5. Education, Connection & Community with Dr. Barbara Bush

FIND MY SWISS SCHOOL PLUS+ Podcast

Education, Connection & Community — A Conversation with Dr. Barbara Bush, Principal of The British School Bern

In this inspiring episode from FIND MY SWISS SCHOOL PLUS+, host Sandra Hueskes sits down with Dr. Barbara Bush, Principal of The British School Bern, to explore what it truly means to educate with purpose and heart.

From her beginnings in community colleges in California to leading an international school in Switzerland, Dr. Bush shares her remarkable journey — shaped by her father’s influence, her Swiss roots, and her deep belief in the power of education to open doors.

📌 Highlights from Dr. Barbara Bush:

• The differences — and surprising similarities — between public and private education in Switzerland
• How international schools can bridge cultures while staying rooted in their local communities
• Why trust, connection, and curiosity are essential ingredients in every classroom
• The evolving role of technology and AI in education — and how schools must adapt thoughtfully
• The joy of teaching, and how giving children “space to be curious” can change everything

Dr. Bush’s reflections on community, compassion, and the beauty of lifelong learning make this a must-listen episode for parents, educators, and anyone passionate about the future of education.

🎧 “You have to like people, and you have to like the world,” she reminds us — a powerful message for our times.

🎧 “What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.” Jane Goodall

BARBARA'S RESOURCES & BOOKS

• Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
• Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Friere
• Harvard Kennedy School’s online basic flipping kit. Steps to a Flipped Learning Experience
• ETH Zürich provides this excellent orientation for flipping a classroom
• Jonathan Bergmann and Aaron Sams, including this article, Flip Your Student’s Learning, on ASCD’s website

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Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction and Guest Introduction
• 0:53 Barbara's Early Influences and Background
• 2:09 Journey to Higher Education
• 2:57 Passion for Community Colleges
• 5:04 Connection to Switzerland
• 6:52 Joining The British School Bern
• 7:33 Public vs. Private Education in Switzerland
• 11:50 Community Engagement and School Environment
• 13:58 The Future of Hybrid Curriculum
• 14:56 Flipping the Classroom
• 15:47 Balancing Tradition and Technology in Education
• 16:40 Thoughts about Integrating AI in Education
• 18:52 Inspiring Curiosity in Students
• 20:27 Building Relationships and Community
• 23:17 Navigating Different Educational Systems
• 26:09 Final Thoughts on Education and the World

Transcript

Dr. Barbara Bush: Insight into Education in Switzerland: Public and Private

Sandra: I am Sandra Hueskes, the co-founder of Find My Swiss School, and I'm also the co-host and today the host of this episode of Find My Swiss School Plus. So today I'm sitting in Bern with Dr. Barbara Bush.

Sandra: Barbara is the principal of The British School Bern. I met Barbara about a year ago when I came to visit the school. And I was very taken with your passion as an educator.

Sandra: So when we started this podcast, I thought I would like to come back and talk to you and share your passion . So thank you for meeting me today.

Dr. Barbara Bush: Thank you for interviewing me.

Sandra: Maybe tell us a little bit about your background. How did you end up where you are today?

Dr. Barbara Bush: I wanna start with my dad, who was a community college professor. He taught biology, botany, and [00:01:00] zoology and watching him, be passionate about his students.

Dr. Barbara Bush: And this was the seventies and eighties in Sacramento, California, which is where I grew up and where I'm from. Sacramento has actually been designated one of the most diverse and integrated cities in the United States.

Dr. Barbara Bush: What this means is that my dad would invite the whole class over for dinner. And because they were from all over the world, you'd have any number of things at the table.

Dr. Barbara Bush: Watching him make a connection with them outside of the classroom. He always knew you couldn't have an expectation of people if you didn't know them, and you didn't make them feel like they were connected with you.

Dr. Barbara Bush: And so I would pretend I was a teacher when I was a kid, or I would pretend I was a principal. then ultimately I thought, no, heck no. I'm not doing that. I'm gonna be an actor.

Dr. Barbara Bush: So I got into theater, I took theater courses. I ended up getting my Bachelor of Fine Arts, a performance degree.

Sandra: I actually did the same thing.

Dr. Barbara Bush: Well Sandra, thank you. We're kindred spirits.

Dr. Barbara Bush: We find each other always.

