ECOLINT MAGAZINE • N°11 • AUTUMN 2012 Campus des Nations Year 6 students’ Geocaching expedition INSIGHTS A sporting chance Team teaching In good hands Technology in question QUOI DE NEUF? Talking the talk Universities and Ecolint Geocaching ESPRIT ECOLINT End human trafficking now LES ANCIENS ET PAS SO OLD Une éducation en or Stick to your guns A day in the life An artist’s way COMING UP OR JUST BEEN Celebrating your generosity Des aventuriers culturels In partnership with the Alumni Association A vos agendas A word from Introduction the DG By the time this edition of echo reaches you, our new Focus for the Future will be accessible via our website. This short document affirms who we are and sets out our objectives for the immediate future as we approach our 90th birthday in 2014. These goals appear under three headings: a high-performing Foundation, educational excellence and, finally, the Ecolint community. The genesis of Focus for the Future was the work undertaken by the Strategic Planning Committee last year, which studied the life cycle of the Ecolint student from admission, through the early, primary and secondary years, culminating with the move to tertiary education and becoming an alumnus. Working in groups, the committee conducted surveys and interviews and summarised its research under four simple headings: What’s working? What’s inspiring? What’s missing? What’s possible? From these findings, we drew up a Benchmark for Excellence: a set of criteria that would define and describe excellence in every realm of school life from governance to It is also my pleasure to introduce this pastoral care, from teaching to facilities, from extra-curricular provision to university issue of echo magazine. We hope that guidance. And it is from our evaluation of how close we are to each benchmark for this edition, once again, provides you excellence that the objectives are derived. Working with my gifted colleagues across with an insight into the diversity of the Foundation, I shall now strive to fulfil these goals. Please take a look at Focus for Ecolint’s vibrant community viewed from the Future and write to me if you feel that you can contribute to achieving our aims. the perspective of both staff, students and alumni. For example, I recommend One of the goals is “to reconnect with our alumni around the globe as part of the to you the articles, “Team teaching” on 90th birthday celebrations and engage them thereafter in supporting today’s and P. 4 and “End human trafficking now” on tomorrow’s students”! If you are an alumnus, it would be good to hear from you P. 11. We are beginning to see the fruits and, in particular, to hear your ideas of how you could reconnect with the school and of our dual language programme as you share your expertise with us. For example, perhaps you are willing to be contacted will read about in the “Talking the talk” by current students regarding careers or university advice, you could offer a work article on P. 7. placement or suggest an opportunity for students completing the CAS (Creativity, Action, Service) component of their IB Diploma. I intend to reach out to our alumni in I recently had the opportunity to the coming months and hope to meet many of you. meet our new cohort of PGCE (Post Graduate Certificate in Education) Another goal is “to ensure that our parents are well informed and engaged in the life student teachers and asked them what of their children’s school” and I also welcome feedback on this objective. Increasingly, they thought were the most important we are harnessing technology to aid communication but nothing beats face-to-face qualities that our education should contact with parents and I look forward to every opportunity to meet with you in the instill. The top two answers were year ahead. integrity and curiosity and I hope that you also feel these attributes are in evidence in the articles in this issue of Vicky Tuck, echo magazine. It is a pleasure to work Director General with colleagues who are dedicated to ensure that their students have a thirst for knowledge and an appetite to make Ecolint is a not for profit educational a difference. Foundation created in 1924 I really enjoyed hearing from current We depend on your support to continue providing the and former students and reading about highest quality international education. Please consider: what is going on inside and outside our schools and across the Foundation in this Leaving us a legacy or making an endowment issue of echo and hope that you do too. Make a difference Vicky Tuck, For more information, please contact: Director General Michaelene Stack, Director of Development Email : [email protected] – Tel : +41 (0)22 787 26 63 2 echo11 | autumn2012 INSIGHTS A sporting chance Robert Roxburgh, (La Chât ’96), studied at Ecolint from 1994 to 1996. He now works for the International Olympic Committee in Lausanne. It is a pleasure to hear Robert’s explanation of how and why his time at Ecolint changed his life “quite drastically”... How did you come to be at Ecolint? election. Since then, I arrived at La Châtaigneraie because I have collaborated my father’s work brought our family very closely with the to Vaud. As I could not speak French, 2012 communications Ecolint allowed me to complete my team and was involved secondary education in English. in each of their major communications What did you do after leaving Ecolint? initiatives, such as The time that I spent at Ecolint had the Olympic Torch an incredible influence on my life. The Relay. It has been exposure to French and to the school’s a passionate seven spirit, encouraging us to strive to achieve years and London 2012 our personal best, inspired my decision to was a first class team attend the University of Geneva. This may to work with, as the Robert, in the middle, with some of his IOC colleagues not have been the most logical choice for coverage of the Games someone who, only two years earlier, had shows. Interestingly, Ecolint was well not being my teacher, Mike encouraged just a very basic command of the French represented at the Games with at least me to join the local football team and language. However, it all worked out two other alumni (Julie Burley, La Chât this gave me the exposure to French and I graduated in 2000. After university ’99, and James MacLeod, La Chât ‘92) that enabled me to envisage university and a short detour into the world of the playing key roles for the Organising in French as a real option. internet, I started working in sport at a Committee. football club and then for the Union of If you could go back and do it again, European Football Associations (UEFA), Did your time at Ecolint affect your is there anything you would do before joining the International Olympic choices in life? differently? Committee (IOC) in 2004. Quite drastically! Before Ecolint, I had I guess you could always say I should always lived in Scotland and my outlook have done this or that differently. Where are you living now and what was very UK-focused. The La Chât However, the decisions that I have are you doing? experience allowed me to broaden my made have led me to where I am today I live in Lausanne and am head of horizons both linguistically and culturally. and I am very happy. So, no, I would not Olympic Games communications for This led me to Geneva University go back and do anything differently. the IOC. In this role, I work in close and, ultimately, to my current job and partnership with the communications numerous friendships that I probably What qualities do you think an Ecolint departments of the Organising would not otherwise have formed. education encouraged in you? Committees of the Olympic Games Without a doubt, a multicultural in London (UK), Sochi (Russia), Rio de What are your fondest memories of awareness. It is indispensable in my Janeiro (Brazil), and Pyeong Chang Ecolint? current job and was really developed (Republic of Korea). My job is to help Although I was only at the school for during my time at Ecolint. guide them through the different two years, I have numerous great communications challenges that memories of events during my time Why do you think education, arise during a project of the size and there. However, my most important particularly an Ecolint education, complexity of the Olympic Games. memories are of the people. Many life- prepares students well for life? I also work very closely with the long friendships were created at La Chât I think that a good education is essential IOC department that looks after the and this is what I treasure the most. to allow people to relate to others organisation of the Games to co- properly and to contribute to the ordinate messaging between the IOC Who was your favourite teacher and development of a sustainable society. and the organisers. why? An Ecolint education takes that a step I cannot really say that I had a favourite, further by giving students an exposure Did you have much to do with the as the high quality of the faculty meant to a unique educational environment. London Olympic Games? that each of my teachers influenced me This allows them not only to learn the My involvement with the London positively in their own way. However, theory but to apply it on a daily basis, Games began in July 2005 in Singapore, one staff member that had a significant as they interact with their counterparts when I was present at London’s impact was Mike Pasternak.