Journeys 60th Anniversary Edition, April 2016

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6 T. 195 S E L O N SCHO A TS C S I S R R ALIS R O E E T D A ION M A BUIL CRE ADIT E R T R O SINGAP

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1950s Individual and corporate donors contribute funds to establish a school that will provide students with an exemplary American education with an international perspective

Singapore separates from Malaysia in 1965

1956 Singapore American School opens on Rochalie Drive with 105 students

1956 The first Islander yearbook is published in 1958

First SAS graduate Louise Feng receives her diploma in 1958

A group of singers perform in 1959 (Kathy Saludo Tan – SAS’67 and longtime SAS teacher is second from the left in the first row)

1959

1962

1969

1965

In preparation for the opening in 1956, a school logo that will last 40 years is developed and included on the invitation

1958

1958

The student council appeals to the school board to lift the ban on students riding motorcycles to school

1960s

1955

1960s

A school song appears in the 1961 yearbook, to be revived at a pep rally in 2005 in preparation of the school’s 50th anniversary

1965

Ho Tee Jam begins catering at Singapore American School in 1965, with his sons the Hoe Brothers continuing to cater at SAS to this day

The Singapore-Bangkok Games begin, a precursor to modern day IASAS tournaments

1980s 1973

The Ulu Pandan campus is completed in 1973 to accommodate growing numbers of expatriate students in Singapore

1973

1973

1970s

The eagle emblem is a student project completed in the late 1970s, sponsored by the art department and the varsity club

SAS Singers is formed and the first Yulefest concert is held

The first high school Interim Semester trips are launched to enhance the curriculum by providing high school students with diverse educational experiences beyond the traditional classroom

Acclaimed exhibition basketball team Harlem Globetrotters visit the King’s Road campus in 1973

The dance program begins at SAS with a handful of students, growing to more than 100 within seven years

1989

1987

1985

SAS is a strong participant in Model United Nations conventions, shown in 1985, even before they were partially taken over as an IASAS activity

1970s 1984 1974

World famous boxer Muhammad Ali visits the SAS campus, reciting his poetry for an hour

The Interscholastic Association of Southeast Asian Schools (IASAS) is formed, allowing SAS students to compete against top athletes from other international schools

1981

1982

SAS purchases five computers and offers formal classes in computer science and programming

The Booster Club is formed to help raise funds for athletics uniforms and encourage school spirit

1992

1994 Interim Semester trips expand beyond Asia to Greece, Hungary, France, Spain, Kenya, and Switzerland

2006

The Early Childhood Center opens

2004

The Woodlands campus undergoes a $65 million expansion to accommodate growing numbers of students

2004

The Social Services Club grows, conducting ten service projects in Singapore supported by 150 students

1995

Singapore American School relocates to the Woodlands campus with 2,500 students; then-Deputy Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong speaks at the opening ceremony

1996

2003

2009

Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew inaugurates SAS’ 50th anniversary

2000s

President and Mrs. Bush visit SAS's Ulu Pandan campus, the first time an American president is in Singapore

Jane Goodall visits SAS and works with SAVE Club students, five years after her first visit to our campus

1990s

1991

The Baytree satellite campus opens, offering short-term relief to a growing waitlist of students seeking admission to SAS

Student, teacher, and PTA volunteers help unload pumpkins and set up for 2003’s annual pumpkin sale at the PTA Food Fest, a longstanding tradition that raises proceeds for programs at SAS

2010s SAS adopts a new vision:

2013

A World Leader in Education Cultivating Exceptional Thinkers Prepared for the Future

2013 Singapore American School hosts the largest installation of solar panels operational in Singapore, leading the school to receive Singapore’s Solar Pioneer Award

2013 SAS and Singapore Botanic Gardens enter a partnership in 2013 to preserve the SAS rainforest and propagate endangered plant species in it for all of Southeast Asia

2014 Primary and intermediate divisions at SAS unite in 2014 to form one elementary school, facilitating smoother transitions for students and aligning with K-5 schools worldwide

2015

SAS students bring TED talks, a speaker series known to feature such notable experts as Google founder Larry Page and former US President Bill Clinton, to campus through TEDxYouth@SAS

Histo

ory in the making

A T R ADI T ION OF

INNOVATION When the American Association founded Singapore American School in 1956, our 105 students learned in a colonial-style bungalow while Singapore was at the crossroads of change. The school opened thanks to generosity and a spirit of philanthropy that continues today. The entire community was involved in planning, fundraising, sourcing furniture and supplies, and eventually teaching and even providing the food that was served.

Close to 40 companies contributed to get the school started, and in our early days, parent volunteers ran virtually every area of the school.

As Singapore grew, so did our school, and both have come a long way over the past 60 years.

Our shared journey has been one of progress, modernization, achievement, and change.

Singapore’s status as one of the most progressive countries in the world, its multi-cultural, highly diverse population, and its innovative and competitive spirit has made for a dynamic place for all of us to live, work, and learn.

SAS has flourished and is now one of the largest international schools in the world with an unrivaled reputation for excellence in education. Each time we moved into a new campus, the board and community wondered if there would ever be enough students to fill such ambitious expansions. Each time, our school was filled to capacity almost overnight due to our high quality programs and outstanding faculty.

I’m proud to be part of this incredible school. It’s a place that is vibrant, innovative, and changes lives for the better. The people who teach and learn at SAS are committed, engaged, and passionate. We have a deep history that makes us proud.

Our thousands of alumni excel personally and professionally as they change the world.

This special edition of Journeys is filled with stories that have defined us. Step into our pages of history to share the moments, big and small, that have made SAS an incredible place to learn. Through these stories, I hope that the classmates, teachers, courses, trips, and memories that come to your mind evoke some of the best times in your life.

And what will the next 60 years look like for us? Singapore American School continues to innovate, adapting to the rapidly changing world around us. As we look to the years to come, we believe that education has to be different now than it has ever been before.

We recently finalized the school’s strategic plan that will take SAS through 2020. Singapore American School will continue to view every opportunity and decision through the lens of our strategic anchors of excellence, extraordinary care, and possibilities.

Now and in the coming years, SAS students will have access to numerous new approaches to learning, personalized programs, and innovative course options. Our curriculum will continue to engage students through the context of American ideals such as exploration, risk-taking, innovation, creativity, and excellence. Students will increasingly understand and direct their learning journey through an expanding focus on inquiry, project-based learning, and personalized learning.

Our students will truly emerge as

exceptional thinkers prepared for any future they choose.

It has been an incredible 60 years at Singapore American School.

I’m proud of our legacy and our collective contributions that have made SAS what it is today. I’m excited for the road ahead as we continue to innovate and improve the educational experience for each and every student. Thank you for being part of the journey.

Dr. Chip Kimball Superintendent

Home of the Eagles Coach Kasi SACAC Singapore American Football League Interscholastic Association of Southeast Asian Schools

The Music Men The Legend of Bilge Paula Silverman: Passion and Performance Hop-Along Hoss and Shoo-Fly Schunk The Jam Room: A Musical Refuge for IPAU Members

A Village of Memories An Amazing Transformation From School Girl to Senior Human Resources Manager From Interim Semester to National Geographic

SAS Rainforest Plants Seeds for Passion and Learning From Ink to Link: The Eye’s Print to Online Evolution Hard Work and Problem-Solving: Robotics at SAS

CONTENTS

The American School The Early Years 1950s Moving and Maturing 1960s Cultural Change and Growing Pains 1970s Coming of Age 1980s Continuity, Change, and a New Campus 1990s A Smaller World 2000s History in the Making 2010s

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The Eagle Connection Christmas Card Reunites Two SAS Alumni Years That Ask Questions, and Years That Answer

The Dedication Plaque That Old Podium: King’s Road Relic Finds a New Home Local Color From Kukup to Kinabalu: The Early Days of Interim Semester

The Banshees SAS Athletes, A Riot, and Long Hair Woes The Smokin’ Seventies The Brick Thieves of King’s Road

Chronicling Our History, One Yearbook at a Time Evolution of the SAS Pep Rally The Family Behind SAS Eagles’ Favorite Dishes

Climbing for Charity: One Student’s Journey to the Top of Mount Kilimanjaro The SAS Parent-Teacher Association The Booster Club SAS: Providing Service Opportunities since 1968

BUILDERS Decade by decade, many hands have come together to build Singapore American School. The student population grew as the role of the US in Singapore and Southeast Asia evolved beginning from the aftermath of World War II, and as economic and social developments came to the region.

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1956 The American School Lawrence R. Wales

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he history of The American School in Singapore is fairly well-covered in the publication American Association of Singapore—50th Anniversary—1917-1967. Some of the details are omitted though, and this summary will add those few things that I still recall. As it happens, I am the only surviving member of the original board of directors, so any suggested corrections by others can only be based on interpretation.

When we arrived in Singapore from Shanghai on January 9, 1949, the ravages of World War II were far from obliterated. Commercial establishments were still trying to reestablish communication lines as practiced in pre-war days. Those companies were managed during the waning days of the British and Dutch colonial empires by the pre-war managers. Changes were occurring though, as Americans took over the commercial and political dominance in the area.

There were just over one hundred American families in Singapore when we set foot on Collyer Quay in 1949. These were about evenly divided among one-third commercial people, one-third government representatives, and one-third missionaries. Some of these were pre-war returnees, but the remainder was the new generation of post-war American international operators. That represented one of the problems

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of the post-war era. These new people had families and they tended to be more itinerant and not career-long inhabitants.

Schooling thus became an urgent need.

Pre-war, there were only three recognized American-style schools in the Far East. There was the well-known American School of Shanghai with students as far from Shanghai as the Dutch East Indies, the Brent School at Baguio in the Philippines, and a second missionary school at Ootacamund in Southern India. Basically no established educational system existed for children of expatriates after the age of ten or twelve as they were sent home to boarding schools. Only those schools mentioned above provided some opportunity for the children of itinerant parents, other than the local schools and some religious schools for the early grades.

One Sunday evening in October 1954 at a cocktail party in the Stanvac residence of Jack and Dode Fee on Rideout Road, D. E. Clutter of Firestone and I were discussing this situation. He had tried to overcome this problem pre-war by financing day care schools that never got acceptance from the American community because there was no real need.

Now there was, and we decided to sponsor an open American Association meeting to discuss the creation of an American school.

Other than our own personal needs, there must have been some inherent heritage factor in my interest. My father was chairman of the School Board of Alpena, South Dakota, when I graduated from high school. His signature is still on my graduation certificate.

My mother was a one-room schoolteacher while the state was still a territory. In my mind, this discussion was the beginning of one of those very successful community efforts which a small community can achieve, such as the pioneers did in America with their one-room schools and colleges. I consider it one of the most significant and satisfying achievements of my career.

At that meeting, held in the original American Club in the Cathay Building, a formation committee was appointed after the normal community bickering to explore the potential of such a school to be sponsored by the American Association. That committee consisted mainly of business personnel because they were the dominant element in the American Association. The committee included D. E. Clutter (Firestone), R. P. Newell (First National City Bank), L. R. Wales (Kodak), Paul Bordwell (Muller and Phipps), Robert Hawley (Cornell Bros.), H. M. Smith (Stanvac), John Stenger (Goodrich), Andy Dalton (Isthmian Lines), M. Oremus (American President Lines), Fred O’ Malley (First National City Bank), Charles

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T. Smith (Firestone), and the Rev. Craig Wilder (Methodist Mission).

After hours of exploratory work the group decided it might be feasible to establish a school of about one hundred students of all nationalities to be called the American School of Singapore with an American style curriculum. It would have to be financed by the State Department budget, and obviously we could not expect funds from the mission groups when they were already desperately short for postwar rehabilitation.

The committee decided that a minimum of $100,000 would be needed for startup costs before any revenue would accrue to the school. Assessments were established for the businesses in Singapore, realizing that not all firms would subscribe but probably the major ones would. As I recall, Jack Fee of Stanvac was the leader in that drive. My memory may be remiss but I believe Stanvac contributed $25,000, Caltex $15,000, National City Bank $7,500, Kodak $7,500, National Carbon and others at $5,000 and less. With some assurance of the necessary funds the committee proceeded with the basics.

First we needed a headmaster, and none of us had the foggiest idea how to accomplish that. We placed ads in the San Francisco Chronicle and the New York Times. With the help of the Methodist Mission Board in New York, we screened the applications, and then they

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made the selection for us by picking Al Fisher. Even as Margie Wales and I met him at the old Kallang Airport in a driving tropical rainstorm, I wondered why anyone in his right mind would accept our offer. He turned out to be a jewel, in that he established the esprit de corps of the school, but he was not an organizational genius.

Fortunately for him and the school the founding fathers and their wives were able to assist him until the time the second headmaster, Jim Aven, took over. He provided that need.

Premises were the next priority. Eb Espey located an older colonial residence in Rochalie Drive that could be rented within our budget and with some modification became the first physical aspect of the school. Later, additional classrooms were constructed where three servants’ quarters existed at the rear of the main building. When the landlord requested the property back for his own use, a search for the new premises was instituted, for in addition, the expansion of enrollment demanded more space.

About that time, the National City Bank considered disposing of its residential property on King’s Road. WIth the assistance of their manager, R. P. “Red” Newell, and funding from the US government, the school board was able to purchase the property and construct new premises.

Our next challenge was a suitable curriculum. Had any of us involved in starting the school realized how incompetent we were in educational matters, we probably would not have lent our talents to the project. At that time the International Schools Foundation did not exist. We were amateurs isolated from any professional assistance. Then in the National Geographic magazine, we noticed an ad for the Calvert System of home education. This was our salvation, as we purchased their system for the new school. Later the curriculum was expanded with guidance from stateside schools, and then in one of those fortuitous circumstances, we had on the school board two professional educators who provided the school with a well-developed modern curriculum of the day. These two who should get recognition were Dr. Morey P. Wantman of the Educational Testing Center in Princeton, New Jersey who had been seconded to the University of Malaya, and the Rev. Kelly Clark of the Singapore Episcopal Diocese.

Now we had fundamentals but no teachers. Someone suggested that we determine if any American wives with previous experience and qualifications would be interested in returning to the classroom. A few were interested, other nationalities were recruited, and volunteers helped in the administrative tasks. Accounts record the recent retirement from the school of Mr. and Mrs. Abraham, a Tamil Indian

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couple we hired. Then there was the matter of uniforms that we considered necessary. Dode Fee and Margie Wales solved that problem for us. Then Margie Wales organized and supervised the library.

So now we’re ready to go, a school sponsored by the American Association of Singapore under the laws of the Republic of Singapore. It was a non-profit, community financed, non-sectarian, co-educational institution which perhaps should have been called the International School, but nationalism prevailed. The school opened on January 3, 1956 with 105 students of whom 53 were other nationalities. Mr. Elbridge (Durby) Durbrow, the American Consul-General convinced Sir Robert Brown Black, then Governor-General of Singapore, to open the school which her

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Majesty’s representative did that January morning. Students were accommodated from first grade through high school. That was quite an achievement for a young school. While she was the only one in her class, the first high school graduate was Louise Feng on July 18, 1958. She was offered scholarships from three American universities, and she selected Colby College in Maine.

Just for the record, the first school board consisted of E. P. J. Fee, Chairman, Lawrence R. Wales, Rev. R. H. H. Berckman, Mrs. Paul Barnes, and D. E. Clutter. However, that whole small American community should be given credit for achieving its mission. I believe it was the first American school of its style in the Orient after World War II. The American School in Tokyo apparently developed from the American Occupation of Japan, but

not before our efforts in Singapore.

Later, Jack Fee was largely responsible for the American School in Bangkok and Dick Henry of National City Bank for the rehabilitation of the American School in Manila. A school was then formed in Taiwan and another in Pakistan, during which time the International Schools Foundation was developing to assist these schools in curriculum, organization, and personnel.

I believe that the minutes of all the meetings and matters pertaining to establishment of our school were recorded, but I have no idea where those files might now be. We left in 1962, and while we have retained an interest in the school and its great success, that information will have to be found elsewhere.

Lawrence R. Wales September 7, 1999

1950

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The Early Years: SAS at Rochalie Drive

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s early as 1948, the American Association of Malaya considered establishing a school in Singapore.

But it was not until 1952, when 130 children showed up at the American Club’s Christmas Party, that the Association moved forward with the idea of starting a school. By 1955 the whole American community had embraced the idea, and the first goal of raising $100,000 was met by donations from individuals and almost forty companies.

Singapore American School opened on January 3, 1956, in a large colonial house at 15 Rochalie Drive. It included only elementary and juniorhigh students as older students were settled in boarding schools outside of Singapore. From the beginning, Singapore American School accepted students of all backgrounds; the original 98 students included 57 Americans and 41 from other nations.

Classes took place in the house’s former bedrooms, garage, and servants’ quarters, and the grounds included a softball field and basketball court. Under the lease conditions, a local family continued to live on the property, and their chickens ran underfoot.

The school day started at 8:15 a.m., and included singing “God Save the Queen” in assembly, held in the former dining room. As there was no air-conditioning, the cooler morning hours were reserved for academic classes. Students went home for lunch and a rest, and returned at 3:00 p.m. for music, PE, art, drama, and other enrichment activities.

In its first few years, the school developed enduring traditions. High school classes began, and in July 1958 the first SAS commencement ceremony saw sole senior Louise Feng receiving her diploma at the American Club. Students voted on a team name and the “Eagles” were born; soon there were Eagles playing fast-pitch softball, volleyball, and basketball. A cheerleading squad appeared at games, and local spectators were amazed. The first plays were performed. The Islander yearbook appeared in 1958, and the first junior-senior prom took place in 1959. The PTA organized a “fun fair,” the forerunner of today’s International Fair, to raise money for the basketball court. And from the beginning, students wore white uniform tops and navy blue bottoms.

