DragonTales - Summer 2020 by Hong Kong International School

Live from Hong Kong

Virtual Learning in the time of Covid-19

SUMMER 2015 2020

Artwork: Jessamina Fox ’20

dragonTales

Table of Contents Letter from Alumni Relations

Breaking News School’s Back Before Summer!

Advancement 2020 Bob Christian Alumna of the Year Award Update: James A. Handrich Service Leadership Endowment Fund

6 9

Staying Connected A Stone to Beat Covid-19: Lucy Doyle ’96 The Alumnus Chronicle of an Upcoming Librarian: Curtice Taylor ’13 In Memoriam Class Notes Dragon Babies Social Sensations

40 41 43 44 46 49 48

Class of 2020

The Last Word Virginia and Cyril Udall

Cover Story Live from Hong Kong: Virtual Learning

Students’ Experience UP & HS Band and Covid “Curriculum”

Then and Now Virtual School 2003 vs. 2020

Community Church of All Nations “We Do Not Lose Heart”

HKIS Student Art Galleries Lower Primary Upper Primary Middle School High School

Student Life Upper and Lower Primary: Library Drive-Through Upper Primary: The Young Americans visit Upper Primary Middle School: The MS Story Collective Middle School and High School: My Freedom Day High School: Eva Schloss

28 29 30 31 32

Parent’s Perspective Coronavirus Diaries

Alumni Making Moves

Milestones Roy Bas ’94 – Learning, Uninterrupted

8 8 25, 37 38, 42, 47

Cover: Kids (+ kids at heart) Ved Bammanhalli ’26, Camille Belin ’26, Weda Bory, Casper Cha ’26, Ava Cheh ’25, Sky Chiu ’30, Weilyn Chong ’20, Kevin Fields, Hamlet Lin, Ruby Lovelin ’30, Gayle Renken, Zachary Seehafer ’23, Kris Shah ‘20, Simone Yick ’29, and Faith Abigail Yih ’24. Corrections Winter 2019 Issue: Two misspellings appear on p. 12 in the “Friends in the 90s” caption: It should read Linda Anderson and Merry Balian. On p.15 Sam Lam’s “then” picture is of another colleague, not of Sam himself. Here’s Sam in 1985! Thanks to our eagle-eyed readers!

DragonTales is produced by Chief Advancement Officer Ann Wardwell awardwell@hkis.edu.hk Managing Editors Carrie Chen Marketing Director cchen@hkis.edu.hk Veronica (Galbraith) Booth ’97 Communications and Public Relations Manager vbooth@hkis.edu.hk Writers Hillary Sandeen Alumni Relations hsandeen@hkis.edu.hk Isabela Hollingshead Annual Fund Manager ihollingshead@hkis.edu.hk Anita Lam Marketing Specialist alam@hkis.edu.hk Publishing & Distribution Coordinators Ceci Lau Development Coordinator clau@hkis.edu.hk Noel Leung Advancement Executive Secretary nleung@hkis.edu.hk

Design Linne Tsu ’96

Thank you to our contributors All our student artists, Saba Ahmad, Geoff Ballard, Roy Bas ’94, Bonnie Bajaj, Liz Belfer ’03, Sheryl Boomsta ’69, Weda Bory, Jackson “Tay” Bosley ’69, Brent Brayko, Lindy Brigham ’69, Joanne Brown, Quinn Russell Brown, Coco Chan ’03, Keith Chan ’96, Melanie Chan ’20, Devang Chaudhary ’20, Gene Cheh, Anna Chen ’20, Ashley Chen ’23, Jessie Chen ’20, Moqiu Cheng ’20, Laura Chesebro, Amanda Cheung ’20, Tracey Cheung, Denise Chow ’20, Priyanka D’Costa, Lucy Doyle ’96, James Ellis ’25, Samara Faruqui ’20, Brittany Fried ’15, Linda Dunoyé, Andrew Galbraith ’99, Jacci Grawburg, Pat Hall, Chadwick Hamilton, Ben Hart, Sue Harvey, Candace Ho ’03, Jennifer Howell, Lauren Kahm ’20, Kirk Kenny, Mike Kersten, Claire Kiely ’20, Connie Kim, Claire Kirk, Kevin Kong, Nam Kong ’20, Nancy Kroonenberg, Evelyn Kuong ’99, Jacob Kwon ’23, Kristina Kyle, Zachary Lai ’27, Kit Lang, Alex Lee ’03, Ariane Lee ’25, John Lee, Michelle Leung ’01, Sharon Leung, Jimmy Liu ’20, Albert Lui ’03, Sofia Mandoli ’25, Ella McCoy ’20, Hayden Michael ’25, Micra Music, Rhea Mogul, Jeanneth Nodland ’03, Charlotte Pang ’20, Adam Pecher, Shirley Pushkarna, Zara Rashid ’25, Amy Robinson, Monish Sabnani ’11, Caroline Scown ’15, Rev. Joel Scheiwe, Jeff Seaberg, Sofia Singer ’20, Rich Siegert, Slate.com, Anne Street Allan, Andrea Sum ’20, Curtice Taylor ’13, Cyril Udall, Virginia Udall, Tanya Underwood, Mekala Weerakoon, Christy (McCaskill) Wendell ‘69, A.J. Winegar ’20, Vincent Yoo ’25, Young Post, and Christina Yuen.

Letter from alumni relations

Dear Alumni & HKIS Community, I joined the Advancement Office three years ago to oversee the alumni relations efforts at HKIS and looking back it has been truly wonderful to connect, engage and hear stories from so many alumni, learn what HKIS means to them and witness the deep friendships they forged while students here. Two highlights of my time so far in the Alumni Office have been celebrating the school’s 50th anniversary in May of 2017 during the week-long celebrations and attending the Class of 1968 & 1969 50th Class Reunion this past July in Seattle, Washington. Both events provided a golden opportunity to meet former faculty members, administrators as well as alumni, who had such a profound impact on our school and its legacy. The 50th class reunion allowed me to meet the students who first roamed these halls, began our school traditions, and started to shape our school identity and culture. And, to witness old friends and classmates reconnecting with one another after more than 50 years was incredible! It was truly an honor to meet Bob Christian, our first Head of School, as well as this year’s Bob Christian Alumna of the Year winner Christy (McCaskill) Wendell ’69. Christy’s tireless pursuit to find, connect and bring together our first-ever alumni for their only class reunion in over 50 years is a feat in itself, but that’s just the beginning of her many skills and talents. Learn more about this amazing alumna and her journey of lifelong learning, service and making the world around her a better place on page 6. Congratulations, Christy! To say this year in Hong Kong has been challenging is a huge understatement. The academic year began with protests throughout our beloved city effectively canceling many events and activities as well as a week of school towards the end of 2019. This was immediately followed by the arrival of Covid-19 in January 2020, forcing the Hong Kong government to close all schools at the beginning of February. We began our home learning journey on February 3, 2020, and in this issue of DragonTales, you’ll learn how HKIS quickly adapted and transitioned to virtual classrooms and learning. You’ll also hear firsthand from a number of alumni who work in healthcare and have been on the front lines of the epidemic in the US and Hong Kong. I want to take this opportunity to thank our faculty, administrators, staff, students, parents, and alumni for coming together to support one another during this most difficult time. Together, we are truly stronger, and we could not have weathered this storm without the commitment from everyone to ensure HKIS continued to provide a world-class learning environment virtually for weeks on end. As we go to print in May, we have news that our students will be able to return to campus to finish up the school year. This is good news we barely expected, and we know that in Hong Kong we are fortunate. We think of all of you across the world where the pandemic has yet to ease off, and hope that by sharing our stories with you now, you can see a light at the end of the tunnel.

Stay well and healthy,

Hillary Sandeen ALUMNI RELATIONS

SUMMER 2020 DRAGONTALES

Breaking News

Schoolâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Back Before Summer

Just as we were going to print, Hong Kongâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Education Bureau (EDB) gave schools the green light to open up for the last weeks of the school year. This meant HKIS could start phasing kids back on to our campuses on May 20, and so we did. (And sent DragonTales to print on May 21!) But nothing was certain; even as HKIS submitted proposals to the EDB detailing social distancing, mask distribution, classroom layout, a handful of Covid-19 cases were confirmed in Tsuen Wan, breaking a 23-day period of no locally-transmitted cases. Though the government maintained that schools should proceed with plans, it added an extra tension: Would we be able to make it back to campus, or would we face another disappointment? And, amidst a flurry of activity of completing travel declaration forms, sorting out busing logistics, pulling out uniforms (growth spurts since January and a closed Dragon Shop meant that some uniforms were on the small side!), and setting alarm clocks, the students did come back. Have a look at those first moments back on campus here! n

DRAGONTALES SUMMER 2020

Breaking News

SUMMER 2020 DRAGONTALES

Breaking News

DRAGONTALES SUMMER 2020

Breaking News

learn more about our semester: To read about our home learning odyssey, see page 12. For how students borrowed books, see page 28. For Middle Schoolers’ perspectives, see page 30. For a parent’s take, see page 33. For alumni doctors’ reflections, see pages 35, 36 & 40.

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Advancement

2020 | bob christian alumna of the year award Christy (McCaskill) Wendell ’69 2020 Recipient

This year’s recipient has an incredible life story and truly embodies the school’s mission of dedicating the mind to inquiry, the heart to compassion and life to service. Read about Christy’s many talents and fascinating journey over the past 50 years. And, she’s responsible for the unimaginable task of finding, connecting and bringing together her classmates after 50 years to host the first-ever class reunion for the classes of ’68 and ’69 in July of 2019! Christy (McCaskill) Wendell ’69

I was flabbergasted to learn I’d been awarded the Bob Christian Alumna Award for 2020. Sincere thanks to the HKIS Class of 1969 for my nomination and the awards committee for this honor. Hong Kong and especially HKIS have always held a special place in my heart. Ever since my father accepted an IBM assignment there in 1965, my life has never been the same. Having initially attended Maryknoll School, I was thrilled when HKIS opened in 1967. Some of my favorite memories were meeting classmates literally from around the globe, helping establish the library, working on the Orientale yearbook, prom, volleyball, and I was the first recipient of the Bob Christian Student Service Award in 1968. Much to my dismay, my father was transferred back to the U.S. after my HKIS junior year, but as the song goes…I left my heart and friends in Hong Kong! HKIS was a life-changing experience for me, instilling a true sense of diversity and inclusion with friends from all over the world, my perspectives and horizons were broadened beyond my wildest imagination. I genuinely value the education, the experiences and friendships to this day! As a student at Virginia Tech, I intended to become a Home Economics teacher, but a summer internship at IBM was my first career detour. I loved working in international human resources for the next 15 years. Two of my favorite positions were helping employees relocate to overseas assignments and teaching leadership and management development at the IBM Executive Education Center. I met my husband, Gray, at Mardi Gras and married in 1984. Our son was born a year later and our daughter in 1989. Sadly, our infant daughter died from delivery complications. His AT&T career took us to Louisiana, Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia and Texas. I was fortunate to be an at-home mom, but decided to return to my home economic roots, starting my own catering business and teaching culinary classes. Wilton Industries asked me to develop a consumer education program for marketing their culinary products. I enjoyed that “delicious” job for the next decade until my husband became ill and battled early Alzheimer’s for 12 years. Becoming the family breadwinner, I went to work for an entrepreneur in Paris, Texas initially to establish their human resources 6

DRAGONTALES SUMMER 2020

department. Over the next decade, I moved from HR VP to COO to President of his five companies… commercial construction, supply chain logistics, industrial ry HKIS diploma from storage, steel Christy receiving honora Interim Head of IS’s HK Dr. Ron Roukema, fabrication, and School, in 2019. real estate development (just a small leap from home economics, but utilizing my IBM experience and focusing on people development). After re-engineering and transitioning these companies to the owner’s sons, I started my own consulting business in 2008. Committed to lifelong learning and having taken college courses throughout my career, I finally graduated from Harvard Business School in 2007. When HKIS celebrated its 40th anniversary my husband was in hospice and I was unable to attend, but it did start me thinking about my classmates and the fact that we’d never had a class reunion. I began trying to locate the 56 members of the class of 1969 and planning a long-overdue reunion. The HKIS Class of 1968 asked to join us. We decided to meet in Seattle, Washington because Bob Christian, the first HKIS Head of School, now 92 years young, lives there. We were delighted our guest of honor was able to attend the first reunion of his first graduates! We enjoyed an extraordinary weekend and re-connection of long-lost friends at our golden reunion last year. Plans are already underway for our next gathering! Now retired, living life to the fullest and giving back wherever I can, I try to have a positive impact on others and a legacy of having made a difference. I enjoy community service, gardening, cooking, genealogy research AND keeping in touch with HKIS classmates. Be sure you stay updated with HKIS Alums … your 50th class reunion will be here before you know it! n

Advancement

Established in honor of HKIS’s first Head of School, the Bob Christian Alumnus/Alumna of the Year Award is presented to alumni who have made a strong, positive contribution to society while living the HKIS Mission and Student Learning Results. Christy McCaskill receiving the Stud ent Service Award from Bob Christian in 1968

Thank you Dr. Roukema.

HKIS Class Officer in pictured on far right.

