The Blue Week - Cervantes Saavedra ISA`s Oral English Examinations

ISA
International Schools Association Newsletter December 2011
The Blue Week - Cervantes Saavedra
St. John’s International School, United Kingdom,
Ms. Cotton
On arrival in Palma, the students took part in a cultural tour,
visiting La Catedral de Mallorca and the Caves of Drach.
On Monday 3rd October we set off on our adventure on the
high seas aboard the Cervantes Saavedra. We sailed from
Valencia on a beautiful morning with a gentle breeze behind
us, heading for Mallorca (Palma).
The entire group of staff and students, from St. John’s and
other schools in Spain, met up for some sightseeing in Valencia. They are pictured in front of the Hemesferic Planetarium
in the city’s Science and Arts Park.
The local Spanish press marked the boat’s arrival in Palma.
The students had a very positive experience, learning the
value of teamwork within a different community and making
friends with pupils from schools around Spain. Although the
language barrier was a challenge, our students rose to the occasion and immersed themselves in Spanish culture!
ISA’s Oral English Examinations
St. Catherine’s-Moorlands School, Argentina, Pinkie
Little
Meanwhile, their luxurious, tall ship awaited. As a new dawn
breaks over the horizon, the St. John’s contingent prepare to
set sail on their adventures.
The students all settled into their accommodation, which was
quite compact, but they quickly adapted to their environment. The crew set about teaching the students how to take
part in running the ship with activities such as knot tying,
sending distress signals using flags and first aid at sea.
Luckily the St. John’s purple hoodies went rather well with
the orange life-jackets, as one wanted to look cool at all times!
Miss Cotton narrowly escaped being pushed in by Harry!
Everybody was extremely impressed with the standards of
traditional Spanish food on board; we ate three delicious
meals a day as well as enjoying additional snacks.
In Summer of 1994, members of the International Schools´
Association and Jacqueline McLellan of Calgary, Canada,
discussed the possibility of creating a new set of Oral English
Examinations that would emphasize on the expressive and
fluent communication in English and not simply the acquisition of grammar and vocabulary. So, a set of four examinations were established as well as a Syllabus geared to developing effective oral communication in English.
These exams took place for the first time in Argentina in October 1994, having Uruguay joined in 2004. For many years
the examiners assigned were Jacqueline McLellan and Ruth
Toner Murdoch but as the number of candidates both in
Argentina and Uruguay increased, a team of examiners was
made necessary to cater for the growing demand of Member
Schools as well as Affiliate members.
These examinations offer the opportunity to develop many
valuable skills such as speaking about literature, share
personal experiences, learn to organize information for more
formal presentations and ease for impromptu speaking, enabling students to build self-confidence and fluency, develop
effective delivery techniques as well as artistic expression of
ideas. In addition, it seeks to strengthen personality, confidence, correct pronunciation, and vocal techniques.
Since its inception and throughout the years, the ISA Oral
Examinations have shown a steady growth, evaluating yearly
over 500 children, over a period of two weeks in October, in
Argentina and Uruguay.
International Schools Association © 2001-2007 ISA and its licensors
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Internationalism Week
International Peace Quilt Project
SEK International Quito, Ecuador, Sandra I. Viteri
SEK Budapest International School, Hungary
During the last years the Social Studies Department of SEK
International School Ecuador has been developing the “Internationalism Week and the Day of Cultures”. This special
project started in the school year 2006 – 2007, as a response
to the growth in cultural awareness and recognition around
the world, and the forces of change brought by globalization,
that have allowed markets, culture and tastes to meet at a
faster rate.
“The International Peace Quilt Project works as a collective
response to the principle behind both the traditional and
modern Olympic ideals of building a Peaceful and Better
World. The focus of the Quilt is to invite children from all
over the World to make a wish for Peace” were the words that
inspired the Student Board in SEK Budapest International
School to organize a Peace Day on February 10th , 2011.
The main objective that the department wants to achieve with
this yearly event is to promote and integrate our families in
a cultural space with important manifestations of different
countries and regions around the world.
We wanted to encourage our students to talk about the World
in which they live, to reflect on their feelings about Peace,
and to share the ideas with the other young people around
the world. Peace Quilt gave our students an opportunity to
tell their story through the universal language of visual arts
making it accessible to everybody, as quilt is a traditional way
of creating which brings people together.
