We enjoyed our first interview with Dave McMaster so much that we spoke with him a second time! If you missed the first interview on what it is like to start an international school, definitely check it out – it’s Episode 74. Dave also recorded two Going Global Stories for us. Head to our information hub to enjoy those.

Dave has 35 years of K-12 education experience, primarily in leadership roles in Canada, Hong Kong, and Bahrain. He joined the Esol organization in Bahrain in September 2018, and led the founding team in establishing the American School of Bahrain, which opened its doors to just over 100 students amid the COVID-19 Pandemic and has grown to nearly 800 students in its first five years of operation.

Prior to this role, Dave served as Principal and Head of School at the Canadian International School of Hong Kong. During his tenure, he spearheaded the authorization process for the full slate of International Baccalaureate (IB) programs. Within six years, CDNIS DP students ranked in the top 10% of IB schools worldwide, and CDNIS was recognized as the top international school in Hong Kong for seven consecutive years. Dave has founded three schools, including the American School of Bahrain.

Dave’s authenticity as an educational leader motivates the entire school community to continually improve, ensuring excellence in educational provision. He strongly believes that cultivating a school culture based on mutual respect, happiness, and high yet realistic expectations will lead to a fruitful educational experience for students. He emphasizes the "smile index" as a key barometer for assessing a school's success. Dave also has extensive experience in recruiting, hiring, and retaining top educators, which he considers crucial to the success of founding ASB.

Dave holds a Bachelor of Education from Queen's University. He also earned a Master of Arts in Educational Leadership from San Diego State University.

Our Guiding Question was, “What is it like teaching and living in the Middle East?”

Here are a few of the topics covered in this episode:

• What teachers can experience teaching in a fairly typical Middle Eastern international school
• Some advantages of and expectations for living in the Middle East as expats, particularly in Bahrain

Resources mentioned in the episode:

American School of Bahrain

Dave's Contact Information:

LinkedIn

Instagram

The show was recorded on February 16, 2025.

Categories: School Life | Travel | Recruiting | Bahrain

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Music: YouTube. (2022). Acoustic Guitar | Folk | No copyright | 2022❤️. YouTube. Retrieved October 11, 2022, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOEmg_6i7jA.

As international educators, like so many others, in a sense, we tend to write chapters to our life stories. These stories can be organized by countries, schools, travel, and, of course, the regular categories of relationships, family, children, aging, and so on.

We were fortunate to catch our guest, Mark Lewis, just as he was reflecting about the chapters of his international experiences, with his retirement coming up in a couple of months.

Mark is a seasoned international educator with experience at the International School Manila, American International School Riyadh, Concordia International School Shanghai, Bodwell International School, International School Ho Chi Minh City-American Academy, and BASIS Park Lane Harbour. He is currently a principal and teacher in the public school system in Canada.

One of Mark’s core beliefs is that many of the world's future leaders will emerge from students educated in international schools. These students are often multilingual, have received top-tier education, networked with ambitious peers, come from families of means, and almost always pursue higher education degrees—traits that are well-suited to leadership roles. This leadership may manifest in local communities, small business ventures, significant corporate positions, or even public office. It is crucial that international schools continue preparing their students for leadership roles by fostering a skill set that goes beyond academic excellence.

We asked "soon-to-be-retired" Mark the guiding question: “What are some of your lessons learned from the various roles you experienced during your years of going global?”

With such a long career in international schooling, Mark had a lot of gems to share with us:

• Commonalities of international schools in Asia
• Characteristics of international schools specifically in China
• Clarifications between legacy international schools, bilingual schools, and local-student-majority schools
• A look at for-profit schools and the various forms they can take
• Working with school boards
• “Leaky boundaries” in international schools
• Repatriating to one’s home country
• A rapid-fire sharing of lessons learned from Mark’s career overseas

Resources mentioned in the episode:

EARCOS East Asia Regional Council of Schools

NESA - Near East/South Asia Council of Overseas Schools

Mark’s Contact Information:

LinkedIn

This episode was recorded on March 23, 2025.
Categories: Leadership | Change | School Life | School Types

Remember to access our Educators Going Global website for more information and consider joining our Patreon community at patreon/educatorsgoingglobal!

Email us with comments or suggestions at educatorsgoingglobal@gmail.com

Follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram or YouTube.

Listen on your favorite podcast app: connect from our share page.

Music: YouTube. (2022). Acoustic Guitar | Folk | No copyright | 2022❤️. YouTube. Retrieved October 11, 2022, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOEmg_6i7jA.

Where does your school stand in terms of designing, implementing and measuring the effectiveness of its whole-school wellness program? Several of our thought-leader guests have told us that wellness is at the top of the to do list for many international schools.

Along with Wellness, another recurring topic in our episodes is change management, especially around the development of new programs. We hear stories about initiative fatigue and the dropping of programs when their champions leave the school.

With so much talk around wellness and change management we decided to invite Alison Leathwood on the show to share an overview of how to design and implement a schoolwide wellness program that is sustainable.

Alison is an international school physical education teacher who is passionate about wellness. She is dedicated to equipping students with the tools they need for both physical and emotional wellbeing. She extends this passion beyond the classroom, having served in various leadership roles including HS Advisory Curriculum Coordinator, EC-12 Personal Development Coordinator, Wellness Committee Chair and currently serving as the Head of Department for PE. Through these leadership roles, Alison strives to create a lasting positive impact on the social-emotional well-being of the entire school community.

Our guiding question for this show was, “How might international school leaders approach the development of a school- and community-wide wellness program based on Positive Psychology?”

Alison offered such a detailed framework along with so many practical strategies that it is futile to try and summarize them here. So I will share just a handful of the topics to whet your appetite for designing an effective wellness program at your school!

Here they are:

• Using a Positive Psychology approach to wellness
• Leveraging Character Strengths and the PERMAH pillars
• The who, what, when, where, why and how of implementing a wellness program
• Other factors that will affect the success of your wellness program

Resources mentioned in the episode:

Alison's Resource folder

David’s Wellness@ES site for integrating Pos Psych into the elementary school

Alison’s Contact Information:

LinkedIn

X: @peleathwood

This episode was recorded on February 24, 2025.

Categories: Wellness | Leadership | Change

Remember to access our Educators Going Global website for more information and consider joining our Patreon community at patreon/educatorsgoingglobal!

Email us with comments or suggestions at educatorsgoingglobal@gmail.com

Follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram or YouTube.

Listen on your favorite podcast app: connect from our share page.

Music: YouTube. (2022). Acoustic Guitar | Folk | No copyright | 2022❤️. YouTube. Retrieved October 11, 2022, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOEmg_6i7jA.