1968, Christy

What an honor to be recognized with the Bob Christian Alumna of the Year award. And what a privilege to be able to address the awesome HKIS Class of 2020. CONGRATULATIONS to each and every one of you. You did it! Not only have you mastered all the essential graduation credits, but you’ve survived riots and protests, political unrest, economic challenges, remote learning, cancellation of much anticipated events and now a pandemic. What a senior year you’ve had. You have triumphed over seemingly insurmountable odds during unprecedented and uncertain times, but honestly this unique senior year has well prepared you to thrive no matter what future challenges may come your way. I am so proud of each one of you and have every confidence that you will press on and amaze us all. Honestly, it doesn’t seem possible that over five decades have elapsed since I was an HKIS student as a member of the Class of 1969, but I’m sure this past one year in Hong Kong may have seemed more like 50 years to many of you! I want to encourage you to continue to be curious and open to new experiences. Be a lifetime learner…leadership and learning are indispensable to each other. Above all, strive to be a respectful, authentic individual who is known for uncompromised personal values and trusted integrity. You may not all be leaders…after all, every leader needs someone loyal to support and follow their leadership, but wherever you go and whatever you do, stay true to what you believe… live with your heart as well as your head. Seek a balance of your body and mind and spirit at home, school and work…in the community and with friends. Give back as you are able and you’ll discover there is no greater joy than selfless service to others. No matter what you do, how great or small your achievements…remember if you change the life of just one person, by changing the life of a single person, you’ve changed the life of a family. Change the life of a family and you’ve changed society. Change society and you begin to change the world! So never underestimate the impact of your actions and contributions. As you prepare to physically leave HKIS, please know that HKIS will never leave you. Always remember that HKIS is here for you. It is my joy to WELCOME all 180 members of the Class of 2020 to your new family of HKIS Alumni. You are now part of a vast network of extremely talented individuals who stand ready, willing and able to help you succeed. Be sure to stay in touch with the alumni office, let them know where you can be reached and how you are doing. I look forward to following each of you through DragonTales and Alumni updates and perhaps meeting you in person at a future reunion! May you live long, be kind and prosper!

SUMMER 2020 DRAGONTALES

HKIS Gallery

Lower & Upper Primary Student Art

The Story Behind the Costumed Characters of Claire Kirk and Kit Lang From their shared love of costumes, theater arts, and edutainment, Ms. Kit and Mrs. Kirk (our Lower and Upper Primary Art teachers, respectively) have been able to use their creativity and impressive costume collections to create characters to make Home Learning fun and engaging for our community. Having worked as teaching partners in the Lower Primary art rooms back in 2017–2018, they continue to collaborate and stay connected like the bridge that links Upper to Lower Primary Campus. By Kit Lang and Claire Kirk

The Rise and Reign of Duchess Doodle

Over the years Mrs. Kirk has played a variety of different characters to deliver messages, tell stories, and bring a little flair and joy to events such as LP International Day. The Fairy Respect Mother was a character created back in 2004 when Mrs. Kirk first worked as the Art assistant to celebrate and encourage ‘respect’ and its huge importance as a character trait. The Fairy Respect Mother was a regular visitor to LP over the years and took a sabbatical in 2017. As home learning began, Duchess Doodle, a relative of the Fairy Respect Mother, has arrived to assist Mrs. Kirk delivering some of the home learning art content. Duchess Doodle’s mission is to connect with our Primary learners, encourage creativity and raise the spirits of young and old. “Creativity is an essential part of our being”. She’s passionate about doodling and any kind of creative moment that brings peace and calm as these moments help us to switch off the noise of life and allow us to reset.

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The Birth of Venus

Venus McArtsy was created in 2015 while Ms. Kit was teaching at International Montessori School of Hong Kong as a fun way to teach art history to primary aged students. As a lover of art, rock music and teamwork, Venus has popped up over the years in the HKIS Lower Primary art rooms singing songs and teaching art vocabulary to our young artists. With her bright orange wig and rockin’ persona, Venus sings about the artwork and lives of various famous artists, shares information on street art around the city of Hong Kong and even tours and talks about famous artwork in well-known museums and galleries from around the world! Venus McArtsy’s music videos, Street Art Tours and Art Talks have been a part of the Lower Primary Visual Art’s Home Learning content over the last few months and she continues to find fun new ways to engage her audience. Tune in to see Venus McArtsy and Duchess Doodle on Ms. Kit’s Art Room live every Friday morning at 9 a.m. for the last eight weeks of school! n

Advancement

Update | james a. handrich service leadership endowment fund Planting the Seed of Service In June 2007, the James A. Handrich Service Leadership Endowment Fund was established to honor then Associate Head of School James (Jim) Handrich, who served 24 years with HKIS. The Fund furthers the school’s Mission Statement and Student Learning Results, especially the emphasis of “contributing to society” and “self-motivated learning” through providing seed money for student-led service projects as well as senior projects at HKIS. More than 80 students have received funding to date through the Fund. We caught up with two former recipients to see how the award has impacted them and if it shaped any of their decisions and projects in university and beyond. Learn how a little money and a big belief can make a difference in the lives of others! Please visit www.hkis.edu.hk/giving to see how to support our students’ service work.

The People’s Café Monish Sabnani ’11 received funding from the James A. Handrich Endowment Fund to help establish HKIS’s very own “The People’s Café” in 2011. Monish recalls, “students called it ‘The Library Café’ and it contained basic items where people could easily go in and out to get a snack in-between class.” The informal atmosphere made for a great gathering space to catch up with friends and was the start of what today is our campus coffee shop. Monish was a student ambassador during his senior year, and Ms. Lauren Fine (then (and now) the High School’s Associate Principal for Student Life) had faith in the students and the project. Monish attended Georgetown University and started working at a shop there where his responsibilities were similar to what he experienced at The People’s Café. Later, he went on to co-found the university’s very own The Hilltoss, People’s Café a healthy salad and smoothie café, run and financed in partnership with The Corp, a student-run non-profit organization. The Hilltoss was founded in 2014 and remains open to this day, employing over 75 part-time students every year. Following university, Monish went on to a role in investment banking at Bank of America Merrill Lynch in New York City. He now runs his own company in consumer electronics called Courant. “The direct parallels between my responsibilities for both café’s at HKIS and Georgetown University were unreal, but the experience helped me so much in the restaurant world. You need support and funding so for the Handrich Fund to provide both when I was 17 years old was amazing.” — Monish Sabnani ’11

“It was the most incredible experience as a senior in High School to know that something you’re working on is really valued enough to be printed, shared and preserved and this could be a resource that you created for other students.” — Brittany Fried ’15

The Empowerment Handbook: Service Through Empowerment Brittany Fried ’15 was a co-recipient of the James A. Handrich Endowment Fund with close friend Caroline Scown ’15 for their senior project: The Empowerment Handbook: Service Through Empowerment.

The objective of the handbook was to create a resource to improve engagement in service for HKIS students while improving the engagement within communities of the countries where service was provided. “This was our first taste of this type of student-to-student facilitation and leadership,” said Brittany. Upon entering university, Brittany decided right away to focus on projects related to the creation of curriculum and to answer the question, “How can individuals become better global citizens and be more engaged with their community?” She has since devoted her schooling to finding ways to study how to “do” education project leadership, facilitation for students, and training — all related to the idea of youth helping youth, and all stemming from the work she and Caroline undertook in their High School years. Brittany works at Georgetown University and in September 2020, she begins her Master’s of Public Policy looking at education policy with the hope to be working on curriculum development. One of Brittany’s main take-aways from this experience was how big of a difference a small amount of funding can make. Brittany states, “It’s really interesting to have these themes that emerged from our senior year and through this project... still are really much shaping the trajectory in our careers.” n

SUMMER 2020 DRAGONTALES

Class of 2020 College Enrollments

Have a look below to see where our seniors are heading. Welcome to the alumni community, Class of 2020!

Congratulations to the Class of 2020! As HKIS Dragons, you have created and supported a culture of care

USA

and respect for one another and the greater Hong Kong community. You continue to find time to serve those in need, and your dedication to making our school an inclusive community where everyone can be themselves is commendable. As you move on from HKIS, I hope you will continue to find the good in others and in our society while navigating your own path. We are thankful to have had you all as members of our campus community, and we look forward to what the future will hold for each of you. We wish you all the best in your future endeavors. Remember: Once a Dragon Always a Dragon. — Dr. David Lovelin, High School Principal

American University Babson College Bates College Boston College Boston University Brown University California Institute of Technology Carnegie Mellon University Claremont McKenna College Colgate University Columbia University Concordia University-Irvine Cornell University Duke University Emerson College Emory University Fordham University Georgetown University Georgia Institute of Technology Harvard University Haverford College Indiana University-Bloomington Ithaca College

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Johns Hopkins University Kenyon College Loyola Marymount University Loyola University New Orleans Mount Holyoke College New York Film Academy New York University New York University Shanghai Campus Northeast Wisconsin Technical College Northeastern University Northwestern University Oregon State University Pennsylvania State University Princeton University Purdue University Rice University Ringling College of Art and Design Sacred Heart University Santa Clara University Skidmore College Smith College

Syracuse University The New School – Parsons School of Design The New School – Eugene Lang College of Liberal Studies Tufts University University of Arizona University of California-Berkeley University of California-Davis University of California-Irvine University of California Los Angeles University of California-San Diego University of California Santa Barbara University of Chicago University of Hawaii at Manoa University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign University of Miami University of Michigan-Ann Arbor University of Nebraska-Lincoln University of Pennsylvania

University of Puget Sound University of San Diego University of South Carolina University of Southern California

Canada

Queen’s University University of British Columbia University of Toronto

Italy

Università Bocconi

Singapore

Singapore Military Service

King’s College London Loughborough University The University of Edinburgh University College London University of Oxford University of St. Andrews University of Warwick University of Westminster, London

List as of May 21, 2020.

Class of 2020

seniors serving This year we honor our students’ service work by featuring students and four organizations close to their hearts. We invite you to donate to these organizations in the Class of 2020’s name! SOS Heep Hong Society

A close family member of mine who has autism catalyzed my passion for working with special needs children. In my sophomore year, I joined Heep Hong, an organization committed to helping kids with diverse needs through integrated education. On occasional Saturdays, a group of around ten children come hang out and have fun with us on our campus. Finding a reason to serve is what I learned and still believe to be the most important aspect of service. It keeps us motivated and passionate when things don’t go our way. My reason has always been for my family. — Andrea Sum ’20 www.heephong.org/eng/donation Mother’s Choice

I’ve worked closely with Mother’s Choice, an NGO providing care for pregnant teenagers and their babies, since freshman year through the HKIS Mother’s Choice Club. I was moved by listening to CEO Alia Eyres’ ’95 life dedication to finding forever homes for babies. Last year, Mother’s Choice youth volunteers and I worked with the Hong Kong Committee on Children’s Rights to write the United Nations Charter on the Rights of the Child Report to advocate for adequate sexual education. Mother’s Choice exposed me to the immense plight shrouded by Hong Kong’s metropolitan facade. I now see the great need to give. — Lauren Kahm ’20

SOS Enrich Hong Kong

We have been working alongside Enrich since they were both in the eighth grade.This NGO empowers migrant domestic workers in Hong Kong with the tools to overcome financial difficulties and achieve their goals.The charity’s work includes financial literacy classes and one-on-one mentoring programs – to allow domestic workers relieve their debt, start businesses, and stand up for their rights. We have worked to create a student branch here at HKIS, which connects students with their helpers at home, and raises money to help Enrich enact their mission. — Sofia Singer ’20 and Ella McCoy ’20 https://enrichhk.org/donate-enrich SOS Music for the Elderly

As underclassmen, we first discovered SOS Music for the Elderly as a platform where we could share our music with others. Over four years of Saturdays, we visited local nursing homes throughout Hong Kong with 60s Chinese ballad performances, crafts, and games. Taking on our leadership positions in our junior year, we initially lost our sense of direction, but gradually realized that our true purpose lies in forming interpersonal relationships. Though coordinating competent performances, crafts, and gifts occupied much of our time spent together, the most meaningful aspect remains the warmth we can share with the elderly and our team.

— Jessie Chen ’20, Moqiu Cheng ’20, and Amanda Cheung ’20 https://mighty-oaks.org/take-action/donate/

www.motherschoice.org/en/donate/ See page 3 of the Summer 2019 DragonTales for more about the deep ties between HKIS and Mother’s Choice!

Congratulations from The PFO The PFO offers a huge congratulations to the graduating class of 2020!! You have endured a tough end to your last year. Celebration and goodbyes with final hugs before year end had to give room to showcasing creativity, collaboration and resilience in new dimensions. Your agility and followthrough to adapt to this unfamiliar and uncertain environment has been remarkable. Looking back, this time will be a special memory in itself.

“On the other side of a storm, is a strength that comes from having navigated through it. Raise your sail and begin” — Gregory Williams

Congratulations on your well-deserved success Class of 2020!!

Congratulations from The Booster Club Dear 2020 Dragons, CONGRATULATIONS on your graduation!! We are so proud of you and your accomplishments, especially given this tumultuous senior year. As you head off on your next phase in life, we hope the Dragon Spirit keeps you happy and confident as you navigate university, jobs, and new places. We hope fun memories of sports tournaments, plays, concerts, competitions, and spirit events are with you forever, as the Class of 2020 will most certainly be with HKIS forever. Once a Dragon, always a Dragon!

We love you, Class of 2020! SUMMER 2020 DRAGONTALES

Cover Story

Virtual school started for our students on February 3. But the learning they gained was real!

Real g n i n r a e L

DRAGONTALES SUMMER 2020

Joanne Brown, High School Chemistry Teacher, looks in her element.

Cover Story

Live from Hong Kong: It’s Teaching Online! The suspension was announced during our January Chinese New Year break, that schools would suspend classes for two weeks…which quickly turned into four weeks…and then 11… The challenges abounded: Lower Primary had to figure out how to teach through play remotely, Upper Primary had to learn new technology, Middle School struggled to balance screen time and wellbeing, and High School had to deal with the cumulative disappointments of cancelled Interims, sports and club competitions, prom, and the possibility of a cancelled graduation. Each division created home learning programs that were suited to the age of their kids. But one thing remained clear to us: Who we are as HKIS stands true, whether our classes are online or on campus. This period of time proved to us that we are truly a resilient, collaborative and creative learning community. Here, read stories about different parts of the virtual learning experience.

hkis’s top tips

for Fellow Educators • Take it slow.

• Create routines.

• Shift expectations.

• Consistency is key.

It’s going to take time to figure out what works best. Give yourself 2-3 weeks to test what works best for your learners and teachers. It takes longer to get through material than normal.

• Streamline and share the load.

Collaboration among teachers makes for great classes!

• Prioritize.

Make sure students will meet learning standards during virtual learning, and then add on the layers to benefit the whole child.

