SUPERINTENDENT’S MESSAGE NOVEMBER 20, 2024

 

IB MIDDLE YEARS PROGRAM (MYP)

 

Last week, I mentioned the proposal by school leaders and accepted by the Board that AISL move towards adopting the IB MYP as a curricular framework for Grades 6 through 10. This is a very exciting possibility, in my opinion. We will host a Coffee Morning on 4 December to give interested parents information about the MYP and to discuss this proposal. It will be in the MPR at 7.30 am. Please do come to this meeting, regardless of the grade that your child is in this year.

 

THERE IS SO MUCH GOING ON AT WEEKENDS

 

In case you did not know it, there is indeed so much going on at weekends, especially on Saturday mornings. It is really good to see this, and to be part of it. Last weekend on Saturday we hosted a wonderful community event on the field, the 7-a-Side Adult Co-Ed Soccer Tournament. Eight teams played football, and the winner turned out to be the team from the British Deputy High Commission. Thanks to Eliza Lovell, from Community Liaison at the US Consul-General for working with our own Nate Heck to create such a festive event, complete with food vendors and also arts and crafts specialists selling their products. 

At the same time as this was going on, there was a swimming meet against the Italian School, and an upper primary Basketball competition featuring 4 teams. The weekend before that, while our Secondary volleyball players were away in Abuja for their WAISAL competition, we had our Grade 3 and Grade 6 football teams playing Pegasus Academy. It is lovely to note the rapid progress that is being made by both those age groups.

 

Of course, as always, our PTO is active in various events, and we are all thankful to them for their efforts on behalf of our community. Coming up next week we will have various Thanksgiving lunches and celebrations on Wednesday, and then before we break we all look forward to a number of music concerts and performances and also to the Tree Lighting Ceremony. As I write this, some parents are in the courtyard painting props and backdrops for the production of “The Nutcracker”. It will be a very busy and uplifting few weeks. Please participate - we love having you here and your enthusiastic presence makes a big difference.

 

COMMUNITY SERVICE: BY DESIGN

 

On Friday last week, our secondary students and teachers participated in our first Community Service Day. And what a success it was. Three groups went off campus: Animal Service Care went to Green Fingers Wildlife Conservation; Wings of Service donated items to an orphanage, Motherless Babies Home: and Smiles and Sunshine gave a cancer awareness presentation at a nearby school, Riverbank School.

 

Others, the majority, stayed here, and there were structured interactions between the older students and the Primary group, working together in sports, games, arts and crafts, language instruction, gardening, and more. The learning that results from these activities is every bit as important as the learning that takes place daily in the classrooms. Our 5 core values were front and foremost for the morning.

 

Fitting neatly into this Day was the Grade 8 Community Solutions Exhibition in the Gym. Parents of students in our Middle School grades will know that we have introduced Design to our curriculum this year. This was planned as a part of the new Innovation and Design Center. What is so tremendous about this is that it has sparked an interest in the Design Cycle across other courses. On Friday last week, fitting neatly into the Community Service Day, the Grade 8 students hosted a Community Solutions Exhibition in the Gym. This is how it was billed:

 

In this interdisciplinary exhibition, our 8th-grade ELA students take inspiration from The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, where young William Kamkwamba tackles community challenges with creativity, resilience, and resourcefulness. Following the Design Thinking Process, they identified local issues, empathized with those affected, brainstormed potential solutions, and developed prototypes to address these challenges. 

Each student will present their project, demonstrating how their solution tackles a specific community problem and sharing insights from their iterative design experience. This exhibition highlights the creativity, resilience, and commitment of young minds to community service and innovation, encouraging everyone to see the transformative power of thoughtful design and action.

 

The idea arose from their study of this book in their English courses, and it led to some creative and productive projects. Working in small groups, students identified a problem close at hand, and then worked through the design cycle to come up with solutions.These they displayed on boards, and then spoke to us as we walked round and listened to them. Problems and projects included the following: Biomass-fuelled generators; a mobile Health Clinic; Traffic solutions; Trash and Littering in Lagos; Water Pollution; an AISL Food Bank; and many more.

 

I was one of the judges, and I was deeply impressed with the quality of the work and with our students' ability to articulate clearly what they were doing and how much they had learned from the process. Here are just three comments from students:
 

We loved uncovering the impact that you can have on other people’s lives;

When you have a problem, you have to take certain steps and you can’t cut corners;

Through collaboration, we can solve so many issues with one product.

 

ALUMNI

 

These comments from the Grade 8s lead naturally into this final section about alumni. Last week I ended this column by suggesting that a true measure of a fine school is to chart and assess what its alumni are doing in their adult careers. I like to make a clear distinction between graduates and alumni. A graduate is an ex-student who has been awarded an AISL Diploma, whereas an alum is anyone who has attended our school. So, we have many thousands of alums, more than we have graduates.

 

My two questions in this regard are these: What are these members of our community doing? Does all the time that we spend on values and coaching ethical behavior pay off in the life’s work of our graduates? 

 

We are now mature enough as an institution to be in a position to know the answers. And yet, our response has to be that we do not know, except for a small number. It is great to have some alums who live in Lagos coming back to use our facilities. They are most welcome. And alums who are visiting Lagos and wish to pop in are also most welcome. But our lists and databases of alums are embryonic. Our new Director of Communications and Marketing, Dr. Carol Ann Tonn, is starting to work on rectifying this. If you are able to help her in this, please respond when asked to.

 

Though tribe and tongue may differ, we hope that the values of this large and growing group do not.