By Lea Barry, Year 12
David Hawley is the new director general of Ecolint. Most of you probably heard his name during the first assembly of the school year. However, you most likely have no clue what a director general is. Personally I didn’t either until Dr. Hawley kindly agreed to this interview.
Long story short, the role of the director general is to oversee the wellbeing of all three Ecolint campuses (La Grande Boissière, La Chataigniere and Campus des Nations). Around 50 years ago, the foundation of Ecolint decided there should be an individual or group of people that had this role. The director general ensures that the campuses are connected or on the same page so to speak. As students, we tend to overlook the fact that LGB is not a single school but along with the other two campuses we make up the International School of Geneva. There are over 4500 students and 1000 employees. Considering those numbers, it makes sense to have someone overlooking Ecolint as a whole.
In order to fulfill his role efficiently, Dr. Hawley spends two days a week at each campus. However, there are only five working days a week so he varies between perhaps three days at one campus one week and one day at another the next. His “official” office is in the manoir at LGB but he has one at every campus. He works along the other Conférence des Directeurs, the senior management team of ecolint.
On the first day of school, Dr. Hughes announced that Dr. Hawley wished to shadow a student for a day to get a real sense of the school. He ended up shadowing Maxime Raymond a fellow year 12 student. He attended all of Maxime’s classes, and he plans to do this with a student at all of the campuses. Overall, Dr. Hawley said that “students give teachers a big gift of cooperation during the day”. He truly enjoyed shadowing Maxime because he was able to see what it’s like to be a student at LGB. Dr. Hawley said that throughout the school year he would love to chat with students in order to truly understand what students think of LGB.
Prior to coming to Geneva this year, Dr. Hawley spent a large portion of his life working in South America (Guatemala, Venezuela and Costa Rica). For the last two years, he lived in the Hague in the Netherlands and was the Chief Academic Officer of the IB.
Dr. Hawley stated that the schools that he attended as a child truly shaped the person he has become today. Hence, before working all over the world, Dr. Hawley grew up in the US, although he is Canadian. He attended two very different schools. As a young child he attended a Catholic school in the Boston area. Dr.Hawley said that when he left his Catholic school he felt as though he had not yet grasped a full outlook on life. For high school he attended a large public school where he felt that it was easy to disappear (which is what he did). He described his high school experience as “being asleep”. Later, when he went on to attend university, he felt as though he was “reawakened”.
Thus, his goal is to prevent students from having the same mediocre high school experience as he did. Dr. Hawley wants high school to be an engaging experience. It should not just be teachers standing at the front of the class teaching facts. For him, teachers and students should be able to learn from one another. He claimed that in a perfect world, “teachers would be the expert advocators of learning”. According to Dr. Hawley, students should feel a sense of ownership, leadership, empowerment and meaningfulness throughout their years at school.
I went on to ask him a few quick fire questions. This is something that the LGB Express will be doing at every interview to get to know the interviewee in a more humorous way.
Quick fire questions:
What is the first thing which comes to mind when you hear the word Geneva?
Jet d’eau
What was your dream job as a child?
A race car driver
What is a drink or food which you enjoy that others (may) find strange?
Horchata, it is a drink consisting of milk made from crushed rice (Guatemalan).
Gallo pinto, is a dish made of rice with black beans and homemade tortillas (Costa Rican).
What is your favourite place where you’ve lived?
Guatemala
What is your favorite aspect of LGB?
LGB’s history as pioneer in international education and its potential for the next educational moonshot (the next big thing to come from LGB that can influence international education).
If you could save one possession from a fire what would it be?
My bicycle
