Following on from our feature on St. George’s School in Switzerland, we speak to Hazel Hogg, who lives with her husband and her daughters Morven (11), Rowan (8) and Alexa (3) in France – practically on the border with Switzerland, where they enjoy stunning views of the Alps and Lake Geneva.  Her children attend the International School of Geneva. Here Hazel talks about living overseas, and tells us more about choosing this school for her children. Read more.

Could you explain how you came to be living in France, and why you chose an international school for your children?

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We’ve opened our Saudi Arabia Talent Pool, and this week we’ve put together a special feature on working in the country. “In some years we have one or two days when it may rain, but this is not certain,” explains Bruce Gamwell, Director of the British International School of Jeddah. Read on to learn more about the school from Bruce and other teachers, and find out about current Saudi vacancies.

“Make of it what you can and Jeddah will return your efforts and not disappoint you.

The sun always smiles in Jeddah.”                              

“Make sure you have plenty of fancy dress costumes!”

“You never have to iron again!”                     

“Make sure you are good at journey directions especially if your partner is not, alternatively buy a GPS on arrival!”

“Visiting old Jeddah is magical and an experience you should not miss and try to repeat.

Read more…

“International-mindedness isn’t something that can be taught in discrete lessons on the odd Friday afternoon, it’s a ‘frame of mind’ and as such needs time to develop”, says Steven Mark, Educational Director of the International Primary Curriculum. In this follow-up to his well-received article last month for Eteach, he points to some invaluable classroom resources to help children start thinking internationally.

Defining international-mindedness

Across the world today you’ll find schools, both international and increasingly in national systems too, that seek as part of their mission to help children become internationally-minded. But what does it actually mean? As yet, there is no single commonly agreed definition. To some, it may be defined around themes such as securing peace and eradicating poverty, whilst others may see it from a more environmental perspective.

One definition that I’ve found useful is that of a growing sense of the ‘other’. Howard Gardner describes “declining ego-centrism” as the basis of human development. Therein perhaps lies the most helpful way of considering what international-mindedness might be: a journey from ‘self’ to ‘other’. If we can help our children and students to develop a strong sense not only of themselves and their own identity, which is crucial, but alongside that, a deep sense and awareness of other peoples, cultures, countries and customs, then we offer them a great chance to be truly 21st century global citizens. Living in such an interconnected world as we now do, and facing complex challenges –ranging from climate change, to terrorism, to poverty elimination – will require a generation of problem solvers and creative thinkers, who see problems not from one perspective but from many. These global challenges and problems will ultimately be faced by the children going through our schools today, and what better chance do we have to help solve them than by helping our children, from the earliest age possible, develop that strong sense of the ‘other’.

What does it look like in children?

So now we have a rough but hopefully helpful idea of what it means to be internationally-minded. But what does it look like in children? Can we really say that a six-year-old in primary school is internationally-minded? Possibly, but given what we know about how the human brain develops it seems unlikely. What we can do though is to set in place cumulative experiences and opportunities that over time – in this case many years – build on each other and hopefully help move our children along that pathway to a greater sense of the ‘other’. International-mindedness isn’t something that can be taught in discrete lessons on the odd Friday afternoon; it’s a ‘frame of mind’ and as such needs time to develop.

Back to our six-year-old then: what might international-mindedness look like in him or her? In the International Primary Curriculum and the soon to launch International Middle Years Curriculum, we’ve tried to be as explicit as possible in articulating what international-mindedness is for different age groups. So for the six-year-old, it may well be knowing that the children in his or her classroom have different home countries, and being able to work with each other and being able to respect one another’s independence and individuality. For older students, international learning outcomes might include knowing about the ways in which the lives of people in the countries they have studied affect each other, or being able to identify ways in which people work together for mutual benefit.

Having a definition of, and clear outcomes for, international learning is the best starting point for schools seeking to develop international-mindedness. If we have these outcomes in place from the outset, then designing activities and tasks to help children learn them becomes so much easier.

Getting started…

Abstract concepts such as international-mindedness can at first seem almost daunting and impractical. Questions such as ‘where do I start?’ and ‘where do I find resources?’ naturally surface. There are, however, lots of great examples from schools around the world and I’ve pencilled below just a few of my own favourites and ones I’ve used in the classroom before to help children to start thinking internationally.

• And now for the news…you come in the morning, time for register and all the other start-to-the-day duties. How on earth can you bring international learning into this? Well, whilst you’re busy with the admin, let the class listen to the daily children’s news podcast from the BBC world service. Aimed at early secondary students, although it can easily be used with older primary children as well, the 3 to 4 minute podcast covers the main stories of the day, and is bound to lead to great discussions and debates afterwards.

