Houston Blog
My blog from Houston, Texas. Updated most weeks, usually on Sundays.
Being an educator in the international education sector is both an amazing job to have and a tremendous opportunity to bring about positive changes in our world. Helping this generation of students to grow into authentic global citizenship is a role that carries huge responsibilities, but which also brings immense intrinsic rewards. Speaking frankly, hardly a morning passes without me getting out of bed and thinking that being the Head of a great international school like Awty, where more than 1300 young lives are being shaped and formed on a daily basis, is about as good as international education can get.
As well being a very powerful expression, the term “international education” can often be a challenging one to define because it is used so loosely in many different contexts. At its worst, some schools use the title “International School” in their names as a marketing tool without any clear understanding of whether or not it relates to the curriculum offered or the mix of its students.
Many other schools claim to be “international” whether or not they call themselves an “international school” because they teach an international curriculum (such as the IB), even though it is to a largely homogeneous student population and it may follow options that avoid engaging with issues of genuine significance on a global scale. Others use the term to reflect a diverse range of student backgrounds or to appeal to an internationally mobile community, even though they may be teaching a local (or national, but not international) curriculum.
It seems to me that any of these uses of the expression “international education” dilutes the term, and it is the students in such schools who suffer as a consequence.
To take just one example, over the past week we have been celebrating “Francophonie”. Francophonie is an annual month-long festival across Arkansas, Oklahoma and Texas that focuses on the cultures of French-speaking countries (see http://www.francophonie-texas.org). Francophone culture is understandably a very substantial facet of Awty’s identity given that 40% of our students study in the French Section, and indeed the official art for this year’s Francophonie (shown to the left) was designed by two Awty students, Agathe Bertin and Emma Vales, after winning a competition. Our own celebrations included workshops on French-speaking countries, visits by poets and artists, a short story competition, a special cafeteria lunch, art competitions, games of petanque, a fashion show produced by the French Section of the Middle School, 7th Grade “Théatre du Boulevard” in Big Blue, a red-white-and-blue uniform-free day, a whole school concert in the PAAC on Friday afternoon, and a celebration pot-luck dinner on Friday evening that included presentations to the winners of the short story competition.
The whole school concert in the PAAC featured a special appearance by the hip-hop band “International Renegades”, a group of Awty graduates from 2009 who now play songs promoting peace and understanding in both England and French. The music was wonderful (if also rather loud!), and the reaction of our students was nothing short of ecstatic. It was great to see our young graduates out there in the community using their talents to promote the same principles of understanding and peace that their former school also promotes.
If Francophonie was an uncharacteristic event at Awty, then we might not be worthy of the title “international”. However, Francophonie occurred within the context of a school with students from 60 countries around the world, that teaches high quality international curricula, and which celebrates global diversity on an almost daily basis in a multitude of ways.
So, to answer the initial question ‘what should an international school look like?’, I would claim that when it comes to education in Houston, ‘International’ should – and does – simply mean ‘Awty’!
The 40 images below provide a few snippets of our Francophonie week. As always, just click any image to enlarge it.
What should an international school look like?
Sunday, 18 March 2012
This week we celebrated “Francophonie”, just one of many examples of how Awty provides a true and full international education experience for its students.