UCDS Spark Magazine #13, Spring 2013

ISSUE 13 - SPRING, 2013

Global Partnerships UCDS Travels Global to India

Partnerships

UCDS Travels to India

Visit us online at www.ucds.org/spark for curriculum resources and information about our Math and Science Workshops for educators.

BY TEACHERS FOR TEACHERS™

In this Issue

Spark is published by University Child Development School.

Sticky Curriculum 4

Head of School Paula Smith Assistant Head of School Teacher Education Center Director Melissa Chittenden

Creating a School Culture in Another Culture

Creative Fusion 10

Cultural Lessons and Universal Truths in Education

Publication Design Jack Forman

What Works

Contributing Writers Melissa Chittenden, Ellie Cross, Nimisha Joshi, Julie Kalmus, Varsha Agarwal Rodewald, Paula Smith, Betsy Watkins

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The Collaborative Teaching Partner and Mentor Program

People Who Inspire Us

Contributing Editors Diane Chickadel, Melissa Chittenden, Jack Forman, Betty Greene, Stephen Harrison, Julie Kalmus, Kerri McGill, Shanthi Raghu, Abby Sandberg, Paula Smith, Natasha Rodgers

18 Lifetime Project: A Conversation with Bhagat and Aditya Patil In Each Issue

Photography Stephen Harrison, UCDS Faculty and Staff

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Greetings from Paula

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Spark Plugs

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For submission information, please contact Shanthi Raghu at shanthir@ucds.org.

The editor reserves the right to edit and select all materials.

UCDS Mission Statement

Š 2013 University Child Development School.

All rights reserved.

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If teaching is an art as well as a science, can both be realized in every classroom?

Taken alone, the science of teaching is daunting. In addition to a deep

understanding of subject matter and mastery of the curriculum, a teacher needs a myriad of coaching and assessment techniques, excellent class management, and stellar communication skills. She must stay current and apply the latest research in effective pedagogy, learning, and child development. A teacher must be culturally fluent in order to communicate effectively with students and their families. And, a teacher must have experience in a classroom in order to learn how to use all of this knowledge and these tools effectively with each student.

On top of all of this expertise, a teacher must also discover ways to light a fire in her students and find a way to capture each child’s curiosity and agency. She must be able to confirm a child’s own experience, that learning will most certainly involve watching experts, trial and error, and typically require a lot of practice. A teacher must be able to create a culture inside the classroom where students feel known, safe, respected, and willing to take risks. This artful ability to establish a relationship that inspires students to stretch is every bit as important as the requisite technical and subject matter knowledge.

An excellent teacher makes a difference in ways that can be measured by a child’s performance, and also in ways that are not immediate but that can change the arc of a child’s life. The professional culture inside a school community also has a powerful impact inside the classroom, so much so that our regional association, the Northwest Association of Independent Schools (NWAIS), has added School Culture as a new standard for accreditation. We know that scientists work in a highly collaborative field where there is much conversation and debate about their work with colleagues all over the planet, and that for centuries artists have both learned from and inspired the work of their peers. Why not offer our teachers similar opportunities?

Yet today, even our most effective teachers typically have no impact outside their classroom. In most schools teachers work in isolation from their peers, with limited funds and time allotted to the professional conversations, learning experiences, and feedback needed to evolve their practice. Likewise, new teachers often step into their own classrooms without enough prior classroom experience to gain a mastery of technical teaching skills and must work to acquire this expertise on their own. This daunting and isolating experience is the reason most often cited by the 50% of new teachers who leave the profession in the first five years. Adding to this lack of time and support to learn from each other, districts often move teachers and principals to a new building on such a regular basis that it is difficult for educators to build working relationships and cultural norms within a school.

The mission:

The Teacher Education Center creates and cultivates professional development opportunities, innovative programs, and educational partnerships. The TEC is committed to promoting teacher excellence and enhancing education at UCDS and in the broader community.

Continued >

It was against this backdrop in 2002 that we were inspired to establish a Teacher Education Center (TEC) at UCDS with a conviction that the culture of inquiry, collaboration and reflection that we wish to create for our students, must begin with our teachers. Over the past decade, we have learned a great deal about building and sustaining an intentional school culture that is owned by everyone, a culture designed to build capacity in our professional staff in both the science and the art of teaching. Through the TEC, we have learned that:

• Schools can systematically build the capacity to improve.

At UCDS we design, implement and evaluate curriculum, teaching and assessment tools using evidence gathered in our classrooms. We go deep into evaluating our practice through insightful conversations that bridge classrooms and teaching levels and connect our entire faculty. We bring in outside experts to infuse our conversations with different perspectives. Through this process we developed the Math Vitamin program that we are sharing with educators everywhere on our Spark website.

