Steppe Up

Welcome!

My name is Warren Rocco and I am an educator based in Chicago, Illinois, USA. I recently returned home after living and working in Kazakhstan as a director with Nazarbayev University’s Center for Preparatory Studies and as a founding member of a team responsible for launching NU’s Center of Innovation in Learning and Teaching.

I created this website to reflect upon years of personal and professional experiences in the USA and Kazakhstan, and to share with others my love for living, learning, and leading in communities that have inspired me to serve. Ultimately, I hope that readers will find joy and enlightenment in my stories, dedicated to celebrating various triumphs in schools at home & away, and that fellow educators might be inspired by something they encounter here and respond daringly and constructively to invent/improve, alongside shareholders, their own school of dreams.

There are at least a couple of ways to approach the information on this site: 1) reading sequentially, as narrative—all at once, or in parts, or; 2) clicking on any of the thematic buttons below, and moving directly to topics of particular interest to the reader (*note: to return to the top of the site, simply tap the browser’s previous-page/backspace icon). However one spends time here—whether we know each other or not, I want to thank guests to the site in advance for taking an interest in this content.

Much of the activity on this site concerns my former life as a teacher in Chicago, coupled with stories of my time as a middle and high school principal with Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools (NIS) in Kazakhstan. While I’ll likely share some updates in the future on my subsequent, post-NIS work at NU, at least two updates seem compulsory:

Since developing this site, I adopted a dog. “Yvie” is an American Staffordshire from Almaty, Kazakhstan. Yvie has reminded me in our short time together of the limitless rewards of putting others first, and she has injected new & entirely unexpected layers of joy into my everyday life. Certainly, those with dogs will understand that Yvie & I are family now.

I also created, hosted, produced, developed artwork, and licensed music for a podcast during the pandemic. “NuclearPods” (*Knowledge is Power: a podcast devoted to Ideas that Matter in Education in Kazakhstan and beyond) was an effort to develop a new hobby & skill-set, connect in difficult times with members of each of our University’s undergraduate & graduate Schools, and elevate my co-host & friend—thereby promoting her capacity for thought-leadership in higher education. Friends of mine will note that my speaking voice in the podcast is slower than in everyday life, but this is intentional: I wanted non-native English speakers—particularly those connected to our University—to be able to follow our conversations with relative ease. Perhaps in the future, I’ll revisit NuclearPods as a solo or partnered-project with a modified goal. Until then, please enjoy a blast from the past from NuclearPods—available via Apple, Buzzsprout, Spotify, and through other popular locations for listening to podcasts online.

Prior to joining Nazarbayev University (NU) in 2019, my role as an international section/deputy head principal in Kazakhstan’s Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools (NIS) included the following responsibilities: contribute whole-school, cooperative management alongside the school's director and senior management team; provide teaching, learning & leading seminars to staff, school administrators, and board & civic leaders at the local & regional levels; staff & monitor invigilation for external examinations; coordinate teachers' internal professional development; manage & support foreign teachers; oversee the summer academic program; direct the organization's short, medium & long-term strategic development plans; supply primary authorship & editing of crucial English-language texts such as policy & contracts, respectively, and; chair the Steering Committee through an 18-month Self-Study into international accreditation with the Council of International Schools (CIS).

Today, it has been more than eleven years since I took a dare to move beyond my comfort zone and into a place of great uncertainty. I admit that I didn’t know much about Kazakhstan before I accepted a job to go there as a so-called “international expert” in teaching & learning. Nonetheless, I embraced the irony and hoped that I would in time shed my ignorance & in the process make a positive contribution to an ambitious national education project. 

On August 20, 2013, I hadn’t been in the capital city of Astana for more than a few hours before I witnessed a thrilling 2-0 Champions League victory by Kazakhstan’s Shakhter Karagandy over Scotland’s FC Celtic. It was quite an induction for a weary, but wide-eyed football (soccer) maniac.

Interestingly enough, I celebrated my 10th anniversary of living in Kazakhstan (August 20, 2023) by returning to Astana Arena for yet another football match. Old habits die hard.

Despite the familiar sounds & machinations of that first football match in Astana, I braced myself for the culture shock that would inevitably follow the move from my busy home in Chicago to the more remote Uralsk, West Kazakhstan. There was, however, mostly joy & wonderment to be found in those early days, when Kazakhstan stirred my soul.

Leo Tolstoy wrote about the Kazakh Steppe, “melancholy and indifference have passed…everything is new and interesting.”

The formal time & place to learn anew began at “Opening Bell” on September 1, traditionally the first day of the new academic year for Kazakh schools. Soon thereafter I experienced my first “Teacher Appreciation Day” in Kazakhstan. I was awestruck by the genuine respect & love that the students bestowed upon their teachers on this remarkable occasion. From start-to-finish, it was among of the most extraordinary treats I’ve ever known in my life in schools.

This is how “Teacher Appreciation Day” in Kazakhstan looked from my perspective (& shaky camera-phone) in autumn 2013:

As exciting & at times overwhelming as the experience was early on in Kazakhstan, I didn’t arrive there without my own defining history.

