Graduation 2016Initial findings of the impact study

Forum on transition to university

June 2016 Term 3 edition

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By Chris Edwards Head of College

A long time ago, a young, dark haired English teacher found himself at a large Education Fair in a famous capital city. His job was to promote the School at which he had just started working. He proudly took from his bag a large photograph of his school’s most famous alumnus—a well-known contemporary businessman—and was about to put it on his display board when he happened to look at the school exhibiting next to him. On seeing the first three images go up on his neighbour’s board—Jawaharlal Nehru, Winston Churchill, Lord Byron—the young teacher sheepishly put the contemporary businessman back in the bag. Truth was, the neighbouring school seemed for all the world to have made a more significant impact on the lot of humanity. And so the young teacher decided instead to promote his school by standing enigmatically in front of a blank, blue display board which he fervently hoped would be seen by potential parents as a beguiling, Zen-like invitation into a realm of infinite possibility. He failed. The parents ignored him and queued up in front of the school where the famous people had gone.

His hair a little less dark than it used to be, the same teacher became rather excited on hearing a tale that would enable him and his new colleagues to delve deep into the realm of impact. This story went well beyond the pictures of the great and good that adorn school walls. The UWCSEA Board of Governors had been reflecting profoundly on a mission statement that was admirable but seemingly ethereal: it spoke not to educational experience but impact. Do we really unite peoples, nations and cultures through the force of education, and will they strive to

make the future more peaceful and sustainable? Could one really tell if we were doing any more in this field than other schools with very different mission statements? So, since the prime objective of the governing body is to ensure the school fulfils the mission, and since the mission is all about impact, the question had finally become “what is the impact of the UWC mission on students and on society?”

Measuring UWC’s impactA plan was hatched. Four principles would guide our thinking: we would not measure input or output, but rather would focus on impact; our study would be a longitudinal study, and setting the parameters of that study would be a study in itself; yes, there would be a drive towards quantitative data, but we needed an in-depth qualitative study in the first instance; and we also needed help.

The help soon came in the form of Research Schools International led by researchers from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Dr Bruno della Chiesa and Dr Christina Hinton, along with Sylvia Malo based in the International Office and Vanessa Christoph in Germany, were mightily interested in what we wanted to do and happy to involve other UWCs, namely: UWC Red Cross Nordic, UWC Waterford Kahmlaba and UWC-USA. The buzz became louder both in Harvard and Singapore, and then a donor (who wishes to remain anonymous) most generously offered to fund an exploratory year. This was a thrilling and liberating turn of events. We were set to go.

Exploratory yearAlong with the dry but essential components of any major research undertaking, interviews were also

conducted with alumni and students by researchers and the scholar-in-residence, Dr della Chiesa, during his visits to the College. These interviews, along with attendant surveys proved especially insightful in an exploratory year and gave us clear indicators of where we might look in the future for impact. We are grateful to everyone who took part in these sessions: they were invaluable not least because they were far from the identikit sessions one might have expected from a College with so strong a mission.

Honing the research questions proved fascinating, challenging and a lot of fun as senior colleagues engaged with the researchers in rich conversations. Eventually we came up with the following:

What ethical values do current and former members of the UWC community think are important and developed as part of a UWC education?

Do current and former members of the UWC community think that they have developed, or are developing, these ethical values?

How has the school informed the development of these ethical values?

What examples can current and former members of the UWC community give of how these concepts are manifested in their lives today?

Given the short lead in time and exploratory nature of the project, I think we can say that this was a mass participation event. 2,365 students and alumni from the four UWCs were involved, with 677 of the alumni and over 1,000 of the students coming from UWCSEA.

In addition to face-to-face interviews, a set of somewhat sinister sounding

DEVELOPING ETHICAL PEOPLEInitial findings of the impact study

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‘thought experiments’ were conducted with students and alumni. Some of you may be familiar with the Veil of Ignorance experiments—to which Kant, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau and Jefferson have all contributed—whereby one determines the morality of an issue by jettisoning one’s abilities, tastes and position within the social order. If you’d like to try a thought experiment for yourself (though this one is not a veil of ignorance scenario), here’s one we used on students and alumni:

A man has robbed a bank, but instead of keeping the money for himself, he donates it to a poor orphanage that can now afford to feed, clothe, and care for its children. You know who committed the robbery. If you go to the authorities with the information, there’s a good chance the money will be returned to the bank, leaving a lot of kids in need. What do you do?

The answers were of course interesting, but more interesting for us was hearing alumni and students connecting with and reflecting on their UWC experience as they went about wrestling with the problem.

Initial findingsThe first fruits appeared last month when a draft report was circulated. The Initial Findings for UWCSEA are most encouraging. Intercultural/global awareness of students at UWCSEA is very high, and crucial notions of ‘tolerance’ and ‘respect for all’ are pervasive. Students believe UWCSEA has helped them to develop ethical values, while UWCSEA values and respondent values are aligned.

Qualities alumni and students report developing most during their time at UWC included compassion, empathy, being open-minded, respect, social responsibility and how to care for

others. Interestingly, when discussing ethical decision-making, alumni in particular associated ‘understanding context’ most strongly with being able to make ethical decisions. This supports the evidence that our students and alumni are extremely aware of alternative perspectives to their own—surely an important part of the ‘peace and sustainable’ future that we are aspiring to. One of the alumni put it best: “I think that just going to school and constantly interacting with people of different races, classes and identities, I learned more about social justice, equality and tolerance than many of the workshops and lectures I’ve had in college. [It] really opened up my eyes to the diversity of the human (not to mention UWCSEA) experience.”

Flying high from the masthead of UWCSEA is Social Justice. This concept incorporates such complex notions as equal rights and opportunity, as well as a strong sense of responsibility to society. A Grade 9 student might have a slightly different understanding of this concept to a seasoned alum, but Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Paine would recognise and, doubtless, rejoice at the kind of thinking taking place in the community. How wonderful if the current Grade 9s still feel this way when, working in major corporations, banks, NGOs and their own companies, they might make manifest their current beliefs. (And early signs suggest cynicism infects UWC alumni rather less than world-weary readers might think).

A significant majority of alumni believe that their ethical values are manifest in their daily lives, and that they are contributing to a better world either through their career, their everyday actions and interactions, or volunteer work. “Because of my UWCSEA

experience, I work for a non-profit organisation which helps shape globally competent students and teachers … I work with diverse schools … almost as if I’m trying to bring ‘UWC’ to those schools!” Another remarked, “I like to think the little things I do every single day contribute to a better world … Just the other day my mum praised me for volunteering at an organisation in Singapore … ‘It’s normal,’ I replied. The only reason I think it’s normal is because UWCSEA made it normal … I firmly believe that the world would be a better place with more of us.”

There are so many more inspiring examples of how the UWC experience has stayed with our students and alumni and how they are having a positive impact on the world as a result. The complexity of the relationship between their experience at school and their behaviour in the real world is not to be underestimated, but we are beginning. Now we await the full report. Once that is received there will be further discussion at College and UWC international level. The hope is we will build a longitudinal study that will incorporate an ongoing partnership with the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Nehru, Churchill and Byron surely earned their place in the story. But in terms of UWC alumni, let’s also ask about the homemaker in Idaho, the volunteer in Jakarta, the girl in Grade 9. In what quiet and wonderful ways might they be developing their thinking and changing this world for the better? And in what way is UWC a part of that tale? And finally, how might UWC improve its practice in the light of this new information so that we all live happily ever after?

That, as my mother used to say, is a story for tomorrow night.

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Defining learning: becoming a school with learning at its core

By James Dalziel Head of East Campus and Stuart MacAlpine Director of Teaching and Learning East Campus

It might appear self evident that every school has learning at its core. Some would wonder what could possibly be at the core of a school if it’s not learning. But the truth is that many schools focus on teaching strategies, on the learning environment or on exam results when they talk about learning: these become proxies that can distract from a school’s core purpose, which is to stimulate an internal change that is taking place within our students—their learning.

Defining and developing a shared understanding of learning is critical for any school. The definition should arise out of a school’s shared culture and context and, most importantly, should help us to understand the difference between the actual internal learning that is taking place (within people) and the external conditions for learning that may (or may not) be in place around us. Martin Skelton, a well known educationalist and founding director of Fieldwork Education, often uses a medical analogy to explain the difference between focusing on conditions for learning, and learning itself. Imagine a hospital that focused on “things that help health,” rather than patients’ “health”:

Surgeon 1: Was the operation a success?

Surgeon 2: Yes, I did everything I was supposed to: scrubbed before surgery, completed the procedure as described in the textbook, debriefed with staff, and it was a complete success.

Surgeon 1: How is the patient?

Surgeon 2: Oh, well, he died.

Unfortunately, this is similar to some conversations we have heard in schools around the world: “I taught a great lesson but for some reason, some kids

didn’t get it,” or “I love that teacher’s classroom, students always look engaged and he uses popsicle sticks to randomise questions, so kids must be learning.” To help every member of our community learn, we must focus on learning itself before looking at conditions for learning. This helps our teachers and students identify the learning taking place. In this way, when we evaluate our practice, we make a professional transition from ‘‘how did the teaching go?” to “what learning took place for students?”