• Building teacher mentors and leaders strengthens instruction.

As we mentor new teachers through our Resident Teacher Program and develop leadership capacity through our Experienced Teacher Cohort, faculty re-examine and evolve their own work. Each year we offer ten new teachers a yearlong, intensive, hands-on teaching experience as UCDS Resident Teachers. Components of the Resident Teacher Program include in-classroom teaching, mentoring from experienced teachers, professional development workshops and resident meetings with peers as a forum for support, as well as reviewing teaching theory and practice. Additionally, each year, six to eight UCDS experienced faculty participate in the Experienced Teacher Cohort. The Cohort program provides an opportunity for teachers who have been at the school for more than five years to reflect, renew and grow professionally, while contributing a project to the school community.

• Intentional school culture can be sustained and institutionalized by aligning the precious resources of expertise, time, and money.

At UCDS we have a working committee of administrators and teachers who create the vision and direction of our programs and oversee the activities, publications, marketing, schedule, and budget of the TEC.

• Partnerships provide a powerful platform for growth.

The TEC has supported multi-year partnerships with schools, universities, and community organizations, allowing our teachers to collaborate and learn from teachers working in different communities, cultures and geographies. Over the past decade, the TEC has launched a half dozen such partnerships with funding from foundations and businesses. UCDS has partnered with our neighborhood school BF Day Elementary to introduce literature circles, with the University of Washington and Seattle Public Schools to improve math instruction at Thurgood Marshall, Leschi, and Emerson Schools, with Victory Schools in Philadelphia to provide professional development and support for math coaches, with Nikkei Manor to increase multicultural and intergenerational learning, and for the past four years, with the Kasegaon Foundation in India to launch Ascend International School.

Today, what began a decade ago as a way to reach out beyond our walls for knowledge and inspiration has become a design-engineering studio for our teachers, impacting our educational culture and our program. The Teacher Education Center is the place where we invite professional educators to challenge and inspire us. It’s where we ignite innovation. It’s where we digest the latest in educational research and roll it into our program. It’s where we develop teachers and residents and build our capacity. It’s where we share and refine the craft of teaching by asking, “Is it working and why?” The TEC is where we partner, collaborate, and learn from educators across the planet. Even today, every conversation with our partners in Mumbai, allows us to see our work through a new lens. Each partnership has deepened our understanding of the science of education. It is our partnerships that have elevated the art of teaching for us and for our partners now on both sides of the planet. We are both fortunate to have this opportunity.

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Paula Smith Head of School

Resources from our bookshelves:

Spark Plugs

World Class Learners: Educating Creative and Entrepreneurial Students

By Yang Zhao

With an understanding of school systems in both the East and the West, Zhao emphasizes the potential harms that arise if school systems are standardized as well as the importance of entrepreneurship education in the 21st century. For more from Yong Zhao, see: http:// zhaolearning.com

World Affairs Council (Seattle, WA) Teacher Resources

In January 2013, the World Affairs Council in Seattle, Washington, hosted a community event: Education without Borders: Transforming Learning for the 21st Century. In partnership with the Asia Society, the event invited Puget Sound teachers to converse with educators from around the world, specifically on topics important to Asian and North American school systems including developing and sustaining a high quality teacher work force. Experts discussed issues pertaining to school systems in Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia, Shanghai, Toronto and the U.S. The World Affairs Council has more information on past and future events as well as teacher resources at: http://www.world-affairs.org/programs/globalclassroom/teacher-resources/

Finnish Lessons: What Can the World Learn from Educational Change in Finland?

By Pasi Sahlberg

“What can the world learn from education change in Finland?” Pasi Sahlberg is a Finnish educator, teacher and scholar. Drawing from his experience as a school teacher and internationally experienced education policy advisor, Sahlberg seeks to explain the answer to this question. For more on Finland’s education system, see also the 2011 documentary featuring Harvard researcher, Tony Wagner: The Finland Phenomenon: Inside the World’s Most Surprising School System.

Moonwalking with Einstein

by Joshua Foer

Moonwalking with Einstein elucidates current research on how our memories work and tells the story of people both past and present with extraordinary memories. There are three main parts: current research on memory, cultural history on memory and techniques to improve your memory.

Through his own personal journey to the finals of the U.S. Memory Championship, author Joshua Foer weaves together the science and art of memories in this fun and engaging read.

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Sticky Curriculum

Creating a School

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in Another

Culture

Culture

by Julie Kalmus and Melissa Chittenden University Child Development School Seattle, WA, USA 5

Picture the winter of 2008...

