Show #123 Jakarta Intercultural School

Transcript

Lori: “Selamat datang kembali,” or welcome back! And as we begin a new season, I want to start with another Bahasa Indonesia phrase: “Mari kita rayakan!” Let’s celebrate! It is the perfect way to open our season because today’s Inclusion School Spotlight takes us to Jakarta Intercultural School, the host of SENIA’s next in-person conference, Championing Inclusion: Celebrating 25 Years of SENIA.

In this episode, I speak with Head of School Maya Nelson about how JIS has worked to make belonging part of the fabric of its community. Maya shares how the school supports its diverse population of 2,200 students through inclusive practices, individualized learning pathways, and the JIS Learning Center.

We also talk about the power of believing in students, building a culture where every learner is valued, and recognizing that inclusion is an ongoing journey.

What a joyful way to begin our new season. Let’s head to Jakarta!

Lori: Well, hello, Maya. Welcome to the podcast.

Maya: Thank you for having me, Lori, it’s so nice to be here with you.

Lori: Yes. I’m really excited to be interviewing you as the head of a school of Jakarta Intercultural School, a place that I called home for several years back in the early 2000s. So I can’t wait to talk about how your school has grown and become so much more inclusive of individuals.

Maya: Thank you. Yes, I’m excited to talk with you too. So much has happened in the last decades, and we’re excited about the work that’s happening at our school.

Lori: Yeah. Well, great. So start by introducing GISS and sharing how inclusion is defined and experienced across your school community. And please let us know, like, the size of your school and.

Maya: Sure.

Maya: So, Jakarta Intercultural School. We’re actually going into our 75th birthday this next year. I’m very proud of. It has a long history, and I think that first and foremost, the culture of the school and the community of the school is what propels everything about student learning. What we hear from our young people, our students, even families that come back or are around the world, our teachers, our faculty, administrators, staff. Is that what they love about the school is how supportive the whole community is, how welcoming and kind of a culture it is, and that it’s a place where students can learn and engage. Engage and be the best of who they want to be. So with that, I think I can speak to the last eight years that I’ve been there.

Maya: But certainly the work that came before I was there is that our school has tried very hard to ensure that every student belongs, to ensure that belonging becomes part of the fabric of what our school stands for, as it naturally has over the decades as well. We have worked on very tangible pieces and steps to ensure that inclusivity is true to the meaning of what that word stands for. And that we want to make sure that every student that comes through the doorways of our school has the program, the resources, the advocacy, the teaching and the learning opportunities so that they can succeed on their own path.

Maya: In the last years, we have worked a lot on the question of who do we want to be and what do we stand for, and what do we want for our young people who are learning at our school, and what does that look like? With that, we’ve added a lot of different tenets and principles and values from different professionals and different philosophies and different best practices and research to build programs that support every child who we can take into our school in the best possible way, and to ensure that learning is accessible and engaging. And there’s some equality to what’s happening at our school.

Lori: That warms my heart. Maya. I love that it’s coming from everyone in the school. It’s coming from the top. And it sounds as if it’s, you know, if you’re going to be working at gist, this is who you are. Right?

Maya: Because. Yeah. And I think that, you know, I mean, you were there. And I think that what people always say when they leave our school is there’s something about the community, and they use the word magical. That’s quite magical. And I think that’s for every student, every person that’s there. And so, you know, it’s. In that regard, it’s very easy to ensure that magic or whatever that is felt really has meaningful purpose to learning for the students who are there at our school. Some of it just took place, some of it before I was even there. All the amazing leaders and faculty and staff that were there before I was there were already looking at best practices and how do we include students with all needs and how do we support diversity better?

Maya: How do we ensure that teaching and learning is engaging and meaningful for every single person that’s here? Those questions have always been asked. It’s easy for someone like me to walk in when some of that foundation has already been there. And the culture is so open to it because people are kind indonesia. And so that kindness and those values are really important to us as a.

Maya: School.