Outside the school gates Singapore was going through a turbulent time.

Demands for self-government, anger over high prices and unemployment, strikes by labor unions, demonstrations by local student groups, disagreements between and within different ethnic groups, among other factors, led to a sense of instability.

Through all of this, Singapore American School served as a concrete symbol of the confidence with which most resident Americans viewed Singapore’s future. With elections in 1959, Singapore achieved full internal self-government. The People’s Action Party, led by Lee Kuan Yew, came to power promising to address Singapore’s economic, social, and political problems. By the end of the decade, Singapore seemed to be on the road to stability and the school was bursting at the seams with over 250 students. The outlook was bright.

1960

Moving and Maturing

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he 1960s was a decade when fundamental decisions about the direction of Singapore and Singapore American School were made.

James Aven, hired as principal in 1959, assembled a more professional staff by recruiting qualified Singaporean teachers, many who remained at SAS for decades. Updating the curriculum, he included classes such as Asian Studies, shorthand, and typing. As numbers increased, the school day lengthened. The 7:20 a.m. “curse of death” classes were especially disliked. By 1961, with over 300 students, SAS had outgrown the Rochalie Drive campus. Finding and financing a large, purpose-built new campus seemed impossible until First National City Bank generously offered to sell SAS the seven-acre lot and home formerly used by its president for $150,000, a fraction of the market value. The American community mobilized once again to raise over $1.7 million needed for the property and new buildings.

The new campus at 60 King’s Road opened in June 1962. The drama program took advantage of the new auditorium, with The Importance of Being Earnest as its first play on a real stage. When

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a cafeteria was built, Ho Tee Jam and his son took over operations, starting the Hoe Brothers’ dynasty at SAS that continues to today.

Students in the first service club, the Candy Stripers, volunteered at St. Andrew’s Mission Hospital. Also, teacher Julian Chun organized the first international sports exchange in 1962, taking nine SAS boys on a two-day train journey to Bangkok to compete in volleyball, basketball, softball, and bowling.

Singapore’s own settlingin process was not going as smoothly. Singapore joined the new Federation of Malaysia in 1963, but quarrels with Kuala Lumpur over federal taxes and a proposed common market caused dissatisfaction on both sides.

Racial and political tensions led to Malay-Chinese riots in Singapore in 1964. In addition, Indonesia declared “Konfrontasi” (armed confrontation) with Malaysia. While most actual fighting took place in Borneo, Indonesian saboteurs caused over forty bomb explosions in Singapore, many fatal. On August 9, 1965, Singapore was expelled from Malaysia.

Despite these setbacks, Singapore addressed major domestic problems in this decade. The local school system was expanded

and the Housing Development Board was established. Besides providing universal primary education and modern housing, these initiatives also promoted harmony among ethnic groups.

A National Service requirement was established, giving the young country much-needed defense.

The Economic Development Board increased employment by encouraging companies such as General Electric, HewlettPackard, and Texas Instruments to establish labor-intensive ventures in Singapore.

American culture began to rival British culture throughout the country. Singapore’s first disco clubs hosted live rock-and-roll, and hamburgers and pizza appeared on menus. Television was introduced in 1964, with many programs coming from the United States.

Teens could not imitate the “car culture” of their US counterparts, but a group of SAS boys did form a motorbike “gang,” the Banshees.

By 1969, the school was again a victim of its own success. With over 900 students, it had already added new classrooms, a gym, a PE office, and a library. Running two sessions per day in the lower grades, SAS again considered its options.

Another move seemed increasingly necessary.

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1970 Cultural Change and Growing Pains

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he 1970s proved to be the school’s most challenging decade, as it faced growing pains and fundamental cultural changes within the school community and in Singapore.

In 1971, under the leadership of Dr. Jack McLeod, the school split to ease overcrowding. Kindergarten to sixth grade students moved to the Alexandra Junior School and the nearby Gillman Barracks, both empty due to the British military withdrawal. For two years, the upper elementary grades enjoyed the jungle setting of the Alexandra campus, while the younger children liked the martial music wafting from the army camp beside the Gillman campus. When the new Ulu Pandan campus was finished, it welcomed students in kindergarten to eighth grade, while the King’s Road campus served as the SAS high school for the next twenty years.

Meanwhile, developments outside Singapore brought challenges for SAS and the nation.

When Suharto gained power in Indonesia, he ended Konfrontasi and welcomed multinational companies to develop Indonesia’s oil reserves. Singapore’s planning, with an educated workforce, clean government, and excellent infrastructure, positioned the country well to play a central role in the oil boom.

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While economically positive, the boom brought waves of new workers and their ideas to the culturally conservative nation. Singapore’s governing elite was particularly worried by “hippie culture,” which they saw as promoting self-gratification, disobedience, and immorality.

A campaign against Western decadence ensued, including censoring music and movies, encouraging conservative clothing and hairstyles, and harshly punishing illegal drug possession.

At this time the SAS student body was changing. The government now prohibited Singaporean students from attending expatriate schools, and the number of missionary children declined. These students, with their ties to local friends and speaking Malay, had provided a strong link to the local community that would be missed.

To counter the perceived isolation of SAS students from local and regional life, teachers took students on weeklong trips during the 1972-73 winter break, and Interim Semester was born. Led by enthusiastic “oil patch” parents, a new football program was started and quickly gained popularity and support.

Parents negotiated to build a football field on the Ulu Pandan campus, complete with stands, lights, an announcer’s booth, and concession stands. Games between SAS teams—the Bulldogs, Oilers, Vikings, and Steelers—were popular community events and featured cheerleaders, drill teams, water girls, student trainers, and barbeque meals by the Cajun Chefs.

As Singapore tried to tamp down on hippie and drug culture, the school promoted drug education, expelled repeat offenders, fenced the campus, and posted security guards. In 1973 the Singapore American Community Action Council (SACAC) was formed to provide counseling and extracurricular opportunities.

With continued growth, campus moves, changes to the culture and student body, and new opportunities in academics and extracurriculars, the 1970s were a roller-coaster ride for SAS. By the end of the decade, the school had instituted lasting changes and learned valuable lessons to apply to future challenges.

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1980 Coming of Age

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he creation of the Interscholastic Association of Southeast Asian Schools (IASAS) in 1982 proved a major step forward for SAS high school sports activities. IASAS provided new competition with other international schools in the region. IASAS also spotlighted the arts, with the first Cultural Convention held in 1983. Parents founded the SAS Booster Club in 1985 to provide uniforms for IASAS teams. The Booster Club became a key high school support organization, providing funding, volunteers for extracurricular, cultural, and scholastic activities, and promoting school spirit, teamwork, and sportsmanship.

Meanwhile, the US recession of 1981-83 proved traumatic for Singapore and for SAS. Dependent on US investments and consumers, the country’s economy plunged for the first time since independence in 1965. The increasingly expensive cost of doing business on the island made matters worse. At SAS, the recession caused a 25 percent drop in total enrollment, with Americans declining to 58 percent of the student body.

SAS leadership moved quickly to counter the downturn, reopening admission to all nationalities and expanding the English languagelearning program. SAS effectively demonstrated its commitment to staff and programs by maintaining positions and salaries despite the drop in student numbers.

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In 1987, a new gymnasium, fine arts center, and library replaced the old principal’s house at the King’s Road campus. With an 800-seat theater, bigger music rooms, and large art studio, the facilities were some of the best in the region. The library had doubled in size, and the gym seated 1,000 spectators.

The new fine arts center, with Superintendent Dr. Kuhbander’s strong support, resulted in an arts explosion at SAS. Passionate, experienced teachers brought new standards of professionalism and innovation to the dance, music, drama, and visual arts programs.

Groups such as the SAS Singers were established, along with traditions such as Yulefest.

One of the decade’s highlights was the last single-venue IASAS Cultural Convention held in 1988 in the new SAS theater.

Program changes countered the separation of SAS students from local Singaporean and Asian culture. Cocooned in the “expat triangle” bound by Orchard, Bukit Timah, and Clementi roads, most students never visited the Housing and Development Board apartments and new towns where Singaporeans now lived. To shape

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the high school experience, the school instituted a graduation requirement of one year of Asian Studies, and Interim Semester for all students, with trips focused on the Asia-Pacific region.

The new Social Services Club encouraged students to become active in the community, and students volunteered at the Vietnamese refugee camp, Special Olympics competitions, leprosy home, and homes for the elderly.

Younger students first celebrated United Nations Day in October 1985, starting a much-loved tradition.

By the end of the decade, “Asian Tiger” Singapore had the best standard of living in Asia outside of Japan. Food courts had replaced street hawkers, the Singapore River was clean, and the first MRT line opened to counter increasing traffic. SAS had also overcome the decade’s challenges. With long waitlists and campus constraints, however, radical change would be necessary before long.

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1990

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Continuity, Change, and a New Campus

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he new Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong continued Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew’s policies with a more open, consultative leadership style. The Certificate of Entitlement system and the Jurong Island reclamation project were launched.

The Gulf War resulted in Singapore’s heightened sensitivity to its geographic location. As US troops fought in the Middle East, American institutions in Singapore tightened security and kept a low profile. SAS temporarily cancelled Interim Semester and removed the school insignia from school buses.

As the US military withdrew from bases in the Philippines, Singapore invited the US to establish a presence that would help ensure regional stability and safeguard shipping lanes. The arrival of US military families increased social and racial diversity at SAS. Continuing strong enrollment led to long waitlists, while the pending termination of the Ulu Pandan lease meant decisions had to be made about the school’s future. As a stopgap measure, the Baytree satellite campus was established in Clementi, which accommodated 125 elementary students.

The SAS Board, like those before them, chose an ambitious and optimistic path, and began planning a completely new

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campus. The government was enthusiastic because the growing expatriate community was outstripping the capacity of existing international schools. A thirty-six acre plot was chosen in Woodlands and, as in the past, numerous individuals and companies donated money, services, and equipment. The King’s Road campus was leased to developers, and a purpose-built K-12 campus was constructed over the next two years.

In October 1996, the SAS campus in Woodlands opened with 2,500 students. Enrollment rose steadily as improved transportation and an enthusiastic community made SAS a focus for Singapore’s Americans, as well as an anchor institution in the Woodlands neighborhood.

The sparkling new campus, along with its strong reputation, allowed SAS to attract teachers with a wide range of expertise, interests, and talents. The Advanced Placement program expanded rapidly, and by the end of the decade the majority of SAS graduates had taken at least one AP exam, ensuring student preparation for university.

Technology was emphasized, athletic opportunities continued to grow, and Interim Semester expanded with trips now including a variety of European countries and more service as a component of many trips.

With dedicated performance spaces in the new campus, the performing arts program blossomed with two dance shows per year, musicals, plays, and concerts. The Parent-Teacher Association purchased a gamelan set from Java, and ever since, elementary students have enjoyed gamelan instruction as part of their music program.

SAS enrollment and staff recruitment did not suffer despite the 1997 Asian economic crisis.

Singapore was seen as a haven of stability in a volatile but promising region, and SAS, with its strong reputation and impressive campus, drew expatriates with children. The school and its host country could look forward to future opportunities and challenges with confidence.

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ith the 2001 worldwide campaign against terrorism, and the 2002 terrorist bombings in Bali, Americans in Singapore entered the new millennium with tightened security including armed Gurkhas stationed at the school gates, provided by the Singapore government.

During the years that followed, Singapore saw a crisis of another kind in Asia with the outbreak of SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome), creating fear throughout the region and forcing IASAS events to be cancelled for the first time.

Economies throughout the region were badly hit.

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The early 2000s at SAS saw a focus on service with many Interim Semester trips centered around giving back to others in the global community. Students rallied to raise funds for the communities ravaged by 2005 Asian Tsunami and devoted time to house-building trips in the region. Students also served locally, including projects in Woodlands neighborhoods.

The new millennium for SAS began with a student capacity of 3,000 that previous generations never imagined possible, and the campus was bursting at the seams. As part of the Woodlands lease agreement, Singapore American School would once again expand to accommodate 3,700 students, a move that again seemed like a leap of faith.

With a visionary leadership team and board, a $65 million expansion emerged that would reflect the desires and needs of students, faculty, and the community.

A new high school was built with a cutting-edge, worldclass library funded by a $2 million donation by the Khoo Foundation in memory of the late Khoo Teck Puat, whose grandchildren attended SAS. New dance and drama rooms, a state-of-the-art media lab, a two-story air-conditioned climbing wall, and a high

ropes course were features of the new, upgraded campus.

A new early childhood center was nestled next to the high school, creating a nurturing, specialized, age-appropriate environment for the school’s youngest learners, while enabling high school students to volunteer and share activities in the classrooms.

By its 50th anniversary in 2006, SAS was the largest singlecampus American school outside the United States. As the school continued to grow, its leadership continued to prioritize creating a sense of community and connecting students, parents, and teachers in a meaningful way.

The board, PTA, Booster Club, and other groups made it possible for SAS students to enjoy a balanced school experience and dream about the future.

The decade also saw student tenure increase, with many families starting their own businesses and taking up residency on the island. A vibrant culture, an open economy, and an extraordinary quality of life made Singapore an increasingly attractive place to raise a family. With educational excellence for their children, the school community would continue to grow throughout the decade.

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n July 2012, after a global search, Dr. Chip Kimball became the twelfth superintendent at SAS. Dr. Kimball’s charge from the school board was to capitalize upon the high quality work of SAS since its inception in 1956, and to help shape the school’s future to ensure that SAS students remain prepared for a complex and rapidly changing world.

At the same time, Singapore began authorizing new international schools in Singapore. These authorizations would provide an increasingly competitive environment for schools, and ensure enough school infrastructure for ambitious Singapore growth.

Dr. Kimball led a year-long process with parents, faculty, and students to create a new vision for the school: a world leader in education, cultivating exceptional thinkers, prepared for the future. The new vision provided a powerful direction for the school, setting the foundation for a school-wide research and development process.

Teams of faculty from every division visited the most innovative and reputable schools in the United States, Finland, Australia, New

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Zealand, Southeast Asia, and Singapore, spending hundreds of hours consulting educational research, interviewing more than 100 university admissions officers, and engaging in discussions about the future of education.

New programs and recommendations resulting from the process included more project-based learning and interdisciplinary courses, curriculum supporting 21st century learning outcomes, a focus on personalized learning, a Reggio Emilia-inspired preschool program, world language immersion programs, a new advisory program for students, a catalyst project requirement for seniors, and new advanced topics course offerings.

At the same time, professional learning communities became a vital part of the school’s continuous improvement practices.

All faculty work together in these collaborative teams to establish common expectations, create an optimal learning environment, share effective instructional approaches, and develop common curriculum and assessment tools to ensure that every student will master the SAS essential learning outcomes.

The school’s organizational culture became more defined and deliberate, centered around three strategic anchors. The strategic anchors make the SAS experience unique among leading schools: a culture of excellence, a culture of extraordinary care, and a culture of possibilities. These enable our students to think, learn, lead, and in turn positively impact the world.

SAS holds a legacy as one of the world’s leading American international schools.

Decades of strong academic results and a balanced curriculum matter to the more than 300 college admission officers that visit the SAS campus each year, and more importantly, to well prepared SAS graduates.

We anticipate that SAS will continue to lead international American education for generations to come.

Singapore American School has come a long way in 60 years, just as the country in which it resides.

COMPETITORS Many academic, artistic, and athletic greats started out here in in Singapore American School! The Interscholastic Association of Southeast Asian Schools and the Singapore American Community Action Council have enriched our students’ extracurricular lives and encouraged them to develop their passions.

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1958 Home of the Eagles Jim Baker

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n 1957-58, Principal Albert Varnum Fisher III directed the softball program. Forty-eight boys in grades four to 11 took part in four inter school teams.

Another team represented SAS in the Singapore Schools League.

The SAS Eagles were born when students voted on the team name in 1958-59. That year, the school’s first varsity team took the field in fast-pitch softball. The Eagles played as the Diamonds in the Singapore Softball Association under the sponsorship of Goodyear, because the school did not have a budget for extracurricular sports. And to call it a varsity team was a stretch, as it contained seventh and eighth graders.

In the first decade of sports at SAS, fast pitch softball was the most important school sport. It was also popular with the greater

expatriate adult community, which had several teams in the Singapore Softball Association league. Playing softball seemed to reaffirm the school’s American identity, and because the school was so small, softball was the one sport that offered an even playing field in competition.

Local schools and teams were still learning the game, while the Americans had grown up playing it.

The Eagles also played volleyball and basketball under the school colors of red, white, and blue. A cement outdoor basketball court was constructed at the base of the garden of the Rochalie Drive campus, and SAS boys’ and girls’ teams began to participate in volleyball and basketball in the Pasir Panjang school district.

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1963 Coach Kasi Jim Baker

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he second year at the King’s Road campus represented a total sea change in sports when a full-time qualified PE teacher and athletic director was hired— Mr. S. Kasinathan. “Coach” or “Coach Kasi” opened whole new vistas for SAS athletes and continued to do so for 20 years.

A native of Sri Lanka, Kasinathan was a graduate of Springfield College in Massachusetts. He had the rare distinction of having represented three different countries in sports—Sri Lanka in rugby, the United States as a member of the national collegiate all-star soccer team, and Singapore in cricket. Every student who played sports at SAS between 1963 and 1983 has a story about “Coach.”

