Taipei American School THE WINDOW | Winter 2019

TAIPEI

AMERICAN SCHOOL

WINTER 2019 THE WINDOW

Taipei American School is an innovative 21st century learning community. Our mission is to inspire each student to be a confident, creative, caring, and moral individual prepared to adapt and succeed anywhere in a rapidly changing world. We provide an American based education with a global perspective that results in a love of learning, academic excellence, a balanced life, and service to others.

Taipei American School offers opportunities for students to reach their full potential to become caring, competent, knowledgeable young people who are dedicated to making a positive difference anywhere in the world

Communication

Effective communication is essential to a trusting, informed community. Thus, in a continuing effort to expand authentic communication, Dr. Hennessy joined LINE, a popular messaging service used by our school community. To friend her, please scan the QR code.

Through this channel, the goal is to strengthen communication on matters relevant to the school. Ask questions and share your thoughts, and Dr. Hennessy will do her best to respond. She is the only one who will see your comments, so you can be candid and open. Please make sure to identify yourself in your initial message and adhere to the school values.

TAS

HEAD OF SCHOOL: RECRUITMENT IS RELATIONAL

Recruitment Begins and Ends With Relationships

By Dr. Sharon Hennessy, Head of School

At Taipei American School, we have long known that in order to have the best school, we must be able to recruit and retain the best teachers. Recruitment does not begin and end at fairs around the globe. It is not reactionary, but proactive and continuous. It is a year-long and yearly process that involves planning both for the current school year’s hiring needs and those of the future.

In our most recent WASC cycle, the visiting committee noticed that professional development is a major strength for our School: “TAS offers a wide variety of Professional Development (PD) training opportunities for faculty, with a focus on initiatives that support the Strategic Plan. TAS brings outside consultants from locations around the world, as well as providing opportunities for in-house talent to provide on-site training opportunities to peers.” Offering world-class professional development is one way in which we retain high-quality teachers – but how do we recruit those teachers in the first place?

Of course, the best method of recruitment is one in which we already excel: word of mouth. Good news does, indeed, travel fast — and the news about Taipei American School’s excellent students, programs, and professional development is out. In this way, every successful recruitment can lead to another friend, family member, or previous colleague joining our ranks. This method of recruitment has brought us TAS hall of fame legends including Dr. Richard Hartzell, Mr. Dan Hudkins, Dr. Adam Nelson, Mr. Jude Clapper, and Dr. Grace Cheng Dodge.

In his recent New York Times bestseller, Contagious, named “Best Marketing Book of 2014” by the American Marketing Association,

the author, Jonah Berger, discusses what makes things popular. Why do people talk about certain products and ideas more than others? It is not, as conventional wisdom might suggest, a highly-coordinated advertising or marketing plan that is responsible. Instead, research has shown time and time again the science of word-of-mouth and other social transmissions. According to Berger, “word of mouth is the primary factor behind 20% to 50% of all purchasing decisions.” This same idea applies to all teachers, administrators, and staff who are deciding whether to buy into the mission of our community. And I have you to thank for all the recruiting you are doing on our community’s behalf. Every time you informally share a TAS success in the classroom, on the field, or behind the stage with the larger community, you are helping our school be able to recruit the best of the best. Berger says that “marketing is about spreading the love,” and you, the parents and faculty of this community, have been sharing this love around the world, enabling our hiring practices to continue to thrive.

As Head of School, I am delighted to serve as the chief marketer and recruiter for our school, scouring resumes, attending recruitment fairs, and traveling around the globe to meet with future faculty members. My official recruitment season for the school year 2019-2020 actually began in July of 2018, but as you all know by now, recruitment does not ever truly end; it merely waxes and wanes depending on the time of year. Various other faculty members often travel with me including Dr. Cheng Dodge and Ms. Simeonidis, depending on the types of faculty members we are attempting to attract. We rely on a number of institutions to assist us in finding the best faculty we can including International School Services, Search Associates, Carney Sandoe, and RG-175, the firm which helped us to hire next year’s Middle School Principal, Mr. Josh Budde. Just this year, I, along with other administrators, will attend the Carney & Sandoe Associates, Search Associates, ISS, and GRC recruiting fairs in Bangkok, Cambridge, Dubai, and Boston.

Although this travel schedule keeps me away from our community for short periods of time throughout the year, I’m a firm believer in Jim Collins’ advice in his timeless work, Good to Great: great vision, without great people, is irrelevant. We will not be able to achieve half

of what we, as a community, strive toward following the mission of our school unless we get the right people on the proverbial bus. This means the administrators and I need to travel across the world to recruit the best and brightest faculty members, who may or may not always be on our beautiful island and may need to know more about us before knowing they are a good fit.

When we are able to meet with these candidates, face to face, shake their hands, and look into their eyes, we are able to know much more about them than what is on their resume, their transcripts, essays, or references; we are able to hear their laughter, see the joy they find in teaching children firsthand, and learn more about their character. As Jim Collins asserts in that same book, “In determining the right people, the good-to-great companies placed greater weight on character attributes than on specific educational background, practical skills, specialized knowledge, or work experience.”

It is the administration’s job, myself included, to hire people of good character with whom the mission of our school will deeply resonate. This often means that our hiring practices at TAS are deeply relational because our dear faculty and parents often know someone who would be a good fit. And so we come full circle to word-ofmouth recruitment, where it all began.

Three of our most recent, and most critical, new hires are people who have already known people within our community for some time: incoming Director of College Counseling, Mrs. Melissa Brennand Mueller; incoming Middle School Principal, Mr. Josh Budde; and his wife, incoming Communications Officer, Becca Budde. Every time one of our community members told a glowing (and true) story about our School, our reputation continued to grow, enabling us to hire renowned faculty such as these. Thank you for sharing your TAS stories with the world and for helping to recruit future generations of expert teachers for our students.

Director of College Counseling: Melanie Brennand Mueller

After graduating from Harvard University with a cum laude undergraduate degree and a master’s degree in Education, Melanie spent several years in the Harvard Admissions Office. She has considerable service experience and for the past several years has been on the secondary school side of the desk as Director of Admissions placing high school students for all eighteen United World College campuses.

Josh Budde has been in the finest of independent schools in the United States for two decades. Josh has served as Middle School Principal of Springside Chestnut Hill Academy for eleven years. Prior to that, he worked at the prestigious Harvard Westlake School for a decade as Dean of Middle School Students.

Additionally, his wife Becca has recommendations and commendations for her work in several areas of school life that match those of her impressive husband including work in counseling, admissions, teaching, and administration.

They have three children who will attend the school next year.

HEAD OF SCHOOL: RECRUITMENT IS

School Principal: Josh Budde Communications Officer: Becca Budde

的科學。根據 Berger 的說法，“口耳相傳佔所有購買決策主要因素的 20％到 50％。”同樣的想法適用 於所有教師、行政主管和員工決定是否相信本社群的宗旨。我要感謝您代表本社群進行所有的招聘工作。 每當您在課堂、現場或與更大社區的舞台後面非正式地分享 TAS 成功時，您正在幫助我們的學校招募最 頂尖的人才。Berger 說，“行銷就是傳播愛”，而您，此社群的家長與教師，一直在世界各地分享這種愛， 使我們的招聘能繼續蓬勃發展。 作為總校長，我很高興擔任本校的首席行銷和招聘人員、搜尋履歷、參加招聘會，以及環球旅行去與未 來的教師會面。2019-2020 學年的官方招聘季實際上是在今年 2018 年的 7 月開始，但是大家都知道， 招聘並沒有真正結束；它只是根據一年中的不同時間盛衰起伏罷了。其他常與我一起旅行的教師，包括 Cheng Dodge 博士和 Simeonidis 女士，全取決於我們試圖吸引的教師類型。我們依靠一些機構幫助我們

Association General Meeting Finance Report

By Gayle Tsien, Board Management & Resources Committee Chair

On October 24, 2018 the TAS Board invited all parents and community members to learn more about the overall state of the School including updates on financial, facilities, and governance information. We were also proud to celebrate the incredible accomplishments and innovations in the area of STEAM as our new facility, the Solomon Wong Tech Cube, drew near to completion. We are currently in the middle of our current Strategic Plan (2016-2021) and it is a perfect time to reflect on what we have accomplished and all that we have planned for the future.

In Strategic Area 1: Strong Foundation, the Board is tasked to “provide responsible financial oversight and stewardship, ensuring stability for the future.” This first area of focus in our Strategic Plan provides a strong foundation for the school upon which to grow and thrive. We do this by providing supportive governance, ensuring both current and future financial strength, and ensuring that our school facilities meet the growing needs of the School. Without strong finances, without strong governance, and without worthy facilities, we would not be able to provide the world-class education that our parents have come to know and expect. The Board is able to support the mission of the school by making sure we are logistically prepared to enact that mission.

The Taipei American School Board is governed by a group of parent and past parent volunteers whose primary roles are to advance the mission of TAS, to raise its reputation and standing internationally, and to ensure the financial stability and strength of our School today and for future generations. We take all our responsibilities seriously, including the responsibility to ensure that TAS is as fiscally strong tomorrow as it is today. During this school year, it is important to the Board that we review not only the areas of the Strategic Plan related to the program, student experience, personnel, and communication but to review our own Board governance practices to make sure we are, in fact, doing all that we can to make this School the best it can be.

In the Strategic Plan, the Board has three main objectives to accomplish during the 2016-2021 timeframe. We are well on our way to achieving all three by 2021.

● Supportive Governance: Evaluate and adjust as necessary the Board structure and processes to meet the continuing needs of the school.

● Financial Strength: Provide responsible financial oversight and stewardship ensuring stability for the future.

● Effective Facilities: Manage and develop facilities to ensure that we provide a high quality and instructionally appropriate learning environment, which supports the development of the Essential Capacities.

We have made progress in all of these three areas, but, as Management & Resources Committee Chair, I would like to particularly focus on the ways in which the Board has been working to meet the second of those goals regarding Financial Strength. We have been working to monitor and adjust long-range plans in several ways. The Management and Resources Committee takes oversight of the financial management and planning, which includes working closely with the Administration on reviewing and approving the operations budget, the capital budget, and the endowment fund. While the operations budget focuses on the shorter term, the capital budget looks out ten or twenty years to see what expenses will be for every part of the school’s structure and infrastructure, and the endowment fund protects the school against unforeseen circumstances. The M&R Committee also looks at various fund and financial projections, to ensure that School is fiscally sound not just today, but into the future. Your Board applies a stringent standard when making decisions with a financial impact: we set an emergency reserve requirement to ensure that at all times, “All funds combined must equal or exceed 6.5 months of operating expenditures.” This means that should some catastrophic financial event happen, our School would be able to continue to operate and pay its bills, keep the doors open, for at least 6.5 months. We meet and exceed this requirement today, and in looking out at the 5-year projections of the School’s financials, we meet this stringent test.

BOARD OF DIRECTORS: AGM FINANCE REPORT

BOARD OF DIRECTORS: AGM FINANCE REPORT

The only way to prepare for future financial success is to plan, plan more, and plan again. Adjustments are always made in various school years to better reflect accurate school needs, including new developments like our fantastic Solomon Wong Tech Cube.

We also work closely with the administration to continue to increase knowledge of fundraising goals, donors, and accomplishments in the community. The best of the best schools do not stop with funds available from tuition and capital fees. The Board knows this and works closely with the development office to help them to effectively inform the community of participation levels in the fundraising program. Once the school community comes to appreciate the benefits and advantages of superior educational options, it is often asked to participate in development or “advancement” efforts that allow us to accelerate progress on our Strategic Plan and capitalize on the wide range of deeply impressive talents of our TAS Tigers.

The list of enhancements to places, programs, and people made possible by generous parent giving is endless and has been a key factor in the accomplishments of the past decade, accomplishments that simply could not have been possible without our Board-driven and administration-implemented development program. We know that we are doing well in this area because the development office was praised extensively for their high-quality work by the recent WASC visiting committee.