Maya: And our kids are. In that regard, it’s easy to say, what can we do that’s good for everyone? Those conversations have been happening for the last decade and we’ve grown our programs and our support systems and our understanding of all people and neurodiversities. We have a very diverse community population of students and faculty and staff, not just in neurodiversities, but in all aspects. We have 70 different nationalities. You know, we have children from different types of families that have different professions. We are very diverse and pretty amazing community.

Lori: Yeah, yeah. And you often hear that term magical in is such for some of the smaller schools who build that, you know, that community. But I think what makes just so special is you’re a very large school. Several campuses.

Maya: Yes, we have 2200 students and we have four campuses. So our large campus has an elementary, middle school and high school and it’s about 50 acres. And then we have a smaller elementary school that’s downtown or more towards the center of the city. And that was the original school that was opened in 1951 and still stands.

Lori: Wow. Amazing. Well, you’ve mentioned that you have a very diverse student population and you talked about providing access and support for all learners. So how do MTSs and UDL shape your approach to supporting your students?

Maya: So I think first and foremost what we want to ensure is that we really look and examine best practices around the world and what is supportive of all students and our faculty in implementing that pedagogy and that understanding and that philosophy. And I think that both MTSS and UDL speak to inclusivity and accessibility and equality for young people. And I think that we have both an expectation and an understanding in practice that classrooms should be places where learning is accessible and relevant and transferable and meaningful to the students who are in the class.

Maya: And that teachers have an understanding that not every child has the same pathway and that not every child is going to engage in learning in the same ways, and that we can be flexible in some of the components of what we do in the classroom, of everything from teaching to assessment for students. We believe very strongly that a continuum of services is important. In that continuum, we want to ensure that what we do is correct and appropriate for each child and not put children into programs because a program is there and so the child has to mold into the program. We want to do it the other way around. We want to look at. At what does each child need, and then in that continuum, find the appropriate support systems so that they can succeed.

Maya: And that will look different from child to child, from student to student, because everyone has that very different way of learning. And we want to ensure that we have the professionals that can support the different trajectories of students that we have in our school.

Lori: Yeah, well, many schools talk about serving all learners, but implementation can be challenging. So what does your MTs look like in practice at GIST?

Maya: So let me first maybe describe. In our program, I think that we’re very lucky. We have professionals who are learning specialists with a background in learning disabilities. I would say we have speech language pathologists, we have school psychologists, and then we have teachers who are more versed in understanding how to work in a more, I would say, in a more inclusive program, building very individualized educational programs for young students who have a very different. Different kind of trajectory and need. And that’s in our GIST Learning Center. In that continuum, what we look at is what does the child need? Where are they at? Have we tried different interventions? And that starts right at admissions with every student. And then of course, as we know with young children, you sometimes don’t.

Maya: You don’t understand their whole learning profile until they grow up a little bit. What we want to ensure is that we have the support systems in the different levels that are required. There are child study meetings at every division. Our student services team is very well versed interventions and also very well versed in team teaching and working in classrooms and supporting students. Again, on that continuum of service. Do they need that support system? Are you going to go to that first level interventions first with the teachers, working with the kids and looking at different types of methodologies and support systems and materials that might be effective? Does it need to go more do we need to assess a child?

Maya: We are very proud that we have amazing school psychologists that can do assessments in our school. I think the difficulty in Jakarta is that we don’t have resources outside of the school. And so we have to ensure that what we have in the school can be the full picture for a child. Most of our students and families, if they need very specific interventions or specific understandings about their learning profiles that we cannot assist with, then they have to go overseas. They have to go to Singapore or back to their home country to find that information, and that becomes really complex. And part of. Part of why we also have opened the doors and looked at what types of services can we provide is to answer that question of what do students need?

Maya: What are we seeing in our families, and especially in our families with siblings who don’t have a school setting to go to that we could perhaps provide? We have a tiered system that our professionals are very well versed in, and they meet regularly with the classroom teachers, with the other colleagues, with the parents, and partnering to make sure that the decisions they make on each child are supportive of their learning and their trajectory. Then we also have the bigger questions that we have to answer that fall outside of any of that, which is, oh, this child has a program that’s so individualized that perhaps what we have in our school isn’t the best fit.

