This post is to share a short keynote I delivered as the opening for our WAB PD Day on Nov 10, 2023. The goal was to set the stage for a day of whole-school, sectional and teacher-led learning, and to act as a bookend on the challenging years before this. We wanted our community to see where we fit in the changing landscape of international education, and why what we do every day – and what we continue to work towards – is special.

The premise of the presentation builds on some writing I started in 2014, on educating for hope, not despair, and it feels more important than ever that to make the most of our non-renewable resources of time and childhood, we need to focus on solutions and show students that their agency matters. It’s not our job to hand our learners the polypermacrisis of a broken world and ask them to fix it.

Part of the presentation situates us as a innovative, community-minded, non-profit, mission-driven, IB-authorised and CIS & NEASC accredited international school, amongst an industry that is growing rapidly and with broader educational trends that may be heading in a different direction. Schools like this are not ‘the norm’. I used data from ISC Research (global) and Venture Education (China), research from my MA and EdD, some personal contacts to verify the numbers and took inspiration from Information Is Beautiful’s Billion-Dollar-Gram for the design. References below.

Connecting these ideas, including the potential impacts of AI, I focused on why what we do matters, and how our students thrive in a “WABNormal” childhood, including some quotes from a recent workshop with Grade 12 students.

There is a cheesy moment, right at the end…

Thanks to the fab communications team at WAB for the video in the presentation, and for this recording.

Personal Reflection

Four years into this role, I’d been on stage many times, but never given a keynote-style presentation. It had almost always been introductions, project launches, accreditation updates or things related to the pandemic. It’s tempting to fly people in for this kind of thing, but instead of having an outside voice deliver their standard speech, we wanted something just for us, by us. This is a stepping stone towards getting more WAB voices up on stage, to ‘champion our staff’ and showcase the internal capacity we have at our school.

People who know me, know I’m pretty introverted, though can project otherwise as it’s needed. I worried a lot about this presentation, and am happy it went down well, with some really lovely comments and feedback afterwards. It was part-way into Movember, hence the scruff, and it looks like the sustained efforts of the last few months’ big projects have made me a bit tired and puffy 😉

Up until about a minute before the presentation, I thought of cutting the ‘shine a light’ moment at the end, concerned it would be too much. But I’m glad I kept in in, it made for a fun moment, and I could tell it was worth it once lights started coming on before I gave the instruction. There were a couple of technical glitches along the way, but taking a breath and feeling the community on my side, we got through it.

Image captured with Insta360 OneX3

Some references:

• ISC Research: International Schools Market Report (and correspondence with Nalini Cook)
• Venture Education (China), correspondence with Carenza Gibson for China data.
• IB Schools Data: IB Facts & Figures
• International Accreditation Data from NEASC & CIS
• James Cambridge (2012): International Education Research & The Sociology Of Knowledge.
• Bunnell, T. (2020). The continuous growth and development of ‘International Schooling’: The notion of a ‘transitionary phase’. Compare : A Journal of Comparative and International Education, 50(5), 764-768.
• Bunnell, T. & Poole, A. (2021). Precarity and Insecurity in International Schooling: New Realities & New Visions. Emerald Publishing.
• Bunnell, T. (2021). The crypto-growth of ‘International Schooling’: Emergent issues and implications. Educational Review.

Image captured with Insta360 OneX3.