• Maps, maps and more maps…does your classroom environment reflect the world? Maps are a brilliant way to help children begin to ‘see’ the world and from a range of perspectives. For map anoraks like myself, Stanfords shop in London offers the best selection of maps for all uses, ranging from traditional Mercator projection maps to Pacific Centred Maps in the fantastic ‘Down Under’ Map. All available to order online.

• Become an explorer… as the title on the webpage below says, “You don’t need a passport” to travel the world. At least not now with so many fantastic resources to explore only a mouse click away. One of the best is the National Geographic Kids site and in particular the ‘places’ part of the site. Take a different country each day or week and go exploring it!

• The local as well as the global… don’t forget what’s on your doorstep. Literally. If we’re serious about helping our students to develop an awareness of the ‘other’, then starting with learning about the host country and culture is an important part of developing international thinking.

• Play a junior version of the real thing…in David Perkins’ new book, ‘Making Learning Whole’ (have a look on Amazon as it’s a great read), he describes how children often learn through playing a ‘junior-version’ of the real thing. He gives the example of baseball but we can equally imagine it for football or indeed any other sport or game. Countries that are successful at football tend to develop children’s skills through five (or less) a side games, small pitches, small goals etc. Think of Junior Monopoly! It’s about giving children the chance to do the same as adult players but with a scaled down version.

So what better way to learn about how countries are linked and work together to solve problems than to play a junior version of the real thing and hold a Model United Nations. Mostly used with senior secondary students, but now increasingly with upper primary and middle years students too, it’s a brilliant way to develop a range of skills from communication to co-operation. Have a look at this website for a fantastic case study of how Overseas Family School in Singapore approached this.

As we’ve seen, ‘international’ needn’t only mean the many nationalities that make up a school population, but can also be something much deeper. Making the development of international-mindedness an explicit aim of our teaching may well offer the best means of making Edwin Ginn’s dream of international education a reality and give our children a great chance of success in the globalised, interconnected world they will live and work in.

Steven Mark is the educational director of the International Primary Curriculum (IPC). His education experience includes many years as a teacher and school leader in Scotland, Netherlands and Germany. He has a Masters degree in Educational Management from the University of Leicester and is about to embark on his doctorate with the University of Bath, England.
Steven has a great range of experience working with both national and international schools. He has spoken at conferences and delivered professional development for educators throughout many parts of the world. He is currently writing a book about how we can best help children and adults to develop international-mindedness, which he thinks may well become the key skill for 21st century citizens.

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Why did international schools spring up, who do they serve, and what on earth does it mean to offer an ‘International Education’? In the first of two articles for Eteach, Steven Mark, educational director of the International Primary Curriculum, reflects on what makes an international school truly international, and how we can best help children and adults to develop the key skill of ‘international mindedness’ for the 21^st century.

Back in the 1990s, much as I was enjoying teaching in my hometown in Scotland, if I’m honest I was getting a bit of itchy feet syndrome. Sound familiar?

Sadly there weren’t any recruitment companies like Eteach at that time specialising in international schools. So each week I would faithfully browse the back pages of the job sections with pen at hand, ready to circle the job ads that caught my eye. After a few applications and knock-backs, word came through that my recent interview in The Hague had been a success, and a new life in the Netherlands was beckoning.

Time to pack the bags and head to Hull for the ferry!

Something familiar on the first day at school

I have many memories of arriving in the school on my first day, but one rather mundane one stands out: I remember looking in the classroom cupboards and finding my Ginn 360 Reading Scheme. For those of you unfamiliar with Ginn 360, it was the Oxford Reading Tree of the 1990s.

I’ll come back to Ginn a little later as there’s more to that famous name than meets the eye, but on that first day there was something that was instantly recognisable and familiar: just what you need when you land on foreign shores! It highlighted to me then – and, as I would find out further in the next few years – that there were many similarities between international schools and the school in Scotland where I’d previously worked. Similar resources. Similar routines. Timetables that looked roughly the same. Same issues being discussed in the staffroom. Lots of similarities but, as I discovered as time went on, lots of differences too.

What is an international school?

So what’s the difference between an international school and schools such as the one I’d left behind? What is it that makes an international school an international school? There are probably two main answers to that.

The first is pretty straightforward, in that they were in large part developed to serve international families: often quite mobile families who are living away from their home country for a few years and then either returning home or moving on to the next country. In such cases, the parents want their children to receive an education that will not only equip them well for the future, but one which will allow the children to transfer easily to other international schools or to schools back in their own country.

One of the earliest examples of such a school was the International School of Geneva, set up in 1924 to accommodate the needs of the growing international population of the city. With families from around the world moving to Geneva to work at the global organisations being set up in the city, such as the League of Nations and the International Labour Organisation, the need for a school which could cater for a range of cultures and languages was evident. Similar schools soon emerged in Japan, the Netherlands, Wales and many other countries. All were designed to cater to the needs of a range of students from across the world.