The program brought together students who talked about
Peace, and then they made hundreds of origami birds and
with them wrote the word PEACE. This inspiring activity
continued with the contest of students’ drawings symbolizing
Peace. The drawings were exhibited in the school corridor
and all the members of our school community, students,
teachers, and parents were invited to vote for their favorite
drawing. With a majority of votes the 6th grader Lea Lefkovits’s work won.
Throughout this week, the students have the opportunity to
work on class projects to learn more about the history, traditions, and customs of the different countries under study, as
well as having the participation of foreign family members
and embassy representatives who come to share experiences
about their countries.
The week finishes with the celebration of the “Day of Cultures”, an artistic, cultural and gastronomic event, where
the school community enjoys and celebrates the ethnic and
cultural diversity represented by the different nationalities
like Brazil, Colombia, Peru, Argentina, Spain, United States,
and Korea among others, that our school has. Each grade
prepares a stand and decorates it with eye-catching colours
and relevant information about the country they represent.
They also offer delicious dishes of traditional food, which are
tasted by the people who come to share this special day with
us.
The winning drawing will become Hungarian square of the
Peace Quilt for the Olympic Games in London 2012.
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A Special Encounter
Colegio Sidarta, Brazil, Carmen Maria Hester
The development of intercultural competence must concern
any well-intentioned teacher who works for an international
school. In fact, this is at the core of international education
and a lot has been written and proposed in order to help
teachers accomplish this goal. There is a lot of interest on
learning and teaching about different countries and cultures,
especially in the dawn of this new millennium. There is no
doubt that learning about one another is an important way of
building a respectful behaviour towards those who are different from ourselves.
I work for a brazilian school called Colégio Sidarta. This
school belongs to a Chinese family. The main language of
instruction is Portuguese but students also learn three more
languages: English, Mandarin and Spanish.
Quite international, right? We are forming global citizens,
right? Right. But nevertheless we often have posed ourselves
the following questions:
- What about their home culture? How deep is their knowledge about Brazil’s cultural manifestations? Are we helping
them to think based on stereotypes or on real life experiences?
- How much of our teaching time is used to explore our own
country’s culture? Is this simply something they will learn
naturally outside the school?
- Why do many of our students show very little interest on
social and political aspects of our own country?
- Do they know one another in their own country?
The idea that we could be helping transform our students
into foreigners in their own country struck us as something
we should fight against with great energy. We started then
setting some new goals and implementing some new actions
that would move us towards a more enriching direction.
Some of these actions caused great impact not only on our
students but on our whole community. There is one in particular that I would like to share with you: we invited two
indigenous tribe members to visit our school and to meet our
students and teachers during a week.
Fowá (“stone” in his mother tongue Iathé) and Kleykeniho
(“son of the tiger” in Iathé) belong to a tribe called Fulni-ô
located in the State of Pernambuco, in the northeast of Brazil.
The great distance between our school – located in the State
of São Paulo - and their tribe is not only geographical. There
is an enormous social, economical and cultural gap. None of
our students, and I must also add, very few of the adults in
our community had ever talked to a Brazilian tribe member.
Although the indigenous culture plays an important influence
in the construction of the Brazilian identity, the knowledge
an urban citizen has is still pretty much based on stereotypes
and childhood fantasies.
Based on teachers’ suggestions, Fowá and Kleykeniho organized workshops in order to accomplish their life mission: “to
teach our culture to the white man”.
The children listened to stories of their tribe, sang and
danced together, learned about body painting, arts and
crafts, how to use a bow and an arrow, how to express oneself
through painting, etc. Many questions were asked and a lot
was explained about the way the Fulni-ô tribe members relate
to Nature.
Teenagers had the chance to hear them talk and sing to God,
and teach about interesting aspects of their language, “Iathé”,
and about the way they count and measure things. Many
questions were asked and responded. A new world of possibilities of living and knowledge was being opened to our
students.
On the first day of the visit some kids were afraid, some were
suspicious, others slightly disrespectful and mischievous, but
most students were curious and a bit apprehensive. “Indians
at school? Very weird”, some would say. “Do they eat like
us?”, Others would ask. But, after five days a surprisingly different picture had emerged: we had students following Fowá
and Kleykeniho like bees to the hive. They were surrounded
by students at lunch time; they were invited to play football
during break; and kindergarten children were sitting on their
laps. A four year old boy even said to them “Could you please
take me with you to your tribe?”, And another one also made
this sweet comment “Before I met the Indians I was afraid of
them, of Santa Claus and of clowns. Now I am only afraid of
Santa Claus and clowns. I like the Indians.”
