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Leadership and fostering a sense of community in an IB school:
Creating comfort as well as purpose during uncertain times By Francesco Banchini
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ince early 2020, many of us have learnt new skills and adapted ourselves, as we have never done before and in a very short period of time. There has been a dramatic shift in the direction and purpose of our lives. We are still in a phase of transition, where the past is known, but our daily lives contain an unprecedented level of uncertainty. As CEO and Director of an International Baccalaureate (IB) school in Azerbaijan, one of the private schools in Baku, I will share here some personal reflections on this recent period of both disruption and opportunity. Our learning community has a strong sense of purpose in changing the standard educational path from a traditional approach to a skill development approach. Our school is a place where students, parents and teachers can learn and improve their abilities and skills as part of a strong community, while also sharing these as part of the larger community here in Azerbaijan. As time has gone by and uncertainty has continued over this last year and more, opportunities have been created. Our first major change and opportunity, as for many schools, was moving to distance learning. This has increased our skills enormously and given us the motivation to rethink how we relate to our students. As we moved from a more familiar learning path, albeit one where a vision of moving forward and keeping the community safe was our
As time has gone by and uncertainty has continued over this last year and more, opportunities have been created.
16 | International School | Summer 2021
motivational drive, we approached distance learning as a new horizon, unknown territory. At our school it has been an opportunity to develop our skills and engage our students in an enhanced digital educational era. We have been able to introduce a range of different platforms to engage our learners, although significant investment in training was needed to ensure that teachers felt confident to embrace the new technology. After a few months of distance learning we made two clear observations. Firstly we realised that this approach to learning developed different and new ways to communicate, focused on an increased level of dependence on devices. Secondly, not only families living in forced lockdown, but also teachers, developed increased levels of anxiety, and we felt that the well-being of our
