Asociación Escuelas Lincoln – an English-language school in the BA province – is a thriving, academically rigorous institution that comprises a diverse community of students and teachers. But that makeup creates its own set of challenges.
Every Friday in Gregory Hines’ fourth-grade classroom includes independent reading time.
Hines firmly believes in fostering diversity and bilingualism and encourages his students to bring books in their home languages. Many wills, of course, read books in English and Spanish, but there are also tomes in Japanese, Arabic, Portuguese and more. Sometimes they’ll ask each other questions about each other’s books, Hines says.
“They’ll say, ‘Oh, can I see your book?’ And they’ll take a look at it. ‘Oh, that’s interesting. How do you read that out loud?’ And they read it out loud,” Hines says. “That kind of anecdotal contact with other languages is helpful.”
These are exactly the types of interactions Hines wants. Not only are his students reading, but they’re also learning about people and topics important to their culture and their families. It’s the most natural of incubators for cross-cultural interaction, understanding, and appreciation.
Hines is far from the only one who thinks that way at Lincoln, the English-language private preparatory school in Buenos Aires province, where he’s been teaching for the past 14 years.
Lincoln, based in La Lucila, a town in Vicente López, embodies this philosophy: inspiring “globally-minded citizens” and finding “strength in bilingualism and cultural diversity” is among the first of its stated core values.
In Argentina, Lincoln is a unique institution. Many say it’s the best school in the country. It routinely sends its graduates to the world’s most elite universities, and its students score substantially above the global average on International Baccalaureate (IB) exams. Beyond this tradition of academic rigour lies a distinct culture of diversity and a robust, inclusive community.
From American to international
Lincoln’s story begins early in the 20th century, with a series of schools near the capital — Lincoln School, the American Grammar and High School, and Ward College — that merged into a single institution in 1952. In the 1990s, the school was renamed The American International School and later changed its name again to Asociación Escuelas Lincoln.
Today, AEL is a nonprofit corporation directed by an annually elected nine-member board of governors and run day-to-day by a superintendent and principals at each of the three schools (elementary, middle, and high). High school graduates automatically receive Argentine and US diplomas and can also earn an IB diploma.
The United States Embassy in Buenos Aires has long played an influential role at Lincoln. It was one of the school’s founders and a key player in its early history, as evidenced by the name’s evolution. Today, the Embassy remains involved through events, university recruiting, and select funding.
Lincoln still orients itself toward the United States in many smaller ways, such as the use of American English spelling. Until a few years ago, it offered Advanced Placement (AP) courses. However, other aspects of Lincoln’s functioning strike a balance, such as its northern calendar, which mirrors US and European school calendars while preserving Argentine holidays and vacations.
Lincoln has become distinctly more international and less focused on the United States in recent decades. The word “American” was removed from the school’s name, and “international ” appeared first. Official Lincoln materials use “university,” not “college.” The cafeteria offers a blend of international cuisine. In the mid-1990s, Lincoln began its IB Diploma Programme in addition to the U.S. and Argentine diplomas each graduate earns. Around that time, says Eddie Levisman, a counsellor at Lincoln from 1992 to 2002 and now an independent international college counsellor and education columnist for the Times’ website, there was massive controversy when, to help accommodate the IB courses, Lincoln dropped US history from its course offerings.
“That was big,” Levisman says. “They were fuming, “We’re an American school!” Those were interesting times.”
This shift is also regional, if not global. Lincoln remains a member of the Association of American Schools in South America (AASSA), a network of schools across the continent through which Lincoln and its peers coordinate conferences, professional development and competition for clubs and sports teams. Many of the member schools, Levisman says, have changed their name to include the word ‘international’ instead of ‘American,’ and schools that never had US roots or schools with British roots also participate.
“The word American, in my opinion, is a misnomer at this point,” Levisman says.
Scholastic paradise
Lincoln’s 21-acre campus sits along the Río de la Plata in La Lucila. Many of the classrooms offer spectacular views of the (not-so-spectacular) river and the nearby greenery of the Reserva Ecológica Vicente López. Everything is walled, gated and guarded around the clock.
“It’s more than just the view or the fields; there’s a feeling of flowing niceness here,” Hines says.
Within those walls is a veritable scholastic paradise. The Mansion is the centrepiece, the oldest and most unique structure and where the administration is headquartered. However, each school has its own building, and an educator’s toolkit is located within each building. Teachers can customise their classrooms however they’d like, from the heavily carpeted, colourful sanctuaries of elementary schools to the precise grid of desks in high schools.
“You were the owner of your classroom. You had all the materials, whatever books you needed,” says Matilde Flesc, a Spanish teacher at Lincoln from 1985 to 1997. “It’s not often that happens in Argentina.”
In 2018, it’s far more than books. Lincoln provides Grade 6 students with personal devices and a range of other equipment, such as cameras and drones. The school has computer labs and advanced software for graphic design and media editing. The recently opened MakerSpace offers opportunities to learn introductory robotics.