Teenagers expressed their feelings in a more analytical, but
no less touching way. One of our high school students wrote
about this experience:
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“After a presentation about their language, they prayed in
their own language for the children that were killed in a
school in Rio de Janeiro. Then, we all shared a minute of
silence to pay our respects for the children that were brutally
murdered. This moment was important for us to understand
that the feelings are the same in any culture and this way we
learn to respect each other” (Ana Julia – High School student)
Something very special had taken place. Something beyond
the “simple” taking in of information. It was a life experience
that touched not only the student’s minds, but also talked to
their hearts and souls. A true intercultural experience.
In addition, Chamberlain International offers a rich student
activity life which includes international travels. Students
have enjoyed travelling abroad to Germany, Holland, Amsterdam, Brussels and Bermuda. Our European trips offer
students the opportunity to experience cultural, culinary, architectural, and economic similarities and differences in specific European countries. Students embark on a cultural and
historical tour of a handful of European countries through
visits to museums, natural points of interest such as castles
and parks as well as the hustle and bustle of nearby cities.
After this remarkable life/educational experience, we had
many insights on how we would better approach cultural
matters in the school. To sum things up, I would like to share
this quote I found:
“The world’s cultural wealth is its variety in dialogue. While
each culture draws from its own roots, it must not fail to blossom when crossing other cultures.”
(portal.unesco.org/culture)
Chamberlain International School
F.L. Chamberlain International School, United States
Chamberlain International School is a therapeutic boarding
school that provides students’ academic and clinical services
with countless opportunities to practice their knowledge
learned within a safe and homelike atmosphere of dormitory
life.
For many years, we have been working with international
students from Bermuda, Canada, Central and South America.
Additionally, over the last several school years, we have been
working with International Learning Exchange (ILEX). ILEX
was developed specifically for professionals working within
the social services and human services fields. They represent
a network of not-for-profit social service organizations in
the United States committed to international professional
development and cultural learning. With the recent disbanding of ILEX, Chamberlain International School is working to
develop its own international employee exchange.
Working with our students in the dormitories, we have
Christine and Maike. Christine is from Jamaica with a Masters in Counselling Psychology. Maike is from Belgium with
Bachelors in Social Work. Both women have several years
of experience in Human Services and offer a wealth of talent
and cultural awareness to our students. Mythe has been with
us for nearly a year and works in the Academic department.
She comes to Chamberlain with many years of experience
and boundless energy!
Finally, we have Kim from the Netherlands with a Master’s
Degree in Clinical Health Psychology. Kim is our first current and former ILEX who works on our clinical team with 10
years experience working with children and adolescents. We
use the word former as Kim recently completed the necessary
documentation to remain as a full time employee!
The Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences, Inc. (BIOS) is
uniquely situated and excellently equipped for highly productive marine field research. Bermuda is located on some of the
world’s northernmost coral reefs and surrounded by deep
ocean. Significant research opportunities are presented by
Bermuda’s diversity of ecological communities: from limestone caves and mangroves to coral reefs and the Sargasso
Sea. Students participate in a week of scheduled activities,
which includes but is not limited to learning about Bermuda’s
history, endemic plants, mangroves, limestone caves, stalagmites and stalactites, coral, fish and bird identification and or
a plankton tow with follow up research in the lab.
Students and faculty stay at the Bermuda Institute of Ocean
Sciences (BIOS). BIOS is a U.S. non-profit research and educational institution covering all facets of marine science.
Green Week
SEK Guatemala, Guatemala, Fernando Aragon
For the first time ever, SEK International students from
Guatemala and many other countries had the opportunity
to enjoy and learn in an incredible journey through the wild
and indomitable natural scenarios of Costa Rica. The emotions and experiences collected by the students and mentors
became life-lasting memories which remind us about the importance of the preservation efforts of the ecosystems which
sustain life in this planet.
