What does your organisation do or offer?

Founded in 2006, ManageBac is the leading online planning, assessment and reporting platform for international schools, supporting over 2,500 schools in 120 countries. By providing schools with one unified system on a consistent, modern and mobile-ready interface, ManageBac offers a seamless & integrated experience for coordinators, teachers, students and parents. OpenApply is a modern online admissions office supporting the applicant journey from enquiry to enrolment. Over 250 schools in over 70 countries rely on OpenApply to help manage their admissions process. Together with our integration partners, we offer schools a world-class software suite for meeting all their information management needs.

What are you best at doing?

We help schools get rid of paper, increase efficiency, and improve communication across the whole school community.

How are you uniquely placed to support AISA member schools?

With 10 years of experience working with over 100 of the top international school in Africa, we understand the unique needs and challenges of AISA member schools.

Most memorable Africa experience?

Exploring a game reserve outside Johannesburg after the 2017 AISA Leadership Conference

What do you always travel with/top travel tips?

I never travel without my external battery pack, microfiber towel, and Vitamin C tablets.

Is there a special offer you could provide ASIA schools this month?

10% off the subscription cost for the first year of using ManageBac for new sign ups who reference this eCircular in the next month.

Jambo!

As the rains settle in to Nairobi, I am reminded that another calendar year is all too quickly drawing to a close and the Holiday Season will soon be upon us. As they say – time flies when you’re having fun!

Since my last communication to you AISA has been busy with the 2018 AISA Educators Conference which took place in Dakar in October. I’d like to thank the International School of Dakar for their help in making this event such a success. It was great to be back in West Africa with over 140 Educators and Associate exhibitors in attendance. I am mindful that our schools there have limited opportunities to access high quality, impactful and targeted Professional Learning on a regular basis. It was such a pleasure to note the openness and willingness to learn new things that this group of educators displays. Their call for AISA to try to make more professional learning accessible to our schools in this part of the Continent is certainly something we are looking at seriously. Please look for the review of this event from Graham Watts (AISA’s Director of Professional Learning) elsewhere in this circular. Please also contact Graham if your school would like to host one of our very popular Professional Learning Institutes (PLIs) next school year.

With the AEC complete, our attention is now turning to the inaugural AISA Invitational Conference (AIC) that will take place from the 30th - 31st March 2019 at the American International School in Lagos, Nigeria. While this event is primarily targeting non-member schools that are interested in experience the quality of learning AISA offers, and who are in the process of becoming an accredited international school, I do invite all educators and leaders from AISA member schools to take advantage of the close proximity of this learning event and register. Complete information about the programme and the logistics for the AIC is available on our AIC Website here.

We are also preparing for our new format, combined AISA Conference to take place in Cape Town from 21st - 23rd November 2019 at the CITCC, Cape Town. AISA’s Professional Learning Design Team (PLDT) will be gathering later in November to finalize the line-up of facilitators that I know will be our best yet. One particular item I want to make you aware of is the multi-stream governance deep dives we are preparing. These will target several aspects of good governance in international schools for a variety of stakeholders - be they new or experienced school leaders, senior admin staff and, significantly, school board members. Of course, this is also our 50^th Anniversary Edition and we have a lot of great surprises in store for all who attend that event - so save the date. We will publish further details of the 2019 AISA Conference on our website early in the New Year.

Another date to save is the 2019 AISA Luncheon that will take place in San Francisco alongside the AAIE conference on Wednesday February 6^th from 12:00 – 1:30pm. I will soon be sending out invitations to this event with full details - so watch out for those.

For now, as this is our last Circular for the year, it just remains for me to wish you, your loved ones and your entire school community a safe and relaxing holiday. Get some rest!

Dr Peter Bateman

Executive Director

Managing allegations of abuse against another child, adult or member of staff is a highly stressful, complex task.

It is vital that any concerns or allegation are dealt with properly and in a way that protects and upholds the dignity of all who are involved. These situations are often complex and can quickly escalate, particularly in the context of an international school community environment.

For this reason, the International Taskforce on Child Protection (ITFCP) has developed guidelines for international schools on how to manage such allegations effectively.

To read about why and how the protocol was developed, see this introductory article.