At the College, our definition of learning is:

Learning is a life-long process in which learners engage with and reflect upon information and experiences to construct new or modify existing understanding as well as develop and apply skills and qualities.

The student definition is:

We learn all the time. We learn about things, how to do things and to understand things. Sometimes we learn something new; sometimes we are getting better at something we’ve done before. When we learn we change the way we think and feel.

A good definition of learning can make an enormous difference to students. This example from a Theory of Knowledge (TOK) class highlights when a student was learning about ‘ways of knowing’ and how to use them to explore how we ‘know’ something to be ‘true.’ This example is paraphrased but real.

“Because this is skill, and it is new for me, it still feels really awkward. I just need more practice with a partner to build habits around this. I understand the concept of ‘ways of knowing.’ I know the different ways of knowing in TOK—that was easy I just make an acronym

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Defining learning: becoming a school with learning at its core

with an online anagram maker. So, I guess what is most important is to get some more practice and feedback on the skills until they are a bit more solid.”

The student in this case is able to participate in this kind of sense making and self direction in part because students and teachers both know about learning and have a clear definition of what it is in our context.

Great schools define greatness by the learning of their students. Great schools have a common and culturally-accepted definition of learning woven into their cultural fabric. Students and teachers in great schools use this language to make sense of what they are doing, and assume congruent behaviours. Great schools focus on actual learning gains and are not distracted by perceived improvements in the ‘conditions’ for learning.

Great schools review their definition of learning and keep it up to date, both with research and with practical examples from the precise context of the school. They are disciplined in their focus on the definition and conditions that affect learning and hold colleagues professionally responsible in conversations to differentiate the conditions for learning from the actual learning itself. They also are tenacious collectors of learning data not in terms of quantity, but instead in terms of quality. Quality learning data (high quality evidence of student learning gains) can only be planned, opportunities provided, and evidence collected and analysed if there is a high degree of shared understanding and accuracy regarding the desired learning and the numerous ways that students might demonstrate learning gains in knowledge, skill, understanding or dispositional learning.

So if the idea of a learning-focused school seems like a tautology, this may go some way towards explaining why staying focused on learning can be difficult and complex, but is no less necessary and rewarding for that.

To make education a force to unite people,

nations and cultures for peace and a

sustainable future

To make education a force to unite people,

nations and cultures for peace and a

sustainable future

the UWC MISSION

is

To educate individuals to embrace

challenge and take responsibility for

shaping a better world

and our educational goal is

so that we can fulfil our MISSIO

N

HOLISTICEDUCATION

We have a holistic learning programme

Because

So th

at le

arners a

re given multiple opportunities to develop the skills and qualities of the

UWCSEAPROFILE

Resilien

t

Principled

Com

mitm

ent to

care

Self-aware

Communicator

Self-manager

Colla

bora

tive

Criti

cal th

inker Creative

and because we know when learning is m

ost effective

LEARNINGPRINCIPLES

Challenge

Feedback

Met

acog

nition

PracticeConstructivism

Secure

Goa

ls

Interact Ownership

This diagram explains how the elements of the UWCSEA Learning Programme fit together. The Learning Principles define the conditions that help to support student learning and are based on our definition of learning.

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By Mike Staples Director of Activities and Sport Dover Campus

With over 4,000 students taking part in some kind of sporting activity at UWCSEA each week, we can be reasonably confident that the majority of the UWCSEA community believe in the positive role that youth sports can play in education. Fair play, teamwork, humility in success and grace in defeat are all important aspects of such an education but outside of College, where sport is big business entertainment, a ‘win at all costs’ culture can sometimes give our children a conflicting set of values as well as make it hard for us as parents to make sense of what, in essence, youth sport is all about.

Of course,‘what sport is all about’ can be very different for each of us and our children.

This was brought home to me at a parents’ sports forum some years ago, at which we were focussing on what direction one of our sports programmes could take in the future. At one end of the debate, training ten times a week to

MAKING SENSE OF YOUTH SPORTS

achieve the highest levels of performance was an expressed aim; while at the other, taking part for fun, health and fitness was the most desired outcome. Parents were surprised at the considerable distance between their points of view (as were we initially), but the discussion was positive and highlighted what we all should have realised. This and similar conversations like it were the catalyst for broadening the range of opportunities and differing pathways UWCSEA offers in recreational and competitive sports, the result of which has been a doubling of student participation in our programmes in the last four years.

Whilst lifelong fitness, personal achievement, perhaps an NCAA scholarship or, purely fun and enjoyment are all reasons to take part in sport, at UWCSEA we hope for something less tangible; essentially through the powerful medium of sport we strive to help young people develop their values, learn how to make better moral judgements, distinguish right from wrong, and acquire a disposition to do some good in this world.

Keeping these lofty goals in mind when our children don’t perhaps make the progress we hoped for, a referee makes a ‘bad’ call, the coach makes a ‘questionable’ decision, or our child’s team lose a championship game is sometimes easier said than done. Personally I thought I would always see this broader picture and I would never show ‘Soccer Dad’ tendencies. To my dismay during and after my daughter’s first representative game I found myself giving her advice, dissecting her game and even chatting over team tactics with the coach! Was I, the Head of Sports at UWCSEA, becoming my daughter’s worst sporting nightmare? It hit home, as a parent of kids playing sport, how easy it is to get too emotionally involved in ‘their game,’ despite the best of intentions.

My experience and those of sports ‘mums and dads’ are increasingly examined by sports governing bodies, sports coach associations and teachers. There is a line of thought in some that suggests, as parents, we should be allowing our children much greater ownership of their own sporting experience than we currently do. In his

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TED talk ‘Changing the Game in Youth Sports,’ NCAA Soccer Coach, John O’Sullivan talks about the reasons for a 70% dropout rate by US kids from youth sports by the age of 13. The key reason being that the adult emphasis on performance and results has led to adults over-criticising children. Children in turn are afraid of making mistakes, are subject to ‘cuts’ and selections, do not receive equal play time and are finding that all the fun has been taken out of what should have been an enjoyable learning experience. In short, the adults sometimes need to just let the kids play.

‘Parent training school’ also didn’t prepare us to know precisely what level of physical development our children should attain at different times in their lives. Knowing when our babies would start to eat, sleep or walk, let alone how fast our children should run the 100 metres, when they should be able to catch a ball or score a goal can be (and likely should remain) a mystery. Sometimes this ‘not knowing,’ in sporting terms, can cause what John O’Sullivan calls ‘a race to nowhere.’ The ‘race’ being the desire by us as parents for our children to

do more and more at a younger age to reach their potential. Longer and longer training hours, early specialisation in one sport, excessive rewards for winning and inappropriate types of competition. Built on research into children’s physical maturation the Canadian ‘Sport for Life’ Movement provides us with a useful and wide ranging insight into what is sensible at all ages whether you are aiming for an Olympic gold or a healthy, active lifestyle. Their long term athlete development (LTAD) stages, based on physical and cognitive maturation advocates: early years fun, a broad physical literacy, late specialisation and intrinsic goal setting. Their ‘end game’ being peak performance in an athlete’s 20s and continued lifelong physical activity into ripe old age.

Of course while there are these pointers helping us to make sense of youth sports, there is no perfect plan. As such it is fine and important that each of us personalise our own sporting involvement. The likelihood is that physical activity will contribute to our children having longer, healthier lives and we as parents should try to give them as broad a range of physical opportunities as is possible while

they are young. Additionally, as the adults our children emulate the most, we should probably try to model healthy practice and positive values ourselves. Inevitably there will come a time when our kids will make their own choices. It is up to us to decide when we let go completely—but let go we should. In the meantime simply making sure that our children know that we love watching them play sport, might perhaps be the most effective thing we can do.

ReferencesCanadian Sport For Life: http://canadiansportforlife.ca/

Changing the Game in Youth Sports - John O’Sullivan at TEDxBend: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32n1JHaDTg4&authuser=0

Further readingChanging the Game project - http://changingthegameproject.com/

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must adopt a stance of listening to gain perspective, deepen understanding and build strong relationships. When all members of the community begin listening to each other, true and authentic dialogue can begin and an awareness of individual needs can be developed. And with this, the education we provide can truly unify.

For these reasons, we took on the role of the student for a day at the beginning of March as part of the Shadow a Student Challenge. Designed by School Retool, IDEO and the d.school at Stanford University, the Shadow a Student Challenge calls on school leaders worldwide to walk in shoes of a student for the day to understand what really happens: in class, on the playground, at lunch. We did this with children in K1 and Grade 1 classrooms, looking to compare and contrast our experiences.

We left the day full of thoughts; some were observations, while others were considerations for the future. Emotions and experiences we encountered such as curiosity, doubt and trepidation were embraced as part of the process of listening. Listening occurs not only with our ears, but also with our eyes and hearts. From our experiences, many of our beliefs about what makes a positive, learning-powered school

TOWARD A “PEDAGOGY OF LISTENING”: THE SHADOW A STUDENT CHALLENGETOWARD A “PEDAGOGY OF LISTENING”: THE SHADOW A STUDENT CHALLENGEwere reinforced. Here are some of our thoughts from the day.

