A Special New Year
Not all new school years are created equal. Years in which students transition from one school to another are especially exciting, filled with new faces, places and routines. Of course, for international school students and educators, starting at a new school often entails moving to a new city, country, and even continent, making such changes feel more dramatic and special still.
This back-to-school season, it has certainly felt like a “special” new school year at ISS, as we roll out our new strategic plan. The plan is designed to ensure that ISS continues to meet the evolving needs of the international school sector. We’ve reorganized ourselves into two main divisions to better serve the sector – Digital Products and Advisory & Operational Services.
The Digital Team is responsible for the development of the ISS EDU platform, which hosts ISS EDUrecruit, ISS EDUlearn, and the School Supply Marketplace. As described in Keith Cincotta’s articles, by developing our digital capacity, we’re now able to unbundle our products, realize synergies among them, create strategic partnerships, and launch new products in response to market demand with greater speed and ease.
Meanwhile, our in-person, high-touch services are now housed together under Advisory and Operational Services. That grouping reflects the integrated nature of schools, in which teaching and learning work hand in hand with governance, planning, marketing and finance. It also mirrors the trajectories of educators’ careers from search to hiring to ongoing development and growth. While the method of delivery hasn’t changed in this division, we continue to evolve our services to reflect current contexts and needs, as described in the articles by Tom Hawkins on leadership transitions and Pauline O’Brien on the central importance of board-head trust to good governance.
Of course, even during “special” new school years, much remains familiar, and conversely, even during “regular” new school years, change is inevitable. Two articles in this edition capture those corollaries. Sylvia Bulter reflects on her 27 years working to supply schools with essential materials and equipment, and Matt Doige writes about developing a new AI bot at Shekou International School to help the school most effectively make use of its extensive data.
Whether you’re a veteran or a newbie at your school this year, here’s to a year full of learning, growth, and discovery.
Liz