It’s a cold, wet evening in Seattle, and children and parents at UCDS are gathering for the annual UCDS Math Night. Parents and students travel from classroom to classroom engaging in hands-on activities. Concurrently, the Head of School, Paula Smith, walks a group of visitors from India through the classrooms. Amidst this touring group is a tall man, proud in stature with a giant smile on his face and a bold laugh he can’t contain: Bhagat Patil.

Bhagat and his family had been researching schools in the United States. Although his family is known throughout Mumbai, India for their commitment to education, having already started almost thirty schools and colleges in rural Maharashtra, Bhagat held a larger dream. He wanted to create access to innovative education in India and, after his U.S. visit, began recruiting UCDS to help him make that dream a reality. Bhagat envisioned bringing new models of education to all children in India, models that deviated from the current textbook-driven curricula, models that promoted excellence though thinking, investigation, collaboration, creativity and innovation.

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Since that visit five years ago, UCDS teachers and administrators have worked with Bhagat and his leadership team to create a new school in Mumbai.

Ascend International School (AIS) opened its doors in August 2012. The programs and the architectural design are based on UCDS’ educational philosophy, collaborative leadership and teaching structures.

Early on, UCDS established a partnership with the Mumbai Team and assumed the role of a “guiding school,” always cognizant of supporting the new organization but not leading it. An important question emerged to guide this process: How could UCDS support the growth of AIS in a way that is deeply embedded in the city of Mumbai and reflective of the Indian heart its founders hold so dear?

Every new project needs a visionary, someone to generate, tirelessly pursue and deeply support the emergence of a new idea. Bhagat Patil knew what he wanted: a school that would embrace research and best practices to create a new learning environment in his community. He wanted a school that would empower its students with critical and creative thinking skills, global awareness and the ability to collaborate.

Educational consultants from UCDS worked with the Mumbai Team and architect Don Carlson, the architect who designed UCDS’ Early Elementary building.

Together, this group worked to articulate AIS’ core educational philosophy and to design learning spaces to support it. As those spaces began to materialize, deep conversations about school culture, values and student experience followed. UCDS asked guiding questions, listened actively and reflectively to the AIS founders and offered educational scaffolding and language to expand the founders’ vision and create a driving philosophy.

From these conversations emerged the school’s Mission and Vision Statements: Ascend International School delivers a rigorous and collaborative 21st century education where students discover a lifelong love of learning. Our innovative program is grounded in contemporary educational research. Through individualized education, we foster academic excellence and cultivate self-confident, creative, reflective, and analytical thinkers. AIS students are motivated to act in the selfless tradition of the Indian heart, actively contributing to their expanding global community.

In 2010, as construction on the new building began, a comprehensive marketing campaign launched.

Marketing was critical for AIS, as it set out to make an innovative educational change within a country that has a long-standing established system

of rote instruction. The school recognized from the beginning that they would need to develop cultural credibility for their teaching model; to clarify their expected outcomes and to regularly explain the rationale for their approach to teaching. To support this work, the Coordinator of the UCDS Teacher Education Center moved to Mumbai and took on the role of AIS Admission Director. Admissions and marketing efforts began two full years before the school planned to open.

Graduate data from UCDS proved instrumental in demonstrating to local, prospective families, the high level of education that AIS is designed to offer.

Concurrent with these efforts, UCDS began work with AIS to begin their search for a founding Leadership Team. For this part of the journey, the UCDS and Mumbai Teams worked collaboratively with a school search firm to find a leader who could bring Bhagat’s vision to life.

As the search began, it became apparent that leadership would need to take both cultural and educational forms. The complexity of creating an international community that strove to embed Indian tradition and heritage required a native of Mumbai at the helm while the goal of bringing a new model of education to Mumbai required someone versed in UCDS’ philosophy to lead. AIS seized the opportunity to hire both.

Continued >

Seattle Architect Don Carlson, designer of the UCDS Early Elementary “Labyrinth” building, worked in concert with AIS and UCDS teachers to translate school culture into a physical form.

Above left, globetrotting UCDS faculty consult with AIS leadership in Mumbai.

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Aditya Patil, Bhagat’s son, participated in every aspect of AIS’ inception. His passion for the project rivaled his father’s and his unique understanding of the cultural landscape of Mumbai coupled with his business background made him the ideal candidate as the school’s CEO. His commitment to the school and its evolution assured sustained leadership and continuity.

At the same time, it was deeply important to the founders that they establish strong educational leadership to lead their new corps of teachers and champion the essential pedagogy of the school.

