TAS News

STUDENT SAFETY IS AN “INSIDE JOB” FOR SCHOOLS AND STUDENTS: LEARNING LONG DISTANCE WITH DR. SCOTT POLAND, STUDENT SAFETY EXPERT

By Lindsey Kundel, Director of Communications and Marketing

Taipei American School welcomed Dr. Scott Poland, Professor of Psychology at Nova Southeastern University, into our community – albeit digitally – in December 2020 for a 3-day digital residency to work with parents, students, faculty, staff, counselors, nurses, and administrators in the area of school safety. Dr. Scott Poland is a licensed psychologist internationally recognized as an expert on youth suicide, self-injury, school violence, school safety, threat assessment, and school crisis. Dr. Poland is a Professor at the College of Psychology and is Co-Director of the Suicide and Violence Prevention Office at Nova Southeastern University, Fort Lauderdale, Florida. He has authored or co-authored five books and many chapters and articles on these subjects including, Suicide in Schools, published in 2015. He has nearly three decades of experience in this field and has led lectures and training for parents, school administrators, psychologists, and many others around the world. Dr. Poland has worked full-time in schools for 26 years and for 24 of those, he directed psychological services for a very large Texas school district. During his time at TAS, he conducted several live and prerecorded training sessions with many different members of our community. Interim Head of School, Dr. Grace Cheng Dodge, explained the importance of providing education for all of our community members and not just our faculty. “I think it’s important for our community to partner together and talk about important subjects like this to keep everyone healthy, happy, and watching out for one another,” she said. “We learned from Dr. Poland that talking about suicide can actually help to prevent it, not the opposite myth.” Dr. Poland met with the KA-12 counseling team for three hours on December 2 and again on December 4 for a series of talks titled “Contemporary Issues in School Crisis Prevention.”

He also presented to all faculty and staff members with important information relevant to coping with the COVID-19 pandemic and TAS’s specific situation as an American international school in Taiwan. His talk to faculty and staff was called “Safeguarding Students and Building Success and Resiliency.” On December 3, Dr. Poland met with our parent community in a webinar called “Raising Children in a Challenging World.” Over 200 of our parents signed up for this important session. For parents who were unable to attend, a video and slide deck were made available in the TAS Parent Portal.

Finally, throughout the three days, Dr. Poland presented a talk called “Navigating the Teen Years Successfully” to both middle and upper school students. Teachers then led breakout sessions to follow up on the presentation. Dr. Poland’s work with our community is part of a larger multi-year commitment to safeguarding our students and emphasizing the importance of mental health awareness in our community at large. Each student, parent, and employee has a role in fostering meaningful relationships with one another that will help make all of us feel valued and safe. Dr. Poland’s digital consultancy was generously funded through an anonymous donation from a TAS family.

EMBRACING OUR DIFFERENCES: JEDI AND DEI - NEW GROUPS FORMED TO PROMOTE INCLUSIVITY AT TAS

By Sabrina C. ’21, The Blue & Gold

The Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI) faculty committee and the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) student group are newly formed initiatives focused on fostering open discussions about social issues in the TAS community and beyond, serving as a platform to create change and improvement. The initial idea of the JEDI Committee was sent out to the faculty body via email and met with wide enthusiasm, with many volunteering to be part of the program across all school divisions. The committee has already had a series of meetings, featuring divisional check-ins, collaborative conversations with the TAS administration and discussions about issues at TAS.

Improving the diversity and inclusivity of the TAS community and curriculum is a large task to tackle, thus the committee only recently solidified its official mission statement.

“Before you can make any plans for anything, you have to figure out what the issues are,” said upper school history teacher and representative of the JEDI Committee Dr. Erika Soublet. “What I am focusing on right now is collecting data to understand what concerns people may have right now.” Mr. Ryan Haynes and Mr. Jaami Franklin, upper school representatives of JEDI, recently facilitated an open dialogue discussion for seniors, with about 20 students showing up. The conversation progressed quickly, with seniors readily speaking about uncomfortable yet necessary topics and school events.

“I was pleased that people felt safe and comfortable in that setting to speak up on a variety of topics,” Director of Upper School Academic and Personal Counseling Mr. Haynes said. The seniors who attended were very passionate about their thoughts on issues such as racial slurs and the lacking sex education at TAS.

