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Students Helping Students
What does it feel like to be mentored by a national champion who is ranked among the best in the world? To find out, you are invited to visit the American School of Brasilia’s afterschool chess club. Meilin Hoshino (Grade 6) and her sister Karen (Grade 10) are considered to be elite chess players…
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Trapeze Bars
The end of each school year is marked by a series of celebrations designed to highlight and appreciate individual and collective achievements while also honoring the unique nature of our communities. The end-of-year celebrations also represent a period of key student celebrations and transitions, such as kindergarten to Lower School, Grade 5 students to Middle…
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Performance, Not Results?
Last weekend, I had the good fortune and honor to host professional triathlete Tim Don at my home during his four-day visit to Brasilia to compete in Sunday’s 70.3 Ironman triathlon (Race Highlights). Since I was also training for the race, I was particularly enthusiastic about spending time with a triathlete who won four world titles, represented…
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Importance of Play
“You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.” It is not clear if Plato was applying these words to education but they are, nevertheless, apropos to our contemporary work in schools. With the focus on grades, curriculum coverage, and standardized testing in schools, there is…
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High Noon
How do you inspire a generation of students to make a difference? Simple – publish a book that details the problems of the near future students will face, while underscoring the importance of immediate action. This is just what Jean-Francois Rischard, a Luxembourgian economist, did through the 2002 publication of his seminal book, High Noon:…
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Compass Points
The Compass Points exercise, designed by the National School Reform Faculty, is an activity used to better understand preferences in group work. Each year, we use this activity with the American School of Brasilia’s new teachers as a means to better understand the group and for the group to better understand the representatives of the school.…
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Brasilia Night Tour
This week, the American School of Brasilia’s faculty and staff toured Brasilia’s Lago Paranoá. It was an important evening in terms of the newest members of the school community getting to know the veteran faculty and staff. In terms of school culture, it is important to not only structure time for community members to build relationships…