school’s Administration remains to be efficient in operational areas of the school without reducing the level of service and to invest so that we can continue to improve the education for all children attending ISA. This continued effort enables the school to keep the tuition increases to a minimum and to increase the possibilities to allocate our revenues to our core activity: student learning.

2021-2022

The distribution of our expenses is stated in the diagram shown on the left.

Client Companies

Overall Enrollment

2021-2022 5% 4% 4% 3% 2% 2% 2% 2% 1%

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Heineken Reckitt Benckiser ING Coty Danone Henkel Adidas Nike LG Electronics

1%

Stryker

73%

Other

Developing Character A focus on...

Respect and Collaboration Annual Lower School Student Council Food Drive Every Fall the ISA community traditionally comes together to help those most in need by collecting and donating food items. Our community donated two full pallets to the Sisters of Charity, an organisation that ISA has had a longstanding relationship with for over ten years. Students in the Lower School Student Council were involved at every step of the Food Drive, from coming up with and pitching a theme, to putting up posters, and sorting and packing food donations.

DISSC Volleyball and Soccer Championship Athletics at ISA wouldn’t be the same without our partners and friends in the local Dutch community. While it was difficult during the 2021-2022 school year for teams across Europe to come together to play, schools in the Netherlands decided to come together to create a competition, the Dutch International School Sports Competition (DISSC). The ISA U12, U14, JV & Varsity Soccer and Volleyball teams took part, with the volleyball games being hosted at ISA.

Integrity and Compassion Teacher to Teacher Cohorts ‘Teacher to Teacher Cohorts’ is our Lower School’s annual sharing of new ideas and professional inquiries. Faculty members present to their fellow colleagues and a notable feature of the 2022 edition was the number of sessions that dealt with mental health and wellbeing. Teacher to Teacher Cohorts are a powerful example of ISA’s enduring dedication to professional development amongst its staff, and to the integrity of the school’s commitment to embody an authentic culture of thinking.

Upper School Student Ambassadors Did you know that since the beginning of the 2021/2022 school year, ISA has welcomed more than 130 new students into Upper School? One particular group in our community plays an important role in making new students feel welcome: the ISA Student Ambassadors. Our Student Ambassadors are volunteers from our Upper School who, remembering what it felt like to be new at ISA, sign up each year to be welcoming, helpful and compassionate to their new schoolmates.

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Choices and Risks International Award for Young People During the first two weeks of May, 120 ISA students from Grades 9, 10 and 11 took part in hiking and camping expeditions as the final part of the International Award for Young People (formerly the Duke of Edinburgh Award) programme. The expeditions entailed three days of hiking and three nights camping in tents in the beautiful Beaufort region of Luxembourg. Students were responsible for their own navigation of the routes that they had planned, carrying all of their own equipment in their backpacks and preparing and cooking their own meals using camping stoves.

Grade 5 PYP Exhibition Journey The PYP Exhibition is the culminating project of the PYP and an essential rite of passage into Middle School for grade 5 students. Students work together in groups to develop a final product based on a topic of their interest and meet weekly with an adult mentor from across the school who shares their passion. This journey culminates in the exhibition itself, a whole-school celebration which is an opportunity for students to present their final product and key understandings.

Balanced Lives NECIS Spring Athletics The NECIS Sports Council aims to provide opportunities for international schools in North Western Europe to compete in specified tournament activities. Although spring is the shortest sporting season, it offers a variety of sports and many participating studentathletes: during the 2021-2022 school year, 182 Students competed in sports such as soccer, track and field, softball, tennis and golf.

Lower School Sports Day Sports day for Grades 2-5 this year included five events, with students practising sports such as kickball, playing team games, stratego and challenging themselves in an inflatable obstacle course. ISA’s youngest students, from Nursery-Grade One, participated in their own sports day. With both indoor and outdoor games and activities, including disco, swings, ‘bouncy ball mania’ and ‘the floor is lava’, students relished the chance to get outside of the classroom, be active and enjoy everything on offer, as well as their ice cream at the end of the day!

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Featured Story

Agents of Change 21st Century Learners By: Colm Brennan During the 19th and 20th centuries, education systems sometimes changed through rapid bursts of expansion and restructuring. But in between these moments, curriculum structures and delivery often remained static, linear and rigid. The industrial form of schooling meant that students were often expected to be passive participants in classrooms. Now, in the face of deep and widespread changes that are transforming our world and disrupting the institutional status quo in many sectors, there is a growing recognition of the need to re-think the goals of education, and the competencies students need to thrive. Global trends like digitalisation, climate change, and advances in artificial intelligence, to name just three, pose fundamental challenges to both the goals and the methods of education.

OECD Learning Compass 2030 concept note, p4.

Student Agency - Shaping Rather Than Being Shaped ‘Agency’ is a real buzzword around 21st century education. The OECD has placed ‘Student Agency’ at the heart of their Learning Compass 2030, a learning framework for the type of competencies they predict children will require to thrive in our highly digitised, highly globalised near future. The OECD Learning Compass 2030 advocates a model of learning based around an ‘Anticipation-Action-Reflection cycle’, where students continuously widen their perspectives and deepen their knowledge through thoughtful planning, building on prior experiences and reflecting on their growth.

Now, this reflective and holistic approach to learning might not sound totally avant-garde to those familiar with the International Baccalaureate programmes, but it’s worth drawing attention to as a signal of the growing global awareness of the importance of placing the learner at the heart of education. Young people are

not passive participants in 21st century society, and so their preparation for their social involvement - of which schooling is a major part - should not be passive either. It could be argued that on many issues, the climate change emergency being an obvious example, we cannot afford for our education systems to not encourage agency in young people.

The OECD has noted that there is no globally recognised definition for ‘student agency’, and culturally it can be difficult to place a uniform value on the concept. It has, however, attempted to define student agency as being ‘about acting rather than being acted upon; shaping rather than being shaped; and making responsible decisions and choices rather than accepting those determined by others’. ISA has long been dedicated to cultivating a school community that values student agency and an approach to learning that places major emphasis on developing character. The stated vision of ISA attests to this, in how well it aligns with the OECD’s vision for education in 2030: ‘To create a community of lifelong learners who value inquiry, critical and creative thinking, take informed risks, and act with integrity and compassion’.