“Coach Kasi had an excellent sense of humor and spent time with students besides regular classroom time.”

Heiko Oberleitner (SAS ‘81)

“Coach Kasi used to stand in the middle of the track and yell, ‘Go, little one, go!’”

Jane Svoboda (SAS ‘65) The sports program expanded dramatically. Field hockey for girls, swimming for boys and girls, the first serious track and field team, and junior varsity teams were all added. Kasi’s great passion was soccer, and the first team took to the field in 1968. By the following year, SAS played in the national semifinals, quite a feat in footballloving Singapore.

1974 SACAC Singapore American Football League Susan Studebaker-Rutledge

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he lives of young Americans in Singapore in the 1970s were enriched by a number of activities generated from within its wellestablished US community. The nature of the community at this time had taken on a Southern accent that dictated which new activities would be popular. A significant portion of the community was made up of “oil patch� parents, named after an informal term referring to a region in the United States that produces a significant amount of oil.

The oil patch states included Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Louisiana, which many in the community called home. In those states, the game of football traditionally was a lifestyle along with a deep passion. So the idea that football could be played in Singapore was met with great enthusiasm.

The Singapore American Football League (SAFL) was formed by parent volunteers, but the Singapore American Community Action Council (SACAC) took over its administration in 1974. It began when members of the community saw a need to provide young people with sports options that resonated with them.

There was also recognition that a high number of young people were involved in detrimental activities, so the need for football and the life lessons that come with the sport became a community priority.

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Along with a group of mainly oilfield-related businessmen, a commission was formed, equipment purchased, and two leagues established: the US (ages nine to eleven) and the National (ages 12-14) Leagues. The World League (ages 14-18) was added the following year. The open grass field on Dover Road was used for the first few years. It wasn’t even a fullsize field. During extreme torrential rains, the field even had to be flipped a different direction so that the players could avoid muddy, sunken holes. An alternative location was badly needed.

Football is an expensive sport, but parents in the community negotiated with SAS for permission to build a field on the Ulu Pandan campus with stands, lights, an announcer’s booth, and concession stands. An enthusiastic group of “oil patch” parents along with the oil service companies bankrolled the program. McDermott Engineering, Bethlehem Steel, TRW/Reda Pump, Halliburton, and countless others contributed over $100,000 to provide a magnificent field, uniforms, and gear for the kids.

The stadium was packed every Saturday, all day long! Parents, family friends, and colleagues came out for the games, atmosphere, concessions, and the best hot dogs in Asia. In those days, our league was supplemented by players from UWC, ISS, and local schools.

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The young men came from a multitude of nations, backgrounds, and sports. Some of the students who excelled in SAFL were from Australia, England, Scotland, Ireland, Germany, France, Japan, Korea, Mexico, India, Canada, and Singapore. For a decade (19751985), football was the largest program in the US community.

The number of people involved in the program was nothing short of phenomenal. There were 12 teams, each with coaches and staff, 12 cheerleading squads, water girls, and sports medicine trainers. In 1978, it was estimated that 500 students were involved, close to a third of the school.

SACAC football set such an example for the region that in 1977, the international schools in Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur formed teams and joined the league. The Kuala Lumpur-Singapore leagues played intermittently in the 1970s and early 1980s, and for a while the competition was called the Durian Bowl. Games with the Jakarta league lasted only three years because Indonesia did not have good medical facilities for injured athletes. At the peak of participation and support, the four Singapore World Leagues played home and away games in both KL and Jakarta. Crowds of 1,200 to 1,500 attended the games. They ate barbecue provided by the Cajun Chefs, a group of oil patch men. Drill teams, cheerleaders, and play-by-play commentators completed the picture.

In the 1990s, a SAFL all-star team, the Falcons, began a football series with Department of Defense schools in Korea, Okinawa in Japan, and Guam, which is ongoing.

The traditions of the Singapore American Football League continue today, though the league is much smaller. SAFL always has an opening ceremony to kick off the season and a closing ceremony where special awards are presented. For example, the first award was established in 1979 for a player who passed away that season. The David Nobles Award has been given out for 35 years.

When the award is announced yearly at the closing ceremony, all previous recipients are recognized so as to celebrate each player who has received it. Another tradition is the playing of both the Singaporean and US national anthems. SAFL has long proven to be an invaluable program offering each player, coach, volunteer, and family an opportunity to develop, belong, and excel. SAFL has held fast to the ideals of good sportsmanship, staunch ethical behavior, and integrity of culture and community for all participants on and off the football field.

1982 Interscholastic Association of Southeast Asian Schools Jim Baker

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he establishment of the Interscholastic Association of Southeast Asian Schools (IASAS) in 1982 was a significant milestone in high school student life at SAS. The founding schools— Singapore American School (SAS), International School Bangkok (ISB), Jakarta Intercultural School (JIS), and The International School of Kuala Lumpur (ISKL)—had decided to move away from the multi-sport format of the past and focus on single-sport tournaments played in defined seasons.

The first year, soccer and volleyball were hosted by The International School of Kuala Lumpur in November; basketball and swimming were at Singapore American School in February; and softball and track were held at Jakarta Intercultural School in April. The high point of the year for athletes became winning an IASAS championship. International School Manila (ISM) joined the league in 1985 and Taipei American School (TAS) in 1986. The six schools meshed and provided a unique athletic experience for expatriate athletes.

IASAS quickly became more than a sports conference. Its most important contribution may arguably be to shine a spotlight on the arts. Beginning in Bangkok in 1983, IASAS’s festival of arts consisted of music, drama, forensics, and dance—art was added in 1985. The IASAS Cultural Convention gave students in the arts opportunities to perform in front of their peers from similar schools. Until 1988, all the disciplines came together each year at one site—an extravaganza of the arts, including six one-act plays, dance performances, music adjudication, honors performances by individuals, and an IASAS choir and orchestra concert.

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Most significant, though, was the role of a student committee that took charge of much of the organization and direction of the convention.

The next year, Cultural Convention was split into two venues. Music and art were in one group; drama, forensics, and dance in the other.

The sponsors of drama, dance, and music also decided to take the competition out of their disciplines and concentrate on performance.

One of the biggest beneficiaries of the Cultural Convention was forensics. Prior to IASAS, The International School of Kuala Lumpur had hosted a forensics tournament, but SAS was the only other IASAS school that participated in it. Including forensics competitions in IASAS gave it a much higher profile.

IASAS took over the sponsorship of the Asian Model United Nations (MUN) in the mid-1980s. The host school, structure, and evolution of the event each year is determined

by IASAS, but delegations are invited from Singapore, the Philippines, China, India, Japan, and Korea, as well as from IASAS schools, with close to twenty schools typically participating.

Setting up an activities conference with six schools in six different countries presented many challenges. Each school had traditions and priorities that reflected the community it served.

There had to be a considerable amount of give and take in order to form the six schools into a group with common goals and expectations. While The International School of Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta Intercultural School, Singapore American School, and International School Bangkok had ties that went back for some years, International

School Manila and Taipei American School were newcomers.

Few rulebooks really covered the unique IASAS format. Team sports played six games in three days in the tropical sun or in non air-conditioned gymnasiums.

Substitution rules and time-outs had to be tinkered with. This was especially true for the IASAS cultural convention because the group virtually made things up as conventions evolved.

It took time to bring rationality and consistency to the league.

Individual schools had to give up control on some things, such as traveling rules, to conform on league-wide concerns. Dates of competition had to be brought into line with the distinctive calendars of six different schools in six countries.

Currently, the IASAS organization of six schools organizes and hosts: • • • • • •

First season: cross-country, soccer, volleyball Second season: basketball, rugby/touch, swimming, tennis Third season: badminton, softball, track and field, golf Cultural convention: drama, dance, forensics and debate, music, and art Model United Nations A mathematics competition

Problems with facilities were solved to a great extent by school and resource expansions that came about as a result of the Asian economic boom. Rising student enrollment meant greater resources for all the schools and greater financial backing for the league itself. By the early 1990s, the league had transcended its early problems and member schools were truly proud of it. IASAS had become the core of each high school’s activities program.

CREATORS Singapore American School provided the space and resources for student artists, creatives, and inventors to flourish. Teachers and principals put on their creative hats and drew the community closer with their unique initiatives as well.

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1970 The Music Men Jim Baker

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ntil the 1970s, music at the high school was extracurricular.

Vocal music had been limited to the Glee Club, which was viewed as a “female” activity, and there were occasional attempts at rock and roll and school bands. This changed in 1970 when music was brought into the high school curriculum.

The school hired Brian Leonard to develop an instrumental music program. Leonard had received much of his music training in the British Armed Forces. The following year, Jim Perry, a choral director from the United States, came to SAS. He and Leonard built the foundation of the school’s massive music program.

The two charismatic teachers attracted incredible numbers of students—though some said Leonard was more eccentric than charismatic. Within a year, the high school had a concert choir with 50 students, a high school chorus with another 50 students, and a junior high chorus with 70 students. The instrumental groups included a concert band, a high school band, and a junior high school band, some 120 students in total.

In 1972, the band, choir and drama club joined forces to produce a full musical, Oklahoma, beginning a tradition of annual musical performances. The most dramatic of these school performances was South Pacific in 1973. It was performed outdoors at King’s Road in the central open-air space around a banyan tree, while the audience watched from the second and third floor balconies of the surrounding buildings.

Perry and Leonard took the choir and selected musicians, 44 students in all, to the United States in 1974.

They performed at an Atlanta Braves game and sang on the steps of the US Capitol building, at schools, and in churches. Cikgu Ehsan, our Malay language teacher, choreographed an Asian dance segment that was part of the show as well.

Perry left SAS in 1974, but Leonard carried on as vocal and instrumental director until 1978. Not only was the school’s music program solidly established, but it had also energized the greater American community and led to later musical productions by the American Association of Singapore.

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Jim Perry and Brian Leonard

1973 The Legend of Bilge John Kukla

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earch the online archives of PublicationSG of the National Library Board (Singapore), and you’ll find the eight known publications by the “Singapore American School Literary Society.”

By law, all such works had to be registered and a sample copy placed on file in the official state library.

And if you were to unearth the entries under MC (P) 1449/74, you’d deduce that between December 1973 and May 1975 on the campus of Singapore American School, a science teacher was actually a punspouting supervillain, the physical education coach had supernatural powers to fight demonic laziness, and that the quiet algebra teacher was really a world-class secret agent.

The magazine was “Bilge.” Catchy, huh?

It only lasted a couple of years. A purple-inked, monthly mimeograph that became an above-ground underground satire, casting students and teachers into a world of parody, caricature and really dumb jokes. It was silly, juvenile, slapdash—and EVERYONE read it.

It was Ms. Wanda Abbott who gave the go-ahead to a couple of bored students doodling and writing dumb jokes in English class. Maybe she realized that ANY writing was worth something. It was the whipsmart Guy Rittger who came up with the premise “Mad Magazine with Teachers.” Jenny Kraar, Renee Bienvenue, Dave Laybourn, Scott Carson, Jeff Slaton, Lance King, and Greg Kemp pitched in, and fellow teacher Bosley Wilder recommended we register it with the Ministry of Culture—despite the fact there was little to qualify it as such. “Bilge” was truly sophomoric humor. Given that

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we were sophomores, it seemed appropriate.

Before long, a lanky kid with a flair for drama joined us. Bill Horan was one of those guys who was good at everything . . . played baseball, basketball, had the lead in several plays . . . a brilliant artist. You’d hate him if he wasn’t so darn likeable. So Guy, Bill, and yours truly started cranking out an issue a month, with circulation being whoever was near the ditto machine when we stapled it.

Looking back, I can’t believe we got away with openly mocking everyone and everything. Coach Kasi became “The Exercisist,” casting out lethargy from his PE students. Mr. Stratton transformed into a 4-star General, Coach Jim Baker was the centerpiece of “Baker at the Bat” and “Jim Baker, PE Star.” We even included the principal, Larry Crouch, dubbed “A Man of Some Importance.”

Students weren’t safe either. Don Kabel led a post-apocalyptic uprising in “Planet of The Students.” KK Watts was the chanteuse who charmed the “Phantom of the Auditorium.” Was there an agenda? Absolutely. If it made us laugh, we put it in.

The biggest surprise was the response to the algebra teacher re-imagined as “Atma Singh, Agent Pi.” In the pages of Bilge, he fought evil in “Live & Let Pi”, “The Man With The Golden Pun,” and “Dr. Ho” . . . before long, there were even Atma T-shirts, and at the school assembly in May 1975, they let us give him an award for “Bilge Man of the Year.” The auditorium gave him a standing ovation.

Shortly thereafter, John and Bill returned to the States, and Guy transferred. Bilge was gone.

Bill graduated from Washington State University, and in addition to being a successful engineer, turned his high school hobby of model building into a true art form. Today, Bill is acknowledged as a world master of miniature model building and painting. He is the author and subject of numerous books, and is in demand at competitions and festivals around the world.

Seriously, check him out. Told you he was good at everything.

Guy Rittger is an information technology guru with titles, proficiencies, and expertise we can barely spell, much less understand.

In his spare time, he is a worldclass sailor who participates in races around the US. While at SAS, Guy also played bass for the band Crystalaugur, along with Howard Kukla, Brian Hall, and Kim Bengs.

Their one album, “Terranaut,” recorded during Interim Semester, took on a life of its own over the past decades, and has since gained worldwide cult status.

Was “Bilge” significant? Not really, except that the school encouraged us to try it. That support meant everything to kids at their most awkward age, in a world far away from their own. No matter what circumstances landed us at King’s Road, we not only found common things to laugh about, and bonded in ways that remain unbroken decades later. The jokes don’t hold up, but the experience was lifechanging.

Thank you, Ms. Abbott, thank you, Ms. Wilder. Thank you, faculty, and especially Guy and Bill. So next time you’re in Singapore, drop by the National Library. Ask for Bilge.

Tell Atma Singh hello.

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1987 Paula Silverman: Passion and Performance Noelle de Jesus Chua

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rs. Paula Silverman personifies the performing arts at Singapore American School. No one else has been as instrumental to performing arts at SAS as she has been. This calm, unassuming, disarmingly warm lady gives you a very clear impression: she believes anything worth doing is worth doing well.

And how well she did! Not only did she pioneer the school’s dynamic dance program, which has been the haven of so many girls and not just a few boys over 28 years, she also played a critical role in shaping performance arts in general throughout the all school levels.

Mrs. Silverman arrived in 1987, when SAS was located at King’s Road. Her mandate was to start the dance program and the aquatics program in the high school, and this, her double major in Physical Education and Coaching (team and individual sports) with a minor in English from the University of Nebraska fully equipped her to do. From the start, she took on the challenges of developing a comprehensive dance curriculum— one that emphasized lifelong learning, nurturing her students, and fostering a culture of passion and excellence in performance throughout the school.

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consolidated and transferred to the Woodlands campus, Mrs. Silverman saw that having four theater facilities for use in the primary, intermediate, middle and high schools would make a higher level of organization necessary. She stepped up and proposed to take on the role of theater coordinator to address the needs of all SAS events and stage productions, even going so far as searching for theater professionals to support the school.

then, more male students have signed up.

Says Mr. Paul Koebnick, “Paula sets a golden standard for the management of SAS theaters and the events carried out each year, coordinating each request to use any of the four theaters by all grade levels, as well as by associate organizations. She might take on the role of producer or step in as stage manager to oversee the big stage productions. All that, and she manages the budgets for theater upgrades and stage productions too, and works with Mimi Molchan to put together the calendar of events for the school.”

And Mrs. Tracy van der Linden, now high school dance teacher, says, “I love watching her engage with my high school students during rehearsals, providing helpful feedback and encouragement.

I also love sneaking into an elementary rehearsal and watching her inspire our younger students with the same contagious enthusiasm. She has been one of the most influential mentors I have had.”

The standout team of the 1980s was girls’ swimming, which won eight out of ten IASAS championships under the coaching of Lyn Obendorf, Kathy Johnson, and Paula Silverman.

While there are many students interested in performance, there are also students interested in what goes on backstage. A natural extension of her work included establishing and moderating student clubs. Not just the dance club, but also the theater tech club, the theater makeup club, and the ushers’ society, all of which provide work and leadership opportunities to its student members.

Mrs. Silverman’s contributions to Singapore American School traverse well beyond the dance program. Once the school

In 1989, a three-point basketball shot helped Mrs. Paula Silverman convince a male student to join her all-female dance program. Since

“Working with Paula Silverman is a true pleasure,” said Mimi Molchan, SAS high school director of athletics and activities. “If you want a job done correctly, with no corners cut, a high-quality outcome, while making sure everyone’s needs are met, she is your gal. Organized, creative, proactive, and a laugh that no one will ever forget.”

And it’s admirable that you will never hear it from her, humble and modest as she is. Asked to share a memorable anecdote, Mrs. Silverman relates how a young man who challenged her to shoot a three-pointer in the gym. He said, “If you make the shot, Mrs. Silverman, I’ll sign up for dance class.”

Says Mrs. Silverman with a grin, “I made the shot. And he signed up for dance. But I think he was really planning on that, anyway.”

1997 Hop-A-Long Hoss and Shoo-Fly Schunk Pooja Makhijani

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early two decades ago, elementary school principal Mr. David Hoss returned from summer break and told elementary school deputy principal Mr. Ken Schunk that he had found two ventriloquist puppets, removed their heads, and wanted to create a show that imparted core values such as respect, responsibility, and compassion to their students.

“He told me that we’d be using our heads on top of the puppet,” said Mr. Schunk, describing the creation of two half-human, half-puppet characters.

