The Principal of International School Savremena at the Leadership for Professional Learning symposium

 

The Leadership for Professional Learning Symposium held on 17-18 June in Cambridge, UK, was designed to connect educational leaders worldwide for a collaborative dialogue focused on leading and enabling sustainable professional learning cultures. Participants were able to share innovations, research and lessons from their experience, and were able to seek support and solutions to challenges facing the field.

The two-day symposium was structured around five focused strands to allow educators, school and system leaders, academics and political thought leaders an enriched experience that was supposed to inform their work:

  1.  Focusing on, and conditions for, professional learning
  2.  Dialogue, professional learning and leadership
  3.  Shared leadership and mutual accountability for professional learning
  4.  Student learning and leadership
  5.  Leadership within a virtual learning space

Common challenges and shared solutions

This was an opportunity to share innovations, research and dilemmas, and to contribute to a range of professional and academic outputs, through collaborative and supportive dialogue.

Simpozijum u Kembridžu

Taking the view that leadership is an activity that can be exercised by anyone, regardless of status, the symposium was supposed to convene a diverse, international group of educational leaders, and we are proud to say that the Principal of International School Savremena, Svetlana Belić Malinić, was one of them. “Being part of the intellectual elite sets a moral purpose to contribute to the changes in international education with a view to creating a better tomorrow. I am delighted to have had the privilege to share my ideas with the educational leaders from all around the world in a thought-provoking interaction”, Svetlana commented after the symposium.

Outcomes  

Participants shared their experiences, identified common challenges and sought creative solutions. They were expected to host a dialogue, bring an artifact, document, or other material to contribute to that dialogue, and also to participate in other dialogues.

The symposium ended with a plenary session, drawing together insights and other outcomes of the earlier small group work. The practices and perspectives were exchanged and all the new ideas emerged from the dialogue around participants’ contributions.

I am extremely pleased and proud to be the parent of a Savremena student. During my first encounter with the school management, when I asked about my child’s potential enrolment, I saw how much love, enthusiasm and professionalism you put in your work. I was impressed by your approach, ideas and methods. I couldn’t believe something like this existed in our country! It doesn’t take long to realise that this is a school you would recommend to everyone. Creativity, modern technology, top-quality education, and most of all, the humaneness that can be seen throughout the school, make it truly different and worthy of its name – Savremena Gimnazija. With such an approach, the success of this school and, consequently, our children’s success, is unavoidable. Congratulations! Jelena Đorđević, Andrija’s mum
Contemporary in any sense of the word, our school offers functional knowledge and quality preparation for tertiary education in Serbia and abroad. Implementing modern and creative teaching in the classroom, where the teachers’ pedagogy and students’ performance are aligned with the highest academic standards for the high-school finals, our school develops linguistic, mathematical, scientific, artistic, cultural, technical and ICT competence, which is a prerequisite for further education and professional development. Teaching is supported by the interactive whiteboards and educational software, whereas practice exercises research and critical thinking.