We recently invited AES parents to join me for a coffee morning to learn more about me—my own values, and what I've been observing and learning during my transition.

Change is all around us. It seems to come faster and faster. The AES community is and will always be changing. Change is inevitable.

But growth is not. We can live in the past. We can deny the change. We can refuse to recognize it.

Or, we can embrace the change and learn and grow from it.

How do we want our children to grow while they're enrolled at AES? How will they show us they're growing?

There are many frameworks to understand or explain learning. In this presentation I want to focus on three areas that we want all our students to grow in.

First is the obvious area of intellectual growth. Broad content knowledge: in science, in history, in literature, in mathematics and so on.

Growth in intellectual knowledge is easy to measure. I can recite the US presidents by name, or can spell all the provinces in my home country.

However, broad content knowledge is available on any smart phone with a 3G connection. Although it's easy to measure growth in this area, it's also limited. We want more for our students...

Skills are even more critical when any smart phone can give you the answers. It's been said, "You get hired for what you know. You get fired for not getting along with people."

Creativity. Collaboration. Communication. Critical thinking.
Problem solving.

These are habits of learning and working that we want students to develop. Can students learn as a member of team? Can they produce something innovative together? Can they communicate a compelling message?

It's challenging to assess and evaluate a student's growth in some of these skills. At AES we think it's critical that we do so.

The third area for student growth that I want to describe is character. Our mission is for our students to develop into "responsible, compassionate global citizens." It's not enough to know a lot of stuff, or to be able to sell your message well to others.

Integrity. Empathy. Joy. Perseverance. Responsibility.

It's much harder to assess a student's growth in character. But, we want to build this area of growth into our curriculum, into our learning activities and into our assessments.

The world is changing. We want our students to grow as the world changes around them.

Content knowledge. Skills. Character. Three areas for growth that the parents and teachers and programs at the American Embassy School of New Delhi want for all our students.

Thank you for trusting us with your children, and their growth!