Thus, Hop-A-Long Hoss and Shoo-Fly Schunk, the principals’ alter-egos and the longtime faces of the elementary school, were born.

Since 1997, Hop-A-Long and his sidekick Shoo-Fly have entertained thousands of children at SAS through song, dance, laughter, and play. “Our first attempts were rather amateurish. We used chairs and a black curtain,” said Mr. Schunk. “I

think kids will make connections with certain things, and it doesn’t all have to be tricked out and gizmoed and kind of technologied up to the point it where it resembles a video game.”

Their performances evolved, and they began to include other SAS staff members as characters, including science specialist and math enrichment teacher Wendy Liddell as “Miss Wendy”, who shared her expertise regarding animals and the environment.

Elementary school librarian Mr. Kirk Palmer was “Mr. Bookman”, who opened his vast library to the children.

“The show introduced literacy and science, as well as included a character lesson,” said Mr. Hoss.

“We wanted to engage kids in really being scientists and discovering the world. Miss Wendy would always be doing some kind of experiment, and the kids would be so engaged and involved with that.

“We were doing shows four times a year in the theater,” said Mr. Schunk, ’edu-taining’ nearly 700 students per show. “We staged a Christmas show, where’d we interview Santa, and a Thanksgiving show, where we’d interview the Turkey!”

As Hop-A-Long and Shoo-Fly became increasingly popular, Hoss and Schunk created Hop-A-Long Productions in 2008, and filmed several episodes over spring break that year. Hop-A-Long’s Schoolhouse, a CD/DVD series, combines literature, vocabulary, science, music, and movement, and “takes children on a journey to explore the world around them, while teaching them to be good caretakers of the planet.” The series was nominated for a Carnegie Medal of Excellence in Children’s Video and was nominated for inclusion in the New York International Children’s Film Festival.

Creating and performing for their students has only reinforced Mr. Hoss and Mr. Schunk’s ideas about education. Mr. Schunk believes that rigor, challenge, and hard work should “not be at the expense of levity, of fun, of things that are truly exciting.”

“I always felt that schools needed to have that, and yet I knew we are in an environment where very often, play sounds to some parents like a waste of time,” Mr. Schunk adds. “I think we’re in some time and place where people think rigor, challenge, and serious work has to look like no play time, no down time, and no time when you’re just mindful or being reflective. I saw the benefit of supplying something that energized kids and that energy wasn’t just about that show. It was about energy going back to the class to apply to math and reading and what not, as opposed to just grinding away at something from 8:00 a.m. until 3:00 p.m.”

Artwork by Sofia Syjuco Class of 2015

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2000 The Jam Room: A Musical Refuge for IPAU Members Kristina Doss

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here is a room just below the Singapore American School’s Riady Performing Arts Center unlike any other at the Woodlands campus.

Tucked away on the ground floor near airconditioning units, the room is clad with posters from concerts that have rocked the Lion City over the past two decades, including Slash (formerly of Guns and Roses), Muse, and Metallica.

The space is also stocked like a studio worthy of garage and famous bands alike.

You’ll find a computer-recording station, drum set, keyboard, guitars, and more unique instruments such as a mandolin, triple-neck guitar, and a six-string bass.

Welcome to the Jam Room, an area for members of the Independent Performing Artists Union (IPAU) that has been at SAS in one incarnation or another for 15 years.

Besides being a haven, the Jam Room is also where bands have formed, friendships have been forged, instruments mastered, and SAS students—regardless of whether they’re on a path to become future mathematicians, engineers, or classically-trained musicians—are free to explore their passion for music.

IPAU members, both past and present, can thank a small group of high school students and the first co-sponsors— former SAS teacher Mr. Bryan Coole and theater engineer Mr. Paul Koebnick—for starting IPAU and creating a home for it in 2000.

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This group of high school students, Mr. Coole, and Mr. Koebnick shared a passion for music. The students were in a band called The Old Kings. Mr. Coole helped with Peace Concerts, an annual event led by the human rights club Peace Initiative. As for Mr. Koebnick, he admits that he doesn’t know how to play an instrument. However, the theater engineer can string together microphones and speakers, as well as live sound and lights, as if they were.

The Old Kings, Mr. Coole, and Mr. Koebnick were also drawn together by the common goal of creating a club that supported performing artists at SAS, whether they were dancers, poets, artists, or musicians, according to Mr. Koebnick.

Over time, the founding members discovered that there were enough opportunities and support in place for most performing artists at SAS in the form of classes, clubs, and events. As a result, IPAU membership narrowed down to musicians who wanted to pursue their own brand of music in an informal setting, Mr. Koebnick says.

The club’s first order of business was to create a place where IPAU members could practice and experiment with music.

Unfortunately, Mr. Koebnick says, the first couple of attempts at finding a dedicated space for IPAU members didn’t pan out.

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The first space in 2000 was located in a practice room. But sound would bleed through the door.

Since the room was located close to music classes and rehearsals, IPAU students couldn’t fully rock out.

During the 2001-02 school year, the Jam Room moved out to a stadium concession stand. Here, IPAU members could play their music as loudly as they wanted. But the location wasn’t convenient to get to, especially during torrential rainstorms. And when the new high school went under construction, the rooms in the stadium— including the Jam Room—were needed for construction offices and storage. The construction ended up being a blessing in disguise.

During the 2003-04 school year, IPAU members converted a theater storage room into what remains to this day as their Jam Room.

Over the years, IPAU has grown to provide more than just a Jam Room for students. The club also provides opportunities for students to perform in front of a crowd.

The club’s “bread and butter” performances are the monthly Break Gigs, performed on a patio area near the cafeteria, according to current co-sponsor Mr. Saylar Craig, a SAS high school mathematics teacher who holds a double major in math and music, and who has run rock band programs at other schools he has worked in.

In addition to the break gigs, IPAU has supported school-wide events in the past such as the PTA-sponsored County Fair and Food Fest. But the big end-of-year feature is an event called PAUFest.

Member Jayg Dimayacyac (‘15) recalls how successful PAUFest 2015 was in drawing both performers and a crowd after two years of the concert not coming together as well.

“In 2015, however, we made PAUFest a priority,” he says. “We publicized and advertised to performers and spectators. We even got people who were not even members of IPAU, to come perform and bring their friends . . .

PAUFest 2015 is one of my favorite memories in IPAU, because this event assured me that we had been fulfilling IPAU’s mission to give everybody a chance to have fun with and express music.”

EAGLES Once an Eagle, always an Eagle! Here is how some of our Eagles have soared in their respective fields. Being an Eagle means to put your best into your passion, no matter what it is.

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he King’s Road campus held so many memories for me that it is still painful to reflect on its passing. I’m like the guy in the TV ad who visits his childhood home and finds a ragged shuttlecock that brings back thoughts of his youth. For me, every hallway and every corner of that campus echoed with memories.

My brothers—David (61) and Robert (65)—and I attended SAS from its inception in a house on Rochalie Drive in 1956 when Singapore was still a British colony. Singapore was by then no longer a colony and in the process of joining the Federation of Malaysia. The only grocery stores were single outlets of Cold Storage and Fitzpatrick’s, both on Orchard Road, a quiet road of two-story shophouses, Lido, and the CK Tang emporium.

I can’t remember anyone living in an apartment then. We all lived in houses with big lawns. We were vastly different from Singaporeans, who lived in kampungs or substandard housing, and yet in a sense, we were much more a part of the Asian community than we are today.

The Americans—there were fewer than 1,000 of us—hunted Easter eggs at the Consul’s residence and celebrated Thanksgiving and Christmas at the American Club, but we also learned to speak some Malay, and lived and worked in a very Asian environment. We were different, but we belonged. We were not as closed in on our own culture as we are today.

The move to King’s Road in 1962 was a big deal for the American community.

We had purchased Emily Newell (‘63)’s house from Citibank. We were so proud of our new school and called it “our little island,” three buildings on a hill surrounded by kampungs.

The mid-60s were a troubled time in Singapore. There were strikes and race riots because the Chinese felt they would face discrimination in the newly

formed Federation of Malaya. Other countries were not happy that Malaysia wanted to be an independent nation.

Most of this did not affect us at SAS. We had to get home before curfew and sometimes made up classes on Saturdays. We participated in local sports events but stayed away from politics. The student council ran the snack bar, often to its personal profit, until Mr. Hoe’s father came in 1965.

In 1965, my junior year, Singapore became an independent nation. Creating a nation from scratch seemed an awesome task, but Lee Kuan Yew’s single-minded determination to make Singapore a self-sufficient, prosperous nation obviously worked—just look around today.

I returned to Singapore in 1971 with my wife, and our son was born in 1974. Randy graduated from SAS in 1992. I taught with some outstanding colleagues. Coach Kasi virtually created and ran the sports programs. He made sure there was lots of competition, both intramural and nationwide. And Abe Abraham, my not-so-favorite high school math teacher, quickly earned my admiration and respect. He became my mentor, I would not have become a teacher without his inspiration and guidance.

I was away from Singapore from 1974-82, but my school did not change much in those years.

Superintendent Kuhbander also joined SAS in 1982. He and the school board initiated many expansion projects that enhanced the campus but did not take away its community feeling.

I believe that SAS is a monument to the shared efforts of parents, teachers, and administrators.

I also believe that it carried the collective memories of King’s Road, Ulu Pandan, and even Rochalie Drive to the Woodlands campus when it moved there in 1996. Remember the African proverb “it takes a village to raise a child”? SAS is a village of our memories that has moved from place to place, but is still our village.

I’ve taught and coached hundreds of fine young people. I hope their memories of their years at SAS are as rich and rewarding as mine.

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1956 An Amazing Transformation Kathy Saludo Tan

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y father served with the US Air Force in England during World War II and became a US citizen. He moved to Singapore in 1947, where he met and married my mother. He was a well-known figure in the small American community, owned a popular service station on Holland Road, and was a founding member of the American Club.

My parents wanted me to attend the Convent of the Holy Infant Jesus (that school’s campus is now CHIJMES, a popular shopping and dining mall). The convent school wanted me to repeat a year because I had not attended kindergarten, so my parents decided to send me to Singapore American School instead. I started first grade in 1956, and my brother Bob (69) joined the kindergarten the following year. We both attended SAS until we graduated.

The Rochalie Drive campus consisted of a big bungalow on a huge piece of land. The ground floor was on cement pillars several feet off the ground. The above ground elevation allowed for improved air circulation, and safeguarded against flooding.

The science class was in the garage, the kindergarten in the servants’ quarters, the library in the living room, and classrooms in the bedrooms. And there were chickens everywhere. The campus was really lovely and had a small, intimate feel.

The primary school teachers were the wives of British army officers and American businessmen. Every morning we sang God Save the Queen. Our uniforms were blue and white dresses, and I was so

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proud of the big blue bow in the back. We used to line up to wait for our names to be called when our cars arrived to take us home, as there were no school buses.

Home life for most of us was also different from today. Many of us lived in bungalows. We spent long hours out in the beautiful gardens playing games like five stones (a game similar to jacks).

In addition to the drivers that picked us up from school, we had cooks, gardeners, and amahs (or nannies). Our family’s amah was from southern China. Chinese amahs were often referred to as black and white nannies because of their traditional black pants and white tops.

Food shopping took place almost exclusively in wet markets, including meat and poultry. We boiled our drinking water, and soaked all our veggies and fruit in potassium. There were few HDBs in those days, with most of the population living in kampungs.

After I graduated from King’s Road in 1967, I went to the State University of New York at Stony Brook, where I majored in science and biology. I fell into teaching naturally. I was a student teacher in life science at a junior high school on Long Island. I hoped to get a teaching position in New York City after I graduated, but schools were closing in the late 60s and early 70s and jobs were difficult to find.

I came back to Singapore and started substitute teaching at SAS in 1972. My first year as a full-time teacher was in 1973-74. I was the science teacher for grades five to

eight for the next five years. The school used a new approach called Individually Guided Education in which four grade levels of students were grouped to learn at their own pace rather than in traditional classes. This concept of a classroom without walls presented challenges for the school, and so the system was changed to two grades per class.

For the next four years, I taught grades five to six and loved it. I liked working with younger kids.

By that time I was married and had kids of my own, and wanted to teach young people to read.

I got a master’s in elementary education and spent the next four years in grades three to four. Then, because of my interest in teaching reading, I taught grades one to two for five years and finally settled in grade one when the school went to single-grade classes. It’s a lovely age because the children learn so much in one year.

Many of my current close SAS friendships are a result of the “Say Goodbye to King’s Road Campus 1996 Reunion” for alums put together by Junia and Jim Baker.

Many Singapore alums from the 60s and 70s attended. Coming full circle, I’m excited that one of my daughters, Anne-Marie (95), taught at SAS. She and her sister Claire (98) attended SAS from kindergarten through graduation.

SAS has played a huge part in my life. It is an amazing organization and it has been remarkable to see its transformation from a little school to what it is today—one of the largest international schools in the world.

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1969 From School Girl to Senior Human Resources Manager Kristina Doss

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eresa Sim, Singapore American School’s senior human resources manager, first moved to Singapore from Hong Kong around the tender age of five in the mid-1950s. At the time, the lion city was a rough-andtumble colonial outpost, but her father, a businessman from China, believed Singapore had the potential to provide a better life for his family.

His priority upon arrival: to ensure his seven children received a good education.

Mrs. Sim squeezed into a trishaw with her siblings each day to attend an English-language school. Years later, she got accepted into a university in Hawaii, but she decided to forgo college to support her large family.

Thankfully, her passion for education was still realized, just in a different way. At the age of 19, she got a job at Singapore American School.

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“I think education is very important, so working at the American school is actually quite suitable for me,” said Mrs. Sim, who retired from SAS in June after nearly 46 years of service. Some things have changed over the years, she said, but one thing hasn’t. “The first superintendent I know and the current superintendent I know has the same goal: to give the best education we can give to students.

That’s the reason why I’ve been here for so long!”

Mrs. Sim’s journey at SAS started like all others: with an interview. It went well and the superintendent offered her the job as a clerical assistant, but there was a catch.

She needed a work permit.

At the time, the school didn’t know how to get work permits for support staff, according to Mrs. Sim. But she wasn’t going to let something like that prevent her from getting the job.

“I told them, ‘I can get it myself,’” she said.

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“To tell you the truth, I had no clue. But I thought this was an opportunity for me to get a job.”

Mrs. Sim went home and, with the help of her father, made phone calls and figured out how to secure a work permit and her job at SAS. Thanks to Mrs. Sim’s can-do attitude and efforts, she started her job as a clerical assistant in 1969, helping high school department heads in the areas of English, foreign language, social studies, and mathematics.

Every once in a while, her schoolgirl ways would show. Having just graduated from school herself, Mrs. Sim was used to jumping up and saying “Good morning, sir!” whenever she saw a principal or the superintendent. “It would be automatic,” Mrs. Sim said with a laugh. “I didn’t realize you just had to say hi.”

She looks back at her time in the high school, which was then located at the King’s Road campus, with fondness. In fact, Mrs. Sim, who eventually moved up to become secretary to a high school deputy principal, is a treasure trove of stories from that time period that is bound to entertain any Eagle who has the honor of hearing them from her firsthand.

Mrs. Sim recalls the 1970s when miniskirts were a popular fashion staple, and it was once her job to measure the miniskirts that teachers wore to school. “Teachers had to stand in front of me and I had to measure; the length from the knees up couldn’t be more than six inches.”

By 1973, the growing school needed a dedicated personnel office. Mrs. Sim was selected to

be the confidential secretary to the superintendent to handle personnel work. As it turns out, her initial research into work permits and her willingness to figure things out would come in handy in her new human resources role, which required her to handle employment passes and payroll for the teachers.

Mrs. Sim didn’t stay in that role for long. She became a personnel officer and then senior human resources manager, ultimately handling payroll for 735 employees at SAS. Mrs. Sim said she felt blessed for the opportunity to work at SAS. “The remarkable and positive experiences I had and with the incredible support from everyone throughout my journey here are just a few of the many things I will greatly miss when I retire,” Mrs. Sim said. “As I close this final chapter in this amazing journey at SAS, I look forward to an exciting retirement which starts a new chapter for me.”

Mrs. Sim intends to visit her family around the globe, including her two children who live in the UK, where they got to pursue higher education. Mrs. Sim’s daughter went to St. George’s and is now an ophthalmologist. And Mrs. Sim’s son went to the University of Cambridge for his master’s degree and to Imperial College for his undergraduate degree and PhD. “Because my father instilled in me that education was very important, I nurtured that into my children.

And because I didn’t have that chance to go abroad, my ambition was to send my children abroad,” Mrs. Sim said. “I worked very, very, hard most of my life to send my kids overseas to study.”

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2000 From Interim Semester to National Geographic Koh Xin Tian

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ith his wife Meghan Shea and his team in Singapore and Boston, SAS alum Mike Rogers ’00 loves to tell real stories about real people, working on documentaries.

He films arts, culture, non-profits, and social enterprises who tackle pressing problems related to upward mobility and economic challenges. Their company Persistent Productions has conducted research, filming, and production in over 30 countries.

Mike’s father’s work brought the Rogers family to Singapore from Thailand in 1987, where Mike had attended International School Bangkok. He officially started attending SAS from 1988, starting from the Ulu Pandan campus, and moving on to joining the first fouryear high school graduating class at the new Woodlands campus.

At SAS, Mike was a part of many sports teams, such as varsity basketball where he served as captain, and softball. He also was a part of Student Council, SAS Varsity Club, and started the morning announcements with his friend Jonathan Goossen.

