Inclusion in the Middle School

Every Wednesday, we are lucky to have an early release with our students and then 2 hours of professional learning as a faculty. Last week, we used that time dedicated to the theme of INCLUSION, which also happens to be one of our Strategic Focus Areas. In line with our beliefs about what learning should look like with students, we designed our time together as a faculty to be engaging, purposeful, and choice-based.

The first portion was a 30-minute guided group discussion (led by our Student Support Services team) about differentiation through collaboration. Teachers sat in departments, and were given two student profiles from our MS (names were removed) and to highly generalize — one was of a highly able learner and the other was an IEP of a student who has attention challenges, low processing speed and working memory difficulties. The following questions guided the conversation:

• What are the entry points for each of these students?
• How does it apply to what you are teaching in the classroom?
• If a student is already showing mastery of learning, how are you differentiating?
• How do we keep the curriculum rigorous yet accessible?

After great conversation at each table, teachers then reflected on how they can use pre-assessments in their next unit to support students across the learning continuum.

Following this introductory session for all teachers and TAs, we then shifted to a choice-based Teachers Teaching Teachers session, where the options were:

• We All Belong: How do we build a Middle School community that is grounded in trust and belonging to ensure that all members live with Dignity? Our counselors led this conversation. In the session, they covered concepts related to how to create a culture of belonging and inclusion (including all aspects of Identity), middle school is a time of questioning identity, creating the environment/safe spaces, and then exploring the curriculum- Do your kids see themselves in the classroom curriculum/environment? What are concrete ways that we can incorporate inclusion in our curriculum? How about in math? How about in PE? Languages (i.e. French in West Africa, Caribbean, and Canada? And the session ended with small groups of teachers and TAs sharing a vulnerability and building trust around a part of their identity that is below the water line.

• Self-Paced Learning: Teachers explored self-paced learning through a model that empowers educators to implement research-backed strategies to promote inclusion. Self-paced learning leverages technology to improve learner understanding and educator effectiveness. Teachers learned about the three pillars of the model; blended learning, competency-based assessment, and self-paced structures. In this workshop, teachers and TAs tried out a small part of this larger model to see if there are ideas you can put to work in your classroom.

It was a productive and thoughtful afternoon collaborating, learning together, and deepening our work to support all students feeling included in the learning at ISK. We are fortunate to have an incredible Head of SSS whose team of teachers and TAs each led a part of our learning; we have loving and thoughtful counselors, who are cultivating a culture of dignity; and a small team of teachers have created self-paced learning environments in their classrooms and are sharing their learning with colleagues. One teacher in particular is a Modern Classroom Mentor Teacher, and it has helped us all learn and grow our thinking about how to personalize learning for students. Want to learn more about the Modern Classrooms Project? Check out the links below:

• Self-Paced Learning: What does the research say?
• Back to School MCP Toolkit
• The Importance of Routines
• Opening & Closing Routines (Modern Classrooms Project podcast)
• How to Help Middle School Students Learn to Work Independently from Edutopia
• Building Self-Regulated Learners (Modern Classrooms Project podcast)
• Catlin Tucker Blog w PD offers

I have been following along with themes of inclusion, and in particular how the Modern Classroom Project supports personalized learning, increased feedback, and student ownership. Cult of Pedagogy has some great podcast episodes on this that I recommend from Cult of Pedagogy, Jennifer Gonzalez:

• 166. UDL as a Key to Equity (with Katie Novak)
• 144. Making Great Screencast Videos (Modern Classrooms Project)
• 158. How to Create a Self-Paced Classroom (Modern Classrooms Project)
• 165. Setting Up Mastery-Based Grading in Your Classroom (Modern Classrooms Project)

Frenetic Busy-ness

It is hard to believe we have already hit September. The first 4 weeks of school flew by in the blink of an eye. At ISK, the beginning of the year has included: Tujuane ‘getting to know you’ days for community building in the middle school, an early dismissal when the Kenyan election results were announced, 2 days of online learning, Back to School Night (our first one face-to-face on campus since 2019), MAP testing, IC Trip preparations and Parent Night, a Board-Admin Retreat, and onboarding new leadership team members. We have also had PTO Coffees, PTO Sundowners, grappling with our definition of learning and learning principles (looking for clarity and coherence as a school), the launch of our House System in a new school year, expanding lunch options to resemble previous choice-based zones for students to eat (similar to before the pandemic), making revisions to our DEIJ action plan, practical first aid training for all teachers/TAs, the return to 75-minute block periods (from shorter classes during the pandemic), and more. In the coming weeks, we will go out around Kenya on our InterCultural Trips and engage parents in Parent-Student-Teacher conferences (hybrid model to accommodate different needs/preferences). The pace has felt frenetic and overwhelming, and many teachers have commented that they are observing students face challenges with settling into routine.

