Dear AISL Community,

When I began in August, I sent a letter to the community to say I felt honored to lead at AISL. I love the beginning of the year because it is filled with such hope in new beginnings.  Now, at the end of the year, I feel grateful that I am still inspired to calmly and confidently lead AISL into the start of the next school year.

As I shared in the March Annual General Meeting of the Board, the reason I came to AISL is, I saw a school with a community and felt the community's desire for the school to be better.  There are many schools in the world and many opportunities. Once I learned about AIS Lagos. I wanted to work here. The main reason was that you want to be better.  Just like in the classroom, the easiest students to help are those who want to change, to improve.  I also felt my skills matched AISL’s needs.

My desire to be here has not changed.  We are a school with a 60-year history in international education in Lagos.  With the best Early Years Program I have seen.  We have MYP, DP and an AP testing center. A 5:1 student-to-teacher ratio with more than 480 students.  Of our 95 teachers, 83% are international teachers, with 70% of our overall teachers holding a Master’s Degree or above.  We are a diverse community representing 74 countries.  We have built three new buildings in the last two and a half years, including stadium lights on our astro turf football field.

We are the home of the Eagles and I am glad I made it my home.

I am more informed and focused on our continued improvement.  AISL needs to focus on continual improvement in academics, athletics/activities, and the arts. If these are dialed with fidelity, our desired enrollment (and waitlists) will follow and students will flourish.

Safety is still the highest priority, even above learning. School safety needs to be about physical and emotional safety. I have spent much of the year working toward the continual improvement of AISL’s physical safety.  I know our school buildings and grounds are safe. I need to know our students feel safe.  Safe to be vulnerable with their thoughts and feelings. Safe to be around each other. Safe to want to come to school.  This is a very challenging time in the world, but more effort needs to be placed on giving students the skills to feel safe and to make others feel safe. AISL also needs to do a better job of communicating our safety record.  Next year, we will share more reports of our discipline activity and our safety record.

I need to continue to hear from you.  What are we doing right and what do we need to continue to improve upon?  I need your feedback and the conversations to continue.  The Parent Council and Town Hall meetings will continue.  My communications will continue.  I will also continue to invite you into parent meetings when you have concerns. I have felt your support. I need your continued commitment and we need to build a trusting relationship.

Along those lines, I will also be sharing more on our Faculty Code of Ethics and a new Parents as Partners plan for all of us to build healthy relationships with each other.  This will be part of a larger Wellness Framework that we will be developing next year with the strategic initiatives centered around Learner Agency, Community Engagement, and Organizational Excellence in ALL we do at AISL, from the Business Office to the cleanliness of our bathrooms.

I have more to share, but I also want you to take the summer to recharge, renew, and remember why you love our school and our community of learners.

With the same promise I shared at the beginning of the year, I would like to share again the poem, Where We Are Headed, by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, which celebrates optimism, wholeness, and the pleasure of seeing everything, I mean everything as a flower. 

With gratitude,

Dr. Dan Love

 

Where We Are Headed

At first, we just say flower. How

thrilling it is to name. Then it’s

aster. Begonia. Chrysanthemum

We spend our childhood practicing

how to separate one thing from another.

Daffodil. Edelweiss. Fern. We learn

 

which have five petals, which have six.

We say, “This is a gladiolus, this, hyacinth.”

And we fracture the world into separate
 

identities. Iris. Jasmine. Lavender.

Divorcing life into singular bits.

And then, when we know how to tell

 

one thing from another, perhaps

at last we feel the tug to see not

what makes things different, but

 

what makes things the same. Perhaps

we feel the pleasure that comes

when we start to blur the lines—

and once again everything

is flower, and by everything,

I mean everything. 

by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer