Welcome to the Counselor’s Page

Although this is my first year in Yanbu, it isn’t my first year working in the ISG family of schools, as I spent two years teaching at the Jubail International School before coming to Yanbu. Before Saudi Arabia, my wife and I spent four years teaching in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. I’ve worked as a counselor both abroad, in Tashkent, and in the US in Wichita, Kansas. I like working with all children, regardless of their age and enjoy watching them grow over the course of a school year, either as seniors getting ready for the challenges of college, or second graders getting ready for the challenges of the sand table. I look forward to being one of the first contacts new students and parents get to meet. I am genuinely excited about the contacts I expect to make in the next year through events both at school and in our community.  

(My predecessor ended with a quote. I don’t feel I can let down tradition.)

“Play is the work of children.”

I found this quote attributed to a number of different people, the earliest I could come up with was Friedrich Froebel.  In the 1850’s he developed the idea of a “kindergarten” as being a place where children could grow and develop at their own pace, he also founded one of the first teacher training institutes focused on training teachers to work with young children.  Though he probably wasn’t the first to give a child a set of blocks as a gift, he was one of the first to think about why children like to play with blocks and how playing can encourage cognitive growth.