Where do you come from and could you describe your career path that led you to Siena?
I’m originally from Harrogate in England. I was actually born in Turkey because my parents were also international school educators and they were teaching at the British Embassy School in Ankara. I went to university in Manchester and, after graduating with a degree in theatre, I decided that I wanted to be a teacher, so I undertook postgraduate training as a secondary educator in music and drama. I taught in the north of England for two years before heading overseas. My first international school was in Bogota, Colombia in 1995, and since then I have never really looked back. I’ve worked in many countries, including Sri Lanka, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh and Jamaica. I started as a theatre and music teacher and then became a head of faculty, leading the arts and events for schools. That involved not only teaching classes but also organizing ceremonies and events, directing all of the school plays and running the choir, so it’s always kept me very busy. I also became a teacher trainer for the IB and through this and my work as an examiner I became very interested in curriculum design. In Bangladesh, I began my journey in administration when I took over as Middle Years Programme Coordinator. I undertook my Masters in International Education Leadership about 10 years ago and have been a senior leader ever since, although I still really like getting back into the classroom as often as I can. I enjoy my role as Head of School. I love working with teachers, parents and students to help create a school where everybody thrives.
How are you finding life in Tuscany? Differences and similarities compared with other places where you’ve lived and worked?
Life in Tuscany is fantastic! My family and I are happy to be living somewhere where the food is of such excellent quality, the people are warm and friendly, and of course the countryside is absolutely beautiful. It’s very different to many of the places that we’ve lived. It’s certainly different to living in Dhaka, Bangladesh, which was a mega city of 14 million people. I’m enjoying learning Italian. I lived in Germany prior to coming here and my Italian is much better already than my German was after four years there! The schools I have worked at over the years are in many ways very similar because I’ve always worked in IB schools, which means that the pedagogy and the philosophy that underpins them is essentially the same wherever I go. Something special about IS Siena is our staff. I haven’t worked in a school where there is such a consistent desire from teachers always to learn more and get better at what they do. There’s less wildlife here at ISS. I’ve worked in schools where monkeys stole the footballs and where poisonous snakes would sometimes appear in my drama studio! Once we had to evacuate campus because an enormous crocodile appeared on the playing field. Certainly, the school lunches here in Siena are better than any school I have worked in before, although I do miss really spicy Sri Lankan curry lunches.
Describe the core values and educational system at IS Siena.
We’ve just been through a lengthy process of reviewing our school mission statement and determining what our core values are as a school. We have three core values: Respect, Integrity and Compassion. It took a long time for us to choose those three words because there are many values that are very important to us, but we felt that these three helped us to connect our IB philosophy and the IB’s Learner Profile with the mission and values of the Inspired organization, of which we are a part. We felt that those three really encapsulated everything that we try to be in our relationships with each other and with how we treat ourselves on a daily basis…Our mission statement states that “we are an open-minded community of lifelong learners, striving to reach their full potential. We are caring, resilient and curious individuals who work together to make a positive impact locally and globally.”
Our mission statement helps us to focus on the individual child, helping each one to be the very best version of themselves and to achieve their own personal ambitions. We are very aspirational for our young people and we really want to challenge them to achieve their full potential, but we also acknowledge that that potential looks very different for each child. It is our job to make sure that we get to know each student so well that we can really help them to achieve their very best, whatever that may look like.
Our educational philosophy is centered around an education that is broad, balanced and well connected. By that, we mean that students continue to study many subjects all the way through even to their pre-university examinations. We study a wide range of subjects in breadth and focus on the idea of concept-based learning where we’re looking at the big ideas that surround learning rather than just the recitation of facts. In our current era, detailed information is available even on our mobile telephones. What’s really important is training young people to think for themselves, to have the skills to critically evaluate and manage that information, to understand how it all connects together to make our world the way it is, and to understand how can they use their knowledge to contribute to the world around them and to make the world a better place. Our philosophy is grounded in the idea of learning being something to be pursued for life not just while we’re at school. Learning for us is also holistic – it’s as much about learning to be a well-rounded social human being able to care for themselves and build strong relationships as it is about maths and grammar.
Our lessons are taught in English and we’re proud of the fact that many of our students graduate with a bilingual diploma. This means that they have maintained a high level of Italian fluency as well as developing English skills, and are able to study in both languages at the same level of fluency. We also achieve excellent results in the Idoneità and the Terza Media, and are proud of the fact that we are able to successfully place an IB philosophy firmly within Italian national requirements.
Could you describe the community at IS Siena?
Our community is small but very strong. Parents send their children to our school because they really believe in the IB philosophy and are very excited about what it can do for their children. Our parents are very involved in the life of the school and we enjoy having parents seeing what’s happening in the classrooms. We have lots of parent information sessions and we have a very active parent community group who meet together to organize events, so it’s a really warm community. People come together from all sorts of different backgrounds, united by the fact that we care for all of the young people in our charge. We take learning seriously, but we all also like to have fun!
We’re very invested in the parent partnership because if we can’t work closely with parents, then we’re not going to be properly able to understand the children that we’re working with and we’re not going to be able to help them in the ways that they and their parents want us to. Many of our teachers are also parents, including me, and so we have that that other perspective on life at school because we see it as parents as well as educators.
What are your future plans for IS Siena?
We have some exciting plans for the future of IS Siena. This year, we’ve already started to embed our Educational Technology Strategy. We now teach some lessons within the Metaverse using our virtual reality headsets. This allows learning literally to go to places and time that would otherwise be impossible! We benefit greatly from Inspired’s investment in Artificial Intelligence. This means we can develop personalized learning for students, whether that means utilizing artificial intelligence within the mathematics platform to help new students to close some gaps in their learning, but also to allow students who want to be challenged to independently further their learning.
Plans are in place to expand our building as our numbers continue to grow, so that we will be developing a new STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics) laboratory, a bigger library/media centre, and a new performing arts space where we will be able to gather as a community to watch our school productions and concerts. We are members of the International Schools Theatre Association and will be hosting an International Festival of Theatre for students aged 10 to 14 in May 2025. We will be continuing to pursue our engagement in the international schools arts scene through music and theatre over the coming years. We have a lot of sports activities going on, particularly in terms of competitions with the other Inspired schools in Italy. Our students are aiming high in their external examinations and we will continue to grow as a center of academic excellence for our students, helping them to realize their futures.