As a child & adolescent, I was indifferent to curricula that drove teachers to constantly refer to their well-guarded “teacher’s edition”-textbooks for the ‘correct’ answers. I was, however, on rare occasions truly inspired by a few rogue teachers, who sometimes went off-script & organized scholastic scavenger hunts around our school, instituted academic relay races, and had groups in sporting practices scream about important literary or historic events/quotes while performing some athletic maneuvers alongside fellow students.

Nothing, however, made a more stirring impression on me in high school as when I saw the film Dead Poet’s Society for the first time. Oscar-winner Robin Williams was larger-than-life as English teacher, John Keating, and director Peter Weir invited me to think about a magical, fictional version of school where students & teachers were real partners in an exhilarating quest for knowledge.

When at last I became a professional teacher, it was this film and a desire to make (students’) lives extraordinary that spurred me on.

After high school graduation, I joined the United States Marine Corps--partly because my father & grandfather served, but also because I was not ready for conventional university studies. I wanted to pursue a truly liberal education.

I loved being a Marine. I felt real pride in being a part of "The Few, The Proud." Ultimately, I claimed lessons & developed habits in the USMC that remain core features of my personal & professional profile to this day.

After receiving an honorable discharge from the Marine Corps, I worked some odd jobs (dock worker, house painter, landscaper, bartender, book clerk and taxi driver), but eventually with the help of the GI Bill earned my university degree with a major in English. 

As an adult undergraduate and then graduate student, I achieved an even greater respect for teachers who taught with imagination & urgency. These open-hearted, open-minded forces of nature compelled me eventually to give in to the vocational call--the whispers of carpe diem--that I'd kept close to my heart, but quarantined in the back of my brain for too long.

When I became a professional teacher, I served a range of populations back home. I started at the University of Chicago’s Laboratory School, one of the most resourced and elite systems for learning in the United States. I then taught at Hales Franciscan High School and North Lawndale College Prep, two iconic educational institutions, heroically serving primarily Black communities amidst some of the most threatened spaces in the country. Regardless of environment, I have throughout my 20+year career in education taken pride in learning about those to whom I am committed to serve while leveraging every available resource to maximize opportunities for all.

Today, I am furthermore guided in my professional life by some lessons learned as part of a rag-tag collective that years ago started-up the Global Citizenship Experience (subsequently GCE Lab School in Chicago, IL). In that school’s infancy, our activities were defined by “Asking Questions and Living Into the Answers.” It was an instructive notion then, and it’s a way of life now. I owe a lot to my fiercely independent & innovative colleagues, in particular GCE founder, Eric Davis, who remains as influential as anyone in my professional life. Eric gave me the opportunity to create dream courses and the courage & tools to reimagine school itself. 

The following profile of my GCE-honed, inquiry-based method to course design and lesson planning was communicated to my dear friend, professor, mentor, and collaborator, Dr. Katherine McKnight, who in turn (with my permission) shared my Why?-How?-What? (Naming-Framing-Gaming) approach in her 2019 book, Inside the Common Core Classroom. Dr. McKnight (http://www.katherinemcknight.com) is a teaching and learning consultant, and an expert in student literacy, and her chronicling of my work as a teacher-leader offers a glimpse into how my thinking evolved to accommodate interests in broader school improvement.

Please click on the chapter pages below to advance the text.

I love to create innovative, impactful courses for students. My approach to design is simple: define our reason for learning in community (purpose), indicate our framework for inquiry (process), and identify the core competencies/skills that students should acquire/master (product). 

Among the joys of original course design are the opportunities to experiment with ideas that excite young minds, meet academic objectives, and contribute to life-long learning. In Vitalogies: Stories for LIfe, I chose to build the course upon the four stages of learning, core competencies of storytelling, story types, and various conveyances/modes of storytelling. 

Vitalogies: Stories for Life was a 1-term, 10th grade humanities course that I designed & taught at GCE. It challenged students to evaluate how real life engagements could be converted into fictional stories that convey our shared and ‘vital’ experiences. 

What follows is my version of a vision board for students. I submit, however, that I created this years before I ever knew such a fashionable thing existed!

In my GCE 12th grade course, An Education in 8 Movements (ED8), I used mechanisms for learning, focal points in leadership, and Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to energize a course that explored in equal measure a number of post-secondary education options while also developing in students the skills they would require to succeed in a traditional university setting.

I really enjoyed teaching ED8. The course enabled my students to discover that there are many worthwhile paths to achieving wisdom & earning one’s keep in the world. The course also empowered students—maybe for the first time in their lives—to revisit, contextualize, and appraise their experiences in education while thinking more critically and independently about their future studies. 

ED8 was the first course I designed that a student could attend on-site or online. My course website was a virtual hub for everything that we introduced & collected during our time in learning together. While I recognize more than a decade later that my ED8 course site (created on Google Sites) now appears dated, the guiding principles (relatively undefined & untested back then) to reduce barriers to learning remain as urgent as ever.

I feel awful for educators who are, or who feel they are confined to teach lesson plans verbatim. Doing so degrades our noble profession by discouraging critical inquiry & useful innovation—thus reducing professional educators to little more than automatons delivering curriculum to students in a manner befitting a mail carrier throwing yesterday’s newspaper onto someone’s doorstep.