Dr. Barbara Bush: And, though that career ultimately didn't [00:02:00] work out. I've worked as an electrician. I have painted houses, I have trained horses. But I kept coming back to this idea of the classroom. I miss being in it. So I started going back to school. My mom had gotten sick with cancer.

Sandra: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Barbara Bush: So I left Los Angeles and I ended up going home. And that's when I went back to graduate school. I applied to California State, University of Sacramento. And I found myself in communication studies, you know, storytelling.

Dr. Barbara Bush: And then one of the professors there, Dr. Peter Nwosu who was a graduate of Howard University and came from Nigeria. He was the one who encouraged me to go onto graduate school as a PhD.

Dr. Barbara Bush: So I ended up getting my PhD. I ended up applying to the University of California, San Diego, UCSD. And I got into that program. And it's the best thing that ever happened to me.

Dr. Barbara Bush: I had a small cohort. And it was there that I started teaching for real . And I would teach the practical application of public speaking and then the head of the department said, we're gonna hire you and from that moment on, I always had a job as a teacher.

Dr. Barbara Bush: I ended up working in the community college [00:03:00] system. Which was my passion. I didn't tell anybody in my department that that was my passion.

Sandra: So why was it your passion?

Dr. Barbara Bush: Because of my dad. Because it's the front line of education.

Dr. Barbara Bush: It's where people go because they can't afford to go directly to university . And so they can get those scholarships that they couldn't have gotten in high school .

Dr. Barbara Bush: It's opportunity.

Dr. Barbara Bush: And the high school that I ended up going to Sacramento City College, you either had the military recruiting or sports. There was no university recruiting at my high school. I had educated parents. I was lucky, but all my friends were going to community colleges. And of course I went where my friends went.

Dr. Barbara Bush: The University of Illinois Champaign Urbana. But teachers had more time. They knew what I was up against. They had information about colleges. They were encouraging me to explore my options.

Dr. Barbara Bush: That's where I started to realize the power of a community college. I come, Sandra, from a middle class background. I'm not trying to sing the song of poverty. But I have friends who had that [00:04:00] experience. And I saw what it did to their choices. And I care about that.

Dr. Barbara Bush: I ended up being tenure track at a community college in a place called Moses Lake, Washington. Moses Lake has struggles economically. There's no denying the poverty and the hard reality that the high schools there are not preparing their students. They can't get physics classes, they can't get advanced literature classes.

Dr. Barbara Bush: It's just not available to them.

Sandra: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Barbara Bush: So those students have now a relationship with the community college there, where they can go and take classes to help them get into university. And I was there and I loved it. I loved my job.

Sandra: It's helping kids believe in themselves which I think is the gift of what you do.

Dr. Barbara Bush: Well, and it's the gift of what it is to be a teacher, right? To be partner in that journey. I had students at Big Bend Community College who were getting up at four in the morning to go work in the fields and then coming to my classroom to work and apologizing for what they had on. So [00:05:00] that all changed me being on that path of higher education.

Sandra: So what is your connection to Switzerland?

Sandra: Your values came across the first time we met. Right as an educator. And Switzerland has a very different reality in terms of access to education.

Dr. Barbara Bush: Right?

Dr. Barbara Bush: Because there's a lot of good free schools.

Sandra: It's rated sixth as per the world population review of the public school system.

Dr. Barbara Bush: Yep.

Sandra: So it's interesting to talk a little bit about the value of public and private education here.

Sandra: Yeah.

Sandra: And, and you speak perfect Swiss German.

Dr. Barbara Bush: No, no, no, no.

Sandra: I think it's perfect. I heard you.

Dr. Barbara Bush: Ich bin Schwizerin aber es ist nicht Perfekt. 

Dr. Barbara Bush: No, and I'm in a yodel club, so I'm working on.

Sandra: Which I also wanted to talk about 'cause you shared that with me.

Dr. Barbara Bush: Yeah. No, my mom was from Switzerland. And she was one of the first women elected to public office here in the Gemeinde, She was not national. Before she even had the right to vote, women got the right to vote in 1971.

Dr. Barbara Bush: She ended up not taking it 'cause she moved to the United States and married my father [00:06:00] and ended up having my sister and myself. So there's four of us. My dad had two boys in his first marriage . So we would always come back and forth to Switzerland.