Download the Protocol - Managing Allegations

ISM is offering all AISA member school a FREE 3 month of Gold Membership. Included in the Gold Membership are the following benefits:

• Online Ideas & Perspectives (I&P) advisory publication access for up to 45 people, including the complete archive of all I&P articles and ISM Theory and Research
• Print I&P for up to 15 people
• Up to 15% off all ISM workshops
• Free webinars (past and future): This is a brand new benefit happening in January, but that I can give your members early access to.  Currently, our Consultants run webinars each Wednesday for 34 weeks. These used to be paid webinars at $156/webinar, but will now be free for all Gold Members. So each year, this is approximately $5000 worth of webinars. Here is an archive of the types of webinars we run - Webinar Schedule
• Free Stability Marker Snapshot to assess the health and financial stability of your school
• Loyalty Program: I call this our Starbucks program. When you renew, go to a workshop, do a consult, etc...you earn credits. Those credits can then be used to pay for entire workshops, offset the cost of consults, and offset survey costs.
• Exclusive LinkedIn Member Community to connect with your peers and ISM consultants.

To find out more contact Clint Losch

Over the past decade the role of non-formal education/ overseas expeditions & adventure weeks has been prevalent in many government agendas worldwide and the development of many school curricular. To name just a few, we currently have: the UK “manifesto for learning outside the classroom” (2006), the Scottish “curriculum for excellence through outdoor learning” (2010), International Baccalaureate C.A.S. Programme, the American Curriculum “week without walls”, “challenge week” and the Duke of Edinburgh’s International Award which has continued to grow, now operating in school in 140 countries worldwide.

What can Les Elfes International offer your students?

Our philosophy

Not All Learning Takes Place in the Classroom

Holistic Learning at Les Elfes

• Developing communication skills – working in a team to find the right route while hiking or to belay effectively in rock climbing.

• Building courage and taking risks – supporting classmates in challenging situations and stepping out of their comfort zones. Students can leap off a bridge for the first time and swing 30m across a raveen or make their first turns on a red slope in skiing.

• Forming the basis for a balanced and healthy lifestyle – understanding the role and importance of physical activity for wellbeing and happiness and building lifelong healthy habits. Enjoying mountain biking or snowboarding and understanding that the outdoors provides opportunities for recreation, relaxation or even future careers.

• Being curious, creative and connected – developing a relationship with the natural world around us, exploring and being comfortable in wild terrain and finding new ways to enjoy being outside. Thinking ethically about our impact on the environment and having respect for and a principled attitude towards nature.

• Forming an active part of a camp community – caring for others, showing compassion, reassuring team-mates who are anxious or sharing knowledge and skills to help others progress. Taking an active role in creating a welcoming and supportive environment in the camp, embracing open-mindedness and meeting students from around the world.

• Building resilience, confidence and independence – being away from home students will need to manage their belongings, their timekeeping and dress themselves properly for the wild outdoors. They can build resilience in challenging weather or gain confidence in their own ability as they kayak further than they ever thought possible.

Growing through experiences

Upward personal growth (realising potential)

• Realising potential and increasing confidence in students (Beames & Scott, 2008), more able and confident in leading group projects, building confidence in expressing opinions (Ewert & Yoshino, 2011) & increased perseverance and resilience (Sheldon, 2009).

Outward personal growth (learning about others)

• Connectedness to others (Allison, 2005), being comfortable relying on others and allowing them to rely on you (Ewert & Yoshino, 2011), reflection of personal friendships and relationships (Allison, 2005).

Inward personal growth (learning about self)

•  A sense of equanimity (Sheldon, 2009), reflection of ones values, self, life and career (Allison, 2005) and a deeper personal understanding of dealing with adversity.

Downward personal growth (learning about environment)

• Building an appreciation for the natural environment (Allison, 2005), linking classroom learning in geography and sciences to adventurous experiences (Allison & Higgins, 2002) and developing a personal investment in the natural world and learning in that field.

• Through challenging outdoor learning students can push their boundaries and explore further stepping into frontier adventure and building memories with the peers under the experienced guidance of our Les Elfes team.

Learn Even More with Les Elfes

Add these workshops/ focuses to your school field trip:

• language lessons, 
• leadership courses,
•  emergency 1^st Aid, 
• expeditions/ camping, 
• bushcraft workshops or sustainable tourism workshop.