Such a malady inspired one of my fundamental guidelines for working in schools: What do we have to do? (And) What can we do?

Teachers, for example, have a lot of stuff that they must do (ie: teach a particular subject for a set number of hours a day/week/term, and achieve with students an array of lesson/unit/course objectives, etc.).

Everything else that teachers do, however, is limited only by their imagination & determination to help students achieve (in organizational context) a better & brighter future.

When I became a teacher, I did so because I wanted to provide for students what few in professional education had provided me: a dream experience in learning.

And few things fuel a great dream more than real passion.

Teachers who bring their passions into schools invariably work with greater purpose, pride & effect. Such teachers leave content deliverers in the dust & remind us that teaching & learning is more about the journey than the destination.

Among my passions is a love for soccer.

As a fan, I’ve had the privilege to attend World Cups, Gold Cups, Copa America, El Clasico & European championships. I’ve witnessed live many legends of the game, including: Beckham, Cafu, Cannavaro, Cristiano, Di Maria, Donovan, Drogba, Eto’o, Henry, Howard, Iniesta, Kahn, Keane, Maldini, Marquez, Mbappe, Messi, Nedved, Neymar, Pirlo, Puyol, Raul, Robben, Ronaldinho, Ronaldo, Rooney, Shevchenko, Totti, Van Nisterooy, Vieira, Xavi & Zidane.

My passion for the "beautiful game" extended to school, where I taught at GCE a pair of complementary, 1-term, back-to-back courses titled, "How Soccer Explains the World" (based on Franklin Foer's book by the same name) & "How Soccer Explains Chicago." 

While teaching "How Soccer Explains the World," I created "SIICQ Reading" (pronounced 'sick-' & intended as old-school slang for ‘great’-reading). I submit that these deep-reading, SIICQ exercises (explained in Katie McKnight’s book extract, above) bring our learners into effective practice, foment useful collaboration, and establish real community around course topics.

Here's how my students used SIICQ Reading to interpret Chapter 10 of Franklin Foer's How Soccer Explains the World:

In my follow-up course, "How Soccer Explains Chicago," we mimicked Franklin Foer’s use of entertaining soccer tales to illuminate expert research on socio-economic issues. We used a combination of themes—extracted from Mr. Foer’s book—to stimulate critical thought & guide response. We mined the familiar and the exotic while using soccer as a conduit to improve our understanding of life in Chicago, motivate empathy for others, and build a bridge to global citizenship.

Our course guiding questions were as follows:

• WHY is soccer a game worthy of our attention?

• HOW does soccer explain important area phenomena?

• WHAT Chicago soccer stories communicate our stories?

Here are excerpts from the 10 unique stories that my students crafted in response to our course questions:

By the time I turned 40, I'd taught most of the courses I desired to teach & obtained a fair amount of experience as a school leader. I'd developed a strong personal & professional network in Chicago, and yet I felt that something was missing in my life: adventure!

I began to look for work in education abroad. I came across a number of opportunities, but none were as dramatic & as exotic as the one I found in Kazakhstan. To my surprise & delight, I jumped at the invitation to test in an unknown land the hard-won stability that I'd earned in my 30s.

I accepted the offer to join Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools and planned my move to Kazakhstan.

When I left Chicago and arrived in Uralsk, I joined nearly 2 dozen fresh faces from around the globe. These spirited women & men comprised our International Team, or "I-Team" serving the local (Kazakh) staff & students. 

Although I understood that the school's orientation guides were essential reading that would help us to do our jobs, I also wanted in those early days to establish mutual respect & trust, build camaraderie, & identify specific behaviors/standards of excellence that would set the tone for how present & future international staff members should live, learn, & lead in West Kazakhstan.

Mindful that so many of us were away from friends & family back home, I invited our international team members to participate in a daily diary (which I maintained as a shared Google.doc). I only introduced one rule for the team diary: “Be kind to yourself & kind to others.”

The following excerpt-entries were authored by 12 teachers from 12 countries in 12 days during the 2013-2014 academic year.

Note: I’m the American (‘from U.S.A. to Kazakhstan’) in the mix—offering some light-hearted poetry after chatting with one of my team members who returned home from work to, let's say, an imperfect domestic situation. Despite unwittingly locking herself out of her apartment, this innovative Australian was on the evening in question eventually able to regain entry through an open window. When she entered her home, however, she was newly deprived of both electricity & clean water. Thanks to her resilient nature and her pitch-perfect Aussie humor, she persevered just fine (“No worries, mate!” she reassured me by text.).

Please enjoy the wit & wisdom of a merry mob of international teachers...

As a writer, I like to give myself challenges. In our Team Diary, I frequently limited myself to precisely 100 words per entry. Here is one of my early 100-word efforts:

Back in the USA my friends and family are celebrating the start of Labor Day, a public holiday for the American worker. Meanwhile, on the other side of the globe in Uralsk, Kazakhstan a multitude of children are defying sunset and summer’s end. As I walk around my neighborhood, I see a tiny mob enveloping a football, three girls dancing atop a van, two boys submarining bottles in a watery pothole, and several kids wielding found-objects while defending a hill from a relentless horde. Altogether, more than 50 children are at-play tonight. None seem too worried about the labor movement.