• Teach, don’t assign.

This is virtual school, not an online course.

Daily structure and habits are critical, whether the student is 4-years-old or 17. Keep school hours, pick a place to work, and change out of your PJs! Parents and students are receiving so much information, so do your best to structure your information in a consistent way.

• Take breaks in the schedule for wellbeing.

A normal school day has scheduled breaks to get the blood flowing, or as a 6-year-old would say, get the wiggles out.

• Pick a tech and go for it.

The sooner you decide on platforms or apps the better, for students, teachers and parents.

• Parents — be facilitators, not teachers. Easier said than done!

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Cover Story

High School Dispatch: “We’re Going Online” In the midst of the Chinese New Year holiday, it became clear that all schools in Hong Kong would have to suspend classes for

the first two weeks back from the CNY break. In the High School, we had a sense of how to do this, following the suspension of classes during the social unrest in November, when schools closed for a week. What we didn’t really understand was what exactly extended virtual learning looked like when it lasted over a week. It would take a few weeks for us to realize that virtual school is not the same as online learning. We couldn’t just upload the material and hope for the best — that was not the way to keep students interested. We had to curate information, not dump it.

So we innovated. First, we decided to stick to the bell schedule and keep teaching “live” — no pre-recordings of classes —

teachers and students connected on Zoom, caught up, learned a lesson, broke up into smaller groups for discussion, and came back — all in the space of a single Zoom call (three cheers for the breakout room function!). It became clear really quickly that this was the best way to capture much of the energy of the classroom — teachers and students feed off of each other, they get ideas from each other, they learn from each other — and a video call is the best way to do this, when you can’t get to a classroom. And, within a few short weeks of upending school as we knew it, kids knew what to do, teachers upskilled their tech skills, and parents were coping.

And now we find ourselves looking ahead, and thinking what this all means for us when we return to campus. For all the silver

linings, there just is no replacement for having everyone on campus; the losses outweigh the gains, particularly for our seniors. We miss the lively energy of having everyone on campus, learning together, socializing together. But this has given us the space to think about how we can take the best of this virtual learning experience and keep it for when we’re all able to come together in one space again. Maybe students will have more freedom to pursue internships and apprenticeships, knowing that they Zoom in on core classes. Maybe students participating in sporting tournaments during school time could catch the class they missed later. We can’t wait to have students back on campus. We miss the chaos of a normal High School day, with its kids in the hallways and club meetings and competitions and group projects and music and impromptu student life. And they’ll be back.

Two stand-up gentlemen in the High School: Associate Principal for Teaching and Learning, Brent Brayko works from his office, while Humanities teacher Leo Zen Zooms with his class.

AP Exams, 2020 Edition Following a College Board decision to administer AP exams in a way that avoided group gatherings, all AP exams in 2020 were live, online, and 45 minutes long. This meant that HKIS High School students along with other students in Asia sat their exams at midnight, 2 a.m. or 4 a.m….!

DRAGONTALES SUMMER 2020

Cover Story

A Peek Behind the Scenes of our Teachers and Staff in Action

SUMMER 2020 DRAGONTALES

Cover Story

Literacy for the Little Ones

Priyanka D'Costa doing a

read-aloud online

Parents across the school were given a front-row seat in their child’s learning, but perhaps none more so than parents of our Lower Primary kids. LPS students need more help from grown-ups to set up their learning and submit it to teachers, and so parents got to see the step-by-step progression of their learning. One activity that all LPS students took part in was writing books. And more books. And then more books. One parent quipped, “When my son grows up, he wants to open a bookstore. We’re getting a 25-year start on inventory!” The reason for this was simple. Teachers had to prioritize which learning standards to focus on, and bookmaking was the ideal way to do this. So it was clear: Students must write every day. And this way, they were able to meet the educational standards set for them in order to be successful to progress to the next grade level. Students also needed to honor the writing process, how to start and end a piece of writing. Producing books is a great way for kids to learn essential writing skills. They learn about different types of books – fiction, non-fiction, narrative, informational – and get to create books that interest them. The skills students learn while bookmaking are transferable – they stay on topic, they can expose how they are thinking – teachers are able to teach to the writer: where is this student in her learning. Finally, it gives students ownership over their learning, and gives them a chance to make something with a purpose. Students can immediately see themselves as writers. Virtual learning comes with a whole host of special challenges for the youngest students. And in focusing on this type of project, teachers are able to get the input they need to assess students, and help them progress in their learning. The success of this project work also depends on parents. Parents less familiar with what writing samples look like for a child may have had a certain expectation of what the book “should” look like. So the teaching teams put together author samples and a sample of writing by a child in their grade. This way, parents could quickly understand the goal of the project. Kids get to write freely, and it’s that experience that will help form a love of writing. And then students talk about their books on Zoom with their classmates, and we are reinforcing that we are a community of writers; they love to share, and they want to share their writing.

Our Lower Primary students — hard at work and play!

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true grid Consistency, efficiency, freeing up time. Those are the three main reasons that the Lower Primary and Upper Primary leadership decided to put together learning grids for our primary students. A grid is a weeklong learning plan for kids and gave consistency across the 10 classrooms per grade, and were created by a “task force” of teachers. Not only did this free teachers up to create richer content, but it was much easier for parents to follow, especially for those families who have kids in more than one grade. Teaching has become very, very visible: Parents perhaps have never had such a clear view of HKIS’s approach to learning at the primary level!

Cover Story

UP students give teachers a thumbs up!

Zoom Boom No matter how old the student, the indispensable tool, the one that makes the difference between an online course and virtual learning, the one that comes closest to recreating the social experience so important to and integral to school, is video conferencing. HKIS made the decision early on to use Zoom as a platform, and it has served well, and was used differently among the four divisions, depending on students’ ages. Across all four divisions, teachers found that it was a wonderful tool to do deep conferencing. Using secure links, kids and teachers could go one-to-one, either in a breakout room in the middle of class, or at another time.

A grade 5 science lesson with Brad Powers, Sarah Deaver, and Megan Godeck.

Crash Course: Virtual Learning Spoiler alert: Teachers love learning. When HKIS asks our teachers what they like about working at HKIS, in third place, after liking the students and liking their colleagues, is the opportunity for professional development (PD). Unfortunately this semester, like all other gatherings, our annual visits from educational experts and conferences in literacy, numeracy, Chinese, and science were canceled, but a new form of PD emerged in real-time: How to teach remotely. Our Tech Coaches and expert colleagues switched into high gear, offering countless sessions on “Zooming In” and “Zooming Up” — how to use the video-conferencing platform to mimic the classroom experience as closely as possible; how to make the most use out of Schoology (a sort of Facebook for classes — a learning management system in the Middle and High Schools); and how to engage with our youngest learners who aren’t as tech-savvy as our older students. And as with all new learnings, there were ups and downs and bumps along the way, but in the end, every one of our teachers has been able to adapt their usual classroom teaching to the virtual realm.

“I’ve been meaning to shorten my lessons for years, and I’ve learned how to make a shorter mini-lesson.” Mekala Weerakoon, Grade 2 teacher

LP teachers Mekala Weerakoon and Christy

Niemeyer record a lesson.

it can’t happen without i.t. Shoutout to our IT department who supported all 3,500 of us to be online during the closure! See page 39 for an interview with our head of Information Technology, alumnus Roy Bas ’94. UP students share writing samples during Chinese Studies. SUMMER 2020 DRAGONTALES

Cover Story

Middle School Mambo The changes that happen in Middle School are dizzying. In sixth grade,

Middle Schoolers may be social distancing, but had the company of their little brothers and other pets.

students are venturing into the new world of secondary school, with the new responsibilities that come with that — more independence, and a greater need for support from their parents. By the time students are in grade 8, they are more in charge of their learning, as they gear up for life in High School. This is a big range, and modifying our Middle School program to something that would work remotely for the whole school took a few tweaks. Initially, we wanted to give students the most flexible schedule possible, giving kids recorded classes and lesson plans for each day, so that they could find the routines at home that suited them best. This is what we had done in the fall when school was suspended for a week due to the social unrest in our city. However, as the school closure extended to two weeks, then four weeks, it was clear that we needed to support students by giving them more structure to the day, and we switched over to following an adapted bell schedule complete with live instruction over Zoom, in addition to the teacher videos and lesson plans. This means that students have the best of both worlds: They can review the recordings and follow lesson plans, while at the same time gaining the benefit of live video conferencing with teachers.

So that was academics taken care of. But what about social relationships and general well-being? Middle School decided to take a Wednesday

and make it a wellbeing day — encouraging kids to get off screens, do some reading for pleasure, and do some exercise, or, if they needed to, a breather, or, to catch up on any work they were behind on. This was a hugely popular move, so popular that it inspired both Upper Primary and High School to make their own wellbeing initiatives. Students were also thinking of creative ways to connect with their friends — setting up a peer tutoring group, or by hanging out with counselors during a “Chill + Chat” session, or with their school house during a jumbo Zoom with kids from all grades within a house hanging out online.

DRAGONTALES SUMMER 2020

Cover Story

Parent Perspective data dive: shockingly positive During the school closure, it became very important for us to know how well home learning was going for our students and their families, and how they were doing in terms of wellbeing and stress during the disruption to the normal school year. Hong Kong’s Education Bureau asked all schools to find out where their families were – had they returned after the Chinese New Year Adam Pecher, HKIS’s Data Analyst Holiday? Through this, we knew that about 25% of our families were outside Hong Kong. This would help us decide how to run our virtual learning, with the understanding of which time zones our students were in. Second, we began to send out home learning surveys, with specific questions to inform us about what was working well, and what wasn’t. This was a bit nerve wracking — our teachers and parents have very high expectations of what education at HKIS should look like, and we wondered if people would be satisfied with how it comes across remotely. The answer has been a resounding yes. In High School, in particular, over 90% of parents and 75% of students were satisfied or very satisfied with home learning. This is a huge relief, and a validation of the work that our teachers, coaches and school leaders have done to streamline and make virtual learning as efficient, accessible, effective and engaging as possible. Anonymous surveys allow us to hear from the whole parent community and how they are feeling supported, or how frustrated they are. And while we hear frequently from parents who are extremely positive or negative about their experience, survey data allows us to hear from those who might have more nuanced and widely-shared reactions to the program. Data has been helpful in figuring out where we are and how we’re doing. And by asking our students and families how they’re doing now, we are able to ask again later, and compare how they fared during these difficult few months with a normal term, now that they are building new tools in resilience. Grade 4 teachers Alex Cleary and Stan Krause collaborate to teach a lesson on colonialism.

Wonder Wednesdays “take off” at UP.

By Jacci Grawburg, Grade 4 parent

Knowing I don’t have to be my kid’s teacher is a huge relief ! It didn’t start that way. I had my whiteboard, I had a schedule, but kids weren’t finishing their schoolwork until dinnertime. It was very technologically challenging, too — I even once accidentally deleted my daughter’s schoolwork! It was a very steep learning curve, and I didn’t really understand what my role was supposed to be. By week three, things were manageable. I was grateful for the HKIS surveys, which gave me a sense that I could share our experience and that the feedback was being heard. But the most profound feedback that I had was from my daughter. I overheard her once saying to her teacher that I was her biggest challenge to home learning. I laughed out loud when I heard that...and then reflected and thought “this is horrible!” So there’s a lot of reflection, and a lot of prayer, especially for grace.

art in a time of quarantine Are you wondering about art and music? Wonder no longer. See page 8 for a peek into what our LP and UP Art Teachers have been creating, and page 49 for music projects featured on social media.

But I Get Up Again

Upper Primary students are in a unique stage. They still play, but there are academic needs. They are digital natives in many ways given their generation, but they are too young to be given full access to digital devices or social media. This posed a great challenge for teachers in Upper Primary as they took on the journey of home learning for grades 3-5. After about a week of getting their ducks in a row and trying to deliver content individually by classroom, the teachers, with the support of the admin team of principal Ben Hart and associate principals Gene Cheh and Virginia Udall, changed their course. They streamlined their classes to set curriculum standards, divided and conquered by sharing teaching responsibilities by subject, and chose a set of consistent platforms for students and parents to access. In a matter of days, students in Grade 4 who have never accessed email before were given a crash course on how to set up Gmail and track their assignments through Google Docs posted on Google Classroom. Grade 5 was already up and running on Google Classroom, and Grade 3 stuck to Seesaw to submit their work. Upper Primary is a time for students to grow in their independence. Once this system was put in place, combining all the expertise and creativity of an HKIS program, our 8 to 11-year-olds were able to shine with a profoundly increased sense of independence and a bunch of newfound technical skills! n SUMMER 2020 DRAGONTALES

Students’ Experience

The Upper Primary — High School Band Virtual Mentorship Program Music has always held a strong presence in the HKIS community, and with the school suspension and the change to home learning, a Virtual Mentor collaboration between the Upper Primary Band and the High School Band students was initiated and implemented. Band students Ashley Chen ’23 and Jacob Kwon ’23 wanted to give back to the community and help young learners find the same enjoyment in music that they did in their passage through the Upper Primary and Middle School Bands, and in to High School Band. They recruited fellow High School musicians with the aim to motivate UP students to continue with their musical journey despite the adversity, while simultaneously offering an opportunity for HS students to learn valuable skills through teaching and mentoring. Overall, it was a great success!

Here, the students reflect on their experience:

“Though the pandemic has proved to be challenging to all of us, the Virtual Mentorship Program has thrived and succeeded in furthering our love for music and strengthening the bonds through our community.” Ashley Chen ’23

“When Ashley and I started this program, we initially sought to address the need to help the kids ‘get in some reps’ during this coronavirus pandemic. I’m fortunate to have an enthusiastic group of talented musicians to mentor, and I look forward to an even brighter future for the HKIS music program” Jacob Kwon ’23

DRAGONTALES SUMMER 2020

“My mentor understands what I need to work on to be a great trumpet player. He encourages me and doesn’t criticize.” Zachary Lai ’27

High School #squadgoals

Students’ Experience

Covid-Curriculum

Notes from a Student TA

High School statistics students dive into coronavirus data.