Contact Malko Alexandre Schraner for more information.

October is a busy month at AISA. With AISA professional learning institutes (PLIs) happening across Africa almost every weekend, I find myself in the fortunate position of needing to make choices as to which of these I should try to participate in. But what a great challenge to have! For example, I've just returned from an exceptional PLC at Work institute at the International Community School (ICS) in Addis Ababa over the past weekend. Dr Tim Stuart and his team crafted a powerful 3 days of deep learning around the key principles that support Professional Learning Communities in international schools. My mind is buzzing around how AISA can support these key principles in our schools and, in time, encourage the fully articulated implementation of PLC schools within the AISA region. If you're wondering what all this about please take a look at the Solution Tree website.

Among the many highlights of my time at ICS was the time I spent with the Teaching Assistants (TAs) who were in attendance at the PLC institute. I found myself gravitating towards them in sessions and at the breaks as I have not really taken the time to explore this important perspective of learning support in our schools. Their engagement, articulateness, proud sense of inclusion and the way they valued so highly the opportunity to learn that this event afforded them was such a pleasure to witness.  Although we have included PL opportunities for TAs before in the AISA programme, I am working with the AISA team to explore ways that AISA might better support TAs across all our member schools on a regular basis. This will start with AISA designing (at least) one of our Webinar Series later this year with Teaching Assistants as the focus and to follow this up by establishing an online Community of Practice for TAs across the AISA region.

The other big event this month is the annual AISA Educators Conference taking place in Dakar later this week. This will be another rich learning experience for educators in our schools. I hope to see many of your there - but if you can't join us why not take a look here at what will be on offer. I'll let you know how it goes in the next eCircular. 
 
Dr Peter Bateman

Executive Director

This year AISA received over 70 applications for our AISA scholarships', a sure indication that our learning events are attracting the attention we think they deserve.

We are pleased to announce the winners:

AISA Educator Conference (AEC) Scholarship Winners

1.       Stephanie Budd, Banjul American International School

2.       Derrick James Zamzow, American International School of Freetown

3.       Yaye Aye Barry, American International School of Conakry

AISA Professional Learning Institute (PLI) Scholarship Winners

1.       Molly Toliver, AIS Abuja

2.       Trey Shiver, Harare International School

3.       Heather Cronk, International School of Kenya

4.       Bronwyn Schickerling, American International School of Cape Town

The work on the History of AISA book is now in full swing.  We are still accepting contributions in the next few weeks. Perhaps you have a story to share about AISA and the impact it has had on you, and especially photos that may illustrate your story.   

Here is one such story.

Graham Mercer, teacher at the International School of Tanganyika (IST)

At IST in the early 1980s we looked forward to the annual AISA conference in Nairobi with an enthusiasm not always engendered by educational get-togethers. Not that the conference itself was uninspiring – IST contributed far more workshop leaders in those days than any other school. But schools, like armies, march on their stomachs. And our stomachs, thanks to Tanzania’s blighted economy (just buying bread or even weevil-infested flour was a daily challenge), were crying out for something a little more exciting than corned beef or mashed potatoes.

The AISA conference provided it. In the form, in those days, of a daily buffet lunch that back in Dar es Salaam we could only dream about, set up on the lawns by ISK’s swimming pool. We would, like Byron’s Assyrian cohorts, come down upon it “like the wolf on the fold”.

And as soon as the day’s workshops had ended (or to be honest, sometimes long before) we would descend upon Nairobi’s supermarkets with similar single-minded fervour.

The rest of the story will be in the History of AISA book.

American International School of Dakar (ISD)

With Dakar the host city of the AEC2018, we thought it timely to highlight one of our member schools in Dakar.

ISD in numbers:

The International School of Dakar began our 35th year last week.

 We expect to break 600 students, a 30% increase over the past five years.  Our community is truly diverse with over 55 different nationalities represented. An elementary classroom will have ten different nationalities and 6 different languages represented.

Our students had the highest scores in school history on the IB DP exams in May, with the highest scores in school history.  We are an MYP Candidate School and hope to earn our PYP authorization by the end of this school year.

 The new US$7million Performing Arts Center & Athletic Complex is well underway with an expected completion date of May 2019. The complex will significantly improve the arts and sports facilities for our students as well as the larger Senegalese community.