I'm very proud of our Team Diary. It held us together when some of us were over-stressed by cultural and language differences, etc. The Team Diary gave us a healthy place to process our unique & shared experiences. It was, over time, a pleasure to see our Diary evolve as our team members gained comfort in our community. 

Truth be told, I'd never participated in such a venture before arriving in Kazakhstan. I just felt good about the idea. So too did my teammates.

And while it wasn't necessary that they all made contributions to the Team Diary, I'm real pleased that they did. 

As enthusiastic as I am about international team-building as a concept, I’m always much more interested in what it means when it’s actually applied among a diverse community of learners. 

At our fledgling school, I had a vision to bring our staff together around a large-scale project that was internationally-motivated, pedagogically informed, and highly immersive. I introduced the project as the International Pedagogical Experience (IPE), a week-long Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)-connected effort to improve students’ awareness of international life & education in-action abroad. 

We created throughout our school a number of MDG-aligned problem areas or challenge opportunities. 

Our criteria for problems required our teacher-designer teams to:

• Define the MDGs & stations for participants in Kazakh, English & Russian.

• Be visually dynamic.

• Be interactive.

• Actively involve at least 1 faculty member from every school department.

• Involve studies of populations from at least 3 continents.

• Create a live representation of a real-world crisis.

• Challenge our collective esteem.

• Encourage persistent, community involvement.

Our criteria for solutions required students to:

• Present solutions in Kazakh, English & Russian.

• Be visually-dynamic.

• Be interactive.

• Involve multidisciplinary action.

• Involve students from every grade level.

• Produce physical & digital artifacts of the significant activities.

• Elevate our collective esteem.

• Require a team effort to claim success.

Throughout IPE Week, teachers modified their lessons to accommodate our global interests. 

It was thrilling to see our lessons become more relevant & consequential as we introduced various complications into our learning spaces.

For example, one day we saw young women excluded from conversations in class. While at first this was something of a bad novelty act, our young women soon became perturbed by the discrimination and our young men recognized the inherent cruelty—however staged. In the afternoon the boys launched a school-wide “He for She” campaign to fight for equal rights (MDG#3: Promote Gender Equality & Empower Women).

Other students on this day were excluded from classes entirely. They were required to remain throughout the day in a single corridor. As more students were moved into the ‘No-Education Zone,’ the area became less like a retreat from lessons and more like confinement. One young lady, however, was able to procure a guitar, and with the support of her classmates wrote & played protest songs. Nearly 100 students learned & shouted the lyrics (disturbing classroom and administrative activities alike), and the segregated students won back their right to an education (MDG#2: Achieve Universal Primary Education).

On another day, students were taught child care and disease-prevention measures for reducing infant/child deaths (MDG#5 Improve Maternal Health & MDG#4: Reduce Child Mortality). Students were on this occasion required to run their own clinic to manage related problems and confront other health-oriented simulations (MDG#6 Combat HIV/AIDS, Malaria and other Diseases).

Another day saw some of our students dispatched to a makeshift ‘refugee camp,’ where they learned to make their own clean water (MDG #7 Ensure Environmental Sustainability) & communicate through creative means their distress (simulated hunger). While some of the students outside the camp served as security guards, others observed the refugee-spectacle. Eventually, some of the onlookers recorded videos (including interviews with refugees), and shared reports of the refugees’ circumstance throughout the school (MDG#1: Eradicate Extreme Poverty & Hunger). 

In a related event, students formed a bazaar/market-style information & action space. They posted & reflected on videos & photographs of the food that we threw away in our school canteen/cafeteria every day. We also hosted a chess tournament ("Hunger Games: Attacking World-Wide Hunger One Move at a Time”), where sixteen of our students competed in a single-elimination tournament. Students represented nations at various ends of the food surplus-vs.-deficit spectrum.

The #1 seed in the tournament, for example, in terms of surplus (USA) faced the #16 seed in the tournament (Congo). Similarly, the #2 seed played #15; #3 & 14; and so on. Top-seeded participants had all or most of their chess pieces to start the match while less advantaged countries began with fewer pieces. The idea was that some under-served participants might through their own skill & creativity overcome the odds, ‘solve’ their ‘hunger problem’ & emerge a more fortified nation—a ‘player’ moving forward in the global game. 

Other students conducted a drive for food stuffs (canned goods, rice/pasta...even soaps, health & beauty supplies...) to support a local food pantry/shelter. A representative from the food bank joined us at the school & shared her experience.

The winner of our chess tournament presented her with our significant donation of groceries and money. We loaded her car, and at the end of IPE Week felt clearer about the purpose of learning in community & the power of the educated (& motivated) to make a difference in school & in the world. 

Note: Subsequent IPEs involved the more recently adopted United Nations’ Global Goals while the school also incorporated the Model United Nations (MUN) program into NIS life.

I’ve long believed that one can tell a lot about a school just by looking at its floors.

Show me a school with a dirty floor & I’ll show you an institutional mess. Show me a school with a clean foundation for learning & I’ll show you a home for beautiful minds. 