Over the last 2.5 years, we have had to slow down and suspend many pre-COVID ‘normal’ activities. We made many adjustments to accommodate the needs when learning virtually, to support wellbeing, to gently transition back to face-to-face learning, to deprioritize grading and elevate growth and connection. Many articles during the first year of the pandemic wrote about the opportunity to reflect and revise practices in a post-pandemic world – to cut the things that did not serve us or aren’t important. Basically, an opportunity to re-think and make needed changes. For the last few years, we have been intentional at every step about how we will modify to do things that we value, in a safe manner. For example, when we couldn’t travel off campus for overnight InterCultural Trips, we brought the outfitters to us to engage in biking, abseiling, SUP, archery and more on our school campus. We modified a pre-COVID engagement we value, so it could work in the pandemic landscape of 2021. And then there were many other activities that we just didn’t do, as the COVID regulations didn’t allow.

This school year, we have seen the expansion back to nearly ‘normal’ life. Student desks are no longer in rows facing the front of the room (a Kenyan government directive during the pandemic), masks are now optional, parents are finally allowed back on campus, and more. And with the dropping of each barrier, we have rushed to add all the things we value back into our calendar. The dilemma: these are all things we value. They aren’t silly or unimportant things. Partnering with parents for Back to School Night, MAP testing, InterCultural Trips, Parent-Student-Teacher Conferences….but it makes for a very busy and hectic start of the year. So the questions are:

• First, are we sure that we really value everything we are adding back to our calendar?
• And second, even if we really value it all, how do we prioritize and give ourselves grace and a manageable calendar?

I am worried about burnout, the frenetic pace, and the ability to engage in deeper learning. I don’t have the answers to the questions above, but am keeping them close to my heart and decision-making at the moment. The first place I have applied these question is with International Day of Peace, which is coming up on September 21st. We celebrate it every year in the Middle School, usually with a student planning committee organizing what that will look like. Last year, the student group created a choice board for students to engage all week long in advisory and then planned a culminating assembly. Peace Day falls during some of our Middle School student trips this year, and so we have decided to have gentleness with honoring this day. Students on trips will engage in a campfire reflection-type activity related to Peace, and students on campus will have a slide or 2 in our Middle School assembly honoring peace work. That’s it. Small and sweet, and letting ourselves off the hook. It doesn’t mean we don’t value peace, but we have to make choices about how we spend our time, and sometimes too much of a good thing is just too much.

Anyhow, this will be the continued reflection for me over the coming months. I would love to hear from others who are grappling with a similar inquiry.

ISK Board-Admin Retreat

Each August, our school board and admin team gather together to ground ourselves as we start a new school year. There is often a board training component, and then also elements of generative thinking. This August, we have invited Board Guru David Chojnacki (pronounced hoy-not-ski) to support this work. I am so grateful to be a part of a school that prioritizes training and investing in the important board role each year.

To launch our session, David and Mike (our director) grounded us in the history of ISK and connecting with our foundation documents. Our mission doesn’t speak about academic rigor or excellence, but is grounded in social responsibility and being a change-maker — “…in pursuit of a better world.” This is our promise to our community/parents. Our vision inspires us to “empower” students, and outlines our hope for the future. And our values support our school culture.

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We started our generative session with the following prompts: When hiring across different sectors, what are the skills and personal attributes that we look for? And then, how does our mission and vision align with/support these skills and attributes? You can see our group’s thinking in the image below. It was a great conversation with our group of administrators, board members, and a student as well. It was a fun exercise, and we were also proud to see that there were strong connections between the skills and attributes we discussed and what our mission and vision charge us to do.

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For the next part of our generative thinking together, we were charged to look at our school size. ISK sits on a beautiful 40-acre campus, and about 15 years ago the board and admin team determined that 1200 students would be our ideal size for our values, the program we could offer, and allow us to still maintain a close community environment. Our current enrolment is 1050 students, and so we are fast-approaching this cap. It is time to think more specifically about all the questions that are coming up related to how we will manage admissions priorities, waiting lists, our values around keeping families together, and more. We reviewed the cap of 1200 in a generative session 4 years prior, but David also pushed us to think if there was new information we should consider, to reflect and reaffirm if 1200 was still our sweet spot, and to think about place (facilities) and people (faculty & staff) that will be needed to be our best at 1200. However, even before we started to think in this direction, many questions and comments came up about how much development is happening in Nairobi, and the expanding demand for an ISK quality education. With this in mind, David proposed that we could shift our conversation to:

• What questions does the board need to wrestle with as we look to the future and consider the size of our school?

This was an important and timely conversation that we will be continuing over the course of the year. I look forward to thinking together with the board as we grapple with these big questions.

The board continued with other sessions with David where they had scenarios and further deepened their understanding of their role (and what isn’t in their lanes). The Admin Team returned on Saturday morning for an hour for us to provide feedback on School Success Indicators. Throughout the year at the monthly Board Meetings, the administration shares regular updates and data with the board, whether parent surveys, MAP testing results, updates on things like our InterCultural Trips or new course proposals, etc. However, the intention for a School Success Indicators dashboard is to provide a view for the board to review how we are doing with delivering our Mission and Vision. Questions for us to grapple with: What do we want to measure? What evidence will help the board measure our success toward the mission and vision, and then determine where further support is needed? What indicators will share the right information about our programs, people and place?

As we “checked out” after the final discussion, it was so great to hear the words folks were using to describe how they were feeling after the two-day retreat. Inspired. Hopeful. Optimisic. Community. Informed…..A beautiful way to launch the year with a strong partnership and shared vision for our continued learning together.

Online Learning & Back to School Night

We were so fortunate to be face-to-face for the first 4 days of school to launch the new school year. ISK had our first day of school on August 10th, one day after the Kenyan presidential elections. Historically, elections in Kenya have been marred by disputed results and violence. Five years ago, our family was newly arrived in Kenya at the time of the presidential elections in 2017. We heard of previous years of violence with the elections – most notably the 2007 elections, and we stocked up on supplies in case the country went into emergency mode. In that election, Odinga contested the 2017 results that Kenyatta had won. The Supreme Court annulled the results and Kenya held another election a couple of months later, and the result was the same as the original election. This year, Kenyatta was not running again due to term limits, and he was now a supporter of Odinga, who ran agains Ruto (the deputy of Kenyatta).

Leading up to the most recent election, predictions were that things would remain peaceful and calm, with limited disruption. The election committee has 7 days to announce the results, and they used all seven days this time, which led to anxious anticipation due to such close results. On day 7 after the elections, ISK followed suit of other agencies in Nairobi, and at noon on the day of the announcement we decided to conduct a 1:15pm early dismissal, so folks would be off the streets when the results were declared. We also transitioned to online learning for the following two days.

While disappointing to switch to online learning, it was incredible to see our whole community pivot so quickly and engage with optimism for those two days. We were so grateful to have 4 days of face-to-face school to launch the year, make connections, pass out Chromebooks, and help students understand their schedules. The 2 days of online learning were light and engaging, as everyone knew it was only for 2 days, and not the same dread as during the pandemic when there were indefinite periods of distance learning. On Thursday morning when students returned to campus there were huge smiles and relief to be back!

And then this past week we hosted our first Back to School Night with parents on campus since 2019. In Kenya, parents were not allowed on campus for almost two years. Last year, we started to organize special events that parents could register for to come on campus, which was greatly appreciated. We are currently working to further expand and reopen campus to parents. In the meantime, this situation has caused a divide and tensions — what is normally intended to be a thoughtful partnership, has evolved into some situations of distrust, poor assumptions, and frustration from parents, as they don’t have the same access, information, or support. So this year, we made an intentional decision to expand this parent event. As advisory is a key aspect of our MS program, parents started there, and we streamed a 20-minute live presentation from our principals and counselors to start the night. Parents then followed their child’s schedule, visiting each of the classrooms and teachers over the course of 2 hours.

It was so lovely to see the engagement, partnership, and connection happening across the different classrooms that evening. Parents were solving math problems at vertical white boards (#buildingthinkingclassrooms) and sharing ‘what they notice / what they wonder’ about a phenomena in science class. Just like their students a few days prior, parents had big smiles and comments of envy for the meaningful learning their children experience.