Mike went on Interim in his three years in the SAS high school, from going on the Milford Trek in New Zealand in freshman year to two different trips to Nepal in sophomore and junior year.

“Back then, it was hard to get into proper filmmaking because of the equipment costs and postprocessing obstacles. Instead, I focused on taking photographs on these trips. Looking back, the trips showed me how much enjoyment I got from travel and photography.

In a way, they were the start of my filmmaking.”

Mike and his schoolmates often visited each other’s houses. He also recalls, “Orchard Road also became a focal point of our outof-school activities toward the end of our SAS years, and was where the shopping and the hanging out would occur. The parking lot on the fifth floor of Lido was a great place to look over the grassy knoll above Orchard MRT station where ION Orchard is now, and watch all the people moving about. It was our version of the Shibuya District street crossing.”

When Mike left Singapore and began his senior year of high school in the US, he longed for the teachers he had at SAS. Later enrolling in George Washington University, he wanted to pursue filmmaking although GWU had no formal film program. He majored in electronic media and sought internships around Washington

DC in freshman year to gain practical knowledge he knew he needed. Getting an internship at National Geographic Society’s DC headquarters, Mike turned this into a full-time job by the time he graduated in 2004. “This is what solidified the love that I knew was brewing inside me for documentary filmmaking,” he says.

After Mike discovered that a lot of large broadcasters such as National Geographic, Fox, Discovery, and TLC based in Washington DC hired college students to help them with productions during weekends, he co-founded Persistent Productions in Washington DC in 2004 with Meghan to take advantage of DC’s weekend filmmaking scene.

This allowed him to expand his contact base and learn about the industry while being paid to work.

“It was really an awesome few years working at National Geographic during the week and taking on

other projects during the weekend, many with contacts from my work at National Geographic.”

one of the biggest changes I have seen in the last few years,” Mike says.

During this time, Mike and Meghan began seriously thinking about working in film as a career. Their talks, experiences, and challenges pushed them to move to Singapore to set up Persistent Productions in 2007. Over a few years, they built relationships with clients in both the US and Singapore. They now travel between Boston and Singapore three or four times a year, spending about six months in each city.

Mike, Meghan, and their team are now working on How I Live With Cancer, a documentary film about closing the global survival gap in pediatric oncology. This film project is a collaboration between The Dana Farber / Children’s Hospital Global Health Initiative (GHI) and Persistent Productions.

Having lived in Singapore for eight years since, co-running his film production company, Mike noticed Singapore’s evolution since the late 90s. “Over the last two or three years, I’ve seen a move toward a more inclusive and collaborative media landscape in Singapore.

More needs to be done, but this is

To students at SAS today, Mike says, “I can confidently say that the student body at the school with you now will be unlike anything you find later in life. There’s a connection that permeates every SAS student, a connection infused with hope and aspirations for the future. These will be the people, names, and faces you will carry with you for years to come, whether you like all of them or not. So try your hardest to remember all the moments you’re experiencing.”

(From top) Staff work on the student newspaper in 1958, now known as The Eye. A Valentine’s Day dance in 1960.

American families in Singapore celebrate the Fourth of July in 1959.

Part of the international student body at SAS glamming it up in 1964.

In 1970, the SAS Eagles are undefeated Singapore softball champions.

In 1972, the SAS boys’ volleyball team places second in their local district.

(From top) Radio Singapore broadcasts The Rumble in the Jungle boxing match in 1974, featuring George Foreman versus Muhammad Ali. Muhammad Ali wins by a knockout.

Cheerleaders organize a send-off pep rally for student athletes headed to Bangkok in 1976. Student participation was enthusiastic and the team went on to victory.

The E a r ly Years

(From top) Jenny Allen and Brian Wenck demonstrate why they were voted Most Spirited in 1984.

1988 airband winners Tim Smith, Sean Spalding, Jason Frankel, and Koro Nuri sing “I Can Dream About You�.

A school dance in 1992.

A 1992 Interim Semester trek in Nepal.

The senior class of 1996 pose for the last yearbook group photo around the senior tree.

(From top) The concert choir performs in style in 2000.

In 2000, Katie Larkin and Brian Cook are named “most likely to live in a log cabin in the Himalayas and write poetry and philosophize about the meaning of life�.

The SAS Singers in 2008.

(From top) On a 2008 Interim Semester trip in Tanjore, India, Mizuha Ogawa and Hannah Milton say hello to an elephant.

Dylan Howell and Tate Theisen snorkel in the Great Barrier Reef during Interim Semester 2008.

(From top) The Lady Eagles huddle before a soccer competition in 2012.

Interim Semester in Bhutan, 2012.

Freshmen Brett Moody, Callum Nesbitt, Seiji Takahashi, Toorjo Mishra, and Ian Stuart work the crowd in 2012.

Art students go on an art retreat in 2014.

Project India members enjoy Holi festivities in 2014.

Music From Stage And Screen: middle and high school bands pay tribute to famous Hollywood movie and musical songs in 2016.

INNOVATORS From the founding of the school to its early decades, teachers and students have found new ways and places to teach and to learn.

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SAS Rainforest Plants Seeds For Passion and Learning Kristina Doss

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umid air and mosquitos surrounded Tanvi Dutta Gupta, a sophomore at Singapore American School, on her first walk through a rainforest. But she still describes her experience as “wonder-filled,” thanks in part to her sighting of the largest moth in the world—the Atlas Moth.

Since this memorable seventh grade excursion, Tanvi has visited this particular rainforest countless times—all of which have inspired her to pursue an award-winning wildlife photography hobby, membership in clubs dealing with the environment and other global issues, as well as internships at biological research labs and a rainforest restoration project in India’s Western Ghats. Eventually, she wants to pursue a career in environmental science or another biology-related field.

Tanvi didn’t have to go on a field trip out in town or to a country outside of Singapore for the seeds of these passions to be planted.

After all, the rainforest that inspired them all is in her school’s backyard.

The SAS rainforest, a unique and innovative resource among international schools, was saved as the school’s Woodlands campus was being built thanks to the efforts in 1993 of a group of seventh grade science teachers and students.

The group routinely conducted field studies at the Ulu Pandan campus as part of the science curriculum. But there was a degree of frustration when the question of ‘What was it like before our school was here?’ couldn’t be answered.

As plans for a new campus in Woodlands took shape, the article said, seventh grade science teachers saw an opportunity to study and record the environmental history of

the site and the surrounding community. Students completed vegetation surveys and a survey of animal life, conducted interviews with members of the community in the neighborhood, and studied archeological aspects of the site.

In September of 1993, science teachers Mr. Steve Early and Mr. Richard Frazier requested the purchase of the forest and wrote this letter to the campus planners. “Keeping a patch of forest on school ground with its accompanying biodiversity is having an incredibly rich biological library and storehouse for no cost at all. If educational value were calculated against the monetary cost, the forest would be the best deal economically of any part of the school plan.”

The opening ceremonies for the Woodlands campus took place in October 1996. The new campus

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didn’t just include technologically advanced facilities, but also a 1.58-acre patch of rainforest that students could learn in too, thanks to both the letter from teachers and the study by students.

Classes in all divisions take advantage of the opportunity the preserved patch of land provides.

The fourth-grade classes of Ms. Rindi Baildon and Mrs. Alice Early, for example, study the diversity of plants.

In the middle school, seventh grade science teachers take students up to the forest around three times a week during the third-quarter ecology unit, using the environment as a working lab to reinforce what students have learned in class that week, according to middle school science teacher Natalie Grimbergen.

Meanwhile, high school students learn sampling techniques and look into basic tropical ecology,

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measuring living and nonliving components, Mr. Early—now a high school biology teacher—said.

Fourth graders use Nature Society Singapore butterfly and bird apps to help identify species, while seventh graders use Project Noah—an online tool that allows students to upload photos of animal and plant species and get citizen scientists around the world to help identify them. In the past few years alone, students have identified more than 500 species of plants, animals, insects, and fungi that call the SAS rainforest home, including rare animals such as the Green Crested Lizard, and heritage tree species such as Pulai and Terentang.

Students are given opportunities to become stewards, helping raise awareness of the struggling patch of land, which desperately needs irrigation, by giving tours. They also contribute to its conservation by learning how to plant and nurture endemic and endangered plants

that need help surviving in this modern country.

Funding from the SAS Foundation and a partnership with the Singapore Botanic Gardens will help in this endeavor. Already, the prestigious organization has provided students with lessons in biodiversity, kindly donated critically endangered species of plants, and trained students on how to take care of them.

“Our SAS rainforest is one of a kind on an international school campus! It provides hands-on experiential learning right in our own backyard,” said Ms. Baildon.

“High and middle school classes and our fourth grade class has been utilizing our little forest, and it is hoped that in the near future classes across all grade levels will be frequent explorers and researchers into the forest.

The possible cross-grade-level connections and experiences are endless!”

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tudents haven’t always had the same immediate accessibility to The Eye as they do now.

The predecessor of The Eye was founded on February 1, 1956 as The Reporter, less than a month after the founding of Singapore American School on January 3.

Started by principal Mr. Al Fisher’s class, the first editor was Narda Anderson (daughter of former teacher Margo Anderson), the first associate editor was Gary Voigt, and the rest of Mr. Fisher’s students were reporters.

The first issue of The Reporter was produced on a typewriter and a mimeograph machine. It reported on the opening of Singapore American School by governor Sir Robert Black, the founding of the newspaper, American-style education, a new safety patrol run

by three students, and a February 13 and 14 Chinese New Year school holiday notice referring to traditional firecrackers that were still legal in Singapore back then!

Over the years, The Reporter changed its name to Tuesday Forum, then to King’s Road Review, then the Eagle Eye, and finally, to The Eye. Just five years ago, The Eye was a print publication personally delivered to high school classrooms twelve hours after it was printed.

The tabloid-sized, black-and-white booklet contained student articles separated into sections, and it was only produced seven to twelve times a year.

“We were read by a majority of students. Students talked about stories as did teachers,

administrators, and parents,” the previous journalism adviser, Mr. Mark Clemens said. “I’d get phone calls from moms and dads asking when the next issue was out!”

After an online journalism class was created, The Eye simultaneously published print and online versions of stories. Although this class was the first stepping stone in The Eye’s transition to an entirely web-based production, Clemens still valued the perks of having a print newspaper.

Another important purpose Clemens thought the print paper served was that it acted as “an archive of school history and events.” Preserving a school’s history, according to Clemens, is much more difficult on the web, where old articles constantly get replaced by newer ones.

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1956: The Reporter

Eagle eye

NOW: The eye website

FINAL PRINT 2012: The eye

Nonetheless, The Eye—led by alumni Anbita Siregar, Megan Cosgrove, Bram Xu, and many others—went online.

The first few days saw very few views, but coverage of IASAS tournaments and school-wide events helped increase readership.

Readers started to realize that the online newspaper was more userfriendly—background information was easily accessible through embedded links and greater variety was achieved through written articles and video stories. Because The Eye staff could publish multiple times a day instead of once a month, viewers were exposed to a significantly greater amount of content in comparison to the old printed newspaper.

Just last year, The Eye’s website underwent—a complete redesign.

A new group of 32 students in the journalism class, as well as a new journalism teacher, Dr. Robin Worley, started fresh and ready to take action. Working as a team, the staff set out to establish a new and improved site.

A month of research, problemsolving, and headaches followed as the staff transitioned old content to the new site, resolved technical glitches, and customized the site to meet all needs.

“There were hundreds of little details that you don’t think about until they become a problem,” Dr. Worley said. She spent several weekends overcoming the technical glitches that arose from

the transfer to a new website and hosting company.

Finally, on Oct. 30, 2014, exactly 60 days after beginning the process, the revamped The Eye went live. In a single day, the number of views for The Eye’s website shot up from 351 to 1,884 views, reaching 29 different countries.

Since then, The Eye has expanded on all levels. Our stories cover more than just SAS news. Staff members have covered the Hong Kong protests, the impact of Ebola on Interim Semester, potential video game scholarships, haze in Singapore, and even ISIS. SAS’s The Eye journalists are now going out of their way to report on news from Singapore and the world, and making it relevant to the student population.

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Hard Work and Problem-Solving: Robotics at SAS Bart Millar and Meredith White with Kristina Doss

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magine if you and your teammates have spent hundreds of hours getting ready for an international competition, working during lunches, after school and on weekends. You, your school, and your parents have invested thousands of dollars in equipment, plane tickets and hotels to attend this event—most of it out of your own pocket. You roll up to your very first round in front of hundreds of competitors and spectators— and your exquisitely designed and built control system utterly fails.

How would you react? You could melt down into an emotional lump, be frozen by your failure, or attempt to define your options and move forward with the few minutes available before your time runs out.

SAS robotics science teaches students to deal with exactly these types of situations, if they cannot be avoided, by prior good planning or building. And rest assured that this, or some version of this crisis scenario, happens to every competitive robotics team at one time or other.

How We Started Bart Millar and Meredith White had deep experience teaching Science, Technology, Engineering and Math education and robotics at their previous schools. They saw that SAS had talented students and great resources, but no robotics teams! Mr. Millar, teaching AP psychology, asked for interested students to find him if they were interested in building robots. By the end of the week, he had 11 students with no experience, but lots of drive and willingness to learn. A week later, Mrs. Meredith White heard that “there was a guy on the second floor doing robotics!” and came downstairs from her AP chemistry classroom to join in. They set their sights on the Marine Advanced Technology Education underwater contest in Hong Kong that coming April.

Overcoming stumbling blocks including money, tools, space, and school schedules, they managed to arrive in Hong Kong at 2:00 a.m. with a robot—though they had left their television monitors behind!

The coaches spent the day finding monitors while the team

practiced with their robot. The next day, on arrival, the school was in a fog bank, though their robot was covered with a tarp. Unfortunately, the tarp caused fog to condense on its underside, draining water down into the control system— which was now completely dead.

Rather than panic, Shresth Mehrotra, SAS ‘12, put together a control system on the spot that consisted of electrical touchpoints to control the motors, and they were in the water with the most primitive system imaginable.

Nonetheless, they managed to finish in tenth place out of 15 teams. Three of the teams that SAS beat were from universities!

SAS Robotics Science was off and running, evolving from a club to an advanced class that sends six teams to three different contests around the Pacific Rim each year.

How It Works Many people are surprised that the robots are not built from kits, and they don’t come with instructions.

Each contest is different every

year, and students have to design and build robots from scratch. Knowledge of electrical, mechanical, computer, and computer-aided design systems are all required to succeed. Students are required to explain their robots to teams of engineers and present technical posters and papers.

At the contests, students compete against, or are paired with, other students and robots they have never seen before. This gives them the most authentic real-world assessment that can be provided anywhere.

People The most successful students are not those with the highest GPAs, but those with perseverance and collaborative skills. After the first year, the value of the program was apparent.

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Don Gi Min, now at the Georgia Institute of Technology, famously explained to a sponsor, “Every failure is a step closer to success.” Don Gi was offered membership in a robotics club his first day on campus— normally reserved for secondyear engineering students.

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Shane Rozen-Levy (SAS ‘14, Tufts ‘18) was offered an internship at Tufts University his freshman year as well, working with soft-bodied robots. He noted that the work he does is exactly what he learned to do with the SAS Robotics Science team.

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Chris Dee, now at Duke University, found a summer job with a marine engineering company in Singapore after his freshman year.

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Kartikye Mittal, SAS ‘16, took a semester off from SAS to take an offer building satellites at Stanford University under the direct supervision of a professor there.

Innovating On The Spot Robotics Science is currently a student-centered class of 42. A stacked model means students can repeat the class, enabling those with more experience to act as mentors to newer students.

They are currently building eight different robots for land, aerial, and underwater competitions.

The class helps them prepare for and deal with failures that are often unanticipated. Preparation sometimes means being able to

think on your feet. The teachers act to set milestone deadlines, and deal with administrative, travel, and financial issues. The students manage robot design, parts acquisition, technical papers and posters, publicity, pit areas at competitions, and even uniforms for individual events.

The class provides direct connections to industry, including sponsors Pratt and Whitney and Autodesk. Their visiting engineers advise our students on a regular basis.

The class curriculum is rapidly evolving, as competence and experience is gained throughout the school and the lower grades.

Students know more when they arrive on the first day of class than the typical student did a few years ago.

Great value lies in that the nature of the events make it impossible to do all the work necessary during class time. Students have to work during lunch, after school, and on weekends, gaining valuable lessons about work ethic and irrevocable deadlines.

Love Birds From friends to love birds—these couples came together through SAS and became Eagle families!

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1983 The EAGLE CONNECTION Dr. Vicki Rameker Rogers

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ingapore American School has been a part of my family for almost 30 years. When my parents moved our family to Singapore in 1983 and enrolled my siblings— Kimberly Rameker Hurst (‘94) and Victor Rameker (‘97)—and me in SAS, we did not expect to still be chanting, “Go Eagles!” nearly three decades later. I didn’t expect to marry a fellow SAS classmate, Matt Rogers (‘95), or that Victor would marry Allyson Tippie (‘99) as well. I certainly didn’t expect to find myself on the other side of an SAS classroom teaching, sharing stories of overseas teaching with my mother-in-law, Ginny, who taught at SAS for a number of years and

was one of those super-dedicated parents who actively contributed to the school.

learned about all three Singapore companies where he has worked through various SAS connections.

