Leopard's Tale
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 What an amazing afternoon for AISL as we hosted the last primary swimming gala for the U11 and U13 girls and boys last week on Friday afternoon. It was jam packed with serious action from AISL, LICS and Musikili. Congratulations to our young leopards for walking away with the following standing:
   
Dear Parents and Students,
Our AISL Coaches are excited to be back this week with more ASA videos for you to watch and practice some drills you would have learnt during our Session 2 ASA program. We hope you enjoy these drills! Kindly click on the thumbnail below and the video will pop up for you to view .
This past week, our G1 students continued their inquiry into sources of light, sound and heat as part of their unit of inquiry, ‘How the world works’. In this unit, students explore how different forms of energy affect the way we experience the world. Students had a wonderful time creating their solar ovens and experimenting how the heat created from them transformed the items they placed on them. Eggs anyone?
 On Wednesday, 6 December from 17:00-18:00, Ms. Monica Murphy (DP Coordinator) and Ms. Terry Maguire (Secondary School Librarian & EE Coordinator) will host an informational evening for Grade 11 parents about the Extended Essay. Parents can expect to learn:
Please use this link to join the Google Meet for the session. We will also leave time for parents to ask questions. We hope you are able to join us for this informational session. Image by Stocksnap on PIxabay.  On Thursday 3 December from 18:00-19:00, AISL Secondary School Librarian Terry Maguire will host an on-line discussion of Netflix's The Social Dilemma for any interested parents. Note that this will NOT be a presentation; rather, it will be an opportunity for parents to share their responses to the film. If at all possible, please consider watching this film with your secondary school-aged son or daughter as it will also spark some important family conversations about the ways we use social media. Please use this link to join the discussion via Google Meet. To learn more about the film, which was highlighted in a previous Leopard's Tale post copied below, please read on: If you are looking for a thought-provoking film to spark some rich family conversations around social media use, consider watching Netflix's 2020 film The Social Dilemma (director Jeff Orlowski; run time 94 minutes). This film explores social media's effects on mental health, as well as how a user's time spent on social media sites is used for data mining and surveillance capitalism. Product developers, engineers, and a design ethicist share behind-the-scenes information about social media product development at Twitter, Facebook, Google, Instagram, and Youtube. Here's the film's trailer (2:34) if you'd like to learn more about this 2020 Sundance Film Festival official selection. We also have some outstanding books in the AISL Library that explore similar issues including Cal Newport's Deep Work (2016) and Adam Alter's Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked (2017). If you watch the film with your tween or teen, we'd love to hear your family's thoughts on it. Image caption: "The Social Dilemma" retrieved from <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uaaC57tcci0> The current Personal Social and Emotional unit for Grades 3 to 5 focuses on the important skills of decision making, communication, and assertiveness. The students have reflected on their own personal responses to situations of conflict. Classes have then discussed different responses to problems. Students have enjoyed using role plays and scenarios to discover different responses to common everyday events. Students are learning that: * Being assertive is different from being aggressive, which interferes with the rights of others. * Assertiveness is a skill that can be learned and improved. * Being assertive may include repeating one’s position, offering a compromise, and/or walking away. * Being assertive does not ensure that people will always get what they want. Following this unit there will be a focus on negotiation. Students will learn that: * Effective negotiation (problem solving, decision making, compromise, win/win) requires certain skills including: careful observation of other people; use of open body language; good verbal communication; imagining oneself in other people’s positions; identifying all the options in a situation; and reaching a mutual agreement. * Negotiation works best when a problem or conflict is addressed in its early stages. Images used with permission from Unsplash.com.    This past Friday we had our first HS Coffee House since campus reopened. Due to size constraints (capped at 50), we had advance sign-ups and respected social distancing and mask-wearing guidelines during the event. We had more than 15 performances that included instrumentals, songs, spoken word, rap, and even magic tricks. We managed to hold the event outside on the beautiful deck of the Palm Pavilion and though it threatened to rain, it fortunately held off! The Coffee Houses, a long-standing AISL tradition, provide students with a supportive venue for sharing a range of forms of creative expression. We believe that every student can grow through performance experiences and that they benefit from having a live audience. I am always in awe of how kind and supportive our students are of each other at events like this. Many thanks to the teachers who came out to support the event, to Mr. Edwin Kamangala and Etai for help with light and sound, to our HS Student Council for helping to publicize and organize, and to our Nemchem and maintenance staffs who helped with set-up and cleaning. We are already looking forward to the next one! Photos by T. Maguire Dear Parents, It has been twelve and a half weeks since we welcomed back students to the AISL campus and we continue to have a safe and engaging learning environment for all students. It’s hard not to be amazed at the journey that has brought us to this point. I know that sometimes I can belabor the point, but your children, and our teachers have done, and are continuing to do, an amazing job keeping us all safe. As our structures become more ingrained in our behavior, we continue to take small steps towards normal operations; and while masks and distancing will remain a part of our daily practice for the near future, events such as the PTA trivia night, the MS movie night and the HS coffeehouse, continue to give us a glimpse into a world where we can all be together again, a world that will happen as long as we continue to make smart decisions. This week I was reading a report by the Brookings institution on the future of global education systems post-COVID, and I was struck by a line in the piece: “It is hard to imagine there will be another moment in history when the central role of schooling in the economic, social, and political prosperity and stability of nations is so obvious and well understood by the general population” (Vegas and Winthrop) What strikes me about this is that it really places the work we are doing here at AISL in perspective. We are a small part of a larger educational ecosystem, an ecosystem whose role is the preparation of the next generation of global leaders. That is why it is so essential that we get this moment right, and why I am so proud to be a part of a school community who understands this, and is committed to doing all the small and unpleasant things required to keep our kids in the school, and to continue their development into the leaders we know they can be in the future. 2021-2022 AISL Merit Scholarship - Launching This Week!The American International School of Lusaka has been awarding merit-based scholarships to attend the high school each year since August 2013. To date we have enrolled sixteen Zambian students into the scholarship program and the school, eight are current students and eight have graduated. Our most recent graduate, from the Class of 2020, is taking a gap year volunteering in the Zambian healthcare system. The other seven graduates are attending universities. Graduates from the Class of 2016
More information, eligibility, how to apply, and the scholarship brochure and application forms are available on the school website: https://www.aislusaka.org/scholarship.html. Please feel free to send this information to people within the local community who you consider may benefit from becoming an AISL Merit-Scholar, and encourage them to register to attend our Scholarship Program Virtual Open Day, which will take place on Wednesday 16 December from 10:00hrs. The AISL Merit-Scholar Selection Committee - scholarship@aislusaka.org  Works Cited: Vegas, Emiliana, and Rebecca Winthrop. “Global Education: How to Transform School Systems?” Brookings, Brookings, 17 Nov. 2020, www.brookings.edu/research/global-education-how-to-transform-school-systems/. Communication We know that this can be a time filled with uncertainties, so please understand that our highest priority is the health and well-being of your children. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact us at rodum@aislusaka.org and sseiler@aislusaka.org. Kind regards, Dr. Rick Odum, Secondary Principal Dr. Sheila Seiler, Secondary Assistant Principal What I am excited about…
 Mark Haynes has joined our team as our new Security Manager. Mark brings a significant amount of experience in law enforcement and diplomatic security. He will work closely with our team to ensure that AISL continues to provide a safe and secure environment for our community.
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