Another way in which we support the financial strength of our community is by collaborating with the admissions office and administrative team to evaluate enrollment data and admissions procedures. Our goal is always to allow for more timely decisions and to ensure that we optimize enrollment at our school while making sure that all admitted students are equipped to succeed in our rigorous institution. When we are able to have a higher enrollment than what our budget projects, we are able to apply those funds to other areas within the school that lead to student success.

Financial equilibrium requires us to think past this generation. Each year, the operating budget is carefully monitored for any possible areas where savings can be made or where enrollments exceed projections, and those surplus funds typically go into our endowment. The endowment fund is a reserve to protect the school against unexpected events and provides funding for the current operation if needed. TAS is unusual (and exceptional) as an international school in having an endowment and we are pleased that with careful, cautious planning our endowment today stands at a higher level than it did before we borrowed from it to build our beautiful upper school building. Families today benefit from the careful budgeting oversight previous boards provided, and families of the future will benefit from our current dedication to maintaining and growing our endowment.

The Board is committed to sound fiscal oversight of our institution, just as we are committed to the best people, program, and places we can offer. We will continue to do this vigilant behind-thescenes work for your students and for future generations of TAS Tigers yet to come.

● 支持性的治理：根據需要評估和調整董事會結構與流程，以滿足學校的持續需求。

● 財務實力：提供負責任的財務監督和管理，以確保未來的穩定性。

● 有效的設施：管理和開發設施，以確保我們提供高品質和適合教學的學習環境，以支持基本能力的發展。

我們在此三個領域都取得了進展，但作為管理和資源委員會主席，我想特別關注董事會為實現第二個目標 有關財務實力所做之努力的方式。我們一直致力於以多種方式監控和調整長期計劃。管理和資源委員會負 責監督財務管理與規劃，包括與行政團隊密切合作；審查與批准營運預算、資本預算和捐贈基金。雖然營 運預算著重於短期，但資本預算能看出十年或二十年學校的結構與基礎設施的每個部分之花費；而捐贈基 金則能保護學校免受不可預見的情況影響。管理和資源委員會還研究各種資金與財務預測，以確保學校在 財政上不僅只在今日，連未來都是健全的。您的董事會在做出具有財務影響的決策時採用嚴格的標準：我 們制定緊急儲備金的要求，以確保在任何時候，“所有合計資金必須等於或超過 6.5 個月的營運支出”。 這意味著，如果發生一些災難性的金融事件，本校將能夠繼續營運並支付賬單，能保持校園開放至少 6.5 個月。我們今天達到並超過了此一要求，而且上看學校財務狀況的 5 年預測時，我們是符合這個嚴格的測 試標準的。

為未來的財務成功地做好準備的唯一方法是計劃、多計劃、再計劃。各學年都會進行調整，以更準確地反 映出學校的需求，包括我們夢幻般的 Solomon Wong 科技館等新開發的項目。

我們還與行政部門密切合作，以繼續增加對社群募款目標、捐助者和成就的了解。最頂尖中的頂尖學校不 會停止來自學費和重大費用的資金。董事會了解這一點，並與校務發展辦公室密切合作，幫助他們有效地 向社群報告籌款計劃的參與度。一旦學校社群開始意識到優質教育選擇的好處和優勢，就會經常要求參與 發展或“進步”的努力，這些努力使我們能夠加速策略計劃的進展，並善用 TAS 老虎隊廣泛且令人印象 深刻的人才。

通過慷慨的家長捐贈而實現的校園、課程和人事的增強清單是永無止境的，並且是過去十年成就的關鍵因 素，如果沒有本校董事會的驅動和管理實施，這些成就是不可能實現的。我們知道我們在發展計劃方面做 得很好，因為校務發展辦公室因最近 WASC 訪問委員會的高品質工作而受到廣泛讚譽。

我們支持社群財務實力的另一種方式，是與招生辦公室和行政團隊合作，以評估招生數據和招生程序。我 們的目標始終是允許更及時的決策，以確保我們優

By Sara Riggsby, Communications Officer

On November 5, 2018, Taipei American School dedicated its newest facility, the Solomon Wong Tech Cube. Board members, administrators, major donors, faculty, staff, students, parents, and members of the wider community united in marking this celebratory occasion.

The Solomon Wong Tech Cube broke ground on March 2, 2017, and is a six-story, openplanned facility on campus dedicated to STEAM education with a focus on design, technology, and robotics. There are dedicated floors for each division, allowing for collaboration, continuity, and teamwork without foregoing age-appropriate learning spaces. This allows students to work on exciting projects in designated spaces over the course of a class, semester, or school year.

The Solomon Wong Tech Cube is inspired by a facility at MIT and contains 4,380 square meters of usable space where students and faculty can work side-by-side and engage in design-thinking challenges. This facility is the next step for 21st-century education and will allow the School to serve as a center for STEAM-related professional development in Asia.

Head of School Dr. Sharon Hennessy welcomed special guests Dr. Lawrence Hobdell, the Regional Education Officer for EAP for the U.S. Department of State’s Office of Overseas Schools, AIT Deputy Director Ray Greene, and AIT Management Officer Mr. Brian Reynolds. She shared, “We had more than 2,500 different donors supporting this project as part of our unified community.” From the day that this vision came to be, “I knew that our children deserved it, I knew our faculty would make the best of it, and I prayed that our community would come together and make it a reality. To each and every one of you, thank you.”

Next, a lion dance performed by the Taiwan Acrobatic Troupe from National Taiwan College of Performing Arts wowed the audience. AIT Deputy Director Ray Greene shared his pleasure at attending the event representing AIT Director Brent Christensen.

TAS Tech Cube Task Force Chair, Ms. Elizabeth Wang, addressed the crowd thanking numerous people who contributed to turning this vision into reality. Those mentioned include TAS administrators Dr. Sharon Hennessy, Dr. Hartzell, and Cathy Hsu; STEAM faculty across all divisions, many of whom were in attendance; along with Solomon Wong Tech Cube Task Force Members Frank Chen, Gayle Tsien, Felix Ho, and Board Chair Tina Koo. Ms. Wang also thanked the companies working on this project: Parsons Brinkerhoff construction managers Alex Lai and Alex Huang; KHL Architects’ Simon Kao, Abei Ding, and Yu-Hao Huang; and I-Cheng Construction & Development Corp’s C.Y. Wang and Edward Wang.

Additionally, the donors who made this building possible were recognized for their generosity: lead donor Winston Wong; early donors Nate and Ming Rich and Chris Yin; and Corning Display Technologies represented by John Zhang of the Corning Center for Scientific Research.

The ribbon-cutting ceremony commenced with participants Dr. Sharon Hennessy; AIT Deputy Director Ray Greene; Solomon Wong Tech Cube Task Force Chair Ms. Elizabeth Wang; third grader Elizabeth Wong (grand-daughter of lead donor Professor Winston Wong); Dr. Richard Hartzell; Mr. Steve Panta; Matt Fagen, newly named Corning Chair in Robotics and Innovation; and a final guest, the awardwinning robot from last year’s “Raid Zero” First Robotics Competition team.

CUBE DEDICATION

SOLOMON WONG TECH

TECH

The Solomon Wong Tech Cube serves a growing need at TAS for STEAM education. This year in the Upper School, over 39 percent of students elected to take additional robotics and computer science courses, and nearly 100% of graduates take physics by graduation. In the Upper School, more than 320 students are currently enrolled in 18 different courses across 29 sections in the Robotics and Computer Science department. Lower and middle school students program simple machines, blend arts and science with the use of 3D printers, creatively engineer prosthetic hand prototypes, and undertake many other design-focused projects.

In addition, students partake in competitive robotics clubs such as FRC, VEX, and ROV that compete in tournaments around the world. Our FRC and VEX robotics teams both qualified for their respective world championship competitions last school year. The VEX Robotics team won 1st place at the Formosa Challenge. FRC Team #4253 “Raid Zero” won 1st place in the Australia Regional, 1st place in the Hawaii Regional, and ranked 2nd in the New York Regional. That team also won the Chairman’s Award in Hawaii for STEM education outreach (work which is detailed in the following The Window article). The new Solomon Wong Tech Cube will help to continue a growing legacy of success in robotics competitions and even provide a new competition training ground for all robotics teams.

Taipei American Students also excel in science and scientific research, areas which will be

similarly bolstered by the new Solomon Wong Tech Cube. TAS is currently the only overseas school with three Regeneron (formerly Intel) Science Talent Search Scholars (2012, 2015, and 2017) and Grand Award Winner at the Intel Science and Engineering Fair (2017). TAS group projects have been published in the PLOS (Public Library of Science) iGEM 2016 and 2017 Collections. Furthermore, TAS Research in Physics students earned gold and silver medals at the Taiwan Young Physicists’ Tournament, a research and debate competition involving twelve open-ended problems where students devise hypotheses and conduct research; two students were named to the All-Tournament Top 10 (2017 and 2018). The School’s current on-campus research laboratories include an atomic force scanning electron microscope, fluorescent microscope, carbon nanotube furnace, and full genetic engineering capabilities. With increased space devoted to STEAM education, these programs will continue to grow and flourish.

When the Solomon Wong Tech Cube opens in January 2019, it will provide TAS students with the space needed to develop necessary skills and experiences they need to make a real difference in the world. Upper school students will learn in an electrical engineering lab and design in a fabrication hub. The middle school floor houses a VEX arena and robotic design lab, as well as vast open areas for art and innovation. The floor dedicated to lower school students is designed to include “tinker and maker” spaces.

家！” 接下來，國立台灣藝術學院台灣雜技團表演的舞獅為觀眾留下了深刻的印象。AIT 副處長谷立言很高興代 表 AIT 處長酈英傑 (Brent Christensen) 參加了此活動。 TAS 科技館工作小組主席 Elizabeth Wang 女士向眾人致辭，感謝眾多為實現此願景做出貢獻的人們。提 到者包括 TAS 總校長 Sharon Hennessy 博士、Hartzell 博士、Steve Panta 和 Cathy Hsu；所有部門的 STEAM 教師，其中許多人都出席了；以及科技館工作小組成員

TAS Robotics Pioneers Taiwan Regional First Robotics Competition

By Lindsey Kundel, Communications Officer

Taipei American School’s computer science and robotics program has much to be proud of in the last 12 months: more than 320 students were enrolled in 18 different courses across 29 sections. All robot design, construction, and project budgeting were student-led. TAS’s FIRST FRC and VEX Robotics teams both qualified for their respective world championship competitions, including 1st place wins at the Formosa Challenge, Australia Regional, and Hawaii Regional. But the most historic accomplishment of all has received the least attention – in part because the years of hard work behind it has not quite come to fruition yet.

During the 2019-2020 school year, FIRST Robotics Competition will host its first-ever Taiwan Regional competition in Taichung, thanks to the hard work of current and former Taipei American School robotics students and their instructor, Matt Fagen, the newly endowed Corning Chair in Robotics and Innovation of the Solomon Wong Tech Cube.

In order to make this dream a reality, TAS robotics students had to find, recruit, and mentor 22 other Taiwanese schools on how to start robotics teams and compete on the international robotics circuit.

Mr. Fagen credits TAS alumna and current MIT student, Angel H. (‘17), with developing this goal three years ago. She, along with her teammates, thought that robotics competitions were an experience that all students should have because of the unique way they blend book-learning with a more hands-on approach. “TAS is unique in that it has a twosided curriculum. We have strong traditional programs in mathematics and physics, the book side if you will, and we have the applied side, found in robotics and research.”

His students, led by Angel H., noticed that many local students do not have the

opportunity to combine their learning in this way and decided to do something about it. “[Angel] wanted to make it her mission to start promoting STEAM around Taiwan as much as she could,” said Fagen. “She contacted and cold-called 60 schools” in order to explain to them why they should get involved in robotics.

According to Fagen, Angel eventually wrote a letter to the Taiwan Ministry of Education and city governor, which received numerous responses of support.

