The Upcoming School Year

Hello again!

Wednesday is First Bell Day at IA, the official start of the school year.  In preparation for the new school year, this past week the teachers have been in meetings to work on important details for the coming year.  As always, each year presents its new challenges and opportunities and once again our school is in a position of transition.

We have a new member of the school administration, Susan, who is our new academic principal.  This week we had the chance to work with her for the first time and hear about her vision for the continuing professional development of IA as a school.  The long-term goal is for IA to become an accredited school.  This is something that will take place after our commitment to teach at IA has ended, but there is still a lot of groundwork to be done that we will be a part of.  We began work on the first baby steps this week as we began to talk about curriculum setting and formulated new policies for the school.

IA has grown so much in recent years and the nature and makeup of the school has transitioned as a result.  A major consequence of this has been that as a school we have some major catching up to do in terms of creating procedures and policies, developing curriculum, clarifying tasks and expectations, organizing events, and improving communication. This is an exciting time for IA, because for a significant part of IA's history we have lacked the stability and resources to tackle some of these issues because day to day challenges like where the school would be, visas for teachers, etc. had to be addressed.  God has blessed our school with much greater stability in these ways in recent years, which finally allows us to begin looking at other these other important things.

Thank you to all of you who were praying about the construction work on our building- I am very happy to say that the work (at least on the inside) was actually finished earlier than anticipated!  We were not supposed to be able to get into the school to begin setting up our rooms until August 20, but the work crew actually finished their work on the inside of the building on Thursday, allowing us to begin moving in on Friday, three days ahead of schedule.  This also means that the school year will be able to start normally. This is a big answer to prayer for us and helps make an always busy and somewhat chaotic time of the year a little bit smoother.

While we do have a meeting tomorrow to finalize the school schedule, Amanda and my teaching assignments are in place for the next year.  Amanda will be teaching English for grades 7-12 as well as doing drama/public speaking.  I will be teaching history for grades 6-12 as well as working with two students once a week for some tutoring help.  For 6th grade I will be finishing the elementary history curriculum, using the final two volumes of the Story of the World series that our school uses. The 7/8th graders will be doing Medieval History, covering world history from 500-1500 A.D. The 9th graders will be doing geography (a class that I taught for last year's 9th grade), and 10-12 are doing Russian History. The combination of grade levels means that I will be handling certain classes on two levels to account for the age spectrums and especially to make sure that the older students don't feel like they are getting a dumbed-down class because they are being grouped with students they have not usually been with in class.

It is nice to be able to teach some classes again for the first time.  Essentially every class that both of us has taught at IA has been different from year to year, but not we are finally in a position where certain classes are being offered again.  I am looking forward to being able to refine some of the material that I have already taught and not have to create a whole new course from scratch, while also getting the chance to develop some new classes as well.

Our numbers are down quite a bit in the middle and high school due to a number of families being on furlough and the return to Korea of many of our business families with older students, which means that we are having to do some creative combining of grades.  Grades 10-12 are combined for English and history, and grades 7 and 8 are combined for history but are separate for English. Alternately, the elementary school is bursting at its seams.  Overall, we have about 80 students this year, down from our record of 100 from last year, but still large by IA's standards.

There are other changes in the works for the coming year too, like the creation of the extended day program, a replacement of the somewhat ad-hoc after school activities and tutoring that was offered last year.  The goal is to create a spectrum of activities that can be offered after school that provide academic enrichment but are not simply tutoring or test preparation.  This has the potential to be an excellent and fun way to interact with students, and Amanda and I are planning to be involved.  The details are still being worked out, so when things become more settled I am sure that we will have more to share.

In light of all of these things, we would appreciate your prayers for us and our school:

-First and foremost for our students, that God would be preparing their hearts to hear from Him and to learn and grow in this coming year, and that we as teachers would be prepared to help them.

-For the administrative and curriculum changes and planning that will be taking place throughout the year.  This is a huge task and it is not being tackled all at once, but is a crucial piece for the school's long term stability and essential for accreditation.  Pray for the board and administration as they work on the big-picture details and for all of us as teachers as we work on things in our particular subject areas.

-For the classes that will be offered and new activities like the extended day program. Pray that we will be able to challenge our students,  helping them to learn and grow.

-For our community of families. We continue to make strides to develop our relationships with the various nationalities and communities that make up our school.  Pray that we would continue to draw closer as a community.

-For us. Pray for strength, wisdom, sensitivity, and creativity.  We are excited about the new possibilities and challenges for the coming year, but we know that we can't do this in our own strength.  We feel sustained by God through the many prayers that you have faithfully lifted up on our behalf and our so grateful for them.  Please continue to pray!

Finally, one important praise.  I've written throughout the past year about the financial challenges we faced at the beginning of last school year and how God faithfully provided through a number of ways throughout the year so that we always had enough for everything.  July marks the end of our fiscal year and the financial report that we recently received was very encouraging.  We are in a much stabler financial position than we were this time last year and want to say THANK YOU to everyone who contributed in any way financially to us.  We cannot do this without you! As God showed us so clearly last year, He is able to provide in any circumstances, but we still consider it a major blessing to be able to start this school year without having to worry about the possibility of not being able to finish the year due to lack of funds.  Thank you and praise God!

-Matt