“It was a great opportunity to widen topics beyond what we talk about in classes and advisory,” said Sofia L. ’21, one of the seniors who attended. “Hearing everyone’s opinions really captivated me.” The DEI is an upper school-specific student group formed by Mr. Haynes, with students of all upper school grade levels invited to join. The goal is similar to JEDI, but with a greater focus on students voicing their opinions and creating effective discourse. The group had their first few meetings recently, hosted by Mr. Haynes and Dr. Soublet. “I was impressed that there was a mix of ethnicities, genders and grades [within the students who attended the meeting],” Dr. Soublet said. “I was also impressed with the willingness of everyone to share their reason for attending and how they felt about the issues being discussed.” The teacher sponsors hope that the group continues to expand, giving more students the opportunity to express their thoughts and opinions and feel included. “I hope we can turn it into a club in the future and get more involvement,” Mr. Haynes said. “We really want the discussion topics to come from the students.”

The TAS community is making great strides to become a more inclusive environment for everyone, and students play a big role in that ultimate goal. “I want students to know that they have a voice,” Dr. Soublet said. “History teaches us that students are some of the greatest agents of change.”

The DEI student group at a recent meeting during the school year.

TAS iGEM TEAM DOMINATES INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION WITH HOME COVID-19 TEST

By Lindsey Kundel, Director of Communications and Marketing

The TAS International Genetically Engineered Machines team dominated the field of 66 high school teams at the 2020 iGEM World Jamboree held in November 2020, taking home the Grand Prize Award for best high school project. This is the third time a TAS team has taken home the “BioBrick” traveling trophy (in 2015, 2017, and 2020). Additionally, TAS was awarded eight individual prizes and nominated for a total of 13 prizes, which is a record.

“The kids are unbelievably motivated this year because they’re genuinely interested in the science,” says TAS Director of Scientific Research, Mr. Jude Clapper. Each year’s iGEM team is composed of students in Grades 11 and 12 who enroll in the course Honors Research in Synthetic Biology, which is co-taught by Clapper, and his colleagues Dr. Jonathan Hsu and Dr. Nicholas Ward across two different class periods. This year’s iGEM team continued its record of success at the annual iGEM Giant Jamboree, which is usually hosted in Boston each fall but which was hosted virtually this year due to the world health crisis brought on by the novel coronavirus COVID-19. This year’s team is led by Wilson H. ’21, a quiet and quickwitted young man, whose independent research was recently published in the 2020 American Society of Clinical Oncology Meeting Library, the world’s largest oncology conference. Wilson was voted as the project head unanimously by his peers, who hold great respect for his skills in graduate-level research and in leading the team’s multi-step research process. In February 2020, right after Chinese New Year, the novel coronavirus influenza began to become more prevalent in Asia, the team realized that there was a research opportunity to be had. “As soon as China realized it was becoming an outbreak, they released the sequence of the virus genome, which made it publicly accessible for us during our first distance learning session,” said Clapper. “Wilson, without any sort of teacher assisting him literally went out on his own, found the sequence of the two strains of influenza and COVID-19 and did several forms of bioinformatic analysis of the genomes.” In March, when the United States began to feel the strain of the virus and the lack of test kits became a concern globally, the TAS iGEM team quickly realized that this project’s potential impact was greater than they had anticipated. “This is a real problem right now and we are designing a kit that will be very useful, not just for the United States but for the entire world,” said Hsu.

The 2020-21 iGEM Team surround their three faculty advisors.

The idea of “impact” is a large component of the iGEM competition philosophy. Every team needs to show that their research project has a component that they call “human practice.” The idea behind this concept is that each project needs to be relevant and helpful to humanity. “Currently this type of test is a gold standard for most virus or coronavirus tests. Basically, it identifies a piece of the DNA where the genetic sequence of the virus is. If you’re infected, you carry that virus in your own body. The test uses a sample out of that person, like saliva or another viral particle carrier. The test can detect if there is DNA in your sample and the color changes based on the presence of that DNA.” Hsu and Clapper describe it as essentially a “ph” test for those who are less familiar with this type of test, known as a PCR-based test. “When you measure the pH of your pool or your water, you put in a stick of paper and it changes color based on the equipment. That’s the whole principle behind our work. If it’s a little bit more acidic, then it changes color. This is what is happening in our test because if you have the DNA of one of these viruses, the test makes a lot more copies of it every time, which then changes the color of the

liquid,” explained Clapper and Hsu. In short, their test works by a simple color change over time—the reaction starts out pink but gradually becomes yellow in the presence of a virus. Their current results show a minimum detection time of around 30 minutes for each of the 3 viruses.