“Now the Ministry of Education is still consulting with her, calling her at MIT, asking her about suggestions she might have for future programs.” Other governmental branches, including the Central Taiwan Science Park and the Southern Taiwan Science Park, have committed to helping Angel’s STEAM mission.

However, governmental interest and financial support were not enough to guarantee an FRC robotics regional in Taiwan. Mr. Fagen and Angel needed to ensure that there would be enough teams in the region to support a TAS application for an FRC Taiwan regional. FRC regulations state that at least 15 teams are needed in order to proceed with an application, although more teams boost the application’s status.

One major hurdle for new robotics teams is designing and building a functional robot from scratch without previous experience. In order to overcome this potential obstacle to recruiting new teams in Taiwan, Mr. Fagen and the FRC team designed a robot that could be built inexpensively by anyone in Taiwan.

“We had seen American teams do this, specifically NASA’s team, who built something called the EveryBot,” Fagen said. NASA’s robotics team released their robot plans on a

ROBOTICS

website for free so that anyone who wanted to could build a competitive FRC robot.

According to FIRST ROBOTICS, the EveryBot, with a final budget of US$1000, is an “affordable, robust, and simplistic” robot that can be built with nothing but basic tools and items found in the kit of parts purchased from your local hardware store. “We took that idea and said, ok, what if we built a Taiwan version of that?” Fagen said.

Since Taiwan does not have the same parts available in all areas as found in the United States, TAS’s FRC team adjusted the EveryBot concept to include parts that are manufactured and readily available in Taiwan. They then did a full design of this robot in a Computer Aided Design file, or CAD for short, that they shared with the Central Taiwan Science Park via the Ministry of Science and Technology.

The next step in obtaining a local FRC regional was to help train the recruited high school teams in how to build and operate the Taiwanese version of the “EveryBot” designed by TAS students. In the spring of 2018, the TAS FRC team went to Taipei First Girls School to build an example of the robot in front of a live audience. After building it, they then taught several local high school teams how to build it.

“After the government saw that it worked, they invested the money to buy the parts for 22 robotics teams here in Taiwan,” Fagen said.

In a news conference in May 2018, after consulting with TAS students and staff, the Science and Technology Minister Chen Lianggee ( 陳良基 ) said that his ministry is seeking a budget of NT$2 billion (US$66.67 million) over the next four years for the establishment of the robot production base, which will be called “the Maker Space.”

After receiving notification of governmental funding, from August 11-12, 2018 the FRC team then traveled south to Taichung, Taiwan

to serve as instructors to all interested Taiwanese robotics teams.

“We taught 22 teams to build 22 robots over the course of two days,” Fagen said. “This means that we now have 22 teams in Taiwan that have committed saying that they will take part in an FRC competition.”

After recruiting 22 teams, the next step to securing an FRC regional competition was to convince Dr. Don Bossi, President of FIRST Robotics and successful technology executive in his own right, that Taiwan was prepared to host a regional competition. According to Fagen, Dr. Bossi had previously been invited to TAS with the expectation that Taipei American Students would be able to recruit and train a sufficient number of teams prior to his visit. “It was our way of holding ourselves accountable,” Fagen said.

Dr. Bossi visited campus on September 7, 2018. While here, he was able to tour the School’s campus and Tech Cube, find out more about the School’s KA-12 STEAM curriculum, participate in a roundtable discussions, and listen to several advanced student presentations. In addition to his work on campus, Dr. Bossi also toured the National Palace Museum with a TAS student docent, Katherine C. The NPM tour focused on available technology during different periods of Chinese art history.

Dr. Bossi’s trip culminated with a formal commitment ceremony. He signed a contract of intent saying that he would help Taiwan host a regional FRC competition in Taichung beginning with the 2020 season.

Although Mr. Fagen is the Computer Science and Robotics department chair, incoming Tech Cube director, and adviser for FRC robotics in the Upper School, he is quick to give credit to others. “It all stems from our kids’ work, pun intended,” said Fagen. “It all comes from our students’ work.”

在 2019-2020 學年期間，FIRST 機器人大賽將在台中舉辦首屆台灣地區比賽，這要歸功於現任和前台北 美國學校機器人學生及其新任康寧機器人技術與 Solomon Wong 科技館創新講座的教練 Matt Fagen 之辛 勤努力。 為了實現此夢想，TAS 機器人學生必須找到、招募和指導其他 22 所台灣學校如何啟動機器人團隊並在國 際機器人賽道上展開競爭。 Fagen 先生歸功於 TAS 校友與現任麻省理工學院學生 Angel H.（'17）於三年前制定此目標。她和她的隊 友都認為，機器人比賽是所有學生都應該擁有的一種體驗，因為他們將書本學習與更加親力親為的方法相 結合。“TAS 的獨特之處在於它有一個雙面的課程。如果你願意，書籍方面，我們在數學和物理學方面有 很強的傳統課程，而應用方面，在我們的機器人和研究中都可以找到。”

他的學生們，由 Angel H. 領導著，注意到許多本地學生沒有機會以這種方式結合他們的學習，因此決定

A Continued Legacy: TAS iGEM Team Brings Home Award yet Again

By Anya L('19), News & Sports Editor for The Blue & Gold

From Oct. 25-28, Taipei American School students attended the International Genetically Engineered Machine Competition hosted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston. iGEM is a premier synthetic biology competition for high school and university students, where teams use biological parts to synthetically design a system and operate them in living cells. The TAS team won a gold medal, the Best Entrepreneurship Award, and was also nominated for seven other awards, which was the second most among all high school teams.

Only seven out of 58 high school teams earned the gold medal for the high school division. High school, college, and graduate school teams all compete for this prize and are judged on the same criteria.

The team received the following prizes: Best Mathematical Model, Best Entrepreneurship, Best Product Design, Best Wiki, Best Poster, Best Presentation, Best Integrated Human Practices, Best Education, and Best Public Engagement.

This year, the team’s project aimed to reduce the carcinogenic effects of ALDH2 deficiency. In other words, a probiotic and purified protein form of ALDH2 is produced as a recombinant to decrease levels of acetaldehyde, which is what makes you turn red after the consumption of alcohol.

This team has planned the project since November 2017, and throughout June the team stayed in Taipei to perform lab experiments. Despite their success at the competition this year, co-project head Catherine C. (‘19) describes the obstacles faced when the seniors from the Class of 2018 graduated.

“We were left troubleshooting results. We literally took the longest time trying to lyse and conduct a functional test on our enzymes,” she said. Although that was not the right approach, they ended up learning about lysing and enzyme purification.

After cloning and testing 11 different DNA constructs, the team found success and decided to test the carcinogenic effects of ALDH2 deficiency through a probiotic candy. Patients were given this candy, which breaks down toxic acetaldehyde. “We are very proud of ourselves entering this competition; 11 DNA constructs is the most TAS has ever made. But the grand prize winner had 55 DNA parts which is insane for a high school team,” said Catherine.

As last year’s Grand Prize winners, biological engineers from different schools had high expectations for the Taipei Team. “Our presentation was full house. All the seats were taken and there were even people standing in the back to listen,” said Catherine. Annabel C.(‘20) also agrees with the success of this year’s iGEM team. “I believe that TAS’s project was fantastic. They put a lot of work into making it the best they can, and I think they deserved to win,” she said.

Next year’s iGEM team shows as much promise as the previous years, upholding TAS’s reputation in the STEM field. “We have plans to collaborate with the robotics department and to change up our ideas. I hope our TAS team maintains and even improves our standards to remind the judges of our excellence,” Annabel said.

According to the official iGEM website, the iGEM Foundation is an independent, non-profit organization dedicated to the advancement of synthetic biology, education and competition, and the development of an open community and collaboration. This is done by fostering an open, cooperative community and friendly competition.

iGEM’s main program is the iGEM Competition. The iGEM competition gives students the opportunity to push the boundaries of synthetic biology by tackling everyday issues facing the world. Made up of primarily university students, multidisciplinary teams work together to design, build, test, and measure a system of their own design using interchangeable biological parts and standard molecular biology techniques. Every year nearly 6,000 people dedicate their summer to iGEM and then come together in the fall to present their work and compete at the annual Jamboree.

This year’s team included 11 upper school students. The team was lead by Catherine C. and Tim H. and also included Justin W., Justin L., Longan S., Chloe W., Caroline C., Charlotte C., Iris H., Emily T., and Leona T.

ALDH2 以重組體生產，以降低飲酒後變紅的乙醛程度。 該團隊自 2017 年 11 月開始籌備計劃，整個 6 月份，該團隊留在台北進行實驗室的實驗。儘管他們在今 年的比賽中取得了成功，聯合計劃負責人 Catherine C.('19)描述了 2018 畢業班的畢業生所面臨的障礙。

“故障排除結果被留下給我們。我們花了很長的時間試圖裂解並對我們的酶進行功能測試，”她說。雖然 這不是正確的方法，但他們最終學會裂解和酶的純化。

經複製與測試 11 種不同的 DNA 建構體後，該團隊取得了成功，並決定藉益生菌糖來測試 ALDH2 效率的 致癌作用。患者被給予這種能分解有毒乙醛的糖。“我們為自己能參加這場比賽而感到自豪 ;11 種 DNA 建構體是 TAS 有史以來製出最多的一次。但是大獎獲得者有 55 個 DNA 零件，這對於一支高中團隊來說 實在太瘋狂了，” Catherine 說。 作為去年的大獎得主，來自不同學校的生物工程師對台北團隊抱有很高的期望。“我們的簡報很精彩。座 無虛席，甚至有人站在後面聽，”Catherine 說。

PSYCHOLOGIST LISA DAMOUR

By Sara Riggsby, Communications Officer

Renowned adolescent psychologist, CBS News contributor, New York Times bestseller, and columnist Dr. Lisa Damour spoke with TAS faculty, parents, and middle and upper school students during her visit to TAS in September 2018. Her book Untangled: Guiding Teenage Girls Through the Seven Transitions Into Adulthood explains normal adolescent behavior and provides strategies for maintaining a healthy relationship between parent and child during this stage of life. In an upbeat and positive way, she talked through the “totally expected challenges in development” during the teenage years with TAS faculty and parents, while also providing students with tools to manage stress and difficult situations on the path to adulthood.

As a mother of two daughters, Dr. Damour fully understands the challenges for parents of adolescents outlined in the book. She believes that her work helped her understand that her daughters’ development was normal. Her older daughter was 11 when Untangled was published, and at the time she had not reached any of the milestones in the book. In hindsight, she realizes just how on point she was about certain things and might have made an even stronger case based on what she has experienced as a parent.

Off the stage, she openly and thoughtfully shared her thoughts on a variety of topics. When asked about TAS students, Dr. Damour said they, “were so much fun, open, engaged, funny, enjoying one another, supportive of one another, and playful.” As a frequent visitor to schools across the U.S., she hears all sorts of answers to the question, “what would happen on the worst day ever?” She praises TAS by elaborating, “sometimes I think [the answers are] a test of me...testing how much I’ll play. Sometimes I see it as a measure of how safe they feel at the school. I’m not always in settings where I am convinced that the girls especially feel as safe as they do here.”

Dr. Damour reminds us that there is no such thing as a bad kid. “That doesn’t exist. There are kids who are suffering and whose suffering takes the form of making things harder on the people around them. There are kids who are misbehaving. All behavior is a communication. And kids whose behavior takes the form of being destructive or difficult are communicating that they are in pain.”

When asked to name the most concerning thing facing young people today, Dr. Damour shared, “I worry that we are at a time when stress and anxiety are treated as entirely pathological when in fact psychologists have long agreed that stress and anxiety are perfectly normal functions that occasionally reach pathological proportions. In the big book of psychological diagnostic concerns, stress and anxiety are things that we are actually very good at taking care of at diagnosable levels. The problem is that when cultures treat anxiety and stress as inherently pathological, kids become stressed about becoming stressed and anxious about being anxious. It makes it worse and it does increase the likelihood of kids moving into a pathological range.

