Intentional Beginnings | TIE Newsletter 12 August 2026 | The International Educator (TIE Online)

12 August 2026

STRIKING A BALANCE

AI Literacy and Rigor Were Never Enemies

By Jacob LaPlante, Jason Boll, Andrew Cajina, and Manuela Penalosa

Research and classroom experience reveal that instructional design can strengthen both AI literacy and academic rigor... more

Supporting Women Leaders in International Schools

By Dr. Denise Brohm

Every woman’s story is different, yet common themes emerge about ambition, belonging, and what international schools can do to support future leaders... more

Setting the Table for Intentional Beginnings

By Megan Vosk and Shafali

What can we do to shape culture, community, and collaboration with purpose and intention, to seize the promise of a new beginning and set ourselves up for success… more

Building Psychologically Safe Classrooms

By Iyabo Tinubu and Elizabeth Palathra

Why do students learn best when they feel safe? Explore practical strategies for building trust, belonging, and inclusive classroom communities... more

PEARLS OF WISDOM

The Impact of Our Leadership

By Yasmine Hashmi

In this Pearl, Yasmine reflects on how a whole school belonging audit revealed the difference between the values leaders intend to uphold and how those values are actually experienced... more

Who Is This School For?

By David Sheehan

Admissions is a school's first act of institutional honesty. Families read who belongs from how they're received, not the mission statement... more

INCLUSION BY DESIGN

Aligning Vision, Mission, and Admissions To Intentionally Include Students With Disabilities

By Laura Cox

How do inclusive schools move from good intentions to meaningful action? Start with leadership, admissions, and systems designed for every learner... more

Communicating School Safety With Care

By Audrey Parker and Sandra Sheppard

Strengthen school safety by using language that builds trust, reduces anxiety, and helps students respond confidently during emergencies... more

When a Lunchbox Looks Like a Crisis

By Jenny-Lee Moore

Leaders can move beyond reactive responses, understand context, and create calmer, more connected school communities during times of tension… more

Sensing a Barrier, an Overwhelming Gap

By Somang H. Choi, Grade 12 student

A reflective and deeply personal essay exploring language loss, cultural identity, and the emotional distance that can emerge within multilingual immigrant families across generations... more

Leadership Through Community Engagement At NIST

By Scott Jamieson

How might we work together to create a culture of service within our own schools and empower students to take action for a more just, equitable, joyful, and sustainable future... more

The Earth Rebounds. So Do Teachers.

By Matthew Piercy

Teachers carry enormous weight. Summer is not simply time away from school; it is the season when we regain equilibrium. My yoga teacher regularly invites me to slow down and hold a pose professing, “it is only injury which is likely to happen when you move too fast.” Any glint or murmuring to slow down grows louder when I consider who I probably have cited more than anyone else in my writing the past years, Paul Salopek… more

If AI Can Pass the Exam, the Exam Is the Problem

By Conrad Hughes

Recent meta-analyses and research have shown that reasoning-focused models (OpenAI’s o1 and GPT-4) outperform medical students on examinations, clearly and systematically beating the median score and, in most cases, the highest-performing humans’ scores too. The assessments in question were multiple-choice tests, the ultimate symbol of mass assessment… more

Dear September

By John Mikton

Some thoughts and reflections from a year of learning, sharing, and leading workshops, keynotes, and coaching for school leaders and educators, and, more importantly, teaching children ages 3 to 11. This year that thinking became a letter, written to September… more

Helping Teachers Flourish: The Heart of School Leadership

By Lianne Dominguez

This summer, I had the privilege of teaching and learning alongside almost a hundred teachers and school leaders through two back-to-back courses on instructional supervision and evaluation. They represented different schools, systems, countries, and stages of leadership. Yet despite their diverse contexts, I was struck by how quickly our conversations converged… more