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Following the scheduled classes, we collaborated with our PTO Reps to host a parent-teacher mixer. In the past, the PTO has sponsored a post-Back to School Night gathering for parents at a nearby Bed & Breakfast, but teachers never attended (as they were tired from the evening). We designed the gathering this year to happen on our beautiful MS Roof, making it easy and accessible for all, and had so many parents and teachers enjoying relaxed company together following the evening of learning and connection. There was laughter and the start to a beautiful partnership for 2022-23.

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Tujuane (‘getting to know each other’) Middle School

We have now successfully finished our first week back at school. This marks the start of my 18th year in education, my 10th year as an administrator, and our 6th year in Nairobi at the International School of Kenya. My twin daughters are 15 years old and starting 10th grade – how does the time fly by so quickly???

I am so grateful that ISK is a school that looks at a compassionate start, with wellbeing in mind. Every Wednesday we have an early release of students, and an opportunity for teachers to engage in professional learning together. Each year, our first day of school is a Wednesday – a short day. Which also means a short week. It is intentional and thoughtful, and greatly appreciated.

In the Middle School, we launch the year with Tujuane Days for Wednesday and Thursday — coming together/getting to know you. Grade level teams plan out 2 days of community building, welcoming new students into our community, grounding and norms, becoming familiar with our learning environment, learning their schedules/getting organized, and getting their devices/reviewing digital citizenship. Then students have a special schedule on Friday that enables them to meet with all 8 of their classes that day for 35 minutes (we normally have 75-minute rotating block schedule with students meeting 4 classes each day).

Here are some of the sample schedules and activities students engage in:

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tujuane-community-buildingDownload

understanding-your-scheduleDownload

rua-digital-citizenship-2022-ms-tujuane-Download

Here are some more fun ice breakers:

—Cult of Pedagogy (Blobs and Lines, Concentric Circles, This or That)

–This or That Slideshow

—Ball Toss Name Game

—Hello My Name Is (Builds day to day)

—Snowball Fight

–Tattoo Parlor: Have each student draw a tattoo that they think accurately describes them or includes one of their favorite things. Then, pin the pictures up and try to match the “tattoos” with the people who drew them.

–Anagram Riddles: Use https://wordsmith.org/anagram/ to enter students’ full names and share anagrams for them to solve. (Example, Jenny Friedman = Fanny Mind Jeer)

–Scattegories: Pick a letter of the alphabet and list a word that starts with that letter for a series of category topics. Give the students a minute to write their list, and then everyone reveals their answers. You get the point if no one else has the same word. (Ex. Fruit, Vegetable, Animal, Country, etc.)

We start Thursday and Friday with Middle School assemblies, which provide the opportunity for introductions, grounding, and helping us to start the year with success on the same page. At ISK, we base all of our norms and guidelines/expectations on Respect, Responsibility, Safety and Honesty. We take time to review lunch guidelines and expectations – because that is probably one of the top things on student minds – ha! We also share expectations related to connection, how we will interact as a community, and start the process of creating shared values. We watched Dr. Maya Angelou’s beautiful video clip to set the tone for who we want to as a community –>

A guideline that became a bit loose last year was related to cell phone use. This was partially because we went most of the year without lockers, which was previously an expectation that all students use and store their personal technology/valuables. All students will have lockers this year, and so we clearly laid out our expectation that students leave their backpacks and all valuables in their locker at all times, including cell phones. If students take their phones out at any time during the school day, they will be stored in the MS Office. Students can only use their cell phones with permission in the MS Office, and we are always happy to help with relaying messages. We believe being strict with this cell phone guideline helps to create a healthy and safe learning environment, where we prioritize connection and wellbeing. Here is a great article about cell phones in schools that really resonated with our team as we reflected on the last year.

Overall, a smooth and gentle start to the 2022-23 school year. We prioritize connection, community, trust and relationships, and intentionally ‘go slow, to go fast’ later….Our students and teachers left Friday afternoon with tired smiles, and we are all excited and eager for the learning that lies ahead.

Happy New Year 2022-23!

In education we are fortunate to have the opportunity for new beginnings each August, when we launch a new school year, with a new group of students, full of new possibilities. We return from our summer break having rested, re-energized, and motivated for the opportunities that lie ahead.