Belonging and community drive learningLearning occurs when children feel a sense of belonging and a deep attachment to their class communities. Engaging in dialogue in classrooms that promotes a culture of collective learning allows students to tap into their peers as a resources. We encountered this when trying to figure out how things worked as the ‘new child’: without the support of our peers, we would have floundered. When children feel connected to their teachers and their peers, they are more receptive to new ideas and to sharing their thoughts. Emotional connection leads to and supports intellectual connection.

Resilience requiredResilience is key to learning. During the day we had to crawl through a ball pit, rebuild broken structures and speak Chinese. As adults, we can forget how varied a child’s learning engagements are during their school day and the importance of self-regulation to regroup after experiencing challenge. We experienced first-hand how an acceptance of challenge and a willingness to be brave are at the heart of being a successful learner.

By Carla Marschall Assistant Head of Infant School and Lynda Scott Head of Infant School Dover Campus

“Real listening requires the suspension of judgments and prejudices. The relationship between peace and prejudice concerns the ability or disability to be good listeners. This is where education for peace begins.” Carlina Rinaldi1

The UWC movement seeks to make education a force to unite people, nations and cultures for peace and a sustainable future. This lofty goal can appear far removed from the day-to-day experience of our youngest students: what does an education for peace look like for a 4, 5 or 6-year-old child within our Reggio-inspired programme?

Professor Carlina Rinaldi, a leading expert in the Reggio Emilia Approach, suggests that the journey toward an education for peace begins with listening. The entire learning community

1 Rinaldi, C. (2012). “The pedagogy of listening: The listening perspective from Reggio Emilia.” In C. Edwards, L. Gandini & G. Forman (Eds.), The hundred languages of children (3rd ed., pp. 233-246). Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger.

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TOWARD A “PEDAGOGY OF LISTENING”: THE SHADOW A STUDENT CHALLENGETOWARD A “PEDAGOGY OF LISTENING”: THE SHADOW A STUDENT CHALLENGEChildren are capableWe can say, “He is only four,” or “she is just five.” These ways of speaking about young children suggest that at a certain age, a child is unable to meet particular expectations. Our experience was quite different: the children we shadowed were our mentors, our teachers. They held our hands, showed us how things worked and were kind to us when we ‘made mistakes.’ Children show themselves to be highly capable in their learning environments when we are patient, listen and give them agency.

School can be thought of as a living, breathing “construction in motion,”2 a system that may require adjustments from time and time. For us, these changes call for a gathering of perspectives and an understanding of the stakeholder experience. By exploring how students interact within our spaces and with each other, we have gained new insights that allow us to make informed judgments for next steps.

As a result of this experience, we will continue to explore meaningful ways to develop the personal social learning of students in their class communities. If emotional connection is at the heart of learning, equipping our students with the social skills to form positive relationships with their peers enhances the learning of the entire

class. We will also consider how to include our UWCSEA community and local community more often in Infant School learning, so as to encourage dialogue and the understanding of multiple perspectives. This allows us to model respect and appreciation for our diverse community. Lastly, we will inquire more deeply into how we listen to our students and provide them with a secure environment where they can exert agency over their learning.

Creating an education for peace goes far beyond looking for “peaceful” behaviours in our students. An education for peace comes about through our seemingly insignificant, daily interactions with each other. In these small moments where students, parents and teachers are valued through our active listening, we find a space for dialogue where common understanding can take hold. In this way an education for peace is a dynamic, fleeting idea that we must intentionally build and rebuild each day.

Read more about the Shadow a Student Challenge: http://www.shadowastudent.org

Meet the Dover Campus Infant Leadership TeamCarla Marschall was appointed as the Assistant Head of Infants at UWCSEA Dover in August 2015. She came to Singapore from Zurich, Switzerland, where she oversaw curriculum development and implementation from Pre-K to Grade 8. Prior to living in Switzerland, she worked in Hong Kong and in Berlin, Germany as a PYP Coordinator and Primary Vice Principal. Carla holds a Masters in Elementary Education from Columbia University’s Teachers College and a second Masters in Applied Educational Leadership and Management from the Institute of Education, University of London.

Lynda Scott was appointed as the Vice Principal of Infant School at UWCSEA Dover in August 2014 and from August 2015, stepped into the role of Head of Infant School. She began her career as a teacher-director in a pre-school in her hometown of Terrigal, on the New South Wales central coast in Australia. In 1991 she left Australia for a two-year adventure to teach in Kuala Lumpur. Now, with 26 years of early childhood teaching and leadership experience in a variety of international school settings, she has settled in Singapore. Lynda holds a Bachelor of Education in Early Childhood and a Masters of International Education (School Leadership).

2 Gandini, L. (2012). “History, Ideas and Basic Principles.” In C. Edwards, L. Gandini, & G. Forman (Eds.), The hundred languages of children (3rd ed., pp. 27-71). Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger.

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tightly aligned to the United Nations Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), the triennial international survey which aims to evaluate education systems worldwide and hits the headlines every few years with new winners and losers in the international limelight of Mathematics and Literacy scores.

The ISA offers us the chance to compare our students’ Mathematics and Literacy scores against a large cohort of international school students’ scores and reflect on what this might mean for us. Of all the tests available, it offered the College the most suitable information: it is based on a cohort of international school students rather than a specific national system; we can compare the scores directly with PISA scores from the huge range of countries sampled by the UN; it tests composition of writing which few tests do; and it has a robust parental report.

Obviously there are limitations to what it can tell us. As with any assessment, the ISA merely gives a snapshot of a child’s knowledge, skills and understanding at one particular moment in time and the results are best read as “plus or minus 10 percent.” For an individual student, the ISA results offer one data point for triangulation alongside other key indicators such as the child’s teacher’s observations of his/her learning and the teacher’s professional judgement. These multiple data points help us to build a well-rounded and informed view of each child’s learning progress.

ISA and PISA scores seem to offer simple answers to a complex problem. But as the saying goes “for every complex

problem, there is a simple answer; and it is wrong.” The kind of learning that ISA measures is best described as ‘necessary, not sufficient’ for the kind of world your children deserve. The recent Turning the Tide report by the Harvard Graduate School of Education which Chris Edwards wrote about in Term 2 edition of Dunia, reinforced how universities are seeing learning more holistically and in the light of values, skills and qualities like those in the UWCSEA profile. In a more automated world it is ethical engagement with complexity that will be required: the attributes our holistic learning programme seeks to build in students. These are the qualities that are not only necessary but also sufficient.

I write in a year in which Google’s DeepMind computer defeated world champion Go player Lee Se-dol, a feat that cognitive scientists said would be impossible because Go relies on such intuition and complexity that it cannot be solved algorithmically: they were wrong. The ISA helps us understand only one very small but important part of the learning puzzle and it can never replace the holistic view of a student that only teachers, parents, students and a multitude of opportunities to display learning can provide. The world is a complex place, and those who are ready to flourish will need more than ever the skills and qualities of our UWCSEA profile, to create not just an efficient future world, but a fair and humane one.

Assessment in an holistic education contextBy Stuart MacAlpine Director of Teaching and Learning East Campus

These are interesting times to live in when it comes to education. The general public is more concerned with the role of education, as the world around us changes rapidly and the definition of what it means to be ‘well-educated’ expands to incorporate far more than standardised test scores, exam results or even university degrees. We all want to live in a peaceful, sustainable world, where our children can flourish, and humanity can make good, fair choices about what is important—and we are wondering how education can help our children shape that better world.

Educational researcher and writer Professor Dylan Wiliam points out in his recently published, Leadership for Teacher Learning, that the nature of the jobs our children are going into is rapidly changing as routine jobs become automated: America has lost more manufacturing jobs to automation since 2000 than were lost in agriculture over the entire last century (Wiliam, Leadership for Teacher Learning 2016). Even complicated routine jobs are vanishing—an example Wiliam gives is that computers are now more effective at diagnosing prostate cancer from biopsies than board certified urologists.

Given this landscape, where does the general public look to know how things are going in education? In some cases, they look to standardised assessments and the International Schools Assessment (ISA), the assessment all UWCSEA Grade 3 to 10 students recently sat, is just such a score. It is

For links to more information on the ISA as well as resources from UWCSEA, please see eDunia.

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By Nick Alchin High School Principal and Deputy Head of Campus East Campus

“Comparison is the thief of time.” Theodore RooseveltI am very proud to have my own children attend the school where I work; they are getting a wonderful education. As well as being taught by caring, passionate, articulate teachers, they are surrounded by an extraordinary cohort of peers (and we know, especially in High School, that peers are as important as parents for influence). They are being taught to balance natural high ambitions for themselves with broader concern for others; and developing the intellectual insight to understand that the two are not actually so different. So I see my children’s values being shaped; their minds and bodies being stretched. It’s all good?

It is all good. But there is also a loss, for some students. It’s one that I have seen in numerous conversations; other parents have confirmed it, and there is a really important message for our community and for us as a society.

