International Baccalaureatte 

As mentioned in the Leadership report, on Monday 14th and Tuesday 15th our school will be visited by Di Fisk and Nicholas Palmer who are in charge of our authorisation process to determine whether the school is ready to become recognised with IB accreditation and global recognition. 

Both Nicholas and Di have shared information about themselves and have given us permission to share their bio with the local community. 

Di Fisk

Hello there!

My name is Di Fisk, and I have been assigned as the Team Leader for the upcoming Verification Visit for your school. I very much look forward to meeting with you all and finding out how the PYP has been moving forward during the Candidacy Stage. I am enjoying reading all about your school via the documents and links that you have submitted and am excited to see how the school is implementing the programme.

My involvement with the IB started back in 2002.  I currently work as an IBEN, based in Sydney, Australia having retired from my last position as elementary principal of a large IB bilingual school in Hong Kong. Prior to the move to HK, I was the deputy principal at an independent girls’ school in Sydney. 

I am taking advantage of my new ‘retirement’ status, working with the Singapore Office as an IBWS Lead Educator, school verification and evaluation visitor, mentor for team leaders and consultant for candidate schools in the Asia Pacific Region.

Both Nick and I are pleased that this visit has moved from a virtual platform to ‘face to face’ as we appreciate the challenges and disappointments that schools (and the visiting teams) feel when these visits need to take place virtually. We will endeavour to make everyone feel relaxed and wish to reinforce that our intention for the visit is not to come and judge or complete checklists of targets, but to engage with a range of members of the school, so that we can celebrate all that you have achieved and collaboratively plan a contextually appropriate path forward for the next five years. 

I look forward to meeting you very soon. 

Nicholas Palmer

My name is Dr Nick Palmer and I have been working as an IB PYP practitioner since 1999. I began my career at the Bavarian International School in Germany and, since that time, have taught, coordinated, and lead various initiatives in IB schools across the world, including schools in Angola, Azerbaijan, Hong Kong, and New Zealand. I have been an IBEN workshop leader and visiting team member since 2016. Currently, I work at Deakin University as a Teaching Scholar at their Warrnambool campus. 

My interest area is global citizenship education and international mindedness. I am also working on a book for the State University of New York publishers focused on practical global citizenship tentatively titled ‘The World in Us: How Teachers and Students Articulate and Implement Global Citizenship Education’ based on my PhD research. I am also part of the team designing learning engagements for the revised IB online digital channel. 

I am very much looking forward to meeting all the team at Saltwater P-9 College.