Dr. Barbara Bush: My dad's parents were from Switzerland. Which is why he initially came to Switzerland, was discovering his roots and saw my mother. He fell in love when he saw her. They got married and the promise was when he retired, they would move back to Switzerland.

Dr. Barbara Bush: In 1992, they attempted to fulfill that promise. They were looking for homes. And then my father unexpectedly passed away. He had AML leukemia. We never ended up moving to Switzerland.

Sandra: So you coming here now is sort of fulfilling that promise.

Dr. Barbara Bush: Promise. And my sister had moved here with her American husband, and I followed a year later. I figured it was now or never. And here I am.

Sandra: And how long have you been here now?

Dr. Barbara Bush: September 17th will be the anniversary in 2023. So then the craziest thing. How do you get a job? Before I moved here, I put out on an expat Facebook page and the British School contacted me.

Sandra: Wow.

Dr. Barbara Bush: Yeah. Aisha Osman and Michelle [00:07:00] Flieler, the owners of this school interviewed me. There was an opportunity to build a school that had been getting smaller but offering an excellent education. The platform of The British School Bern was undeniable to me.

Dr. Barbara Bush: These people know what they're doing. I realized there was time for innovation, but it's hard to innovate when there's no quality. It's much easier to innovate when you've got high quality.

Sandra: I think what you bring to the table is something a lot of families moving here are trying to understand. And what we do with Find My Swiss School is help families choose between public, or private schools, these decisions are deep and they're difficult. We have this public school system that is excellent, and also you're building this private school so I'd love to hear your perspective.

Dr. Barbara Bush: As an American, I came with a particular perspective of private schools, and I will be quite transparent, not positive.

Dr. Barbara Bush: I'm a public school child, through and through. I found them to be elitist, and as a professor, I found students who came from the private school system often unprepared.

Dr. Barbara Bush: That being [00:08:00] said, here in Switzerland, you have a population of people. Who are not staying here, and they're gonna be moving on in three years or and then they're going back to their English speaking place.

Dr. Barbara Bush: They can't integrate into the Swiss system in the sense that learning Swiss German and German will not benefit them when they return. So we serve a community that needs us.

Dr. Barbara Bush: The public school system is here to serve a democracy. Democracies were built with certain structures in place. And one of those structures is a public school system.

Sandra: Absolutely.

Dr. Barbara Bush: And so you should have a good public school system that people are excited about, invested in, and wanna have kids go to. So the Swiss public school system serves that purpose. And thankfully here in Switzerland we have high social trust.

Dr. Barbara Bush: We don't have high social trust in the United States anymore. Which is why you've seen a proliferation of private schools and homeschooling and alternative school choices.

Dr. Barbara Bush: Here you still have high social trust. There's still private schooling serving particular needs, [00:09:00] especially private international schooling. But overall, because of its quality, people are giving the public school teachers a hands-off approach.

Sandra: And it's a culture shift too for parents.

Dr. Barbara Bush: It is.

Sandra: Who put kids in the public school system here in Switzerland? It's a no news is good news approach.

Dr. Barbara Bush: That's right. We don't have trackers on our kids here. If a parent was trying to decide, I would ask, what does your future look like?

Sandra: That's usually the first question. How long are you, how long are you gonna stay?

Dr. Barbara Bush: Yeah. And if you don't know. Maybe think about integrating into the public school system or finding a bilingual school that might be a private school. That will help you then transfer to a public school.

Dr. Barbara Bush: We have families, who are international and transient. We also have families with an international background. Maybe one parent is Swiss and the other parent comes from somewhere else and they want to return to another country.

Sandra: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Barbara Bush: Or they don't see themselves here long term, but they want to leave those people are coming to our school. And [00:10:00] sometimes Sandra, which I think is really great, we have Swiss kids who come to our school. They have a very specific need that we can support.

Dr. Barbara Bush: And then we turn them back over to the Swiss school system. It has happened a number of times here at the British school. Where kids are coming through and then we encourage them to go back. Because they are staying.

Sandra: We work with families with that too. I think sometimes the Swiss school system doesn't teach some of the soft skills so directly.

Dr. Barbara Bush: Yes.

