This year marks the beginning of an era in our high school with a new grading system and high school principal — Justin Alexander. As the school year takes off, he shares some thoughts about his first impressions and challenges he will face. For more about his background, please refer to the article written last year, here.

When describing his first impressions of ISB, he expresses warmly, “the students are very friendly! They are getting involved with their studies, sports, and activities.” He also adds that he is very thankful for the supportive and experienced group of faculty, especially Mr. Vaughan and Ms. Canobie as “they know how everything works, so I have 

been really glad to join that team. I look forward, as the year unfolds, to work closely with them to help ISB continue to be a better place for students to study and for teachers to teach.”

Furthermore, Mr. Alexander has an extremely positive mindset when it comes to the challenges he will face that comes with arriving at a new school. He consistently emphasizes that challenges are, in reality, opportunities to improve.

Like many of the students, he recognizes that the change of the grading scale from A through F to a 1 through 7 is difficult for many people to adapt. However, he assures us that he is very supportive of this grading system because “the previous schools that I were in were IB diploma schools, and we had a 1 through 7 scale for everybody, so it is not new for me but it is new for the students and for the parents.” So, his main goal is to help the high school students and parents better understand what this change is.

Another challenge he acknowledges that comes with this new role is learning everyone’s names. With approximately 620 students in the high school, lots of parents, about 80 teachers, as well as classified staff, to say there are a lot of names to learn would be an understatement. In order to overcome this obstacle, he lays out his plan for the year to “work my way to try and learn more names. I am an advisor for a year in a grade 9 class because it is important I get to know that group of students better. I plan on joining a GCW trip, I hope to travel with some IASAS groups, and being in classes around school.

Additionally, Mr. Alexander highlights the importance of student voice within the school. He articulated that a more effective approach to implementing changes would be to hear from the student body and see what areas students believe can be improved. He continued, “I had a very positive meeting with Senior Student Council, and they were sharing ideas that have come up through the StucoLine, and they are really good questions and good suggestions, and we are going to act on a couple of those.” An example of a recent change that has been put into consideration is possibly changing the bus routes to go from ISB to the new metro line.

And lastly, he wants to say a huge thank you to everyone at ISB! He describes that his family
“has been well supported, our two children have been very happy to be a part of ISB, part of teams, and part of classes. That, to me, has been very important because not only am I the principal, but I am also a father.”

We are so glad to have Mr. Alexander joining our Panther family! We can not wait to see the positive impacts he makes on our school in the years to come. And next time you see him in the hallway, do not forget to introduce yourself to try and make his job a little bit easier.

Have any thoughts you would like to share? If so, please leave it in the comments below!

Nikki Ling