The loss is that surrounded by a large number of high-capability, driven

students, many perfectly good students will feel completely average, or worse, failures. Small wonder that self-image can take a knock, at least initially. And it’s understandable really—the cognitive shortcut we use to answer how am I doing? is how am I doing compared to people I know? rather than how am I doing compared to reasonable standards? Experience tells me that our students tend to go on to do very well—but they don’t feel that way here when looking around themselves.

Of course the same is largely true for adults too. We tend to compare our jobs, salaries, status to others around us, forgetting that globally we have far greater good fortune than the majority of the world, now, or in history. We should know better—but for our students, all they have is the reference point of school; and this can mean that the standards they use are so absurdly high that what would have been very good or excellent in some previous schools is now average. That many of our typical students would be academically outstanding at most other schools is confirmed by teachers’ anecdotal impressions and objective ISA data. The situation is not helped by what can be an unhealthy focus on Oxbridge or Ivy League colleges as the only valuable post-school destinations (just for the record; for most students, even some brilliant ones, they are not).

The knock-on consequences of this are many and well documented; shallower learning; a lack of joy in learning and possibly further afield, a narrowing of intellectual curiosity; poor sleep habits; low self-esteem. At the extreme levels, students can lose their way completely.

What is the answer? Well, we need to recognise that there are broader social and cultural themes here, and understand that students pick up all the messages from school, peers, home, and more widely. Simply discussing these matters has to be a good start. For our part, we are seeking to mitigate against this through our focus on growth, and effort/approaches to learning rather than simply raw attainment and our emphasis on criteria for success rather than rankings. The truth, however, is that none of this will work if we push students for top grades rather than maximum commitment; if we insist students get tutoring even when they do not need it; and if we constantly praise ‘smartness’ or ‘talent’ for its own sake. The oft-quoted list of practices that ‘require zero talent’ here is, for me, profound.

Zero talent required: qualities for growth

These require zero talent: 1. Being on time 2. Work ethic 3. Effort 4. Positive body language 5. Energy 6. Positive attitude 7. Passion 8. Being coachable 9. Doing extra 10. Being prepared

This is the kind of language we should be using. Far from being against talent, these are the kinds of qualities that will create it and allow it to grow, rather than simply label it. And once created, these are the qualities that will ensure talent is put to good use, for the betterment of all, and not just used as a trophy. These are the qualities that should be the staples of our conversations with students.

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By Alice Whitehead Grade 1 Class Teacher and Primary School Global Concerns Coordinator Dover Campus

Service is at the heart of the UWC mission. An understanding of why and how we help others is an integral part of the learning experience at UWCSEA, and part of what drives our graduates to become ‘aware, able and active contributors’ in the global community.

But what does this look like within the learning context of our Infant School children, aged 4–7 years?

The Dover Campus Infant School has supported Mumbai Mobile Creches (MMC) since 2003, linking the Global Concern with the curriculum, holding fundraising events and hosting colleagues from MMC on visits to the College to share practice. This relationship was nurtured by the previous Infant School Principal, Chris Fensom and continues to develop today. It is through our links with MMC that the children learn to initiate actions and to make a commitment to shaping a better world.

MMC develops and maintains care programs for children of construction workers in Mumbai, India. These mostly migrant men and women work long hours, and with the help of MMC, are able to ensure their children are cared for during the day. MMC’s programme ensures that the children’s educational, nutritional and health needs are addressed. Donations from Dover Infant School and the UWCSEA community play a part in helping MMC to fund their programme, meeting needs such as covering teacher salaries and buying educational resources.

As students in our Infant School begin to become aware that some people outside their immediate community need support, a challenge presents itself. How do we support young UWC learners to make a meaningful connection to the lives of people living 4,000 kilometres away?

As a past student of UWCSEA Dover, a teacher in Grade 1 and the Coordinator of Global Concerns in the Primary School, this is a question that holds deep importance to me. I believe the

answer lies in giving students the opportunity to form a relationship with an organisation like MMC; integrating learning more about them through day-to-day classroom activities and talking often about the people whom they support. Once children learn about projects like MMC and why they exist, often the next, very natural question is “How can we help?”

Meaningful opportunities to take action, followed by an understanding of the results of the action are also an important part of this process. This academic year the Infant School students collected over 200 stationery sets for the children at MMC. These were delivered to the project and distributed throughout their centres. In February, I took some of them with me on a visit, sharing the experience with the Infant School children on my return through video and photographs. The significance of conducting a collection of something tangible, like pens and pencils, is important for younger learners as this enables them to make a more direct connection to their own lives.

Mumbai Mobile Creches Connecting our youngest students to service

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One of the students in my class, Fergus Benefield, took this even further and went to visit some of the MMC centres during the March holiday. Fergus and his mum Keri spent several days in Mumbai, visiting two of the centres where they spent time getting to know the teachers and children. Fergus enjoyed teaching the children how to make chatterboxes and paper planes and he shared some new games like Duck Duck Goose.

Keri recognises, as do all our families, the importance of the Service programme at UWCSEA. And whilst it wouldn’t be possible (or suitable) for all Infant students to visit MMC, Keri believes that their visit was an extension of their family values, in which doing things for others should be a part of everyday life. She believes, as we do, that it is important to nurture this from a young age. Our service programme has been deliberately structured to enable even our youngest students opportunities to develop and deepen their understanding of both their shared humanity and how they can effect change for good by their own actions.

When Fergus spoke about his experience he was quick to point out the similarities between the children he met and the children at UWCSEA; “They play too!” he said. He also felt that the organisation did important work by keeping the children safe during the day and helping them learn. It was fantastic to watch Fergus enthusiastically recount his trip with his peers, and in return, the children’s interest in the project grew. Reflection is a crucial step in service learning, and Fergus made a heartwarming digital recount of his journey. It was great to be able to share this with all the Infant classes as it helped to deepen the understanding our children have of the children in Mumbai attending MMC centres.

Lucas Ghai, another child in my class is planning a trip to visit MMC with his mum in October. When I asked his mother Yvonne why she was taking him she said, “Our kids grow up in such a privileged way … We think it is really important that from an early age our kids learn to appreciate this and also understand that they have an

opportunity as well as a responsibility to make a difference.” This year Lucas brought his birthday money in to me and told me it was for MMC. When I asked him why he said, “My bedroom is full of stuff, I don’t need any more! There are people in the world that need things.”

One of the things that sets a UWCSEA education apart from others is the authentic and real integration of service into the curriculum. As children move up from the Infant School to the Junior School, there are further opportunities to connect with the Service programme, in Singapore and beyond. The grade-level Global Concerns projects continue to help students foster an understanding and, more importantly, a desire to support others in our global community and to take action to help shape a better world.

Photos from Alice Whitehead and Keri Benefield

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… Knowing all of you extraordinary people, I can say that in our lifetimes we … will encounter plenty of moments where we feel that we have ‘made it,’ much like today … By all means, we should appreciate those moments, for we

put our heart and soul into them, but let that not make us complacent…

Equally so, many people will have sky high expectations of us, … but let’s not spend time getting hung up on what others expect of us and instead, make the most of the meaning we create.

Class of 2016, this array of actions, experiences and memories that we made over our time here, that is the foundation of who we are. That is our inner freedom, and finding it, may not be an easy task. But once the time comes that we truly do find our inner freedom, let us not

let it go, for that inner freedom is what will guide us as we journey across the path through life, this time without the option of so easily turning back.

And so … Class of 2016, I wish that we have enough insight to, against any challenge the world presents us, embrace it to become … the

embodiment of our lifelong passions, joys and dreams amongst any type of adversity lying in our way.

In ten years time, when we reunite … there will be one common thread that will link us together, and that is

our undying UWC spirit to stay true to ourselves, fight for what we know is right, and remain the

brilliantly unique, Phoenix-loving graduates from the charming old place sitting on

1207 Dover Road.

By Raphael Bijaoui Speaker for Class of 2016

Dover Campus

GRADUATION 2016

Designed by Ruth Alchin, Grade 10, Communications intern

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To view videos and additional photos from the graduation ceremonies, visit eDunia.

504Graduates

38Scholars

57Nationalities

… Looking back at the last two years and considering both what we’ve witnessed around the world and what we’ve experienced here—as students at UWC but also as members of the wider global community—I think that we are compelled to ask: “What have we learned? And what are we to do with that learning?”

Now I’m not going to pretend that I know the answer to that question, or suggest that our generation somehow has solutions to all the world’s problems. But I do truly believe that we, as a cohort, have something special to offer. When you consider who we are and what we have achieved during these extraordinary two years—what we have achieved as individuals but more importantly what we have achieved collectively—it’s not difficult to imagine the opportunities we will have to drive change in the future.

And as we look to that future with the hope of change on the horizon, we can draw inspiration from what Barack Obama said in 2008. He said: “Change will not come if we wait for some other person or if we wait for some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.”

Here today, we are 177 students from over 40 countries all across the world. We represent a multitude of races, ethnicities, and beliefs. We are individuals defined by our own values and the values of the UWC community.

We are, all of us, imbued with a strong sense of purpose and, by virtue of our experience here, uniquely equipped to contribute to our communities and the world as a whole.

We are the class of 2016!

By Blake Bullwinkel Speaker for Class of 2016 East Campus

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“Digital learning should not be separated from other ways of learning. It is a tool, just like playdough, sand, or paint.”