Maya: And so I think a little bit of that is, you know, where the Just Learning center comes from is that idea of what can we do that’s very individualized, that’s very specific to each child that doesn’t have to look the same, but that supports individuals in their learning that can be, you know, can be found at our school. And that’s grown. It’s young, but it’s grown. And that’s a pretty beautiful thing when you watch it.

Lori: Yeah. Well, most of our listeners would have no idea this is the case, but this is the reason that we left. We, my family and I, had to leave Jakarta back in 2003 is because of our son and his individual learning needs. And there wasn’t a place then, you know, this is a long time ago. And there wasn’t a place where he could attend school and get the more individualized education that he needed. And it was very difficult to find, like you mentioned, the outside resources, the speech paths and OTs, and all of the different specialists that could work with him. So we made that difficult decision to move back to the United States, where we’re from. And now JIS has the gist Learning center.

Lori: So tell us a little bit more about it and how you’ve opened up the doors to more students. Not all, but more based on what your school can provide.

Maya: Absolutely. So a few years ago,.

Maya: The board.

Maya: And I were talking about, what is it that’s missing in this community and what do we see and how can we really, I think, fulfill our mission a little bit more in supporting the families in our community? And, you know, we, I. I had some experience with opening other, I want to say schools, school within a school kind of programs and other international schools. And we brought up this idea of how about if we have a learning center and we just go for it and try it and, you know, and see what happens. And so, you know, in one sense, I would say a lot of planning went in. And in another sense, we just kind of dove in and did this. Right.

Maya: And we started in the elementary school, and we took young children who were not able to be served in regular schools, most of whom actually had been at home and homeschooled or just at home with their families because their needs were more significant. And they needed an approach and methodology that was different than in a regular classroom. And they needed to have skills all the way around, from academic to social, emotional to motor to language to attention, that supported their development. And so we started with a few children that were in our program actually, that had no place to go. And. And it worked. And it, you know, it didn’t work all well at one time, but we.

Lori: Oh, yeah.

Maya: Along the way, you know, we talked to a lot of people that helped us. You know, we had a group of champions for this program. We had really supportive parents who wanted to help us make this work. And we had a handful of students in our Gist Learning center in the elementary school. And as the students became more comfortable in that program, which had very. The students all had very individualized Learning programs, or IEPs, as it would be called in the US to support their learning in all realms. Then we asked that question of how does that fit in the school? Of course, training for the classroom teachers, training for the specialist teachers, being able to match kids into classrooms. All those pieces came into play.

Maya: Then again, it’s not the same for every child. I think the beauty of this program is we look at each individual student and says, you know, and ask ourselves, what are their strengths? Where do we meet, need to meet their strengths? What can they do that is supportive of growing those strengths and where can we put them so they have exposure for that? So, you know, we have a Child in the. In the secondary program right now who is a prolific swimmer and he’s on the swim team and, you know, and goes to physical education classes. We have a child who loves to dance and she goes to the high school dance classes.

Maya: Every child has a very different approach and a different unique set of classes that they are part of in the school community, in the greater school community that goes from elementary through high school. In the elementary, the students are all tagged into a classroom. They have a home base in a classroom, in a regular classroom. However, how much they spend time in there depends on what they need. And that will change over time. We’re not rigid in that we know that it might be little steps when they’re first there, and that grows to bigger steps and longer times and friendships develop and loyalties develop and understanding of that child develops. And so then we can grow that pathway even more.

Maya: While we are working in their JLC program on the very specific skills that they may need, whether that’s. That’s an academic area, social, emotional area, behavioral. We do have students who are on the autism spectrum. And so we’re not ABA specialists, but we do work on different behavioral components and motor and sensory integration and so forth. And so it’s really a very unique program that’s built for each child. And we will not. I shouldn’t say we won’t, but we don’t have the capability of taking more than eight students per division because the personnel levels are so high. We have a, you know, a certified teacher that has a special education background. And then we have teacher assistants who also have that background that we had hoped that the program would grow going into early childhood.

Maya: First we thought, let’s start the interventions very young. That wasn’t where our clientele was. And so we actually had to move it to the secondary very quickly. And then that secondary program, it moved from middle school to high school within a year. So we’ve only had the middle school, high school, a secondary program for two years, and we have 11 students in it. We also said when were building this program is we want the places where our students learn to beautiful places. We don’t want just a classroom that happens to be a leftover classroom. So in the elementary, we had done a full redevelopment. And so we picked two very center classrooms for our JLC program. So that was front and center as part of the whole kind of courtyard system.

Maya: It leads out to the playground. It had a lot of sunshine, so we purpose built that area. And then in the secondary area, we actually asked. A lot offices had occupied. This one building that’s right next to the head of school’s office, that looked like a house, and we loved the way that it looked. And so we asked everyone to move and we redid that whole place. And it’s a beautiful space, very large, has its own kitchen, its own living room. Upstairs is a whole life skills wing with dorm rooms and laundry facilities for those students who might need more specific vocational training as they move on. And we have our first graduate in a year and a half year. So that’s exciting. But again, it’s very dependent on the child.

Maya: And so the challenge with this program is it’s very dependent on each child. The unique piece about this program, it’s very dependent on each child. We want to partner with our parents. We want to learn more about what’s effective and best practices. Trying to pull curriculum for 11 different students who are very different from each other is difficult because some of it can be from the classrooms in the regular program. Some of our kids are getting credits in the high school, but it doesn’t look the same. And not every transcript is going to look the same, and not every IEP looks the same. That intimate planning and understanding and deep thinking about what works and what’s effective and what’s most important for each individual student is really what propels this program. You know, it’s.

Maya: It’s a program that I would think, and in hindsight, probably a lot of teachers would be saying, like, what are you guys doing? Like, they didn’t understand at the beginning, but now it’s a. Now when you see our students totally enmeshed, you know, and going to the assemblies and going to. They go to the trips, you know, that some of the kids are able to go on. Some of the trips that we take in the middle school and high school, you see a sense of belonging from everyone and a sense of, I think, even loyalty and support from other students for our students. And there’s a little bit more even of reverse inclusion where the high school kids are hanging out in the JLC center with the kids and so forth. Though it’s growing, it’s not perfect.

Maya: And I think the hard piece, as you said at the very beginning of this question, is we built it wanting to be more inclusive. We built it so that there was an opportunity for our families to all belong with siblings in a school. But we still can’t take everyone, right? We still there. It’s still not enough space and not enough expertise, perhaps, for some areas. And so it’s still hard. Right. Because they’ll have to sometimes say no. But we’re really proud of what we have. And the program is home to between 15 to 20 kids every year and families that are very engaged and really remarkable. Remarkable faculty and staff that work in there.

Lori: Yeah. Well, congratulations.

Maya: Thank you.

Lori: It’s exciting. And just being a parent myself, I know how meaningful that is to your school and your community and that sense of belonging. You talked about the way the community reacts in. In school, the other students. And, you know, we talk about that idea of rightful presence where, you know, when a student isn’t there, a student from your JLC center, when they’re missing, they’re gone, they’re missed. Right. You know, and so that’s when you know, you really have that sense of belonging prevalent throughout your community. So.

Maya: Yeah.

Lori: Great. Well, curious. Switching a little bit more out of the jlc, but no, I mean, adding them in as well. So, as a large international school, how do you maintain that consistency inclusive practices across your multiple divisions and probably hundreds of educators if you have 2,200 students? Right.

Maya: It’s difficult. Right? It’s always difficult. And then in the high school, we have multiple pathways. We have AP classes, IB classes. You can take a mix. You don’t have to take either. And we’re very fortunate that we have learning specialists at each division. And we don’t have speech language in the high school, but we have speech language through middle school. But it’s difficult. Consistency of practice is difficult, and consistency practice at different levels of classes is difficult, as well as the understanding of accommodations and modifications and what we can do and what we can’t do. And that’s always something that we have to consistently speak to every year.