One of the things that has become apparent to me and Matt over the years is the extent and value of the SAS network. My interview with former superintendent Mr. Bob Gross came about as a result of a few SAS teachers who personally passed along my resume. I will always be grateful to them all for giving me the opportunity to “come home” and give back to an institution that had taught and inspired me so much. My husband’s employment history also has SAS fingerprints all over it. In fact, he

A more recent example of the power of our SAS network was evident during an eighth grade social studies trip I organized to Philadelphia, New York, and Washington, DC. Alumna Jessica Blakemore (‘03), who worked in the White House, was able to secure an exclusive tour for us inside the compound.

Matt and I are not only thankful for the professional benefits of our personal SAS connections, but also for the close-knit group of

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friends we have from our student days. Our SAS friends aren’t just distant “people we used to know” who keep in touch via Facebook updates, but are some of our best lifelong friends to this day. They are friends with whom we can go long periods of time without much contact and still be able to pick up without missing a beat when we meet again. Our time spent together in Singapore as part of the SAS community undoubtedly played a significant role in all of these personal and professional relationships.

As the school and its community continue to grow, it becomes increasingly challenging to keep this personal, family feeling alive, but it also multiplies the power of the SAS network. The truth is that the SAS experience does not stop the day you leave Singapore.

Whether you have been a part of the SAS family for a few months, a few years, or a few decades, it’s important to recognize that you are part of something bigger—an international institution with global connections and a powerful alumni network. We consider ourselves extremely fortunate to have been part of this network for so long, and look forward to our son, Kasey’s year at SAS. Once an Eagle, always an Eagle . . .

Go Eagles!!!

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Christmas Card Reunites

Two SAS Alumni Kristina Doss

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orget Cupid and his bow. In this love story, the matchmakers used a Christmas card.

Jessica and Adam Rose first met in 1985 when they were about four and five years old respectively.

Jessica’s family had just moved to Singapore, and Adam’s family welcomed them to the neighborhood.

The years that followed involved many memory-making moments as their families spent special occasions together. Jessica and Adam, who were both students at Singapore American School, also rode the bus together each day.

“I remember spending all of our holidays together, celebrating birthdays, joining for community tennis tournaments, and going to Rawa, Malaysia, for vacation together,” said Jessica, who attended SAS from 1985 to 1987.

“We swam at the pool almost every day. Adam (who attended SAS from 1982 to 1988) most often played with my older brother, but I convinced him to play house when he wasn’t around.”

Expats, however, don’t tend to stay in one place for too long and inevitably Jessica’s family moved to Hong Kong. Although Adam’s family visited them in Hong Kong

before they also moved away from Singapore, it would be two decades before Jessica and Adam would meet again.

According to Jessica, the reunion came thanks to their moms—Jane Palumbo and Joan Rose—who kept in touch every year by sending Christmas cards.

The 2006 card, for example, informed Jessica’s family of Adam’s three-month journey traveling the world. “I remember my mother saying, ‘Jess, have I found the guy for you!’” said Jessica, who also loves to travel.

Eventually, Adam moved to Hawaii after his travel adventure rather than returning to his Chicago home as planned. Coincidentally, Jessica also moved to Hawaii to start a one-year internship to become a school psychologist. Neither of them knew they were both on the same island of Oahu—that is, until the 2007 Christmas card arrived.

“In December 2007, my mother called me and said, ‘You’re never going to believe who lives on Oahu!” said Jessica. “She proceeded to tell me about Joan’s Christmas card and gave me Adam’s phone number. I called him in December, we became friends in January, and then started dating in February (2008).”

A few years later, in April 2012, Adam proposed to Jessica at a secluded spot overlooking Waimea Canyon on the island of Kauai.

“It was stunning,” said Jessica of the location.

The following year the two lovebirds married and continued to fly around the world when possible.

In fact, earlier this year Jessica and Adam returned to Singapore and visited SAS. “I’ve wanted to visit Singapore and SAS as long as I can remember because it was a special part of my upbringing,” Jessica said.

“Being there with Adam and my parents brought back lots of good memories, even though we attended a different campus.”

Jessica is currently the director of student support services at Shanghai Community International School, and Adam, who moved back to Oahu in May, is a firefighter with the Honolulu Fire Department.

They plan on meeting up in different countries during school breaks until they can be reunited.

“How fitting that we are in the Love Birds category,” Jessica said.

“Our decisions have been to support one another’s endeavors out of love.”

2004 Years That Ask Questions, and Years That Answer Koh Xin Tian

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ecky and Patrick Green were college friends from Western Washington University and new teachers at Singapore American School in 2004. Spending their December break in Phuket, they experienced the Boxing Day tsunami first-hand where, thanks to Patrick’s calm and quick thinking, they lived through an experience that changed how they looked at one another forever.

The Greens work as the middle school technology coordinator

and a high school learning support teacher at SAS. Patrick’s parents were teachers, so he saw the impact his parents had in the lives of others. Patrick wanted to do the same from a very young age. And Becky was hooked on a teaching career after taking a class in young adult literature in college, compelled by the study of how to deepen readers’ expressions and reactions to both words and images. It led her to secondary studies in English and history, and eventually a masters in literacy education.

To Becky, teaching and illustrating are inseparable. Becky is a chronic doodler from a family of artists and creators. She recalls, “I never knew that all people didn’t spend their free time with colored pencils and art supplies until well into adulthood.” As an English teacher, Becky spends a lot of time reading books about writing and creative processes, and she applies those same principles to her illustrations.

Long before they thought of living in Singapore, Patrick and Becky were teaching in Washington

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state where one summer, Patrick, Becky, and the SAS middle school principal met for an informal lunch that led to a serious discussion about teaching overseas.

At the end of July 2004, to their shock, Patrick and Becky each received a call from SAS saying that two teachers were needed for that school year, and asking if they could they be on a plane in six days.

Serendipitously, Becky had just sold her house and had packed up her belongings for a local move.

She recalls, “Every last detail slid into place; it was definitely one of those magical life moments when the circumstances overtook any reasoning and you knew completely what was the right thing to do.”

That first summer after an intense first year overseas and a difficult experience in the Boxing Day tsunami, Patrick and Becky headed back to the US in their separate directions; it weighed on both of them that something essential was missing from their lives. On the fourth of July, Patrick called Becky, asking her to drive up to Washington from Oregon for a few days. They both confessed that things had changed between them.

“Recently, as a family, we listened to an audiobook of the first Harry Potter novel. There’s a line in the book after Harry, Ron, and Hermione have just defeated a troll. J. K. Rowling writes, “There are some things you can’t share without ending up liking each other, and knocking out a twelvefoot mountain troll is one of them.”

As flippant as it may sound, that silly quote resonated. You cannot

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live through a life and death situation and not be bonded in an immeasurable way.”

After a decade of friendship, there really wasn’t anything else to learn about one another, so they married in a friend’s backyard ten days later. “Again, it was one of those moments in life where you don’t need to reason it out—you just know you’re doing the very best of things,” says Becky.

Now they are in their tenth year at SAS and have a five-year-old son.

There are many things the Greens love about where they live and work. They say, “One of the many fabulous things about working at SAS is that you’re surrounded by talented, intelligent, interesting, and compelling people. Teachers and students alike push you to be better at your craft and at life. A typical day means getting to do what you love and what you’re trained to do to the very highest caliber, all the while with really stellar folks humbling and inspiring you.”

They are especially thrilled that their son, Oscar Gus, gets to experience SAS along with them.

For the Greens, the highlight of their experiences here is the exceptional teaching and loving Oscar’s teachers Laura Jo Evans, Dave Taylor, and Jessie Burant have provided little Oscar.

In summer, the Greens visit Cashmere, a small town in central Washington state, which they consider to be home. Patrick’s family are generational orchardists, and Becky and Patrick have a small farm next to his parents, siblings, and cousins on a family compound in the Cascade foothills. “Our time

there is precious: It’s when we connect with family, mountain bike, hike, paddle, and reconnect with land that we hope to someday farm ourselves,” says Becky.

The Greens love to travel as a family and find that exponentially enjoyable with their son. They plan to take a year of adventure off in the future to travel and pursue their individual learning goals as a family. They want Oscar to see them actively cultivate joy, extend their comfort zones, try new things, and never stop learning. But until then, they are happy to be rooted in Singapore.

Patrick says, “I think most expats feel the pull from home’s ticking clock: Our parents are getting older, our nieces and nephews are growing up, and our connections back to the US are changing. All of that is difficult, but it’s tempered by the blessings that come with living overseas and feeling like our little family unit really is its own entity of us against the world.”

“Sometimes we wonder how we ended up here. Patrick is very practical and deliberative, and to have ended up in Asia and in a marriage on just a few days’ notice just doesn’t make sense. But yet, it’s become our normal, and it shapes how we look to the future,” says Becky.

One of Becky’s favorite quotes is from Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God: “There are years that ask questions and years that answer.” Becky and Patrick seek to follow those questions and to have open hearts to wherever life may take them next.

Memory Keepers We trace the milestones of our school’s history through alumni memories and stories. From saving an old school relic to restoring black and white photos, memory keepers bring our past back into full color.

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1956 The Dedication Plaque Jim Baker

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n January 3, 1956, in a ceremony held at 15 Rochalie Drive, Singapore’s Governor, His Excellency Sir Robert Black, officially declared the school open, pulling the drawstring to unveil the dedication plaque which still hangs today at the school’s Woodlands campus. Also present were Lady Black, Mr. Elbridge Durbrow, Consul General of the United States, Mrs. Durbrow, Mr. Mohammed Sidek bin Haji Abdul Hamid, the Assistant Minister of Education, Mr. Albert V. Fisher, the school’s Principal, members of the founding School Board chaired

by Mr. E. P. J. Fee, and the sponsors of the American Association of Malaya.

The opening ceremony took place in the dining room, which was to serve as the school’s assembly hall and library. The American flag and the British flag continued to flank the windows until Singapore became self-governing in 1959.

The plaque featured the SAS shield logo that had been designed at a cocktail party at the time SAS was founded, where an attendee sketched it on a paper napkin. It mimicked the logo of the Union Pacific Railway.

Mrs. Gruman cleaned it up and repaired some of the gilt, but found that the rest of the restoration work required was beyond her abilities.

So she got a store in Bras Basah Complex downtown to recreate the shield and restore it to the plaque.

SAS parent Mrs. Mary Gruman found the school’s founding dedication plaque in a outdoor hall area in between the high school and the school fields. Pulling it out with then-superintendent Mr. Bob Gross, they found that the plaque was covered with mold.

Mrs. Gruman also noticed that the old SAS crest was missing as she had seen the photo of the original unveiling of the plaque from 1956.

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1966 That OLD PODIUM: King’s Road Relic Finds a New Home Junia Baker

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ong ago, Mr. Don Chambers (‘70), president of the eighth grade class of 1966, gave a wooden podium to Singapore American School on behalf of his class.

Over the years, many leaders and speakers stood behind that podium—student council nominees, graduation speakers, principals, superintendents, and counselors.

Ambassadors and celebrities spoke from it. Students practiced debates. Muhammad Ali, a legendary boxer, held students spellbound with a rap in 1974.

Former President Gerald Ford greeted students behind it in 1981.

In the beginning, the podium was unadorned except for the plaque from the eighth grade class of 1966, but soon the SAS crest was placed on the front. Its red, white, and blue coat of arms represented the school from its inception in 1956 until it was declared oldfashioned and replaced 40 years later.

Some time in 1984, the heavy old podium was replaced with a modern pine one. Its crest was removed and placed on the new podium. The old podium languished in the gymnasium, was occasionally used for sports awards, but mostly gathered dust in a storeroom. Teacher Mr. Jim Baker rescued it. He had been a senior at SAS when the podium was given to the school and remembered both the occasion and how special the gift had been to the school community. He happily taught behind it for over 18 years, creating alumni memories of him and “that old podium.”

In 1996, Mr. Baker took a year’s leave to write a book. Fearful that the podium would be tossed in the chaos of the school’s move to Woodlands, he moved it to his apartment.

In 1997, the podium returned to his new classroom in Woodlands.

Another teacher, Mrs. Paula Silverman (‘87-present), had salvaged the old coat of arms, which Mr. Baker put on the podium.

Many more alumni memories of debates and discussions were born in that high school classroom with the funky old podium.

At the end of the 2014-15 school year, as Mr. Baker was wrapping up his final year teaching at SAS, he found a new home for the podium in the classroom of SAS alumna Dr. Vicki Rameker Rogers (‘95), who has been teaching at SAS since the early 2000s. She is honored and touched to be able to continue the tradition.

Mr. Baker also gave her the original entrance sign that welcomed students to the King’s Road campus, which is proudly displayed in her classroom.

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1 970 Local color Interview with Mr. Paul Griffin, high school photography teacher, 2000-2013

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s part of the spring 2012 high school art show, high school photography teacher Paul Griffin’s digital photography class presented a series of black and white photos that they had colorized that semester. The original photos were taken by alum Mr. Dave Hogan (‘73) while he was a student at SAS. Mr. Hogan was an avid photographer for the Islander and the student newspaper, then called the King’s Road Review.

Here are excerpts from our conversation with Mr. Griffin about how he came about working with Mr. Hogan’s photographs, and the project the students completed.

How did you discover the photos taken by alum Dave Hogan?

During a campus visit a few years ago, Dave shared with me that as a student he had done a lot of photography for the yearbook

and student newspaper. He was working on digitizing his negatives from that period and offered to share the images with me when the project was completed. The CD he compiled contained an impressive selection of the black and white photos he made at SAS during the 70s, and I decided that it would be a fabulous collection of photos to draw from for the colorizing lessons with my students.

What was the process for coloring the photos? it was all done digitally using Photoshop®. It involved creating a layer for each color applied so that density and hue could be adjusted individually. The students used Wacom tablets and pens. It’s like working with a high tech coloring book. Finished images were then printed on high quality photo paper using a professional inkjet printer that we have in the SAS photo lab.

What was the take-away for the students?

For assignments like this, I tell the students they are giving new life to an old photo. Besides learning the technical skills that might be useful in future classes and their careers, there are a lot of lessons learned in creativity, color selection, and application.

Many of the photos had dust and scratches, so students also learned how to touch these up before beginning the colorizing process.

Classroom skills aside, I think the project gave the students an appreciation for the history of SAS as well as the technical and creative evolution of photography.

Ken Root (‘72) playing soccer.

Goalie Aldo Garrolini (‘74) is on the left. Colorized by Sami Fuller (‘13).

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Girls’ hockey team, 1972.

Colorized by Shanti Purnamasri (‘12).

A visibly upset Denny Freeman (‘73) with Dave Steigmeier (‘73) in front on learning that their rugby team would not be allowed to participate in the National Championships unless they cut their hair.

They refused to comply.

Colorized by Ryka Sehgal (‘14).

Jim Gribi (‘73) running in a relay race. Colorized by Alex Koncki (‘14).

Jay Spencer (‘72) playing soccer. Colorized by Ariq Chowdhury (‘12).

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1972 From Kukup to Kinabalu: The Early Days of Interim Semester Larry N. Crouch

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y love affair with Interim Semester began in September 1972, when then Singapore American School Superintendent Dr. Jack McLeod asked me if I had ever heard those words before. After hearing my “no,” he explained that the concept had been proposed by teachers during faculty orientation week, and he wanted me to study it so we could start one up at SAS. When headmaster Harry Barteau hired me in 1968 to teach social studies, he had made it clear that SAS needed an active Southeast Asian studies program with field trips that would help students learn from and appreciate living in a foreign country. Unrest and disturbances in Singapore, Malaysia, and southern Thailand were subsiding, and it was a good time to expand opportunities for SAS students.

Over the next three years, from 1968 through 1971, students from the social studies and Malay language classes went on field trips to many places in Malaysia.

Students also visited locations in Singapore, such as the Chinese burial grounds near Bukit Timah Road, the Malay villages along the northern and eastern coasts, the Indian temples and business district, and Chinatown with its temples and history.

The trips to Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, and Siem Reap, the staging city for visiting the famed ruins of Angkor Thom, Angkor Wat, and other temple sites were most impressive. Undertaken in 1969 and 1970, they were some of the first trips beyond Singapore and Malaysia. SAS students were fortunate to witness the ruins of the ancient Angkor culture and

civilization before the destruction and wanton theft inflicted by the Pol Pot regime in the 1970s.

In 1970, the school offered a summer seminar for middle and high school students. It focused on Singapore’s history and culture, emphasizing the Chinese, Malay, and Indian traditions of the young country. The participation of many local artists, professors, musicians, and politicians, including famed painter Chen Wen Hsi and calligrapher Dr. H. Lu, dance groups, and well-known music personalities, made the program very special.

With encouragement from Dr. McLeod, a faculty planning committee began to plan a school-wide Interim Semester in 1972-73. I recall a heady degree of excitement and nervousness in the air. Most on the faculty had never

offered “short courses,� and many had not done field trips of any kind. But a high level of thoughtful creativity was driving ideas and suggestions.

Periodic reports were made to the board, faculty, students, and community, and in the fall of 1972 the board approved the first Interim Semester, to be offered for one week in January 1973, between the first and second semesters.

Among the first Interim Semester programs were Chinese calligraphy, introduction to photography, intensive Malay, jungle survival, understanding wayang, making a movie, French only for a week, introduction to Islam and Hinduism, introduction to batik painting, discovering Singapore, intensive tennis, scuba, repairing cars, synchronized swimming, advanced puppet making, intensive English grammar, math tutorial, Buddhism and a night in a temple, photo

darkroom skills, and Chinese brush painting.

Trips to Kota Kinabalu in Sabah, Songhla and Bangkok in Thailand, Malacca, Penang, Rawa, and Kuantan in Malaysia, and Java, Indonesia were included. The range of opportunities expanded over the next few years, and in 1975, my last year with the program, we had trips to London and Manila.

