Welcome to Students Incorporated, a podcast where we dive into relevant topics and issues
related to the world of business, technology, education and design.
I'm your host, Mr. Jason.
Episodes include student conversations, interviews with thought leaders, and inspirational stories
with an international flavor.
This podcast is created and produced with the help of students from the International
Community School of Bangkok.
In today's episode, we will be having a discussion with Mrs. Karen, our middle school principal,
and a Q&A session with a few of our eighth and ninth grade students.
It should be a fun time, especially with our student guests, because they will be fulfilling
the roles of our co-host.
Okay, let's get started with our quote of the day and some news headlines.
Thank you, Mr. Jason.
Our quote of the day comes from the previous senior master of the Jade Palace and the founder
of the Valley of Peace, Master Ugwe.
He is quoted as saying to the future dragon warrior, just before he moves into the next
life, you are too concerned with what was and will be.
There is a saying, yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift.
That's why it's called the present.
Such wise words, as you cannot tell the future or change mistakes from the past.
Learn to live in the present and make the best of every day you are given, because it
is a present.
Naseri, the Iranian refugee who inspired the Steven Spielberg film, The Terminal, has passed
away.
As shown in the movie, Naseri had lived at the Paris airport for 18 years on multiple
occasions and now has passed away of natural causes.
Hurricane Nicole hit Florida's eastern coast on Thursday as a category 1 hurricane, and
eventually weakened to a tropical storm.
Beachfront houses suffered immense damage.
Rising sea levels are causing erosions and high tide floods due to climate change.
Archaeologists believe they have located a tunnel leading to Cleopatra's tomb.
The tunnel is around 1300 meters long and is located 13 meters underground.
Excavation has revealed a religious center with three sanctuaries, statues, golden pieces
and coins portraying Alexander the Great, Queen Cleopatra and the Ptolemies.
According to Martinez, the head archaeologist, if the tunnels do lead to Cleopatra's tomb,
this would be considered the most important discovery of the century.
Thank you for the quote and the news headlines, Linda.
Let's begin with our first question.
Welcome to our podcast, Mrs. Karen.
We have a question for you and it is, what are some inspiring qualities you see in middle
school students?
Thank you, Lyon.
I'm happy to be here.
We were just talking before the podcast about the idea that middle school often gets a pretty
bad rap.
You watch movies, right?
TV shows.
Middle school looks like an absolute disaster when you watch them in those contexts.
And I think that sometimes the actual beauty of middle school is that you have students
who are at an age where they're really developing who they are, what they're interested in.
They have this ability to start to have really adult conversations, really think deeply about
ideas while at the same time maintaining that childlike energy and enthusiasm for what they're
learning.
And so when you talk to a middle school teacher or, you know, right now we start to go through
our recruiting season, right?
Where we're looking for teachers to come to ICS and to come into the middle school.
And some of the things that I'm looking for would be teachers who really embrace that,
who really love a bit of chaos, a bit of crazy, a whole lot of awkwardness, but also this
absolute brilliance of seeing a person emerge in those years and seeing the initial kind
of unveiling of who these kids are going to be as adults.
And it's such a privilege.
It's a really exciting time to be part of.
Moving on, what is the importance of implementing XBlock into the week and what are their positive
impacts?
I know I really miss having them.
I think XBlock is a favourite part of my week for sure because I get to get back in the
classroom and hang out with students.
It's also the favourite part of lots of students' weeks.
I think anytime you talk about a schedule, whether it's advisory or whether it's XBlock
or whether it's just changes you're making to your own lessons in the class, you kind
of think about schedules for schools a little bit like our facilities.
So if I was to create the most incredible playground in the elementary that the elementary
world has ever seen with slides and a flying fox and the huge, you know, just huge, right?
What I'm actually creating is potential, right?
I'm creating opportunity and I'm creating potential.
I'm creating potential maybe for kids to learn gross and fine motor skills or conflict
resolution out on the playground.
But I'm not actually forcing any of those things to happen.