Sandra: For example, study skills, organizational skills. Some teachers absolutely do. Some really don't. Often the private schools teach some of those soft skills in a more robust way 

Dr. Barbara Bush: And we also have really small classroom sizes here. They get a lot of one-on-one attention. And that is easier to do when you've got 10 kids versus I know, 'cause I teach in the public system 19 kids.

Sandra: And wraparound care is the other

Dr. Barbara Bush: Yeah, that's right. Wraparound care. Exactly. So those are some of the things that I let people know. I always say be wary of if you're going to a private school, if they're badmouthing the public school system. Pay attention to that. [00:11:00] Because there's a lot of really good schools in the public school system.

Dr. Barbara Bush: The only thing that I would also add, is that in an international school private school, you do have maybe less, I'm hedging my bets, but you have less issues with prejudice, and we have had sometimes kids who are going to village schools here in Switzerland.

Dr. Barbara Bush: We had one child came to us when I first started working here in 2023, she actually couldn't even speak. She had started off in the Swiss kindergarten. It was a village school. She was, as they say in Swiss German, mobbed, we say bullying in American English.

Dr. Barbara Bush: She stayed with us for a year and I'm happy to report she's now back in the Swiss system and she's doing very well.

Dr. Barbara Bush: So this can sometimes be a problem in small village Swiss schools.

Sandra: I agree with you. We've seen that too.

Dr. Barbara Bush: It's very important. And that's a place where we serve very nicely, I think.

Sandra: Well, you have a very diverse group of children. Every time I come to visit, I think it's fantastic.

Dr. Barbara Bush: They're from all over. The other thing that I'm passionate about because I am Swiss, [00:12:00] is I want my kids to get to know Switzerland.

Dr. Barbara Bush: I feel like we bring Switzerland in, we're here in the kirchgemeinde. So it's the church community, literally, it's how you translate it. And there is a church in our building, but we are absolutely not affiliated.

Dr. Barbara Bush: We're not religious. We have it all here. But we do have a very good relationship with the kirchgemeinde and because it's a community building, we have yoga classes, senior citizen classes, new immigrant classes, children learning English classes that are not affiliated with us directly.

Sandra: You said this to me when we first met You said you were very proud of the fact that you have an extension into the local community. Yep. And I think that's something that I see with some schools that we visit all over Switzerland, where there can be just a bubble.

Dr. Barbara Bush: Can you imagine being in school in Shanghai and you never get to know anything outside of your private school. What a missed opportunity.

Sandra: Also for people who are listening to this who don't know where your school is situated. The first time I came to visit you, I went for a little walk down the path and with the [00:13:00] sheep and the cows.

Dr. Barbara Bush: I remember. Yeah, I remember you doing that.

Sandra: And the cat.

Dr. Barbara Bush: Yeah. Yeah. And the cat. There's a lot of cats. And by the way, we had a chicken in the school. At the end of the summer, ``Dr. Bush, there's a chicken in our school``. I'll take care of it.

Sandra: But this is so lovely about Switzerland. There is this real melding of nature and things are very present. You're not protected from these things. You can engage with your chicken in the school.

Dr. Barbara Bush: I wanna be a good community member because there is prejudice. And you can help reduce that when you, when people get a chance to talk. And do something fun together. And it's a chance for my kids, to get to know Switzerland. And then they go onto some other experience, but they'll take this with them.

Sandra: So the school goes up to what year now? 'cause I know you've been growing and expanding, so

Dr. Barbara Bush: Yeah, it was been a long project. Well it depends if you take the American or the British curriculum. So we can go up to year 13 if you choose British curriculum, if you choose the American curriculum, you'll go up to year 12. we still have our primary years up until year six.

Dr. Barbara Bush: And then seven through 12 or seven through 13, again. The curriculum is [00:14:00] hybrid. Because that is the future of schooling.

Dr. Barbara Bush: I believe it's a way to make a mark right now to step into a frame where people are deciding what that looks like. And I know what I want it to look like. And it fits our school. We're small, so having a bunch of classrooms is not physically possible for us at this location anyway, so it made practical and logistical sense too. Sandra teachers are not the, sage on the stage.

Sandra: I've been reading so many articles about how university students are becoming disenfranchised with university degrees. Partly because they feel AI is so accessible and...

Dr. Barbara Bush: That's right.

Sandra: That's probably a whole other topic. Whole nother episode podcast. To do that one another time.

Dr. Barbara Bush: You should do a group of people for that one. So fascinating. I think that's a topic.

