ALKHOBAR, 28 April 2006 — It is a sign that all is well in the Kingdom when the enrollment at international schools is growing and invitations to school events are popping up every week. Visiting the Dhahran Elementary/Middle School (DEMS) last week to watch the school’s production of the musical, Annie Jr., was a delight. The auditorium was packed with enthusiastic friends and relatives. On stage, the students sang their hearts out. When the lights came on at the end of the show, an exuberant crowd surged forward to offer the performers flowers and take some photos for the family album. After the tension of the past few years in the Kingdom, the excitement evinced by this group of expatriates was a pleasure to witness.
“The quiet in the Kingdom has allowed our parents to feel more comfortable making the trip to school and staying at school and not worrying so much about things possibly happening. That’s good because we can get the community spirit going in our school and get our parents up to volunteering and participating in our school activities,” said DEMS Principal Bruce Hudson.
The spring semester has been very busy for the DEMS students. The school held a very successful walkathon sponsored by Coca-Cola, in which the students raised over SR51,000 for three charities. The Qatif Relief Society with its orphans’ committee, Boys’ Town in Sri Lanka and Earthquake Relief in Pakistan, through the International School of Islamabad, were all beneficiaries of the funds raised by the walkathon. In Pakistan, the DEMS donation will be used to rebuild elementary schools destroyed by last year’s earthquake.
This spring events at DEMS include “Dads and Donuts,” a “Hot Dog Day” sponsored by Tamimi, the National Junior Honor Society induction, “Moms and Muffins,” “Teacher Appreciation Day” and, finally, the 8th Grade Graduation on June 5.
Two weeks ago DEMS received an “excellent report” on its Accreditation for Growth (AFG) midpoint review. This is part of the protocol used by the Middle States Association which provides the accreditation for DEMS, a part of the International School Group (ISG) in the Kingdom.
“We are halfway through our seven years of our accreditation, so an external person visits the school and sees that we are achieving our objectives. All of our schools have gone through the same process in the ISG district and they have all been very successful in it,” reported Hudson.
Hudson emphasized that the DEMS objectives, which were reviewed, were created by analyzing the scores of its students on standardized tests. This measurable data was studied to determine where the school could improve to help students bolster their knowledge base and skill sets. Developing the objectives can be compared to “strategic planning” for continuing excellence at the school. That the school and its students have been well-served by the accreditation, may be seen in the increase in the enrollment.
“We’ve had a year of growth and we are continuing to grow,” said Hudson. “We just picked up six students last week, which puts us over 240 for the year. We started the year at 170. We’ve seen strong growth pretty much across the board in the ISG district. The Saudi economy is booming right now and in part that is reflected in the number of students joining our school.”
The changing recruitment situation for professional manpower in Saudi Arabia, is apparent in the changes to the DEMS student body.
“We are a true international school, although we are also an English-speaking school teaching the American curriculum according to our accreditation. We used to have a preponderance of North American students and just a few from other countries. That has changed,” Hudson remarked. “For the first 10 countries represented in our school, the numbers are quite even. This year we have a lot more students from the Middle East. Our Muslim population is increasing, too. Many of our students have been enrolled in international schools all over the world, so they are used to our curriculum and our environment.”
With the growth in the number of students coming from outside North America, DEMS has had to make significant enhancements in its English as a Second Language (ESL) program.
“We have a significant population of non-English speaking students enrolling at our school,” Hudson explained. “We cope with the increasing numbers of the students with limited English language skills by hiring ESL teachers. We started the year with a half-time ESL teacher because we only had very few non-English speaking students and now we have a teacher and a half and we are looking to recruit another full time teacher for that particular program.”
He continued, “ESL can be looked at in two ways. It can be a pull out program where students go to that teacher and get intensive English language training out of their regular classroom, or depending on the level of ability of the student, sometimes the ESL teacher goes into the mainstream classroom and assists a student with the vocabulary and comprehension part of the lessons. It is a program where a teacher can only work with a few students at any one time. We are up to almost 40 students who need the ESL program. We do have people in the community who have helped us out and that has enabled us to retain students who we normally would have had to turn away, but we do want to bring in another full-time teacher for the ESL program.”
Hudson stated that DEMS is anticipating that the current growth pattern will continue at least through spring 2007.
“In fact, I believe all ISG schools will continue to grow. They will grow at different rates, but all the schools will continue to have new students enrolling,” he said. “I see possibly at this time next year a bit of leveling off. Our staff is made up of about fifty percent sponsored teachers and fifty percent locally hired teachers. All of our teachers are well qualified, primarily Western teachers, with vast experience. So we have to plan and recruit well in advance to maintain the high quality of our staff. We are recruiting teachers right now with the expectation of having many more students in the coming academic year.”