A kid could play on that playground without ever learning to be a good friend or without
ever learning to do the monkey bars, right?
So anytime that we create a change in a schedule at a school, all we're doing there is creating
a potential, an opportunity.
And when we created XBlock, it was like creating a playground for middle school.
Now if I put in a middle, a playground in the grade 12, you know, like the commons in
for the high school that you guys would probably love it, right?
But it wouldn't be used to its maximum potential because when are kids developing those gross
and fine motor skills the most in elementary?
And so putting the playground in elementary makes sense, right?
For that developmental state.
So when we put in XBlock, we chose middle school because of the timing of what students
are developing.
And one of those things, Linda, is that we're really trying to allow maximum opportunity
for kids to explore who they are, what they like, what they're interested in, what they're
not interested in, right?
Oh, I thought I might like pottery.
Actually turns out, you know, hate it, whatever, right?
So but it's just opportunity.
We can't force any kids to learn anything through it necessarily, but it's like putting
in a very intentional playground in middle school that gives them the chance to develop
in an area that we think is important, which is exploration and just trying something new
because that's risky.
That takes some courage to try something new in a fail-free environment, right?
Maybe you can share some of the XBlock activities.
Share some of these topics and subjects that the kids are able to kind of get involved
with.
Sure.
We've got over 22 different choices every quarter, and students can take one XBlock
per quarter.
So you take four, and hopefully over the course of middle school, you can take up to 12 different
subjects or different XBlocks.
Everything from kind of STEM electives like microbits and programming.
We've got a new one on Python using Python for coding, animation, digital animation, introduction
to Photoshop, all of those sorts of STEM-like activities.
Then right through to the arts where we might have more around painting, drawing.
We have a photography.
We have a craft class.
Even action kind of oriented XBlocks.
When you guys were in middle school, I think you remember Mr. Peter doing his survival
skills XBlock or yard games, beginner volleyball, things that really get students, middle school
students up and moving.
I love board games, and so my XBlocks, the next two XBlocks I'm running are strategy
board games and that sort of thing, real-time games.
So one of the concepts is to ask teachers, like, what do you love?
I mean, you might be a math teacher, but maybe you love cross-stitch.
Why not show students that we're not just one thing?
We're not just like an engineer brain or a history brain or whatever it is.
We actually are whole people, and we have got hobbies and talents and things that we
love and our teachers get to share those with students, which is awesome.
Well, thank you, Mrs. Karen.
That really clears things up for me why XBlock existed.
Now, I've also wanted to hear another question that I wanted to know since I was in middle
school.
What are the benefits of having an advisory block daily?
I think the benefits are going to be seen very differently from one student to the other,
one advisory to the other.
Go back to my playground analogy, it's very much about opportunity, right?
So we have this potential space at the end of every day.
We have a 20-minute block.
You guys in high school have got kind of a once a week homeroom, and you probably remember
in middle school we have a 20-minute advisory every day.
So you get to meet with the same teacher and the same students each day at the end of every
day.
So you think about, well, what could we use that time for?
Middle schoolers immediately think of fun.
What could we use that time for?
And so, sure, we want to incorporate some games and team building and get to know you
activities and we do that at least once a week with team building.
Some advisories are super competitive and that's their most exciting part of the week.
They really love that.
Others are really chill and they don't kind of get into the competition side of things
very much.
But it's totally fine.
And in fact, maybe it highlights the point, which is that every advisory creates their
own identity over time.
So you're going to get different groups of students put together.
We try to make sure that there's some friends in each one of them so that you don't feel
isolated.
Because the point is to find a small community within our big community.
Since you were in middle school, we've had kind of a shift towards really using our advisors
more as academic mentors.
So all of our middle school students right now have set academic targets.
What's one class they want to improve in and then their advisor is working with them on
that.
So we're really trying to utilize this fantastic 12 to 1 ratio, which is small, right, to its
best advantage in middle school to really help students not only feel at home, but achieve
what their goals are for the middle school.
Or even just identify that they have goals would be excellent as well.