The campus has everything a student needs: classrooms, libraries with books in three languages, playgrounds, athletic fields, a cafeteria, a gym, a pool, a theatre, and more. The near-constant security and available facilities mean students have a place to stay after school to do homework or socialise. Blanca Serra, Lincoln’s operations team manager, recalls one student who fell asleep in the library and left with her late at night, hours after extracurricular activities had ended.
Learning and developing
This cornucopia of resources is just one dimension of the framework that supports a tradition of high academic achievement. First, there are the teachers, who currently represent eight nationalities and continually develop professionally. There are annual conferences where teachers and even students share tips on how to improve the educational experience. Lincoln has a programme that helps its teachers earn PhDs in education.
“The teachers really seem excited about teaching,” says Haika Dehart, a parent with children attending the school. “They challenge the kids and make them think. They do a really good job staffing qualified teachers as well as those who just enjoy teaching.”
To strengthen the Lincoln experience in and around the classroom, Lincoln has faculty and staff committees that devise and implement new curricula, programs, and overarching strategies and philosophies. Stacy Wallace, Lincoln’s dedicated health teacher (a rarity in international schools, she says) heads up many of these efforts.
“As a teacher, I like to move to where someone is going to be a bit more innovative,” says Wallace, who began her teaching career in her native Australia and arrived at Lincoln by way of Uganda and South Korea. “They just seemed to do things that the other schools I’d been involved in hadn’t necessarily done.”
Gratitude Week occurs every September. Lincoln employs dedicated learning coaches who support teachers, both in and out of the classroom, with language and content. The school constantly creates new extracurricular opportunities, such as its TED programme and MakerSpace. Since the 1980s, Lincoln’s community service programme has built schools and provided teaching in marginalised communities in the vicinity and across the country.
“They learn a lot from people suffering and having a tough time,” says Emma Bousquet, an Argentine teacher who chaired Lincoln’s languages department for over two decades in the 1990s and early 2000s. “This opens your mind a lot.”
To help fund the scheme, Lincoln hosts International Day each year, its own world fair in which members of the Lincoln community show off their home cultures through food, music, dance, and clothing. Parents also play a key role beyond the school, primarily through the organisation Parents at Lincoln (PAL), which disbursed AR$90,000 to fund 13 initiatives last year.
These aren’t the only activities available outside of class. According to the 2017 Lincoln annual report, roughly three-quarters of Lincoln students across all grades participate in after-school activities. These include traditional sports teams, dance classes, student government, and the student newspaper, as well as STEM options such as Science Club and the MakerSpace Club. These experiences sometimes include travel—last year, the high school boys’ basketball team visited Brazil, and a group of fine arts students participated in a festival in Chile.
Diversity and Community
Yet none of this is different or superior to other elite private schools in Argentina, such as Northlands or St. Andrews. But among Lincoln’s 750 K-12 students, 46 nationalities are represented, of which only a quarter are from Argentina or the United States. Although English-speaking nations such as Canada and the United Kingdom, and regional neighbours such as México and Colombia, are common, students come from nearly every continent and speak dozens of languages. Few have simple backgrounds. For example, one former student was born in Chile, has an Italian father, lived in Egypt as a child, attended university in the United States, and now lives and works in Argentina.
Lincoln’s middle-school principal, Jeff Voracek, is from a small town in the US Midwest but says his children feel more American than Argentine. A current Lincoln student holds three passports, none of which are Argentine, even though he’s spent a large part of his childhood here. The list goes on.
This international population is why Lincoln places such importance on producing “globally-minded citizens.” It’s why the first thing Lincoln teachers or parents will say about a classroom is how it’s not uncommon to have a dozen or more nationalities represented. And it’s why Lincoln has more in common with international schools in 100 different countries than with its Argentine peers just down the road.
This type of environment offers many advantages. Without a true majority/minority dynamic, for example, the pressure to assimilate into a dominant local culture is negligible. And this concept has been so central to Lincoln’s identity that it has capped the number of Argentine students admitted.
“The idea was, if we open the gates for anybody to come in from Argentina, then we lose internationalism,” Levisman says. “That philosophy is essential to the school and always was.”
Though it might disadvantage Argentine families, it’s a conscious decision for the school to stay in its own lane and double down on what it’s known for.
Within the classroom, this internationalism yields a distinctive learning environment. The natural diversity of opinion, just by nature of the diversity of backgrounds, is astounding, Wallace says. For many of the topics she teaches, the learning experience is enriched. For example, a common teaching device involves assigning students a viewpoint to defend. Still, at Lincoln, Wallace says she doesn’t need to mandate anything because many opinions already exist. For many, this trains students to view the world in an accepting light.
