Iain Fish has spent 27 years working at and leading schools in South East Asia and Europe. As a consultant, Iain offers a sensitive approach to school leadership, focusing on the diverse voices that contribute to school improvement.
Please introduce yourself to our AMCHAM Newsletter readership so they better understand who you are, what you have been doing and the focus of your professional life experience.
I am a British citizen but have lived outside the UK since 2000. I spent 18 years in Southeast Asia and moved to Luxembourg with my family in 2018. First and foremost I’m a father and husband, although professionally I have worked in the world of education since 1997 as a teacher, coordinator and principal. As a parent of two nearly grown-up children, it’s been fascinating watching how education has changed through the eyes of a school practitioner as well as my own kids. It’s amazing to me how differently you see things when your own children are going through it.
What are the values that inspire you and you hold close which serve to guide your decision-making?
Professionally, as an educator, it’s hard to disentangle values and the learning process, and I am becoming increasingly interested in the need to deliberately teach values in schools. In these times where there are so many influences on young people beyond home, parents and school, I think there is a growing need for us to take a more active role in this aspect of personal development.
I am especially inspired by people who are humble and help others to grow. In my work, I know that I do not have all the answers and believe strongly in drawing on the expertise of individuals and teams. I’m very in favour of collaborative education. To this end, I think an important part of my work is in providing the foundation, structures and systems to allow others to achieve their goals and get their work done. Often, this also means getting out the way to let others lead either in a formal or informal capacity.
Have your values changed over the past three years and, if so, in what ways… and why?
I’m not sure if my values, per se, have really changed much over the last three years, but I have, like many, become more sensitive to the importance of ensuring that our learning environments are places where students and colleagues feel safe, valued and represented while also accepting and acknowledging our own biases and perspectives. For years, I think we haven’t taken seriously the way simple decisions over design, choice of resources, the physical environment, language and more, prevent some members of our communities from feeling included or developing a sense of belonging. In some cases, we actually make life difficult for some just because we haven’t really thought about this. It is rarely intentional, hence the need to be more intentional in our decision making.
What are the four most important learning objectives you and your team of teachers and students are facing with regards to ensuring appropriate education excellence to ensure your students are appropriately prepared to face and overcome the challenges they will confront?
I struggle with the term education excellence, as it means so many things to so many different people. It is a very well used term in education but has little value when you consider the incredible diversity of the populations we serve. In the world of education, sadly concepts around excellence all too often seem to revolve solely around exam results, qualifications and higher education destinations. This is disappointing as I feel education is about so much more than this. Many schools today, like my current school, ISL, have missions and visions which emphasise skills, dispositions and strive to be developing good people who make positive contributions to their communities, and who aspire to make the world a better place. Unfortunately, these things are difficult to measure where academic results are easy to.
As for the four most important learning objectives, I think today they are to do with (1) developing lifelong learners who are adaptable, flexible and reflective, (2) collaboration and communication skills, (3) strong digital skills and (4) critical thinking and creativity. These are the skills that students really need to navigate the complexities of the 2020s.
Do you believe the world looks different from the perspective of boys as compared to girls and how do you differentially guide, inspire and motivate your students based on their respective genders?
Like many things in schools, it’s about meeting students where they are and giving them what they need at that moment. I think being a teenager is especially difficult today and I don’t see that changing any time soon. I think that our boys are being sent so many mixed messages today and this is very difficult when you are discovering your identity. Our schools often promote the need for boys to be gentle, kind, compassionate and emotionally sensitive and for good reason, but boys are faced with so much in the media which still seems to emphasise the importance of strength, physical ability, confidence, decisiveness and being in control. Many of the popular role models that boys look up to still fit the latter profile better. I am conscious of the need to tread carefully here. There is no doubt that when boys feel they are being targeted and heavily criticised, they are in danger of being driven towards a toxic rationalisation – I mean the likes of Andrew Tate and other misogynists.
The challenge for girls growing up today feels much like it has been for years, only amplified in today’s social media jungle. Popularity and physical stereotypes still seem to play an important role, and impact the lives of our students at an increasingly younger age. However, I am encouraged that schools are doing a better job today of promoting positive female role models in non-traditional roles. We have a long way to go but the landscape is looking up.
To what extent are issues of sexual orientation challenges within your school population and how do you deal with them?