Our next question is, we've heard that middle school has something called the Eagle Award
program.
Could you tell us more about it?
Most of the upperclassmen here did not have it in middle school.
And we were wondering what it is.
Probably remember we had an Eagle Award that was given out at the end of grade eight during
a big assembly.
And one student would receive that or maybe in an unusual year two students might receive
the Eagle Award.
But as we thought about it, we thought why not kind of create our own almost mini capstone
in a sense.
Now the concept of a capstone is something that you do at the end of a period of time,
right, that kind of encapsulates everything that hopefully that you've learned along the
way.
So grade eights are invited.
It's an optional program.
We have about between 40 and 50 students doing it this year to participate in this year long
program that is really self initiated.
They need to take a lot of responsibility and to achieve three to four different kind
of goals along the way.
By the end of the year, they will have achieved a wellness sort of target or a wellness goal,
which is about their physical health, their physical well-being.
Some of them might identify that they want to participate in a particular sport or a
particular athletic activity to improve their physical well-being and health.
And the second one is kind of an exploratory goal where they improve a particular skill.
Now both the well-being and the skill goals that they accomplish and that they achieve
have to be 10 hours in length.
So it can't be just like I'm going to swim for an hour, I'm going to run for an hour,
or it couldn't be that I'm going to try out coding for an hour and then I'm going to go
switch over to sewing for an hour.
They need to deep dive into a particular skill.
So they might spend 10 hours learning a language or learning some kind of musical instrument
and they keep track of that.
They have a mentor.
We use different programs like masterclass online or Skillshare and they choose something
kind of deep dive into that.
And then the third component is a service component that will start in February.
And that's where they identify an organization that they admire and want to work alongside.
Again, they put in a certain number of hours, they do interviews with that organization.
Unlike high school caps, they're not creating a project.
They're drawing alongside of an existing organization to volunteer their time and energy
and maybe learn something.
Well, not maybe, I know that they learn a lot from these organizations.
So by the end of the year, some of our students and last year we had about 20, I think 21
grade eights accomplish all of these things.
In addition, we do seminars throughout the year on leadership from different people around
the community.
And then, you know, they're kind of awarded at the end of the year for having spent some
time in grade eight before they hit the big leagues here in high school.
Really, again, exploring something different, trying something new and learning some new
skills.
So I'm pretty proud of them.
I don't know, you'll hear them ask questions later.
They're kind of, you know, how do we learn to do well in high school?
One of the things that the Eagle Award Program teaches them is how to work on a long project.
I mean, this is a year long project.
How to break things down into smaller parts.
You have a mentor come alongside them and help them make sure they're staying on target.
But that's pretty essential learning for when you're getting up into, certainly up into
year 11 and 12 and working on some of these bigger projects like Capstone, for example.
So our last question for you today is what are some of the main differences you see between
sixth graders and eighth graders?
Some of the key differences.
So when our sixth graders come in, you really have to think that, you know, we're receiving
elementary school and elementary age students, right?
These guys are coming in.
They've had a single classroom teacher who's done a fantastic job for many years of building
a classroom culture where they're together with the same 20 students and they're cared
for and nurtured by that teacher.
And of course they've got specials and they move around to different electives.
But they're kind of coming into a much more high school, what looks much more like a high
school schedule where they're moving around independently.
I don't know if you remember the fear factor in that, like am I going to get lost?
You know, am I going to be able to open my locker?
Am I going to be late for class?
How am I going to find my way around?
I think if you asked any of the grade six students, they would remember that very well,
right?
That fear of coming in new to that environment.
So moving from that to grade eight where in the next month we're going to be working with
each of our grade eight students to create this four year course planner where they're
looking ahead to high school and instead of kind of widening their interests, they will
start to narrow their focus.
And over time, by the time they hit where you're at now, Linda, they're really kind
of focused in on a particular goal, hopefully, or an area of interest.
So that's a pretty huge difference between grade six and grade eight.