The program at SAS gave students many opportunities for unique human experiences that helped them to grow, create, and learn.

They found they could interact with a humble rice grower, paddy manager, temple mayor, rubber plantation worker or supervisor, wayang actor, aspiring calligrapher, highly talented Chinese artists, a mayor in the city of Phitsanulok, a Buddhist monk, and a Hindu saint.

They could climb a mountain, survive in a jungle, walk respectfully

though a rice paddy, create a movie synced to the Cat Stevens song Where Do the Children Play?, produce an animated film, increase their French or Malay mastery, make batiks, survive being detained by Thai police for making a serious mistake, learn calligraphy and brush painting, and enjoy spending unlimited time in some of the finest museums near and far.

After the first Interim Semester was history, students and faculty made a presentation to the board and Parent-Teacher Association about their experiences. I will never forget the excitement and enthusiasm that characterized their presentations. When the film Where Will the Children Play was shown, the audience reacted with applause and cheering that made it clear the program would survive. Even so, few of us then would have thought that Interim Semester would still be alive today.

Rebels From motorbikes to long hair to smoking to saving bricks, some students (and teachers!) have gone against the grain. They might not have gotten off so easily if it were today!

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1965

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n the late 1960s, the school administration prohibited students from riding motorcycles to school.

The student council disagreed with the decision and, in 1969, appealed to the school board to lift the ban.

gang” that had existed in previous years, and that motorcycles were dangerous vehicles and symbols of revolt: “The school should not give parents a pretext to buy motorcycles for their children.”

It was rare that students could drive cars in Singapore, and motorcycle licenses could be more easily obtained at age 16. There had always been students who rode motorcycles to school before the school’s ban. The board followed the lead of the superintendent, who opposed a retraction. The superintendent said the rule was in effect because of a “motorcycle

From 1965 to 1968, there had been a group of SAS students who joined together to form the “Banshees,” modeled after groups they had seen in the movies. As a “motorcycle gang,” the Banshees were at best a parody of a gang.

Only half had motorcycles or motorbikes, and the largest cycle was 200cc. The rest of the “motorcycle gang”

traveled by car because the father of one of the members let him use the car and driver when the Banshees “rolled.” They created quite an image. Imagine seven or eight motorcycles accompanied by five or six jean-jacketed “rebels” in a chauffeur-driven car— rebellion expat style!

As time went on, the school began to see a connection between discipline problems and membership in the Banshees.

As a result, it banned the group, the wearing of jean jackets, and motorcycles.

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1 970 SAS Athletes, A riot, and Long Hair Woes Jim Baker

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n the 1970s, because of its growing size, Singapore American School was becoming a force to be reckoned with in team sports other than its traditional strength, softball. Soccer, basketball, rugby and girls’ field hockey all grew to be successful school sports. Two sports in particular made an impact on high school competition in Singapore—basketball and rugby.

In the 1971-72 school year, the boys’ B division basketball team won SAS’s first non-softball national championship. That same year the boys varsity basketball team was eliminated from the final rounds of the national championship because of a near riot they caused. Playing on an outdoor public court against Catholic High, the game drew a large crowd from the surrounding HDB apartments.

The game was close and physical.

When an SAS player retaliated

against his opponent and missed, hitting an official, the crowd became incensed. The boys had to literally run for the bus in a hail of abuse and anger. For a couple of days it was a major item in the sports pages. The following year, the SAS team redeemed itself by winning the national championship, knocking off Chung Cheng High School in the semi-finals and ending its string of eleven straight championships.

The boys’ rugby team, in its first year of competition, won the national seven-a-side championship in 1971-72. They beat traditional powers such as Raffles Institution and St. Andrews’ along the way. In 1972-73, the team made it to the Singapore national 15-a-side final game. The game was to take place after the boys’ basketball final. During that basketball game, the attention SAS received was not just from their

success, but also from the length of the hair of the SAS players.

Successful longhaired athletes did not fit well with the model that Singapore wanted for its youth. The Singapore Schools’ Sports Council told the rugby team that they had to cut their hair before they played in the championship. Most of the team refused, and as a result SAS had to forfeit the championship, and was ejected from the council’s leagues.

SAS was readmitted to the Singapore Schools Sports Council leagues in 1975 on the condition that Eagle athletes conform to the hair code for Singapore schools.

By that time, however, the school’s athletic program had moved in a new direction, and the Singapore league was never again as important to SAS competition as it had been from 1962 to 1973.

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1970

THe Smokin’ Seventies Koh Xin Tian

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ehind the lockers. In the bathrooms.

In Mr. Hoe’s room, two sneaky students at a time.

In the band room. In the auditorium.

Students used to smoke all over the King’s Road campus in the 1970s until the smoking lounge was opened to student use on Monday, November 4, 1974.

Earlier in the school year on September 24, 1974, student council president Joe Westrick proposed a smoking lounge.

Parents were telephoned at random for their opinion on the issue, after which the faculty met and approved the smoking lounge almost unanimously. The student council had pledged its support in policing the lounge, and Joe Westrick and principal Larry N. Crouch had also established a set of rules and penalties regarding the lounge.

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Superintendent Dr. Plank, Mr. Crouch, and several teachers supported the lounge, arguing that the traditional no-smoking rule “was no longer possible to enforce without turning SAS into a policed campus.” They also asserted that “the principal and faculty could enforce the modified smoking rules with much greater ease if there were a lounge.”

The board passed the resolution to install a lounge, adding two conditions: that the concept of the smoking lounge was to be on a three-month trial basis, and that the board would review the effectiveness of the lounge on January 7, 1975. Students and faculty left the meeting optimistically and the smoking lounge was set up behind the library.

Only students who had received official endorsement to use the smoking lounge on their ID cards were allowed to use the new lounge. Exhorted Mr. Crouch in the Tuesday Forum on October 29, “Since the school is making provision for students who are brave enough to face their parents about their smoking habit, it will at the same time toughen the penalties and increase the risk of getting caught for unauthorized smoking. Please cooperate, face your parents, or kick the habit!”

On December 10, 1974, “The Facts On Campus Discipline: A Report From Mr. Crouch” was published in the Singapore American School Tuesday Forum. The article reported that between September 2 and November 26, 1974, 159 students had been caught violating the school’s smoking rules, serving more than 300 hours of detention, about 25 two-day suspensions, and four suspensions for the quarter

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as third time offenders despite the presence of the lounge.

Still, on December 20, 1974, Mr. Crouch was quoted in the Tuesday Forum: “I feel that the smoking lounge, the increased faculty presence, and the tremendous support of the student council have helped considerably in bringing some control over unauthorized smoking and in improving the general campus atmosphere.”

Earlier that month, Mr. Crouch had given an extensive nine-point report to the board on January 14 in favor of keeping the smoking lounge.

faculty and student council were supportive of the smoking lounge measure as well.

However, by May 4, 1976, with increasing drug arrests and problems in SAS, the majority of parents and faculty wished to see the smoking lounge removed.

The Tuesday Forum reported that smoking privileges would remain a part of campus life for the rest of the 1975-76 school year, and Dr. Plank noted that “Smoking on campus is easier to control if it is confined to one area,” even though he recognized that closing the lounge would not stop smoking on campus or stem drug usage. It was however, doubtful that the smoking lounge would reopen in fall 1976.

Student smoking was banned on the SAS campus soon after and remains banned to this date, as it is in all Singapore schools. Tobacco on campus was prohibited in May 1991 on the King’s Road campus, and this rule was reviewed and enforced again in November 2004 on the Woodlands campus. All this while, the school and the Central Narcotics Bureau of the Singapore government had also been cracking down on drug use.

With the smoking lounge, most bathrooms and the locker area were now virtually free of smokers, and the smoking lounge was used only by students who had been given smoking cards, though five were caught without their cards since November 14, 1974. Smoking at the far end of the library had almost ceased, illegal smoking on campus had been reduced by 85 percent, the campus atmosphere had improved considerably as smokers felt that it was less of a “policed campus,” and all students felt less intimidated about using the bathrooms and walking behind the lockers when it rained where smokers used to congregate. The

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1 9 96 The Brick Thieves of King’s Road Koh Xin Tian

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fter the last Singapore American School classes were held at the King’s Road campus in 1996, the school moved to Woodlands and the old school site was cordoned off for demolition. Saddened by the loss of their historic campus, a few members of the SAS community decided to creep back in and find a souvenir to take home.

SAS teacher Dr. Vicki Rogers (’95) and her siblings Ms. Kim Rameker (’94) and Mr. Victor Rameker (‘97) went to school together. Dr. Rogers later graduated from high school at King’s Road, and her brother Mr. Victor Rameker was part of the first graduating class from the SAS Woodlands campus.

When she heard that the King’s Road land was going to be sold for development, Dr. Rogers’s now-motherin-law Mrs. Virginia “Ginny” Rogers, a sixth grade RLA teacher, headed to campus with a few other SAS parents to salvage what they could find.

“We’re a family of teachers, we’re very law-abiding people, and I grew up in Singapore!” says Dr. Rogers.

“But Ginny said, ‘Well, we just need a memory.’”

The group of parents picked up as many items from the site as they could, and Mrs. Ginny Rogers grabbed as many bricks as she could carry before the building was demolished. Once security guards on the site discovered the trespassers, the group made a wild dash out of campus. Mrs. Ginny Rogers later

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affixed a metal plaque to one of her bricks that says, “Singapore American School, 1962-1996.”

When SAS moved to Woodlands, staff uprooted part of the symbolic “senior tree” where yearbook photos were taken annually. They tried to plant it on the Woodlands campus, but it did not survive.

“The King’s Road campus was very nostalgic. It was a cozy, familial, homey campus. These little brick-andmortar pieces were literally all we had left of so many memories,” Dr. Rogers recalled.

Dr. Rogers described the other SAS King’s Road artifacts in her classroom: “This is the famous travelling

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podium. Jim Baker wheeled this over to me and it was a very emotional day. He’s an alumni like I am! There’s a lot of history, and it’s hard to describe. This podium was donated to SAS by the eighth grade graduating class of 1966! More people need to appreciate this.

The same with this sign.”

“I’m all about the stories of this institution, so if there’s a better platform than this tiny little classroom, then let’s put these items there, for however many people we can share them with,” Dr. Rogers said.

She added, “And the brick is sitting above my motherin-law’s fireplace on the mantle in California. We’ve been thinking of bringing it back.”

Traditionalists Some SAS traditions have persisted through the years— and there are more to come! From the family that’s served up 50 years of school cafeteria lunches to the waxing and waning of pep rallies, these traditions are shared by generations of SAS graduates.

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Chronicling Our History, One Yearbook at a Time Sheyna Cruz

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he photograph is nondescript at first sight: slightly grainy, black and white. On the left, three students bend over a sheet of paper. Four girls sit around the other side of the table, calf-length uniform skirts grazing the floor. They appear to be engaged in a lively discussion.

The year is 1958, and the manuscript lying on the table will soon become Singapore American School’s very first yearbook, the Islander.

That photo, and many others, lies tucked away in a corner of the Khoo Teck Puat Library’s bottom floor known as the Archive Room, home to relics from school years past. The room is bright and spacious for its small size. Yet arguably the most interesting aspect about this place is the

shelves that line each wall. Look to the left or right, and you’ll be greeted with a rainbow array that includes every volume of the Islander ever published.

From paperback to hardcover, school-wide to high school-specific, grayscale to full color, there’s no shortage of transformations the yearbook has gone through to become the polished, professional product that it is today.

But any staff member can attest to the fact that the Islander is more than just a few hundred pages of high-resolution graphics and text. Nor is it a club—the job of recording 365 days of student life requires a collective effort by the 20 high school students who take the Journalism Yearbook class.

It hasn’t always been smooth sailing in the Islander’s history. In 1997, Mark Clemens became the yearbook adviser. Despite having a journalism degree, he recalled, “I had no idea what I was doing when I took over.” Neither did most of his students when they first walked in the door.

On top of their inexperience, the 1997 crew had to chart their path through a time of technological transition. Mr. Clemens believes they were the pioneers of the digital layout, but back then they were armed only with Adobe Pagemaker (now obsolete), plus “two Apple computers, and limited access to a drop-in lab.” Of the two available cameras, one was broken.

A major breakthrough came when Mr. Clemens discovered that the advertising funds could be used for purposes other than promotion. He invested what little they had in rolls of film and a new Apple computer.

In subsequent years, he remembered, “The Islander students were the heroes . . . they built a large advertising base that allowed us to buy computers, cameras, scanners, printers, microphones, and more.”

Over time, as Mr. Clemens and his students grew more familiar with their trade, they became the ones to drive change. Senior superlatives such as “Most Athletic” and “Class Flirts” were quietly dropped one year.

Other adjustments were less well-received. Mr. Clemens said, “The most controversial changes involved“ reducing the number of senior portraits per page,” which prompted “calls from moms and...a couple of very angry kids.”

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Still, editor Laurie Nelson stood firm in her decision, as did her staff.

Several years later, when Virginia Sheridan came onboard as a new adviser, she too oversaw more changes to the Islander.

The “Student Life” section was expanded and organized chronologically by month, in order to “capture the year as it happened and as it was experienced by students, rather than clumping the year into artificial categories,” Ms. Sheridan explained.

The team of Islanders also experimented with a new dynamic.

Rather than assigning separate sections to each individual, they worked in teams under the leadership of a section editor.

But Ms. Sheridan is quick to stress that the yearbook and its makers are no strangers to change. “Truth is, the Islander evolved every year with the imprint of each unique staff, adviser, and school year,” she said.

And yet, 60 years after Singapore American School opened its doors, the Islander remains one of the few constants in this ever-changing institution. Yearbook delivery day, which falls right around finals and graduation, is always an anticipated event.

Seniors Shreya Suresh and Erika Dinsmore are the co-editors of this year’s Islander Vol. 58. As veteran staffers, they have witnessed the growth of the Islander even in the short space of three to four years: higher quality of work, restructuring of roles, and the arrival of a new yearbook adviser, Dr. Robin Worley.

One thing that hasn’t changed is their shared conviction that the Islander plays an integral part in

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documenting memories. “For the SAS community, of course it’s a yearbook, something you can look back on,” Ms. Dinsmore said. “But if you really think about it, a team of people has been recounting your whole year and putting so much effort into making sure that you remember your high school experience.”

The staff strives not only to cover large events, but also to capture them in specific detail, because, as Ms. Suresh puts it, “It’s all about that one person” who will want to go back and relive an event they deeply cared about.

Above all, the Islander represents collaboration.

“People in Yearbook understand that they couldn’t do a yearbook themselves,” Ms. Dinsmore said, adding that “even the editors could not do half of the yearbook themselves.” After all, the collection of volumes in the Archive Room exist because of an ongoing effort—by the students, for the students—to record and preserve our history for years to come.

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1958

The Evolution Of the SAS Pep Rally Sunita Srivatsan

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n Friday, October, 2015, the high school gym was dotted with yellow, red, green, and orange, and anyone passing by at the beginning of the day would have heard cheering and screaming.

It was the first pep rally of the school year. Pep rallies, which take place every season, are meant to bring the SAS high school community together and support students representing the school at various Interscholastic Association of Southeast Asian Schools events —from sports and music to public speaking and drama.

Each pep rally day, students dress in their class colors not only to recognize the Interscholastic Association of Southeast Asian Schools athletes, musicians, and speakers as they walk across the gym, but also to witness showcases of their peers’ various talents (ranging from basketball games to choral performances). And of course, to conclude each assembly, student council members rally all of the grade levels for a school cheer.

From what used to be a small school with an even smaller student body at its 1956 inception, SAS has grown to have a large student body while still managing to maintain the supportive community feeling at each pep rally. While it is nearly impossible for all (almost 1,200) high school students to know each other on a first-name basis, the fact remains that at each assembly, there is still a strong connection between students of different grade levels and social groups.

How has SAS school spirit gotten this far? To answer this question, let’s take a look at the evolution of SAS pep rallies over the years.

Back in 1958-1959, the student council was named the outstanding club of the year. This year, therefore, marked the beginning of an organizing committee that would become the heart of SAS spirit in the next decades.

1961 marked the expansion of the student council’s role to encompass the planning and implementation of various school

wide social events, and in 1965, the school community started to support the SAS Eagles at interscholastic events such as “The Bangkok Games.”

But it was in 1970 that school spirit grew to fully embrace the term “pep.” During the school year, there were enough interested students to begin a Pep Club, responsible for bringing out school spirit by encouraging attendance to varsity games and sponsoring pep rallies. This was built on with the increasingly common appearances of a school cheer team, as represented in the 1975 yearbook feature for the SAS cheerleaders.

School spirit only grew for the next decade or so, and from 1980 onwards, Eddie the Eagle mascot in costume had begun to grace pep rallies.

In 1990, for the first time in SAS history, the fully feathered eagle mascot was present at pep rallies and varsity sports games.

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In the late 90s and early 2000s, pep rallies dipped in popularity.

Students and faculty began to question the assemblies because of their time-consuming nature and failure to promote school spirit in a lot of students. 2001 was the first school year in which the pep rally was removed altogether.

In 2002, with the perseverance of student council, the pep rally made a comeback. But, they continued to face criticism and questioning, even until 2005. Despite these challenges, the pep rally survived, and it has now regained popularity among students.

Another interesting change that occurred in the early 2000s was with regard to class colors. The freshman orange, sophomore green, junior yellow, and senior red that we continue to see today were introduced in the 2005 school year, contrasting with the red, white, and blue that were worn in previous years.