Seán McHugh, Digital Literacy Coach, UWCSEA DoverSince the implementation of the extensive digital technology programme throughout UWCSEA in 2010, the College has adopted a view that while technology is important in today’s digital age, it is only relevant if it enhances learning. This has led to implementation of a cutting edge approach to pedagogy and teacher practice within a technology-rich learning environment. Indeed, it was this commitment that saw UWCSEA recognised as an Apple Distinguished School for 2014–2016, and before that named the 21st Century Learning International School of the Year.

Understanding how best to utilise technology for our youngest students is the basis of a new international study currently being carried out by Debi Keyte-Hartland, an educational expert in early years learning. The study, titled ‘Meaning-Making and Digital Languages: Technology as a Creative and Expressive Language’ involves schools in the UK and Sweden as well as UWCSEA in Singapore. The study is examining how digital technology can be used with young children through creative and expressive approaches in an enquiry-based setting, by exploring real, virtual and imaginary contexts including 2D and 3D dimensionality, graphics, sounds, musicality, dance, drama and storytelling. This approach recognises that there are multiple—often simultaneous—ways of seeing and thinking. As a result of our participation, UWCSEA is collaborating with schools around the world, ensuring we are best placed to further embed the appropriate

use of technology to support learning throughout the Infant years.

Lynda Scott, Head of Infant School, Dover Campus explains, “Kindergarten to Grade 1 is a unique time for a child’s learning journey. At a time when they are still developing their reading and writing, as well as their verbal communication skills, digital technology can help bridge the gap when it comes to documenting their experiences. For instance by encouraging students to film themselves and their friends playing in the sand and then later narrating what they are doing and why, thinking and learning is made visible. This provides a wonderful window into their world. Other examples include using iPad apps to create stories, keeping an online learning journal or digitally capturing their work and providing their own voice annotations.”

Supported by UWCSEA’s Annual Fund, Debi has run two workshops with Infant staff on Dover this academic year, focusing on how teachers and teacher assistants can use technology to encourage creative expression and enhance the enquiry-based style of learning we embrace in our Infant School. The first focused on developing digital documentation so as to be able to engage parents with students and

teachers in a three-way process. By creating more effective tools through which parents can understand their child’s learning journey this not only allows parents to see more of what their child is doing, but also gain a deeper understanding of why they are doing it and gain greater insights into how their child thinks and learns. The second workshop (illustrated in the photo below) examined the use of different forms of digital media and tools within the classroom to enhance curriculum. Both workshops showcased best practice from around the world that have been found to enrich learning.

To complement this work, the Infant School will launch a new platform for sharing learning called SeeSaw in August. Designed to capture the learning journey for K1–G1 students, this innovative app empowers students to independently document what they are learning in school. This will enable parents to be more closely involved in their child’s learning journey, seeing how their child progresses over time, and support this learning at home.

The UWCSEA Annual Fund is managed by UWCSEA Foundation. Gifts of any amount enhance the exceptional experience and high standards of UWCSEA.

Creating windows for student expression Effective use of digital tools in the Infant School

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By Paul Turner Middle School English Teacher and Tech Mentor Dover Campus

“We live in a time when the very nature of information is changing: in what it looks like, what we use to view it, where and how we find it, what we can do with it, and how we communicate it. If this information is changing, then our sense of what it means to be literate must also change.” (Warlick, 2005) This was written over 10 years ago, and the environment in which children are growing up continues to change at a rapid pace. In order to stay relevant and effective, educators and curricula must evolve, and the inaugural ‘reThinking Literacy Conference,’ held in April 2016 at UWCSEA Dover in partnership with 21st Century Learning International, was an opportunity to engage with what that evolution might or should look like.

Our students, to varying degrees, are online—most are consuming content online, many are communicating online, and some are producing content online. In her keynote presentation at the conference, Kristin Ziemke, an inspiring and passionate educator and author, asked the audience to remember the most recent website they had visited, and then to think of the dominance of visual texts in the content we consume online. She reminded us that we are responsible for educating our students in how to analyse and interpret images, just as much as text. As a Middle School English teacher, what I appreciated was

that Ziemke went beyond presenting the specifics of applications and devices that can be used in the classroom; her commitment to her students’ learning was evident, and the tools, as far as she is concerned, just form part of what good teaching is today.

This appeal to the pedagogy, rather than the “flash” of technology, was reinforced by Dr Troy Hicks, a professor of English at Central Michigan University, who highlighted in his address that educators must have clear intentions when they introduce new modalities into their courses. Each decision must be based on a clear vision of how the modality will extend and challenge existing literacy skills. In our English classes, we want our students to be able to engage with any text in a consciously critical manner, understanding audience, purpose, structure and meaning. We want our students to be able to effectively communicate their ideas, using the medium of their choice, with a clear understanding of the techniques at their disposal to deliver their ideas with clarity. These intentions can be realised in numerous ways, and Dr Hicks reminded us that, although our courses must engage with the changing definition of literacy, any change must be carefully considered and purposeful.

I have been to conferences on technology in education where the focus has been more on the technology than the education. With UWCSEA as a partner in this conference, it was not a surprise that pedagogy, rather than

the latest technology, was at the core of the discussion about contemporary literacy. As a newcomer to the school, and in my role as Tech Mentor for the Middle School English Department, I have been impressed with the clarity of vision when discussing the integration of technology into the classrooms, one which consistently returns to the question, “Will it improve teaching and learning?” This is what educators care about the most, and this was clearly woven into the fabric of the ‘reThinking Literacy Conference.’

As educators, it is our responsibility to educate children to be literate in the world that they live in now, and effectively prepare them for the world they will live in later. The ‘reThinking Literacy Conference’ provided us with an opportunity to engage with the ‘how’ inherent in this responsibility, and was a stimulating, enriching experience for all who attended.

ReferencesWarlick, David. “The New Literacy.” Scholastic Administrator Magazine. April 2005. Web. 21 May 2016.

reThinking Literacy Conference

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Strive to belong, not fit inAn excerpt from the non-fiction essay

It’s a feeling that has plagued each one of us at some point in our lives—not fitting in … Feeling left out and not being able to fit in is a problem that all kids have faced at least once in their lifetime … A recent survey showed that 40% of teenagers felt pressured into trying to fit in with other kids at school. These days fitting in has become a top priority for many teenagers. Significant amounts of energy are put into trying to meet the expectations of someone other than themselves.

What does ‘fitting in’ even mean? Does it mean the same thing as belonging? Brene Brown, author of The Gifts of Imperfection and research professor at the University of Houston says, “Fitting in is the greatest barrier to belonging. Fitting in, I’ve discovered during the past decade of research, is assessing situations and groups of people, then twisting yourself into a human pretzel in order to get them to let you hang out with them. Belonging is something else entirely—it’s showing up and letting yourself be seen and known as you really are.” And so it becomes even more clear that to ask someone to fit in is to actually tell them to change something about themselves … Instead we should be focusing on encouraging teens to be themselves, stay true to their values and aim to belong rather than fit in …

Friendship plays an important role in a child’s development. Children learn many social skills from a young age and are

able to build many connections …But healthy friendships don’t usually form from cliques … A clique is very exclusive, people are either ‘in’ or ‘out.’ … Rather than trying to fit into a clique we should be encouraging friendship groups. In a friendship group, members don’t have to be alike or share the same hobbies. They don’t have to constantly worry about being kicked out of the group for the way they act. In a friendship group kids can ‘belong.’ …

There is no instant solution to making good friends, but it’s important to know that you have to be patient. Work on bettering yourself, find a passion that you can focus on. Join a club or a sports team where you can form healthy friendships while staying true to yourself. It may be a long journey and there are going to be challenges along the way but when you find a friend that accepts you for who you are and what you believe in, that friendship is going to last, you will be happier, and you will feel like you belong.

… Now is the time for parents and other role models to play a bigger role in guiding teens towards building a sense of belonging … and to encourage strong friendship groups. It is important for young people to not lose their sense of self and personal values and be strong enough to not let society define their identity.

By Caitlin Moor, Grade 8

By Heidi Foster, Grade 7 and Khushi Raju and Carlotta Menozzi, Grade 6 East Campus

A community of word lovers, that’s who we are—the team behind Off Tangent, the first Middle School literary magazine at East Campus. The whole experience of producing our first issue has been wonderful for our team. Imagine, the first day, everybody walking inside the room, scared and nervous. And then, slowly figuring out that everybody loved the same thing: writing.

Being in a community that loves reading and writing makes you feel at home. It’s almost as if we are united by one single, long piece of thread that runs through our hearts. Our love for words, the thread that binds us, is what makes us a family.

A journey off tangentThe first day of the activity, we were all shy and nervous as we stepped into Ms Paula [Guinto]’s comfortable and inspiring classroom. We had no idea how much work we had ahead of us or how big a project this was going to become. We first defined what a literary magazine was, and after the first few meetings filled with introductions and explanations, that is when the magic started.