Senior Anna Chen wants to become a teacher. Since September, she has been working as a Teacher’s Assistant in the High School Math Department with Mrs. Janet Taylor. As with so much this semester, her experience changed dramatically once all classes went virtual.

By Devang Chaudhary ’20 and Jimmy Liu ’20

One of the factors that contributes to the threat of the nCoV is that people who have the disease can infect others without exhibiting any symptoms. As part of our statistics project for Advanced Topics in Mathematics, we wanted to model the disease based on the existing data while taking asymptomatic infections into account, with the aim of more accurately modelling the spread of the virus. The preliminary step was researching the data we needed: we consulted the WHO daily coronavirus report for data on the incubation period, recovery period, and transmission rate (R0), and we used the John Hopkins University heat map to track the number of cases over the months of January and February. We coded our model using the programming language Java, and used Desmos (graphing software) to graph our final data. One of the initial problems to arise was that there was no concrete data on the probability of an exposed person becoming infected (sigma). As a result, we added another dimension to our study, where we would estimate various sigma values, before finally choosing the one with the least mean absolute percent error. We also discovered that there was a big jump in the infected population of the reported data at a certain point. To account for this, we calculated a new second R0 value, to be used from this point onwards. Our final model exhibited a lovely logistic (‘S’) shape, meaning that the infected population is expected to increase approximately exponentially at first before flattening out as it approaches an asymptote. However, our mean absolute percent error was quite high. To further improve our model, we could add a quarantine and death phase. A quarantine phase would account for the idea that infected people do not keep on infecting other people as they are quarantined, while a death phase would provide us with the crucial statistic of how many people are expected to die. We could also segregate our population by age group and gender to account for potential confounding variables.

By Anna Chen ’20

As I’d like to pursue a career in education, I requested to be a TA and started this school year as a TA in a freshman algebra class. I sat with the students each class and answered questions to help them consolidate concepts without having to disrupt anything their teacher was doing. I loved how lively and eager to learn the students were. Being able to interact with them and getting to know each of their unique personalities was something that made teaching really enjoyable for me. However, since classes moved online, it became much harder to interact with the students. As we’re now separated by a screen, it’s harder for me to gauge where they’re at. Even though I know that some students are struggling, I no longer know what they’re struggling with unless they tell me and it’s harder for me to help without disrupting class. Teaching online also feels very impersonal and it’s really disheartening to not be able to interact with your students. I’m often speaking to a screen and getting no replies from a sea of muted faces. It feels like I’m just talking to myself and it takes away some of the fun I had as a TA. However, I recently did a one-on-one session with a student and it felt very gratifying and rewarding. It was so nice to be able to connect with them and I was so happy to answer their questions. Being able to talk to the student honestly really made my day! Online classes have made my students more accountable for their learning, something that will definitely help them as they progress through High School. Being a TA online has also given me a better perspective of what my teachers are going through. Their resiliency and ability to still make classes fun and meaningful truly inspires me. Even though I’ve been able to get into a new routine with virtual learning, I am excited to get back to physical school! n

All in all, we learned a lot about statistical modeling through this study and thoroughly enjoyed it.

r with the

Anna Chen and Mrs. Janet Taylo freshman algebra class.

SUMMER 2020 DRAGONTALES

Then and Now

Virtual School 2003 vs. 2020 Then and Now The Covid-19 outbreak brought back memories of the SARS outbreak in 2003, which deeply affected Hong Kong and shut down schools for a few weeks. There have been similarities between the two events but some differences too: The 2020 suspension has been many times longer and has disrupted the global community in a way SARS did not. And yet, following SARS in 2003, HKIS saw its sharpest drop ever in enrollment, while current enrollment numbers for the 2020-21 school year remain steady. Here, we ask teachers and staff members to share memories of their time at HKIS during SARS and how it compares to this semester’s closure. Shirley Pushkarna, UP Teacher’s Assistant In 2003, SARS hit and escalated so fast that all of Hong Kong shut down rendering it a ghost town. Just like now, schools closed; however, faculty and staff reported to school daily. Virtual school was up and running expeditiously but was rudimentary compared to home learning now in 2020. Most schoolwork was sent via email. Lessons were prepared and photocopies of worksheets made and then scanned to attach to emails. Teachers touched base with students by phone. 2020 technology has enabled a sophisticated virtual learning experience that is easier to prepare and above all the personal touch of seeing and talking with students. In 2003, the school was able to reopen and have students on campus until the last day of the school year. It was good to have physical and personal closure, especially for seniors as graduation took place. Hopefully, we were able to have similar closure this school year.

Anne Street Allan, Middle School Language Arts Teacher My strongest memories of SARS concern announcements during the period I left Hong Kong to attend a Writing Workshop. Flying Hong Kong to San Francisco where crew outnumbered the handful of travellers, we had to keep our masks on for the entire flight. On arrival, the Immigration Hall at San Francisco was packed. Tired, I did not want to queue for five hours, so making sure that my soggy scrap of blue gauze did not muffle my words, I announced very loudly, “From Hong Kong! Can I come through? From Hong Kong …HONG KONG!” I still laugh at the memory of many hundreds of weary travellers INSTANTLY jumping out of the way to let me through. I was Moses parting the Red Sea. Later, I introduced myself at the workshop with my most friendly smile announcing, “Hello, I’m Anne and I’m from HONG KONG …” Wow, the sight of so many teachers’ mouths dropping open in unanimous visible stunned silence seared into my memory. As educators, we’ve all had the kid who is last to be picked by his peers so yes, for the following days, I was THAT kid. The most unsettling memory though was in my hotel room watching early morning CNN for the news ticker announcing the increasing number of deaths back in Hong Kong. Thankfully, SARS did not last as long as Covid-19 but it left an indelible mark on all of us who lived through those days.

From the 2003 Orientale yearbook 22

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Then and Now

From the 2003 Orientale yearbook

Sharon Leung, Director of High School Athletics What a difference almost two decades makes in relation to online learning! Back in 2003, we managed home schooling for nearly 5 weeks. When the government announced that schools were closing, teachers were asked to report to campus where we spent a week mapping out distance learning using a system called “Moodle”. Since my boys were in grades five and one at the time, this meant receiving an electronic weekly packet of worksheets, activities and experiments to complete from across all subjects. As a PE teacher, we sent home suggested activities and asked families to choose those that best suited their children’s interests and to log their exercise. My friends and I banded together and booked out the clubhouse at our housing complex and set up “school” for 2-3 hours each morning. We found this a much more productive way of completing the packets. It was amazing how our children were so much more cooperative with other parents than their own! Luckily we didn’t have “stay at home” orders so our kids were able to go out to the playground which we used as a motivator for getting work done. When we did return to campus in mid-April, we had to sign temperature check logs each morning and anyone flying in/out had to sign health declaration forms and have their temperature taken upon arrival into the SAR.

Joanne Brown, HS Science Teacher Our children (Bailee and Dana) were three and two years old then, and I remember considering the possibility of escaping to Hawaii and conducting online classes from there. My brother operated a resort there; however we realized if we landed at his resort, then the stigma of being

from Hong Kong would be bad for his business. We stayed in Hong Kong and did email online learning. Students would submit their work through email, and we would communicate lessons and assignments on email. The city was a ghost town; streets and alleyways were cleaned up; people started wearing masks and spitting became a thing of the past. I do believe these memories of SARS have helped Hong Kong be strong/ proactive and have vision/hope in this current battle. And now, 17 years later, it’s deja vu with much better technology and pedagogy of student learning! I am so thankful for all the tech tools that we have to run online learning, as well as our tech support people. Our ability to communicate with students is not as ideal as face to face; however it allows us to connect and grow. In spite of the challenges, I do believe having this school structure in place allows students a feeling of accomplishment and purpose, that gives them a sense of control over their future paths.

Christina Yuen, Senior Accountant I have been working at HKIS since July 15, 1976 (with a short break in 2005). HKIS has been a source of stability and security for my whole working life. I felt this very strongly in 2003 during the SARS outbreak, and also now. Even though the Covid-19 outbreak has lasted much longer than SARS, I don’t feel worried about the disease in Hong Kong. I wear a mask when I take the MTR every morning to catch the staff bus, and once I am on campus I know my colleagues and I are totally safe. n

SUMMER 2020 DRAGONTALES

Then and Now

Class of 2003 Reflections + Support for Class of 2020 We reached out to the Class of 2003 (which lived through SARS during its senior year) to see what words of encouragement, advice and wisdom they could share with the Class of 2020. Here’s what alums told our seniors to encourage them through the remainder of the school year, and into their future!

Hang in there all of you! SARS wasn’t a lot of fun, but it was a learning experience that helped me, Hong Kong and the rest of the world get through this COVID-19 crisis. It really sucked to have Interim cancelled and not be able to see your friends for 3-4 weeks, but looking back I can understand why this was necessary. Back in 2003, I felt at the time that people were overreacting, but now that I am a 35-year old dealing with elderly parents/grandparents (i.e. vulnerable populations), I can see we were definitely not overreacting. Measures to close schools, borders, social distancing aren’t a lot of fun, but the alternative seems worse. So please stay safe! It’s frustrating to be confined to home, but think of it this way – this is an opportunity to explore some of your other interests and do some of the other things you’ve wanted but never found the time to. As a senior, you probably don’t have that much work to do (senioritis, unlike Covid-19, is a perennial phenomenon) and just saving on the morning and afternoon bus ride frees up a lot of time for you. There’s a lot of hobbies you can pursue here – try to find a productive one you like and pursue it! I was (and still am) a nerd so I spent my time reading about AP World History and eventually took the AP Exam for it and did well, even though I never took the class. I know others spent the time getting to know their family members better, pursued activities online, learned to code, home workouts, read dense yet interesting novels, etc. The possibilities are endless. But if you’re not going to do any of that, please make sure you get some sleep! When you get older you realize how valuable sleep is, and High Schoolers are perennially deprived of it. I am still friends with many classmates from HKIS 2003 and we still see each other regularly (current crisis excepted). I look back at High School and still have very fond memories. And on occasion when we do talk about SARS, we look at it as a challenge that as a class we overcame together. So will you. Hang in there, we will overcome this. Albert Lui ’03

Hello! Sending warm greetings from my office in Norway! I remember SARS well, my mother has very weak lungs, so we were particularly worried. I remember that during SARS she would wash the milk carton after shopping just to make sure we didn’t bring it into our home. Usually time off school would be great! But AP exams were coming up, and I was worried missing class would make me get a bad result. I am what you call a late bloomer. But one of my favorite memories is sitting by the pool and studying on my own, making flashcards to remember facts. I remember it well, because I kind of liked it. I didn’t know it then, but that experience would give me great confidence when it came to self-study (which there is a lot of in college). I learned to trust in my own abilities to teach myself, to plan and to conquer. Best of luck, and try to think of this is an opportunity for self-development and self-discipline. You may surprise yourself. Jeanneth Nodland ’03

I remember SARS as actually being a really fun out of the ordinary time :) When things in life change unexpectedly, don’t get trapped in a struggle of complaining how it’s so different, but rather completely embrace the chance to do what you normally could not. Grasp this moment to go deep into a passion, create works for your portfolio, prepare gifts and letters for loved ones, things we always wish we had time for. Life is going to continue to change and if you can meet it with an open mind, you will learn how to adapt and have fun no matter what. When you graduate and really live in the outside world, you will realize what a privilege the precious bubble and safety of HKIS is, we are so lucky. Liz Belfer ’03

I remember how hard it was to stay motivated without the day to day of seeing your peers and working inside a classroom. Having everything online (not to mention painfully slow dial-up internet in 2003!) made it very challenging to keep up with the course-load. As seniors getting ready to graduate, this became a problem because we weren’t able to fulfill our credits to graduate and ended up having to do a lot of extra credit! So my advice to all seniors is to make sure you stay on top of your work! Organize small study sessions with your classmates during this time and hold each other accountable for meeting deadlines. Though we should avoid large group gatherings, small groups should be fine if we exercise adequate precautionary measures. If there are concerns, video conferencing would also be effective! Anonymous ’03

DRAGONTALES SUMMER 2020

HKIS Gallery

Middle School Student Art Art & Design

Veronica Guo ’24

Arianna Khoo ’24

Jane Poon ’25

Kaiya Coleman ’24

Nao Murata ’25 SUMMER 2020 DRAGONTALES

Community

church of all nations

“We do not lose heart”

Upper Primary

Chapel

Kevin Kong, CAN’s latest Director of Youth Ministry, accepted the position in January. A few short weeks into his job, school shut down and services moved online. Since being instrumental in the founding of HKIS, Church of All Nations (CAN) has viewed its role as one of service to the school and larger community. Spiritual care activities like public worship, leading school chapel, counseling, prayer, service, and providing compassion during times of community tragedy are an essential part of the ministry of CAN. The shared history, physical proximity, governance, and sense of grounding in the Christian faith mean that CAN’s pastors and leaders deeply value their service to HKIS students, staff, and families. On January 19, 2020, CAN installed Kevin Kong as Director of Youth Ministry. Kevin had come to Hong Kong through a partnership of CAN with the Lutheran Church — Missouri Synod (LCMS) Office of International Mission to complete a two-year internship as part of his study through Concordia University, Irvine in 2017. Kevin’s primary role is to serve young people through mentoring, counseling, and spiritual care. He has been instrumental in expanding CAN’s support for primary school chapels, after-school clubs like JOY Club and FISH, and connecting Christian students from other Hong Kong schools with each other. With the opening of the Spiritual Life Office in the HKIS High School, Kevin has become a safe and compassionate advisor to students. Leveraging his own hobbies of e-sports, basketball, and sampling Cantonese cafés, Kevin connects well with students as he encourages them in the growth of wellbeing. We are blessed and happy that Kevin has joined our community in this role. “For to this end we toil and strive, because we have our hope set on the living God, who is the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe…Let no one despise you for your youth, but set the believers an example in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, in purity.” 1 Timothy 4:10,12 n

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Young Life year end gat

hering

Kevin as Martin Luther

St. Baldrick’s Foundation– Shave for the Cure

Community

r for Farewell dinne yant Br n Jo r teache

LCMS Youth Gathering

St. Baldrick’s 2019

Kevin reflects on his first few months on the job: Joining the Church of All Nations team and HKIS community, I imagined deep and meaningful time engaging with students. Lo and behold, a pandemic hit. What now? Schools are meeting virtually, and students are locked at home. Here I am sitting in my office—alone. Oh wait! Church is still open! Oh, never mind, we are going virtual.