Fostering autonomy and empowering students is, in practice, much easier said than done. There is a balance to be struck between providing space for students to take ownership of their own learning experience, and implementing a curriculum that will provide the subject knowledge required for examinations, university admissions and skills for the workplace. Traditional education systems were designed to cultivate productive contributors to national workforces, and however much this concept feels like it is rapidly growing outdated, the basic expectations of schools supplying competent employees can’t just be summarily cast aside. Independent schools like ISA generally have more flexibility to adapt to societal changes than national systems of education. Forward thinking adaptation requires expert educators who are aware of the disciplinary and transdisciplinary competencies required of students for university admittance and to thrive in the economy of the 21st century.

As part of its most recent accreditation process, the ISA community reflected upon how well the school is performing in its efforts to cultivate an empowered student body. Both the ISA community and the accreditation agencies agreed that this complicated,

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but crucial, facet of school operations is an area where targeted improvements can still be made. As the New England Association of Schools and Colleges (NEASC) considered how well ISA was meeting its learning principle of ‘Learner Engagement and Autonomy’, they noted that ISA students were engaged in learning throughout the school. The NEASC team further noted that ISA had room for growth in helping students personalize their own learning, especially in the Middle Years Programme.

Acting on the accreditation report, and also on the feedback received from the school’s own faculty and staff, ISA’s administration and faculty have made providing opportunities for greater student agency a key component of the 2020-2025 strategic plan.

Work has already begun on achieving benchmarks of the plan in earnest, and as this is happening concurrently with the OECD’s explicit emphasis on the importance of student agency, we find ourselves at ISA in a privileged position: observing meaningful development of a critical societal trend in action around us. ‘Student Agency’ sounds wonderful, and is something that everyone from intergovernmental economic organisations, to independent school accreditation agencies, to MYP students and teachers in Amsterdam, feel strongly should be prioritised by modern education institutions around the world - but what does it actually look like in practice, and how does its value manifest itself day-to-day for a student community in a place like ISA?

GOA at ISA It’s 2pm on a rainy Autumn afternoon, and class is in session for ISA’s high school. If you’ve ever walked these Upper School school corridors during class time, you’ll know how unlikely it feels that over 400 teenagers are present all around you. Behind closed doors, language classes are in full swing, and the air inside of the classrooms rings out with the sounds of lessons in Dutch, French, Japanese, German, Mandarin, Spanish and more. But outside, the halls are mostly empty (save for one or two stragglers rushing from their lockers) and all is quiet. This is the way things have been for years.

Stop in the right place for a minute though, and you

may notice something slightly out of the ordinary. If you’re in one of the school’s cafeterias or in the Upper School library, you might notice individual students dotted around, joining zoom calls with teachers and classmates spread across the world, or watching lectures on their laptops on subjects as wide ranging as entrepreneurship and data visualisation. These tenth 11

grade students are part of ISA’s newest pioneering group of online students, enrolled in the Global Online Academy (GOA). GOA is a non-profit organisation that ISA has partnered with for the first time for the 2021-2022 school year, as part of the concerted effort to increase levels of student agency in the Middle Years Programme. It offers a chance for students to take part in collaborative, online courses with levels of specialisation and choice that schools wouldn’t be able to offer as standalone programmes on campus.

Courses generally run over the timespan of a semester, so this year’s trailblazers are currently working through the first of their two courses for 2021-2022. Summer courses are also available for selection, but for now ISA tenth graders have the choice to apply to be in a GOA course during the school year in place of the second of their two acquisition languages on their daily schedule.

Blythe Carney is taking a course in Positive Psychology this semester. She recalls that she initially thought GOA

sounded quite complicated, but was enthused by the interesting course options. In addition, after the COVID affected, previous school year, she felt confident in her ability to thrive in asynchronous learning. She explains that the semester-long course is broken down into units, and each unit is about 3 weeks long. ‘We’ve focussed on one part of positive psychology in each unit. So, most recently we did ‘Gratitude’, and learned about that for 3 weeks. You get different types of assignments; sometimes I do videos or have writing assignments, but none of them are too long. There are quite a few group projects too, and whenever we have a writing project we have to respond to each other, so there’s a lot of interaction’.

Mia Reyn has chosen to take a course on ‘Applying Philosophy to Global Issues’. They’ve started working on basic principles of morality - what it means to be good and how it can be measured - and then began to focus more on political systems, the structure of society and how we could go about creating an ideal political system. Mia says that when she saw the variety of courses available to choose from, she thought - ‘it would be a waste if I didn’t try it. I love learning, and I wanted to try something new’.

The GOA Site Director at ISA is Douglas Beam, and he has been overseeing the implementation of GOA in its seminal year at the school. He explains that when students apply to take a GOA course at ISA, they are required to craft a motivation statement explaining their decision, and are selected to join based on

their exhibiting the independence required for the rigorous course ahead. This is crucial, as anyone with

experience in fully-distanced learning at any level of education will attest to it not being an easy process.

Even with the group dynamics that are now possible through online learning, there is still a lot of isolated work involved, and a level of self-determination and discipline that can be quite notably different from in-person, or even hybrid, learning. In the field of Educational Design, developers for distance learning tend to adhere to the concept of ‘Equivalency Theory’ - that distance learning can, by definition, never be the same as classroom learning, and so trying to directly copy it can only create a poorer imitation. Online learning needs to be something uniquely created, and students learning online need to develop particular competencies that will help them throughout the class and in future learning situations. If student agency is about cultivating mature reflection and acting rather than being acted upon, online learning is fertile ground for catalysing this growth. Mr. Beam affirms:

‘One consistent theme that I’ve heard from GOA students is that the courses are more difficult than they thought they would be. I have also consistently heard that the courses and content are very engaging. So, the general experience has been: this is really hard, and this is really interesting!’

Of course, there is a certain level of self-selection in the type of risk-taker personalities who were likely to sign up for GOA at the first opportunity without knowing exactly what was to be in store, but Blythe and Mia are inspiring examples for how offering students the chance to embrace an elevated level of selfdetermination can be rewarding at a personal level, as well as an academic one. Blythe remarks: ‘I find myself thinking about positive psychology a lot throughout my day, and making connections to real life a lot. At school I don’t always have those connections, at least with some subjects - like maths, for example. But with psychology it’s something you can apply to pretty much anything’.