Maya: I think that part of it also is we have made a commitment that what we really want to do is to ensure that our learning specialists and our support services teachers and team are as trained as possible in whichever methodologies that they wish to have. And so for an example of that is, we had everyone in support services trained in Orton Gillingham. And so I think that when you see consistencies of practices, it brings, whether you ever use those OG practices or not, depending on the child. What it does, though, is it brings an understanding of language and an understanding of purpose and methodologies that brings a group of support services teachers together in discourse and allows for maybe closer communication and understanding of what you do when with students.

Maya: I think if you can start there, then what you have is more language and conversations and discourse with the greater faculty about what needs to happen in the classrooms and how you partner and how you co teach, how you plan together, how you execute and implement accommodations and so forth. But I think it has to start with that team. And then of course, it always starts with, also with leadership. Always ends and starts with all of us standing up saying, this is what we believe and this is what we need to do. Not perfect, right? It’s not perfect. And it’s hard because you can have a twice exceptional child in high school that can, you know, do a higher level class.

Maya: And that teacher may have never seen a child that’s in a higher level class with dyslexia or whatever it may be. And sometimes we have to start from the beginning all over again to explain that and to support that. But I do think that it’s in the fabric of the school that we believe that every child belongs. And if a child is in our program, we’re going to make it work. And there’s an expectation that we support our kids and there’s an expectation that we respect the learning paths of our kids and that we understand that we as adults are all individual, unique human beings and that our students are too. And I think that’s there. I think that the premise is there.

Maya: I think sometimes, you know, the implementation might be a little bit wobbly or it gets forgotten, but I think it’s there.

Lori: Yeah. Well, can you share a student success story, a program innovation or a moment that captures the impact of your inclusion efforts?

Maya: Sure.

Maya: Gosh, you know,.

Lori: Probably have tons.

Maya: Yeah, no, I don’t have tons, you know, because, I mean, I have some from when I was a principal there. But as a head of school, you, you don’t tend to hear every story. Right?

Lori: Sure.

Maya: And I, I will say, you know, a pretty remark, I’m going to say a couple here because I want to show the extremes. Right?

Lori: Yeah.

Maya: There’s a young person who graduated this year at a very young age, twice exceptional, very, extremely high IQ probably, I would say such a high IQ that most international schools don’t even know how to deal with this. Right. But I worked with them and the elementary school worked with the parents and then have worked with. They check in all the time. And I hear reports of this young person and I gave him his diploma several years early, but he is off to a wonderful university. And this is a student that in the elementary school, everyone said to me, as a building principal, he’s not going to make it. He’s too different.

Lori: Right.

Maya: He’s too different. And he’s so smart in some ways. He can’t, you know, he can’t do certain things and he doesn’t have a peer group and all of that. And, you know, and I, I watched him when I gave, you know, when he walked towards me to give the diploma. And I think, man, have you grown up. And I think that it shows you again and again that children, students, will astound us. And we never know what’s going to happen. And it’s our job to believe and do what we can and to do no harm in one sense and to do everything we can to champion them. And so that was a success story on a different vein.

Maya: And a lot of the support systems there were not in teaching and learning, so to speak, in academics, but in navigating social nuances and navigating behavioral issues and navigating understanding of environment and navigating from the faculty point of view what his learning style and what his cognitive abilities were all about. It was a different type of a process that included everyone. And he wouldn’t have made it across that stage had it not been for wonderful faculty and support systems and counselors along the way. I can speak to another young boy who came into our JLC program at the elementary level with almost non verbal parents, had never really had him in school, great difficulty with behavioral aspects and goodness gracious, in two years he just turned things around and became much more socialized and much more aware of his surroundings.

Maya: And the school has this talent show at the elementary school and he stood up and did a solo and it brought everyone to tears because A, he wasn’t very verbal and B, that he could stand up there in front of 600 people and sing. Yeah, I used that video in my opening speech last year to the faculty about, you got to believe kids, right? You got to believe that you never know what will happen. And look at this. And maybe it’s not an academic piece that he did, but for him to be able to be on that stage with the background that he had and with the challenges that he faced is a pretty remarkable thing.

Maya: And it really, you know, the parents are so happy because he, you know, they said he belongs here and he’s joyful now.