After eight years of teaching at UCDS, Betsy Watkins had developed her skills creating curriculum, mentoring new teachers and spearheading strategic initiatives for the school. AIS saw her capacity for school leadership and appointed her founding Principal of AIS. With this tandem of leadership in place, the school’s deep connection to its local community was balanced by its educational ties to UCDS – and the pathway for long-term collegial conversations and partnerships was paved.

This partnership already takes many forms.

Regular Skype conferences, travel groups, teaching exchanges and curriculum sharing have led to vibrant conversations. Several former UCDS Resident Teachers have accepted positions at AIS, bringing to the school a personal understanding of UCDS philosophy. They provide individualized education and collaborative teaching structures. In addition, AIS Collaborative Teaching Partners periodically travel and study at UCDS. Creating opportunities for UCDS teachers and administrators to see other schools, share ideas and learn from colleagues in their field is central to the mission of the UCDS’ Teacher Education Center.

The emerging learning exchange between the two schools is at the heart of the AIS partnership.

In fall 2012, it was time to launch the new AIS program! Once the celebrations on both continents subsided, the work of teaching students in Mumbai began. The first AIS class is already experiencing an unparalleled educational opportunity.

At left, AIS Principal (and former UCDS teacher) Betsy Watkins discusses the AIS educational program UCDS Head of School Paula Smith.

Above, the AIS structure captures the unique energy of this global partnership of minds and vision.

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Of course, on a broader scale, AIS will continue to evolve. New institutions continuously develop school-wide systems based on collaboration, innovation and flexibility while assuming the need for adjustments and adaptations along the way. For AIS, it is especially important to develop these systems in a way that resonates with their environment and culture. As with UCDS, at the heart of this work is building ownership of program across the faculty and developing effective mentor relationships amongst the AIS faculty and staff. The shared attention both schools bring to faculty development and growth continues to fuel the special relationship between us.

common elements, but different constituencies and different neighborhood cultures and norms deeply impact the daily life of a school. A critical question emerges that resonates with global efforts around the world: How can we initiate projects like AIS that are grounded in an authentic partnership, where both schools feel they are fed from one another? The extraordinary opportunity in working with an international founder group is the equitable cross-platform learning that flows in both directions for all people involved the project. We all learn from getting outside our own classrooms and school walls; it’s those experiences that enhance us as educators, learners and people.

UCDS is not alone among independent schools in partnering with efforts to launch international schools around the world. Yet, schools are not cut and paste businesses. Teachers and administrators all work to provide an excellent education for students and strive to fill a niche in each community and culture. Attempting to recreate a school even across town could not yield the same school. Of course, there would be

The AIS program commenced in the fall of 2012. Once the celebrations on both continents subsided, the work of teaching students in Mumbai and developing an adaptive curriculum began in earnest.

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Creative Fusion

Cultural Lessons

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in Education

by Ellie Cross, Art Specialist Varsha Agarwal Rodewald, Hindi Specialist Ascend International School, Mumbai, India As founding members of Ascend International School in Mumbai, we’ve spent our first year translating the rich philosophy and traditions of UCDS in Seattle across oceans and time zones and through the filter of an entirely different culture. This dynamic process has given our community the opportunity to examine each aspect of the UCDS program and clarify the why behind what we do, adjusting elements of our program to best fit our cultural context. Each teacher planning-meeting is animated by discussions, spanning from simple spelling adjustments as we shift from American to British English to ideas for how we grow from our previous working experiences and build community by creating our own school traditions. Throughout it all, our community has been defined by both the thoughtful lessons we’ve learned from each other and by the bedrock truths we’ve found to be consistent across cultural contexts.

Continued >

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Cultural Lessons While we are consciously creating a unique school culture here at AIS, we are not doing so in a vacuum. Our teaching community is acutely aware of the ways in which our school culture is a microcosm of the greater cultural influences that inform the values, perceptions and expectations of each of us. At Ascend, we share a variety of unique benefits, challenges and lessons that come from working in this cross-cultural environment. We sought feedback from our teaching and administrative staff, which painted a colorful picture of how our community has become defined by both the advantages and difficulties of learning from each other’s cultures in an educational setting.

From the feedback, the most cited benefits of working in a cross-cultural environment read like a dream list of the core values every teacher hopes to instill in their students, namely the development of flexible thinking, open-

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mindedness, appreciation, empathy and respect for multiple perspectives.