This year begins my sixth year at the International School of Kenya. The start of this year has felt smoother and easier than any year at ISK yet, and I have realized how much I value settling into a post for the long term (we lived in Cairo, Egypt for 6 years and New Delhi, India for 8 years prior to our current post in Nairobi, Kenya). My first few years at ISK were frenetic and a lot of work, since I had no assistant principal and I was developing new systems, implementing programmatic improvements, and also working to shift a culture of low morale. Then the last few years I was fortunate to have an assistant principal, but the pandemic meant rethinking everything, with virtual teaching and learning, virtual workshops, virtual teacher orientation, and professional learning to support needed shifts for how we engage in a virtual world.

While we aren’t back to pre-pandemic normal, we didn’t need to reinvent everything for our teacher orientation this year. We are always intentional to think about our objectives for teacher orientation, hoping to keep it meaningful and fresh, and also provide the needed time to prepare for students. But we didn’t need to troubleshoot all the logistics of new scenarios, multiple contingency plans, and more. This meant we were able to think about our purpose and intention of how we wanted to launch the year. As a leadership team, we worked at the end of last year to clearly define a school-wide goal around DESIGNING LEARNING, including developing a shared definition of learning, learning principles, and reviewing what I call the ‘word salad’ of all the foundational documents we have at ISK. Our leadership’s word for the year: COHERENCE, with a hope that we have a more clear vision of learning as an organization. If DESIGNING LEARNING is WHAT we will focus on this year, HOW we will manage this work is COLLABORATIVELY. So in the Middle School we decided to spend our first full day of orientation building trust, learning together, and focusing on relationships and culture.

In the morning, our counselors led us in exploring our ‘wobbles’ in the Trust Triangle, which includes authenticity, logic and empathy. And in the afternoon we dove into the principles behind Diane Gossen’s Restitution approach. I love the concepts behind restitution. Restitution has as its foundation the beliefs that we are all doing the best we can, we all make mistakes, and ensuring that all of our needs are met and we are strengthened when we come together. While our first reflection is how powerful this is with students, it is also useful when thinking of our interactions and relationships with adults. How often do we fail to provide the same grace to our colleagues, where we would otherwise be gentle and loving with students?

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It is my hope that taking time to intentionally focus on relationships and trust, and aligning what we believe and how we want to interact in our community will provide a foundation for positive collaboration in the year ahead. When the work gets hard and we find ourselves in challenging situations, we will have shared language and shared values about how we treat and support each other, and who we want to be as a community of learners.

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Happy New Year

By Lisa Starr

Isn’t it fantastic—

Perfect strangers and you 

saying Happy New Year!

Happy New Year! All day long

as if everyone in the world

has suddenly become a friend

who wishes you abundance.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful

to treat every day this way—

February 9th—The Ides of March—

Happy New Year! Happy New Year!

Any old Wednesday—Happy New Year!

I think it would catch on and blaze—

a wildfire of generosity and kindness—

every day the glory and the newness.

Most people don’t know this

but the birds starred doing this years ago,

and look, and listen

how it’s worked out for them.

4th Annual Proud To Be Me Day

On Friday February 18th, we suspended our normal schedule in the Middle School to celebrate our 4th Annual Proud To Be Me Day in the Middle School. What an incredible opportunity of leaning into our values related to community, equity, justice and inclusion at ISK. We saw students leading workshops they had planned collaboratively with a committed groups of teachers, and engaging our community in important conversations related to gender identity, sexual identity, religion/culture, neurodiversity and racial identity/racism. Our goal: how to use our privilege to be an ally, to open our hearts and increase acceptance, and to consider our social responsibility to bring about change.

The purpose of this day is: 

• To raise awareness about different aspects of identity and how it contributes to our community’s diversity
• To nurture an open mind and heart to expand our inclusive community
• To increase awareness, acceptance, and a sense of belonging
• To increase sensitivity about the impact of our actions and words

We laid the foundation for these important conversations in advisory, discussing privilege and oppression (check out the great, short video linked here and embedded below that makes those concepts super accessible), how to be an active listener, and the importance of being an ally.

On Friday, all MS students rotated through 5 sessions related to identity with the goal to deepen our understanding, expand our acceptance and inclusion, and learn to become allies to those who might be more marginalized in our community.

