Strengthening ties

KIS International Head of School Sally Holloway and Richard P. Hall, her counterpart at affiliate Washington International School, have had a lot to talk about lately as KIS expands into the secondary level. With their curriculums already closely tied, the two schools are looking to many other areas of future cooperation.

Less obvious, however, is one of the closest affiliations. It involves KIS International School (formerly Kesinee International) and Washington International School (WIS) located in the US capital. Indeed, the relationship is so close that the local school has obtained from its American counterpart its mission statement, its curriculum and even Sally Holloway, its head.

“It started up about 1996 when our owners were looking to develop a school here, but they didn’t know exactly what they wanted,” Holloway explains. “They had seen the schools here and they wanted something different, but they didn’t know what that was.

“They had a friend who was on the board of trustees at Washington and she had said that it’s a different school and they should just come and see what they thought. A group of them went over to Washington, saw the school and decided this is what they wanted and they approached the school about starting up an affiliation,” Holloway relates.

“That moved through quite quickly so we signed an agreement in 1997. I started here in ’98. It was a quick decision because the school here was very much committed to the ideals of Washington,” Holloway observes.

Those ideals, says WIS head Richard Hall, who visited Bangkok recently, are enshrined in its mission statement which defines the school’s task as providing “a demanding international education which will challenge students to be responsible, effective world citizens.”

“That’s a powerful statement for a school,” Hall asserts. “You start by figuring out what you mean by effective. That has a lot to do with academic skills. It also has a lot to do with the ability to get along with other people. It has a lot to do with knowing a world other than your own particular spot in your own particular country.

“What does responsible mean? That adds the environmental aspect – being responsible for other people and the betterment of the world and making it a better place,” Hall remarks.

One of the chief mechanisms for realising the goals set forth in the mission statement for both schools is the International Baccalaureate (IB) curriculum. Indeed, both have been IB schools since they were founded. WIS, in fact, was one of the first schools anywhere to adopt this demanding curriculum.

“WIS was founded in 1966 by a visionary by the name of Dorothy Goodman who has been very involved in IB circles from the very beginning,” Hall explains. “All of the students involved in the school take the IB from the Primary Years Programme (PYP) through the Middle Years Programme (PYP) through the IB diploma programme.”

Until this year, KIS had been exclusively a primary school following the PYP programme and expectations were that it would continue serving that niche. The school had grown to a comfortable size of just over 200 students and had just been granted full accreditation from the Council of International Schools. There was no intention on the part of the owners to go any further.

Things changed very quickly, Holloway discloses. “About this time last year, the parents’ group came to see us and said there was a big group of the parents that really wanted us to continue. They appreciated what we had done to allow their children to get into other international schools, but they wanted to stay at KIS. That was their ideal.

“So they asked if we would consider opening a secondary school. We went to the board and discussed it and it was agreed that we do a feasibility study with a professional group. That study concluded that KIS should open a secondary school since that is what the KIS community clearly wanted,” Holloway relates.

“It was quite a late decision in the year. In fact, we weren’t going to open grade six this year since we’d had a very small grade five class, but the parents said that they wanted to stay. If we would open grade six, they would stay. We actually agreed knowing that it was not necessarily the best financial decision at that time. We didn’t have a lot of time to prepare either. But we had five committed students. Now there are 12 and we’re getting a lot of applicants.”

Clearly, having the affiliation with WIS was a big factor in moving so quickly – as had been the case in setting up the PYP programme several years earlier. In both situations, KIS has been able to draw on the expertise and experience of educators at its partner school in introducing the curriculum.

Since the PYP is inquiry-based with individual schools shaping the content to meet their particular situation, Holloway says that KIS has looked to its US partner for ideas and examples rather than a fully-defined curriculum.

“The affiliation has provided KIS with direct access to another school’s vision of what the programme of inquiry (POI) looks like for them,” Holloway points out. “This sharing of information is very useful for a new school as it provides a professional dialogue from a different perspective and presents ideas in great detail for us to consider. Ultimately, however, it is up to the individual school to develop its own POI and our affiliation provided support while we did this.”

The MYP is quite different from the PYP, Holloway says. “It’s much more sophisticated. This is a programme that is developed for teenagers. It’s set up to understand those changes in them, what they’re going through physically and emotionally. I think it does work very well because it allows them to be more mature and to see things from a more grownup viewpoint. But it also understands that at times they are still very immature.”