Mia also feels like the work she is doing in her online classroom is making itself visible to her in the world around her in her daily life. She adds: ‘I love being able to learn something I’m really interested in and I chose myself. It feels like a kind of freedom, and it makes me much more enthusiastic than if I was forced to do something like this. And in my course, everyone is enthusiastic.’ Blythe concurs that, in her online classroom ‘no one really slacks off. Everyone cares about it, is trying their best, and putting in the effort’.

The value of being a GOA member school dovetails beautifully with the IB Middle Years Programme’s aim of challenging students to make connections between their learning and their own world around them. At its heart, student agency is really about cultivating the individual level of motivation you find when education meets personal interest, and reaching the point where, as Mia said, ‘everyone is enthusiastic’. GOA provides students with the opportunity to explore their passions and, perhaps more importantly, take on a mature and active responsibility for their own learning. Mr. Beam has observed how ISA students have already begun to think about the big picture of their personal school experience, and have now used GOA as an opportunity to take ownership of a more curated journey through the IB. The school experience isn’t just shaping them, they are actively shaping their own experience too.

‘Creating even more places where students exercise agency is very much in line with the MYP programme.

One interesting thing that happened this year is that several students chose GOA courses that are related to the topics they chose for personal projects. So, they were actively seeking out learning experiences to grow their knowledge and understanding of interesting and important topics’

Intrinsic v Extrinsic Listening to Blythe and Mia describe their experiences with GOA, it’s not hard to feel a twinge of jealousy for the opportunities they have to study topics as niche as ‘Positive Psychology’ and ‘Applying Philosophy to Global Issues’ as tenth graders, and the positive way in which they describe their experiences. Being ‘good’ at school, and finding a passion for what you do at school, haven’t always traditionally gone handin-hand. From a personal perspective, I did my work in secondary school because I was told to, and when I found success in exam periods it was without often feeling energised by the learning experience.

As an adult, I, like millions of others in recent times, have discovered great pleasure in consuming fairly ‘educational’ media, and lamented upon such resources as lacking during my own school years. If only these books, documentaries and podcasts had been available to us then, how different school could have been! Education, it is easy to think, is wasted on the youth.

On reflection, however, things are not quite as simple as that. I might not have been thrilled if my history teacher in secondary school had prescribed a 22 hour podcast on the First World War to me, but I probably

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wouldn’t be enthused by such a command now either, as much as I enjoyed racing through it recently of my own volition. In the same way, it’s a common complaint of English language majors in university that a love of reading quickly becomes a chore of labour once the classics start appearing on reading lists rather than wishlists. Perhaps we’re deluding ourselves to think that age begins to grant us the love of learning required to really appreciate the opportunities around us to seek out knowledge, and it is actually the seeking itself that can make all the difference.

Agency allows us the opportunity to find intrinsic motivation. ‘Grown ups’ aren’t often listening to podcasts to pass tests, to satisfy their teachers or to impress their parents. The motivation for learning comes from a desire to follow interests and passions, discover new things, and perhaps share ideas with other like-minded people. This powerful force is the prize behind the door of student agency that more and more schools (and the OECD) are seeking for their students, and is what Blythe and Mia are currently finding through their GOA studies. It’s quite likely they will never meet the classmates whose work comment on in their online portal in person, and they may never hear from their GOA instructors again once their course is finished, but they approach their work with diligence borne out of a responsibility to themselves and a passion for the subject. This kind of intrinsic motivation is what schools like ISA are working towards when they speak of a community of lifelong learners who value inquiry, and critical and creative thinking.

Ultimately, the greatest benefits of GOA may not come from the (frequently fascinating!) subject matter, but from how much the subjects and the learning matters to the individual students. And when Mr. Beam pauses to consider how this group of online learners have grown through their experience so far this semester, his thoughts turn to the ‘soft skills’ they are developing - skills and attitudes that will stay with them for life: Just in this one cohort of students who have taken GOA courses, the students have really grown in their competencies. GOA develops six core competencies: • Collaborate with peers who are not sitting with them on campus.

• Communicate and empathize with people living in areas of the world that are culturally different • • •

from their own.

Leverage their curiosity to curate and create content that is relevant to real-world issues.

Reflect on and take responsibility for their learning and that of others in an open forum.

Organize their time and tasks to become independent learners.

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Interpret assignments and express themselves using a variety of learning tools.

So, students are assessed around these core competencies. This has come up in individual conversations with different GOA students and several have noted how they have learned skills and strategies to manage their work better and that some of the selfmanagement challenges that were really difficult at the beginning of the course have led to improvement throughout the semester’ As an IB continuum school, and a school with decades of experience in developing a culture of thinking and open-mindedness, the International School of Amsterdam is extremely well placed to stay ahead of the curve in this trend of modern learning and teaching. GOA is a natural addition to the work that ISA teachers do every day in helping students discover their passions, seek out connections between their learning and the world around them, and find the value in learning beyond the scores they can achieve in examinations. Students at ISA are inspired to be tomorrow’s agents of change by becoming agents of their own learning today.

Mia Reyn’s project at the end of her semester 2 GOA course was selected as an exemplary project, for inclusion in the public GOA Catalyst Exhibition Showcase. Her project, ‘How do labels impact academic performance?’, completed as part of her course on Social Psychology, was one of 20 selected as exemplary from over 500 teacher submissions. GOA course teachers submit select student work for consideration when a student’s project ‘demonstrates the target outcomes impressively and is the result of an exemplary process, including careful, thorough research, a well-crafted question, and an original response to it.

These projects also raise awareness and promote grassroots actions and institutional change’.

References https://www.oecd.org/education/2030-project/teachingand-learning/learning/student-agency/Student_Agency_ for_2030_concept_note.pdf https://www.oecd.org/education/2030-project/teachingand-learning/learning/learning-compass-2030/OECD_ Learning_Compass_2030_concept_note.pdf

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Week in the Workplace A new experience for Grade 10 ISA launched another programme for students during the last school year: Week in the Workplace. The programme is designed to provide Grade 10 students with an opportunity to spend a week gaining valuable real-life work experience within a specific field of their choice. By gaining work experience in a field they are interested in, students learn valuable life lessons that will impact their university choices and prospective career.

this connection, specifically the understanding of what it is like to go to this school and be in an international setting. Furthermore, it was very interesting to see what an ISA student could potentially do in the future as a career path, especially in one that I personally may considering”, said Emilia.

Emilia, ISA student, spent a week working with the Creative Agency team at TomTom, a Dutch navigation company that invented the world’s first route-planning software for mobile devices. What Emilia didn’t expect is that her mentor and the CEO of TomTom are both part of the ISA Alumni Community!