Racial Identity/Racism: The group started with this foundation video – The Science of Racism, and created a shared definition and criteria to understand racism. Students then interacted with various scenarios to discuss whether or not they were racist. The scenarios included touching black hair, using the ‘N’ word, teasing East Asian names, etc. Students ended with tips on how to be anti-racist, and this video – What kind of Asian are you?

Sexual Identity: The group started with this video – What is sexual orientation? – from Amaze (a great resource for puberty, relationships, our changing bodies and sex education). Students engaged in a fun Kahoot, and then interacted with various scenarios (being bullied for ‘coming out’, using homophobic slurs and more) and discussed how to be an ally.

Religion & Culture: In this session, students started by surfacing their prior knowledge about religion, and interacting in a word association activity. Students watched a video created by our student planners, and explored assumptions, commonalities, and discrimination related to religion. Students engaged with various scenarios to consider how we recognize, respect, and celebrate the different cultures and religions in our ISK community.

Gender Identity: Students started with an ‘Agree or Disagree’ activity, and then watched this Bill Nye Gender video. Students then discussed the definitions of gender, sexism, toxic masculinity, and the fact that gender is a social construct. Students explored gender stereotypes, pronouns, and learned about the gender spectrum through a Gender Unicorn activity and this video – Range of Gender Identities from Amaze. This session ended with tips about how to be an ally, and where to get support.

Neurodiversity: In this session, students started by being split into 3 groups, where 1 was asked to wait in the hallway while the other 2 groups learned a dance. The third group then entered the room and tried to learn it without any verbal support. The exercise was intended to develop empathy for how learners feel when we exclude them. They watched this video – Human Neurodiversity Should Be Celebrated, and further learned about Autism, Dyslexia, Downs Syndrome, and ADHD, including strategies to be more inclusive of people with these diagnoses. The ultimate goal: to create an environment that is inclusive, accepting, and nonjudgmental.

The Middle School Proud to Be Me Day event coincided with the school-wide International Week celebrations. After the 5 student-led workshops, the entire school came together for the International Day final parade to celebrate the rich diversity at ISK.

Student Leadership

Middle School is a time when there is significant change and growth: physically, emotionally, intellectually, and socially. It can be a confusing time, but also a special and magical time for students to learn more about themselves, explore and identify new passions and areas of interest, and also develop agency as learners.

Middle School is a time when students find their voice, and start to develop their leadership skills. At ISK, we believe in the power of amplifying and listening to student voice, and providing opportunities for students to expand and grow their leadership qualities. Our Middle School believes and promotes that ALL students can be leaders, and encourages all students to find a way to get involved, use their student voice, and find something they are interested in to expand and grow their leadership. We do not have an elected Student Council, for example, but instead provide a variety of opportunities for students to naturally grow as leaders based on their interests. Below are some of the examples of how students can grow their leadership.

Leadership Round Table

Every two to three weeks, we host a Leadership Round Table. This falls under the ‘Democracy’ pillar of Round Square, and we promote that any student can choose to participate in any of the sessions they choose. We share the topics that will be discussed, and use this as an opportunity to get student feedback and input about different aspects of life in the Middle School. The topics this year have included: feedback on our hybrid learning plan, input about how to stay connected and tend to the mental health of our community, feedback as we returned to face-to-face learning, input on the electives offerings for courses next year, and sharing thoughts on our schedule/time table. Students then report our conversation to the entire Middle School during assemblies, practicing their public speaking and presenting skills.

Student Leadership Seminar

Twice a year, we host a Leadership Seminar. This is also open to any students interested in attending, and has a different theme each time. The goal is to have fun and grow as student leaders through participation. We also try to dispel the myth that leaders are those who stand at the front and have the loudest voice, but instead, hope that all students will start to recognize their unique leadership gifts. The theme in December was around our Strategic Focus Area (SFA) for Wellbeing. Our upcoming Leadership Seminar in April will focus on our SFA for Inclusion.

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House Captains

The purpose of our House System is to connect and grow our community vertically across the Middle School. Each house has a few House Captains who come together regularly to plan fun events to support that goal. This year, that has included the Jerusalema Challenge, a Kahoot Challenge during the DDL, the Bottle Flip / Cone Flip activity when we were in Hybrid Learning, Hybrid Sports Day in December, socially distanced Noodle Tag and Drama Games in February, and most recently the Greatest International Scavenger Hunt the World Has Ever Seen (GISHWHES). We are so grateful for these community builders to help us have fun these Wednesday mornings. 

