Safeguarding & Wellbeing

August

• Aiglon College is pleased to welcome Lana Kulas to the school community. Lana begins in August as a new Deputy School Director with responsibility for curriculum and learning. Lana joins Aiglon from Hiba Academy Shanghai, part of the Wellington International Education in Shanghai, China, where she served as Second Master, having initially joined as the Founding Head of High School
• School Director, Nicola Sparrow, welcomes Lana, “With Lana joining the team we have a strong team of Deputy School Directors in place who will be able to continue to develop Aiglon as a world-class school and caring community. Lana’s experience and passion mesh wonderfully with our school ethos and I’m certain everyone will make her feel welcome on campus.”
• Lana’s appointment as Deputy School Director completes the school’s structuring of its deputy school director roles, who help to look after the overall student experience. Tom Hadcroft, who joined in April, has responsibility for safeguarding and wellbeing, and Lee Glaser, who joined last year, is responsible for character education and school development
• Lana was born in Bosnia and Herzegovina, what was then Yugoslavia, before moving with her family to the UK at age nine to escape the war. She entered the local school speaking no English. She eventually graduated from the University of Oxford with her Bachelor’s Degree in English Language and Literature and later with a Master’s in Education Leadership and Management from the University of Bath
• Lana spent seven years teaching in comprehensive schools in London, serving in various roles including head of subject, head of sixth form, university and careers advisor, and eventually assistant principal at Chelsea Academy
• When Lana moved to Qatar in 2013, the idea had been to have a year’s break from the UK state education system and to gain experience in a different context abroad. Instead, she stayed seven years, working across three different schools and eventually becoming head of secondary school at Swiss International School in Qatar
• Lana and her partner moved to Shanghai, China in 2020, where they were ready for a different kind of adventure in international education. Lana joined a brand new bilingual school to set up the high school at Hiba Academy. The pandemic, of course, meant it was not the easiest time to work in education, but Lana persevered. She helped to set up the school’s IGCSE and International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme (IBDP) before taking up the role of Second Master, or Vice Principal. Hiba Academy has 1,100 students from grades one to 12. The school is a unique blend in international and bilingual education, welcoming a majority of Chinese students alongside an international staff body
• I do think my background had some impact on me going abroad,” reflects Lana. “My experiences have helped me relate to students who come from a non-English-speaking background. People often assume I’m a native speaker from the UK, and I say, well, actually, no. It’s been a helpful way to relate to families and to talk about these cultural differences. In London, we had a lot of kids who were also refugees or asylum seekers, and I’ve been lucky that I’ve been able to share those experiences as well.”
• It is also such cultural differences that have Lana excited to step back into a fully international community like Aiglon. “I’ve loved getting to know the Chinese culture, but equally, I’m excited to move to Aiglon where you have 70 different nationalities –as well as a boarding school environment. I’ve known about Aiglon for a while, and its reputation as a truly international school.”
• At Aiglon, Lana’s focus will be to work closely with the other deputy school directors, Lee Glaser and Tom Hadcroft, to continue developing the overall student experience. “We will work together to make sure the students have as holistic an education as possible, but my responsibility will focus on the academics.” Lana describes this as bridge-building, looking at all the choices and holistic skills students develop through character education and expeditions to ensure that learning and development is also reflected in the classroom. “We want to be able to further develop a seamless curriculum from junior school all the way through to the senior school as well as possibly develop alternative pathways for the older year groups,” she says
• As Lana has begun to plan for the year ahead with her future colleagues at Aiglon she has been especially pleased by the work done so far around holistic reporting, and is keen to explore how this can be furthered. “There’s loads of work going on around the things that universities and employers look for, that schools don’t necessarily measure. But how do you capture it? I want to look at how we assess, so we are not just producing things that parents and universities want to see in a report, but so that students have agency and understand how to improve their own learning.”
• Lana highlighted how she has seen students with low SAT scores thrive at Ivy League universities, even compared to others who had done much better in standardised examinations. “It’s about trust,” she highlights. “You need to have that relationship with parents, so that parents and students can understand that this type of success is not just based on grades. How is a child growing, beyond just the grades? This is especially important in a boarding environment.”
• Not only is Lana’s professional experience in international education well suited to Aiglon’s diverse and dynamic culture, but so are her personal interests. An avid rower and skier, Lana is excited to be in the mountains where opportunities for sport on the lake and the pistes await. Like many students and fellow staff, this enjoyment of mountain life is a key part of the school experience and Lana will certainly be out on the mountain with students
• Lana is joined by her partner and their three Shanghainese street cats; she will live on campus and looks forward to meeting many in the wider Aiglon community as part of the 75th Anniversary celebrations this August