Appointed team members took the roles of “buddies” to support and guide the students. The TomTom team shared that “we were very satisfied with the students’ visit and engagement during the week and hope that we were able to inspire them to consider a career path in tech, to show them the importance of mapmaking and how interesting it can be. This is what our cofounders Corinne and Harold always aim to achieve through our initiatives with students.”

“It was very valuable having my mentor being an ISA alum, in the sense that I was able to talk about some of my experiences that she could connect with and vice versa. I was even able to ask her about my course choices for the following DP years and what her experience was in the IB. It was interesting to have

Last year’s Grade 10 students, Anouk and Daniela, completed their Week in the Workplace with the ISA Communications Team. Throughout the week, they visited their peers at their various workplaces, conducted interviews and wrote an article based on the student perspective:

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What is Week in the Workplace?

Week in the Workplace is a week-long internship programme. Near the end of 10th grade, all students worked at a company that relates to their personal interests. The 10th Grade class from the 2021-2022 school year consisted of 114 students. Of all those students, 53 different companies were able to host our tenth graders and 14+ career paths that relate to all these different internships. Every student has a unique role and stories to tell leaving their Week.

What is your role in this internship?

Duru and Lara – “We work with an independent artist, so it’s really just about learning and observing, we do some practical work, but it’s also a lot of back and forth with questions”

How does the company relate to your interest?

Emilia – “I work with TomTom, which is a navigation company. I put down that I really enjoy design, but I didn’t understand how TomTom could match my interest. Then I learned I would be working with a graphic designer, and I was quite excited.”

Students who did not yet have a place of employment in April/May were given a form to fill out regarding their interests. Vikki Kuelers and Susan Costello-Tennyson then worked together to find each student a suitable place to intern. A number of students were going to be disappointed with their result. Nonetheless, the students whom this happened to left the workplace more open-minded as they found their interest in something they never imagined could.

What is challenging about this role?

Derek – “ I am not really an expert in this area considering its software, so I can’t really lead in anything which I would consider a challenge” In every work environment, there are challenges, either “big” or “small”. Junseo Kim, another student intern, explained that his challenge was more related to the hands-on activities he is doing, contrasting Derek’s response. These challenges are also vastly different from what we commonly encounter at school. Learning to overcome these challenges can be another challenge in itself, but still a necessary one.

How do you think this experience will benefit you in the future?

Mayuko – “We learn about how the company works with environmental and social issues. I think this really helped me understand how we are contributing to Global Warming so in the future, I can change some of my habits.”

Most students we interviewed described how the week would help them for University or future careers. Week in the Workplace is not primarily for these reasons; it’s also to teach students things one can only truly comprehend outside of a classroom. Even with only four days, an experience such as Week in the Workplace is beneficial in many different ways.

Last year’s 10th graders were the first ever to experience Week in the Workplace. We can not wait to see this programme grow in the years to follow!

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Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at ISA ISA has an international and diverse community, with families and staff members joining from every corner of the globe. With 66 student nationalities and around 55 languages spoken within our community, our mission to educate for international understanding is more relevant and important than ever before.

As an international school, we work to ensure that every member of our organisation is equally represented and feels a sense of belonging to our school community.

While it is the responsibility of every educational institution, and indeed, every global organisation, to consider and ensure diversity, identity and equity for their community, for ISA to live true to our mission, it is important for us to be self-reflective and encourage important, and sometimes difficult conversations, around topics such as diversity, equity and inclusion, in order to best serve the needs of our students, our community and the world.

But what do diversity, equity and inclusion mean for us? Diversity refers to the different characteristics that make every person unique, while equity involves ‘distributing resources based on the needs of the recipients so that all members of a community are afforded the same opportunities to achieve equal outcomes.’ Inclusion refers to behavioural practices and social norms in a community that include and integrate everyone, so they feel an equal sense of belonging and purpose.

After taking a step back to assess the work needed to be done in this area, ISA took two steps. A Statement on Racism, Discrimination and Injustice was issued, and the ISA Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Task Force was founded, which aims to ‘advocate, educate and empower our communities to construct an antiracist, socially-just and inclusive world’ and ‘create a collective social movement to build safe, inclusive and diverse human environments through strategic cultural change.’

Through a focus on the area of DEI, encouraging conversations about identity and focusing on equity through representation and inclusion benefit not just underrepresented and underprivileged groups but also the school as a whole, just as equity benefits all of society. Students of all backgrounds are exposed to different perspectives and ideas, enriching their learning experiences and preparing them for the real world.

In the aftermath of the global Black Lives Matter movement, ISA and other international schools engaged in a period of reflection. As the Council of International Schools (CIS) stated, ‘while equity has always been part of the CIS mindset [...] the Black Lives Matter movement made us think again – at a deep organizational level. Our reflections left us, as a global membership organization, with the clear sense that ‘we need to do more,’ and ‘we know there is work to be done and CIS is committed to its own reflection and development alongside supporting our members in this area.’

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At the forefront of ISA’s continued period of reflection, exploration and commitment to deepening DEI practices in the classroom is Lower School Counsellor Eli Arenas Thomas, who has undertaken research during her Thought-full Schools Project on diversity, equity and inclusion. The Thought-full Schools Project is an opportunity for ISA faculty to engage in professional, collaborative inquiry, enriching their own practice and those of colleagues, sharing their learnings and thereby positively impacting student learning in the process. Eli is also a member of the DEI task force herself.

So, what do diversity, equity, and inclusion look like in an international school environment? As an international community, these terms mean ensuring that every member of our community feels included, represented and celebrated. For Eli, a key term in this conversation is ‘identity safety.’ Identity safety refers to an environment where students are not bullied based on their race or other aspects of identity.

Every member of the school community should feel as though they matter, ‘not in spite of, but because of who they are.’ An identity-safe school is a place where everyone feels physically and emotionally safe.

This environment can be intentionally cultivated in all learning experiences, both inside and outside of the classroom. It encompasses how adults treat students, how students treat one another, and how adults treat other adults.

What can we do as an international school to ensure an identity-safe school for all community members?