“Young people are much better off when adults normalize stress – which was my aim with the upper schoolers – so that young people are not frightened of it and so they can, in fact, embrace it as an expectable component of growth. Young people are much better off when adults normalize anxiety as an alarm function that protects all of us from frightening things, alerts all of us when something is not quite right, like if we did not study for the test we are about to take, anxiety under those conditions is a really helpful and normal and important response. If someone wants to invite you to a party that feels out of control and you feel anxious, that is where anxiety is your best friend. And so to pathologize anxiety has all of these negative repercussions. Kids get out of touch with its protective function, kids are frightened of something that should not have to frighten them, and so that’s really problematic and very concerning.

“For me, the way I think about anxiety is that kids take their cues from grownups. So when your toddler falls down and scrapes his knee, the first thing he does is look at his knee and the second

Straight Talk on Parenting with Dr. Lisa Damour

thing he does is look at your face. If you are panicking, your kid will panic. And if you say, ‘it’s OK,’ your kid feels OK. This is what a lot of parenting looks like as kids develop. So, if a kid is panicking about taking a test and the parent is panicking about them taking that test, the problem just got way bigger than it ever needed to be. “My advice to parents would be to do what you did when your toddler scraped his knee. Help kids keep things in proportion, be containing and responsive, but don’t join them in the sense that everything is a crisis. There are real crises, but most of what teenagers are panicking about is not. You can offer containment and reassurance and support while cueing to the teenager that this is very manageable.”

略。”她以樂觀和積極的方式，與 TAS 教師和家長討論了青少年時期“完全預期的發展挑戰”，同時還 為學生提供了管理成人道路上的壓力與困難情況的工具。

作為兩個女兒的母親，Damour 博士完全理解書中概述的青少年父母所面臨的挑戰。她相信她的工作幫助 她了解女兒的發育是正常的。當 Untangled 出版時，她的大女兒才 11 歲，當時她沒有達到書中的任何里 程碑。事後來看，她意識到某些事情的重要性，並可能據她身為父母所經歷的事情做出更強而有力的案例。

離開舞台後，她公開而深思熟慮地分享了她對各種主題的看法。當被問及 TAS 學生時，Damour 博士說： 「他們非常有趣、開放、敬業、好玩、並享受彼此的關係與相互支持。」作為美國各地的學校常客，她聽 到了所有對“在最糟糕的一天會發生什麼？”這個問題的答案，她藉詳細說明來讚美 TAS：「有時我認為 [ 答 案是 ] 對我的考驗 ... 測試我能玩多少。有時我認為這可以衡量他們在學校的安全感。我並不總是確信女孩 子特別感覺到像這裡一樣安全的環境。」

Damour 博士提醒我們，沒有壞孩子這樣的事情：「那是不存在的。有些孩子正在遭受苦難，他們的痛苦 以讓身邊人的事物變得更加艱難的形式出現。有些孩子行為不端。所有行為都是種溝通。那些行為採取破 壞性或困難形式出現的孩子正在傳達他們的痛苦。」 當被問及今天年輕人最關心的事情時，Damour 博士說：「我擔心我們正處於壓力和焦慮被視為完全病態 的時候，事實上心理學家一直認為壓力和焦慮是完全正常的功能，偶爾才會達到病態比例。在心理診斷問

IN ACTION: PSYCHOLOGIST LISA DAMOUR

NUTRITION UPGRADES

A Focus on Food: American Nutritional Consultants Visit TAS

By Lindsey Kundel, Communications Officer

As part of the School’s efforts to ensure the health and wellness of students, TAS has retained the services of U.S.-based child nutrition consulting firm School Food and Wellness Group (SFWG) to evaluate the offerings from the School’s food services program. SFWG offers a full range of nutrition services and has worked with an extensive portfolio of school systems: their largest clients include the cities of Chicago and Los Angeles. SFWG provides comprehensive professional services for both the U.S. National School Lunch Program (NSLP) and After School (Supper) Program. SFWG currently partners with over 50 schools across the U.S., ensuring over 30,000 students receive healthy meals on a daily basis.

TAS and SFWG started working together at the end of last school year, collaborated over the summer, and two nutrition consultants from SFWG, led by CEO Emily Chatelain, visited campus earlier this fall. While on site, SFWG consultants observed current food services operations, met with divisional leaders, participated in student focus groups from all three divisions, and presented information to faculty and parents.

According to Chatelain, it will take time to revamp the meal program because the meal program here is “extremely robust.” “We are so impressed with what is accomplished here for grades K-12, that is a big range of ages and palettes, and the types of foods kids can eat versus what high schoolers want to see,” Chatelain said. “The kinders are eating the same thing the high schoolers are eating which is not common. Most of the time you see an elementary kitchen totally separate from a middle and high, but your school has found a way to tie everything in together well.”

Working together, SFWG and TAS will continue to establish nutritional standards to guide food service decisions. SFWG has made recommendations regarding food offerings and suggested some recipe adjustments; after discussing local food sourcing options, they also suggested some more general improvements to the food service programs. Finally, they have begun to assist the School’s curriculum team with ideas and methods to incorporate healthy eating strategies into the health curriculum.

“We’ve been working with TAS all summer and developed a TAS meal standard,” said Chatelain. “It’s not final, but the goal would be after this visit to revisit the standards we created, similar to USDA’s meal standards in the states, the school standards – how many calories, how much sodium is in a meal – what does that look like here. We developed a draft over the summer and now we are here to see everything in action and to see what is feasible/realistic to do.”

SFWG will send two representatives to TAS later in school year 2018-2019 to continue supporting the School’s program in this transformational period, working with Food Service Director Shawn O’Neal and his team to provide additional guidance, advice, training, and new recipes. Registered dietician and cookbook author, Emily Bunson, and Chef Jason Keegan, will return to train TAS’s kitchen prep cooks and chefs from January 3-7, with the goal of putting two new, healthy entree options in the serving line when students come back after the winter holiday break.

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During this training time, the School will be looking to examine ingredients, identify food allergens, and provide options for students with food-based allergies, gluten sensitivity, and Celiac disease. With SFWG’s help, the School has set measurable goals including reducing saturated fat, improving promotion of vegetarian and gluten-free options, making the salad bar more student-user-friendly, and redesigning pizza offerings to include more healthy options.

The School has decided to bring all kitchen staff back early from winter break, paying them overtime, to make sure they receive the excellent training from SFWG consultants. According to Director of Facilities, Mike Dodge, the School is “fully committed to this nutrition program and are putting money and time into it in ways that will produce meaningful results for our students.”

Some of these improvements have already taken place, while others will need more time to implement. As of September 17, every lower school student who purchased pizza also received a serving of raw vegetables and raw fruit. This pairing will continue throughout the year and is at no additional cost to parents.

Starting in September as well, the School also began to reduce the number of processed pizza toppings by 50%. Studies have consistently demonstrated that diets low in saturated fats, sodium, and nitrates are healthier than diets which contain high levels of processed meats. Healthier topping choices like vegetables and lean meats will not be reduced.

Finally, Mr. O’Neal and his team have been experimenting with recipes for new gluten-free products, including gluten-free scones which are now available in the snack bar, and is continuing to distribute sample products to administrators and staff for evaluation. Based on community feedback, they will continue to fine-tune their recipes and more products will be available soon.

Student Report Cards in a Digital Age

By Rebekah Klar, Lower School Associate Principal

In the fall of 2015, a committee of intrepid lower school educators gathered in a room to tackle an important question – How could we create a K-5 report card that would reflect our mission, and our values and capture a dynamic picture of learning?

A cursory look on the internet or at reports from your school days confirms the fact that despite leaps in our understanding about how students learn and pedagogical best practices, not much has changed in the field and how we communicate children’s progress at school.

When lower school administrators decided to send reports electronically rather than in paper form, it gave us an opportunity to explore some new possibilities. We challenged ourselves to “stop thinking flat” and began to imagine a report card that could reflect student learning results more comprehensively.

With that in mind, the committee researched other school reporting models. We clarified the purpose of the report card and agreed upon the “non-negotiables” – aspects of the current report that would be imperative to carry over to the next digital version.

The lower school report is standards-based which allows us to clearly articulate what we expect students to learn and be able to do. Levels of performance towards mastery of those specific learning targets are indicated by numbers: 3 – Meeting Standard, 2 –Progressing Towards Standard, and 1 – Area of Concern. These levels reflect the belief that students are on a continuum and that progressing is the most important aspect of learning.

To improve the usefulness and communicative value of the report card, the digital platform offers some important features. We have been able to embed exemplars of student writing and standards of mathematical practice at each grade level. With a click of a button, parents can see the exemplars of student work alongside explanations of how it meets the grade level standard. The hope is that this helps parents understand our expectations and the skills we are teaching. In addition, clickable “Artifact” buttons allow parents to access

photographic, video, and audio evidence of their own child’s work in different content areas. A more extensive view of current work on individual student Seesaw blogs is also available when parents click on the student photo at the top of the page.

Teacher narratives remain central to our reporting system. The new digital report intentionally begins with a section entitled “Social Development and Behaviors that

STUDENT REPORT CARDS

Promote Learning”. Teachers report on personal attributes and dispositions/habits children exhibit such as kindness, empathy, perseverance, and curiosity. Here, we provide digital links to our TAS Values and Essential Capacities.

Content area narratives also appear before the relevant standards. This year, we will reduce “teacher talk” and use bullet points to clearly outline a child’s strengths and next steps. In this way, the report is designed to be less static, providing specific information to help parents understand how to best to support their children and to help future teachers make instructional decisions.

Our K-5 digital report card launched successfully last year. This December, our KA children will receive digital reports for the first time. We would be remiss if we did not shine the spotlight on our magnificent IT team led by Dan Hudkins. Samuel Quek was responsible for much of the elegant technical work behind the scenes as he patiently designed code to support our vision for reporting on lower school students. We have more ideas about how to enhance the platform further, but we will give the IT team a chance to recover first!

New Middle School Debate Program Offers Fresh Opportunities with a Clear Vision

By Emily Nelson, Middle School Debate Head Coach

The TAS middle school students have gotten much more argumentative this year—and it has all been in the service of boosting their academic skills and preparing them to become engaged citizens. The middle school debate program has greatly expanded in 2018, and we are excited to offer our students more opportunities to learn and grow through debate education.

New Debate Program Elements in 2018-19

Curricular Elements

This year, the Middle School has added debate education to the regular school day and our afterschool programming. We changed the focus of the Grade 7 public speaking class from general speaking to debate, and renamed the course accordingly. This new quarter-long debate class, which every Grade 7 student takes, teaches the four core debate skills: constructing arguments, refuting arguments, note-taking, and research.

We use a wide variety of debate formats, games, drills, and written exercises to help students strengthen these skills. Teachers and students work together to identify engaging debate topics. No matter the topic, the goal is always the same: to help students build a solid foundation of argumentation skills that they will carry with them throughout their academic careers.

We continue to offer a Grade 8 debate elective, but we have renamed it “advanced debate” and now offer it all four quarters. The Grade 8 students work on the same skills as the Grade 7 students, but because their reasoning skills are more mature, we can practice the skills at a more advanced level. In the Grade 8 class, we also learn about the public forum debate format and research the current U.S. Public Forum topic (which changes monthly).

Extra-Curricular Elements

The debate opportunities do not end when the school day does—for the first time, we now offer a middle school debate club after school. This activity operated as a drop-in club at the beginning of the school year, and early meetings were packed with dozens of students who were eager to discover what debate is all about. We now have a smaller group of committed Grades 7 and 8 students who attend one or two structured practices per week. We continue to offer a weekly dropin debate club for Grade 6 students.

Competition opportunities are what make debate such a fun and motivating way to learn, and many of our Grades 7 and 8 club members are preparing to travel to the San Francisco Bay Area to attend two prestigious public forum tournaments in February. We are currently working hard to create more competition opportunities so that we can serve every student who wants to compete. While plans for additional travel are still in progress, we have begun running in-house scrimmages so students can participate in real debate rounds all year long. We held our first-ever middle school scrimmage on October 27, and about 40 middle schoolers attended. Three days later at practice, students began asking how soon we could do it again. The middle schoolers’ enthusiasm and love of competition are key ingredients in driving the program forward.