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Student Ambassadors

This group requires an application process, and provides service to our ISK community. Student Ambassadors provide tours to prospective families, support New Student Orientation, and act as ‘buddies’ to new students. Ambassadors work with our counselor to have regular training sessions, and also to continually support the overall culture and climate in our Middle School.

Social Justice Club

Some of our co-curricular offerings also provide amazing opportunities for students to grow their voice as leaders. The Social Justice Club is for students who are interested in equity and social justice work that can really impact both the ISK community and the world at large. Students meet each week and work collaboratively to learn about and promote social justice work within our community. This club is student-led and student-centered. Students have the opportunity to lead the Middle School in this work by creating a meaningful program for our advisory sessions related to identity, equity, and social justice every Thursday.

Proud To Be Me Day Planning

This group of student planners starts meeting in November to plan how the Middle School will celebrate our diversity and learn more about our identities on our annual Proud to Be Me Day. Students propose the different themes for the student-led workshops and then work with supporting teachers to develop meaningful activities to engage their peers. The purpose of this day is:

• To raise awareness about different aspects of identity and how it contributes to our community’s diversity
• To nurture an open mind and heart to expand our inclusive community
• To increase awareness, acceptance, and a sense of belonging
• Increase sensitivity about the impact of our actions and words

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Peace Day and Earth Day Planning Committees

International Day of Peace is on September 21st each year, and Earth Day is celebrated on April 22nd. A few weeks before these two dates, we put out a call for interested students to help us plan how we will honor and celebrate these important days as a Middle School community. How will we contribute to a more peaceful world? In what ways can we increase our environmental stewardship?

 

We also have ad hoc committees and opportunities that come up for students to get involved as leaders. Most recently, we extended an offer for interested students to join our Scheduling Committee, as we look to the 2021-22 school year and hope to design a timetable that will support our teaching and learning goals. It is important for us to not only support the growth of student leadership, but also to ensure we are listening carefully to student voices and experiences.

There are so many opportunities for our students to get involved, grow their leadership, and make a difference. We encourage all students to get involved and grow their leadership!

***With deep gratitude to Beth Coyle and Colleen Coady, who launched this model of student leadership at the American Embassy School in New Delhi, India. I have been so fortunate to learn from amazing models and mentors, and have seen this student leadership model to be powerful for Middle School Students.

Ignite & Connect Weekend Experiences 2021

Each September, our Middle School typically ventures outside the ISK campus to Ol Pejeta, Ngare Ndare Forest, and beyond for our annual InterCultural (IC) Trips. The trips have the goal to explore Kenyan culture, embrace adventure, engage in service, appreciate our natural surroundings, make social connections, and have fun outside the classroom walls. However, this year IC Trips were postponed due to the pandemic and distance learning. With the prospect that students wouldn’t return face-to-face until January (per the Kenya President’s directives), we decided we needed to think outside of the box.

In November, the Middle School put together a dream team of interested teachers to imagine up possibilities for the IC Trips and review if we thought such experiences were still manageable. As an initial part of our process, we gathered student input on their favorite parts of our annual InterCultural Trips. They shared: adventure, team building, fun, camping, and being with friends. With this criteria in mind (aside from the camping), and the prospect of not being allowed to travel off-campus for an overnight trip, the teacher committee started to imagine an experience that could meet these goals. We rebranded and repurposed IC from ‘InterCultural’ to ‘Ignite and Connect.’ We abandoned our normal goals, and instead had these objectives:

• To have fun through adventure, challenge and outdoor active experiences
• To connect with friends (old and new) and make time for community building

We reached out to the outfitters with whom we have trusted relationships for these annual trips: Rift Valley Adventures and Savage Wilderness, and they were on board for developing a creative alternative experience. [Side note: if you ever decide to visit Kenya for tourism and fun, in addition to amazing safaris, beautiful landscapes to explore, and the gorgeous coast, you should definitely consider RVA and Savage for adventure and fun!!]

As a part of our preparations, we also engaged all the ISK team members: from the Health Office, Security, COVID Compliance, Operations & Functions, Food Services, Child Protection, and more. We worked to design a safe and fun trip keeping in mind the 4 W’s –> 

Keeping our COVID regulations in mind, we designed an awesome weekend for our students. On 3 separate weekends, each grade level of the Middle School spent a weekend on campus – 8am-8pm on Saturday and 8am-4pm on Sunday (and then recovered with a ‘shifted weekend’ staying home the Monday and Tuesday that follows).