One practice that has taken place is conducting a book audit, reviewing each classroom library to spot any trends. Educators examined who wrote each book

and where it was written, discovering that the majority of books represented one group of people, specifically being written by white men from English-speaking countries such as the UK, the US or Australia. This discovery prompted educators to realise that they need to examine the resources they use to ensure that inclusion and representation are embedded into standard learning practices. This new awareness informs decision-making, which means that educators can move away from traditional stereotypes in the books and resources they use and instead use a more diverse range.

How is DEI embedded into the curriculum? One example of how students begin learning about diversity is through an activity in Pre-K called ‘The Story of My Name’. Students are required to ask their parents about their names, where they came from and why they chose the name. These questions initiate discussions about family history, language and cultural identity. Students then present their findings to the class, educating their peers on their identity and allowing the rest of the class to get to know them and their backgrounds on a deeper level. What’s in a name? For all of us, our name is a layer of our identity. As Eli points out, a key part of being an educator is managing relationships and initiating such conversations about identity to ensure that representation and diversity remain embedded in the classroom and the pedagogical choices that are being made.

Creating awareness of these topics is the first step, and it is the responsibility of educators and everyone in the school community to continue having these conversations to keep moving forward towards an inclusive, identity-safe learning community. It is our responsibility as both a school and as individuals to keep having these conversations.

As Brene Brown said, choosing our own comfort over hard conversations is the epitome of privilege.

An expert on authenticity and vulnerability, Brown considers being vulnerable as the true sign of strength.

Therefore, we must all be open to being vulnerable, accept that we have biases and be open to unlearning and relearning in order to foster identity safety. After all, what can be a more important cause than ensuring an identity-safe environment for every student and contributing to a more equitable and inclusive society?

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Reflecting on One Year of After School Care at ISA The 2021-2022 school year brought the exciting start of a new programme at ISA: for the first time, an After School and Vacation care programme for students from Pre-School to Grade 5. After one year of running the After School Care Programme at ISA, Rosa Middendorf, the Programme Coordinator, looked back on the journey of building a new programme from the ground up and reflected on some highlights from the programme’s first year.

Rosa has found developing a new programme for the school to be a “rewarding experience”. She began with a vision, which has been to create a programme that continues to promote authentic learning experiences for students, supports ISA’s mission, and creates a safe, nurturing and healthy environment to ensure children’s well-being. For Rosa, recruiting the ideal members of staff, who would bring in the right expertise to help create this environment, was an essential first part of realising this vision. Thankfully, the programme gathered a team of passionate staff members who built a welcoming and fun place for the students to be.

Rosa said: “I’m grateful for the team of professionals I work with. They are committed, passionate and care so well for the children.”

From the outset, ISA developed the programme to further our mission to educate for international understanding by encouraging students to build respect and appreciation for each other and embrace their cultural differences. While ISA students are used to learning in a culturally diverse environment throughout the regular school day, grade levels and age groups aren’t usually as mixed as in the After School Care programme, which caters to students from ages three to eleven. Therefore, Rosa initially questioned how ISA could create a safe environment for all ages where every student feels a sense of belonging. However, through conscious choices and deliberate efforts

during the development of the programme, Rosa and her colleagues worked to create a welcoming and inclusive environment for all students.

Firstly, the After School Care programme is structured

by monthly themes, with the initial theme of the month

being ‘building friendships’. Students got to know their peers in the programme, creating a bridge of connection for students from different classrooms, grade levels and cultural backgrounds. Teachers and students discussed friendships and identity, for example, what would happen if ‘Art’ and ‘Science’ were friends, despite their seemingly stark differences.

Students were surprised to learn that such opposites could be friends, sparking their curiosity and leading them to ask questions and consider friendship from a new perspective.

Positive traits such as caring and being a good listener are emphasised and praised in the programme, creating a safe space for every student which celebrates uniqueness and diversity. One way these traits are highlighted is through ‘Carpet Time’, which gives students the opportunity to talk about what they enjoyed during the session and gives educators a sense of what students are thinking and feeling: “children have so much to tell”. During Carpet Time,

Rosa ensures she highlights moments of friendship, kindness and caring amongst the students every day.

For example, if a new student joins the programme and other students make an effort to invite them to play and make sure that they are OK, this friendly and welcoming behaviour would be praised during carpet time.

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The result of these efforts is a safe, welcoming and inclusive environment for all students, with students of all ages embracing and accepting each other and enjoying the time they spend together in the programme. Younger students look up to their older peers, while the older students enjoy acting as role models, with all students gaining confidence from these experiences. For example, a sport-loving thirdgrade student asked to teach soccer to the younger students during gym class, a lovely surprise for his teachers!

“My son had a great week in the Vacation Care.”

Other themes from the After School Care programme include seasonal topics such as ‘embracing winter’, during which students participated in a winter Olympics. The first weekly theme of the Vacation Care programme during this summer break was ‘Summer Splash’, which focused on water play, including paddling pools and water gun fights! For Rosa, giving the students in the programme a voice and an opportunity to choose their activities is very important.

Students are included in planning the programme’s themes and activities and regularly give feedback on what they enjoy. For example, students in grades 3-5 were asked what they need to feel as though they have dedicated space in the programme, giving them ownership over their own learning experiences and the feeling that they are being heard. Collaboration between students and teachers is at the core of the After School Care programme. Feedback from students, parents and colleagues has been highly positive and valuable. Parents note how much their children enjoy their time in the programme, while students say they like different activities and hanging out with their friends.

After a very successful first year, the After School Care programme’s future is exciting. Rosa is looking forward to adding more activities to the programme, especially for older students and for the programme to grow and continue providing a nurturing environment and authentic learning experiences to students after school.

“I love the After School Care because it has a lot of great and fun activities. Everybody is always occupied. There is also an area for 3 Grade - 5 Grade. A space where you can do your homework and read. It’s nice and relaxing.”

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“I like the After School Care because we go out and get some fresh air while we are playing”.

“The After School Care is a really good place to be because you can hang out with your friends and play with them”.

“Thanks a lot for taking such great care of our kids.”

“You are doing a fantastic job in creating a place for our children to build their social skills.”

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Girl Up Secures Gender Equality Win for ISA ISA has taken a huge stride forward on the road to gender equality, thanks to the Girl Up student organisation, whose sustained efforts have ensured that menstrual products are now freely available and accessible to everyone who needs them in both student and faculty bathrooms.

