People and places
Striving to serve our island community Daniel Slevin writes from the International School of Koje Korea’s second city, Busan, lies in the far South-East of Korea. Yet if you drive through a sea tunnel and over 2 suspension bridges to the island of Geoje you will find yourself in a far more international community. This is because Geoje island is the location of the world’s second and third largest shipyards, and serving them both is the International School of Koje (ISK) – spelled with the older Romanisation of the island’s name. Our school is made up of a diverse and ever-shifting community dependent on the projects in the shipyards, from North Sea oil rigs to naval submarines. As of April 2019 Texans, Indians and Kazakhs make up two of the largest groups among over 30 nationalities, whereas a few years ago it was Norwegians, Indians and Australians. As different projects are designed, built, and completed, so our community shifts in size. Over the past decade ISK has grown from fewer than 100 students to nearly 500, before now settling at around 150. This ‘accordion effect’ is due to oil prices, as when oil prices are high – as they were from 2006-2014 – the shipyard’s order books bustle. Winter
Summer |
| 2019
As our smaller school grew, the Senior Leadership Team (SLT) were able to think afresh about how best to educate our diverse community with total freedom of curriculum choice. Fieldwork Education’s International Primary Curriculum (IPC) represented the values the school wanted to imbue in its staff and learners – those of challenge, expert teaching and a plethora of learning activities that would make the school a place where everybody would look forward to learning every day, whilst providing a framework for rigor and support. For our Middle Years, the IMYC (International Middle Years Curriculum) was selected because we recognized the value of a curriculum rooted in the body of neuroscience of the adolescent brain and specific to the three very formative years (ages 11-14). We have not looked back since, as the level of student engagement and enquiry is exceptional. We added the International Early Years Curriculum (IEYC) to our offering in 2017, a year after our first IPC accreditation and the same year in which we became the first school to be accredited for the IMYC. Next year sees us take on
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