As a middle school programme, the MYP is subject-based, a significant change from the primary years. At the same time, one of the programme’s most distinctive features is its deliberate attempt to link the various subject areas.

“For me, going to secondary school was going from one class to another to another with no connections between,” Holloway recalls. “But there are so many connections now. I think the teachers appreciate this as much as the students. There’s less pressure. You’re not walking out of one class with your sack weighed down with a whole bunch of work that doesn’t relate to the next subject. There are the links and I think that makes a lot of sense.”

Once again, the affiliation has been invaluable, Holloway says. “We couldn’t have opened grade six unless we’d had the affiliation, really. I went to Washington in the summer and met with the middle school head and the MYP coordinator. I picked up a large number of materials and made sure we had all the right texts. We ordered similar types of literature books that they were working with in grade six and we started up.”

The WIS MYP coordinator also accompanied Richard Hall on his trip to Bangkok to meet with her KIS counterpart. She also spent time with specialist teachers to help them to incorporate more of MYP within their classes.

“All has been a really good link for us. We can just write and find out what they are doing, and how they approach a particular issue,” Holloway says. “It’s been an incredible support in starting up the programme because there’s too much to learn about it.

“Washington’s a much older school, so they’ve implemented MYP into an already existing school whereas we grew into the MYP. It’s good for us because we can say ‘if you could start this all again, what would you avoid? What would you do differently?’ You’ve got someone there who’s going to be totally transparent with you and give you that information.”

The affiliation between the two schools has thus far been relatively one-sided with the older school helping the new school get started. But Hall is very optimistic that will change as KIS matures.

“One of the things we’re talking about is doing joint units of inquiry at the PYP level,” he says by way of example. “A kindergarten class might be doing ‘the home’ as a unit of inquiry and e-mail allows the teachers to be able to do that as kind of a joint project. You can see what that could develop into.”

Hall says the biggest potential for exchange, however, lies with the older children. “One of the exciting parts of KIS moving to a secondary school is that there are so many more opportunities for affiliation and for exchange to take place because the kids are going to be older.

“When it gets to be the IB diploma programme which we’ve been doing for a very long time, I think it can be of enormous help for both of us. Over time, the exchange aspects of it for us can be pretty exciting.

On the drawing board are increased student and teacher exchanges between the two schools, including homestays. Any KIS student or teacher lucky enough to make the long trip to Washington will experience an environment very different from that of the local school. Washington DC, after all, is the centre of government for the world’s only remaining superpower and it is also the site of a host of well known attractions.

At the same time they will be comfortably based within WIS’ own small community. “One of the enormous advantages of our school is that it is on two campuses, so it’s two small schools,” Hall explains. “So often we talk about small independent and international schools as ‘the family’. It’s a very important concept for our school, particularly when you get students who come from all over the world. It’s an anchor for them and it’s very often an anchor for their parents.

About a third of the school’s 800 students are all American – mother, father and child — Hall says. “But scratch a little bit and you find that one of the parents went to an international school growing up or one of them was an army brat.

“One third are not American, but they might have been living in Washington for 20 years. These students are very Americanised, but yet they’re going home and speaking a language like Portuguese.

“The other third’s a mix, so it’s a very interesting community. If you count up all the passports – mother, father, child – it’s up to about 90 countries,” Hall notes.

Meanwhile, on our side of the world, KIS will provide an equally stimulating environment for WIS students and teachers.

Hall is clearly pleased with the affiliation that has developed between the two schools. “Having Sally who taught at WIS for eight years and who knows our school so well, plus the accreditation by CIS, give us a real sense that this is a wonderful place,” he says.

An artist’s 3D computer-assisted rendering of KIS’ future facilities The KIS campus has 16 rai, only four of which are used for the present single-building school. The current facility still has adequate space for grades six and seven. The expansion will take place in two phases with the original architect in charge. First will come a multi-purpose complex for the next academic year which will have a swimming pool, an art room, counselors, offices, a canteen and an auditorium. The second phase will see the construction of a four-storey building for the secondary school housing the classrooms, the design and technology lab, ICT labs, science labs, a large library and a study area for the diploma students. For more information on KIS International School call 66 (0) 2274 3444 or visit the school’s website at http://www.kis.ac.th Washington International School’s website is http://www.wis.edu