Summaries From Keynote Presenters in IB Asia Pacific Conference 2013 in Kuala Lumpur

[caption id="attachment_253769" align="alignleft" width="162" caption="Ben Walden, an English actor who talked about inspirational leadership as one of the presenters in the conference"][/caption]

By Yan Yulius

PYP Coordinator at Sekolah Ciputra, Surabaya, Indonesia

Recently I had a chance to attend another regional conference held by IB Asia Pacific office and this time it took place in Kuala Lumpur. The venue was chosen for the first time after Singapore held the event for several years already. It definitely gave different atmosphere and vibe to the event, especially people who come to the conference can also do tourism visits to some interesting places around Kuala Lumpur. It’s a nice city, better if I had to compare to big cities in Indonesia. However, I saw lots of Indonesian around the city and made me felt like home. Talking about the conference itself, I think I would rate it as an average. There were some factors that made me think like that such as: the rooms/ venues for the breakout sessions, the compact schedule which I think there were too many sessions in one day, and also the quality of some presenters. In this writing, I would like to share my notes and thoughts of the keynote sessions that I attended.

Thursday, March 21st 2013

Shaping the future: Visioning 2030 by Prof. Sohail Inayatullah

The first keynote speaker is Professor Sohail Inayatullah who is an expert of future studies. I never heard future studies before but I think it would be interesting to see how IB education see the relevance of future studies in the programmes from the perspective of this expert. He opened his speech with some facts about today’s society which is sometimes overwhelmed with too much realities and starts to think about entering the unknown of the future. He stated many times that the future is asset, resource and narrative. There were so many changes happen nowadays and will continue to happen in the next following years or decades such as: more women lead important role/ organization , climate change (which usually become one of the themes at most IB schools), and the possibility of animal rights to protect biodiversity. Animal Rights…? Yes, animals will be projected to have its own rights and protected by law in the future. So how do we learn about the future? He proposed some ideas, firstly of course we need to predict, then to be interpretive or to understand perspective. The next step is to be critical with the current issue which might affect future and the last one is to do action learning for shaping the future, at least our own future.

Now, can you imagine what will happen in 2030? Imagine these: library in the future 2025, where human can directly download content to the brain; development of vitro meat, human-made protein in food; flat world where people connect to each other easily; artificial intelligence; development of healthy cities; demographic shift; transparent brain where you can use your brain to literally control technology; everything is hyperlink; and of course the rise of Chindia (stands for China and India) as the new powerful countriesfor their science and technology. So how the school will be in 2030? If I use metaphors to describe the school using industrial terminology, it should be like smart shopping center where learner could choose and has so many options for their learning. School should apply customer co- create system, where the learner could negotiate the curriculum with the school. So how do we prepare for the future? First step, just imagine, because your imagination matters.

Presenter’s suggested site: www.meta-future.org

Friday, March 22nd 2013

Inspirational Leadership: an inspiration from Shakespeare's literature by  Ben Walden

On the second day of the conference, Ben Walden was chosen to open the day with his keynote speech. He is an English actor who is currently promoting leadership education through the screenplay of William Shakespeare’s literature. In this session he used Henry V, one of famous Shakespeare literatures, to deliver concept of inspirational leadership. Once again, he started his speech with a quote "Imagination is more important than knowledge" – Einstein, which I thought the word "imagination" has strong emphasis in this conference. He mentioned again that imaginative quality is vital. As educator, teachers have to understand what we are educating our students for. He also said a classic quote “Managers do things right, Leaders do right things”. In relation with school, the learning community need to be inspired with the act of leadership by the administrators and by teachers as the leader of the class. At this point, the core of leadership according to the discussion is spotting talent of others. So what is the different between vision and strategic target? In vision you should not have measurable target, unlike the strategic plan. This target can be deficit to inspire community. Somehow, I think that this statement is correct, if  we only targeting the school community to do things just like what we plan then we are only bunch of boring managers attempting to achieve targets. Without vision, school community would not have courage, motivation and inspiration to go forward.