Sandra: A panel discussion. That's a great idea. I'll invite you to that.

Sandra: I feel like education is really changing. And I'm curious, you've spoken of your passion about public access, the democratization of education.

Dr. Barbara Bush: But before even ai, there was this whole term called [00:15:00] flipping the classroom. I would say I first heard that term 2010 ish.

Sandra: And what does it mean exactly?

Dr. Barbara Bush: Flipping the classroom is where the student becomes in charge of their learning. The teacher provides opportunities for the student to explore or take accountability for the subject matter.

Dr. Barbara Bush: So let's say you wanna talk about the industrial revolution And then you say, what happened in the industrial revolution, between the countryside and the cities? I want you to talk to me about that next week and teach us, give us three important examples.

Dr. Barbara Bush: That flipping of the classroom removes the teacher, the teacher becomes more of a guide.

Dr. Barbara Bush: The idea is that you allow students to take control of their learning. And now these hybrid classrooms, that flipped classroom model is being enhanced with technology.

Dr. Barbara Bush: And it's weird, Sandra, I am very old fashioned. I like a good old handshake. I'm an environmentalist. And I'm old fashioned about the classroom. I think face-to-face learning matters. I see my students learning and they have [00:16:00] no technology in front of it. And they can focus and they can concentrate and they can develop their own ideas. And I think it's that traditional classroom is doing that for them. That being said. You cannot be afraid of change.

Dr. Barbara Bush: I may wanna open the door for somebody, but there's technology now where they can open it for themselves, and that's probably more empowering.

Sandra: It may be that we end up having these different phases of education. Meaning you might have more of this real life education in the early years. That's much more experiential.

Dr. Barbara Bush: Yes.

Sandra: We also, with COVID, we are still dissecting what happened there in terms of education.

Sandra: And I'm curious if we'll end up with a shift and then you start integrating technology and critical thinking. Because what I worry most about is these studies of how AI fosters laziness, right? So how do we then inspire children in learning And how would we phase the integration of AI into building skills and using it as a tool and not as a crutch.

Dr. Barbara Bush: Where a student [00:17:00] can still have the intellectual skills to move forward. Knowing that technology can act as a partner, but that they can also work alone.

Dr. Barbara Bush: And that's true anyways, right? Can I work with a partner? Can I work alone? Technology is becoming that partner. Now, generative AI is recognizing patterns.

Sandra: And it doesn't challenge in the same way. I actually wrote a piece about what AI can or cannot replace in the classroom. And I think being able to have disagreements. Being able to have discourse and being presented with different viewpoints.

Dr. Barbara Bush: It's not gonna challenge you and no matter how big AI gets, we're gonna have to work together as people. And so you gotta know how to do that.

Dr. Barbara Bush: And so people continually need that refreshment on how do you work with people?

Dr. Barbara Bush: It's important to recognize what its limits are. And I am not a technology pessimist, but I'm also not a technology optimist. I'm trying to find the way in the middle.

Dr. Barbara Bush: I think a big problem right now, however, is. And I would encourage all educators to start using AI because right now kids know more than [00:18:00] educators about AI. I'm also trying to school myself on that.

Sandra: We need to be more thoughtful with how we utilize these things. I once read about the iPhone. We have something in our hands that can have the access to all the knowledge of humanity. Yet we use it for most of the time for TikTok.

Dr. Barbara Bush: And I think that's, that's really the goal in the younger years, if you're pushing this layered educational approach where you're slowly building up knowledge and you're giving them a lot of time to explore, that matures them. And you're getting them ready for the technology. You're not just getting them ready for higher learning, you're getting them ready for the tool itself. And you have to have that in mind. It has to be an actual practice in the classroom.

Dr. Barbara Bush: I'm right now writing our AI policy 'cause we now we have an upper school. And if school doesn't have an AI policy and they have higher years, they should get on it. They should get on it.

Sandra: Agreed. What do you think is the key to inspiring children to want to learn as an educator.

Dr. Barbara Bush: Um, I, I would [00:19:00] like to ask my kids that.

Dr. Barbara Bush: I think two big things that you, yourself are inspired about learning. Students I teach in the public school or my kids here as their principal, they know I love learning. They see me read, they see me look at bugs.