Saturday was an exploration of fun adventure activities, where we grouped students based on their friendship preferences as they rotated through 5 activities with the outfitters:

• biking skills
• a low ropes course
• stand up paddle boarding
• archery skills
• abseiling (rappelling) off the roof our our new MS building

After the 1-hour rotations for each activity, we had down time to connect with friends (hanging out, table tennis, basketball, football, and more) in the late afternoon. We ordered pizza delivery, and then watched a movie on the big screen with popcorn as it got dark, and students also roasted marshmallows to make s’mores.

Sunday brought more fun, and we organized the day’s groups based on student choice for the activities. Sunday’s activities were ‘deep dives’, where students had the opportunity to explore for an extended 2.5 hour period of time 2 activities of their choice – they all selected 1 activity from our outfitters and 1 design challenge from our ISK teachers.

Sunday ended with students racing homemade ‘boats’ made of recycled bottles in a Recycling Regatta at the pool. Overall feedback was overwhelmingly positive, and we were thrilled to offer such an exciting, fun, and meaningful experience for our Middle School community! We definitely met our goals, and are so happy that we were able to dream up this creative innovation in spite of the COVID obstacles we are facing. We hope we can resume off-campus InterCultural Trips again next year, but are so pleased and proud for this incredible opportunity for our community to IGNITE and CONNECT!

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New MS Building!

We dreamed, we planned, we imagined possibilities, we considered our goals for teaching and learning and what that would look like for the physical environment…and then we waited for those dreams to become reality. What was expected to be a 2-year project ended up being only 1.5 years….even during a pandemic! We are thrilled that we were able to open our new middle school building in January 2021.

Our Priorities for the new MS Building:

• Be accessible: Wheelchair and washroom access ADA code
• Have an appealing design
• Facilitate the ISK learning goals (ISK’s educational aims, personalized learning, inclusion, technology, integrated learning)
• Reflect the Middle School philosophy – teaming/collaboration, meeting developmental needs of our students
• Plan for growth, provide for an increase in student numbers
• Embrace the natural environment
  • Have natural light, consider airflow and rain (have covering when walking between classes), consider weather
  • Incorporate elements that appreciate that we are in Kenya
• Have flexible learning spaces – outside balconies, large spaces, flexible spaces outside the classroom
• Fit in with the architecture of the school

Our new space has some incredible features – large classrooms with outside learning patios, glass doors that can be open for lots of airflow (we didn’t realize how good our planning was for a pandemic at the time!), a teaching kitchen, a multi-purpose space, a black box theater, a gorgeous conference room on the roof with glass walls amidst the treetops, a life-centered education room as we launch our more intensive needs program for grades 6-9 next year, and 6 large open-air roof top spaces that have proven to be invaluable for lunch rotations and other safe uses for larger groups as we welcomed students back on campus in the pandemic. We are still waiting for a few of the spaces to be completed….stay tuned – will add pics of the kitchen, MPR, and black box when complete!

We are in love with our new space and are thrilled that the opening coincided with welcoming students back on campus (our 6th and 7th grade students hadn’t been on campus for 10 months, per Kenyan mandate!). We look forward to getting our parents on campus at some point, and also the Grand Opening Ceremony in March.

Enjoy these photos to get a glimpse of our incredible teaching and learning spaces. A great place to spend our days with students!

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  Entrance from ES side.

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  6th Grade Pod

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  Principal and MS Office at bottom, Counseling Suite next level, Conference Room at treetops.

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  Our beautiful building!

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  Inside the middle of the building.

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  Looking at HS Science Wing in the back, 8th grade pod in the foreground.

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  Our beautiful building!

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  Main entrance.

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  Tours with students.

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  Tours with students.

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  Hanging out.

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  Beautiful kitengela glass being installed.

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  Hallways.

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  Math classroom.

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  Counseling office.

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  Humanities classroom.

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  Humanities classroom.

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  My office.

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  My office.

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  Seating outside the Conference Room on the roof.

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  Roof view.

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  Conference Room.

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  Staff celebration on one of the roof spaces.

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  Lunch rotation on the roof.

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  Bella and Sophie on the first day of our new MS Building!

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  Lunch fun on the new roof.

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  Inclusive bathroom signs.

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  Humanities classroom.