Another interesting ideas proposed by Ben Walden was 4 Concepts of Leadership Potentials divided by two masculine and feminine qualities: Good King – who works based on order, Warrior - who is action oriented, Great Mother – who is nurturing, Medicine Woman – who works for change. He asked audience to reflect which style that we most and least prefer with. I evaluated myself as Great mother for the most preference style and Warrior for the least. Well, I was worried that I am too feminine, but Ben mentioned clearly that these qualities are not merely for specific gender; instead these qualities are general and can be applied to anyone of any sex. Then, we discussed about the problems that might come up if we are having too much preference in one learning style, which I found also interesting. This idea could tell us that if we are conscious of it and become aware the consequences, we have choice. At the end of the session, he told story of Henry V about his leadership qualities who could inspire his army to fight against the opponent whose much more army (which I found similar with a movie “300” by Zack Snyder). One thing that I remembered the most is that a leader could take some times alone to think and reflect, without a need to be always there and fight in front. Finally, Ben Walden acted the inspirational speech of Henry V, which was touching and really inspired me to apply these leadership skills and shared with others when I come back to school.

Saturday, March 23rd 2013

Teaching for Resilience by Prof. Paula Barrett

“You wander room to room hunting for diamond necklace that is already around your neck" Rumi - 13th century, Persian poet

That was a quote that Prof. Paula used to open her keynote. She is a an expert in the field of child psychology and owned FRIENDS program that propose the prevention and treatment of anxiety and depression. She used the quote to emphasis the idea that most people don’t have confidence to share their mental health problem with others. One thing that I agreed about her statement was that physical health problem is not stigma; but mental illness is. Common people would think that mental health problem are not the subject that you would share with other people freely; unlike the physical condition which is easier to share even with people who we don’t really know. Surprisingly, based on her research, 1 of every 5 people experience anxiety or depression. She defined anxiety as excessive worry which also relate to physical disruption such as stomach ache, headache. Some people called it “perfectionism”. Somehow, I could use this knowledge to reflect to myself and felt like it's really helpful for me to understand more about my mental health condition. In the context of school, you can say that 1 of every 5 students in your class experienced anxiety and definitely it needs prevention which is long term. The best investment that you can do for prevention will be embedding social and emotional skills in the school curriculum. Just like the previous presenters, Professor Paula asked the audience to have vision to the future; She mentioned that in the next 30 years, people will spend more money to deal with mental problems/anxiety and obesity from diabetes. To overcome the mental health problem, she proposed an idea of resilience, which she defined as the ability to bounce back in the face of adversity.

Furthermore, she discussed about the factors that could affect mental health. The risk factors are physiological sensitivity, neurological growth and life events. She mentioned that the growth of children from teen up to age 21-25 is the riskiest age for experiencing depression and anxiety. While I couldn’t agree more that life events really have significant impact on someone psychology. These include breakdown family, peer pressure, marriage, work problems and much more daily life experience which happened day to day. The good news is, there are protective factors. One important thing that I got is about attachment, means that every human being needs affection from at least 1 person in their life. In school context, teacher is one of the closest person who students could attach to, though teachers still needs to limit with professional space between him/herself and the child. Another thing I learn is that we can definitely teach attention style or mindfulness by looking at the detail of students habit in learning and doing their daily tasks. Thing that I found a bit cliché is being a positive thinker; it’s definitely true and undeniable but it’s also extremely hard to do. It’s interesting to hear a statement from Prof. Paula about how you can identify and determine people happiness from the wrinkle on their face when they gets old. Physical and social enhancement would be the next factors that might affect mental positively. And the last one is prevention program which can be embedded in school curriculum, in this case she proposed a program to teach about resilience called FRIENDS program, which is used worldwide. Professor Paula Barrett ended her session with another quote ”Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising everytime we fall” - Confusius 500 BC, China.

Suggested site by presenter: www.pathwayshrc.com.au and a movie www.thehappymovie.com