Dr. Barbara Bush: They see me look at their work. They see my curiosity. And then I think the other thing is having fun with them so that you don't kill their curiosity.

Dr. Barbara Bush: Sometimes a child might go off on a little tangent. I had a student the other day. We had an assignment to, make clouds. We're having a weather unit, and he decided he wanted to make lightning bolts. And I was like, that is not the project.

Dr. Barbara Bush: But I thought, Barbara, don't step on his joy. It's weather. Let the kid make lightning bolts. And he was thrilled. He was focused. I could have stepped on his curiosity. Or I could have found a way to make it work with the lesson.

Dr. Barbara Bush: And you can't always do that. But I think those two things, finding the joy and be it having fun with your own curiosity, letting [00:20:00] them see that

Sandra: it's probably good for teachers and students, what you've just said actually.

Dr. Barbara Bush: And I don't always know everything. Let's figure it out. Let's go find out. Let's look.

Dr. Barbara Bush: I think in the United States, the way that I grew up in education, you really needed to spit back what was given you. I wasn't really encouraged to think until community college.

Dr. Barbara Bush: And that is where I started loving education. And I don't think that's an accident. So I think getting kids to have critical thinking is, it doesn't just happen in the classroom.

Dr. Barbara Bush: You know, and I talked to you a little bit about horse training.

Sandra: Hmm.

Dr. Barbara Bush: And I've worked a lot with rescue horses.

Sandra: And you have a horse now.

Dr. Barbara Bush: I have a horse now who was rescued. But you have an animal who can hurt you, who moves through a lens of fear. And when an animal like that has been abused, bad things can happen. So you learn to give them space to let them show you what it is they're seeing. And when you do that, you find out how to interact with them, how to communicate with [00:21:00] them.

Dr. Barbara Bush: And so it, same thing in the classroom. When you give kids space and you see, kind of see where they're coming from. I have a student who is intensely curious and bright, and I was watching him and thinking about how I think he doesn't realize how smart he is. And by observing him and giving him space, and then being able to redirect him and talk to his mom and talk to him about his strengths and his intelligence, he's now going on to sekundarschule.

Dr. Barbara Bush: And he has plans for something more than what he thought he could. He had a limited perspective of what he could do. So giving kids space is really important in helping them find their curiosity.

Dr. Barbara Bush: So, if I was gonna say anything, is that I value bonds and I value relationships, and I value community. And I think when people have those things, they can do anything.

Sandra: And I think you really exemplify that in the school.

Dr. Barbara Bush: Thank you.

Sandra: Which is why I thought I needed to follow up with you.

Dr. Barbara Bush: Thank you. I wanna stand on our merits. And I really like that you go around and you're looking at [00:22:00] all these schools.

Sandra: Thank you. Thank you.

Dr. Barbara Bush: And I think it's wonderful that you're sending kids to public schools and private and private international. And you're looking at what they need.

Sandra: We believe in trying to really find the right fit. There are so many wonderful schools that we come across, you know? I mean, Pascale and I have often said, the leadership sets the tone for the school.

Dr. Barbara Bush: Yep.

Sandra: It sets the tone of trust with the teachers. The parents feel it. The kids feel it. And that personality is much more influential than schools often realize. So for us, it's important always to meet with the leadership because I think it shows the values.

Dr. Barbara Bush: Well, and I will say my bosses are Aisha Osman and Michelle Flieler. They own the school's, a women owned school. A women run school. It's a women led school.

Dr. Barbara Bush: They are my bosses, but they let me make the call. I always pass things through them. I always make sure, I run the Osman Flieler check, but they almost a hundred percent of the time say we trust you. And that is a gift.

Dr. Barbara Bush: So that comes back to trust. Right. You have trust. [00:23:00] And then you can build something, really build something good. I appreciate my bosses for that. And then they act like they're not my bosses, but they really are my bosses.

Sandra: Well, it sounds like you have a good partnership.

Dr. Barbara Bush: Yeah, we have a good partnership. Very good.

Sandra: You're all aligned on the same goal.

Dr. Barbara Bush: Yeah, we're definitely aligned. We care about the same things.

Dr. Barbara Bush: I think the hardest thing maybe in the public school system for some folks. Probably 'cause it was created in a different era, and I know this tonally it's different, but it's the coming home for lunch thing. That's tough.

Sandra: It's quite an old school model.

