History

The American International School Vienna (AISV) was established in 1959 in a beautiful neighbourhood north of the city. Today the AISV community boasts 800 students from over 80 countries and a faculty of 130. The school has reached this point in their storied history with strong communication and a pursuit of best practice in international education.  

Background

Dr. Tim Stuart was kind enough to connect me with AISV’s Middle School Principal, Lauren Mehrbach. Lauren is an amazing leader and leadership coach who has a real heart for students. Her career has spanned the globe, including serving at the American Cooperative School of Tunis and Singapore American School. It was a privilege to tour the school with Lauren (and Frankie, AISV’s unofficial principal dog) and learn from her experience. Here are a few highlights from my visit.  

Highlights

AISV provides a great example for how to leverage communication channels like social media, school website, learning management systems, and posters to share messages with their community. For example, anything they post on Instagram they also post on their website, in a section called “School Stories”. I like this because it generates more exposure for each story which helps more community members know what’s going on. Great communication is key to positive school culture. 

I appreciate how AISV makes use of its spaces. It is, like many universities and schools, built on a hill, with numerous updates and wings added throughout its history. Over the years, school leadership has clearly tried to craft each space with flexibility to maximize student learning. As I have touched on before, welcoming spaces are important to consider because they contribute to the feeling community members have in the school, which in turn contributes to school culture. 

Great principals, like Lauren, care for their students’ wellbeing. One of the ways they do this is by supporting the student voice. Ways you can do this at your school include, seeking student feedback, including students in school improvement initiatives, and sharing school stories from the student perspective. 

Lauren shared about her processes of intentionally guiding her division toward change. It reminded me of one of my mentors and one of the best principals I know, Karen Conwell, from ICS Bangkok. Both Lauren and Karen guide their teams toward change using a similar process: 

• Relationships with staff
• Rationale for the change
• Runway for staff to process and implement the change
• Rollout the change
• Results – gather data about the change
• Review & Refine the change 

3 Key Takeaways

• Clear Communication: Be willing to clearly communicate with candor to benefit your team and to reach strategic goals. How might an extra dose of candor add clarity to your team?  
• Lead Leaders: Leadership development and mentorship is valuable to your school and the greater school leadership community. Which emerging leader(s) can you mentor this year? 
• In-depth Implementation: The goal is to have deep implementation of initiatives, not to implement as many initiatives as possible. Which core initiative can your school establish more firmly this year?  

Build culture, unlock potential. Visit my Connect Page or send a message on LinkedIn. 

Stay tuned for more international school visits – up next International Christian School of Vienna!

Peace & Blessings, 

– Josiah