Serving Children During Wartime

Profile: JON ZURFLUH

Within weeks of Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the American School of Warsaw in Poland made supporting refugees an all-hands-on-deck priority. Families opened their homes. Students collected donations. And Jon Zurfluh, the school’s director, learned of another pressing need: to save a struggling school based in Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital.

Integrating more than 100 students from the Pechersk School International Kyiv into his own school was a monumental effort, inspired by those student-led efforts to support refugee families, Zurfluh says. It didn’t come without its critics. “But it was the right thing to do,” he adds. “It was the true epitome of servant leadership to just say, ‘We’re going to make this work and all the naysayers, you’re just going to have to put that in your pocket and we’re going to get through this.’”

Colleagues say Zurfluh, an AASA member since 2018 whose role functions much like a superintendent’s, has exemplified that can-do, servant leadership attitude across his career — from postings in his home state of Washington to international schools in China, Russia and Poland over the past 30 years. His efforts to prioritize the needs of others and the broader school community have shone in big and little ways.

“He’s fearless, and he’s courageous,” says Melissa Schaub, associate director for learning at the American School of Warsaw.

When Zurfluh directed the Anglo-American School of Moscow and St. Petersburg, he gave wide latitude to a teacher who had developed a service-learning initiative. “He gave her such a sense of autonomy and freedom to be able to lead the kids to opportunities nobody had dreamed of at that time in the school,” Schaub says.

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic in Warsaw, Zurfluh ensured the school could remain open by developing a rigorous testing protocol. “John had the model that many, many international schools were listening to,” Schaub says.

As a young teacher at an elementary school in Washington’s University Place School District, Zurfluh identified a pressing need for a computer lab, so he found a way by creating a team of older students to help set it up. “He just didn’t back off from challenges,” says Judie Bilderback Taylor, then the school’s principal.

Zurfluh credits his parents, who always stepped up in the community, and Taylor, who taught him the importance of empowering others, as the influential guides through his professional life. “It was built into me to always pick the choice to go help if I could,” he says. “That’s been my mainstay every step of the way.”

A career in education abroad wasn’t the plan for Zurfluh until his early 30s after a sister school trip to Japan. In 1994, on temporary leave from University Place, he taught kindergarten at the American School of Guangzhou in southern China. It was supposed to be just a two-year stint. But over those two years, he worked his way up to vice principal. He’d return to the United States at different times, but the challenge and opportunities of leading and building up international schools kept luring him back.

This spring, however, as a massive construction project wraps up at the school, he plans to leave his Warsaw post for consulting work. He and his wife, who have two grown children, will split their time between Washington and Guangzhou, where she has family connections.

Zurfluh says he is stepping back, but he doesn’t like to use the word “retire.” “I would really love to continue to be a servant to boards and to governments and to continue to help schools grow and develop,” he says. “We’ve got some challenges on the horizon … there’s still plenty of work to do.”

Sarah Hall is a freelance education writer in Raleigh, N.C.