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Now, with support from teachers and the administration, pep rallies continue to be organized by high school student council and executive council groups, and they are more positively received than ever. Pep rallies serve to support students in their passions—whether they are academic, sports, or even arts-related.

“I’m glad we’ve started incorporating non-sports IASAS events into student-council-led pep rallies because it shows that we support every member of our school, and that you don’t have to be a sportsperson to be recognized, but you can also be recognized through your involvement in art, music, dance, drama, tech, Model United Nations, debate, and so on,” said high school mathematics teacher Ms. Darlene Poluan.

“The high school at which I taught at previously only did pep rallies for sports-related activities. I think SAS really excels in celebrating different things about our school.

We still have some way to go,

but it’s a really great start.”

SAS pep rallies have also evolved into opportunities to build a community and forge relationships during a time that is otherwise extremely stressful academically.

Junior Council president, Freddie Shanel says,“Ultimately, our perception of our ‘high school experience’ will come from the relationships we’ve forged and the friends we’ve made, an idea that goes hand in hand with school spirit. By taking pride in our school and celebrating those in it, we are recognizing those friendships and their value.”

Almost six decades after the beginnings of SAS, the high school tradition of pep rallies allows us to take pride in how far our school has come.

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1966 The Family Behind Sas Eagles’ Favorite Dishes Koh Xin Tian

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n the first day of his new job at Singapore American School’s cafeteria on June 20, 1966, seventeen-and-a-half-year-old Mr. Hoe Juan Jok, his sister Ms. Hoo Juan Ang, their father Mr. Ho Tee Jam, and their two helpers took a taxi to school. They walked into a tiny, sweltering kitchen where the only electric appliances were ceiling lights. Mr. Hoe­­— who already had a few years of experience working in restaurants, a canteen, and a clubhouse— his father, and sister officially took over the cafeteria operations that day. They sold a good amount of food and made $52.

They did this from a kitchen at the 60 King’s Road campus that only had two wooden food preparation tables, a small basin, one wooden front counter, one domestic gas-run General Electric oven, one General Electric refrigerator, and one small soda chiller, which was a round iron tank with a big block of ice.

Three months later, Mr. Hoe drove into campus on his 50cc green Honda. Three years after that, in 1969, his family bought a second hand Ford Cortina station wagon.

The business was taking off as SAS parents began teaching the staff how to cook American food items such as hamburgers, grilled cheese, sandwiches, donuts, and chocolate brownies. Combined with local recipe favorites, the Hoe family would go on to develop a menu of dishes that SAS Eagles over the next 50 years would grow to love and crave even after graduation.

“Children love our food,” said Mr. Hoe, who now runs the elementary and middle school cafeterias at

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the school’s Woodlands campus.

“What we cook, they will eat…

The teachers and the community here are very supportive of our cafeteria.”

In 1973, the two brothers began working at SAS’s new Ulu Pandan campus, while their father and sister worked together at King’s Road.

The SAS community’s support of Mr. Hoe’s family and the cafeteria operations goes back for decades.

In fact, Mr. Hoe recalls when Harry Barteau—the new high school principal at the King’s Road campus in the late 1960s—first began looking out for the cafeteria.

When their father Mr. Ho retired in 1990, the elder Mr. Hoe Juan Sim took over at the King’s Road campus until SAS moved to the present Woodlands campus. The younger Mr. Hoe Juan Jok now works in the SAS elementary and middle school cafeterias while the elder Mr. Hoe Juan Sim works at the high school cafeteria.

Altogether, they hire and oversee over 70 staff members.

With a rapid increase in student enrollment, Barteau outfitted the kitchen with more modern appliances. During a nationwide cholera outbreak in the late 1960s, Barteau also personally placed water purification tablets into the cafeteria water dispensers for students in case the locally-bought ice was affected.

Kitchen upgrades are not the only things Mr. Hoe remembers about the 1960s. He recalls the students and their antics during that decade as well. For example, high school students would sneak in and out of Mr. Hoe’s storeroom in pairs to smoke, because it was their socalled safe place.

In 1971, as the school expanded due to the increased presence of US families in Singapore during the Vietnam War period, it split into three campuses: King’s Road, Alexandra Road, and Gillman Barracks. As a result, more members of the Hoe family came on board. Mr. Hoe’s elder brother, Mr. Hoe Juan Sim, and their mother, Mdm. Tin Kok Luan, helmed the kitchens at the Alexandra and Gillman campuses.

Mr. Hoe said he treasures memories of the events he has catered and the people he has met over the years, including alumni from his early days. Mr. Hoe is also proud of his staff, who arrive at work before 6:00 a.m. and leave around 6:00 p.m. on weekdays.

“Most of the staff have worked here for 20, 30, or even 40 years, because the environment makes them happy,” he said.

Mr. Hoe’s son, Mr. He Xian Hao, has followed his grandfather and father’s culinary footsteps. Xian Hao studied baking and pastry making at Le Cordon Bleu Paris and gelatomaking at the Carpigiani Gelato University in Italy.

The Hoe Brothers invite the SAS community to look forward to new sandwiches and food items at the high school grab-and-go kiosk, and to the continuation of healthy menu items and old favorites.

June 20, 2016 will mark Mr. Hoe’s 50th anniversary at SAS, coinciding with SAS’s 60th anniversary.

Volunteers Founded by volunteers, SAS has given rise to generations of generosity among its community and students. Every contribution makes a difference to the quality of education our Eagles receive.

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2014

Climbing for Charity: One Student’s Journey to the Top of Mount Kilimanjaro Kristina Doss

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ylan Palladino stood on Mount Kilimanjaro, the highest freestanding mountain in the world, in the summer of 2014, determined to get to the top. He had already been climbing for five full days, and still had seven more hours to go before he reached the summit.

The final push wouldn’t be easy.

The weather was so cold that ice blew in the 14-year old’s face and his eyelids felt as if they were going to freeze shut. At such a high altitude, it was also hard to breathe.

While the idea of quitting briefly crossed Palladino’s mind, the urge to reach the summit at 19,341 feet was stronger, especially when he reminded himself who he

was climbing for: hungry school children in Cambodia.

“I had to show them that if I could meet this obstacle, they could do anything as well,” Palladino, a student at Singapore American School, said. “The impossible is possible.”

While most kids his age spent their summer lounging on beaches or shopping in malls, Palladino hopped on a plane to Tanzania the evening he completed ninth grade at SAS. The goal: to raise money and awareness for Caring for Cambodia’s Food for Thought program.

The program ensures that students attending Caring for Cambodia

schools have at least two meals per day. The nourishment from these meals help students concentrate in the classroom and stay in school, giving them a better chance at graduating and gaining employment, according to Kay Flanagan, Caring for Cambodia’s Singapore country manager.

“School meal programs are important for so many reasons, but unfortunately they’re the last thing to get funded,” Palladino said. As a result, he set out in January to raise money and awareness for Caring for Cambodia’s Food for Thought program.

Palladino crafted the Feeding Minds Fighting Hunger campaign in a way so that anyone could get

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involved and make a difference.

Preschool students at his school sold lemonade, kindergarteners held a read-a-thon, second graders made and sold bracelets, middle school and high school students collected jars of change, and adults hosted events. Even local businesses got on board thanks to Palladino’s efforts.

Meanwhile, Palladino—a fulltime student—had to train for the culminating event: the Mount Kilimanjaro climb. As 60 percent of climbers are unable to reach Mount Kilimanjaro’s summit due to altitude sickness, Palladino worked hard to ensure he didn’t meet the same fate. He tackled the treadmill, step, and elliptical machines at Altitude, an altitude training facility

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in Singapore. And he climbed Mount Kinabalu on the island of Borneo.

Palladino’s hard work paid off.

Not only did he make it to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro in June, but Palladino also surpassed his fundraising goal of SGD $125,000.

According to Caring For Cambodia’s Flanagan, Palladino’s efforts have ensured that 5,000 students will get two nutritious meals per day for an entire year.

Palladino, who is the first student to raise enough funds to run the Food for Thought program for a whole year, is also setting an example for his generation and the next.

Palladino’s mother, who also climbed Mount Kilimanjaro, agrees.

“Standing on the top of Africa with my son was a powerful experience filled with lots of emotion as we reached the summit,” said Denise Palladino. “He’s leaving his mark on this world by testing his limits in seeking adventure and inspiring others to be compassionate. I couldn’t be prouder!”

The Feeding Minds Fighting Hunger campaign is still accepting donations through Caring for Cambodia’s website, and Palladino continues to look for ways to help those in need.

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1956 The SAS ParentTeacher Association Jim Baker

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hile it didn’t officially register as an organization with the Singapore Registrar of Societies until shortly after the school opened, the SAS Parent-Teacher Association (PTA) really began the day American parents began to dream of a school for their children.

Certainly it was active in 1956, beginning with such projects as raising the money to build the Rochalie Drive basketball court. The main event to achieve this was a “fun fair,” an early forerunner of the today’s International Fair.

Since then, the PTA has continued to be thoroughly involved with the school community. It raises funds for the school and indirectly provides a venue for high school service and activity clubs to do much of their fundraising. It sells school uniforms, brings in guest authors, musicians, and choreographers, provides grants for school projects, and awards scholarships for graduating seniors.

It organizes class parties, as well as provides classroom and field trip assistance to teachers. In addition, the PTA welcomes and supports parents and creates a sense of place and home for the SAS community.

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1970 The Booster Club Jim Baker

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nterscholastic Association of Southeast Asian Schools (IASAS) required a large budgetary commitment on the part of the schools. SAS agreed to pay half the cost of each student’s travel to IASAS events, a cost that significantly increased when Taipei American School and International

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School Manila joined the league, as they were more expensive destinations. The sudden increase in the activities budget initially left few funds for sports uniforms and equipment or for uniforms for music groups.

In the past, kids had bought their own uniforms with some help from the school. This meant that the quality of the uniforms was determined by the motivation of the coaches and athletes. In a new league with a higher profile, a group of parents came together to address this problem. In the 1984-85 school year, a Booster Club was formed, initially to raise the funds for better quality uniforms that would remain with the school from year to year. The Boosters played an important role in stimulating school spirit and pride in the teams in the early IASAS years. As time went on, the school’s budget caught upwith IASAS costs, but the Boosters had

established themselves as a key high school support organization.

Ordinarily, Boosters are associated with sports only, but at SAS they are equal supporters of the arts.

Throughout the years, they have provided the extra touches that the programs needed.

During their first decade, Boosters helped with housing visiting tournament participants; they organized awards banquets and slide shows; they brought coats for the choirs; they checked kids in early at airports so the kids would not miss class; they provided hospitality for visiting coaches; and they raised large sums of money to supplement the school activities budget.

Since then, the parent volunteers of the Booster Club have continued to support the high school community and build school spirit at SAS.

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1968 SAS: Providing Service Opportunities since 1968 Kristina Doss

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aelan Cuozzo, a recent graduate of Singapore American School, will always remember the service trip she took in her junior year to Cambodia.

who were using old pesticide containers to hold water for their families to drink and they were completely unaware of the dangers of this action and many like it.”

While there, Ms. Cuozzo and other members of the high school service club Village H.O.P.E. (Health, Opportunity, Prevention, Education) educated farmers in two rural villages about how to use pesticides safely—a lesson that could mean the difference between illness, life, and death for families whose livelihoods depend on the land.

The Cambodia trip was just one opportunity out of many that Ms. Cuozzo and others have to lead, teach, and even learn while helping people in Singapore and beyond as students at SAS—which has a long history of providing students with service experiences.

“I was shocked about how limited their knowledge was on this topic,” said Ms. Cuozzo, who is now pursuing a computer science degree and service opportunities at Rice University. “There were people

In fact, one of the earliest community service groups in the high school—Candy Stripers— was founded in the 1968-69 school year by Rena Campbell. As candy stripers, students worked at St. Andrews’ Hospital for Children and the group remained active during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s.

Students’ contributions to the Singapore community did not end in the 1980s; it continued through the high school Social Services Club established by Jo Clem in 1984, according to Singapore’s Eagles. The Social Services Club asked students to give their time and apply their experience to the problems of others while visiting a Vietnamese refugee camp, working with children with cerebral palsy, and visiting homes for the elderly.

Eventually, the book said, the club quickly expanded to include work with the Singapore Leprosy Home and children in the Special Olympics program.

With each passing year, the number of students involved in the Social Services Club increased, giving them glimpses into Singapore society that they would never have normally experienced.

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Top left Candy Stripers were one of the earliest community service groups in the high school.

Right The Vietnamese Refugee Center was a favorite community service project for students in the 1980s.

Since then, the number of service clubs that high school students can join has risen to 61, according to a recent count of clubs listed on the SAS high school service council website. The clubs—serve a variety of areas, including education, the disabled and ill, poverty eradication, and global issues. The diversity in service club offerings allow students to volunteer in areas that are meaningful and personally relevant.

Outside of clubs, high school students can also take servicelearning trips, which are academic courses, around the world through Interim Semester—a program established in 1973.

In the 2014-15 school year, eleven service trips were offered to students and more is expected to be offered this school year. In addition, all high school students are now required to participate in at least one service learning Interim Semester course before graduating from SAS. This new requirement, along with the increased number of Interim Semester service learning courses that will be offered, reflect the value SAS places on providing service

learning opportunities for students.

Service opportunities are not just for the teenage crowd. In fact, in the 2010-11 school year, SAS integrated service learning into the kindergarten through eighth grade curriculum.

“Interested teachers were invited to pilot with a plan to encourage all classes to full participation by 2014,” said Dr. Roopa Dewan, who was asked to spearhead the service learning effort and now serves as the volunteer coordinator. “We can be proud that we have made significant progress. Today, all classes from kindergarten to eighth grade are involved in this.”

By embedding service into the kindergarten to eighth grade curriculum, equal weight is given to both learning and service in an effort to encourage students’ intellectual and character development.

In the 2014-15 school year for example, kindergarteners read various books on how strokes or illnesses impacted the elderly. They also worked on their core values of respect, empathy, and compassion.

The lessons culminated in a visit with the Adventist Rehabilitation

Centre, where SAS students sang songs and helped patients play a game using fine-motor skills.

Grade two students help feed needy families in Singapore through their annual walkathon— all while learning about nutritional needs on a personal, local, and global level in science class and socio-economic diversity and how to distinguish between needs and wants in social studies. And fourth graders share their literary skills when they read to and mentor Innova Primary School students.

Dr. Dewan said Martin Luther King Jr., known for his leadership in the African-American Civil Rights Movement, summarized service learning best when he said: “The function of education, therefore, is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically… We must remember that intelligence is not enough.

Intelligence plus character—that is the goal of true education.”

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Many of these stories, information, and photos in this series of stories originally appeared in Singapore American School’s alumni magazine Journeys, high school publication The Eye, the book Singapore's Eagles: Singapore American School 19562006 by Jim Baker (from which much of the text of the Builders chapter is taken), Singapore American Newspaper, HistorySG: an online resource guide from the National Library Board, the Skinner Inc. blog, and the Singapore American School website and community bulletins.

Contributors and sources include Adithi Jagannath, Amos Ong, Barbara Harvey, Bart Millar, Beth Stefanik, Bob Helmer, Cara D’Avanzo, Charlie Neibergall, Clayton Doss, Cliff Owen, Doug Tindall, Francis Ang, Haziq Hairoman, Helen Eagles (Skinner Inc.), Hoe Juan Jok, Ian Coppell, Jamie Alarcon Simbulan, Jason Adkison, Jeane Khang, Jenna Nichols, Jim and Junia Baker, John Kukla, John Mireles, Kathy Saludo Tan, Ken Stoehrmann, Koh Xin Tian, Kristina Doss, Kyle Aldous, Lauri Coulter, Lawrence R. Wales, Mackenzie Hirsch, Mark Schoen, Mary Gruman, Matthew Elms, Meredith White, Mike Imperi, Nikhil Agarwal, Noelle de Jesus Chua, Pat Chiota and Richard Payne, Paula and Rick Silverman, Paul Griffin, Pooja Makhijani, Robert Dodge, Sandhya Bala, Sarala Nair, Scott Woodward, Sheyna Cruz, Sunita Srivatsan, Susan StudebakerRutledge, Timothy Isaac, Vanessa Spier, Vicki Rogers, Virginia Rogers, Zulkifri Mohamed Monsor, and many more.

We’d like to dedicate this publication to the families, staff, students, and teachers of Singapore American School from our past, present, and future.

Philanthropy:

The Spirit of SAS Sixty years ago, parents, community members, friends, and businesses in Singapore pooled their time, energy, and resources to establish a school that would provide students with an exemplary American education with an international perspective.

This spirit of philanthropy endures at SAS today. Our school’s formal fundraising efforts date back to 2005, and in 2014-15, staff and volunteers worked together to raise approximately $2 million SGD in support of educational opportunities for students. This support expanded the range of meaningful learning experiences and programs for students.

Be involved and participate in the life of our school by making a gift to the SAS Foundation.

A gift to the Foundation, whether big or small, demonstrates your belief in the mission and vision of the school and its goals of fostering real-life academic, economic, social, and cultural understanding in every student. www.sas.edu.sg/giving

40 WOODLANDS STREET 41 SINGAPORE 738547 PHONE: (65) 6363 3403 WEB: WWW.SAS.EDU.SG QUESTIONS? EMAIL US AT COMMUNICATIONS@SAS.EDU.SG CPE Registration Number: 196400340R Registration Period: 22 June 2011 to 21 June 2017 Accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC)