High School

When Kelly Chang was a child, she immigrated with her family from South Korea to the US. She enrolled in a California elementary school and remembers the challenge of learning a new language – her ESL classmates were her first new friends and they remained close for years. Kelly thought of school as her work, proud to imitate her hardworking parents.

Kelly surprised her parents by choosing to become a math teacher. She taught in California and New York City before deciding to move abroad, surprising herself by finding a position in Korea at KIS. In the classroom, Kelly is authentic and approachable, recognizing each person’s capacity for growth, interested in helping students succeed. She believes you do not need to excel at all things to be successful. “There’s a lot of pressure and competition in high school,” she says, and recalling her own experience informs the compassion she brings to her teaching.

Like many people in our school community, Kelly knows multiple cultures. After a few years teaching at KIS, she invited her parents to visit Korea for the first time since they immigrated. Kelly recalls how special that visit was. Together they marveled at where they were, the places they knew.

Jay is from Korea and spent his childhood in Singapore where he attended an international school. When his family returned to Korea during his later elementary years, his parents wanted him to have a Korean language school experience too. Jay enrolled in a Korean public school. He credits those years with his Korean language comfort and fluency but in middle school he began thinking about how to keep his English fluency. He researched English language high schools including international schools.

This was one of the first big decisions about his future that he made with his parents. They were supportive of learning more. His mother even suggested Korea International School – the school bus passed right by their home. Jay recognized what he’d been looking for when he began scrolling through photos and information about KIS. As a kid in Singapore he enjoyed afterschool activities. He wanted a well-rounded high school experience.

During Jay’s first week on campus he tried out for the volleyball team. Tennis was his game but he knew that joining any sport was a great way to find friends. By the end of that first season he was surprised to be named MVP – but not surprised he found friends. 

Jay continues to be involved in activities and athletics at KIS. He appreciates the balance KIS encourages students to develop through diverse co-curricular opportunities. Jay thinks of co-curricular activities as mini communities. KIS is full of all these wonderful, overlapping groups ready to welcome you. So Jay’s advice to new students is to go for it, try something new. You will find us, we will find you.

Julie remembers deciding to become a lawyer when she was in second grade. At the time she could not fully express why that profession appealed to her. The closest she can guess is that she wanted a sense of order and justice in the world. And as she grew older, that desire remained. Julie wants a career in law. Her humanities classes and activities at KIS are a valuable first step.

AP Language taught Julie academic research practices and how to more effectively use evidence to support arguments. The class also emphasized the interconnectedness of global issues. Julie sees that holistic perspective of the world in her literature and history classes too. Context is essential. Julie has the patience and curiosity to learn what makes a story or decision or justice happen. Her yearlong AP Research project examined the impact of unemployment on domestic violence reporting, a question that intersects economics, public health and safety, gender studies, and justice.

Julie also credits co-curricular activities with developing skills for a future in law. As a ninth grader she joined the mock trial club to learn more about legal procedures and practice courtroom behavior. She also competes in speech and debate. These activities also give her a chance to mentor younger students. Julie takes a cue from how her own teachers communicate and build rapport to create a comfortable, collaborative environment.  

And she likes the fun she has along the way. Julie started kindergarten at KIS. She thinks of her grade as one big lump of friendship. There can be competition but there is greater care and camaraderie as students achieve more together.

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.