Confirmation 2019

Well, God, what are you doing? A question I have found myself asking a lot these past few months. All my goals and tasks I set for this year have been put on the back burner and/or thrown out the window. OK God, time to adapt and overcome. What goals shall I set now? Hurry, I need to find something to do. Perhaps, God is saying, “Be still.” Maybe it is time to take a break from everything and breathe a little.

Installation and Commissioning

“Recess” for High School students during home learning

Students in JOY Club only know Kevin as Gordie, the puppet.

Could it be both? Knowing when to move and when to stop. There are times for both. Time to adapt and learn to reach students virtually through videos. Finally, after years of watching people make videos and considering making videos, I am finally the one who is putting together weekly videos for kids. Times can be hard during a lockdown and the best thing we can do is offer our time to be with someone during this time which can feel like one of mourning. Times change but our God doesn’t and neither does his mission. We continue to share his love in every way we can with all that we can. Especially, during these difficult times, we are all learning to adapt, improvise, and overcome together. “Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” 2 Corinthians 4:16-18

Vacation Bible School with a partner church SUMMER 2020 DRAGONTALES

Student Life

upper and lower primary Library Drive-Through

Our librarians get creative and lend thousands of books during the school closure. By Laura Chesebro, Lower Primary Librarian, and Amy Robinson, Upper Primary Librarian

We are living in interesting times, and unique challenges call for innovative solutions. With school and Hong Kong libraries closed, Lower and Upper Primary libraries wanted to get books into the hands of young readers but were faced with the challenge of how to do this safely. With some inspiration from other librarians and some creative thinking, the Library Drive-Through was born. Families ordered up to ten specific books from each library with the option of having librarians select fifteen additional books, for a total of up to 50 books. Library teams worked to select just the right books and organize them for pick-up by families, drive-through style. Without ever leaving their cars, families were able to return books and leave with a full bag of fresh books selected especially for them. HKIS families borrowed more than 10,000 books from the two libraries! While it wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t the same as seeing readers in the libraries, librarians and families were thrilled to know the young readers had new books to enjoy. n

DRAGONTALES SUMMER 2020

Student Life

upper primary The Young Americans visit Upper Primary For the first time ever, the Young Americans (YA) visited and worked with HKIS students. Students were treated to a week of high energy singing, dancing and lots of fun! By Gene Cheh, Upper Primary Associate Principal

Photos courtesy of Bonnie Bajaj.

A number of years ago, a friend and colleague at Canadian International School (CDNIS) invited me for a visit. He noted that the school had invited the Young Americans, a traveling group of talented singers and dancers, to work with their grade 6 students. Not knowing what to expect, I made the trek to CDNIS, and within seconds of being together, I was amazed at the level of energy, excitement, joy, and fun that this group of 40 performers brought to and engaged with the students. The cast members showed such great care, youthful enthusiasm and sincere warmth that it allowed all students, including those who appeared shy or less motivated, to experience the joy of music, dance and working together. I knew that this

was simply a must-have experience I wanted for our HKIS students too!

And finally, after four years of thinking, planning, negotiating and organizing, it was deeply satisfying to see our grade 3, 4 and 5 students walk into Church of All Nations and be flanked by 40 bouncing, hooting-and-hollering, high-fiving Young Americans. Students were given a quick introduction before being treated to a choreographed song and dance number that was met with awe and thunderous applause. Immediately afterward, students were shocked and in disbelief as one of the group leaders promised that the students would be able to perform the exact same song and dance routine in about 20 minutes. And true to what I had witnessed at CDNIS four years ago, students were soon up on their feet, working in small groups to learn the different parts of the dance led by individual cast members and performed the very same dance after 20 minutes. Amazing! Grade 5 students continued to work with the YA cast members for three more days culminating in a dynamic evening performance on Friday, January 17 in front of a full house at Church of All Nations. The Young Americans performed a wide variety of popular hit songs and high-energy dance numbers for the first 45 minutes and then for another 45

minutes with our talented students. Students performed originally composed songs written by them throughout the week, humorous skits, individual and small group harmonies, and a number of whole-group (260 performers!) highly-choreographed routines and show tunes. Among the amazing and many unforgettable memories I have for the week together, my favorite might be the end of the final evening when the homestay families met with their YA cast members for the last time. These families hosted our Young Americans guests, introduced them to various sights and sounds of Hong Kong and spent time together, something that parents commented as one of the highlights of the whole experience. The joy shared from performing together made for a perfectly satisfying conclusion to a week of hard work. Thank you Young

Americans and we look forward to making this an annual event at HKIS Upper Primary! n

Farewell Mr. Cheh! June 2020 sees the end of an era in the Upper Primary School, with Mr. Gene Cheh departing after 19 years at HKIS. Mr. Cheh came to HKIS from CDNIS in August 2001 as a grade 5 homeroom teacher, which he was for eight years before becoming a UP Associate Principal 11 years ago. Mr. Cheh and his family are heading to the American School of Dubai in the UAE, where Mr. Cheh will take the position of Elementary School Principal. Keep in touch with Mr. Cheh

at gcheh@asdubai.org!

SUMMER 2020 DRAGONTALES

Student Life

middle school The MS Story Collective

Where we mine the ‘home learning’ silver lining into sparkly bits of narrative gold Excerpts from reflections by Middle School Students, capturing life during the home learning experience — visit http://blog.hkis.edu.hk/wp/wbory/ to read them in full, and more!

James Ellis ’25

Vincent Yoo ’25

The coronavirus. Around me, the world spins faster than ever before… and I am getting dizzy. Meanwhile, the news blasts away shoving false information down my head. I don’t know what to think if I am thinking at all…

Things have changed so drastically, yet things have remained in a similar cycle in my life. Food, memes, games, procrastination, existential dread, temporary depression from said procrastination and repeat. At least, that’s what was supposed to happen only for a few months at this point.

I gaze out the window and up towards the clouds. I take a deep breath and count slowly to ten. Life slowly slips back into me. Being stuck in this apartment makes me feel trapped and helpless, as though my voice is strained in a large crowd and cannot be heard. I close my eyes and continue to breathe. With each breath, I become increasingly aware of myself and my surroundings. I am quickly plummeting into the world of meditation. Life is a blue sky, endless with possibilities. I try to imagine I am flying across the sky without troubles on my shoulders. The breeze blows my hair, and I look down at the birds flying below me. Problems and stress are just clouds floating across the horizon of life. Once overhead, they will never come back. They will shatter down and drop, drenching me with emotion. Happiness. Euphoria. Gratefulness. I am drenched but left with the hope of tomorrow. The hope of where people think of one another, before themselves. The hope that we can come together… not physically, but mentally. The hope of perseverance and life.

Sofia Mandoli ’25

Everywhere I’ve lived there has been something that has or is happening that is pretty drastic. I lived in London during Brexit, I lived in California during the Trump election, and now I am living through the virus in the world just like everyone else. I used to think I was an introvert, and would love to spend a day inside and read. But after this I’m pretty sure that I’m going to want to go outside EVERY day. I have learned how grateful I am for the small moments I’m allowed to go on walks outside or to the beach and experience the outdoors for a mere moment before I have to grab my mask because there’s people coming down the street. I have tried to keep myself sane by doing online workouts at home because it makes me feel like I’m being more productive. I have tried to adjust to home learning, but I know I’m going to be happy when we are allowed to go back to school.

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When I first heard that school was going to be suspended, I was jumping with joy. I told myself, this would be a great opportunity to play games all day, gobble up whatever was in my recommended feed on YouTube, eat so many things I never would have eaten if there was school, and finally, talk to friends about pointless subjects for hours and hours. But obviously, I wouldn’t be creating this paragraph without expectation subversion. I’ve realized, my stress regarding homework has now increased to levels of massive proportions. In class, there is usually classwork you need to get done within the class period, which is reasonable, and removes any stress when you walk into the classroom. However, in home learning, everything has an extended due date, and as a teenager, I have to admit, I honestly can’t resist procrastination. Also, because of home learning, this is technically the highest amount of homework we’ve gotten. Some of us might go a bit crazy from all this, added with homework possibly given from external tutors. Not to mention, playing games and watching YouTube feels empty all of a sudden, and for some of us introverts, school is the only place where social interactions can happen. This may not be the most dangerous moment in history, or the most deadly pandemic either, but I can guarantee you that at least a few people will have changed drastically in personality when we return to HKIS.

Hayden Michael ’25

Now that things have settled down a bit in Hong Kong, my days are relatively quiet. I do my home learning, then I might go to a beach or occasionally to afternoon tea. Maybe I am unhappy about home learning, but some kids have no learning at all so perhaps it would be more fitting to be thankful rather than angry about this situation. All in all, I think that despite home learning being a miserable chore, it is necessary and something positive that could possibly come out of this is that it will make students appreciate school more. n

Student Life

middle school and high school

My Freedom Day

Published in the South China Morning Post's Young Post on March 17, 2020. Print-ready article provided courtesy of Young Post.

Amidst the many canceled events this semester, HKIS was pleased to still participate in CNN’s My Freedom Day global campaign to raise awareness about modern-day slavery. This year, instead of correspondents on campus, Middle and High School students took to Zoom to share their thoughts with CNN anchor Kristie Lu Stout on ending modern-day slavery and what freedom means to them. Read more in this article by Ariane Lee ’25 and Zara Rashid ’25, which appeared in the South China Morning Post’s Young Post. n

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Student Life

high school Eva Schloss

Holocaust Survivor Eva Schloss on Hope, Gratitude, and Grit Photo courtesy of Quinn Russell Brown, Design by Jeff Seaberg

On January 20, Ms. Eva Schloss, an Austrian-English Holocaust survivor, step-sister to Anne Frank, and author, spoke to our Middle and High School students about her experiences during the Holocaust. Her story of hope, survival, and gratitude struck a chord with our students; you can read a selection of their reflections below. Special thanks to Elanna Mak ’22, the PFO, and the Hong Kong Holocaust and Tolerance Centre for helping to arrange Ms. Schloss’s visit to our community. I think that the most memorable message from Eva’s talk was about losing her brother and how she didn’t want his legacy to be forgotten. She mentioned that life is too short sometimes and since we can’t predict anything that happens, it’s important to value every single day and have meaning and make our lives worthwhile. I want to connect this to my life by remembering to enjoy life and doing things that will make a difference in the world. — Melanie Chan ’20 The most powerful message from Eva that I got was to stay resilient, especially during times of hardships. Despite losing her family and going through a period of depression, she managed to slowly overcome this challenge by thinking positively. This relates to my life as I now understand that life goes on and that I need to have grit when going through difficulties. — Denise Chow ’20 What stuck with me the most from Eva’s talk was what she shared about the after-effects of Auschwitz. We had all previously known about the horrors of being at Auschwitz, but, at least personally, had never realized that the trauma wasn’t close to ending after liberation.This is evident when considering the people who died after they ate too much food when the Russians were feeding them or how Eva experienced her deepest depression after already having been liberated from Auschwitz as she had learned that her father and brother had not survived. — Samara Faruqui ’20 I was quite interested in the point she made about time being a source of healing for her, but also with the passage of time and distance from the events that can cause people to forget what happens if we do not study history. This was one of the many things that stood out to me, but what intrigued me most about this idea was the sort of “double-edged sword” of time. The stories of her time in the camp also shocked me. Even though I had learned about the Holocaust, read Anne Frank’s diary and other personal accounts, hearing Eva Schloss’s story from her made it much more personal and devastating for one to hear. — Claire Kiely ’20 32

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The most memorable message for me was to always have hope because that is what keeps us going in times of hardship. It connects my life in a meaningful way because if Ms. Schloss is able to bounce back from the horror of Auschwitz, I should be able to face my life with optimism. — Nam Kong ’20

The most memorable story from Eva’s talk for me would have to be her description of the times later on in her life when she chose to go back to Auschwitz for TV interviews. This was memorable to me because it was the final piece of proof that this woman is one of the strongest and confident women out there. Even after her entire ordeal, she was still able to travel back to Auschwitz several times and face her past. I remember thinking to myself that this was something I would never be able to do if I were to ever go through an experience like that. It taught me an important life lesson, though. It taught me that no matter what happens, no matter what you go through, you shouldn’t ever have to hide away from your past. When you face the hardships that you experienced once, you become a stronger person. — A.J. Winegar ’20 I have always known what the Holocaust was and terrible and impactful it was, I have always read books and heard stories about it, however, with somebody truly there in person, to have really been through the Holocaust, it felt different compared to all my other experiences towards the Holocaust. The way she talked about her story in person was very impactful as she spoke on the subject with so much passion. — Charlotte Pang ’20 n

Parent’s Perspective

parent’s perspective Coronavirus Diaries

My Kids Have Been Stuck at Home for 22 School Days. It will be this way until April at least. By Tanya Underwood This article first appeared online on March 3, 2020. Reprinted here courtesy of Slate.com. https://slate.com/human-interest/2020/03/coronavirusdiaries-home-school-hong-kong.html