Once we defined what our literary magazine was going to be, that helped us understand what we really wanted to become. We knew that we wanted art, wanted design, wanted something poetic. We wanted a literary magazine that was home to stories, opinions, creativity and voice. We had a unique task that had never been carried out at East Campus before; showcasing the writing and artistic talent of our Middle School.

Also, before starting the process of creating the magazine we had to understand what it meant to be trustworthy, respectful, loyal and have integrity. Our team had to be respectful of people’s work and make sure that people felt comfortable submitting and sharing their pieces. We valued all the art in the magazine and treated it with respect. Integrity was the key. Making the literary magazine was really magical, from being a stack of stories, to creating the most precious final product.

We then thought of our name, Off Tangent. We spent a lot of time picking a name. In fact, there were quite a few options floating around, and then, Ms Paula suddenly said “Off Tangent!” We all gave her a weird look not knowing what it meant. This is what she said “Off Tangent, you know, we are quirky

Designed by Ruth Alchin, Grade 10, Communications intern

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Photos by Jabiz Raisdana

ChangesThe view from my window is ever changing The art of my life repainting My heart beating at a different rhythm Body breathing in a different pattern Reflection shows a changed person Adapting, adjusting, bearing burdens Am I here, or is it someone unknown? Am I veiled, hiding the human of old?

Changes are taking me to exquisite places I am learning from experiences and changes Making me cry or making me sing, I am no longer the person I was before Adjusting is the trait I once bore Up, down, I’m spinning all around Flying high, falling to the ground I am alien to myself and others now.

The process is ending, now I am changed I may differ, but I’m not strange Now I am a dreamer who achieves Now I am a believer who believes No dual sides, just one human Leaving shadows, turning towards the sun Accept the modifications to life For with changes, I will strive.

By Raniyah Basheer, Grade 6

and unique, not mainstream.” We all took a liking to it and agreed on it.

So Off Tangent it was. And is. Weeks and weeks of hard work were put into making the magazine. From creating submission forms for writing, photography and art, to reviewing the submissions and choosing pieces, to emailing writers, artists and photographers, creating a logo, designing a cover, finding a publisher and more. There were so many leadership opportunities where people got to step up and take on different challenges as Mr [Jabiz] Raisdana and Ms Paula had a lot of faith in us and let us do a lot of the decision making.

The financial side was difficult though. Part of our team was working on getting the money to make all of this possible including the launch party at

the end. Getting the money was going to be hard, and we knew that. We were new and nobody knew how well we were going to go and what quantity we were going to sell. The Finance Team finally found the money and sent the magazine to the publisher. In less than two weeks we had our final product.

The day the magazine reached our hands was when we realised how much our hard work had paid off. It was a beautiful and proud moment for all who were part of the creation process from the authors to our team. We finally had physical proof of our work and that was way more than we could ask for.

To celebrate, we held a launch party so that we could share our work and joy with everyone else. We invited all the students involved and their families. We even asked the Green Gecko and Daraja

Photos by XXXXXX

GCs to sell food, and the Parents’ Association to sell beverages. The event was a huge success! Writers from our magazine read their stories and we had musicians there too! We sold almost all of the copies of our magazine and the few remaining were sold in the next week at school. The event was definitely a lot of work but was worth it! Every member of our team and anyone else who had been part of our journey was glowing with pride.

We definitely learnt about hard work and how it will pay off in the end. Like Vince Lombardi said, “The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary.” In fact, we have found this to be completely true.

Visit http://offtangentuwc.blogspot.sg to enjoy the full content of the magazine online.

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By Ally Garland Grade 3 Teacher Dover Campus

Friends, actors and audiences, lend me your ears! Let me tell you more about the fabulous opportunities the Primary School teachers and students have had this year for Drama workshops to support our Arts Festivals.

One of the many thrills and highlights of a year in the Primary School is the grade-level Arts Festival. Many of these annual performances have been written into Units of Study, and all the students are keen to find out their parts and get into character. The activities around the Arts Festival focus on looking at how performers capture the audience’s attention, how to convey feeling and development of skills to make their performance come alive.

However, as fundamental building blocks to a successful performance, these drama skills need to be acquired by Primary School teachers in order to be able to successfully integrate them into the learning experience for the students. In the past, the challenge in further developing these skills in our students was that many classroom teachers in the Primary School had minimal formal training in drama techniques. And so to this end an outside provider, Centre Stage, was

engaged to build a programme that would both lift the level of expertise within the teaching staff and develop confidence and enthusiasm in imparting these drama skills to their students.

Support from the UWCSEA Foundation’s Annual Fund enabled a series of professional development workshops, designed to give teachers hands-on experience of different games, activities and scenarios that they could then bring to their own classrooms. For most of us, the afternoon of workshops redefined what ‘drama’ entailed, helping us eliminate some of our past practices: who knew there was no need to cast some students as rocks and trees because you have run out of speaking parts? A range of ideas were demonstrated to increase the actor’s tool kit, to foster character, positive body movement and an expressive voice.

A second workshop provided for the development of skills supporting the technical side of staging a performance. Staff were given a range of practical tips on using different heights, lighting and costumes, and how to avoid masking. This resulted in the entire faculty gaining a shared vocabulary and understanding of terminology for various aspects of drama.

Not only did these workshops give staff

an opportunity to participate in all of these activities, they allowed us to plan how to incorporate these skills and techniques into our own Arts Festival productions.

With help from the Centre Stage staff, a workshop model provided students opportunities to engage in learning these skills before Arts Festival rehearsals began. It was an extremely positive way to kick start this unit and upskill everyone: students and staff alike. Various workshop sessions immersed the students in the use of voice projection and clarity, movement around the stage, and building their characters. Every session was practical and engaging, designed to teach a specific skill. These sessions were led by the Centre Stage, with UWCSEA staff gaining greater expertise by shadowing such skilled drama practitioners. The final workshop session included UWCSEA’s own technical staff, who demonstrated how the lighting and sound elements for a performance are controlled in the RBT theatre. The students were fascinated to see ‘behind the scenes’ and the experience also made them aware of different areas on the stage they needed to consider while performing.

Having reflected on both the staff professional afternoon and the student

THE VALUE OF DRAMA

Crafting our performance in Grade 3

“Art teaches us nothing, except the significance of life.”

Henry Miller

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By Brian ÓMaoileoin Primary School Principal Dover Campus

Why do we bother with performance when it takes time away from classroom work? At UWCSEA, we place a very high value on drama and performance because it represents so much more than act—dance—finish with jazz hands—await the applause. It provides our students an experience that requires them to develop self management, commitment, relationship-building, time management, teamwork and collaboration. And it requires them to engage with plot, character and feelings. Many subjects ask students to communicate, to be creative or to share a perspective; drama demands

it. Drama education gives students an opportunity to get into a role and ensures they are also asked to step back out of it to reflect on the experience. And while drama education is a different thing to performance, performance is an immensely important component of it.

Children innately understand conflict, friendship, injustice and betrayal. They understand love and failure and ambition. They understand joy and despair and grief. But their grasp of these concepts, when they are young, is undeveloped and confusing. Role play, acting and performance in our Arts Festival productions provide children a vehicle to explore these areas of humanity, to engage with them meaningfully and to reflect upon them

in a way that is comfortable and safe for them.

And quite apart from any of these lofty and noble aims, performance is a whole lot of fun. Whenever I talk to High School students about their memories of Primary School, they mention two almost exclusively: their Arts Festival productions and their Outdoor Education residential trips. They never mention a particularly memorable worksheet. Never.

At UWCSEA, we like to push our students in the back and into the spotlight. For some, of course, the push is unnecessary: they revel in it. For others, we cannot push too hard or too soon, but we will still gently push.

workshops, the staff felt that they could see a direct connection between the skills being taught and these filtering in a very positive way into the children’s performance. The teachers also felt that they were able to focus their attention on certain areas of the Arts Festival production with greater confidence and knowledge. The level of the children’s performance was lifted as was their technical understanding.

The whole process was an extremely positive experience. In addition to the growth in drama skills, staff have confirmed that they are far more likely to try different drama activities in our classrooms not only during Arts Festival production time, but also in other areas of the curriculum. Teachers also appreciate the opportunity it has given us to expand and refresh our own knowledge and expertise in this area.

And now, at the time of writing at least, it is on with the show!

Thanks to the generous contributions of our community, the UWCSEA Foundation was able to fund this initiative. The UWCSEA Annual Fund is managed by UWCSEA Foundation. Gifts of any amount enhance the exceptional experience and high standards of UWCSEA.

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The theme for this year’s conference was “Hubris in History.” Prior to the conference, participants submitted a 2,000 word essay on a question of their choosing that addressed any aspect of the conference theme. Indeed, the conference itself was really the culmination of months of thought, reflection, collaboration and hard work. At the event itself, the essays and their authors were arranged into thematic panels on topics including Imperialism, The Great Man Theory, Modernisation and Stagnation, and Terror and Authoritarianism. Each young historian delivered a 10-minute version of their essay before facing a dynamic and engaging series of Q&A sessions.