MIDDLE SCHOOL

NEW DEBATE PROGRAM

DEBATE PROGRAM

Our Debate Education Philosophy

Although it might seem strange to hear a debate coach say it, we do not debate for debate’s sake. And while winning debate tournaments feels fantastic, coming in first place isn’t the ultimate goal. As an educational tool, debate is useful insofar as it teaches skills that will benefit students in other areas of their life. As a means of discourse, debate is useful insofar as it helps us get closer to the truth. Our faculty teaches debate with these two purposes in mind.

A great debater makes logical arguments cogently and elegantly—just as a well-educated person in any field does. This is what we expect our students to strive for in every round. While we do teach debate strategy, we try hard to minimize the focus on gamesmanship and maximize the emphasis on top-quality reasoning.

As debate coaches, we find that some students come to us having learned that the way to win debate rounds is to confuse your opponents or spread them thin by making a vast number of poorly developed arguments, in the hopes that they’ll be unable to answer them all. Unfortunately, judges in some communities reward students for this behavior. But we’ll never let that fact lower our standards. We encourage students to make thoughtful arguments that promote meaningful clash because that’s what debate looks like at its best.

Done well, debate can be a way of arming students with the tools they’ll need to navigate a world where truth seems to be losing its foothold in civil discourse. The ability to compare evidence, analyze others’ reasoning, and evaluate the relevance of expertise are indispensable skills for anyone who wishes to make their voice heard. However, done poorly, debate can develop bad habits. In the hands of inexperienced or unqualified coaches, debaters can learn to use arguments as weapons, spewing forth talking points without meaningfully engaging with the issues.

That is why we hire the most qualified and experienced coaches, and why we teach a style of debate that encourages students to communicate effectively about real-world problems. Most students find it extremely challenging to explain their thinking on a complex topic in a compelling way to a knowledgeable audience, but when that’s the expectation, they rise to the occasion. When students focus on realistic arguments grounded in robust research, they can come to a deep understanding of how arguments work and how to persuade people of good ideas, and that is what we want for all of our debaters.

TAS DEBATE

D O S A N D D O N ' T S : G O O D & B A D D E B A T E S O U N D S . . .

LOGICAL

S t u d e n t s m a k e l o g c a l a r g u m e n t s t h a t a r e d r e c t l y a n d o b v i o u s l y c o n n e c t e d t o t h e r e s o u t i o n

FOCUSED & RESEARCHED

S t u d e n t s f o c u s o n a r g u m e n t s t h a t h a v e a b r o a d b a s e o f r e s e a r c h t o s u p p o r t t h e m T h e m o s t i m p o r t a n t a r g u m e n t s i n t h e r o u n d r e l y o n e v i d e n c e f r o m e x p e r t s o n t h e t o p i c

CLEAR & ORGANIZED

T h e r o u n d i s c l e a r a n d e a s y t o f o l l o w A n y w e l l - i n f o r m e d a n d i n t e l l i g e n t o b s e r v e r w o u l d h a v e a g o o d s e n s e o f w h a t t h e m a o r d i s a g r e e m e n t s i n t h e r o u n d a r e a n d w h a t e a c h s i d e s p o s i t i o n o n t h o s e d i s a g r e e m e n t s i s

STUDENT-DRIVEN

S t u d e n t s m a k e a g e - a p p r o p r i a t e a r g u m e n t s t h a t t h e y f u l y u n d e r s t a n d I t s o b v i o u s t h a t t h e s t u d e n t s c o n s t r u c t e d t h e a r g u m e n t s t h e m s e l v e s w i t h l i m i t e d g u i d a n c e f r o m a q u a l i f i e d c o a c h

RESPONSIBILITY

S t u d e n t s u n d e r s t a n d t h a t i t i s t h e i r r e s p o n s i b i l i t y t o p e r s u a d e t h e j u d g e r e g a r d l e s s o f t h e j u d g e s b a c k g r o u n d T h e y k n o w t h a t j u d g e a d a p t a t i o n i s a v i t a l a n d s o p h s t i c a t e d s k i l l t h a t t h e y s h o u l d s t r i v e t o p e r f e c t T h e y n e v e r b l a m e t h e i r l o s s e s o n i n e x p e r i e n c e d j u d g e s o r c o m p l a i n t h a t t h e j u d g e m a d e a m i s t a k e

UNFOCUSED

S t u d e n t s s p e n d m o s t o f t h e r o u n d t a l k i n g a b o u t a r g u m e n t s t h a t s e e m s e v e r a s t e p s r e m o v e d f r o m t h e r e s o l u t i o n

S t u d e n t s m a k e s l i p p e r y s l o p e ” a r g u m e n t s w h e r e t h e y c r e a t e a c h a i n o f a r g u m e n t s f r o m m u l t i p l e u n r e l a t e d s o u r c e s T h e c h a i n o f t e n e n d s i n a n u n r e a l i s t i c i m p a c t s u c h a s n u c l e a r w a r e x t i n c t i o n o r o t h e r g l o b a l c a t a s t r o p h c s c e n a r o s

CONFUSING

T h e r o u n d i s m e s s y o r c o n f u s i n g S t u d e n t s m a y m a k e a r g u m e n t s i n a d e l i b e r a t e a t t e m p t t o c o n f u s e t h e r o p p o n e n t s T h e j u d g e m a y s t r u g g l e t o f i n d a c l e a r r e a s o n t o v o t e f o r e i t h e r t e a m

INAUTHENTIC

S t u d e n t s r e a d m a t e r i a l s t h a t t h e i r c o a c h w r o t e f o r t h e m I t s o f t e n o b v i o u s t h a t t h e s t u d e n t s d o n t f u l l y u n d e r s t a n d t h e m a t e r i a l s t h e y a r e r e a d i n g T h i s m a y e a d s t u d e n t s t o o v e r s i m p l i f y m i s c o n s t r u e a n d m i s u s e c h a l l e n g i n g c o n c e p t s w h i c h d a m a g e s t h e i r l e a r n i n g

FULL OF COMPLAINTS

A f t e r r o u n d s s t u d e n t s c o m p l a i n t h a t t h e y h a d a l a y u d g e a m o m j u d g e o r s o m e o t h e r v a r i e t y o f s u p p o s e d l y u n q u a l i f i e d j u d g e S t u d e n t s f o c u s t o o m u c h o n t h e t e c h n i c a l a s p e c t s o f d e b a t e a n d n o t e n o u g h o n a r g u m e n t q u a l i t y s o t h e y a r e o n l y c o m f o r t a b l e w i t h h i g h l y t e c h n i c a j u d g e s

基礎。

我們繼續提供八年級的辯論選修課，但我們已將其更名為高級辯論，現在四個季度都開課。8 年級學生的 工作技能與 7 年級學生相同，但由於他們的推理技能更加成熟，我們可以練習更高級別的技能。在 8 年級 的課程中，我們還了解公共論壇的辯論形式，並研究當前的美國公共論壇主題（每月更改）。 辯論的機會並不在下課後結束 - 我們現在第一次在放學後提供一個初中辯論社。這項活動在學年開始時是 以隨機社團運作，早期的會議擠滿了數十名學生，他們渴望發現什麼是辯論。我們現在則有一小組投入的 7 年級和 8 年級學生，每週參加一到兩次安排好的練習。我們繼續為六年級學生提供每週一次的隨機辯論社。 競賽機會使辯論成為一種有趣和激勵性的學習方式，我們許多的 7 年級和 8 年級社團成員正準備前往舊金 山灣區參加於 2 月份舉辦的兩場著名的公共論壇錦標賽。我們目前正在努力創造更多的競爭機會，以便我 們能夠為每個想要參與競賽的學生提供服務。

雖然額外旅行計劃仍在進行中，但我們已經開始進行內部訓練，以便學生可以全年參加真正的辯論。我們 在 10 月 27 日舉行了第一次初中混和賽，約有 40 名初中學生參加了比賽。

三天後，在練習中，學生們開始詢問我們多久後能再次舉辦。初中學生的熱情和對競爭的熱愛是推動該課 程向前發展的關鍵因素。

雖然聽到辯論教練這麼說可能看起來很奇怪，但我們不會為辯論而辯論。雖然贏得辯論比賽感覺很棒，但 是進入第一名並不是最終目標。作為一種教育工具，辯論是有用的，因為它教授的技能將使學生在其他生 活領域受益。作為一種話語手段，辯論是有用的，因為它有助於我們更接近真理。我們的教師教授辯論時 考慮到這兩個目的。 一個偉大的辯論者能夠有條不紊地進行邏輯論證

ACADEMIA SINICA

Academia Sinica

By Darby Sinclair, Upper School History, Political Science and Forensics Teacher

“When we are steaming rice, this meant it was archive preservation day,” four TAS interns enthusiastically shared with University of Southern California Professor Jake Soll’s second visit to the Archives Institute of Modern History at Academia Sinica this past October. A rice cooker and a demonstration of traditional preservation techniques of Qing Dynasty archives was not what Soll, Joanna Nicholas Scholar-in-Residence envisioned after our students visited the Archives Institute for a tour in January 2018.

The Achives Institute of Modern History contains important original historical records which are a major repository for research on modern Chinese history. Diplomatic records of the Qing Dynasty dating to the early 17th century, early Kuomintang government archives, and personal papers that study the development of modern Taiwan after World War II comprise the majority of the archive. As Professor Soll began to plan his first visit to TAS he dreamed of finding a way for students to experience history outside of the classroom. His prominence in the world of distinguished historians allowed TAS to have the doors opened to a collection that is over ten kilometers in length. Through this initial visit Professor Soll helped TAS establish a relationship with the Archives Institute and create an opportunity for four TAS students to spend the months of June and July completing a summer internship in these hallowed walls of history. The collaborative goal between the Archives Institute and our school was to create a mutually beneficial experience for the head archivists to teach a new generation of young historians about ancient preservation techniques, organizing, and recording of historical records.

In October, prior to the return of Professor Soll, I asked the students to provide a list of the archives they wished to present and share with us during our visit to the Archives. A quick email reply came with an unimaginably long list of documents ranging from Japanese colonial maps of Taiwan, a photo album of Emperor Hirohito’s visit to the U.S., and a Qing dynasty legal document on the divorce of a wife and the the role of government in daily life. The TAS interns eagerly shared each story with us, painting a vibrant picture of Qing Dynasty control and the relationship with Taiwan. On our return visit we were struck by how confidently and nimbly our students moved from room to room with the ease that we could only imagine a professional who has an intimate understanding of the documents might have. Upon reflection, our interns remarked on how precious this experience had been for them. They understood that they were allowed into the chambers that are a rarity for even the most seasoned of historians. This relationship was made possibly because of Professor Soll’s desire to extend the experience of historical learning outside of the classroom and the trust that Academia Sinica had in our TAS students’ ability to work professionally with priceless documents of Chinese and Taiwnese history. Our hope is to continue to build these relationships and provide opportunities to the next generation of young historians.

經驗，教導新一代年輕歷史學家關於古代保存技術、組織和歷史記錄的登錄。 10 月份，Soll 教授回來之前，我要求學生提供他們希望在訪問期間與我們分享的檔案清單。一個快速的電 子郵件回覆帶來了一個難以想像的長文件列表，包括日本的台灣殖民地圖、裕仁天皇訪問美國的相冊、以 及關於離異妻子的清朝法律文件與政府在日常生活所扮演的角色。TAS 實習生熱切地與我們分享每一個故 事，描繪了清朝控制和與台灣關係的生動畫面。在我們的回訪中，我們感到震驚的是，本校學生們從一個 房間移動到另一個房間，帶著我們只能想像一個對文檔有深入了解的專業人士之自信和輕鬆。經過反思， 我們的實習生評論了這次經歷對他們的珍貴程度。他們明白，他們被允許進入即使是經驗最豐富的歷史學 家也罕見的房間。這種關係可能是因為 Soll 教授希望將歷史學習經驗擴展到課堂以外，以及中央研究院對 我們 TAS 學生在中國和台灣歷史上無價的文件之專業工作能力的信任。我們希望繼續建立這些關係，並 為下一代年輕歷史學家提供機會。

UNITED NATIONS

Taipei American School's Thriving MUN Program

By Darby Sinclair, Upper School History, Political Science and Forensics Teacher

At TAS we continually evaluate how we can best achieve our mission to be an innovative 21st century learning community. MUN is one of many extra-curricular programs that effectively has carried out the TAS mission of providing students with a global perspective.