The fact that we, as teachers and administrators, are authentically working through these cultural differences creates powerful modeling for students as we ask them to do the same. One member of our teaching community articulated this: “Having multiple perspectives and visible differences in culture supports the concept that many answers are valid, correct and valuable.” As an added bonus, teachers also wrote about the new knowledge they’ve gained from working closely with other cultures, describing examples from different books to new dance moves. As one American teacher wrote, “[We] have a lot to learn about how to celebrate a holiday!”

However, these lessons aren’t learned without effort. It is only natural that a cross-cultural environment poses its set of challenges. Communication styles, ranging from accents to choice of words and their interpretation in a particular setting, stood out as one of the biggest challenges faced by teachers from

either continent. For instance, a word like ‘advocate,’ which is commonly used in the UCDS Continua assessment documents, has a negative connotation in India. This one word called for lengthy discussions before all the teachers came to consensus about its appropriate use. While the word ‘advocate’ is still used verbally among teachers, we rewrote portions of our assessment continua using other words to adapt to the Indian context. When working in a multinational environment, challenges also arise from not knowing the origin of certain values and beliefs. For example touching books or laptops with your feet is considered disrespectful in India because they are a revered source of knowledge.

The need to constantly adjust your expectations was another commonly cited challenge. However, this mutual compromise of expectations is precisely what leads to rich and genuine collaborations. As one person put it, “Sometimes the thing you didn’t plan on turns out to be better than your expectations.”

Challenges are the deepest lessons in disguise. Our multi-national setting has not just given our faculty the opportunity to learn about each others’ culture but also the rare insight and scope to study respective culture in greater depth and from another lens.

“It’s been nice to take the opposite view and to re-evaluate priorities and values.” Working through our crosscultural challenges has allowed us to form a more balanced perspective on our own culture. As one faculty member at AIS stated, “I’ve learnt not to take my culture as seriously and I’ve learnt that there are parts of my culture I’m so grateful to have grown up with.”

These lessons reflect the international mindedness, flexibility and empathetic culture we are building here for adults and kids alike.

Universal Truths

As an International Baccalaureate candidate school, AIS is in the process of incorporating IB’s ideology into our own philosophy. At a weekly faculty and staff “town meeting” at AIS where samosas and peanut butter sandwiches are enjoyed with equal zest, the entire team is intrigued by the same question. Why did the International Baccalaureates select just six transdisciplinary themes to encapsulate every piece of curriculum we design? Our community took the time to educate ourselves and examine the origins of the six themes: Who we are, Where we are in place and time, How we express ourselves, How the world works, How we organize ourselves, and Sharing the planet.

In our search for answers we explored the writings of Ernest Boyer, a renowned American educator and writer, who advocated for the universality of education, which is an essential component of IB. His work further underlines AIS’s philosophy of respecting the individuality of each student, while simultaneously acknowledging that we are all members of the human community. We share certain deep rooted characteristics and universal experiences. Irrespective of one’s origin and upbringing, there are core commonalities that make us human, and these are shared by cultures all across the world. In spite of our diverse composition, we as a team unanimously agreed that ‘life’ needs to be respected and that language empowers us to communicate and share. Art, architecture, dance, music and sculpture are integral to any culture we come across in varying

degrees. Our historical experiences shape our lives, and we analyze situations by putting ourselves in different spaces and times. We are all part of a group or institution, and we work or consume to sustain ourselves. So what impact does this have on the classroom?

A classroom setting incorporating any of the above commonalities– individually or in creative combinations–would thus provide a meaningful and interesting context to learning, irrespective of its geographical location. Values and beliefs are what help us connect these lessons we learn in the classroom to the larger natural world outside. To reflect these values, AIS students worked as a community to create school-wide ‘Essential Agreements, “Be Kind, Respect Our Community, and Be Responsible,” which were signed by each member of AIS.

Finally, our school’s mission statement grounds the essential agreements and ultimately reminds us of our shared passion and purpose: the students.

Our goal as educators at both AIS and UCDS is to help students discover their uniqueness in this diversity and to develop and nurture their interests and attributes against this universal backdrop.

The curiosity of kids is one of the most valuable resources that educators across the world can tap into and use as a driving fuel for their curriculum.

Keeping our mission at the core of everything we do allows us to develop a healthy school culture. The values of collaboration and a lifelong love of learning permeate every aspect of the organization. It is from merging our strengths as individuals into a shared approach to our common goal that will allow us to fulfill our mission of cultivating lifelong learners who are actively contributing to their expanding community.

