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Multilingualism is an Asset

AISJ ES inner courtyard for International Mother Language Day 2021 When moving into my new position as K12 Learning Support Coordinator at the American International School of Johannesburg last year, I created a Whats App group called Laura's EAL Support Team. You know who you are - THANK YOU! I recognized that building a strong…

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The Right to be Disabled

In my last post, I wrote about one of the keynotes from the virtual SENIA 2020 conference, This month, I will return to that inspiration as well. Norman Kunc and Emma Van der Klift spoke about their own experiences navigating school and life with a disability. They made powerful and provocative points that have continued…

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Get ready, Do, Done

Question your maps and models of the universe, both inner and outer, and continually test them against the raw input of reality. Our maps are still maps, approximating the landscape of truth from the territories of the knowable — incomplete representational models that always leave more to map, more to fathom, because the selfsame forces…

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Help! I am Co-Teaching my child at home.

Tales from the Covid-19 Lockdown, remote learning reality If you are like me, and so many others around the world currently, you are trying to continue to do your job remotely over zoom, GoogleMeets, and other virtual platforms, which is strange and challenging enough, on its own. IF, you also happen to be a parent,…

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Building a Culture of Dignity

All human conflict emerges from violations of dignity or perceived violations of dignity.Donna Hicks From Paul Bloomberg's work at AISJ September 2019 We had the great fortune at AISJ of working with Paul Bloomberg from the Core Collaborative this past week. He began his work with us by focusing on building a culture of dignity.…

Learning to be wrong

As I have mentioned in previous posts, supporting students in making their own choices and asking their own questions has been a focus of our curriculum work at the ISP. To that end, we recently reorganized a third grade unit on sound and the scientific process to allow students to explore their own questions and curiosities about sound. Students either asked a question about sound, developed a hypothesis, created a plan, and interpreted their results, or they built an instrument and disc [...]

Equal Opportunity, A case for more personalized learning

If the environment is a bad fit for the individual . . . our performance will always be artificially impaired. If we get a good fit with our environment . . . we will have the opportunity to show what we are truly capable of. This means that if we want equal opportunity for everyone, if we want a society where each of us has the same chance to live up to our full potential, then we must create professional, educational, and social institutions that are responsive to individuality. (Rose, [...]