Critical thinking, complex problem solving, and negotiation rank amongst the top ten soft skills that the World Economic Forum deems essential in the global workplace. Many TAS students are actively honing and refining these soft skills through our Model United Nations (MUN) program. MUN is an extra-curricular activity in which students role play delegates to the United Nations or similar intergovernmental forums. The skills that MUN helps develop involve in-depth research, public speaking, debating, writing skills, and collaborative negotiation. Teamwork and leadership abilities are the most significant skills that students come away with after participating in an MUN conference.

TAS has had an active MUN program for over 30 years, with the last 10 years expanding rapidly to provide opportunities for over 170 students in Grades 7-12 to travel off-island to Europe, Shanghai, Seoul, Singapore, Malaysia, and the Philippines. Currently, over 85% of upper school student MUN participants travel to international conferences, while in the middle school nearly half of Grades 7 and 8 participants are attending in off-island conferences. The chance to travel internationally provides our students with the experience of practicing cross-cultural communication skills with students from across the globe. When we are not traveling the globe, we are bringing the world to us. 2019 will mark the 10th anniversary of the TASMUN conference, hosted by TAS at the end of April. Starting with only three schools in attendance, we have now expanded to over 25 international schools, many coming from across the Asia region. We believe that every TAS student from Grades 5-11 has the opportunity to participate as either a page, press team, delegate, chair or a member of the student leadership team.

As the MUN program continues to evolve we have begun to challenge students to begin applying their soft skills through meaningful engagement toward achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The TAS MUN program believes that MUN can be a conduit to act as an agent of change that inspires action to support the SDGs. This coming April, upper school students committed to an action-oriented SDG project will travel to the United Nations Headquarters in New York to present their plans for more actively supporting the SDGs in their community. This will be the first time that TAS MUN students will have their voices heard in a forum that is no longer a simulation, but is working towards real action. We believe that this effectively addresses our TAS essential capacities as MUN students take initiative and creatively problem solve to tackle global challenges.

As our MUN community continues to redefine our mission we look forward to the energy and enthusiasm that our youth at TAS will continue to exude as they apply their leadership skills to engage with likeminded individuals on the world stage.

在全球旅行時，我們將把世界帶給我們。 2019 年 4 月底 TAS 將主辦 TASMUN 10 週年會議。從僅有三所學校開始，我們現 已擴展到超過 25 所國際學校，其中許多 來自亞洲各地。我們相信每個 5 - 11 年級 的 TAS 學生都有機會以一個頁面、新聞團 隊、代表、主席或學生領導團隊的成員參 與盛會。 隨著 MUN 課程不斷地發展，我們開始挑 戰學生藉有意義的參與以實現聯合國可持 續發展目標（SDG

ATHLETICS: WELLNESS CENTER

Health,

Wellness, and Excellence Continue to Expand for the TAS Community

By Mike Corsini, Associate Athletics Director

The Tiger Health & Wellness Center opened its doors in 2013 as a striking and well-equipped space to assist TAS students, faculty, and staff in realizing their fullest potential in fitness and wellbeing. The popularity of the center spurred the expansion of its staff and services beginning in 2016 with the addition of an assistant athletic trainer, a rehabilitation specialist, and a personal fitness coach. The center’s staff of six trained and certified professionals provides a range of services— from personal training to injury prevention and treatment—in the pursuit of health and wellness.

Strength and conditioning staff members Dr. Trey Mitchell, Mr. Anthony Poole, and Mr. Denny Wen are committed to assisting the TAS community in developing physical wellness while minimizing the risk of injury. Upper school and middle school students have the opportunity to build lifelong fitness habits by attending on-campus Sport Specific Training (SST) Agility & Explosion sessions offered after school throughout each of the four athletics seasons. Upper school students are also able to schedule one-on-one or small group training classes that aid in the development of discipline and grit. In the 2017-2018 academic year, students took part in more than 600 personalized training sessions.

Head athletic trainer Ms. Amber Hardy and rehabilitation specialist Mr. Jerry Chen coordinate sports medicine services for approximately 200 student-athletes each year. Ms. Hardy and Mr. Chen dedicate their time to preparing our student-athletes for the rigors of competition by administering services related to sports injury prevention, treatment, and rehabilitation. In addition to providing coverage for all athletic practices and competitions, they are spearheading a concussion impact testing initiative and will execute a functional movement screening (FMS) program aimed at identifying at-risk areas of the body and performance-limiting movement patterns.

Our student-athletes have utilized the Tiger Health & Wellness Center’s numerous resources in their drive toward competitive excellence, and this has paid dividends: TAS varsity teams captured a school-record seven gold medals at IASAS championship events in the 2016-2017 academic year and followed that effort with five gold medals and a school-record-tying 13 overall medals in 2017-2018.

The center is open to faculty and upper school students Monday through Saturday. A calendar of opening hours is accessible on the Facilities page of the TAS athletics website.

生運動員做好準備。除了為所有運動練習和比賽提供報導外，他們還帶頭進行腦震盪影響測試計劃，並將 執行功能性運動篩檢（FMS）計劃，旨在識別身體的危險區域和限制運動的動作模式。 本校學生運動員利用老虎健康中心的眾多資源來推動競爭優勢，這已經帶來了好處：TAS 代表隊在 20162017 學年的 IASAS 錦標賽中獲得了 7 枚金牌的學校紀錄，在 2017-2018 賽季取得了五枚金牌和一個創紀

ROXANNE BROWNE

Roxanne Browne: The Art of Laughter

By Brenda Lin, PTA Communications

As a part of the PTA Special Grants program, middle school, upper school, and Grade 5 drama students were treated to a week of theater workshops with grant visitor Roxanne Browne in October.

For Roxanne Browne, acting started out as a hobby, a release from long hours spent sitting still in classrooms. She found joy and freedom in the physicality and spontaneity of theater. At the suggestion of a teacher, she decided to focus more on drama, and after regularly attending a Saturday workshop, she learned the discipline of theater. It was when she was able to marry her passion for theater with its methodology that Roxanne began to entertain the possibility of pursuing it as a career in earnest. With the support of her family, Roxanne went to Paris to study physical theater at L’Ecole Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq.

The Jacques Lecoq method is rooted in three pillars: 1) Open your space, which examines how you use your space, your body, the physicality of it and relationship to your surroundings; 2) Movement, which is the awareness that everything moves; and 3) Play, which stresses the importance of play and laughter. This was exactly how Roxanne worked with TAS students – encouraging them to walk around and observe and gain trust from each other. Then she gave the students a stimulus or a prompt, and they would improvise and play off of one another. Roxanne observed that TAS students were really eager and willing to try new things; they were energetic and uninhibited and very imaginative.

The parent community was also given an opportunity to attend a theater workshop with Roxanne. Parents were given a brief background of the Jacques Lecoq method and then were asked to stand up and participate in a number of activities like passing along a clap, passing along laughter, and walking around the room led by different body parts. Parents were a bit selfconscious in the beginning, but it did not take long for them to relax and find the joy in physical exploration and play.

For Roxanne, the most important thing is how to apply theater to all aspects of life – how to form trust and use the power of observation to respond and communicate, to really hold eye contact, and relate to one another.

The poet John Paul Lederach has said, “I discovered that we have no empirical evidence that being more serious leads to greater insight into the human condition than being playful. There is, however, growing empirical evidence that being playful opens toward the ever-elusive, supple heart.”

Roxanne reminds us of that very notion – that through understanding one’s space, moving within it, and maintaining a sense of playfulness, we can find a real way to relate and understand.

For the budding actor, Roxanne offers this advice: Be willing to try, be inquisitive, do not be afraid that this will not lead to a “stable” job. You would be surprised at how pervasive the skills you acquire in theater can be applied to all aspects of life.

FACULTY PURSUING DOCTORATES

Practicing What They Preach: Record Number of Full-Time Faculty Pursue Doctoral Degrees

By Lindsey Kundel, Communications Officer

Taipei American School prides itself on hiring a large number of faculty members who have received advanced degrees. In this current school year, 2018-2019, approximately 63% of our faculty members possess one master's degree and another 5.7% have two or more master's degrees. 8.9% of full-time TAS faculty have obtained a doctoral degree, defined by HR as either a PhD, JD, or EdD. This number will go up significantly in the next two academic years.

A record number of full-time faculty are currently pursuing doctoral degrees in their spare time. 13 faculty members, which is nearly 5% of our full-time faculty, are enrolled in an online or parttime doctoral degree. It is important to note that this number does not include the 6 other faculty members who recently graduated from doctoral programs just last school year.

While some of these faculty have just started their studies, some have finished or are nearly finished with coursework, and some will be graduating in a few months, after the grueling process of defending a thesis. The 13 faculty members span across all three divisions, including administrators, teachers, and counselors. While their formal titles may vary, they are all teacherleaders.

Tara

Lori Richardson Garcia, East Carolina University

Leanne Rainbow, American College of Education

Prefers not to be named

Tim Sheu, Johns Hopkins University

Chris Hoffman, Bethel University

Juliana Martinez, University of Bath

Andrew Lowman, Walden University

Evelyn Chen, Vanderbilt University

Kevin Held, Northeastern University

Jill Fagen, Bethel University

Jeff Neill, Northeastern University

This surge in doctoral degrees at TAS aligns with recent information regarding the prevalence of doctoral degrees in America. According to the National Science Foundation, American universities are awarding doctoral degrees at an accelerating pace, up nearly 3.5 percent from 2013 and up nearly 8 percent from 2011. However, Taipei American School teachers have outpaced those statistics since nearly 5% of our faculty are currently seeking a professional degree beyond a master's.

For middle school EAL teacher, Tim Sheu, pursuing a doctorate degree was the next logical step in his career. "I'm a lifelong learner and for a number of years I felt like I needed to look into a new degree in order to grow professionally," Sheu said. He is currently in his third and final year of the program at Johns Hopkins, studying how to build teachers' efficacy and expertise in teaching writing across the curriculum.

Andrew Lowman agrees with this "idealist" sentiment about why he first applied, but he thinks that there is a more practical reason as well. "I would hope that as educators we all see ourselves as lifelong learners," Lowman said. "But the thing is that we also all have some gaps in our

Lower School Middle School Upper School Administration

Simeonidis, USC Rossier

Kathryn Limmer, USC Rossier

professional backgrounds that we should try to address because we all come into education from different places." For Lowman, this meant that because his master's degree focused more on counseling and positive psychology, he knew that he needed to learn more about school leadership in order to "round out" his experiences before accepting a new administrative role within the school.

For other faculty members like Lori Richardson Garcia and Evelyn Chen, the motivation to pursue a doctorate was similarly focused on broadening their understanding of how schools function. Richardson Garcia said that she was interested in exploring other areas of leadership beyond her work as a middle school counselor. "I [wanted] to be able to see what we do for students through multiple lenses," Richardson Garcia said, "and working on my doctorate [would give] me exposure to many different aspects of school leadership."

Chen similarly said that she got the "itch" to pursue this degree because she wanted to be involved in "different conversations" around the school beyond those of her science classroom. Her goal was to feel like her contribution to the school was part of a greater picture. She compared it to the analogy of a frog inside a well seeing only a small part of the sky. "I think that's how I felt because in our classes...because there's just really no time for you to establish that holistic picture of what kids are learning [in different classes]."