You know, not just talking about physical height, you know, voice changes, all of the
delights of puberty that they go through between six and eight.
But I mean, this is a major change in focus from being just totally obsessed with, well,
how do I get to class and how do I survive this new world to, wow, I've really got to
start planning for my future in a much more serious way.
You know, some students come into grade six ready for university, but there's not too
many.
And so you see incredible change in growth.
And maybe that's one of the things that I love most about middle school.
And I think if you talk to any middle school teachers, what they love.
I first started my career teaching grade 11 and 12.
So when I was here at ICS back in the day, I taught English and I taught some history
classes up in the upper high school.
I never thought I would want to teach middle school.
Like they were crazy, squirrely, out of control.
You know, over the course of my career, increasingly, you know, I took on classes maybe that were
a bit lower in that age group.
And I think one of the things that as an absolute delight about middle school is this question
you're asking me, Lian, which is this huge difference that you get to witness over three
years of middle school, seeing students move from really being elementary students to being
ready for high school.
And that growth is incredible.
It's a privilege to be part of.
I'm of course thrilled to work with the team of teachers and educators I get to work with.
Thank you for that.
Do you have any final general advice for the current or upcoming middle school students?
Do I have any advice for the current or upcoming middle school students?
Well, listen to Students Incorporated.
I think that what you're doing here is just an example of the advice that I would give
to middle school students, right?
Which is find something you're interested in and create something new.
Take this opportunity in middle school over the next three years that you've got to initiate
something, you know, start a club, try something.
It doesn't much matter if it falls on its face.
You're in middle school.
There's no big life consequences to trying something and not working out.
So yeah, just give it a go.
And I think that you'll find that in middle school, all of our teachers would be really
supportive of students just trying something new.
So I love this, love Students Incorporated for doing that and for initiating something
new this year.
And I hope you inspire our middle school students to do the same.
And with that, we are running out of time for part one.
Thank you so much for joining us, Mrs. Karen.
We will be right back for part two.
But first we have our regular announcement from Lion.
One, two, three, four.
The holiday season is coming up with Thanksgiving only a week away.
It is a time of deep gratitude and appreciation for our loved ones and the opportunities we've
all been given.
And according to Andy Williams, the most wonderful time of the year, Christmas, is just a little
over a month away.
The high school Christmas party is coming up soon and it will be a fun time full of
games, songs and great food.
Don't forget to sign up for the QR code on the posters around school.
For part two of this episode, we are mixing it up a bit with our co-host and guests.
We welcome two current eighth grade students, Nishka and Garch as our co-host.
We also welcome two ninth grade students, Highlight and Jedi, as our guests.
And because we are referring to this part of our episode as burning questions eighth
graders want to ask ninth graders, our two eighth grade co-hosts will be interviewing
our two ninth grade guests.
Okay, Nishka, we'll begin with our first question.
Since we'll have to choose classes for ninth grade soon, what advice would you give us
for selecting courses and how much help do the counselors provide?
For me, I'd say to choose courses that really interest you.
I wouldn't choose courses because your friends are in them or because they might sound cool.
Maybe just do them because you want to do them if you haven't interested in it.
I think counselors, they help you setting them up and giving you advice for future courses
too.
Yeah, so for me, I personally think that you should select courses based on your interests
or your passions.
Just take middle school and treat it as like an exploration field.
Try your best to find out and discover your passion in middle school and then choose your
courses based off of your passions.
But other than that, for ninth grade, for like when you're registering for courses,
just keep in mind of the prerequisites since I totally think that that's important.
Although in ninth grade, I don't think there are too many choices for you to choose at
that point.
You can choose more when you're in 10th grade.
And the counselors also provide us with great advice.
So if you have any questions, feel free to just ask your counselor.
Yeah, and I feel like in eighth grade, you know, the freedom you get is like strings,
band, drama.
Is there like more core classes that you get to pick specifically?
I guess for core classes like math and science, there's a lot more.
There's like physics and you know, you have ICP, but then it branches off into many more,
you know, more specific classes.
