| NFI Newsletter September 2020 | |
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Reflections from the NFI Design Team | | |
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| | Dear NFI Community, The world as we knew it came to an end on December 31st, 2019 and the next chapter isn’t clear. What is clear, is that we are in a period of transition. And what is also clear is that support for diverse learners won’t wait until the world settles down again. How do we support students in an ever-changing, uncertain and ambiguous world? There are certain principles that we can take from past experience that can support us in this period of transition. Join us for our Virtual Conversation Beyond Hope and Fear: Supporting Diverse Learners in a VUCA World... November 7 and 8, 2020 (each day will have 2x90 minute modules). This conference focuses on the question: How do we support diverse learners and their parents in our complex reality? This includes virtual/blended environments, transitions between them, and SEL issues. CLICK HERE for more information and to register. Our Next Frontier Inclusion family continues to grow and evolve. Our Founding Members - William Powell, Ochan Kusuma-Powell, Kristen Pelletier and Kevin Bartlett set the stage for our international school community to explore and develop schools that are inclusive of all students in 2009. Simon Gillespie joined the Design Team in 2017 and we now welcome Stephen Dare, Head of School at Hong Kong Academy together with Ochan and Kristen as we think strategically about the future of NFI and continue to design an organization committed to inclusion.
Stephen Dare is entering his eleventh year as the Head of School at Hong Kong Academy. He is passionate about the co-construction and democratization of learning experiences within organizations. He believes that everyone has the capacity to make contributions that elevate thinking and promote action within their schools and in support of broader educational initiatives. Stephen began his career as a preschool teacher in Southeast England and has worked as an administrator in North and South America as well as Southeast Asia. Stephen is an Agency Trainer for the Thinking Collaborative and has embedded the work of Cognitive Coaching and Adaptive Schools to drive the HKA mission and identity. He regularly presents courses on coaching and building inclusive organizational cultures in diverse settings. On August 17, 2020 NFI hosted its first Special Forum on the topic of supporting students with intensive needs in international schools. The focus question guiding the conversation was: how are we integrating our most vulnerable learners within the wider school community? A group of 24 educators joined together to share experiences and resources as we further build our network of support. Supporting students with intensive needs in international schools has increased over the past few years, Danette Sack and Heidi Laws are offering a virtual Job Alike series for school professionals who have an already established program for students with intellectual disabilities. If you are interested in joining these conversations, please contact Danette at DS...@isb.bj.edu.cn. With warm wishes, The NFI Design Team, Simon Gillespie, Ochan Kusuma-Powell, Kristen Pelletier, Stephen Dare | |
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| | Leading The Way Research Projects: Another way that NFI supports schools is through its research arm. Entitled “Leading the Way”, we respond to needs on learning support-related issues put forward by member schools. Examples of previous LTWs include: “Why LS or EAL is the Wrong Question: Serving ELLs with Learning Issues in Inclusive Schools?’”, “Challenge Accepted! Reframing our Approaches to Behavior Management in Inclusive International Schools”, “Processes and Tools to Support Data-Driven Decision Making in Learning Support”, and “Serve the Need, Not the Label: Highly Able Learners in International Schools.”
The LTW process works in the following way: Typically, a school will nominate a topic they're interested in for deep study. NFI will pull together a team of no more than 10 individuals who are known for their interest and expertise in the topic, and all committee members read published material in the field for 6 months, assessing it against their own personal and professional experiences in the context of international schools. A face-to-face meeting is scheduled in advance, and the committee comes together for 48 hours to distill thinking and write a first draft of a monograph on the topic for distribution to member schools. A follow-up conference on the topic is scheduled at the school several months later.
This year, an LTW on Co-teaching for Diverse Populations will be hosted virtually with UNIS Hanoi in November, 2020, with a follow-up conference, dates to be determined, when we will present our findings. In addition, there will be an LTW on Policies for Inclusion hosted virtually with Qatar Foundation in December, 2020 with a follow-up conference planned for November 2021.
NFI continues to contribute to the growing literature on neurodiversity and inclusion in international schools. Please sign in with your school membership password on our website to download your copies. Hard copies can also be purchased on Amazon.