Kevin Held was motivated to continue his graduate work for a slightly different goal. Instead of working towards a career goal, Held has been working to rectify a lack of research in his particular field: technical theater. "I noticed a lack of any literature about why we do what we do behind the scenes," Held said. "Everything focuses on how to use the latest gadget, but not why it enhances our art form. I also noticed that the rhetoric about robotics and engineering focused on the team process, iterations, and returning to the design until you get something that works."

Many of the faculty members interviewed said that they had been thinking of pursuing a doctorate for several years before applying or beginning their coursework. One faculty member, Chris Hoffman, has a different story. This is his second attempt at doctoral studies because he was deployed to Afghanistan in the middle of his first degree. He took a break from his studies upon returning to the United States and, after moving to and living in Taiwan for several years, he finally decided to return to his research.

For Hoffman, studying leadership at the doctoral level has been about "standing on the shoulders" of those leaders who inspired him, leaders from the military and from the other schools he has worked in. He decided to continue his studies because he wanted to become what he calls a "public intellectual," a person who is consulted and trusted by others when they face challenging problems in education.

Juliana Martinez was also interested in continuing her studies based on the leaders she had learned from in the past including her adviser at St. Paul's School, our current Head of School, Dr. Sharon Hennessy. "She has been in my life for a very long time," said Martinez. "And she's very impressive. Back when I met her in high school she already had multiple degrees. Since that time I have always wanted to pursue a higher degree."

For Leanne Rainbow, the opportunity to also be a role model is on her mind as she finishes her degree. "I think it's a good message for our students to have a female doctor in STEM present in their life at an early age. It's powerful for all of our students to look up to, but it's even more powerful for our young girls." Within her own family, she's proud that her daughters see her work through the joys and challenges of study. "It's not always pretty," she said, "but I like studying alongside my girls and I'm glad that they get to see me working hard on something that's really important to me."

Each of these TAS faculty members has a different story about why they are pursuing this degree now, but all agree on the sacrifices that must be made in order to achieve this degree. All of these

FACULTY PURSUING DOCTORATES

PROFESSIONAL

PURSUING DOCTORATES

doctoral candidates work full- (or beyond full-) time at TAS. They have families, children, and other outside responsibilities including taking care of pets, coaching responsibilities, and attempting to live a balanced life. However, they all echoed the same sentiment about pursuing a doctoral degree: something's got to give.

Chris Hoffman wakes up between 3:30 and 3:45 every morning to read, write, and study before coming to work. He does this, he said, so that he can be fully present both at work and at home with his family.

Lori Richardson Garcia often has a similar schedule to Hoffman. "At one point when I was writing my literature review, I was going to bed at 7:00 PM and waking up at 3:00 AM." She spoke about the importance of being strategic with work time but also scheduling in protected time for yourself and your loved ones. "We carve out time on Mondays because [my husband] is off. Monday is our date night [because] the other nights we’re both working."

Several of the other candidates said that they prefer to work mostly on evenings or weekends.

Jeff Neill said that he often wakes up early to work out, but prefers to save all work for after his children go to bed. "Thankfully, my kids go to bed early," said Neill. "One of the promises that I made when I started the doctoral program was that I wouldn't allow it to interfere with family." He said the things that he has sacrificed the most are sleep and reading for pleasure instead of for classes.

For Evelyn Chen, she said that the thing she has had to sacrifice most is her social life. "Every weekend I try to do one great thing for me. Whether that is yoga or having dinner dates with friends, I definitely make sure to do something for me," she said. "But the rest of the weekend is for work."

Juliana Martinez is enrolled in a British program that has a much different schedule than the other American universities; as such, she has a much different work schedule than the other candidates. She attends classes in person in the United Kingdom each summer and then works independently during the school year on research and synthesis papers that reflect her knowledge of the course content. She said the biggest thing she has had to sacrifice is vacation time. She and her husband have not yet taken a vacation during the school year since beginning her studies. "You definitely need someone at home who believes in you. My husband has been the one who has really supported me through this process, discussing my ideas and helping me to organize them," Martinez said.

TAS actively encourages and supports faculty members who are pursuing graduate work. Whether it is offering on-campus graduate credit workshops, partnering with outside online educational groups like COETAIL, State University of New York at Buffalo, or The College of New Jersey, or helping to fund students who are working on graduate credits that relate to the School's Strategic Plan, professional development continues to be both supported and expected.

All of the faculty members interviewed encouraged other faculty members to pursue the more difficult option, a doctoral degree, over a second master's degree, albeit for different reasons. For some, like Juliana Martinez, a doctoral degree is superior because of what the title symbolizes. "If I'm going to do all the work of forty credits and a thesis, I want a title," said Martinez. "For me, that is something important because it is hard work to go through that level of academic research...if I'm going to research something that in-depth, I want to be able to have a title that says that I really understand that subject."

Chris Hoffman and Tim Sheu agree with Martinez. Both describe being a doctor as entering into a club of public intellectualism, where other people might look to you for ideas and answers to difficult problems. This is not a theoretical claim. As a result of nearly completing his doctoral degree, one faculty member, Jeff Neill, has already been asked to consult on his area of research for a professional journal.

These 13 faculty members are a compelling testament to the School's continued support and encouragement of professional development for our faculty. These candidates have made the difficult (and time-consuming) decision to prioritize their own learning, which will benefit not only the students under their immediate care but the entire culture of learning at our school.

PURSUING DOCTORATES

Tara Simeonidis

Chris Hoffman

Kevin Held

Leanne Rainbow

Juliana Martinez

Jill Fagen

Lori Richardson Garcia

Andrew Lowman

Jeff Neill

Tim Sheu

Evelyn Chen

Kathryn Limmer

孩子和其他外部責任，包括照顧寵物、執教責任、以及努力過均衡的生活。然而，他們都對追求博士學位 的觀點表達了同樣的看法：有些東西是必須付出的。 Chris Hoffman 每天早上 3:30 到 3:45 之間醒來，在上班前讀書、寫作和學習。他說，這樣做，他就可以 全力放在工作與家人身上了。 Lori Richardson Garcia 經常與 Hoffman 有類似的時間表。“有一陣子，當我寫文學評論時，我在晚上 7 點睡覺，並在凌晨 3 點醒來。”她談到了為自己和親人安排特定時間的重要性。“我們在星期一會空出時 間來，因為 [ 我的丈夫 ] 休假。所以週一是我們的約會之夜，[ 因為 ] 其他的夜晚我都用來工作。” 其他幾位博士候選人表示他們更喜歡在晚上或週末工作。 Jeff Neill 說，他經常早起鍛練身體，但更喜歡把所有工作留在孩子上床睡覺後做。“謝天謝地，我的孩子

對於 Evelyn Chen 來說，她說她最不得不犧牲的是她的社交生活。“每個週末我都會嘗試為自己做一件開 心的事。無論是瑜伽或與朋友共進晚餐，我都一定要為自己做點什麼，”她說。“但週末剩餘的時間則是 為了工作。”

Juliana Martinez 進修的是與美國大學相當不同時間表的英國課程，因此她的工作時間表與其他博士候選 人很不一樣。她每年暑假在英國上課，然後學年中獨立研究並於論文中融合所有反映她對課程內容的知識。 所以，她說最大的事是她必須犧牲渡假的時間。她與她的丈夫在她修課期間還未休過假。“你肯定需要一 個相信你的人在家裡。我的丈夫一直是那個為我的學習而犧牲的人，” Martinez 說。

TAS 積極鼓勵並支持正在進行研究生工作的教師。無論是提供校內研究生學分的研討會；與 COETAIL，

SUNY Buffalo 或 TCNJ 等外部團體合作；還是幫忙資助正在研究與學校策略計劃相關的研究生學分的學生， 專業發展仍然得到支持並受到期待。

所有受訪的教師都鼓勵其他教師追求比第二個碩士學位更難的選項 - 博士學位，儘管原因各不相同。對於 像 Juliana Martinez 這樣的人來說，博士學位是優越的，猶如頭銜所象徵的。“如果我要完成四十個學分， 我想要一個頭銜，”Martinez 說。“對我來說，這是重要的，因為通過這一級別的課程很難 如果我要 深入研究一些東西，我希望能夠得到一個頭銜，說明我實際上對那主題有相當程度的瞭解。” Chris Hoffman 和 Tim Sheu 同意 Martinez 的看法。兩人都形容自己是作為博士，進入一個公共理性主義

LOVE STORY

Lesley and Jim: A TAS Love Story

By Connie Ma, Alumni and Community Outreach Officer

Imagine marrying a girl you met in high school forty years later. This may sound like the plot of a Nicholas Sparks novel, but it is the actual real-life story of Lesley Hall ’79 and Jim Smith ’78.

In 1976, Lesley and Jim crossed paths at TAS. Jim “Smitty” Smith ’78 was a junior at TAS, a talented artist and a varsity baseball player, who loved the freedom of traveling in Asia. “It was an absolute adventure that I can’t explain to my children or people who didn’t have the opportunity to live through that time,” recalls Jim. That same summer, Lesley Hall ’79 had just moved to Taipei from Maryland. She played tennis at TAS and enjoyed exploring Taiwan through Mr. Richard Arnold’s class Journeys into Asian Culture. “He really forced you to get outside of yourself and participate in the country,” remembers Lesley. Though the two remember each other by sight, they moved in different social circles. After TAS, Jim graduated with a degree in architecture in Houston and married a woman he met there. He traveled all over the world as an architect with different firms. Lesley also moved back to the US and graduated with a degree in journalism, pursuing a career as a reporter. She moved with her first husband to Germany in the ‘90s, and eventually settled down in northern Virginia to work in editing and advertising.

In 2015, Jim and Lesley’s paths crossed again. The previous year, Jim’s wife had passed away, and he had moved his practice home to raise their three children. In February, Jim’s best friends in Virginia invited him for a change of scenery at a TAS reunion. Lesley had also recently lost her brother and mother to illness and was not getting out much. Her best friend from TAS persuaded her to attend her first-ever TAS reunion. To her surprise, she ended up talking all night in the kitchen with a man she remembered quite clearly from TAS many years ago: Jim Smith. They discovered common histories of living in Tokyo, moving to Taipei, and attending TAS, starting a conversation that continues today.

In July 2018, Lesley and Jim tied the knot in New Mexico, after carrying on a long distance relationship for three years, “enriching Southwest Airlines in the process,” quips Jim. They returned to Taiwan in 2016 and 2018 for the Worldwide Reunions, where they reunited with Mr. Arnold and hiked up to Battleship Rock (also known as Dog’s Head). Lesley calls their relationship something that feels like it was meant to be: “Jim and I talk about TAS and Taiwan all the time. It is so great to have that shared experience with the person you are married to.” These days, Jim is in the process of moving from Houston to Virginia, where the couple will combine their libraries, collections of ‘70s pirated vinyl records from Taiwan, and sets of Ricardo Lynn furniture. To echo what Mr. Arnold said when he heard about their marriage, “We wish them every happiness in the world.”