One of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals for 2030 is to ‘achieve gender equality and empower all women’. The UN has long said that it considers girls’ education and reproductive health crucial to furthering sustainable development through gender equality, making Girl Up’s achievement all the more significant. Having freely accessible menstrual products is a much-needed, long-awaited step toward gender equality at ISA. Instead of spending their break and lunch times trying to get hold of sanitary products, students who have periods will be able to entirely focus on their education without worry, contributing to an overall more equitable environment for our school and society in the future.

Girl Up started out as a relatively small student organisation at ISA. However, the group has experienced a lot of growth over the past couple of years under the leadership of the ISA Head of Libraries, Kim Tyo-Dickerson as their new advisor. With the Upper School Library as the backdrop of their meetings, the Girl Up group and their agenda became open and visible to the rest of the student body for the first time.

Despite initially experiencing some teasing from a small number of students, the group bounced back stronger, uniting to achieve their goals and thriving in adversity through leadership, friendship and the strength of their belief that this was the right thing to do for women, girls and our school as a whole.

It didn’t take long before the group decided upon their goal for the year; to ensure that menstrual products are freely accessible at ISA to everyone who needs them. This was a goal that the group had been trying

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to achieve for some years, and while some previous groups had found solutions, issues with budgeting and cost meant that these solutions were only temporary.

This is the first time that the problem has been solved on a permanent basis.

The journey to gaining permanently accessible sanitary products began when Girl Up members raised the issue that point-of-need, cost-free access to menstrual products is essential in today’s world and a significant step toward gender equality. Led by grade 12 students Priyasha Ghosh and Harshita Sharma, Girl Up undertook considerable research and discussion, striving to find permanent funding at ISA to provide menstrual products. Then, with the help and wholehearted support of the Facilities Team, Dr. Carmody, and our campus Nurses, Girl Up set to work.

After deciding which bathrooms require menstrual products, finding cabinets that allow the products to be clearly visible, and researching the most costeffective option for providing both tampons and pads, the permanent boxes were finally installed.

As a result, menstrual products are now widely accessible to everyone on campus who needs them.

Girl Up’s efforts have ensured ISA’s further commitment to girls, women and people who bleed by allowing girls to focus on their education, a necessary step to ensure educational equity on campus. While leaders Priyasha and Harshita graduated with the Class of 2022, they hope their legacy will continue with the next generation of Girl Up members, who will continue making progress toward gender equality at ISA.

Resources: https://sdgs.un.org/2030agenda https://www.un.org/youthenvoy/2016/03/education-reproductive-healthgirls-key-sustainable-development/ https://abcnews.go.com/International/reproductive-rights-foundationgender-equality/story?id=84491621

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Class of 2022 Graduation Ceremony

The Class of 2022 had their efforts acknowledged and celebrated in a beautiful graduation ceremony on Saturday, 4 June 2022. During the weeks prior to the event, graduates had been working hard to prepare for their IB exames, which only made the ceremony more of a memorable moment.

The evening started with the procession of the 108 students representing the following 29 countries Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Republic of Korea, Russia, Netherlands, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, United Kingdom, and United States. As an international school, we encouraged students to wear the appropriate graduation clothing of their nation or culture in the ceremony.

Leadership Awards

Projwal Ray & Tagesech Tyo-Dickerson

Given to students who model strong leadership skills within our ISA community.

ECIS Award for International Understanding

Hugo Boudier

Given to a student who is a good representative of furthering the cause of international understanding.

CAS Award

After the welcoming remarks from our Director, Dr. Bernadette P. Carmody, and Assistant Head of Upper School, Paul Griffiths, Daniella Gates was invited to speak on behalf of the faculty and staff. Lastly, graduate Giorgi Vancko represented the student population by delivering a breathtaking piano performance which the MC’s said “represented the graduating class beautifully well as a strong variety of different talents and personalities that came together to create this group.”

Julie Beaulieu & Sheli Goldis

Given to a student who embodies the spirit of CAS - Creativity, Action and Service, in addition to the IB learner profile.

Peggy Brannigan Award for Environmental Action Daniel Khan Gutiérrez de la Roza

In honor of ISA parent alum who originally launched the school’s Green Team and sustainability initiatives.

This award is given to a student who demonstrates leadership, commitment and actions to protect the environment. This students receives a thousand euros scholarship and a further thousand euros is donated in the student’s name to the environmental organisation of their choice.

As per tradition, graduating achievement awards were presented that evening. These are presented to students in recognition of personal, academic, and ethical excellence, and faculty members vote to decide who should be awarded. According to Paul Griffiths, this is an “exceptionally talented group of caring and internationally-minded individuals.” Please see on the right a list of the awards and their recipients.

Simon Schilp Athletic Award

Alberto Jones & Skye MacRae

Given to students who have contributed positively to the ISA athletic programme and have been valuable members of various sports teams over the past years.

The night was drawn to a close with a final speech by student representative Projwal Ray, the awarding of diplomas and a graduation video commemorating

ISA Award

memorable moments this class has shared together. A reception was held for the graduates and their families.

Norah Vlas

Given to a student who personifies the goals of ISA. They bring a positive attitude to education and have utilised the school’s opportunities creatively together with experience and achieved success.

We thank all of those who made this graduation such a special event and congratulate the graduating class of 2022 for all of their achievements!

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Class of 2022 Univeristy Matriculation

At ISA, students are encouraged to explore the wide variety of options ahead of them: whether they want to go to university, take a gap year, join the workforce, volunteer, or even what country they want to live in, what they want to study and what passions they want to follow. Throughout the year, the counselors organise workshops, university visits and career advisory sessions to support students.

Every year, ISA graduates are admitted to top institutions around the world. This is a result of students’ hard work, exceptional IB results and support from their counselors and teachers.

In 2022, the majority of the 107 graduates chose to go to university after finishing their high school at ISA. In total, students matriculated to universities in 14 different countries. 42% of students continued in the Netherlands, while 17% pursued their studies in the United States, 10% in the United Kingdom and 19% in other countries. 12% of graduates opted to take a gap year and focus on volunteering or developing skills for the marketplace.

Some of the popular courses chosen by graduates include: business, psychology, international relations, economics, and liberal arts.

This spectacular college placement is only possible due to students’ IB DP results. Once again, students performed above and beyond expectations, placing ISA far above the world average of IB results for another year.

We couldn’t congratulate this cohort without acknowledging the exceptional circumstances in which they achieved these results. The unprecedented global pandemic affected every aspect of their academic lives, requiring them to adapt and be flexible as they switched back and forth from in-person to distance learning, making their achievements even more admirable.