We are on day 22 of no school in Hong Kong, not counting weekends. In late January, the government asked residents to avoid crowded places and large gatherings. The schools closed, and the museums and sports facilities shut down soon after. Restaurants remain open but empty. The Education Bureau announced last week that school would reopen on April 20 at the earliest. The city is in a holding pattern, and so are we. My older daughter is in second grade at an international school. Each day around 4 p.m., her teacher emails a “home learning” plan for the next day. For a 7-year-old who doesn’t yet know how to work independently, “home learning” means home schooling. In our version of home school, both parents work, and there is also a 3-year-old prowling around the house, attempting to eat Legos or color the couch with a Sharpie. To be honest, during the first week of school closure, I didn’t even open the teacher’s emails. I struggled to keep up with my own assignments as a freelance writer. No way did I have time to also teach my child. My husband, a teacher himself, said he did some learning with her that week. It wasn’t very much, and it certainly wasn’t consistent. Fortunately, things have calmed a bit since then. We’ve settled into a routine where our daughter meets every weekday morning with one or two—no large gatherings! —second graders in our apartment building, and they do their work together. It is good enough for now, but I worry my daughter will fall behind grade level. Her teacher calls each student once a week and also facilitates weekly small-group video chats—as much remote instruction as their young attention spans can handle. Last week, he asked the students what color they associated with home learning, an exercise in getting the kids to talk about their feelings. My daughter said, without hesitation, “A low yellow.” When I asked her why she gave that answer, she said, “Because yellow means happy, and I’m not as happy right now.” Her explanation did not surprise me. She is still a happy kid, but she cries more often. She misses her school friends and worries about getting sick. She is afraid to touch door handles or elevator buttons as we leave the building

to walk to the neighborhood grocery store or nearby beach. When we talk about the virus, she asks to change the subject. These days, she threads herself around me the second I sit down, her arms locked in mine, her head in the crook of my neck, like human connection is the only thing keeping her safe. My husband is a High School biology teacher at the same international school where my daughter attends second grade. He’s still teaching his full course load, except now everything is online. He conducts most of the classes from our balcony, which is on the 10th floor and overlooks Hong Kong’s signature lush green hills. It’s the only reliably quiet spot in our apartment. Each class begins with a COVID-19 check-in. They review new data, then discuss how the outbreak has changed over time. My husband gives the students a few minutes to ask questions or share concerns before moving on to the planned lesson. Sometimes he turns his computer screen outward so he and his students can watch the black kites (a kind of small raptor) that swoop gracefully above our apartment building. They call the birds their “class pets.” It is a comfort to all of them, I think, that nature remains unchanged. At the end of a long balcony day last week, my husband told me that he’s depressed. A laptop screen with 20 small faces staring at him is a poor substitute for joking around with his students during labs, and saying “hi” to them in the hallways. He wants what we all want: for life to feel normal again. Still, we spend more time outside, and we spend more time together. Every other Friday, we meet up with a group of friends and their children and hike to the local country park for a BBQ. There, we watch the kids chuck rocks into the reservoir, an area they call “Mars” because of the reddish earth that surrounds it. The name is apt because even though we live on an island with 7 million people, we are usually the only ones in sight on these outings, the lone inhabitants of a strange planet. The kids cook their dinner and dessert over the fire. Their fingers get sticky with grease and marshmallow. The portable speaker plays Vampire Weekend, or Taylor Swift, or maybe even hair metal. The kids complain about the hair metal, but they always dance anyway. We don’t talk about the virus in those moments, or all the what-ifs. On these evenings, it feels like we are getting away with something. n

SUMMER 2020 DRAGONTALES

Alumni Making Moves Tay & wife Emili at his 50th Class Reunion in 2019

Counseling Jackson “Tay” Bosley ’69 Tay Bosley in

their Triumph

circa 1968

enlightened counsel

Dr. Jackson “Tay” Bosley is a clinical psychologist who has committed his career to counseling sexual offenders in order to change their lives and the overall suffering of others.

Tay remembering lost classmates at their 50th Class reunion

HKIS uniform, 1968

Dr. Bosley retired from full-time work from Rutgers University in 2017 and currently is at Princeton University working with students and professors who have been identified by Title IX as having engaged in these types of behaviors. Additionally, Dr. Bosley teaches classes in the Criminal Justice Department of Monmouth University and in the graduate program in Forensic Psychology at Fairleigh Dickinson University. He also serves as an advisor to police, attorneys, and psychologists who work with this population and as an expert witness in court cases involving sexual offenders. He has a Bachelor’s degree in Religion and Psychology from the University of Hawaii, a Master’s degree in Psychology from Antioch University and Doctorate in Clinical Psychology from Rutger’s University.

for refusing to fight in the war. I was involved in anti-war protests, and that spirit continues as I work against interpersonal violence and for equal rights/justice.

You attended HKIS for your junior year of High School in 1967-68. What influence did HKIS and the people you met have on you personally or professionally?

How did becoming a Buddhist impact or influence your personal and professional life?

HKIS offered a rarified atmosphere of rigorous scholarship and knowledgeable peers. It was an “enhanced environment” that showed me that I could excel in academic situations (if I put out lots of effort). It also taught me to appreciate the wide variety of cultural opportunities that were available, reinforcing my appreciation of Asian culture and religion. Socially, Michael and Peter Swaine and Christy (McCaskill) Wendell remain good friends who offer me encouragement and wise counsel. They were each, in their own way, heavily influenced by our time in Hong Kong and remain assets to the world by the positive influences that they have left in society. What are your fondest memories and experiences from HKIS?

My fondest memories of Hong Kong involved feeling accepted by these great friends and running around (driving around) Hong Kong Island. I still have a picture of me sitting in my mother’s Triumph TR-4 on the Peak. I thought I was hot stuff — it was a heady time for me. You spent part of your childhood in Japan, Thailand and Hong Kong as a result of your father’s career as a diplomat and military officer.

When I lived in the US (Hawaii) I lived at Ft. Shafter, in Honolulu for a period, but basically lived in the civilian community while in Asia. My father was a diplomat and military officer, and I never considered (voluntarily) being involved in either. I was “invited” to be in the army during the Vietnam War, and after cooperating for a period of time, became a conscientious objector and spent a year locked up 34

Tay (on stage) wears his

DRAGONTALES SUMMER 2020

Did the time you spent in Asia as a child influence your eventual study of Buddhism?

I never perceived Buddhism as weird or foreign. My childhood (male) friends in Thailand all went to learn meditation during the rainy season when they reached puberty. Since I was a nominal Christian I did not. I saw the monks every morning as they did their alms rounds, and they were very much treated with graciousness and respect. My friends were all Buddhist and it seemed like a pretty good way to live.

As a young man, having spent some time behind bars, I experienced a crisis of conscience and faith. I longed for some sense of meaning, and eventually lived in two monastic centers in Hawaii while I was struggling to find a purpose in life. I found great happiness in those environments. In one of the monastic centers, my teacher suggested that working to benefit others by reducing the suffering inherent in life was a noble and a worthwhile thing. I went from wishing to escape secular life to immersing myself in it in a way to make things better. You mentioned that you “fell into your work” and that you always knew you wanted to give back and make the world a better place.

I taught birth control in a family planning clinic, worked at the Sexual Abuse Treatment Center in Honolulu, and eventually settled on a career helping individuals who had committed these offenses to change their lives and live in society without hurting others. It was while I was teaching birth control, the issues of sexual abuse kept coming up. It wasn’t a part of my life, and I didn’t even know it was that much of a problem, but it led me to want to do something about it. I offered to do volunteer work for the Sexual Abuse Treatment Center. They offered me a job working with significant others of sexual assault victims — men who’s loved ones were assaulted. Over time, it was suggested working with the perpetrators would be more effective in reducing the aggregate suffering in society. Continued on page 45.

Alumni Making Moves

Medicine

Keith prepares Covid-19 patie to treat nts

Keith Chan ’96 gadgets and gratitude

Keith Chan ’96 went to medical school later (age 29) than traditional pre-meds and became an interventional radiologist, specializing in cancer treatment. Here he reflects on the foundation that HKIS provided him, his passion for understanding patient needs as well as playing with gadgets, and how the Covid-19 pandemic has brought HKIS alumni together. Keith with wife Karen and twins Hannah and Lucas

You were at HKIS from Grade 5 through graduation, then…?

I graduated from HKIS being really interested in doing something where I could be creative and impactful. I liked the idea of making medical devices and seeing it used to improve health, so I studied biomedical engineering and went to Stanford for grad school in mechanical engineering. I joined a med tech company in the Bay Area after graduating, and as a young engineer it was a lot of fun. After several years, and becoming more knowledgeable in medical engineering, I still felt disconnected from actual patient care –– I did not know anyone who benefited from these technologies or the medicine and diseases pertaining to my products. My colleagues who were previously doctors and nurses described their clinical experiences as providing motivation for their daily work, and suggested that I apply for med school so I could blend both my passion for innovation and deep interest in patient care. And the rest is history. Before you went to medical school, what gadget did you work on that you were most excited about?

I was the program director for the AbioCor artificial implanted heart. It was this super complex titanium “grapefruit” for patients with end-stage heart failure. This device replaces the human heart, and has a battery and computer system implanted in the abdomen. Patients had to dock themselves every night to a “charger” to ensure their heart kept working. That’s….incredible! Why did you leave med tech to return to medical school?

It was a tough decision to leave what I was doing, but life isn’t a linear path — we’re constantly evolving, bettering ourselves, always learning. In our own ways, we push ourselves to grow throughout our personal and professional lives. My love for learning did start at HKIS: I discovered that learning can be truly fun, and not “work”... I remember this being especially true with my science teachers in High School — Mr. Joel Klammer, Mr. Eric MacDonald — but even as far back as my grade 6 science teacher, Mrs. Mary Fenton.

Keith and the “grapefruit heart”

So going from working back to graduate school was awesome… and fun. A great thing about Stanford’s program is that they let me explore the various medical specialties early, and my mentor told me that interventional radiology is full of new gadgets and toys. He was right, I love it. So now you’re an interventional radiologist — what’s a day like for you?

I look at imaging to make diagnoses, but then I use the imaging to use tiny tools to do minimally invasive surgeries, such as going through arteries to various parts of the body to stop internal bleeding, or freezing tumors, or open up blocked vessels. I love what I do, and nothing is more rewarding for me than actually seeing that really sick patients get to leave the hospital and go home, or be with patients and their families when they realize they are going to beat that cancer. Outside of work, I teach medical device design at the University of Washington, and help incubate new medical startups. What has work been like for you and your colleagues in the Seattle area in the midst of the Covid-19 outbreak?

Everything is upside down, and now everything in the hospital is about Covid patients. Like my colleagues and teammates, we wear protective gear and have been doing procedures at the bedside of Covid-19 patients who are on ventilators. I feel that every medical worker balances anxiety and fear of being overwhelmed with sick patients with getting sick ourselves. Many of us are also anxious about bringing the disease home to our loved ones and not knowing when we ever get back to what was “normal.” Continued on page 45.

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Alumni Making Moves

Medicine Evelyn Kuong ’99 Performing with World Doctors Orchestra in Paris

Contributing to the Fight Performing charity surgery in mainland China

Charity work in ma

inland China

With sons Alistair and Avery

When Evelyn Kuong ’99 discovered she could enroll straight into medical school at The University of Hong Kong, she jumped right in and graduated in 2004, specializing in orthopedic surgery at Queen Mary Hospital, where she continues to practice. This HKIS “boomerang” (who attended HKIS for grades 1-3 and 7-12) speaks to DragonTales about the HKIS teachers who inspired her, the complexities and joys of pediatric orthopedic surgery, and her sense of duty during the Covid-19 outbreak.

Do you have any particular teachers who particularly supported or inspired you in HKIS?

Why did you choose orthopedic surgery? What do you like about the specialty?

I had outstanding teachers all around, but a few stand out in my mind. Doctor Karl Ostheller (Doc O) taught me the concept of integrity in Geometry class and trusted us enough to take tests on our own as he left the room to get coffee.Trust was a fragile gift bestowed upon me that was never to be taken for granted. Mr. Joel Klammer, my physics teacher, nurtured my fascination with science. He gave me a safe haven to explore the magnificent world of physics while being the only underclassman in Honors Physics and then again as one of only two girls in AP Physics. Mrs. Sue Harvey, my Calculus teacher, indulged my love for math which, at times, resulted in bursts of giggles in the middle of class at the joy of solving a calculus problem. Mr. Marty Schmidt, my homeroom teacher, instilled in me the sense of social responsibility and respect for all cultures. Even with my current crazy schedule, I insist on taking time to do charity work regularly, albeit not as frequently as I would like. I will always remember Mr. Jim Handrich, my High School Principal, shaking every student’s hand as we arrived at school — every single morning, rain or shine.

I specialize in Paediatric Orthopaedic Surgery because it is the perfect marriage of science, art, and humanity. I face daily challenges and philosophical questions. The growing skeleton poses particular technical challenges to a surgeon – growth can limit what surgeries we can do, but can also be manipulated to work in a child’s favor. For a surgeon, the best surgery is the kind that improves the function of a child, but not necessarily the way they look. On the other hand, if a child is born with a medical condition that renders him extremely short and he asks me to lengthen his legs so that he can be taller, is that surgery ethically justified? Just because a child doesn’t look like everyone else, does that mean he’s not normal? What is the most important aspect of being human anyway? How do I, as a surgeon, improve a child’s life with my surgery?

You were quite musical in High School – have you kept that up?

Music has always kept my soul from crumbling under the pressures of daily life. I played flute in Wind Ensemble in High School under the brilliant direction of Mr. Tim Gavlik, who cemented in me the importance of hard work and daily practice. When I was still a surgical resident, I had the honor of joining the World Doctors Orchestra. It is an ensemble of doctors from around the world who all have a passion and talent for music. We meet several times a year to perform in venues all over the globe. Highlights for me include performing at the Berliner Philharmonie, the Paris Philharmonie, the Beethovenfest in Bonn, and the National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing. Playing music is my way of putting some beauty back into the world and serves as a good foil to the technical intricacies of my job as a surgeon during the day.

The last few months have been incredibly difficult for healthcare workers worldwide. Hong Kong has weathered the storm comparatively well so far. But what has it been like for you in the hospital? How are you doing?

