INTERCULTURAL WEEK

By: Michael Allen, ES Principal

Building strong home-school partnerships has always been at the heart of Intercultural Week at ISB. This year, the ISB planning team, including faculty representatives from across the elementary school teams of teachers along with PTA ES Coordinators and Thai community representatives, came together to develop a common purpose for Intercultural Week as we emerged from the pandemic. In addition to building strong home-school partnerships, the planning team articulated these key purposes at the start of the planning for Intercultural Week 2022: Focus on student learning connections between cultures - “intercultural”

• Celebrate humanity

• Focus on themes that unite cultures

• Provide an opportunity to connect cultures

• Reconnect our community post-COVID

• Develop caring, globally minded individuals

• Ensure that all students see themselves represented in Intercultural Week

• Create unity through our diversity

• Fun!

• Celebration!

With these clear purposes in mind, the planning team discussed a wide variety of ideas as to how we might do a better job of uniting the cultures. From there the idea to focus on how different cultures use music, dance, games, language, artwork and crafts to connect and communicate emerged. In addition, the planning team had a strong vision to unite cultures and develop a structure that would invite the ISB parent community to work together across cultures to help make important learning connections for the students as well as model intercultural collaboration for them.

While everyone knew this was a significant change from the past, the planning team was hopeful parent volunteers would be willing to “give it a go” and collaborate in this cross cultural manner…and they did! The cultural connections the volunteers made this week were extraordinary. For example, all Grade 1 students learned about how the matching game of dominoes is played in different ways across the variety of cultures in Thailand, China, Israel, and Puerto Rico. The parent volunteers then developed a unique set of dominoes uniting these cultural aspects which the students played. This is just ONE example of dozens of activities that occurred throughout the week.

The planning team is now in the process of reflecting on Intercultural Week 2022 as we begin to think about what enhancements we might want to make for next year. Parent volunteers and ES faculty completed different surveys that the planning team will carefully review to make informed decisions for next year.

In the meantime, a tremendous THANK YOU goes out to everyone who worked cross culturally to help make Intercultural Week 2022 a positive learning experience for our ES Panthers!

The Elementary School launched the 20222023 school year welcoming new vice principals Farah Thaxton and Honey Tondre.

Ms. Thaxton was an elementary principal in Seattle Washington, USA, and joined us focusing on the Upper Elementary. Honey Tondre joined us as our VP and early childhood specialist, most recently from Abu Dhabi. In addition to Michael Allen, each have had over 20 years of experience working with students, teachers and families.

As a new member of the team, one of the things Ms.Thaxton enjoys the most is “...collaborating and learning with Mr. Allen and Ms. Honey during our weekly meetings.”

Ms.Thaxton further mentioned that “One of the many things that drew {her} to ISB were the values; and noted that when she thinks of them individually, each of them speaks to her. However, when she thinks of them collectively, it encompasses a place where everyone belongs.

“I have been impressed by the strong focus on students’ social emotional well-being and building classroom communities. It’s clear that everyone values “belonging” at ISB!” Ms.Thaxton says.

During the ES opening assembly, teachers worked collectively in the storytelling of the “Enormous Turnip”. As a team, they had to work together to pull a turnip out of the ground! It was a great example of how all belong and all are part of what makes ISB so amazing. The entire elementary school was involved in the story, working together to accomplish a goal.

“Joining such a dynamic team has helped make the transition easy to Thailand. I look forward to continuing the important work supporting all of our learners towards achieving their goals.” -Farah Thaxton, New Elementary School VP