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25 Years On Campus You can dream, create, design, and build the most wonderful place in the world. But it requires people to make the dream a reality.

Walt Disney

Not long after ISA welcomed its first student in 1964, the Harvard Graduate School of Education founded a research centre called ‘Project Zero’. Project Zero was, and is, dedicated to researching, sharing, and helping to implement best practices in teaching and learning around the world. ISA would later become one of the project’s collaborating schools, and our faculty and students have now been contributing to, and benefiting from, our strong connections with Project Zero for more than 20 years.

The Culture of Thinking project is one of the major global initiatives of Project Zero. It seeks to improve learning and collaboration by honing group and individual thinking processes, and it highlights 8 forces that shape group culture in schools. One of these is the ‘Learning Environment’. Project Zero posits that:

space we share. Where Project Zero accepts that ‘most educators inherit a physical environment fashioned for an old paradigm of learning’, at ISA we are fortunate enough to inhabit a place where collaborative learning is encouraged by the space, communities are nurtured by the layout, and bright and spacious classrooms, workshops, playgrounds, gyms and more offer all our community the flexibility and opportunities to be inspired in comfort and security.

Designed by architectural firm Alberts en Van Huut (also designers of the iconic Het Zandkasteel (The Sandcastle), former headquarters of ING Bank at Bijlmerplein), the move heralded the beginning of an era of great development and growth for the school.

Soon after the move, ISA became the first school in the world to offer the IB’s new Primary Years Programme, giving students the opportunity to pursue an IB education from Early Years right through to graduation, and the total number of students enrolled began to grow steadily to fill the increased capacity of the new campus.

As a culture shaper, the physical environment is the “body language” of an organization, conveying its values and key messages even in the absence of its inhabitants. The physical environment of a school or classroom will dictate how individuals interact, their behaviors, and performance. The physical space can inhibit or inspire the work of the group and the individual. Although most educators inherit a physical environment fashioned for an old paradigm of learning, there is still much that can be done in the design of that space to facilitate and promote a culture of thinking. (from the Harvard Graduate School of Education’s website)

The 2021-2022 school year marked 25 years since ISA moved to its current physical environment on Sportlaan in Amstelveen. Especially considering how

the physical space where learning takes place is such a key shaper of culture in a school, the move to a purpose-built, modern campus was a momentous development for ISA. It can, perhaps, sometimes be easy to under-appreciate how much the day-to-day experience of students and staff is enriched by the

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Gordon Rogers was President of the ISA Board of Trustees in 1996 when the current ISA campus was opened for the first time. Gordon’s wife, Kerry, held the important role of National Representative Coordinator within the Parent-Teacher Association at the time.

When we sat down with them recently to discuss the campus opening, it was an opportunity to reminisce on great times past for ISA, and reflect on how much the school has both evolved, and still retained the same spirit, all these years later.

‘It was a huge event’, Kerry remembers. ‘We had a gala - tuxedos, black-tie - and the now-King was there to dedicate it’. ‘I got some of the glory for opening the school as Board President’, Gordon adds, ‘but (then Director) Margaret ArmstrongLaw was just amazing in making everything happen, and so were my predecessors on the Board of Trustees’.

Gordon continued to explain some of the hopes and vision of the board at that time for the new iteration of ISA.

One of the things we did, once everything was ready to go, was have strategic planning meetings - the board, the administrative staff, teachers and some students - trying to work out ‘‘where do we go now?

Where do we go from here, and how do we ensure that we’re successful moving forward?’’ One of the things I really remember from doing that was saying ‘’Well, what’s ISA all about?’’ and so we were working around the school’s mission, to educate for international understanding. One of the planning committee members was a high school senior… and he said ‘’While we’re here we’re a community - we talk to each other and we relate to each other as people, not nationalities’’. And that always stuck with me, and we wanted to build on that sort of sentiment: that through education at this school, people can come together.

Project Zero’s 8 forces that affect culture in a school are almost imperceptible unless you know to look for them - they meld together to create an overall culture of thinking we feel all around us. In the same way, ISA as a physical campus is hard to separate from ISA in the abstract: a place to learn, a place to come together, a

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place to make friends and a place to make family away from home. ISA is, thus, a precious concept as well as a physical space. Thousands of students have passed through the classrooms at Sportlaan 45 since nowKing Willem-Alexander attended the opening, and time spent at ISA is remembered with great fondness by so many alumni.

In speaking about the campus, Gordon and Kerry can’t but speak of the fun and formative times their family shared together there. ‘ISA was the glue that bonded us all’, Kerry shares, remembering the PTA with particular fondness. ‘You develop so many friendships. If you’re feeling lost, join in with something at school and you won’t feel lost anymore’. Over 20 years since they left the school, the Rogers still treasure the personal connections they made, and that they still maintain to this day across great distances. Gordon explains that ‘the academics were exemplary, but maybe even more important were the extra-curriculars - swimming in Hamburg and playing trumpet in recitals - those were so memorable’.

Perhaps it’s fitting that a discussion on the anniversary of the opening of the school building and grounds evolved into a discussion on the greater impact of the school as a whole, because the physical space is such a key and inseparable part of what makes ISA that greater whole now. Gordon says the ‘school still feels familiar, but things are also different. It feels like a small liberal arts school now, and like the layout encourages learning’.

So, to hark back to the strategic planning meetings of the 90’s, we can still ask today: ‘what is ISA all about?’.

Perhaps our chat with Gordon and Kerry Rogers answers the question. ISA is a beautiful, purpose-built campus in Amstelveen, where the people sharing the space come together to create something special, a community that has been treasured by families and staff for many, many years now. The physical environment of a school is one of many factors that creates the greater whole - it’s the house where we have made a home.

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A Home Away from Home PTA Highlights from 2021-2022 School Year With most of us enjoying another busy and bustling school year at ISA, it seems like life on campus and in the Netherlands is completely back to normal. So, it’s easy to forget that, earlier last year, the Netherlands was still living under a Covid-19 lockdown. For all of our community members, the 2021-2022 school year became a year of flexibility and change, with students,

staff and parents needing to adjust to changing regulations constantly, while trying to maintain a sense of normalcy, connection and community. During that strange and unique experience, where would we have been without the PTA to guide and support us?