The adventure was organized by SEK Costa Rica from March
the 28th until April the 2nd 2011. Along this time the participants experienced extreme activities ranging from wildlife
observation in the middle of the night, to rafting on the rapids of a river 12km long and surface snorkelling 15km within
open sea in front of the tropical shoreline of Costa Rica.
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Also, students experienced speleological exploration of caves
and observation of animals and plants in their natural environments. In summary the journey consisted of five exciting
and unforgettable days of extreme adventure and adrenaline
with an ecological approach.
The presence at the conference of so many investors seeking
to enter the international education market confirmed this
trend, indicating that growth is likely to continue into both
the short and medium term. Indications are that there will
be more education groups expanding into emerging markets
with the Far East and Latin American being seen as regions
with the greatest potential.
Although the general thrust of the presentations was of optimism, there were, nevertheless, a number of warnings given.
It was suggested that some countries, previously highlighted
as having significant potential for development, such as India
and China, presented fewer opportunities than might appear.
The reasons for this note of caution are centred on the lack
of significant numbers of families in India able to pay for a
quality international education and the restriction on Chinese
nationals attending international schools in China. The clear
recommendation was for all those considering developing
schools overseas to engage in comprehensive market research
to ensure that all decision-making is based on solid information.
The delegations experiences accumulated and shared during
the Green Week greatly contributed to build and reinforce
the ecological consciousness that our students need in these
times of conservation-oriented technologies. The activity
itself can be summarized in a single word: OUTSTANDING!
Thanks Costa Rica for your hospitality. As Costa Ricans used
to say, Pura Vida!
International and Private Schools
Education Forum (IPSEF)
ISA Representatives, London, Andrew McEwen
The event was an opportunity for key experts and practitioners in the field of International Education to share their visions and concerns. Present were some 150 participants from
all over the world. Attendees represented a wide range of
corporate education groups, investors, advisers and government authorities.
Among those presenting, besides our own ISA representatives (ISA’s Chairman, Luis Martinez, and ISA’s Marketing Advisor, Andrew McEwen), were: the CEOs of GEMS,
Nord Anglia, Kunskapsskolan (Sweden), NABSS (Spain)
ISC Research and the Parthenon Group. Also addressing the
conference were: the Director General of the Knowledge and
Human Development Authority of Dubai, the Director of the
Centre for Market Reform in Education, the General Manager
of Teach Anywhere and the Director of the Centre for Evaluation and Monitoring of the University of Durham.
Day One saw speakers address the issues related to growth in
the international schools market. Areas such as- the strategies necessary for successful replication of existing schools,
choosing viable locations for establishing new schools, finding local partners, branding and general management were
all considered. There appeared to be consensus that growth
in international schools continues to exceed 5% per year,
with currently over 6,000 international schools worldwide.
Mr Martinez spoke on a range of issues connected with deciding whether to opt for acquiring an existing school or starting
a new school from scratch. He explained the whole process
through the analysis of a number of case studies. Mr Martinez
also highlighted the advantages that ISA membership brings
to all those schools working in the international sphere, enumerating the support and services ISA can offer. Mr McEwen
presented a comprehensive summary of how to replicate an
existing school. He detailed issues to do with branding and
control and the need to protect the Home school’s reputation.
Day Two saw a range of speakers address issues related to
Curriculum Development, Training, Staff recruitment and
crisis management (financial and sociopolitical). The IB programmes were presented in the context of promoting global
awareness in students and ensuring rigorous evaluation and
consistent grading. On-going training was shown as being
extremely important in the context of international schools,
given that many such schools operate somewhat in isolation
from the national education infrastructure and therefore
need to create their own CPD (Continuous Professional Development) strategies. Equally the need for a well-managed
recruitment process was highlighted with focus on reference
checking and criminal record checking. It was also recommended that candidates be screened for behavioural characteristics in order to ensure their suitability for appointment.
The final section of the day addressed issues relating to managing crisis situations. A number of scenarios were analysed,
ranging from managing natural disasters such as floods and
earthquakes, political instability and crime related situations
such as kidnapping and general financial crises. In all cases
there was a common thread, which emphasised the need for
preparedness, ensuring that the necessary protocols and risk
assessments have been implemented in order to guarantee
the wellbeing of personnel, students and the protection of the
school’s infrastructure.
In general the conference was a valuable opportunity for
those present to share ideas and experiences as well as permit
ISA to establish a presence in such august company.
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