Yeah, as Jedha has said, you can choose to delve deeper into certain specific fields,
which could benefit you throughout later on in your high school career.
So I think it's very important to keep in mind of the prerequisites as well as I've
mentioned earlier, because if you are aware of the prerequisites, you can take that beforehand
and then you can choose the more advanced courses later on in your high school career.
Yeah, that is really smart.
I feel like people think like ICP I'm taking right now and there's so much homework.
How is that in ninth grade?
It really depends on like the classes that you have that you take.
Mostly teachers don't really give you as much, you know, homework as you would in eighth
grade.
It's mostly just studying, but you should do that on your own as like a normal thing.
But if you're working on a project, they will assign you like stuff to do.
I feel like in terms of workload for me, I don't think there there's like a drastic difference
between the workload in eighth grade and ninth grade.
But the major differences that I would like to point out is the content in eighth grade
and ninth grade.
So you might experience that transition a little because the ninth grade content might
be a little more advanced and it takes more time to wrap your head around it.
But overall, speaking of the workload, I don't think there's a major differences, but I would
like to also add on that in 10th grade, that might be like the major shift, the actual
high school.
On your first day of high school, was there anything you were worried about or nervous
about?
For me, on my first day, I wasn't really I didn't really fear like anything.
I was kind of more scared of what the community was like in high school.
I'll be worried like the, you know, the lowest grade and all these older kids, you know,
they're kind of scary, but you know, if you as you know, the week goes by, everyone's
actually really nice and really good to just talk to people and get to know them because,
you know, the community here at ICS is really good and like they can help you.
So in my opinion, I think that on the first day of school, I was very apprehensive of
like meeting new people, getting to interact with upperclassmen.
I was very concerned about that because I was not really sure whether or not high school
would actually be a major transition into like this new community in which you're like
the youngest.
And besides that, I feel like a piece of advice that I would like to give to those who are
also concerned of like their first day of school is just to like take this time to reconnect
and rekindle with your friends because like during the break, you sometimes don't spend
as much time with your friends.
But now that you're back to school, just take the time to kind of reconnect with them
and build that tight relationship.
And Jedha, you mentioned like the community of high school.
And I feel like a big part of our school is like the after school activities and the clubs.
So I know you're like in place and stuff.
How do you balance that with your homework?
I'd say for homework, you shouldn't procrastinate at all because it always builds up and you
know, the more you just finish things faster and on pace, it helps you and you like your
grades aren't as bad.
I wouldn't say to choose so many after school activities because you know, we'll still
need some free time as well.
So my experience with this is that I always try to keep track of the tasks that I have
in hand at the moment by using a to do list and also having a calendar in hand.
Like it could be a digital form or like physically depending on your preferences.
But other than that, I usually just keep track and lay out my schedule beforehand.
So you have like a scope of the future.
Yeah, of what your future looks like as well as know how to organize your time so that
it's most effective and efficient.
And I'll highlight.
Are you a part of any clubs right now?
Yes, I am part of the MUN club, which is the Model United Nations club here.
And I heard that there's also going to be an ICS Model United Nations conference.
So I really do look forward to going and participating in that as well.
So MUN club basically introduced me to the idea of students coming together and discussing
about like global issues.
So I think a piece of advice that I would like to give to like eighth graders, like
rising ninth graders would be to if you are currently part of the global issues club,
maybe you might as well consider joining the MUN club later on.
I'm also part of the debate MUN and yeah, the Union Article Club, which is about writing
and recognizing the interconnectedness between the global issues and your life.
You can also write about random topics, but basically are trying to use journalism as
a way to advocate for different issues.
So how did it feel for you guys?
Because when you were in eighth grade, you were the oldest middle school and you knew
basically everything about it.
But then when you go to high school, you're really new to it and everyone else has been
really experienced at that and they've been there for a long time.
In my eighth grade year, I felt really comfortable with just the school.
I wasn't really scared of anything that much.
I didn't really have any fears or, you know, I guess doing well in my grades and all that
was still an important thing.
