On behalf of our Board of Directors, I am pleased to announce the appointment of Katherine

Patton Brewer as the next Head of School of SCIS-Hongqiao beginning in July 2014.

Katherine is currently serving as Deputy Head of School at the International Community School of Addis Ababa (ICSA), a three-program IB World School in Ethiopia. She carries teaching and administrative credentials, as well as certifications in IB Language A and Administration. She holds a BA in English Literature with a minor in History, an MA in Teaching, and is currently pursuing her EdD in Educational Leadership at Lehigh University.

Katherine hails from Nashville, Tennessee, where she began her educational career as an IB English and high school language arts teacher. She took her first international post at the Carol Morgan School in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, where she continued as an AP English teacher. Over the years, Katherine engaged in many leadership opportunities: steering accreditation committees, presenting professional development workshops, leading strategic planning initiatives, and overseeing budget development, to name a few. She became Assistant Principal at Carole Morgan and quickly established herself as a strong and very capable leader. Eventually, Katherine and family made the decision to move to Africa where she started in the post of Director of Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment.

Katherine will be joined by her husband, Alan, who will also be working at SCIS-Hongqiao, in the Physical Education Department. Alan has many years of teaching PE, and coaching soccer, gymnastics, and fitness. He was voted “Soccer Coach of the Year” in Nashville, Tennessee. Katherine and Alan have twin boys, Austin and Gavin, who are excited to become red dragons next school year.

We are also pleased to announce the appointment of Tina Santilli as our new Middle School Principal at SCIS-Hongqiao. Tina holds a Doctorate in Educational Leadership, MA degree in Education and Human Development, and BA in Special Education, as well as teaching and administrative credentials. She is currently working as the Vice Principal at NIST in Thailand, and served in principalship and other leadership posts at TLCS, Qatar; TAS, Taiwan; ISS, Singapore; JIS, Indonesia; and IST, Tanzania. Tina already has two strong connections to SCIS: she worked with our current Principal, Dan Kerr, at JIS; and she was a member of the WASC visiting team for the October, 2007 visit to Shanghai.

For now, please join me in welcoming Katherine and Tina to our administrative team of educators and our SCIS-Hongqiao community. Below you will find a letter of introduction from Katherine Brewer.

Yours in Education, 

Jeffry R. Stubbs
Superintendent of Schools
Shanghai Community International School – Hangzhou International School 

I am so very happy to be joining you for the upcoming 2014-15 school year. Before I arrive, I wanted to take the chance to introduce myself from afar. I am originally from Nashville, Tennessee, but my family and I are currently living in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. We’ve been here in Addis for three years where I have been serving as the Deputy Head of School. My husband Alan and I started our international careers in the Dominican Republic working at the Carol Morgan School. Alan served as the Athletic Director and taught elementary PE. Coincidentally, we also started our family there as well; our twins, Austin and Gavin, are now almost four and have successfully mastered their own twin dialect, none of which is intelligible to anyone else. We seem to be steadily working our way east around the world and could not be more excited about moving to Shanghai, one of my favorite cities in the world.

I know that we will have the opportunity to get to know each other more in the upcoming months, but I wanted to share a bit about my core values as an educator. I believe that children learn best when they are engaged, challenged, and can contribute to their own learning experience in an authentic way. We not only develop their skills, but we also create the experiences, the memories, and the love for learning that those children carry with them into adulthood, and that is an amazing responsibility.

I also firmly believe that each of us rise to the expectations that those people who are important in our lives set for us. It is our responsibility as educators to set high expectations for our students, and then to believe they can reach them. We are the caretakers who provide the support for every learner in our community.

I look forward to becoming a part of your community and working with you to create the best learning experiences possible for our students, while being always focussed on the high standards you already have put in place. The holistic approach that SCIS has towards education, valuing all aspects of a child’s development, is one that I wholeheartedly believe in. I believe the role of the Head of School is to provide you with the time, resources, and vision necessary to enable you to focus on student learning, and I am committed to this responsibility.

Before we have the chance to meet in person, I welcome your questions or comments via email. Until then, have a great holiday season and second semester! 

Sincerely, 

Katherine Brewer