Last week, Chris and Pam Maxey visited the African Leadership Academy (ALA) in South Africa. They met with founder Chris Bradford and faculty leaders to share ideas for how The Island School can work together with ALA in the future to help define great school leadership. ALA and The Island School are excited to model creative assessments that celebrate mastery and community work that makes a difference.

Pam and Chris also reunited with Nirina, Summer Term ’15 and Ben who arrives this week to join Summer Term ’16. Nirina is graduating and taking a GAP year to build a commercial scale aquaponics system back in his home country of Madagascar. Ben is motivated to learn more about our waste to energy systems this summer and how he can bring similar ideas to fruition back home in Gabon.

After a great tour of campus, Nirina shared his senior thesis presentation. During the presentation he asked the audience to practice yoga with him in order to explain his journey at ALA in a unique way. He discussed the importance of balance and learning how to lean on one another and how this was especially true at The Island School.

The Island School aims to be a truly global base camp where young leaders can lean on one another, where they can learn to better understand the opportunities and challenges faced by their generation. Our work with ALA is a strong step forward towards achieving this goal.