The team’s second part of their research is trying to make sure that these tests could be used by people in their own homes, without much margin of error for people to selfidentify color changes. The team collected results with timelapse videos and wrote an analysis software program that can automatically analyze the color changes in the videos using a cell phone. This allows the user to measure the color change with a simple phone camera and will eventually be easily adaptable to personal home-use. Project head, Wilson H., thinks that ultimately the TAS project has two advantages over other tests: it’s fast and it’s accurate. “It’s sensitive and specific,” he said, “which are the two parts of accuracy. It also operates at room temperature, which means that you don’t have to work in a special lab in order to process the results.” Wilson and his other team members feel grateful for the synthetic biology program at TAS. “It has really opened up a lot of opportunities,” he said. “When I started Upper School, I was actually focusing more on the engineering side of learning, like in robotics competitions. But I eventually realized that my true passion is biology and chemistry. It’s something where I can truly expand my knowledge and what I want to do in the future.”

TAS WELCOMES BACK EXPERT IN CROSS-CULTURAL IDENTITY, DR. JOSEPHINE KIM

By Lindsey Kundel, Director of Communications and Marketing

Dr. Josephine Kim visited TAS virtually in 2021 and delivered two presentations live on March 15 and 17 to the TAS parent community and another presentation for TAS faculty. Dr. Kim previously visited and lectured at Taipei American School in 2018, when she presented information about supporting our children's cross-cultural identities. During this recent visit, she spoke on two subjects she is passionate about, based on both her research and lived experiences: "Predictable parenting for unpredictable times," and "How prepared is your child for the world outside of TAS?" Her first talk, "Predictable parenting for unpredictable times: Building resilience and self-esteem for success in school and life," focused on meaningful strategies that all parents can begin to employ in today's fast-paced world. While parents cannot control how and when life’s challenges will present themselves to their children, they can build protective factors that will buffer the falls and promote their well-being. At the core of these protective factors are enhancing students’ resilience and self-esteem, both of which can be fostered through trusting relationships with caring adults. Dr. Kim discussed predictable parenting skills that foster resilience and increase self-esteem during unpredictable times. In her second talk, "How prepared is your child for the world outside of TAS?", she explicitly wanted to help parents think through what their children will experience once they leave their homes, especially those who will study abroad in the United States. While TAS may be seen as a safe cultural bubble, many parents and students do not give intentional consideration to how their cultural identities intersect with privilege and oppression in the global context. While English language skills and STEAM knowledge are important, Dr. Kim believes that diversity and equity literacy are amongst the most sought-after skills in any given field, school, and position when the global platform is the stage where students will perform.

These opportunities were presented in conjunction with TAS’s JEDI and wellness initiatives. Thank you to the PTA for inviting Dr. Kim and partnering with us as TAS builds on our work to appreciate strengths and cultivate diversity and inclusion.

Dr. Kim is an internationally recognized counselor, educator, author, and speaker with expertise in multicultural diversity, cross-cultural identity, family engagement and parenting, mental health, and child/adolescent development. She is on the faculty of the Harvard Graduate School of Education as well as the Center for Cross-Cultural Student Emotional Wellness at Massachusetts General Hospital. Dr. Kim has provided professional consultation and expertise on multicultural, mental health, career development, and educational issues to various media sources in Asia and in the U.S. Dr. Kim gave a presentation on "How prepared is your child for the world outside of TAS?

BLACK LIVES MATTER AT TAIPEI AMERICAN SCHOOL

By Lindsey Kundel, Director of Communications and Marketing

Taipei American School stands with the Black Lives Matter movement and has begun to formally incorporate these ideas into the School’s professional development and student curriculum.

On Wednesday, March 24, 2021, all faculty and teaching assistants gathered for an important professional development meeting titled “Black Lives Matter: Why Should We Care? What Can We Do?: A Conversation on Empathy, Solidarity, and Action By Building Common Ground.” The School has planned additional conversations on the same subject with non-teaching staff for later this spring.

Led by middle school history teacher and TAS alumnus Weston Cooper ’08 and our guest diversity trainer, Anthony Kelley, this seminar helped our faculty connect the history of Taiwan to that of the U.S., in particular, connecting the movements of Taiwanese identity to that of Black Lives Matter.

