Message from Catriona: update on NAIS Conference and school visits

“We live in a time of deep injustice but also unprecedented opportunities. What is your legacy as an educator?” Shiza Shahid

Dear Faculty and Staff,

It’s great to be home! Taking time to step out of the busyness of daily school life allowed an opportunity to reflect on where we are as a school, to learn from others’ experiences and insights, and to return energized and appreciative of this great school community and what we’re doing for our students.

I’m very glad to say that the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS) annual conference in California and the school visits were very worthwhile. The theme of the conference was Reimagining Independent Schools (Tearing down Walls, Building Capacity and Designing our Future).  You can get a glimpse into the theme, professionalism, and energy of the conference here. (If you look carefully, you can also get a quick glimpse of Molly on the video). You will hear a lot more about insights gleaned from the conference as we gradually assimilate new learnings into our current and future work and conversations.

David attended sessions about Student Wellness, including Positive Education, Data Organization and Analysis, and Structures for Professional Development. Molly attended sessions on teacher orientation programs, using real data to develop well-being interventions, youth-participatory action research, reimagining master campus master planning, and utilizing new research based tools to assist with measuring student leadership skills.  I attended sessions on leading planned change, enrollment projections, and adolescent development in high performing schools. Molly and I also attended a pre-conference on “Essential Considerations for Transforming Educational Spaces.”

The keynote speeches were outstanding! The speakers were actress Viola Davis, author and speaker Franz Johansson, social activist and founder of the Malala Fund Shiza Shahid, and motivational speaker Simon Sinek. We are currently speaking with Shiza’s agent to determine if we can bring her to SSIS to speak to our students and community as she epitomizes our Core Values in action.

On the way, we visited The Nueva School, Castilleja, and the Stanford D School as these schools offer exemplary programs and facilities. The staff at these schools were very generous with their time and reminded us of how important it is to share our learning with colleagues from other schools. The visits were both reaffirming of what we are currently doing as a school and inspiring about possibilities to be considered for the future.

Additionally, we made some great contacts with other professionals. And, just this afternoon, I received a set of slides directly from the Shipley School on their admissions/marketing presentation and other resources.  We have lots of stories about other encounters, schools and organizations wishing to visit or work with us, presenters we wish to bring to the school, etc.

Thank you all for taking great care of our students while we were away, especially to WaiMun for holding the SSIS fort and to Donna for stepping in for Middle School when needed.

Have a great week!

Catriona