Explosion in demand

The success of these early schools has led to an explosion in recent years in the demand for international schools. Today there are almost 6,000 English-medium international schools around the globe. Beyond the sheer growth of these schools, what is particularly interesting is that the biggest group of students overall is no longer the expats, but those from the local, wealthy population.

What might be attracting those families? Well, lots of reasons of course – wanting their children to learn English being an obvious one. But for many families it is the chance for their children to have an ‘International Education’ that is so attractive. That for me is the second answer to the question of what is an international school: it provides this ‘International Education’. But what on earth does that mean?

What is an ‘International Education’?

Let me share an example: a few years back I had the good fortune to spend some time in South East Asia. I was invited to visit a small international school and have a look around. It was a lovely school in many ways: dedicated teachers; enthusiastic children; strong leadership team.

The children were a mix of international and local students. Walking around looking at the displays, I was struck by the content of them: Florence Nightingale, The Great Fire of London, The Tudors and The Stuarts and not forgetting the ubiquitous ‘Slipper’. Now there’s nothing wrong with children from Asia learning the story of Florence Nightingale or the Great Fire (by the same token, there’s nothing wrong with kids in the UK learning about famous people and events from Asia); they’re great stories. But for these children it was at the exclusion of learning about their own culture, and that strikes me as wrong.

So here was a school that to all intents and purposes fitted the historic profile of an international school: international and local families; international and local teachers; and flags from around the world bedecking the entrance area. But something was missing. Something that Edwin Ginn would have recognised.

Remember him from earlier? Edwin Ginn of publishing fame was one of the earliest proponents of international education and set up the International School of Peace in Boston in 1910. Long before terms such as ‘global citizen’ and ‘global dimension’ became popular, international-mindedness found many of its roots back in the early 20^th century.

Following the many terrible conflicts that had recently taken place throughout the world, people like Edwin Ginn, who were committed to the cause of global peace, set about trying to develop an education that was more international in outlook.

For the school I visited then, the boxes that defined the school as international were certainly ticked, but the learning in the classroom didn’t because the ‘international’ in ‘international school’ isn’t only about the intake of families to the school: it’s about something more profound. It’s about a deep commitment to the development of international-mindedness in our students.

In the second part of this blog about developing international-mindedness, coming soon to Eteach, Steven offers information about where to begin, and points to some of his favourite classroom resources that will help children to start thinking internationally.

Steven Mark is the educational director of the International Primary Curriculum (IPC). His education experience includes many years as a teacher and school leader in Scotland, Netherlands and Germany. He has a Masters degree in Educational Management from the University of Leicester and is about to embark on his doctorate with the University of Bath, England.

Steven has a great range of experiences working with both national and international schools. He has spoken at conferences and delivered professional development for educators throughout many parts of the world.  He is currently writing a book about how we can best help children and adults to develop international mindedness, which he thinks may well become the key skill for 21^st century citizens.

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Deciding to become a Special Education Needs teacher can be an exciting, yet daunting prospect. A teacher of this kind usually works with students who have learning difficulties, behavioural problems and physical or sensory disabilities.

Knowing where to start your research can be a challenge in itself, which is why we at Eteach have just launched our Special Education Needs Career Portal. Here you will be able to find all the information you may need when deciding whether or not you want to become a Special Education Needs teacher, join SEN Talent Pools and search for Special Education Needs jobs.

Of course there is no right or wrong way to go about your research, but to get you off to a good start here’s some information about what you may need to consider and some sources of help.

One of the first things to think about when deciding whether to become a Special Education Needs teacher is the area you would like to specialise in. Some of the most common special needs include:

• dyslexia
• autism or severe epilepsy
• visual or hearing impairments
• physical disabilities
• learning difficulties
• behavioural disorders
• psychiatric problems

It can take a while to find the right job for you, which is why it’s important to take your time in your job search. A great way to keep an eye on the latest SEN vacancies whilst still deciding which the right path is for you is to join Talent Pools.

Talent Pools are specific to regions and schools, which means that you only have to join the ones that are relevant to you. Schools’ Talent Pools are live all year round so even if they aren’t currently recruiting, they can still view your CV anytime they like. This means that if you stand out, chances are that they will remember you when a vacancy does arise.

Once you have decided on the kind of role you would like, you can then start searching for Special Education Needs teaching jobs. If you need any help or advice don’t forget that you can always contact a member of the Eteach team who will be happy to help.

Is Special Education Needs teaching something that you would consider or already do? Is there any information that you would like to see more readily available to SEN teachers? Let us know your thoughts below.

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