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Jessica Schmidt expected to work in medicine. Three years into medical school she met with an advisor who helped reframe her struggle with academic life. For Ms. Schmidt, an ADHD diagnosis explained so much – and understanding how her own brain worked inspired a totally new professional direction. Ms. Schmidt reflected on her earliest school experiences and realized she wanted to create a classroom environment that supports all students.

Ms. Schmidt’s first grade classroom is communal with shared daily routines that provide structure. Even as students are self directed in a rotation of classroom jobs, they recognize how their participation adds to the community. As a class they take time to talk about why they do things the way they do – with an emphasis on care and growth.

Academic learning is infused with wonder. What do you notice? What do you wonder? Ms. Schmidt engages in conversation about thinking. Critical thinking, thinking outside the box, thinking about thinking. She believes feedback and adaptability are important to the learning process too. Reflecting on your own learning is helpful – Ms. Schmidt does this out loud to show students that adults keep learning too.

First graders learn so much in a short time but what stays for years after is how they felt with their teacher and classmates. “The kids build good relationships and you see that throughout the day,” Ms. Schmidt says. “These kids enjoy each other, enjoy being at school.” Ms. Schmidt wants her students to have confidence in their ability to learn. She wants them to know they are seen, appreciated, and capable of incredible things – as individuals and in community.

As a child, Lucas Vu was afraid of the water but his parents viewed swimming as a survival skill and enrolled him in lessons. By middle school, Lucas trained in the pool daily, perfecting his strokes. Lucas competed as a swimmer and water polo player for the national team during university where he studied environmental engineering and management. 

“Sometimes you may not know you like something until you try it,” Lucas says. For him, the first something was swimming. And then, coaching. When his water polo coach tapped him to be assistant coach, Lucas decided to give it a shot. Soon he began teaching swimming and water safety. As the KIS aquatic coordinator, Lucas believes that water safety is an essential skill and that even timid swimmers can learn to be safe around and in water without support. More than a decade later, he continues to appreciate the fun and challenge of teaching and coaching swimmers. 

Lucas coaches with empathy for his athletes. He remembers the struggle of his own early competition days that helped him understand the crucial balance of physical, mental, and social-emotional wellness. Now Lucas coaches KIS swimmers to prioritize their individual well-being and develop healthy team relationships. Camaraderie is essential. As he says, “We are about the whole team.”

Wade Hopkin has taught science at KIS since 2001. He is interested in how students interact with what the natural world reveals. His AP biology class is often a standard for students planning to study the sciences in university. Indeed, Mr. Hopkin is proud to help create foundational science experiences for students, including for alumni who have gone on to careers at Boeing, NASA, and in vaccine research. 

When Mr. Hopkin was a high school student he also loved science but was discouraged by his teachers from pursuing a profession in the field. They warned him that there was too much math in science and his math grades were poor. Mr. Hopkin continued studying science anyway. Years later he understood his struggle with arithmetic was due to a learning disability called dyscalculia. By then he had started thinking of math as a language that uses available information to tell a story one equation at a time. It’s like math is to writing as arithmetic is to spelling – the story you’re telling is more important than an occasional spelling error. The concepts of higher maths like calculus or those used in physics are accessible even if you sometimes confuse the arithmetic.

Mr. Hopkin’s ability to develop ways around and through complex math applications in science is what makes his astronomy class so fascinating. 

Astronomy is as much a lesson in history as science. Charting the sun, moon, planets, and stars gave ancient civilizations a way to measure distances between cities, plan crops, and predict weather. Mr. Hopkin teaches his students what we’ve lost to light pollution, technology, and urbanization of our modern world. Together the class wonders what you can learn by going back. They practice orienting to cardinal directions. They learn about the base 60 measurement Babylonians first used – which remains today in our time and degrees. Astronomy students also calculate distance and magnitude in the night sky using the Newtonian slide rule. 

The idea is to introduce students to new ways of thinking and learning. Mr. Hopkin is amazed by the productive struggle of learning and what the mind can comprehend. He wants students to feel possibility in the process, to imagine the great capacity of their own minds. 

Middle school counselors Jessie Gochar and Irene Lee connect with students – in the halls between classes, at lunch, in classes, with individual check-ins, in small groups. They value possibility and growth. Ms. Gochar and Ms. Lee are two people of many in middle school who create ways for students to thrive, including through parent partnership. Their middle school counseling office welcomes you to pop by and share a success, join for a catch up, or snuggle with Cocoa the therapy dog.

Middle school is a wild developmental time for students. That may be what draws both Ms. Gochar and Ms. Lee to the age group. Young adolescents are empowered to navigate new complications in friendships, advocate for themselves, and think through decisions. Ms. Lee talks about balance in life. Middle school is a great time for students to develop ways to support their mental health – for example, by setting boundaries or embracing failure as essential to growth.

Ms. Lee understands how easy it is for students to put pressure on themselves. Perfectionist tendencies were part of her own growing up in an international school, attending hagwon each evening. Ms. Lee pushed herself to achieve through university too. Now she is pursuing her doctorate but at a steady pace that allows her time to unplug, go for walks. She wants students to avoid burn out.

Ms. Gochar sometimes feels like a middle school student discovering what she is excited about. With her daughter in university, Ms. Gochar wonders what she wants for herself now. Reading more is top of her list – books are fun, interesting, and a way into the world. Ms. Gochar values global citizenship. She wants students to know who they are and trust their decisions to develop confidence as they move through the wider world.