Adapting to change during Covid-19

Curiosity and agility: ISN’s tools for success

Famous quotes by philosophers, artists or business executives about bravely weathering change often optimistically emblazon our walls or are showcased as screensavers, heralding a deep desire to be positive risk-takers.

"The art of life is a constant readjustment to our surroundings."
–Kakuzo Okakura, The Book of Tea

An ability to accept challenges and to be energized by transformative opportunities, particularly during a time of profound disruption, is a feature of human nature to which many of us aspire.

Due to the world health crisis, a new paradigm has recently been imposed. The people and businesses that are most successful have demonstrated a particularly keen ability to adapt. Research shows that two traits are associated with successfully navigating the pandemic: curiosity and agility. Curiosity guides us to seek new ideas and explore solutions. Agility allows us to take bold, decisive action, giving us the freedom and flexibility to pursue outside-the-box solutions.

"Every success story is a tale of constant adaption, revision and change."
Richard Branson

ISN has always worked purposefully to build a culture that fosters both curiosity and agility. I have witnessed a distinctly tenacious attitude from the whole ISN team in the face of the current health crisis and feel that these trying times have sharpened our resolve to accompany young people on a learning journey that necessarily has pitfalls.

Upon learning that the Coronavirus would close the school, the entire staff went into robust problem-solving mode, training on zoom, feverishly organizing lessons and resources to be delivered as effectively as possibly in what has been termed "pandemic pedagogy".

Principals and Homeroom teachers increased their focus on how to live and learn successfully and happily in such an uncertain world. The school invested in training for every member of staff on Child Protection & Well-being, an immediate recognition of the social and emotional impact that such a crisis can trigger.

Teachers confronted these tumultuous challenges with admirable resilience and resourcefulness, determined to maintain the school structure as a reliable constant. A strong desire to be creative and upscale practices to engage students led to a wide variety of experimental practices such as online assemblies with a tree surgeon and bee keeper, online fitness sessions in sports classes, use of the gaming platform Discord as well as a host of apps to reinvent the delivery of the IBDP Group IV Project—all of this during lockdown. Today teachers continue to explore new ways for students to demonstrate learning through a range of diverse new media and edtech resources

"It is not the strongest or most intelligent who will survive but those who best manage change."
Charles Darwin

In response to our initiatives, we collect feedback to ensure that our efforts are working. We track data from students, teachers and parents to ensure that the strategies that we put in place function and that we are meeting the needs of all of our stakeholders.

While parents and students appreciate the flexibility to connect to lessons on zoom, this is sometimes a strain on the teachers who have to juggle students online as well as face-to-face, dividing their attention. Due to data from these various stakeholders, we have adopted a blended approach to course study, an intentional method of diversifying instruction in which teachers propose new ways for students to maximize learning and thrive.

Concretely, a successful blended design means that the face-to-face and the online are integrated, functioning together to support each other, and in which students can, in part, control the time, pace, and place of their learning.

“Unprecedented times call for unprecedented measures.”

ISN is proud to be a school that views the unexpected as an opportunity for self-reflection and new, bold beginnings. We will continue to monitor our progress in an effort to fully embody our mission and vision.

Emily Morgan
Academic Director