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What Works

Creating a Culture of Intention: The Collaborative Teaching Partner and Mentor Program

by Betsy Watkins, Principal Nimisha Joshi, Collaborative Teaching Partner Ascend International School, Mumbai, India

Everything begins with a sense of possibility. Ascend International School’s roots

began with Shri Rajarambapu Patil, founder of the Kasegaon Education Society, believing that an independent India meant a chance to educate females, untouchable castes and offer educational opportunities where there had previously been none. Now we find ourselves nearly 70 years later as part of an education society with an established history, setting out to design an urban international school meant to bring the best in the field of education to Maharashtra. And so we began, supported by our roots in India and guided by a newlyestablished partnership with University Child Development School (UCDS) in Seattle, USA, to look for the type of faculty who could help us create, establish and maintain an intentional community.

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Continued >

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As we searched for our dream faculty, we grappled with questions that face new

communities: How can we be intentional when establishing an educational culture? How can we collaborate and capitalize on the individual talents, backgrounds and knowledge bases of our faculty while still creating a sense of community? How does Ascend International School (AIS) become the kind of school which offers the best of what is available in international education, while continuing to strengthen the roots of children in the rich context of India? And how do we help local faculty who may have never seen this type of education to create and take ownership of it?

Before AIS even hired faculty, the Collaborative Teaching Partner (CTP) and Mentor Program was born. Modeled after the UCDS Resident Teacher Program, we would create a culture of mentorship within our school—beginning with hiring Mentors who had been trained in the established culture of UCDS and hiring local faculty, comprised of our CTPs, who were motivated to provide this type of education within an Indian context. Together, our Mentors and Collaborative Teaching Partners would build AIS’ culture, teaching and learning beside one another.

As do Residents at UCDS, our CTPs would participate in all curricular planning and professional development. They would also conduct parent conferences, write narrative reports, lead small group and large group lessons and sit on a faculty committee. We would put structures in place, similar to those at UCDS: bi-monthly meetings for both Mentors and CTPs in which we focused on reflecting on their roles and experiences, offering professional development opportunities, and providing guidance on understanding the ‘whys’ behind the AIS program.

Yet, we also knew this program would be different—if we were bringing teachers trained at UCDS, none of them would have the cultural background needed to ensure an understanding of what it means to follow in the selfless tradition of the Indian heart (as is part of our mission statement) or how to best create relevant curricula in an Indian context or a myriad of other considerations ranging from parent communication to securing access to local resources. We wanted to create a situation where CTPs and Mentors were guiding each other—each in their realm of experience—to collaboratively create an exceptional educational model. Additionally, we wanted our CTP and Mentor Program to help cultivate leadership from within our school. We knew that even though we had a strong relationship with UCDS, it would be our local faculty who would provide long term continuity for AIS. To begin, we sought Mentors trained in the UCDS philosophy and teaching practices. Our current Mentors are either former UCDS faculty members or have completed the UCDS Resident program. We selected individuals who would not only be passionate about this type of educational model, but would also be ready to listen, reflect and share ideas, while guiding the creation of a new program at Ascend International School. We looked for Mentors who would be able to articulate and embody the essential elements of the community we were seeking to build—collaborative, 21st Century, high academic expectations, meaningful, engaging and emergent curricula, internationally-

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minded, flexible and responsive. Above all else, we sought Mentors who embodied a “we” attitude and shared an enthusiasm for helping AIS realize its mission.

When hiring CTPs, we shifted from a typical approach of selecting candidates based on their test scores or rankings.

At AIS, we were looking for educators who were not ingrained in a traditional system of rote learning. We looked for teachers who demonstrated passion and enthusiasm for projectbased learning, an openness to adapt to new ideas and an ability to articulate the ways in which they had been working to educate themselves about the best practices and most current research in the world-wide educational community. We sought individuals who would ask questions and require our young institution to define itself through response. And again, above all else, we sought Collaborative Teaching Partners who embodied a “we” attitude and shared an enthusiasm for helping AIS realize its mission.

As it is our first year of operation, the CTP and Mentor Program has only begun its infancy phase. Some things have gone as expected. The interactions of our cultures enrich our community as a whole and as individuals. Having more than one teacher in our classes allows us to individualize our program to each child, and both Mentors and CTPs have learned a lot. Perhaps what we could not have anticipated (although we must admit we did hope for) is the depth with which the CTP and Mentor Program has enriched our school. Although we have struggled with finding the balance between communication styles inherent to the different cultures, we are finding our feet beneath ourselves and coming to know who we are as a community. When one of our CTPs discusses concerns about children’s ability to relate to a read-aloud character with a working grandmother and a discussion about respecting local customs and exposing children to international perspectives ensues—we know the foundation of trust has been built. When one of our CTPs finishes reading nearly every book we have in the library on language development and volunteers to run a language group for the first time, we know we are cultivating self-motivated leaders. When our Mentors reflect on what helps them extend beyond their comfort zone, we know the culture of learning is being established.