Weston Wang Cooper was born in Taiwan to an American father and a Taiwanese mother. He grew up speaking Taiwanese, Mandarin, and English. He attended local public school until 9th grade, graduating from TAS in 2008. After graduation, Cooper attended the University of Washington for his undergraduate degree, where he majored in International Studies and Cultural Anthropology, with a focus on race, ethnicity, and identity formation. He worked at Morgan Stanley before returning to school to receive his masters’s degree in Teaching. Weston began his education career in the Seattle Public Schools before returning to TAS as a middle school history teacher in 2018. Anthony Kelley left a chaotic and violent childhood to become a successful college athlete, winning the Rose Bowl while playing football at the University of Washington. Turning toward academia and away from the NFL, he went on to earn a master’s degree in Education Leadership and Policy Studies. He worked at the University of Washington and later at Washington State University as Director of Student Diversity and Outreach. He now helps individuals and organizations realize their true potential through deep self-awareness and negotiating difficult conversations. According to Interim Head of School, Dr. Grace Cheng Dodge, this seminar’s primary goal was to introduce points of “solidarity” between Taiwanese and American history in a conversation that demonstrates how two people with very different lives find common ground through empathy. “If you do not know the extensive history of Taiwan and that of the Black experience in the U.S., you also might not know how there are great similarities and parallels between the two,” said Dr. Dodge.

She said that the administration had hoped to feature this event in February, coinciding with Lunar New Year and Black History Month, but she feels fortunate that the School could find a time this month to feature this important presentation, “in light of recent anti-Asian violence, Taiwan’s international isolation, and seeing how our community can be better informed about race relations and cultural competence.” Cooper and Kelley ended the presentation with a brief discussion of why actively seeking to find common ground with others by learning about them is essential. This presentation is part of an on-going effort of the Taipei American School administration and its JEDI committee to increase awareness of justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion throughout the School.Weston spoke about his own family history in Taiwan and how that paved the way for him to understand the struggle of Black Americans.

Anthony Kelley (left) and middle school faculty Weston Cooper ’08 deliver a seminar called “Black Lives Matter: Why Should We Care? What Can We Do?: A Conversation on Empathy, Solidarity, and Action By Building Common Ground.”

SERVICE-LEARNING TAKES CENTER STAGE IN THE MIDDLE SCHOOL FOOD DRIVE

By Lindsey Kundel, Director of Communications and Marketing

The Taipei American School Middle School organizes a food drive every year to help less fortunate families in Taiwan. In 2020-21, the student council received names of 30 families to assist from the Pearl S. Buck Foundation.

Students from each homeroom volunteer to lead and share information with their classmates. Students in Grades 6, 7, and 8 coordinate the service activity and ask that all middle school students sign up to bring in particular goods. This year’s food drive took place from January 25 to February 2. In that time, middle school teachers and students contributed food and drink items such as rice, soup, juice, powdered milk, as well as cooking and school supplies. All 95 family members were also given a personal gift. In addition, the middle school student council provided each person with a new fleece blanket, bath towel, and a pair of socks. On February 3, TAS shipped the boxes directly to the families. Middle school student council co-advisor Rhonda Pottorf said, “I’m very impressed with the generosity of our middle school students. Through this service project, our students had an opportunity to make a connection with other families in the community and demonstrated the TAS values of kindness and responsibility.” Pottorf has been leading the middle school student council for every year of her 16-year career. She currently teaches Grade 7 academic support, which is what she has taught for most of her tenure here except for two years that she spent with Grade 6. She explains why she loves teaching middle school. "Because I teach students in small groups, I get to know my students well. I love being able to work with the students individually to help them meet their academic goals." Over the last 16 years, many things at TAS have changed, but Pottorf is most struck by what hasn't changed. "The Middle School has stayed the same in the way that we're very tight-knit," said Pottorf. "We're all very close and we look out for each other."

She does note that the School has increased its attention to character education and homeroom over her tenure, which she believes is equally important to academics because it teaches students to be conscious of how they approach situations in life and how their actions can have a positive effect on society. Pottorf was initially hired for both academic support and student council from the very beginning. She says that at times her work with the student council feels like a second full-time job, but she knows that every activity – like this food drive or the middle school dances it sponsors – has a lasting impact on the students and their memories of the TAS middle school experience, and that is what makes it all worth it.

"I enjoy working with middle schoolers and helping them develop their leadership skills," she said. "It's rewarding to provide social events for students where they can just relax and enjoy being themselves without the pressure of academics. It's a very important part of Middle School to include social and emotional events."

This year's food drive was larger than in previous years, involving more families and more TAS students than in years prior. "This year we had 134 food drive representatives, which is about two per homeroom who came to the preparation meetings." Pottorf believes in the power of service-learning and is proud to help students experience this at TAS. "I feel that community service is vital as it gives students the opportunity to think outside of themselves. They also realize the impact of giving back," she said. "When you support your community by helping others, you create a stronger place for everyone."