Islands of Sanity

Tested by Turmoil: A School Endures as an Island of Sanity

by Timothy S. Carr

What did we do to deserve this magical place?” I asked my school colleague in 2014 as we surveyed middle school students tending a garden of their own design on our lush tropical campus of the Jakarta International School in Indonesia. Today, I often look back at that blissful moment as a sign of the fruits of our collective labors, a reserve of positivity that ultimately enabled our school community to persevere through the nightmare that followed.

Two days later, the school was thrown into the abyss by a series of unfounded criminal accusations involving sexual abuse initially against two school staff members.

Along with those who preceded us at the international school, we had built a sanctuary in the midst of a megacity in southeast Asia. In line with Margaret Wheatley’s thinking about islands of sanity, it was a refuge, a safe, nurturing place, where 2,500 students in preK-12 from 85 nations came together for impactful learning. Teachers felt free to innovate. Students had time and space to pursue their creative learning passions and parents were welcomed as partners.

Our school’s mission: “Creative, inquisitive, passionate, learning to be best for the world.” Our values, which we wore on lanyards around our necks daily, included perseverance, compassion, balance and fun. Joyful learning wasn’t just encouraged, it was becoming the norm.

The fact that these core elements — our mission, vision, values and dreams for the future — were co-created by representatives from our entire community in 2011 was key. Because they weren’t edicts from on high, the core documents were invitational and actively invoked by essentially all members of our community. The emergent plans served as an active compass, not a prescribed path. They guided everything we did, from lessons planned and priorities to facility construction. We had done the hard work that yielded a rare gift: organizational clarity focused on high-quality learning for all.

Guiding Lights

When our island sanctuary and its state of relative bliss suddenly fell under siege in 2014, every fiber of our community was tested. The flood of social media lambasting our community painted us as pariahs and spread like a wildfire throughout the country. An ever-growing team of crisis management experts, legal counsel, public relations specialists, diplomats and community power players all joined our leadership team and board of trustees to chart our crisis plan and pursuit of justice for innocent staff members (who later were released from incarceration after serving half of their sentences).

To our faculty, the message was simple during the storm: While we deal with these external forces attacking our school, please focus all of your energy on the students and teach your hearts out.

While these support systems were key guiding lights, our organizational clarity, our integrity, our sense of purpose and our direction collectively enabled us to persevere. Informed by the indigenous traditions of our host nation, Indonesia, we knew who we were, and so did our international school colleagues around the world. This translated into faith that we would survive, persevere and even thrive in the future.

Over the ensuing months and years that followed, that faith turned out to be contagious. Despite the shocking headlines, friends and colleagues reached out across the world to offer support. These turned out to be vital lifelines.

Steadfast Focus

Recently, I was asked to speak to the community of what’s been renamed the Jakarta Intercultural School, which I had left as head of school in 2017 for a new professional venture back in the U.S. Individuals gathered on campus around the dragon fountain and those in diaspora listened remotely on the 10-year anniversary of the firestorm in Jakarta. While it felt like ripping off the bandages yet again, I took the opportunity to reflect anew.

Paradoxical feelings linger — a mixture of deep sadness for the needless suffering, especially for those incarcerated and their families, as well as joy in the triumph of our unique, multicultural community that held firm and became stronger through the crucible of the protracted crisis. I’m deeply grateful to have been part of such a principled community, a true island of sanity, that’s still focused on learning to be best for the world.

Tim Carr is principal/consultant at Joyful Learning Leaders LLC in Williamstown, Mass.