If one subscribes to such a viewpoint, then one is also inclined to place a premium on the people who facilitate such an environment for teaching & learning. Throughout my time with Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools, I made it clear to everyone in our community how much I value our cleaning staff. I introduced into our culture the expression, “Clean Work Makes the Dream Work” and organized days of honor (“White Roses Day”) in support of those who dedicate themselves to keeping our school in constant-bloom. 

I'm proud to have a strong relationship with the members of our Clean Team--in part because I’ve seen what happens to schools that treat their cleaning crews like ‘the help’. It ain't pretty.

On “White Roses Day,” I worked with our Student Council and members of our faculty to express our collective appreciation for the work done by our Clean Team. I got the roses, Student Council delivered the salute, we sang together, and our young men provided the honorees a victory dance. 

After the ceremony, we took turns performing the tasks usually managed by our Clean Team. The whole affair reinforced our appreciation for those who keep us clean, and reminded us that we’ve a responsibility as a community to follow their lead and to protect & promote a standard of excellence in every aspect of our school life.

As beautiful as our school appeared, I recall one day in 2016 feeling depressed while walking through many of the classrooms in our school. They were—apart from the teachers and students inhabiting the spaces—completely bereft of character. There were precious few teaching aids. No décor. No inspiration. No heart. Either the walls were completely bare, or they were marred with some tattered, dismissible remnant of Soviet-era instruction. Our classrooms-as-learning environments were unacceptable.

Shortly thereafter I pleaded with teachers at a staff-only assembly to begin immediately applying their monthly classroom stipends to improve the awful appearance of their classrooms. But nothing really happened.

I decided then to target a couple of forward-minded homeroom teachers. “I’ll match your monthly classroom stipend if you do something about your spaces now,” I begged. Again, nothing really happened.

I assembled a small team of educators with whom to consult on the topic. “What resources should be available in every classroom?” I asked.

“Languages support,” said the Languages Coordinator.
“Practical aids,” said the Global Perspectives & Project Work instructor.
“Inspiration!” said the Art teacher.

So that’s where we began. I asked our selected-teachers within two weeks to improve their classroom by adding languages support, practical aids, and inspiration. Once they’d met the mission, I invited groups of teachers from across the school to see how two of our own absolutely transformed their spaces in such a short time.

I loved the results and thought for sure that once our teachers saw these reimagined classrooms that they too would want in on the fun. But again, nothing really happened. Moreover, as proud as I was of these two teachers for their commitment to improving their learning environments for students, I was certain that they/we could do more. So I took the three ‘criteria’ that we’d offered and added seven more points of emphasis—formalizing a project that I would call “RoomIES: Classroom Integrated Educational Support.”

RoomIES Criteria:

I.             Promotes Caring, Attention-to-Detail & Inspiration.
II.            Promotes Local/National Culture & Traditions.
III.           Promotes Global Citizenship.
IV.           Promotes Digital Literacy.
V.            Promotes Languages Learning (CLIL).
VI.           Promotes Student Works.
VII.          Promotes Hands-On Learning.
VIII.         Promotes Effective, Discipline-Related Teaching Aids.
IX.           Promotes Guiding Questions & Guiding Statements
                (Inquiry & Vision/Mission/Values-Based Learning).
X.            Promotes Student Reflection & Feedback/Commentary Opportunities.

My next move was to get Student Council on the case. I asked each member of our student leadership team to find a homeroom teacher with whom they were close and to focus on improving just one area, one criteria-component in their classroom. Within a month, we’d accumulated & posted on our Student Council board a number of examples of excellence.

Suddenly, teachers were asking ‘How do I get involved in RoomIES?’

Soon thereafter, I walked around our school and felt a profound sense of personal and collective pride in how we came together awkwardly but assuredly to support improvements to our students’ learning environments. Before the start of the following academic year, every single classroom in the school fulfilled at least one RoomIES’ criteria-point. Every single classroom in the school began working in a deliberate way to further-support teaching & learning. 

I managed NIS Student Council for a few years, and my association with this group is among my most treasured experiences with the school. 

When I began working with Student Council, it was a ceremonial body that voiced-over some events and rarely engaged in authentic leadership in our school. These super-talented & highly-motivated groups were simply not given the opportunity to spread their wings and fly. 

In my first year with Student Council, I developed with our students a set of 10 guidelines for our work together. 

Student Council would…

1. Support the Vision, Mission & Values of the school;

2. Represent all students in communicating student interests & concerns to the school’s administration;

3. Foster a culture of respect in the school;

4. Compel student acts of gratitude in the school & beyond;

5. Create a better present & future for our community;

6. Improve teaching & learning in the school;

7. Honor high achievement in the school;

8. Develop paths to global citizenship in the school;

9. Guide other students into leadership opportunities;

10. Have fun!

Once we put the above parameters in place, I asked each student to commit to leading an “Impact Project” that would enable us to live into one or more of our guidelines. By the end of the school year, Student Council had established itself as a viable, active school leadership group & laid the foundation for a leadership model that defines NIS’ Student Council to this day. 