Through a melting pot of questions, themes and topics, the IYHC allowed us to puncture misconceptions about the past. The range of well researched papers took us to places such as Ancient Egypt, the Roman Empire, Vietnam, Germany, Russia, Indonesia, Cambodia, Afghanistan, the US, Iraq and China. Cautionary tales were told about ISIS, nationalism, greed, famine and foreign policy. In other words, we were compelled to challenge our preconceived remembrances and asked to reconstruct old ideas under a new light. And for all that, there was novelty too. Who knew that Perkin Warbeck used his physical attractiveness to legitimise his claim to the English throne in the 16th century?

Alongside papers and presentations, this year saw the introduction of seminar sessions, facilitated by students for students, on topics such as the role of an historian and the pitfalls of evidence. We were also asked to devise our dream history programme. There was genuine passion in the room during these sessions. Students from Beijing, Malaysia and Singapore, students from international and local schools, students from grades 10, 11 and 12 were all sat together for the same reason, eager to learn from each other, eager to share. Indeed, the plenary sessions that followed the seminars, in which each group shared its thoughts with the others, were remarkable not simply for the ideas discussed but for the sense of community generated in the room. We may have started the conference as strangers but we ended as friends.

Ultimately, the most significant piece of learning that we all took away from this year’s conference was that those who allow hubris to consume them are condemned to view history through a sullied lens, unable to differentiate between the path they choose and those roads that have led to failure in the past. But those that embrace challenges with modesty and openness can help to shape a better world.

By Victoria Ivory Birrell Grade 11 East Campus

Eric Hobsbawm once stated that, “Nations without a past are contradictions in terms. What makes a nation is the past … and historians are the people who produce it.” Hobsbawm was highlighting the need for us to be distinctly aware of our history because ultimately it defines who we are as people and as a society. But Hobsbawm was also telling us that historians are the people who paint our impressions of the past, and that this role in itself comes with a great weight of responsibility.

This exact responsibility was placed on the shoulders of students at the International Young Historians’ Conference (IYHC) 2016. IYHC is arguably the only conference in the world of its kind, and this year’s third conference was our most ambitious yet. Taking place across the span of two days (the 5th and 6th of March), this year’s conference saw 50 students from 10 different schools across three countries present in front of an audience of 70 peers. The conference provided an invaluable opportunity for students to hone their skills as historians. Through research papers, presentations and discussions we were able to form connections with other students who shared similar passions.

LEARNING FROM HUBRIS IN HISTORYInternational Young Historians’ Conference 2016

Photo by Regine Anastacio

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The 2015/2016 academic year marked the 20th Anniversary of the South East Asia Student Activities Conference (SEASAC) and a year of significant athletic achievement for both the Dover Phoenix and East Dragons teams. UWCSEA is a founding member of SEASAC, and each year senior teams from both campuses compete in regional SEASAC sport championship tournaments alongside teams from 11 other international schools in Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Singapore and Thailand. In addition, students from the College participate in SEASAC Model United Nations and Arts Festivals.

As part of the anniversary year, ‘Super SEASAC’ sports tournaments were hosted this year, which brought together multiple championships in a single weekend at a host school. Over the course of the year, UWCSEA hosted three

SENIOR SPORTS ROUND UP

The 2015/2016 ACSIS results as well as a range of UWCSEA sports articles can be found on eDunia and the Dover and East Sports News pages.

SEASAC’s ‘Super’ 20th anniversary year

Dragons 2015/2016 SEASAC results Division 1 unless stated

Sport Girls Boys

Badminton 6th Champions

Basketball Champions (Division 2) Champions (Division 2)

Cross Country 4th 3rd

Football 2nd (Division 2) 4th

Golf 7th 5th

Gymnastics Level 6 – Champions Level 5 – 3rd Level 4 – 2nd Level 3 – 2nd

Level 3 S – Champions

Softball 2nd 2nd

Swimming Champions Champions

Tennis 4th 2nd (Division 2)

Touch/Rugby 3rd 2nd

Volleyball 2nd (Division 2) Champions (Division 2)

Phoenix 2015/2016 SEASAC results Division 1 unless stated

Sport Girls Boys

Badminton Champions 4th

Basketball Champions 3rd

Cross Country Champions Champions

Football 3rd 3rd

Golf 4th 2nd

Gymnastics Level 8 – Champions Level 7 – Champions Level 6 – 2nd Level 5 – 5th

Level 4 – Champions Level 3 J – 3rd Level 3 S – 2nd

Softball Champions 3rd

Swimming 2nd 4th

Tennis 3rd Champions

Touch/Rugby Champions 3rd

Volleyball 5th 2nd (Division 2)

Super SEASAC tournaments including Division 2 Football and Volleyball in Season 1, Division 2 Basketball and Tennis in Season 2 and Division 1 Badminton and Softball in Season 3, as well as Division 1 Gymnastics.

Overall, it was the most successful year in SEASAC to date for the East Dragons and the most successful in recent times for the Dover Phoenix. Most importantly however, we celebrate the students’ dedication, teamwork, collaboration and resilience as they strive to do their best and enjoy themselves through sport.

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point the opportunity cost of expat life. Of course, there are many obvious benefits—the shared adventures, exposure to new cultures, and travel to places that would have been off the charts if we had stayed back home. These are all stimulating and rewarding experiences that can turn our children into confident citizens of the world and bring families closer together. However, complications arise when Third Culture Kids (TCKs) go off to university on the other side of the world to a country that is ‘foreign’—even when they are technically its citizens. Their prior moves have taken place within the comfort zone of the family circle. The solo move to another continent and culture can bring some unanticipated adjustment issues. For parents too, this is also a time when the implications of expat life can become acutely painful, especially for empty nesters. As one mother put it, her bleakest moment was the realisation that her family ‘was being chopped up—it would never be quite the same again.’

The interactive Parents’ Forum was an opportunity to build resilience and support within our expat community. The panel of 11 parents had children in a variety of colleges and countries and a diverse set of perspectives to offer. What they had in common was the wisdom, honesty, humour and generosity with which they shared their experiences and insights. They covered a wide range of pragmatic issues, from visa applications to opening bank accounts on campus,

By Linda de Flavis University Advisor Dover Campus

What do parents wish they had known before their children headed off to university in another country? What advice would they give to other parents whose children will be going through the process in a year or two? The Parents’ Forum on Transition to University, held in March at Dover Campus and open to High School families from both campuses, was a chance to hear diverse perspectives on the practical, legal, logistical and emotional aspects of transition.

All of us who raise our children overseas have weighed up at some

Parents’ forum on transition to university

and teaching children how to budget. They advised on when and how to get the mobile phone package and the winter wardrobe, what to buy to furnish the dorm room, and what happens to all that stuff when students need to vacate their rooms during the holidays. They talked about safety concerns and strategies for addressing them. As for the emotional issues of separation, it seemed that initially it was only the parents who were heartbroken—most children were eager to say goodbye once orientation began! Yet all the parents stressed how important it is to keep communication channels open, as their children could be vulnerable to emotional ups and downs later on, including depression triggered by SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder, brought on by lack of exposure to sunlight in winter climates). Parents also shared how they coped with their own sense of loss as their children moved away. A recurring theme of the evening was that boys tended to be far less communicative than girls once they left home, yet their need for emotional support was as great. One mother of sons said, “The way they show homesickness can happen in different, subtle ways—such as getting frequent, minor illnesses. Look for signs and follow your gut.”

Parents stressed that the UWCSEA reunion in December was “hugely important” for students to reconnect with their friends. According to research on TCKs, the international school community where they spend their formative years is the one they

Designed by Ruth Alchin, Grade 10, Communications intern

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Photos by Amber Schroeder

identify with most strongly, rather than their passport country. This idea is certainly borne out by surveys with our own alumni—the vast majority identify Singapore and UWCSEA as the country and community they feel most emotionally connected to, regardless of citizenship or the length of time they have spent here. Many alumni remain deeply attached to their circle of UWC friends no matter where their paths take them, and the first reunion helps to restore their morale and sense of rootedness in a community, at a time when they may be questioning where they belong.

Surveys of our alumni suggest that while our students are generally very well-prepared academically (at least, once they have adjusted to the workload), the first year at university can involve a few ups and downs emotionally. Some degree of culture shock seems inevitable, even for students returning to their passport country. At a school like ours where diversity is celebrated, students are bonded by their cross-cultural experiences. The move to a more homogenous culture, where the social codes are unfamiliar, can make them feel lost and uncertain for a while. In addition, there are challenges with time management. Students need to learn how to organise relatively unstructured days, juggling academic responsibilities with domestic chores that may be new to them. When forced to choose between a pile of laundry that just can’t be put off any longer, and a pile

of books that need to be read for a test the next morning, students can feel overwhelmed and minor problems can escalate out of proportion. One alumna remembered calling her mother at 2am, sobbing incoherently about a ‘crisis’—ants had invaded her computer on the eve of a deadline. Another wore pink tie-dye clothing for the entire first year, having learned the hard way that his red shirts could not go into the washing machine with his whites.

However, along with challenges of various kinds that they highlighted, our alumni offered lots of solutions and tips for how to settle in quickly and manage the workload, which have been shared with our outgoing Grade 12 students. Alumni also emphasised the importance of patience, open-mindedness and a sense of humour—qualities needed when engaging with any new culture. Reassuringly, while there might be hiccups along the way, things do work out and the vast majority of students end up loving their colleges by the end of the first year. How do we know that? It’s evident from the large number of graduates who come to our Alumni Fairs, excited and eager to share their university experiences with younger students.