While each CTP and Mentor pair operates differently—the regular conversations our faculty have with one another and the trust we have built within these relationships continues to grow and expand our community. Everyone at AIS benefits from the rich, multi-faceted discussions that come from crafting crosscultural curricula and sharing perspectives about how to help children achieve their goals. Our diverse perspectives broaden our insights into classroom dynamics, curricula development and teaching styles.

While the CTP and Mentor Program will continue to evolve, we can rejoice in knowing that each step we take is with intention.

As both CTPs and Mentors recently reflected in a meeting, “We are all driven toward the mission. We just need to keep learning from and about one another and continue to learn when to step forward and when to step back in order to strengthen our collaboration.”

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People Who Inspire Us

LIFETIME PROJECT A Conversation with Bhagat & Aditya Patil

by Paula Smith

UCDS parent, John Neilson loved ideas; those he found in literature and those he gained through a deep appreciation of world culture, math, science, art, music, philosophy and physical excellence.

In 1999, at the age of thirty-eight, John lost a hard fought battle against non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

In honor of John’s life, The Neilson Endowment Fund was created.

Through the Teacher Education Center at UCDS, we use this endowment to create and share programs that offer children access to big ideas.

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John was an inspiration to us in life and we dedicate this, ‘People Who Inspire Us’ section to him.

Bhagat Patil is Chairman of the Governing Council of Ascend International School (AIS) in Mumbai, India, and Aditya Patil, his son, is the school’s CEO. AIS is an extension of the work of the Kasegaon Education Society (KES), which is committed to ensuring quality education for children and young adults across Maharashtra State. The Society was founded in 1945 by a dedicated group of individuals, led by Shri Rajarambapu Patil, who were deeply concerned with the lack of educational opportunities for the youth of rural Maharashtra.

Several years ago, members of KES travelled throughout the United States looking for educational inspiration. Following a tour with Head of School Paula Smith, the Society hired UCDS as the consultants for their ambitious project to start a school in Mumbai.

For the past four years, KES has worked in partnership with UCDS to envision and design a program based on the UCDS philosophy.

Ascend International School enrolled its first students in the fall of 2012. Paula Smith spoke with Bhagat and Aditya about their inspirations and aspirations for AIS. Continued >

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Spark: Tell us about your educational journey.

Bhagat: I was educated in the present system in India, which was set up by the British Empire. The British had to control their empire without computers, without telephones, without internet.

They wanted to train people to write, do calculations, read English; so, they set up schools to teach people to do these basic things and become their bureaucrats. The present education system is a system of mass production.

If you are producing some nonliving thing, you give the same treatment to every piece. The present system is to give the same lecture to all 60 students, and in today’s world, this system is outdated. We need so many more things to be successful. It’s what business and industry needs today – people who can think outside of the box.

Aditya: When I went through school, I remember our teachers told us what to do. You couldn’t ask questions because asking meant that you didn’t know the material. Our goal, as students, was learning what the teacher said, without gaining background knowledge. The teachers told us that if we couldn’t memorize our lessons, we would not be successful in life.

Performing well meant memorizing, taking an exam and scoring high. Many teachers did not even teach some subjects until ten or fifteen weeks before an exam. Then, they would teach quickly, just covering the portion of the syllabus they thought was important from the point of view of the exam.

Spark: So the program at Ascend, it must, everyday, bring your experience into contrast.

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Aditya: Yes, I think it started in the Math Workshop that I took at UCDS, when I asked a lot of questions about fractions and multiplication that I never asked while in school. At Ascend, at a planning meeting or when the teachers are talking about a curricular piece, I listen and I have those “Aha” moments, now more than I ever had while I was in school.

Spark: What is your hope for the change that you are making at Ascend? What are your aspirations for the children at the school?

Bhagat: Nowadays, in the engineering colleges in India, around 20-25% of all graduates are ready to be productive in a job when they go into the industry.

The other 75% of graduates need six to nine months of additional training.

If you look at all disciplines the percentage of job-ready graduates becomes even lower. Only 10-15% are job-ready when they leave the college; the balance needs further training so that they become productive to their companies; very few of them think independently. If you throw a problem at them, they will stumble.

At AIS, we emphasize building skills, which is more important for a child to be successful in life than memorizing information.

Aditya: One of the most important things for the kids to develop is a liking for whatever they are studying. They should understand the subjects that are taught in school and be engaged in them because, once they are engaged, they will want to go even way and beyond what we expect; they may do their own research about a project. So teaching is about engaging the kids and giving them a stretch. We hope kids graduating from the program come

away with the ability to engage with the problems they face and the inclination to stretch their abilities to tackle those problems.