Achieving success in our “Impact Projects” led us to incorporate four new leadership opportunities under the Student Council banner:

I.    Act Up!-Committee: Agents for Positive Change                 
II.   Global Goals Group (GGG): Think Global, Act Local.                            
III.  RoomIES: Classroom Integrated Educational Support Team        
IV.  Young Leaders’ Guild: Live-Learn-Lead.        

Members of Student Council spent one term in each of the above sub-groups, gaining valuable service-leadership experience while recruiting other students to join the newly created leadership teams on a longer-term basis. 

By cycling through the new leadership groups, Student Council completely satisfied its guiding objectives and built leadership capacity in our school. In the years to come, Student Council remained essential partners-in school leadership by ensuring the school’s ability to develop informed, conscientious agents for change.

Just as we aim to provide students with authentic leadership opportunities, so too must we empower the teachers who serve them.

I introduced to NIS a “Teacher of the Month” program that involved rigorous & transparent teacher evaluations, monthly nominations from each school department, and a mechanism for student voting. I was honored to then present the Teacher of the Month award at select-morning, all-school assemblies. Such events reinforced a culture of gratitude in our school among students & teachers alike; teachers earned respect as craftsmen/craftswomen who were held in the highest esteem while students expressed in community their appreciation for models of excellence in teaching.

I’m forever proud to be associated with such practices, activities, events, etc. that promote teaching & learning for what it is: the noblest of pursuits. 

Speaking of pursuits, I’ve worked in a few schools that have either developed their Vision & Mission statements from scratch or felt compelled to redefine their guiding statements. Here’s what I determined at NIS that Vision & Mission meant to me:

When developing or re-imagining Vision & Mission statements in schools, I typically ask the following questions of shareholders:

Vision: Who are we at our imagined-best?

Mission: How do we get there?

At NIS, the following 25 words/ideas appeared most frequently in our survey responses: active, best, caring, citizens, community, creative, education, excellent, friendly, global, improvement, innovative, inspiring, intellectual, Kazakhstan, leaders, math, morals, patriots, polylingual, produce, responsible, school, science, world.

These ideas, coupled with our existing Values-set formed the puzzle pieces from which our formal Guiding Statements emerged.

While helping schools to clarify their guiding interests, I’ve spent a fair amount of time over the last 20+ years thinking & re-thinking my own ‘philosophy of education.’ 

The following is an attempt to make compact my core beliefs about teaching, learning & leading.

I call this “A Focus on Learning: Signs of Effective Instructional Leadership.” It’s about Knowing (4Cs) & Doing (4Ps).

1) CARE (*represented in the symbol above as a half-circle facing up, like a smile.).

“When we CARE to learn & teach, we PREPARE to teach & learn.”

As school leaders, we have a responsibility to foster a school climate that is rooted in trust, gratitude, and the joyful pursuit of knowledge. Our pastoral obligation requires our full commitment to students, staff & families through direct, yet compassionate engagement. At NIS, our psychologists, caregivers-in-residence & our curators (group managers) were first in the line of support. They were the ones most attuned to the students’ socio-emotional needs, & most frequently in conversations with our parents. Such commitments reflected our belief that it is the responsibility of school leaders to protect and promote a culture of caring through the provision of time & resources allocated to accomplish this primary task. Furthermore, surveys of pastoral care were conducted frequently in order to ensure staff & students’ wellbeing. Finally, we evaluated teachers’ punctuality, preparedness & effect at delivering purpose-driven lessons.

2) CHALLENGE (*represented in the symbol above as a vertical line, like a deep well or a skyscraper.).

“When we CHALLENGE every learner, we PRACTICE deliberate teaching.”

NIS-Uralsk is part of an elite network of schools that support Kazakhstan’s best & brightest. Our Cambridge-influenced curriculum is designed to guide gifted & talented learners into excellence. Our academic work is student-focused & delivered through experiments in contemporary pedagogies inside & outside the classroom. It is the duty therefore of school leaders to assign & monitor the roles & responsibilities of those entrusted to educate our youth. We must ensure that our policies & practices support our highest aspirations for individuals & for our school community. School leadership must effectively evaluate to what extent teachers have delivered creative & effective instruction that guides students through various challenges into significant learning opportunities while helping them to meet their learning objectives, achieve autonomy & fulfill their potential.

3) CONNECT (*represented in the symbol above as a horizontal line, like a power cord plugged in or like a handshake.).

“When we CONNECT through school, we PARTICIPATE in a professional learning community.”

Since learning is a social enterprise, we must provide our students a rich array of experiential and inquiry & project-based activities. At NIS, our Trilingual Policy supported fluent communication in three languages (English, Kazakh & Russian), and our classroom environments became laboratories where professional educators model the challenges & benefits of collaboration. Our leadership ensured that students & teachers alike embraced learning inside & outside the classroom—joining our collective effort to make a positive difference in the lives of others.

4) CHANGE (*represented in the symbol above as a half-circle facing down, like a bridge bending toward the future.).

“When we CHANGE our minds for the better, we PRODUCE results that matter.”