I was a final year medical student at The University of Hong Kong when SARS happened in 2003. As Covid-19 started to unfold in January 2020, I knew Hong Kong had developed a good method of handling novel transmissible diseases. There were certainly hiccups along the way, but the medical system in Hong Kong endured. Calm and reason prevailed. Nonurgent surgeries were put on hold for several months, so many surgeons (including me) took turns volunteering to take care of Covid-19 patients to ease the burden on our colleagues. I do not view the weeks I spent away from my family while I worked on the “dirty team” as a sacrifice, but rather, my way of contributing to the fight. Just as the rest of Hong Kong contributed by wearing masks and staying home. This is the perfect illustration of how humans rally together to take care of each other in times of crisis. Individual freedoms may have been temporarily sacrificed and our lives turned upside down, but our society turned out stronger and healthier. n Get in touch with Evelyn at evelynkuong@hotmail.com

DRAGONTALES SUMMER 2020

HKIS Gallery

Middle School Student Art Photography

Kaes Carter ’24 Jacob Yang ’24

Toby Yu ’25

Nicola Wong ’24

Jennifer Yung ’24 SUMMER 2020 DRAGONTALES

HKIS Gallery

High School Student Art Digital Art

Digital Manipulation IFC, Jack Dingemans ’23

Digital Manipulation, Gaia Liu ’23

Sammy Hwang ’23

Jessie Chen ’22

Veronica Fu ’20 38

DRAGONTALES SUMMER 2020

Milestones

learning, uninterrupted Roy Bas ’94 recalls his days as an Upper Primary student at HKIS in the 80s and how his interest in computers back then has set him up tp lead him the Information Technology team at HKIS today.

Roy and colleague YH Gan in the IT lair.

What was your fondest memory from when you were at HKIS?

This is where I learned how to play soccer. I moved from the Philippines and arrived in Hong Kong, where it was the only sport they played back then. And when I say I played soccer, it was morning, lunch, recess, after school...it’s what I looked forward to every day. How did you get into this profession, and what brought you back to HKIS?

Back in ’85-’88, my dad worked for Bank of America in IT, and I wanted to be like my dad. I was already into computers. I’m lucky because HKIS had computers back then as well. We were very advanced! I had been doing IT security and management with my previous company for 18 years, which required a lot of travel. I have five children, and it was a lot of time away from family. An opportunity came up with HKIS for an IT manager. I applied, and here I am. Tell us about the IT department at HKIS.

There are 15 people in the IT department who look after specific areas: infrastructure, database, web application, help desk services, and our AV people. People say it’s a big team, but since we are servicing 3,000 kids, 500 employees, and 6,000 parents, I guess we are at the right capacity to keep things running in IT. Just yesterday [April 23], I was able to go home after spending two days here, including overnight, because of an emergency. We have to keep things online for home learning, and so classroom blogs, Schoology, PowerSchool, DragonNet — they need to be up and running, otherwise, our parents will call our Head of School, our principals, their teachers, and...we don’t want that. We want everything to be running smoothly for our kids. What are the key challenges you have to deal with especially during the time of home learning?

When the system is temperamental, I tend not to go home. I need to make it work first. We tried to put strict rules and policies in our firewall, but we don’t want it to block Schoology and PowerSchool authentications — we need to find a balance between the flexibility of our systems for home learning [access] and our security. I’m the kind of person who likes to walk the talk and lead by example. So even if my

Roy with his wife Glenda and five kids. Roy in 1987.

network knowledge is a bit rusty, I will be there to do what I can to help [my team]. I care for my staff, and so if they don’t sleep, I don’t sleep. I want to serve them as well. Working in a school, you always have to learn new things. When we got back [after Chinese New Year], we were in a bit of a shock that school would be closed and kids wouldn’t be here. But we had to have a platform where teachers can teach. We had looked into Zoom back in November because of the protests in Hong Kong when we had to close school for a week. So we implemented it [for home learning], but continued to change it, as we looked at the security settings that can give the most secure online learning for our kids. Teachers had to have confidence in what they were using. What is the weirdest thing you’ve had to deal with being in this role?

The network runs all over the place, across two campuses and four buildings, and so one day an animal chewed into our fiber — I think it thought it was a noodle or something — and it broke our Internet for Middle and High School. It was during the summertime, thank goodness, but that was the weirdest thing in my whole career. When we get back to school, what is exciting for you about the future?

Augmented reality is on our radar; this would have been really good for home learning! And upgrading our networks for more interactivity in the classroom to give our teachers tools that can really help with their teaching. We always have to look forward to the future, because… we’re HKIS. We’re one of the leading schools in the world, and I’m proud to be an alum! n Stay in touch with Roy! Email him at rbas@hkis.edu.hk

SUMMER 2020 DRAGONTALES

Staying Connected

A Stone to Beat Covid-19 Lucy Doyle, MD is a hospitalist physician at Evergreen Hospital in Kirkland, Washington USA. She wrote this reflection in March, in the early days of the US’s coronavirus outbreak. By Lucy Doyle ’96

The isolation breaks your heart. Spouses both hospitalized with Covid-19 but unable to see each other, sometimes having brief minutes to say goodbye as one is taken to intensive care or passes away. Grandparents finding ways to say goodbye to their children and grandchildren from their hospital room over the phone. Countless phone calls by doctors and nurses relaying messages to loving family members of patients in isolation wards with Covid-19, because for public safety, relatives are not always permitted to visit. These are just a few of the heart-wrenching moments of humanity overcoming the isolation imposed by Covid-19 infection that we have been witnessing in hospitals in Washington State and beyond. Covid-19 hits us hard as a species because of our interconnectedness. Isolation is a requisite part of the response

to the pandemic: isolation of patients by infection control measures in hospitals, limiting family visitors at times of our greatest need for a loved one’s hand to hold, isolation of elderly parents from their communities, social distancing, quarantines, lockdowns, closed borders.

We are the underdogs in this battle against a behemoth virus, SARS-CoV-2. As we face limited resources and an overwhelming strain on our health system, how do we find hope in this battle? How do healthcare workers come home from work and not feel completely devastated? How do patients and families find the courage to recover from the emotional effects of such brutal isolation even when physical recovery is possible? How do we face the grief of losing a family member or colleague to this virus? We can reframe connection and come together. What we in the US saw happening in Asia and Italy as spectators, we now are living in as actors. We now speak of shared experiences. We understand how it feels to look down the barrel of complete uncertainty, face to face with our mortality. I met my husband during a cholera outbreak in a remote area of the jungle in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Despite eroding health infrastructure, his team quickly controlled the outbreak. He chose to become a physician to save lives in the face of a near-constant public health emergency, with great risk to his physical safety. He works in crises from war and 40

DRAGONTALES SUMMER 2020

displacement, to cholera, measles, malaria, and Ebola, and often more than one emergency simultaneously, year in and year out. For me, that fateful cholera outbreak was temporary, knowing that I would get on a plane and depart from it. This is different. I came home from my first week of work in this Covid-19 outbreak as a hospitalist physician near Seattle exhausted, and asked him, how does he find the strength to work in constant emergency without end in sight? His answer: hope and solidarity. Not hope because he is naïve

in the face of facts that are not reassuring. Rather it is because he has seen hope in action, the mobilization of all within a community to defeat Goliath after Goliath, to find a way forward when society is shaken, to do a lot with a little, and to survive against all odds. I have witnessed in this fight the value of connecting. The value of connecting patients with their families despite strict isolation measures, of coming together as a team of health care workers to organize and advocate for our community. My brother, an entrepreneur in China, used his network to connect me to physicians throughout China with clinical experience treating patients with Covid-19, which has helped my team care for patients here, as we were among the first responders in the U.S.

We can all do something.

It is one thing to ask people to stay home. It is another to mobilize the capacities of everyone in our communities to support us in this battle, even from our homes. It is another to mobilize all of us who may not have homes, food security, or smartphones. With our community behind us, knowing our needs on the front line, we all come to fight together. Our community assets, by valuing them and remaining hopeful, are our stones to beat this disease, and to overcome the isolation imposed by this Goliath. I had the joy of calling the spouse of a patient last week who successfully came off the ventilator and was recovering. They would soon be able to hear each other’s voices by phone. Again, I am reminded of why we do this work, why we stay hopeful despite the odds of what we are up against. n This article was originally posted on Medium. Reprinted with permission. https://medium.com/@doyle.lucy

Staying Connected

The Alumnus Chronicle of an Upcoming Librarian An alumnus returns to HKIS for an internship in the libraries and finds a new passion in life. By Curtice Taylor ’13

I left HKIS without a set goal in mind. I was not one of the lucky ones with a plan already drawn out. I loved creative writing, but I was not sure how it would financially support me. My undergraduate degree in Creative Writing felt nice when I completed it in 2017, but I didn’t know how it could be used in a proper job. I looked at other people’s published books and was afraid of trying to be like them. The costs seemed too great. This past school year, I came back to HKIS as an intern for the High School and Middle School Libraries. This came up in idle conversation about the future with my mother while I was already employed in Hong Kong as an English tutor. At this point I was learning more about what I felt happy doing, and what I did not want to deal with. This library job would be another experiment with no certainty of success; the fact I would be working at HKIS would make the job easier than a completely new environment. I was tossed right into the fire when the academic year began. I did a lot of physical work, strengthening my body and learning what you could do in a library. Just like with my other jobs, I was trickle-fed this information through hours of work. And just like those times, I asked a lot of questions so I could do my job well. This made my progress speed up over time, like a fighter in a training montage. Instead of a big showdown at the end, I went from the High School library to the Middle School to take on bigger challenges.

Clockwise from the top: Curtice reads a book at home; his name plate on display in the MS library; and his junior yearbook portrait.

During this training and my interaction with the HKIS students and faculty as they came to the library, I discovered a critical fact about myself: I enjoy helping other people. Some of my previous jobs had me aiding others, but there was a big difference this time. In the library, I felt more capable of sharing my knowledge with other people because it was connected to something I enjoy. When students approached me for book recommendations, I felt happy to offer my opinion on “good” books. I could discuss series or titles with them and keep track of what was popular. I liked doing this more than any other job I had before it: I felt like I had found my dream job. Of course, choosing your dream is just the easy part. My journey to becoming a librarian is not yet complete, but I have started on the path. I plan to begin my graduate studies in Library and Information Sciences in the fall of 2020 at Kent State University, which is near my hometown in the United States. With my family and friends supporting me, I feel I can become who I want to be and find a job that balances work and pleasure. n SUMMER 2020 DRAGONTALES

HKIS Gallery

High School Student Art Photography

Rosamond Chung ’20

Abby Day ’20

Anxiety, Emerson Fox ’22

Conceptual Self Portrait, Chiara Jeong ’22

Aaditya Bhasker ’21

Aru Inukai ’22 42

DRAGONTALES SUMMER 2020

In Memoriam Doyle (Doc) Robert Holliday 1938 – 2020 High School Social Studies Teacher, 1970 – 1972

Doc Holliday 1972

Kathie Siegert and the Hollidays enjoy a picnic in the Kowloon Hills, circa 1971.

Doyle (Doc) Robert Holliday passed away on March 27, 2020 at the age of 81 in Houston, Texas, and is survived by his wife JoAnne Holliday and two children, Heather and Mike.

Mr. Genzel 1981

Doc was a faculty member at HKIS and taught social studies from 1970-1972. A memorial will be held at a later date once group gatherings are safe.

Earl Ross Genzel

“I remember Doc and his first wife Sally from the early ’70s. Doc had a dry sense of humor which he regularly brought to his social studies classes. He loved sports, and always found a way to be involved in them. Doc was a fun-loving guy, who brought much to his short time at HKIS.” — Rich Siegert, Middle School and High School Social Studies Teacher, 1970-81.

High School Theatre Arts, English & Drama Director, 1980 – 1982

1942 – 2020 Throughout his 41-year career in education, Mr. Genzel was a loved and respected theatre professor and found great joy in directing, designing, and acting for professional theatre and opera as well as writing plays. At HKIS, he directed The Crucible, Little Mary Sunshine, and The Madwoman of Chaillot. He was predeceased by his wife Karen who also worked at HKIS. They had four children, including son Noah ’90, who passed away in January 2020, and four grandchildren. ting Mr. Genzel direc 82 19 The Crucible in

Georgeanna “Dusty” Knisely 1933 – 2019 Director of Libraries, 1974 – 79

Dusty Knisely 1976

Georgeanna “Dusty” Knisely was born in Tsingtao, China, on February 7, 1933. She attended school in a Japanese internment camp in Shandong Province in China during WWII. Dusty served as the grade 7-12 librarian at HKIS on the Repulse Bay campus. She passed away on November 8, 2019, in Dillsburg, Pennsylvania, surrounded by family and is survived by her three sons Stephen, David, and Alan and their families (including six grandchildren and six great-grandchildren). Dusty is reunited with her husband Jay, of 47 years, and she is singing with the most gorgeous alto voice you have ever heard! A memorial service was held at Calvary United Methodist Church in Dillsburg.

Mr. Genzel with the Drama Club, 1982.

SUMMER 2020 DRAGONTALES

Staying Connected

Class Notes

1969 Sheryl Scarbrough Bomsta

MOROCCO — THE ADVENTURE BEGINS! In February, Frank and I had the opportunity to spend two weeks in Morocco with our neighbors who were serving a humanitarian mission there for 18 months. We packed our bags and headed for the unknown, with visions of the movie Casablanca dancing in our heads.

We frequented the medina in every city. The streets were narrow and cars couldn’t pass through, but you had to be on the lookout for motorcycles, bikes, and donkey carts or you could get flattened. You could find almost anything you could imagine in the variety of stalls and the vendors were always “ready, willing, and able” to make a deal. Reminded me so much of the Hong Kong alleys where I learned my bargaining skills. I obliged more than once and came home with a variety of wonderful items, from Berber carpets to clothing to small mementos.

Our first destination was Rabat, the capital of Morocco, where our friends were living. After 22 hours of drive time, flight time, and sitting in airports, we arrived in Casablanca. From there we took two different trains to reach our final destination.