Good question. I’d like to broaden this out though, as only looking at sexual orientation oversimplifies what is a complex domain. We must also talk and learn about sexual identity, gender identity, gender expression and biological gender, as well as about society’s reactions and challenges with these concepts. Really, this is about education first and foremost and our goal is to help everyone in our community understand better the incredible diversity in our communities and how we can safely ensure that each young person can be themselves.
As you can imagine, with such a multi-national community at an international school, we have to be sensitive to cultural differences and concerns, while also holding to our core values. It’s sometimes a difficult line to tread. However, I feel it is vitally important that as part of relationship and sexual education, we talk about issues such as consent, male privilege, feminism and sexual exploitation, as well as safe sex practices. It is not fair to young people to expect them to work these things out for themselves. However, I also understand that parents often find these issues a challenge to address, hence schools have a big part to play.
How has the COVID-19 crisis impacted your students and what steps have you taken to mitigate and promote a return to “normalcy”?
Here in Luxembourg, we were fortunate not to have faced some of the more stringent COVID restrictions that students and schools in other parts of the world experienced. We were, of course, affected although it is difficult to identify which developments were caused by COVID and the crisis, and which were the result of other changes that have impacted young people in recent years, such as the saturation of mobile phone usage, the explosion in the role social media plays in their daily lives and other global events and societal developments.
I think that what we have seen is definitely a growing anxiety, and also a change in the relationship between parents and school. During the pandemic, parents were given a window into some of the daily dynamics of school life that they had not had before, because they saw their child learning online from home. Of course, it was just a limited snapshot, not an accurate representation of everything that happens in schools, but it did prompt parents to ask questions and wish to understand more about what takes place in schools. This is good of course, democratizing, but it also alters some of the role dynamics and relationships that schools have with parents.
Some research suggests that the extended time students spent online during the crisis accelerated social media usage, and therefore contributed to the anxieties that seem so prevalent in young people today. While this claim has merit, I think there are other factors at play that warrant consideration.
At ISL, post COVID, we worked very hard to re-engage students in extracurricular activities, and it’s great to see participation rates getting back now to pre-covid levels. These are such an important part of our community, personal growth and school spirit.
Are your students confident or concerned for their futures and what are you doing to address any of these concerns?
Overall, our students demonstrate that they are optimistic and confident about their futures, and the vast majority of our graduates head off to university or other higher education institutions. Of course, there are some who follow alternative paths, or elect to take some time out before their further studies, and as a school we do our best to help students seriously consider this. Personally, I think that for many of our graduates, going directly to university is such an expectation that sometimes they do it without really thinking it through. My sense is that there is a rise in the number of students who change course or even university after 1-2 years, and I feel this is perhaps the result of following the well-trodden path rather than actively looking at what is the best fit for them. This is where good guidance counselling is necessary, and helping students to make sensible choices is fundamental. Something I have noticed is how our students tend to first gravitate towards a big name or brand university, rather than necessarily the colleges that offer the best programmes for them. With an IB Diploma, they have a wealth of options and there are some incredibly forward thinking, but less well marketed or less known colleges, offering superb programmes, small classes, visionary methods and top notch teaching too.
What are the concerns of your students and have they changed as a result of COVID?
As described above, I don’t think that COVID has necessarily impacted the kinds of concerns teenagers face. Anxiety and stress are definitely on the rise although I also see this generation taking the concept of balance far more seriously. There is definitely a growing sense of our students wanting careers and professions that offer good working conditions, as well as a good salary.
What are your concerns as the upper school principal at the ISL?
My greatest concern is always for the wellbeing of students and staff, increasingly this means mental health awareness. We live in times of very high expectations, and those are magnified in high achieving communities. These expectations are multidirectional – parents to students, students to teachers, parents to teachers and so on. The curated lives that people see online amplify these expectations, including of ourselves, and together these contribute to a pervasive culture of high expectations (sometimes unrealistically high), low tolerance and the inevitable stress that results. Students often feel enormous pressure to succeed and sometimes this can cause difficulties. When children feel they are not meeting the expectations of their peers or parents, it can be quite damaging. It’s why we need to work hard in our schools to be rational, contextualise expectations, and offer support through integrated advisory programmes, counsellors and other activities.