Live today, look to the horizon…

I hope this first official eNotes finds you well and either in Warsaw or quickly winding your way into our midst in preparation for the school year that lies ahead. It’s always best when kids make it on the first day and we are always working hard to make sure we support your needs in achieving that goal.

This message continues our exploration of continued growth and development of a school through some modest updates. We learned last spring that, even in the midst of the most challenging times in our history, we could still continue the work of strategy and vision continuing our efforts on the plans we charted some years ago.

This week, I’ve been sharing the fruits of that labor with staff during our opening time together as we prepare for the year ahead. In the midst of that immediate work, we’ve also taken some time to discuss our hopes and dreams, both for ourselves and the school.

At the very end of the year, we completed work on strategic “sprints” that helped us focus in on the themes of our work in the coming year. These have now been detailed in a policy manual that was adopted by the board at its final meeting. I’ve linked it here so that you can both better understand our strategic process, driven by policy, and our plan for the coming year, articulated in Section E:

• Organizing Time and Space – includes facility planning project!!
• Being a Learning Lab/Teaching School – professional development and shared practice
• Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity
• Growing our use of data to drive inquiry

These four broad strategies are all aimed at improving our ability to accomplish goals and achieve greater outcomes for students across the grade levels. As we start this school year, we go deeper into these action plans and begin, in many cases, implementation of these strategies in order to assure that ASW remains on the forefront of international education while retaining the important sense of community and common purpose that weaves us all together. I welcome your comment and insights as we move forward toward that horizon together.