headteacher-secondary

46 teachwire.net X X X X X X X X X X X been more challenging for us, had we not been able to do that. We’re especially thankful for the strength of our school community. It sounds paradoxical, but being an international school attended by students of over 70 different nationalities makes our community tighter than most. Many of our students and parents have few or no family links here, with the result that we’ve seen everyone really pulling together to support each other. Where there have been concerns, people have listened to our advice and communications and opted to isolate. I’m hugely grateful to How hard is it to oversee a student population hailing from 70 different countries during a global pandemic? Barny Sandow, head of school at ACS International School Cobham, shares his experience... classroom life I remember when I first arrived at ACS International School Cobham, moving here after spending a number of years overseeing a school in Brunei. I can still recall seeing the school’s campus for the first time, 25 minutes out of Heathrow Airport. Having begun with just 175 students in the site’s original manor house building, we now have 1,200 on roll from ages 2 to 18, with many studying the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme in their High School years. We have a very broad international offering, however, so we also have students studying for high school diplomas and advanced placement qualifications. Safer and richer The key thing for us in recent months has been our outdoor education provision. We're fortunate enough to have on-site woodland that we use for our Forest School offering, but we also try and get students across the school outside as much as possible. Beyond the expected PE lessons, we’ve endeavoured to hold classes outside, where appropriate. Take humanities, for example – a lesson on early man involving a classroom exploration activity was made into a safer and richer learning experience by being held outside. We don’t simply encourage going outside for the sake of it, though. We’ll always carefully consider beforehand how the students’ learning can be made better by going outside and using our different outdoor spaces. On the whole, however, we’ve seen everyone's sense of wellbeing improve by spending time outside and being more active. The pleasant weather we had during the initial lockdown seemed to help everyone reconnect a little more – I suspect things would have A global community our facilities teams who moved mountains to create a safe school environment, complete with handwashing stations and outside shelters so that the students were able to stay dry at break times and at the start and end of the school day. Back to the 1950s And then, of course, there were the ways in which our teachers had to adapt their practice. International schooling, and the pedagogies we have here, tend to be focused around children learning and working together, and solving problems by collaborating and communicating. Within the past 18 months, however, they effectively had to go back to teaching in traditionally- styled classrooms, with desks facing forwards as if it were the 1950s. We've had to contend with a number of tough wellbeing 46 IN NUMBERS Date established: 1975 Age range: 2 to 18 Student population: 1,200 Staff: 220 teaching / 150 support