When I moved into ninth grade, I felt that, you know, I had a lot more to learn and I
had a lot of new experience basically.
Yeah.
So for me, in middle school, you oftentimes take classes with peers from your own grade.
But when it comes to high school, you get like a more diverse environment and you also
get to learn with students whether or not whether they're like an upperclassman or maybe
they're like a little older than you or some sort.
Yeah, so I basically just ask them for advice and they're oftentimes very open and they're
always open-minded and I always like ask them for help.
If I don't understand about some content that we're currently covering in class, I always
try my best to kind of connect with upperclassmen.
Yeah.
And hearing you guys today, I have to say I'm excited to get into high school.
Get into it's like we're good accepted.
So what is one piece of advice you would give to all eighth graders moving to high school?
Okay, I'd say to enjoy your last year in middle school because it's a lot of fun even though
ninth grade isn't like drastically different.
Have a lot of fun in eighth grade.
Do your best, try your best, try to have fun and you know just get ready for that ninth
grade year.
As a former middle schooler, a piece of advice I would like to give is that just use your
middle school time to seek and scour for your passions through activities, extracurriculars,
whether it's the programs that middle school provides for us.
For instance, the Eagle Award program, the X Block opportunities, I feel like those are
just like great opportunities for us.
And also as like an opportunistic, I also love enjoying like you know participating
in these activities anyways.
So I feel like that's like good opportunity.
Try to build a very tight knit relationship with your friends and connect with them as
much as possible because in high school, I feel like friends are such an important aspect
of your high school life.
So if you have a clan, a gang that you could rely on, I think that would be very helpful,
beneficial and supportive for you.
So since you're in ninth grade now, are there more or less electives and what type of classes
do you get to take?
How do they compare to your eighth grade classes?
I feel like now that we're still in ninth grade, I think that the classes that we're
taking are oftentimes like very similar to our classmates, so we don't really have like
too many choices that we could choose from.
But just keep in mind that we're collecting our credits and you know taking the courses
that would lead to opening up more doors later on in our high school career.
So at this point in time, we're also still like novices in this like high school career
field.
So yeah, just collect all of the required courses and then you could choose to concentrate
and focus on particular classes later on throughout high school, specifically during like 10th
grade, 11th grade in 12th.
Okay, so this is really random, but it just popped into my head and maybe it's because
I'm really hungry right now, but I have to know what is lunch like in high school?
That is an amazing question, Garch.
I just like to say lunch is the best time of the day because you know that's when you
can relax, you can talk to your friends, you know meet new people and always connect with
others because you know it's always a lot of fun to talk to other people that's not
in your grade like upperclassmen because everyone's actually a lot of fun and really nice.
So you might find a new table to sit with or you know lots of people to hang out with.
So I would like to describe high school lunch in one word.
So I think it's like very liberating to just let out all of your energy because like after
a very tiring morning, you get like this long break, especially like after a test, you get
to talk to your friends and let go all of the burdens that you've been holding throughout
the test sessions.
So I think it's a great time to talk to your friends, eat lunch, have like this session
with your peers, try to connect with you know strangers maybe and go to the media center
and just look for books.
As we end this episode, let's remember the wise words from Master Uguay.
Today is the present so let's make the best of every day we are given because those days
are gifts and that's a wrap for this episode.
Did you catch the connection there?
Present, gift, wrap and the holidays coming up?
Okay with that cheesy ending, I just want to say thank you to all of our guests for
joining us, especially our eighth and ninth grade students because your voice matters
too.
Please stay tuned for more episodes about exciting and engaging topics.
You won't want to miss our next show as we'll be recording it in front of a live studio
audience of more than 400 people.
Anyway stay tuned as you definitely don't want to miss it because it's never been done
before here.
As always this podcast would not be possible without the hard work and support of our international
student production team.
All music and sound effects are courtesy of Pixabay.com, a vibrant community of creatives
sharing copyright free images, videos and music.
And we are signing off until next time.
We are Students Incorporated because your voice matters.