Learning Support Audits:
One of the ways that NFI supports schools is by conducting audits of their Learning Support programs. NFI takes a systems approach in reviewing what is in place at the school to support children who learn differently and examines four dimensions of inclusion: Developing Common Meaning and Community Commitment; Designing and Integrating the Program; Building Professional Capacity; and Evaluating and Improving the Program. This year, NFI conducted three learning support audits at large international schools.
The review process can be broken down into three parts: a) pre-visit preparation; b) on-site visit; and c) report writing. Typically, we send in a team of two individuals who prepare themselves by reading school documents on the support programs. Documentation might include any pertinent accreditation reports, board policies on admissions and on student support, any available program handbooks, and recording, reviewing and reporting protocols (IEP forms and processes, report cards, etc.). In advance of the visit, we also ask the school's help to send out surveys to different stakeholder groups, collate the results, and return these to the NFI team members. At this time we are also developing systems and tools to be able to conduct audits virtually. NFI Definition of Inclusion: Reflecting on the concept of inclusion, and in line with the global movement on anti-racism, we have been more thoughtful about diversity representing society as a whole.
"An international school is inclusive when it has made the intentional decision to develop diverse student and faculty populations that reflect society as a whole, including multilingual learners and students with diverse learning profiles. These schools take a systems approach to building capacity amongst stakeholders, offering universal design access to all aspects of school life." (NFI Design Team, 2020) | | |
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Story of an Inclusion Journey | | |
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| | Leveraging Opportunities in an Online Environment
By Stephen Dare, Head of School at Hong Kong Academy Shifting to an online learning environment has challenged many preconceived notions in the educational sector, inviting administrators, teachers, parents and students to rethink practices and procedures they may have previously viewed as sacred cows of K-12 schooling. At Hong Kong Academy, our perspectives on technology, timetables, homework, assessment and engagement have quite suddenly been forced into question, and as we have acclimated to the ‘next normal’ we have taken the opportunity to consider our identity as an organisation and ask ourselves: “Who are we?” “Why are we doing this?” and “Why are we doing this, this way?” (Garmston & Wellman)
As a school that was founded on the principle that an inclusive educational environment enhances the learning experience for every student, we have also been required to re-examine the ways that we meet the needs of learners who receive mild, moderate and intensive tiers of support. With up to 15% of our total student population falling into these tiers from Kindergarten to Grade 12, we have had to be agile, adaptive and innovative to ensure that we can continue to deliver a robust and personalised programme to every child through a virtual platform.
Since February, when we first shifted to a fully online learning programme, we have continued to focus on our mission and sought to ensure that everyone in our community feels safe, supported and successful. Within Learner Support, we have identified opportunities to enhance our service delivery model, and also at times felt frustrated by the limitations that accompany screen-based instruction.
Let’s start with the strengths. We have continued to be committed to our collaborative model, with classroom and learner support teachers planning virtually and co-teaching lessons through our online platform. This structure has allowed for flexible grouping and in many cases much more individualised support, as teachers have been able to schedule both one-on-one or small group meetings with students that still allow for them to join whole class synchronous instructional experiences. When content has been delivered asynchronously, we have observed that for many students in learner support, they have benefited immensely from opportunities to self-pace their learning and access materials and resources as frequently as possible without the pressures of having to move on when a period ends or the class transitions to a new focus. Documentation has also become more consistent and formalised, with parents receiving more frequent updates from subject-area and learner support teachers and often having a more up-to-date understanding of where their child is in their learning journey at any one time. We have also seen increased participation from some students who, in a traditional classroom setting, might be reluctant to put their ideas on the table in front of their peers. Whether it is through a chat feature in an online meeting, a shared document to which many students are contributing, or software programmes that allow for anonymous contributions, many students have found a voice that was previously quieter in a face-to-face setting.