We became “experts” at getting around. We took the trains, the trams, a few taxis, but first and foremost, our FEET took us where we needed to go. Frank’s two wishes were met: riding a camel and charming a cobra. What more could

Frank with a cobra

It was great to have friends to stay with and who “knew the ropes” as far as where to go and what to see. Morocco has such a fascinating history. We traveled all around and visited the cities of Tangier, Fez, Marrakesh, and Chefchaouen (the Blue City.) The countryside varied greatly and we soaked it all in, learning as much as we could about each place. We found the people extremely friendly and helpful. They would offer us their seats and help us find our way if we looked uncertain as to where to go. The hotels we stayed in were exquisite and eating our food from a tajine with four other people was a novel experience.

DRAGONTALES SUMMER 2020

a guy ask for. One of my favorite things was conversing often in French and actually being mistaken for a native French speaker. After all, it had only been 52 years since I’d left France. (LOL) Experiencing a culture so different from our own was a unique experience and I would highly recommend a trip to Morocco.

One more bit of exciting news: I was thrilled with the arrival of my 31st grandchild, with one more expected in June. Unfortunately, with all that is going on in the world today, our planned family reunion won’t be happening as scheduled.

1969 Lindy Brigham

repertoire that I followed was playing the bassoon. I love the deep rich tones of the instrument and how weird it looks. At HKIS I vaguely remember playing at school but do remember Mrs. Parr who conducted the ‘Band’ and Mr. Von Behren who connected me with the Hong Kong Opera Orchestra. In May of 1969, the orchestra played nine performances of Offenbach’s La Belle Hélène. Certainly the highlight of my musical career. I took one semester of bassoon in college and that was the end of my musical endeavors. I always thought I would come back to it though and so now that I am retired I have started lessons again. Two lessons into my new endeavor, the COVID-19 social distancing decree means that now I am taking lessons via Zoom which is less than desirable, but life as we are now living it.

2003 Coco Chan

Lindy Brigham ’69 and her bassoon

My mother’s eldest brother was in Germany at the end of WWII and brought back a bassoon for my mother who played it in her High School band. This was in a small farming community in Iowa no less. We are not a family of tradition and the only skill/ talent/custom in my mother’s

Valerie Ho and Coco Chan ’03

Coco Chan launched Asia’s first spiritual and wellness platform with business partner Valerie Ho last August. OMSA,

Staying Connected

“Ohm for the Spiritually Awakened”, is a lifestyle portal dedicated to nurturing the relationship with self through self-care, self-love and spiritual practices. OMSA is a one stop shop for all things spiritual. Think crystals, oracle cards, aromatherapy and more! Visit their Instagram @omsa.world for spiritual guidance and holistic wellbeing tips!

quelqu’un...Mais on ne le sait pas toujours.” Seek to be that sunbeam for others. You have been that for me.

www.omsa.world

Mrs. Sue Harvey High School Math Teacher and Academic Programs Coordinator, 1993-2020

We know you like to read Class Notes.... so submit yours today! Contact alumni@hkis.edu.hk with your updates, stories, and photos.

I will become a bit of a vagabond visiting family in Singapore and Egypt, living in Reston, Virginia, in Europe somewhere and here in Hong Kong. Feel free to contact me anytime at lsdunoye@gmail.com.

My heartfelt gratitude to my students and colleagues for all they have given me over the years here at HKIS. I am a much better teacher and person because of you. I leave you with a quote from one of my favorite books Le Petit Prince: “Nous sommes tous un rayon de soleil pour

You recently attended your 50th reunion for the classes of 1968 and 1969 last July in Seattle. What was it like to see classmates and friends after 50 years?

Old age sneaks up on us. I saw a t-shirt with the words — “Inside every old person is a young person wondering what happened?” I see my contemporaries and wonder — “That person looks so old”. Of course, if I look in the mirror, I say the same thing. Do you have any advice or guidance to share with our youngest alumni when seeking their career paths in life?

Find an endeavor that you like to do and that makes the world a better place. If you are not good at it, you can learn to get better. In contrast, if you hate your job (and continue to do it), you will be miserable and it will rub off on everyone else. Remember, this life is precious, we are only here for awhile so make good use of this time, all actions have consequences (karma is real), and happiness is not what we are told it is — money, fame, etc. These are important lessons in life.n Reach out to Tay at taybosley@aol.com

Keith Chan ’96 Continued from page 35:

Transitions Mme. Linda Dunoyé High School French Teacher, 1996-2020

Tay Bosley ’69 Continued from page 34:

When I arrived at HKIS in August of 1993, I had no idea I would spend most of my professional life here! No matter what awaits me, I will miss the students, who bring me much joy and laugh with me often, and especially my colleagues, many of whom I can also count as friends. Along with many amazing memories, HKIS has blessed me with difficulties, fulfilling work, and opportunities. I will always be grateful for that. I’ll be “snowbirding” between Vermont and Guam for the foreseeable future. I’m not quite ready to leave Asia, so Guam is a nice compromise — close enough to Hong Kong, but part of the US. My email contact is suehuhtalaharvey@gmail. com.

A few HKIS alumni in healthcare have connected recently on the HKIS Alumni Facebook group to support each other during this time. What’s that been like?

There is a huge camaraderie among health professionals in general, and in particular friends and alumni. It started with a few of us in the Seattle area including Lucy Doyle ’96 and Candice Tong Sanchez ’96. But then the outbreak happened, so we had to change plans. Lucy posted to the alumni group and has brought together about 50-100 HKIS alumni working in healthcare, mostly in the US but also in Asia. We’ve had an alum send personal protective equipment (PPE) from China, several who have shared the latest medical knowledge and practices from their countries, others who are just there for each other when somebody has had a long week taking care of patients who have died, or whose spouse has become sick and then was figuring out how to manage quarantine and childcare. It’s been amazing. Regardless of where you are in your career or in life, there is such a bond among HKIS alumni. The HKIS experience is always so special — alumni are always there for each other, having shared this unique common experience. n Get in touch with Keith at ktc@stanfordalumni.org!

SUMMER 2020 DRAGONTALES

Staying Connected

Dragon Babies

1999 Andrew Galbraith ’99

Naomi Inés Biele Galbraith was born in Shanghai at 9:16 a.m. on September 16, 2019. She is little sister to Isaac and daughter to Andrew Galbraith ’99 and wife Emily. When not making her brother laugh, Naomi keeps herself busy in compliance with her Chinese visa, which lists her purpose of residence as “personal affairs”.

like we’re all going through a never-ending confinement month together!

2003 Coco Chan

Jeremy not exactly social distancing with his stuffed friends!

2001 Michelle Leung

Theodore (Theo) Lee was born on October 10, 2019. Coco Chan ’03 and Dan Lun with their daugther Harper Alexandra

Our baby girl, Harper Alexandra Lun, was born on August 20, 2019 at Matilda Hospital in Hong Kong. We’re back home and on a routine now! Super exciting times.

2000 Grace Chen

2003 Candace Ho

DRAGONTALES SUMMER 2020

Jeanie Blum-Campo

Meet Jeanie Blum-Campo!

Grace Chen ’00 and Kevin Wong with their son Jeremy

2006 Gigi Campo

Gigi, who attended HKIS from 1999-2003, and her husband Max Blum-Campo had a 6 lbs,1 oz baby girl on May 17, 2019.

Michelle Leung ’01 and husband Ian with son Mason Ethan

My husband Kevin Wong and I welcomed our baby boy Jeremy into the world on March 24, 2020, just a minute past his due date, and a day after NY shut down! We are so thankful to God for this blessing, and are eager for this pandemic to be over so family and friends can finally meet him in person. With everyone staying at home it feels a bit

2003 Alex Lee

Gigi and Max live in Cambridge MA, USA and both work for Google.

Big brother Maxwell Nathan Lau born in 2017 with Mason

Michelle recently gave birth to her second son, Mason Ethan Lau last month in October 2019 in Hong Kong. Her first son is Maxwell Nathan Lau, born in December 2017.

We just moved back to Southeast Asia (Singapore) and made it just in time for Mabel (3) to welcome Baby Lulu (Tallulah Deerwester) into the world in November 2019.

Who doesn’t love a cute baby! Send in your birth announcements and photos of little Dragons to alumni@hkis.edu.hk so we can coo together.

HKIS Gallery

High School Student Art Drawing & Illustration

Eliora Kwok ’23

Amanda Cheung ’20

Nicholas Chen ’20

Hannah Tan ’20 Nam Kong ’20

Samantha Chan ’20

Andro Glinoga ’23

Elly Wolhardt ’23

SUMMER 2020 DRAGONTALES

The Last Word

Virginia and Cyril Udall Upper Primary Associate Principal and High School Choral Teacher, 2009-2020

Building on One Another After 11 years, the Udalls are leaving HKIS and heading to Garden International School in Guangzhou. Their decade-long tenure has engaged them in the High School choral program and Upper Primary building transformations. Their love of music, kindness, and community shines through their time at HKIS.

In every endeavor, we build what we learn from those before us. It’s the expertise and experience of a community that brings us together, and helps us excel. This is a lesson shared with DragonTales by Mr. Cyril and Mrs. Virginia Udall, who reflect on HKIS as they leave after 11 years. Having met at a music education program in Arizona and lept into an adventure teaching at international schools in Paraguay and Venezuela, the Udalls wanted to move to serve a new community. They sought out HKIS, having heard about it through colleagues in South America who had worked at HKIS. “The mission of the school spoke to us,” said Cy. Virginia, who trained to be an elementary music teacher before getting an MA in Educational Leadership, came to HKIS as an Upper Primary Associate Principal. She made the move to administration when she realized that she could impact the lives of every student in the school in a broader way. “One of the things I loved most about being a music teacher: Knowing every student, and working collaboratively with every teacher in the school to make sure that the music class was supporting students’ growth. Moving to administration meant I could serve teachers to serve students.” Cy loves his role as the High School Choral teacher. Cy explains that choirs are about the process, the satisfaction of working together on a project, meeting each challenge as a community — the sum is greater than its parts. “What’s unique about the program that Cy has created,” says Virginia, “is that we see the quality of performances improve year on year.” Cy elaborates, “The connections and camaraderie are so strong. It’s like we have an institutional memory with vocal skills; one generation learns to sing, building on another. We wouldn’t be where we are without the students – they learn from each other and continue to build and improve.” This school year had many surprises and disappointments, but one of the biggest ones for our High School Choirs was that a chance to perform at Carnegie Hall fell through due to the Covid-19 pandemic. HKIS had been selected to be a featured choir at a concert in March, which meant singing a set of music as a single choir, in addition to singing in a mass choir. “We had to send in several recordings as an audition; we weren’t expecting anything, so being accepted was a big shock and a huge honor!” Cy explains. 48

DRAGONTALES SUMMER 2020

Clockwise from top left: Cy conducts at the Lower Primary Grand Opening in 2017; a festive 2019 Tree Lighting Ceremony; Virginia, son Luke and Cy say cheese; Virginia and Luke at Make-o-Ween 2017.

While the cancellation was undoubtedly disappointing, Cy says singers don’t do it solely for the performances, they sing because of the community, the intrinsic motivation that comes through the process of learning music together. “We sing for its own sake,” says Cy. Building on the work of others is something that we also saw during the Upper Primary School renovation. Initial renovation plans to HKIS’s original Repulse Bay building were in the works when Virginia first joined Upper Primary. But those have little to do with the final plans, which developed over the years and were perfected, thanks to the many teachers and administrators who worked and continue to work in Upper Primary and contributed to those plans. “The success of past members of our community is so important. We don’t change for change’s sake; we improve and that benefits the program. The people we work with bring something that shifts our thinking and our practice. Every piece of what we do is because of what somebody and many somebodies brought to us,” Virginia explains. This careful consideration of change, along with a dedication to inquiry, was not only visible in the physical building but also the program. “How do we give kids an opportunity to combine their interests and truly inquire? How do we bring service-learning into the program? How do we integrate social studies and language arts? That workshop mindset has been crucial to how we develop as a school,” she adds. “Upper Primary is a special time in our kids’ lives; yes, we set them up well for Middle School, but we want to honor where kids are and meet them where they are in their learning and development. Play is still very important to us here and inspires kids to deepen their inquiry. Kids at UP now have more opportunities for choice and more autonomy over their learning.” As the 2019-20 school year wraps up, as unusual as it was, the Udalls reflect on their time. “HKIS is where we’ve been for the greatest length of time, the place we started our family; we came as two of us and leave three of us. In fact, Luke started in Reception 1 a short 10 weeks after his adoption. In international schools, eleven years is a long time, but not at HKIS. We are continually professionally and personally fulfilled.” n Stay in touch with the Udalls! Mr: udcogency@gmail.com and Mrs.: viquilou@gmail.com

Staying Connected

As we entered the new year, who would have imagined weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d have a semester quite like this one! The coronavirus pandemic cast its shadow over all of us, but every cloud has a silver lining, and we can be proud of the way we responded during this turbulent time. Have a look at some of the ways our community collaborated and flourished.

Social ions Sensat

FACEBOOK

www.facebook.com/ HongKongInternationalSchool

POST & TAG

@hongkonginternationalschool

TWITTER @HKIS

SUMMER 2020 DRAGONTALES

Dates to Remember 2020

October 17 Pumpkin Festival November 25-29 Holiday Basketball Tournament 50 years at HKIS Please contact Alumni Relations at alumni@hkis.edu.hk if you are planning a reunion, campus visit, etc. Visit our alumni site at https://www.hkis.edu.hk/alumni/ for information on upcoming events, news and updating your alumni information.

Alumni: Stay Connected! POST & TAG Middle School Art Students Chinese Ceramic Dishes

@HKISAlumni

JOIN US ON

LINKEDIN in/hkisalumni

A LU MNI

STAY IN TOUCH

www.facebook.com/groups/ hkisalumni

1 Red Hill Road, Tai Tam, Hong Kong +852 3149 7000 info@hkis.edu.hk

DragonTales - Summer 2020

Articles inside

Alumni Voices: Snippets

The Young Americans visit Upper Primary

The Middle School Story Collective

Class of 2020: Seniors Serving

Bob Christian Alumna of the Year Award

Real Learning