As leaders in education, we are devoted to continuous improvement. At NIS, Our School Development Plan (SDP) expressed dozens of areas in need of improvement and offered corresponding interventions that were created to elevate our performance. Our school leadership ensured that these & many other initiatives on behalf of our students came to fruition. We then evaluated to what extent our teachers contributed in measurable & meaningful ways to the growth of students & colleagues alike. At years’ end, we re-engaged the cycle—reflecting on what should be stopped, started, kept and (further) improved upon.

Among the books I kept on my desk was Simon Sinek’s Start With Why. This book, preceded by Simon Sinek’s 2009 TEDx presentation (link above) changed the way that I think about the world, and about the world of education in particular. Sinek’s genius resides in his ability to transform scientific data about consumer behavior into a simple prescription for living. Sinek’s “Golden Circle”-model (Why?-How?-What?) suggests that “people don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.” Sinek’s philosophy has been so impactful on my thinking that it influences almost every significant action I take in schools.

I connect educational philosophy to leadership practice because I am convinced that if school leaders can guide their teams from knowing and believing in what counts to doing and achieving what matters in schools, then we may provide exceptional value to our professional learning communities.

In fact, I’ve extended Sinek’s inquiry-based model to include more questions (Who?-When?-Where?) for the purpose of guiding a variety of projects in our school—including our Strategic Development Plan (SDP).  

I enjoy the challenges associated with team and project(s) management. My DIME method (*because inviting shareholders to contribute their ‘10 cents’ makes us richer) might be summarized as follows:

I. DEFINING

I have for years, managed schools’ strategic development plans (SDP). These are updated annually and typically include between 45-60 projects. The projects are sub-managed by individuals with various specializations from around the school community. To track our progress, I devised another inquiry-based scheme to organize the work.

• Why? To establish high standards and strategic goals to organize for school improvement (Awareness).

• How? To assess school needs and consider paths that will lead to better outcomes (Authenticity).

• What? To determine the events most vital to realizing significant growth during the school year (Action).

• Who? To establish alliances that connect talented persons to projects of consequence (Artistry).

• When? To define the time and additional measures it takes to get results that matter (Accountability).

• Where? To reflect on each journey, evaluate our successes or lack thereof and dream anew (Achievement).

II. IMPLEMENTING

I upload our SDP online as a shared Google.doc and introduce an editable ‘Where?’-column, so that those primarily responsible for a project can provide regular updates that include reflection (a progress report), references (evidence of action), and recommendations (evaluations and determinations on future investments).

III. MONITORING (*Formative Assessment)

At our near-weekly SDP meetings, I select projects for review that I want to discuss as models of excellence or opportunities for improvement. When we have not met our obligations, we discuss and troubleshoot our problems together and try to leave the meeting with an improved commitment to the project(s). Throughout the year, I provide the school community with SDP updates on a labeled whiteboard, adjacent to my office. I use a system of colored magnets (green = achieved; yellow = on target; red = off target) to clearly communicate our progress. I do this for a couple reasons: I want everyone to plainly see what we are trying to achieve together, and how we are doing in our endeavor. And I also want everyone to know that I take responsibility for achieving our goals, and that the “buck stops with me.”

IV. EVALUATING (*Summative Assessment)

Towards the end of the academic year, I create a shared Google.Slide and I ask those primarily responsible for SDP projects to answer the following in three separate slides:

• Why did we commit to the project (re: What was our strategic motivation?)?

• How did the project unfold (re: What evidence do we have of our engagement, or lack thereof?)?

• What are our recommendations for next steps?

At the end of the academic year, we share the results of our SDP reflections in community and determine if the projects have been satisfactorily completed, or if they should be renewed, revised, or terminated before the next school year.

Altogether, my educational philosophy and leadership practice works when our love of learning matches our will to work together to achieve the school of our dreams.

In the early days of NIS, I created a teacher evaluation instrument called the "Teacher Support Form." I later introduced a trilingual version of this form online so that all school leaders could submit evaluations via laptop, tablet, or phone. I used color-coding to aggregate data and communicate results—which in turn was used to identify teacher improvement/coaching opportunities and inform larger professional development needs. 

I also created for our Heads of Department a monthly "Teacher Performance Review" tool. The ‘Review’ used evaluative language that complemented our “Teacher Support Form” and provided department leaders an opportunity to conduct efficient, yet critical reviews of their respective teams.

Over the years at NIS, I introduced a number of mechanisms for professional development, including, “Guerrilla PD,” “Coffee, Tea & PD,” and “Time to Shine.”

"Guerrilla PD"

In the first couple years of our school, I noticed how difficult it was for teachers to find time for professional development. Our teachers, it seemed, were persons of varied backgrounds & expertise, constantly on the move, & regularly engaged in some kind of small-scale contest against the odds. It reminded me of guerilla warfare (*minus the arms!).

While trying to find a solution to this problem, I came across the teachings of the Hungarian psychologist, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. He suggested that we achieve “flow” in life when we achieve balance between our states of arousal and control. More specifically, he wrote:

“Flow” is the mental state of operation in which a person performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity. In essence, flow is characterized by complete absorption in what one does.

I endeavored at NIS to connect those educators with elevated, but under-utilized skill-sets to teachers with less competence, but a real desire to learn a specific skill.