Bhagat: Education is the noblest thing that one can do and so out of that I felt that we should constantly be trying to improve the quality of the schools we have. I agree with Aditya, the most important is that a child develops a love for learning early in life. When a child has a love for learning and a love for coming to school, then I think half the job is done. When things are interesting for the child, the learning is effortless. This project will have a wider impact on the other schools in the Kasegon Education Society. Once we are more fully enrolled at AIS, we would like more elements of what we are doing here to percolate in our other schools. We had certain challenges when bringing this way of teaching from Seattle to Mumbai, but getting it from Mumbai to other schools in Maharashtra will require new thinking again because we’ll be working in a vernacular medium. We have so much energy for this work, knowing that even if we can just do a little it will create a lot of impact. We have about 30 KES schools and each school has between 300 and 500 students.

Spark: What would your father say about Ascend? He was such a visionary for his time.

Bhagat: My father was a people’s man.

He always wanted to do things for the people, for the downtrodden in this area. If he could see that we are doing so many things for the people he would be very happy. He was first a teacher, and the institution of education was his first social initiative. If we succeed

in enhancing the quality of education in the schools of KES, he would be very happy to see that accomplished.

Aditya: He did things that were revolutionary, that were paradigmshifting in terms of education. In the same way, Ascend can change the paradigm of teaching in India.

Bhagat: Our first school was started in 1945 by my father who wanted to do something for the community. The school and the first hostel for the lower class children were built through the shramdan, through people donating their labor through the village. So the whole village was with him in constructing the school. The spirit during pre-independence was that in order to build the country we have to have education for children in the rural areas. The areas around these schools and this cooperative movement have been growth centers in the rural areas.

Now, our work is coming full circle–from starting by changing paradigms and educating girls and the lower class of people in the rural parts of Maharashtra to now to coming into the city and educating these students in a whole different way than parents and teachers have seen. What we at AIS are doing is a continuation of my father’s work. For right now, AIS is definitely revolutionary in terms of education practices for a lot of people in Mumbai.

Spark: So you are already causing people to think differently about education, and they are very interested. What are the challenges in explaining the educational philosophies in Mumbai?

Bhagat: Since the current generation of parents have been educated in a particular way, it is very difficult for them to digest that learning can be so much fun. I think they have trouble believing that kids can enjoy learning like this. Our program also caters to every individual child. Because Indian schools have so many students, it is very difficult for parents to understand that we can individualize the curriculum for every child in the school.

Aditya: Here, it is all about getting into the top 3 or 4 colleges or universities, and we haven’t seen kids pass through our system yet to graduation. That’s one of the biggest challenges. It is all about competition. When people see our graduates out in our community, going to university or whatever their path, that will create the maximum impact and knowledge of our program.

Spark: What is the bigger picture for the foundation? Are you raising money to speed up the implementation of a bigger plan?

Bhagat: Initially Ascend was meant to be a pilot school for our other schools that we already have, a way of serving the other schools, training teachers and providing resources. Our goal is to make this school sustainable as quickly as possible, and then in turn this school can help spread this model throughout our 30 other schools.

Aditya: I think we will be looking for Ascend to play a pivotal role in terms of the development of those schools.

People from the Education Society are already coming to see the Ascend. They share their knowledge of the other schools with us and then go out and

share what they have learned here. Our teachers are also keen on volunteering their time in the other schools. So, a real exchange of ideas is developing.

Spark: You said that this is THE PROJECT. I can feel it when I talk to you–that you are all in.

Bhagat: I keep telling people that this is my lifetime project.

Aditya: It is definitely a lifetime project when you have a school like this. Partly because you can only have one—you can’t have 50 or 100 schools just like this. Working on this project right from the beginning is phenomenal. Right from the time that I first came to UCDS to now, I have grown substantially. I don’t think that the opportunity to start something new like this will ever come to me again. The people that I have worked with have been really amazing.

Obviously the building is there and the school is there, but the people that we work with are what define Ascend for me.

Bhagat: I am grateful that everything has worked out. Right from when we got the land, then UCDS was there with full interest, and we had Aditya.

The combination of me and him and us and UCDS has really worked. We’ve had such a high level of collaboration between Seattle and Mumbai and that has made the whole project very unique. Right from the idea itself – the first thing we brainstormed was, “what is the philosophy of the school?” That is how we have got a totally different product, something exceptional because we had this collaboration right from the beginning.

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