Last school year, our community was made up of 66 student nationalities, with 65% of all school nationalities coming from outside of Europe, representing countries and cultures from across the globe. For an international community, a school plays an essential role in our lives, providing a key point of information and connection, a place to make friends and a means of easing the transition to life in a new country. During the pandemic, when many of us couldn’t travel to our home countries for extended periods of time, it was more important than ever for ISA to provide opportunities for our international community to connect with one another. This is especially true for thenew families who joined us from overseas this year. Thankfully, the PTA and volunteers rose to the challenge, working closely with school leadership throughout the school year to understand the changing government regulations while providing opportunities for our unique international community to come together whenever possible, both online and in person. Finally, on 28 February 2022, parents were able to come back onto campus, and the PTA made sure to mark the occasion and celebrate, welcoming parents back with coffee and cookies.

The beginning of a typical year at ISA is usually

marked by the annual PTA Welcome BBQ, which gives our community, particularly our new families and staff, the opportunity to get to know our school and make new friends. Due to Covid-19 restrictions at the time, the 2021-22 school year welcome was slightly delayed, so the PTA hosted a ‘Fall BBQ’ for the first

time. Who says you can’t barbecue in October? Much to the delight of students and parents alike, that fall also brought the return of another special ISA event: the annual Trunk and Treat! For the first time since the start of the pandemic, the community donned their spookiest costumes, decorated their cars and collected Halloween candy.

Some events are traditional at ISA and represent the beating heart of our community. As the year progressed, more of these favourite in-person events became possible once again, including the beloved International Coffee Mornings hosted by various parent national communities. Two events celebrating gratitude, giving thanks and showing appreciation also made a return to our spring programming. The PTA held their annual ‘Sweet Staff Day’ to show ISA teachers and staff how much they appreciate everything they do for students and the school. Staff and faculty were given a gift and enjoyed poffertjes and coffee, and students and parents were encouraged to show their appreciation by making a card, sending an email, or thanking a staff member for all of their hard work in person. Likewise, to celebrate the return of parents back onto campus ISA Faculty and Staff hosted a PTA Coffee Morning on 4 May to show appreciation for our PTA and parent community and all they had done for our school.

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The year also saw some new and exciting events for ISA. The PTA kindly sponsored a speaker, Marjon Bohré, to give an interactive lecture on ‘Humanizing the Workplace’ in the ISA World Theatre. Bohré explained why it can seem risky to show up and let yourself be seen in the workplace and how it is actually courageous to be vulnerable. Community members who attended gained new insights and practical techniques to show up at work as their authentic selves, helping to work towards creating a culture of more humanness in the workplace.

ISA celebrated the diversity that unites our community in May with an ‘International Community Celebration.’

The PTA hosted an international shared breakfast for parents, faculty and staff, while the Middle and High

School Student Councils gave speeches emphasising cultural connections, identities and diversity. Students shared lunch and were encouraged to wear clothes representing their unique cultural identities. National parent and staff communities ensured the campus was decorated beautifully for the event while other volunteers baked and cooked for the celebration.

The event was a fantastic display of our international communities coming together to make something special happen.

Finally, the PTA made sure that the 2021-22 school year was rounded out on a high, with the first-ever ISA Family Fun Run taking place on 11 June. The run took place through the school building, with registered runners receiving a bib number and a professional timing chip. Other activities included a Bouncy Castle, Dodgeball, Obstacle Course, various carnival-like activity booths set up by ISA CAS students and a raffle of themed baskets.

The pandemic brought unique challenges and obstacles for every one of us, which could have been a

time of division for our community. For many of us, the pandemic meant we could not visit our home country or see loved ones except through a screen. However, the PTA worked tirelessly to ensure a level of normalcy for our school, creating valuable opportunities to connect whenever possible and ensuring that our community was given a home away from home at ISA. 31

CDLT: A Year in Review 2021-2022

Despite the challenges posed by the pandemic, the Centre for Development, Learning and Training (CDLT) had a extraordinary and busy year, continuing their mission to provide world-class training for the international education community. See below an overview of the workshops hosted by the CDLT during the 2021-2022 school year. For more information on upcoming workshops please visit cdlt.isa.nl

Humanizing the Workplace with Marjon Bohré People seem to behave differently at work than in other social contexts and not only because their role requires this. Is bringing your whole self to work even possible and advisable? In this interactive lecture, participants dived into what is necessary to humanize the workplace, why it can seem risky to show up and let yourself be seen, and how it is actually courageous to be vulnerable. Participants walked away with new insights, and some practical tools to apply in the workplace on the road to more humanness at work.

This lecture was inspired by the work of Brené Brown.

Motor Remedial Teaching Workshop Age-appropriate development of gross motor skills is essential for the overall development of children and has a huge impact on their well-being. The MRT programme was developed in the Netherlands and is unique in the world.

This one-day course equipped attendees with the skills to set up and run an MRT (Motor Remedial Teaching) programme. The training focused on screening and testing students; organising small MRT groups with individual attention and programme developed for each student; evaluating the results of the training and playground activities.

Creating Cultures of Thinking The Cultures of Thinking Project is a global initiative under the direction of Dr. Ron Ritchhart. Since 2000, the CoT Project has worked with hundreds of public, independent, and international schools and museums across North America, Australia, Asia, and Europe to help transform schools, classrooms, and museums into places where thinking is valued, visible and actively promoted as part of the regular day-to-day experience of all group members. Three books have documented this work and are useful resources for those interested in developing a culture of thinking: Intellectual Character (Ritchhart, 2002), Making Thinking Visible (Ritchhart, Church & Morrison, 2011), and Creating Cultures of Thinking (Ritchhart, 2015). A fourth book, The Power of Making Thinking Visible, is currently in the works and will capture what we have learned about using thinking routines most effectively as well as sharing many new routines we have developed.

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Connections

The International School of Amsterdam Magazine 2021-2022 Annual Report

Editor-in-chief Matt Jasinski

Co-editors

Megan Amelia Colm Brennan Nathalia Lima

Design and layout Emma Wendt

Publisher

ISA in collaboration with XPat Media, The Hague, the Netherlands

Printer

Damen Drukkers Werkendam The Netherlands ISA alumni, families, faculty and friends receive Connections.

We welcome your comments and encourage you to submit ideas and articles for consideration.

Letters and inquiries may be addressed to: Connections Sportlaan 45 1062HE Amsterdam +31 20347 1111 Communications@isa.nl

Photography Kerry Reinking FocusOn

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