Notes from the Executive Director

By Shoshanna Sumka

Ever since I was a kid I’ve looked forward to summertime. I have a June birthday, I love to be outside and there is just excitement and freedom of not being in school for a few months. I’m sure as educators you have similar feelings of anticipating summer.

What are you excited about this summer?

I’m most excited this summer to spend ten days with 55+ dedicated and passionate teachers in Santa Fe, New Mexico to wrap our brains around how to make classroom learning more engaging, more transformative and more relevant to both teachers and students. The caterer, Pinon Catering, always whips up delicious and abundant meals and there are late night conversations under the stars about the meaning of life!

To me, this is the soul of ISEEN; the people who come together to share ideas without limits or constraints, with openness, vulnerability and a joy for learning. ISEEN schools exhibit this passion and long-time member school, Appleby College, demonstrates it in their article below.

We also have exciting new things coming up in the next year! We’re thrilled to be partnering with Chadwick International, in Songdo, South Korea for the inaugural Global Institute in the fall of 2020. Being on their campus in March reminded us how international schools bring together both engagement around global competencies and experiential learning practices. Our time in South Korea was such an incredible learning experience and I’m pretty excited to work on this program together.

In other professional development spheres, I connected with some of you at GEBG in Atlanta. It was great to meet some ISEEN old-timers. One of the most meaningful sessions I went to was about ending the destructive practice of orphanage volunteering. If you send students to volunteer with orphanages and haven’t watched this video yet, I highly recommend it: The Love You Give.

I’m looking forward to seeing some of you or your colleagues at the Summer Institutes in Santa Fe in a few weeks. Keep a lookout for our photos on social media. We’d love to see what you are up to as well. If you find yourself out and about in the world, send us an update we can post on Facebook or Instagram!