Jessica Morriss

The Amsterdam International Community School (AICS) is a fast-growing IB World School, which caters successfully for the international community in and around Amsterdam. As part of the Dutch International Schools network (DIS) and the Esprit Scholengroep, AICS currently educates around 1800 students across three campuses. The school is expected to expand further with two new school buildings near the completion phase. We sat down with Jessica Morriss, the new Head of Community Relations at AICS, to find out about her new pioneering role and her plans for putting the ‘C’ for Community to the forefront. 

Jessica, not many schools have a Head of Community Relations, and it’s certainly a novelty in the Netherlands within the DIS network. What made you decide to move from ‘leading learning’ into ‘leading the community’ at AICS? 

You are right, it’s a relatively new idea. Before I started in August I did some research and discovered there are very few schools with Heads of Community. So yes, it’s a pioneering role. For the past five years I have worked as a Head of School in the Primary department. About three years ago, in a Leadership Team meeting, I started to talk about wanting to put the ‘C’ (for Community) from our school name into action. I tried to find out more about what a Community Relations role entails and started to realise the scope and complexity of the position. Before I entered teaching, I worked in different professional roles, which hopefully enables me to add my different perspective and experience to this. When our new director, Rynette de Villiers, joined at the beginning of this year, we discussed what a Head of Community Relations could bring to the school and which people I needed to support in order to make things happen. At the moment I am focusing on three main teams in Primary and Secondary: the arts, sports, and service. It will be interesting to see how we can work together to build on existing learning and community experiences. Our challenge is to come up with new ways of getting the school out into the world and getting the outside world into our school. 

You are one school with three campuses and a fast-growing community. How can you, in your new role, help keep students, parents and staff connected at AICS? 

The Covid-19 pandemic taught us a few useful lessons. Everybody had to switch to online learning overnight and experienced a new way of connecting and collaborating. This was really valuable for our teams, as they all work across different campuses. We now know that it is possible to stay connected, from wherever our teachers are based physically. The vast majority of our teachers are based at one of the campuses but they all have colleagues who work in another location, so collaboration and communication are very important. The same goes for our parents. Because we weren’t allowed to host any social events or have parents inside the school campuses during lockdown, it gave us time to restructure things with our parent body. The group has re-emerged like a phoenix from the Covid ashes and is now called the ‘AICS Parent Society’ (APS). We want to work closely with them to make sure that we are reaching and connecting with our parents and listening closely in order to move forward. We hold regular sounding boards with the APS and the reps to gather ideas and hear any concerns. The parent communication works online and the communication is fast, direct, and personal. Reaching out to newcomers for example has become easier, and creating better pathways of communication and tapping into the knowledge and expertise of our parents has become better. We want to take this forward and involve our parents more in the school. This is a key way of keeping everyone connected.

You mention that you aim to put the ‘C’ from your school name at the forefront of things. Does that mean more community initiatives in the future?

Absolutely. There is real scope for growth beyond our immediate school community. This morning I had a meeting with the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, where we are exploring areas of collaboration. As schools we are anchored in our communities and have a social obligation to give something back. I am very happy with our ‘Community Garden Project’ pilot, which is a good example of what we are trying to achieve. Some time ago we joined the Green Business Club (GBC) Zuidas, who work with different companies and organisations on sustainability ideas and programmes in Amsterdam. The AICS and GBC Zuidas put together a bid for a neighbourhood project, for which we received some funding and temporary access to a plot of land from our local council. The idea was to develop the vacant plot with our students and turn it into a community garden and learning space, where we would bring the local community together. We are just coming to the end of the first year of the project. The vision is to inspire students to learn from local expertise, from local business owners, from retired residents, or from students at the nearby university. Our students can share ideas, connect with others, and practise their Dutch when they communicate and network with the locals. Our recent tree-planting project at a retirement village, supported by Deloitte, is another example of how we hope to inspire our students’ learning beyond the four walls of the classroom and lesson times. This all links in very closely with the IB Student Learner Profile, and I like the idea that in the future some of our alumni could be out in the world really making a meaningful contribution to the planet and working to bring other communities together. Making meaningful contributions and connections, locally and globally, and fostering intercultural competence and global citizenship, this is what the AICS stands for. This is what we mean when we strive to put the ‘C’ of the Amsterdam International Community School at the forefront. 

Thank you, Jessica. Keep pioneering! For more information about AICS visit: www.aics.espritscholen.nl

Photo credit: Vincent Koerse & Ritchie Damwijk