The Association for the Advancement of International Education is the premier professional organization in the United States for American international schools. Membership is comprised of school heads, administrators, counselors, teachers, and professors and professionals who provide services for inter-national schools.
AAIE holds a major conference each year in the United States that is attended by over 500 delegates, including overseas schools directors,stateside superintendents, regional education association executive directors, andofficers of U.S. accreditation agencies. In addition, this annual international educational meeting attracts university personnel that offer training courses to teachers in overseas schools, College Board representatives, book publishers, and many other individuals interested in Department-assisted overseas schools. The meeting affords OS staff opportunities to work with many of the school directors from the various regions, set up school-to-school partnerships, and develop and nurture various OS initiatives. Examples of these opportunities include sessions that bring together OS staff and regional association executive directors with members of the College Board project and the Advisory Committee on Exceptional Children and Youth. In 2007, the conference was held in San Francisco; in 2008, it will be held in New York.
In 2007, at the San Francisco Conference, AAIE and the National Association of Independent School (NAIS) launched The International Trustee Handbook, a version of NAIS' very successful Trustee Handbook, written specifically for the needs of international school boards of trustees around world. With OS support, a team of experienced overseas school heads rewrote each section to improve the book's utility to school heads and board members of overseas schools. The book has been widely distributed to all Department-assisted overseas schools.
In 2007, AAIE sponsored the Summer Institute on Exceptional Children, formerly known as the Optimal Match Network Institute, held at the Seattle University campus in Seattle, WA. Fifty teachers from 34 countries attended. The Institute offered workshops on designing and developing curriculum for gifted students, language acquisition and learning, and on effective interventions for students experiencing learning and behavioral difficulties. Buffalo State and Seattle Universities offered graduate credit. The conference will be held again at the same site on July 7-9, 2008.
In June 2008, AAIE will offer a new three-day institute, Challenging Your Most Able Students for directors, principals and others to create a plan for challenging their brightest students. To be held on the campus of The Johns Hopkins University, the institute is also sponsored by The Center for Talented Youth of Johns Hopkins University and the Center for Gifted Education of The College of William and Mary.
AAIE also provides a variety of services to international schools around the world, primarily through the Internet. These services include customized on-line courses on leadership development for headmasters, teachers and administrators, and model employment contracts for heads of American/international schools. Other services include indexed information on educational projects at www.aaie.org to help teachers develop projects and information on use of the Internet in the classroom, school board policies, on-line curricula, and on opportunities for participation in Internet discussion groups with colleagues around the world.