We partnered 2-4 educators for a semester & generally found that mentors & mentees alike discovered/rediscovered flow because they were sufficiently stimulated & challenged; the latter acquired new skills & met a professional need while the former’s passion to teach a thing (& perhaps to teach others) was rekindled.

Guerrilla PD is now a part of life at NIS, and mentors & mentees regularly switch roles (as the skills-set demonstrated-vs-desired, dictate). Teachers, furthermore, have grown to appreciate the opportunity to create their own cohorts & set their own PD schedules.

Lastly, just as I was informed by our teachers & inspired by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, NIS teachers adapted to 'pay it forward' and endeavored in their own classrooms to create for their students opportunities to achieve flow.

"Coffee, Tea & PD"

I experimented with the idea of "Coffee, Tea & PD" in Chicago schools—interviewing teachers about their practice in coffee shops around town & sharing our learning in community.

At NIS, however, we expanded upon this idea to present on & discuss assigned themes/topics-of-need each month with 10-15 teachers. We determined that every department would send at least one representative to the seminar & that attendees would be responsible for leading related-breakout sessions in their departments through the month & until the next "Coffee, Tea & PD" event.

One of the things that kept us motivated early on was the warmth & collegiality of our 1-2 hour events. Perhaps this was because attendees volunteered to join sessions/topics of choice? Or maybe it was because we created formal invitations & set a lovely spread for our guests? Or maybe it was just the complimentary coffee, tea, and sweets?

Whatever the reason, our sessions were among the most predictably joyful experiences that I’ve encountered with adults in education. Moreover, the sessions were frequently catalysts for Guerrilla PD or even Action Research initiatives.

"Time to Shine"

Regardless of the PD avenue(s) taken by NIS teachers, I asked each of our teachers delivering professional development to consider the following guiding questions as they organized for meaningful & effective professional development in support of our learners:

At the end of each semester, our teacher-leaders presented at a conference/celebration, their experiences delivering & participating in professional development. These events built esteem in our learning community while reminding us of the tremendous talent that we already possessed, along with our existing capacity to continue to improve—for our own sake & for the sake of those we serve.

As important as it is to understand, evaluate, improve & even celebrate teaching & learning practices, school administrators earn/maintain credibility in a school by actively participating in (*vs presiding over) a professional learning community.

Among the ways that I do this is by assisting in the classroom as a team-teacher and contributing academic texts that support our collective work. Here's a booklet of lessons that I devised to support our teachers & students' preparing for IELTS (International English Language Testing System).

Please click on the pages below to advance the text.

In June 2018, NIS Uralsk received full accreditation with the Council of International Schools (CIS). The award represented a culmination of more than 3 years of personal & collective commitment to the international accreditation process, and for all practical purposes marked the fulfillment of my pledge nearly five years prior to work myself out of a job with Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools (NIS).

As Chair of our CIS Steering Committee, I can confirm that our successful but imperfect school understood why it is great, how it must continue to utilize CIS’ toolkit for authentic reflection and substantial improvement, and what it must do in the future to more completely live into its guiding statements.

In my time with NIS, I gave as much as I could to develop in Kazakhstan a strong and sustainable culture of excellence. I am proud today that a once-wobbly, year-one state-sponsored institution has evolved into an autonomous, laboratory school and emerged a regional hub for sharing its best practices in Kazakh education. Moreover, I am blessed to have seen so many former students of this school, matriculate to Nazarbayev University and other institutions of higher learning in Kazakhstan and beyond.

In conclusion, I’ll leave the reader with some lingering images & notes from my time in West Kazakhstan.

Included below are photos from my first NIS “Opening Bell” ceremony, where I met the city’s Mayor (*then regional Governor; then Astana’s Mayor), Altay Kulginov & our School’s Director (then Astana’s regional Education Director), Sholpan Kadyrova. Both Mayor Kulginov & Director Kadyrova remain treasured friends, and it is remarkable that we all changed cities and yet maintained similar zip codes 10 years after our first meeting!

Included also below are images from my last days in Uralsk, where our students & staff presented me with the most touching tributes and a traditional “chapan” that I will cherish for the rest of my days.

Perhaps my favorite memory of my time in West Kazakhstan, however, is of five NIS students who, within days of my arrival there, took me for a tour of Uralsk & treated me to a pizza dinner. Nearly five years later, we reconvened at that same spot and these outstanding young men shared with me their plans to begin studies that autumn in highly competitive universities in Asia, Europe & USA.

I will never forget their kindness to me in my earliest days in Kazakhstan & I hope that we’ll manage another reunion someday--perhaps at the same pizza joint in Uralsk, or maybe elsewhere on this planet. In any event, I am confident that these young men--like so many of the scholars whom I’ve served--will continue to leave their unique and positive impressions on the world.

So, where/what’s next?

While taking a chance on Kazakhstan remains one of the best shots that I ever took, I’m ready for something new. I’m back home in Chicago now, and I’m excited to begin the next phase of my personal & professional journey.

The map below conveys in gold the countries that I’ve been fortunate enough to have visited since leaving for Kazakhstan in 2013. I don’t know where I’ll ultimately live, learn & lead next—whether in the USA or abroad—but I’m certain that education takes us places and brings us closer to our dreams.

Thanks for reading.

Warren