Lesley Hall'79 剛從馬里蘭州搬到了 台北。她在 TAS 打網球，並藉 Richard Arnold 先生的亞洲文化之旅來探索台灣。“他真的強迫你走出自 我並參與這個國家，”Lesley 回憶道。雖然兩人見過並互相記得，但他們卻進入不同的社交圈。在 TAS 之後，Jim 畢業於休士頓大學，獲得了建築學學位，並娶了一位在那裡遇到的女士。作為不同公司的建築 師，他走遍了世界各地。Lesley 也搬回了美國，並獲得了新聞學學位，從事了記者的職業。她在 90 年代 與她的第一任丈夫一起搬到了德國，並最終定居在維吉尼亞州北部從事編輯和廣告工作。 2015

TAS 就學；對話於是開始至今。 在 2018 年 7 月，經過三年的遠距交往，Lesley 和 Jim 在新墨西哥州結婚，“在這個過程中大大資助了西 南航空公司”Jim 戲謔地說。他們於 2016 年和 2018 年返回台灣參加全球校友會，在那裡他們與 Arnold 先生重聚，並徒步前往軍艦岩（也稱為狗頭）。Lesley 把他們的姻緣稱為天注定：“Jim 和我一直在談論 TAS 和台灣。能與你結婚的人分享經驗真是太棒了。”現在，Jim 正要從休士頓搬到維吉尼亞州，這對夫 婦將合併他們的圖書、來自台灣的 70 年代盜版黑膠唱片收藏和 Ricardo Lynn 的傢俱。讓我們倣效 Arnold 先生在聽到他們結婚時所說的話，“我們祝福他們擁有世上一切的幸福。”

Lesley Hall

Jim Smith

Growing with Summer Academy

By Catherine Huang, TAS Summer Academy Staff

GET READY FOR SUMMER ACADEMY

For the last 20 years, the Taipei American School Summer Academy program has filled a need by the TAS community for continued academic growth over the summer months. During the ensuing years, the course offerings for students Pre-K through Grade 12 have continued to evolve to support and strengthen the academic interests of TAS students. During the program’s two-week or four-week sessions, students have the opportunity for enrichment in core studies, advancement through the curriculum by fulfilling graduation requirements, and the pursuit of passions and interests in new areas of study.

Enrichment

Language arts programs begin at KA where young learners can hone their reading, writing, and speaking skills to build confidence and prepare them for the upcoming school year. Additional specific language art course offerings include: story writing & illustrations (Grades 2-5), public speaking (Grades 3-4) and Model UN-focused reading, writing and research (Grades 7-8).

Science aficionados can get an early start with STEM exploration (Grades 2-3), enroll in scientific experiments focusing on sound and design a musical instrument (Grades 4-5), and further develop basic scientific skills while focusing on ecology, biology and chemistry through middle school scientific research (Grades 6-8).

Math course offerings begin in Middle School and focus on two different strands: pre-algebra preparation (Grades 6-7) and algebra preparation (Grades 7-8). These classes may be used for extra math enrichment or to prepare students for placement tests.

“Summer Academy's 4-hour sessions provide a unique opportunity to really concentrate on the class's subject matter, reducing the time needed to review material. This provides for fast-paced, high-energy classes. Regular school schedules include large time gaps between classes so much time is needed to review material covered in the previous class.” - Mr. Brian Tobey, Summer Academy lower school public speaking teacher.

Advancement

Upper school students can use Summer Academy to fulfill basic graduation requirements or expand and accelerate their progress in the math and science programs. Course offerings include a wide range of math, science, public speaking, and robotics options, as well as an extensive internship program that works closely with many of Taiwan’s leading businesses and scientific research institutes. Math and science advancement classes are extremely rigorous, moving through an entire year’s work in one month. For that reason, students enrolling in these classes need to seek the approval of the department chair or the Summer Academy director.

“Honors advanced geometry is a fast-paced class that introduces students to rigorous mathematical logic. Contrary to popular belief, it's not just about shapes. The class is concerned more with the process than the answer. Students are already given the answer and they're asked to provide the "why?" At first, this is a bit of an adjustment for students at this stage in their mathematical journey because it requires the skill of concisely and clearly communicating their thought-process, but it's a critical skill for their future learning in math. The class isn't for everybody, but it's a great way to stretch their thinking and abilities in a very intense but collaborative environment.” - Mr. Leo Lopez, Summer Academy upper school honors advanced geometry teacher.

Passion

Each year a number of students enroll in Summer Academy simply to pursue a specific passion in

one of the offered course areas. Whether the interest be art, drama, Chinese history through the National Palace Museum program, or an additional robotics or business class, students are able to pursue their passion at a deep and meaningful level in the context of high quality instruction and with access to the incredible educational resources at TAS.

This passion has even led to one student enrolling in the Summer Academy class "capital markets and investing," twice —the first time as a rising Grade 10 student and the second time during the summer of 2018 after graduation as a refresher course. This particular student had a budding interest in investments, and “under Dr. Bruce’s tutelage something clicked, enlightened even.” The result for this TAS alumnae was a shift in her focus from computer science to pursue more classes in economics and business in upper school; she is now majoring in business and economics in college.

Whether your child is interested in enrichment, advancement, or the pursuit of a new passion or interest, there is something in Summer Academy for him or her. New courses are offered each year. Visit the Summer Academy website at tassummeracademy.org for all the latest information and updates. Enrollment opens on February 13 for middle school and lower school students, and March 7 for upper school students.

GET READY FOR

World Mathematics Championships Finals

Nine TAS students attended the three-day North East Asian Mathematics Competition (NEAMC) at the National Olympics Memorial Youth Centre in Tokyo which serves as a qualifier for the Finals of the World Mathematics Championships® 2018-19. Participants engage in nine different rounds within six skill categories over the three-day competition.

The intellectual caliber of all of the participants ensured that our students were inspired to perform at their highest level. Rounds provided opportunities to collaborate and communicate with peers from other schools, and some rounds even added a physical component to the competition.

Grade 11 student Joseph L. led the team and came away with five medals in areas covering innovation, creativity, as well as individual competitions. Joseph was the overall winner in the Duel competition, involving all 120 participants.

In all, eight students earned the coveted Golden Ticket to attend the 2018 World Mathematics Final this December at the University of Melbourne. Congratulations to Joseph L., Justin H., Jasmine O., Louis C., Richard W., Hiro K., Vivian W., and Rupert L.

In late September, nine TAS students performed in the 25-member honor band at Frankfurt International School during the AMIS Honor Jazz Festival. The honor band included members from Asia, Europe, and South America. Students had to prepare recordings last spring which were heard in a “blind audition” process.

Congratulations to TAS for having the largest contingent in the AMIS Honor Jazz Band of any participating school!

BCS Machine Intelligence Competition

BCS Machine Intelligence Competition held in London allows competitors to give live demonstrations of applications that show progress toward machine intelligence. Congratulations to Wish W. '20 for winning the 2018 BCS prize for Progress Towards Machine Intelligence with his entry "Rock, Paper, and Scissors Using Machine Learning." The system learns a player's behavior during the classic game by constructing a neural network, thus enabling it, after a training period, to win most of the following rounds of the game.

Congratulations to Eming S. '21 and Henri R. '21 on a fantastic performance at the Global Tourism Summit Student Debate hosted by the Hawaii Tourism Authority. Henri and Eming finished as the tournament runners-up, losing a close final round debate to Syosset High School of New York after finishing the preliminary rounds with a 4-0 record.

In addition to the team from TAS, the Student Debate field was comprised of three teams from Hawaii, and one team each from New York, New Jersey, China, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Canada, Australia, and Japan. This is TAS’s first final round appearance at the Student Debate and a very impressive finish for two sophomores in a field that was primarily juniors and seniors.

SPAN – Safe Passage Across Networks EARCOS Weekend Workshop

Doug Ota came to Taipei American School at the invitation of one of our upper school counselors, Ryan Haynes, who met Doug several years ago. The idea of supporting the transitions that students in the international community frequently make has been around for many years, but it has never been researched and formalized as it is by the SPAN organization. Doug’s book and presentation are all couched in the application of the most recent research in cognitive neuroscience and counseling to identify areas that students will most likely struggle with during these transitions, give language to the counselors and teachers who work with them to effectively communicate with these students, and focus on strategies that have proven to be effective in supporting students as they make major transitions in life.

The workshop was attended by almost 40 people, including counselors, teachers and administrators from Taipei American School; counselors from The Center, a Taipei support network for the international expat community; and various schools and NGOs from around the EARCOS region. Four TAS upper school students who had all recently undergone major transitions were guest speakers during the Saturday afternoon session and provided their perspective about how it felt to transfer into TAS. Their observations and validation of the emotions they felt and the challenges they faced during these transitions helped to clearly illustrate the need for international schools to continue to evolve in their work to support transitioning students.

便與這些學生進行有效的溝通，並專注於已經證明能有效支持學生生活中 的重大轉變之策略。 參加研討會的有近 40 人，其中包括來自台北美國學校的輔導老師、教師 和行政主管；社區中心的輔導員；支持台北國際社區的網路；以及來自 EARCOS 地區的各個學校和非政府組織。最近經歷了重大轉折的四位 TAS 高中學生是周六下午會議期間的演講嘉賓，他們提出了對轉入 TAS 的感受。 他們觀察和驗證其所感受到的情感與他們在這些過渡期間所面臨的挑戰， 有助釐清國際學校繼續發展他們的工作以支持過渡期的學生之需求。

Sonia Rastogi Visits TAS

UNICEF Representative Sonia Rastogi, a gender-based violence and public health practitioner, visited TAS for a week in September. Ms. Rastogi serves as a representative of UNICEF and recently worked as the Head of Office in Bentiu, South Sudan with Mercy Corps. She is committed to developing evidence-based, accountable, and intersectional programs and policies for people most affected by a crisis. Prior to working in the humanitarian sector, she advocated for policies and programs at the U.S. local, state, and national level for women and girls living with HIV. A graduate of The Harker School, she holds a master’s in public health from Columbia University’s

While at TAS, Ms. Rastogi taught classes, hosted assemblies attended by all upper school students, and chaired student roundtables with leaders and representatives from TAS service clubs. During one of her classroom discussions, Ms. Rastogi reviewed case studies on forcible displacement and its effects on migration to the EU, looking at the impacts of immigrants leaving their home country. She explored the complexity of issues by considering the motivations of everyone involved, from the new host country to the smugglers involved in the transportation of the migrants, citing anecdotes from her own work to illustrate the concepts.

Mailman School of Public Health.

DID YOU KNOW?

Her upper school assemblies also focused on issues around migration, using examples in recent history as case studies. Although the formation of the U.N. established international norms and safeguards, we continue to see human rights violations and are experiencing increases in migration throughout the world due to conflict, climate change, drought, and natural disasters at the highest rate ever recorded. Ms. Rastogi encouraged students to do what they can to address these issues in five ways: 1) Learn about current issues and history 2) Think critically and dig deeper into areas of interest

3) Start at home; learn about who within the local community is being marginalized and needs help

4) Challenge the conversation by digging deeper to understand the key interests that impact conflicts

5) Lead; we all have the agency and capacity to make change

During a lunch roundtable with student leaders from a variety of clubs including Unicef, Girl Up, and Amnesty International, leadership and service were discussed in meaningful and actionable ways. Ms. Rastogi encouraged everyone to recognize that participation matters at all levels and that there are many ways to make an impact beyond fundraising. She suggested mapping out issues, reaching out for help with local leaders, and thinking critically about how to make an impact by participating in work with other NGOs to create a network. By seeking out allies and consulting with stakeholders who provide meaningful insights, students can identify volunteers with genuine passion for their causes. Students were also advised to start small and build strategies, with the committed core group of people on board, using a suite of tools to accomplish their goals.

Sonia Rastogi 訪問 TAS Sonia Rastogi 是一名以性別為主的暴力和公共衛生從業者，她在 9 月份訪問了 TAS 一週。Rastogi 女士是聯合國 兒童基金會的代表，最近在南蘇丹本提烏美慈組織擔任辦公室主任。她致力於為受危機影響最嚴重的人制定循證、 負責和交叉計劃與政策。在從事人道主義工作之前，她替美國地方、州和國家層面的愛滋病毒感染婦女與女孩所 制定的政策和方案發聲。她畢業於哈克學院，擁有哥倫比亞大學梅爾曼公共衛生學院的公共衛生碩士學位。 在 TAS 期間，Rastogi 女士教授課程；主持由所有高中學生參加的集會；並與 TAS 服務社團領袖和代表主持學生 圓桌會議。在她的一次課堂討論中，Rastogi 女士回顧了有關強迫遷移的案例研究及其對歐盟移民的影響，並研究

In addition to a rigorous academic program, and a focus on academic and personal excellence, TAS students will develop: *Adapted from the NAIS Essential Capacities

Congratulations to the directors, cast, musicians, and crew of the two fall productions, A Christmas Carol and Little Shop of Horrors.