This is not to gloss over the real challenges that come with online learning in the midst of a pandemic. Many of our learner support students have social-emotional goals, and the lack of interaction with peers has made it difficult to maintain progress towards these outcomes. Successful online learning can require strong executive function skills, and students who are developing in these areas can find it overwhelming to ‘keep it all together’ with increased independence and fewer informal check ins during a lesson or over the course of a day. We have also noticed that for some families, the collective stress of home-based learning has been great, particularly when a child is receiving intensive support during the school day. These parents have shouldered a huge level of responsibility to provide care as well as supervise the learning programme for their child, and we have worked with these families to develop structures and interventions to support the whole family. We have found that in a few cases, our first, second and third approach to learner support has not worked for a child or for a family. Learning from these experiences, we have worked in partnership with parents to explore a wider range of alternatives and will continue to do so for the duration of their time in our community.
So whilst we might mourn much of what we have lost over the last nine months, we remain optimistic about the journey ahead. In our five year strategy, which we launched earlier this month, we have stated that ‘Because we assume that learners will be entering a rapidly and profoundly changing world, we will empower every learner to be flexible and creative so that they can thrive in a complex, volatile and ambiguous future.’ Through the lens of learner support, we believe that this focus can support us to expand our individual and organisational capabilities and provide even more meaningful, relevant and individualised support to every child in our programme. | |
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Practical Tips and Support | | |
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| | Steve Dare, Head of School at Hong Kong Academy, said the school’s stance in planning their re-opening of school has been to ensure “everyone feels safe, supported and successful.” As a way of thinking about developing relationships with our students at the start of the school year, this seems as good a principle as any, to live by. What might this mean, in practical terms? Here are three ideas, taken from the chapter on “Knowing Our Students Through Observation: A Distance Learning Lens” (Wong-Powell & Kusuma-Powell, in press): - Make sure each student feels ‘seen and heard’: Especially if your return to school is a virtual one, find ways of connecting with each student, not just with eyes and ears, but also with your heart. This will require personal check-ins with students.
- Remember that all behavior is communication and all behavior is for a reason. For example, if a student frequently turns off the camera during class video conferences, take note, ask what might be going on.
- Support student social and emotional wellbeing: Learning is a social activity and online learning may not satisfy the needs of some students to connect with others. Provide opportunities for small group processing; as well as time for students to share their stories of joy, fear, moments of pride/bravery, with the intention of prompting connections of care and support between students.
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The Common Ground Collaborative - The Common Ground Collaborative (CGC) is a non-profit, global community of sense-makers, innovators, educators and partners who share a common goal. We’ve had it with decades of disconnected curriculum, disconnected schools and disconnected conversations, so we are co-creating smart, systemic, sustainable solutions. The CGC is committed to creating inclusive schools which has been at the core from its foundation. For more information visit their website at: https://commongroundcollaborative.org | |
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WIDA International School Consortium - This year NFI and WIDA have collaborated to publish a new edition of the Towards Inclusion Audit Protocol to be more inclusive of English Language Learners. Audits are available for both ELL and learning support concurrently. From Silos to Systems: Working Collaboratively for Learning Access, an NFI/WIDA Conversation at ISKL in April 8-10, 2021. Optimizing learning for all students: To serve all students well, Learning Support, EAL and classroom teachers need to collaborate to plan, teach, assess and reflect together. School leaders and educators should communicate in clear and consistent ways with each other - and with students and parents. In fact, we all know that this aspirational state is hard to achieve and sustain. https://wida.wisc.edu/memberships/isc | |
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International Schools Consultancy - In collaboration with the International Schools Consultancy, there will be a third global survey on the status of inclusion in international schools distributed in September. NFI and ISC value your responses and input as we shift the conversation worldwide. | |
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International MTS Summit - The International Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS) Online Forum Series aims to build capacity among school leaders, support directors and teaching teams in the science and philosophy of Multi-Tiered Systems of Support. Forums are organized in three strands for more information visit: https://www.internationalmtss.com/ | |
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Special Education Network and Inclusion Association - SENIA is an association of educators, professionals, and parents, whose mission is to advocate for and provide resources and supports for differently-abled individuals. SENIA has an annual conference held in the Asia region and have local chapters in Europe, South America, Africa and beyond. If you are interested in joining this dynamic network, please learn more about SENIA on their website at the following link: http://seniainternational.org. | |
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