Lori: Joyful, yeah. That’s great. Well, I’m curious. You are already doing so much and so well, but what are the next steps for inclusion at Jess?

Maya: Gosh.

Lori: Yeah. What advice might you give to so many?

Maya: You know, we’re always wanting more training for our support Services, staff. We always want more training for our faculty and staff. Right. And understanding neurodiversities and understanding inclusive practices and understanding MTSs and UDL and all of those aspects. So PD is always a big thing. And I think that good teachers want to learn and good teachers want more information. And I think, you know, that will always be something that we will desire and push for. You know, we are growing in some ways and, you know, and have opened two JLC classrooms or three, I guess, but a secondary and elementary program, that takes a lot of work and takes a lot of leadership.

Maya: We’re going to be looking for a student services director to come in and support the practices and alignment because exactly what you said earlier about how do we ensure that there’s consistency of practice, we’re not perfect at it and we. I think we need to have further conversations about what works and what doesn’t work. And I think that we also know the challenge sometimes in being international countries is that countries have limitations of what they can offer external to our school. And that really does affect our school. When you have complex, for example, psychiatric issues or complex medical issues, Indonesia is a tough place to be. And so even having resources and connections globally is a really important piece for us. And so there are so many different things, Right.

Maya: So many things to ensure that the teaching and learning that we provide all our students and our students with neurodiversities is the best that it can be. And I think that we’re never going to be happy with what we have. We always want more and better and stronger and more unified, more consistency and more, you know, consultancy from others that are brilliant in this field. And so there’s lots.

Lori: Yeah, yeah, there’s lots. You know, we always, at Senya, we always say it’s a path or a journey that we’re all on and whether. Yeah, we’re all in different spots and there’s always somewhere to go.

Maya: Absolutely.

Lori: It’s not going to end. Right, Right. Well, speaking of good PD and celebrations, you know, you mentioned that this year is just his 75th anniversary, which is incredible. So congratulations. I’m happy to have been part of that at one point of our lives. And it’s going to be Sonia’s 25th anniversary coming up soon and you’ll be hosting that conference. Just is going to be hosting our conference from February 26th through the 28th, in 2027. And I’m. I’m just curious what inspired your school to take on that role and what does hosting this event mean to your Community.

Maya: Isn’t it remarkable? I mean, first of all, isn’t it remarkable that in the international setting, we have a school that’s 75 years old and still going strong, and we have an organization that 25 years ago, we all wondered, is this going to go? And it’s now so important to the international community and families and professionals all around the world. So thank you to Senya. What does it mean? Well, first of all, I think that we’re proud of the efforts that we’ve had, we’ve made along the way in this field, and we’re proud to be part of, you know, I think part of an international educational platform that believes that students have a place and that belonging is critical and that inclusion should be celebrated, and we want to show that.

Maya: And then I do think that we are eager to learn, so if we can host it, we get a lot more people to learn. So there is a piece of that’s very selfish because we know that this provides opportunities for our professionals and our families. That is extraordinary. And we can’t do it without an organization like Cinya. So we want that partnership. We want to host and we want to be there to help champion another 25 years for you and another 75 years for us in what good practice and what, you know, education is all about for all kids.

Lori: Super. Well, I. We are so excited. So I get to return home and.

Maya: You do. You do.

Lori: And, you know, just. Just for all of you out there just is a beautiful campus. I’ve never really seen a school like it, so quite excited to return. You know, we’re celebrating, so there’s going to be a lot of celebration and things that have never happened at a senior conference before. So we’re quite excited. So we hope many of you out there will join us.

Maya: Yes. Come to Jakarta. It’s going to be an excellent conference, and we have so much to show off, and we want to partner with other schools and other professionals. So we’re open.

Lori: Yeah. Well, Maya, thank you so much for your time today and for sharing about gist, where you were and where you’ve come and the path leading forward. It’s very exciting stuff.

Maya: Thank you so much, Lori. It’s been a pleasure to talk to you, and we really value this partnership and are excited to see everyone at Senia in February of 2027.