Sandra: And I have some older, family friend ladies who once said to me, oh, I feel so sorry for your child not coming home for lunch. And I realized they think I'm failing as a mother. 

Dr. Barbara Bush: both parents work and it's just not the reality anymore. 

Sandra: I give credit to some cantons who have now lunch programs in Zurich City for example. They are considered more day school offers now.

Dr. Barbara Bush: That's an important adjustment that school schools are gonna have to increasingly make, I think.

Sandra: And certain cantons, like Basel Stadt, I give them credit for that too, have invested hugely in the Tagesstruktur offers. So it's more the [00:24:00] norm that people go than not. And they of course have subsidies for families on different needs.

Dr. Barbara Bush: The schools I teach at are little village schools, so they haven't adjusted to this day school model.

Sandra: Yeah. And, and it comes later. It will come later,

Sandra: i'm an expat as you know. My husband is Swiss. We moved here when my kids were three and five, and I was like, how do people work? I want to work. And I started doing this because I saw how confusing everything was for schooling. I thought it's so difficult to navigate.

Dr. Barbara Bush: So an interesting thing to keep in mind is that the Swiss system is not as rigid as people think it is. It's actually past sixth grade. It gets permeable.

Dr. Barbara Bush: But for the British curriculum, we are a year ahead. So where the Swiss system has two kindergartens. We have preschool and the British curriculum calls it reception. So when our child is in year one, the Swiss student is in kindergarten.

Dr. Barbara Bush: But then also there's a much more structured curriculum in British curriculum in terms of kindergarten. You're not just drawing and [00:25:00] playing. Whereas in the kindergarten, in Switzerland, you just play. So for any expats listening to this, that's normal. And you might think, oh my gosh, my child doesn't know how to write or whatever.

Dr. Barbara Bush: They're not learning their ABCs. You, first of all, you can do that at home if you have time and you're inspired to do that. But the kids catch up.

Sandra: The philosophy behind this Swiss idea of this play-based curriculum in kindergarten, is that when they reach grade one, they start doing reading and writing, which is age 6, 7, the brains are absolutely ready. So they learn it quickly. And that builds excitement and confidence and interest because they have an early win.

Dr. Barbara Bush: I see.

Sandra: And so by about grade three is where it all starts to level out. Starts level out. 

Sandra: But for some kids, the more academic start is appropriate, and for some kids, the more play-based curriculum is, you know, it's about finding the right fit for the child. And you don't know, your kid's still figuring things out. You're figuring things out as a parent.

Dr. Barbara Bush: But I do think it's important for expats to realize that if they're gonna stay and their [00:26:00] child's gonna integrate, that this is the norm. It's just a different approach. Different approach.

Sandra: We try and explain that to families too. And give them a little bit of that color and context.

Sandra: Do you have any final takeaways you'd like to share with me? You know, something that, that you find yourself coming back to in the role that you have.

Dr. Barbara Bush: I think if you want to be an effective educator, and I think as a principal, I'm also an educator. You have to like people and you have to like the world.

Dr. Barbara Bush: There's a lot of stuff going on right now. Not to be too political. I feel like I'm losing my country. I feel like I'm losing the United States and I don't wanna cry or get too emotional about it.

Dr. Barbara Bush: But that can be heavy. And I'm not the only person. I'm not special. There's lots of people who have that experience from all over the world. I understand what it means to feel like your home is gone. In my case, it's not war but it's disappearing.

Dr. Barbara Bush: But I can't lose sight of the fact that the world's a beautiful place. Louis Armstrong was right. It's a wonderful world.

Dr. Barbara Bush: That's my final takeaway. [00:27:00] It's a wonderful world and, and if you can keep finding that, you'll keep finding yourself and you'll keep finding your joy for education and learning and discovering no matter how old you are.

Sandra: Thank you for that. It's actually a really nice way to wrap up our conversation. Which I've really enjoyed.

Dr. Barbara Bush: Thank you. Me too.

Sandra: And I look forward to our AI deep dive, which I think will be the next next panel

Dr. Barbara Bush: panel. Panel, panel. Alright.

Sandra: I'll work on, that's a panel. Panel. Yeah.

Sandra: So really thank you very much and we look forward to continuing to connect with you.

Sandra: Thank you, Sandra. You guys are doing great work.