As teachers and leaders within International schools have sought to understand ways of better serving their students, many have leveraged action research as a tool for school based inquiry. This panel will explore the different elements of action research studies including: creating conditions to support research, identifying wonderings, choosing different methods of data collection, making meaning of research and sharing with school communities. Reva Jaffe-Walter, researcher/scholar and former Internationals teacher and Kathleen Rucker and Shazia from Brooklyn International High School will share processes, principles and examples from their research and action research projects.

As we plan for the coming school year, how can our school communities strengthen support for SLIFE? Bay Area school leaders & educators have been coming together throughout this school year to learn about & to develop effective systems for supporting SLIFE. They have explored literature, case studies, and examples in order to reflect on and discuss their own work. Rocio Reyes, the Academy Leader for Richmond High School’s International Academy, will present an overview of her experience as a member of this group and the key learning, wonderings, and next steps that have emerged as a result. Participants will have ample time to discuss and explore these ideas with other leaders from across the network, and space to reflect on potential applications to their own school communities and context.

Language and content integration (LCI) is a core principle of the Internationals approach, but there is not a lot of detail on what we see when we open that magical box. Much research has conceptualized what language-related knowledge content area teachers should have. However, there are few empirical studies of what content teachers know about language, and how they integrate this knowledge in their content instruction. In this presentation, Internationals’ partners Kongji Qin (https://steinhardt.nyu.edu/people/kongji-qin) and Lorena Llosa (https://steinhardt.nyu.edu/people/lorena-llosa), professors and researchers from New York University, will share what they learned from a study of expert science teachers within Internationals and we will examine what implications that has for our collective work.

Getting a holistic picture of how our students are experiencing school has been tougher this year than it’s ever been. An empathy interview is a valuable tool that can be used to see from the perspective of the “user” of our system. In this session you will hear about Francis Hammond International Academy’s experience using this tool to better understand a target group of students that were attending virtual class consistently but minimally engaging during and/or after class. Whether you are collecting data as part of an inquiry cycle or in your reopening design process, these semi-structured conversations and the empathy mapping process can be a helpful way to develop insights about what your students need and how to best support them. Participants will have ample time to discuss and explore this tool with other leaders from across the network, and space to reflect on potential applications to their own school communities and context.

This final session will provide Leadership Retreat participants with the opportunity to bring together their reflections, learnings and wonderings from prior sessions. We will explore planned or new strategies and their implications for addressing the new needs of your community after the pandemic.