The final comments on the Transition Forum go to the parent of a Grade 11 student: “… a very useful session … very interesting with handy tips, important reminders and setting the stage for all levels of planning for Grade 11 and 12 parents.”

Our thanks to the Dover Parents’ Association for the chance to share our alumni’s perspectives and insights at the forum, and to the parents on the panel for so generously offering their honest and thoughtful advice.

A full write up on the forum can be found on the UAC blog’s (login to the portal), including information on gap year and national service, which were also covered comprehensively in the forum.

Further reading on transition for Third Culture Kids

Tina L Quick. The Global Nomad’s Guide to University Transition (2010). [Highly recommended]

http://www.internationalfamilytransitions.com/

Lois J Bushong. Belonging Everywhere and Nowhere: Insights into Counseling the Globally Mobile (2013).

Lisa Pittman and Diana Smit: Expat Teens Talk (2012).

Robin Pascoe. Raising Global Nomads: Parenting Abroad in an On-Demand World (2006).

Karen Levin Coburn and Madge Lawrence Treeger. Letting Go: A Parents’ Guide to Understanding the College Years (2009, Fifth Edition).

David C. Pollock and Ruth E Van Reken. Third Culture Kids: Growing Up Among Worlds (Revised Edition 2009).

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because you want to, but because you have to in order to communicate, to exist. And just like that, the three weeks had passed, and I was on my way to Azogues, a small city in the southern province of Cañar. It was here that I met the family with whom I would grow immensely, not only in my love for Ecuador (and, unexpectedly, for Spanish!) but also through the personal connections I made whilst there. Tim Cahill once said that “A journey is best measured in friends, rather than miles,” and this was the absolute truth for me. The number of friends I made, Ecuadorian and non-Ecuadorian, was so amazing, and each of them treated me with so much respect (especially knowing that my Spanish was very mediocre!).

I started out working with the Red Cross, to gain some experience to support my dream to study medicine. However, I later found a new apprenticeship: teaching dance in a local high school. It was absolutely what I needed. Dance has always been one of my greatest passions. It was something I refined at UWCSEA, during UN Nights as well as through the High School Dance shows. To be able to become a choreographer and teach some of what I know and can do was awesome. I lived with an amazing family—I had a mom, and for the first time I had a big brother, and a baby sister. I even found a best friend, something I never thought I would find half way across the world.

Now, to explain about how I came to the decision [to take a gap year]. In February 2015 I started to panic about

By Andrew Dunn Class of 2015 Dover Campus

“Travelling—it leaves you speechless, then turns you into a storyteller.” This quote from Ibn Battuta holds a lot of truth. Looking back over the time I spent in Ecuador on my bridge [gap] year, I was too astonished, too caught up still in the moment, to even think of how I would be able to tell of my experiences in a single story. It will be difficult for me to do, but I will do my best.

My journey kicked off in August 2015, a few short months after graduating, when I travelled to San Francisco for pre-departure training with other UWC students and a group of American high school graduates. We spent a week learning about what to expect in our new country, including lessons such as the dangers of a “single story” that our hosts may have about our place of origin. This could be from people hearing on television [and in other media] about the riches of the USA, or the struggles of Africa., and that we should not judge these people on the lack of knowledge they might have, but rather treat them with curiosity and guide them toward a more “real truth.”

In the second week we flew to Quito, Ecuador where we spent three weeks learning about the politics, culture and way of life in the country. And I started my Spanish classes. Talk about struggles. It was probably one of the most difficult things I have ever endured; learning a new language not

Tales from my Global Citizen Year

CRAFTING MY STORY

college and careers, and not to mention final IB exams. I was stressing out. And then I received an email about Global Citizen Year. I had never considered doing a gap year, but I read through the website, and I listened to interviews with Global Citizen Year Founder Abby Falik, and it immediately caught my full attention. I had found the perfect solution to the stress and struggles I was going through. I knew I was not ready for college, and so I thought a year outside, in the world, would do me wonders.

And honestly, it did exactly that. Because, in the words of Mary Anne Radmacher, “I am not the same, having seen the moon on the other side of the world.” Even college deans are now encouraging students to take gap years, in which they take time to realize what their passions are, and what they are good at; to realise what they want to become when they finally “grow up.” Former Dean of Admissions at Princeton, Fred A. Hargadon reflected on the benefits of a gap year in this way: “I am convinced that one’s college education is greatly enhanced by the maturity, experience, and perspective a [gap year] student can bring.”

And so I would like to encourage each and every one of you to at least consider a gap year. It was life-changing for me, and it could be for you as well—as long as you work hard at maintaining your goal, which for me was making this a year to learn. What makes it even sweeter is the stories I now hold, having become someone worthy of telling my story.

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Many articles in this edition have expanded content on eDunia (www.uwcsea.edu.sg/edunia) — look for the symbol as you read the magazine and visit eDunia for more photos, video and expanded content.

Other stories featured only on eDunia:

Primary SchoolBali Bridges Team pulls together during building trip

ISTA Primary Drama Festival East hosts festival connecting creative arts and conservation

Middle SchoolMS Creatives Arts Festival A celebration of drama, music and visual arts

Round Square exchange A student’s experience in Switzerland

High SchoolDigital connections East students teach computer skills through Local Service

Advocacy through film A student experience on the THIMUN Qatar Film Festival

CommunityPACE Meet the Author New event launched

Front cover: East Campus Class of 2016 graduation ceremony, see pages 14–15

there he first experienced intercultural exchange. Two years later he won a scholarship to study in Singapore at UWCSEA, awarded by the UWC National Committee in Peru.

The multicultural education and the international environment at UWCSEA were beneficial. “They exposed me to complex and puzzling situations that showed me a wide picture as a young idealistic student. That motivated me to join the FGL fellowship; I want to keep expanding my access to global education.”

Eyner will be joining young leaders representing 35 nationalities and excelling at college and universities in the United States, United Kingdom, France, Singapore, Hong Kong, China, and the United Arab Emirates. The foundation’s admissions committee—comprised of leaders in the corporate and public sector—unanimously selected the final 20 FGL fellows based on their proven records of academic excellence, strength of character, leadership potential, and ambition.

Class of 2014, Peruvian National Committee Scholar Dover Campus

Dover Campus graduate Eyner Roman-Lopez has been accepted into the internationally competitive 2016 Future Global Leaders (FGL) fellowship program.

Eyner, who attended UWCSEA Dover as the Peruvian NC between 2012 and 2014, was one of only 20 fellows selected from a pool of 300 international applications. Now a first-year Davis Scholar at Colorado College, Eyner is studying mathematics and studio art with the intent of becoming an architect. He hopes to use design as a means of achieving social impact and reducing socio-economic inequalities.

The Future Global Leaders three-year fellowship, provided by the Future Leaders Foundation, offers mentorship from world renowned professionals, a three-week intensive leadership training in the Rocky Mountains, funding and support for an internship abroad, customised career advice and tools, and access to the Fortis Society upon completion of the fellowship. The aim of the Fortis Society is to bring more diversity to world leadership.

“I grew up in a small district in the outskirts of Lima,” Eyner explained. “When I was a kid, I helped my mother at the bookstore she owned before I went to school in the afternoon. She would tell me that the person who reads has the ability to go far in life.” In 2010 he enrolled in the only public boarding school in Peru, and it was

named Future Global Leader

EYNER ROMAN-LOPEZ

This article was adapted from the original, with permission from Colorado College. Image supplied by Colorado College and published with permission.

Dunia is published by UWC South East Asia. Reproduction in any manner in English or any other language is prohibited without written consent. Please send feedback to dunia@uwcsea.edu.sg.

Editors: Sinéad Collins, Kate Woodford, Courtney Carlson and Molly Fassbender Design: Nandita Gupta Photography: Sabrina Lone and members of the UWCSEA community

064COM–1516

Printed on recycled paper with environmentally friendly inks.

UWCSEA Dover is registered by the CPE CPE Registration No. 197000825H CPE Registration Period 18 July 2011–17 July 2017 Charity Registration No. 00142

UWCSEA East is registered by the CPE CPE Registration No. 200801795N CPE Registration Period 10 March 2011–9 March 2017 Charity Registration No. 002104

MCI (P) 169/03/2016

Akihiko Hoshide returns to UWCSEAJAXA astronaut and UWCSEA alumnus, Akihiko Hoshide ’87, visited Dover and East Campus in May to talk to students and answer questions about his career in space. This was his first visit back to UWCSEA since his graduation, and he talked with children from all grade levels. Primary students enjoyed an informal session with Aki, as he answered their questions “Can you eat in your space suit?” and “Where do you land?”

Aki has completed three space walks during two missions to the International Space Station (ISS). During a videolink call from the ISS to Dover Campus in 2012, he discussed how his time at UWCSEA had influenced him and his career, noting (from space) that, “I see the world; I do not see borders” and this worldview is a reflection of his time at UWCSEA.