“Everyone who attends schools like Lincoln is absolutely used to the diversity, so they are very accepting,” says Lucrezia Rigano, who attended Lincoln for all four years of high school and lived in half-a-dozen countries before that. “Compared to other communities, the international school kids community is one of, if not the, most accepting on a racism/prejudice spectrum.”
Although many students stay for only a few years, Lincoln has leveraged its diversity and globalism to cultivate a strong sense of community that many remember as a special place where they made lifelong friends. Despite their diverse backgrounds, the common narrative of being a fish out of water in a new culture has helped foster family-like relationships, even when students have only a few years together, Flesc says.
“Lincoln plays to that by making an environment that’s nurturing — we’re all different, we’re all new, we all need a friend,” Dehart says.
Powerful experiences at a price
This incredibly diverse, supportive and comprehensive learning environment comes with side effects. The first is cost. A year’s tuition at Lincoln ranges from around US$15,000 in elementary school to US$30,000 in high school. And that’s not all. Each year, re-enrollment costs several thousand more. Elementary school students must wear the official Lincoln uniform, which families buy. High school lunches in the cafeteria cost AR$160 a day. If personal transportation is unavailable, private after-school and after-extracurriculars bus services can cost up to AR$6,000 per month. Although Lincoln loans personal devices to younger students, families are responsible for providing the required devices starting in seventh grade. Most high schoolers have their own laptops.
“You’re identified with being very rich because most of the people who come from Lincoln have everything paid for,” says Alicia Baines, a British-Argentine senior at Lincoln.
This isn’t a relevant barrier for families whose employers cover education costs or who have moved here for a high-paying opportunity. But it would dissuade a middle-class Argentine family seeking the best possible education and strong preparation for university abroad for their bright children.
The tension between Argentine and expat teachers is also a problem. For much of Lincoln’s history, current conditions remain unconfirmed, though one teacher did reference a robust benefits package for expatriate faculty—Lincoln has paid non-Argentines significantly more than Argentines. Beyond salary comparisons, expat teachers have had benefits such as health insurance, housing provided by the school, and a paid trip home once a year that Argentine teachers haven’t had. The children in both groups may attend Lincoln free of charge.
But by far, the biggest side effect is in Lincoln’s curriculum. The school is accredited to offer a US diploma, an Argentine diploma, and an optional (but popular) IB diploma. Coordinating for one school is a lot; requirements start piling up quickly. On the US side, Lincoln follows the Common Core standards. The Argentine Ministry of Education has its own requirements. Wallace, for example, must cover US- and Argentine-mandated health topics in the correct years. Consistent with its location, Lincoln students have Spanish classes every day.
“The school does have to blend the two worlds together, which is not always easy,” Hines says.
Planning a class schedule is now more challenging due to the addition of two-year IB courses. Students complain about what they see as illogical requirements, like the vaguely named cultural studies course and the course of Spanish-language art. And this isn’t just a student grievance — it’s mentioned in Lincoln’s 2017 annual report.
“You wish the government would just leave us alone, but they don’t,” says Nelson Ruseler-Smith, an Argentine-American senior at Lincoln. “I don’t think anybody really gets much out of that.”
These square pegs in round holes are only exacerbated by an unavoidable negative of Lincoln’s model: the high turnover rate of students and staff. Building on material hypothetically learned in earlier years isn’t an option. But more than that, on an emotional level, friends are ephemeral, only physically close for as long as a family happens to be staying.
The Bubble
Move past those negatives, and Lincoln still offers an incredible educational experience. But in some ways, these abundant resources and welcoming sense of community make Lincoln too perfect. There’s literally no reason to leave campus. Going to class? Head to Lincoln. Want to play a sport or join a club? Stay after school at Lincoln. Need extra tutoring? Find help at Lincoln. Ashley Bell, an Argentine-Canadian senior at Lincoln, says her father explored options for her to play sports away from the school. Still, they ultimately decided against it because Lincoln had everything they needed.
Pair this reality with the diverse and largely non-Argentine makeup of the Lincoln community; the result is ‘the Lincoln Bubble.’ In other words, expatriate members of the Lincoln community, especially students, often don’t need to engage directly with Argentine society if they don’t want to. Take Baines, the British-Argentine senior. She identifies as Argentine, is an Argentine citizen, and is perfectly bilingual. But her days are filled with English at home and school. She has Argentine friends, but no one with whom she speaks constantly, Rio Platense. As a result, she says, Argentine humour is hard for her to follow. And she’s not an outlier.
“I wouldn’t say we’re disconnected, I just think we’re definitely more comfortable in an English setting,” Baines says. “I would love to interact more with the Argentine community. When I meet Argentines, I almost put more effort in to bridge that gap.”
Contrast this with the story of the Dehart family, six Texans who moved to Buenos Aires three years ago for what they knew would be a temporary stay. Haika Dehart enrolled her two youngest children in an Argentine private school and her two oldest in a Lincoln school. She’s happy with both experiences but sees distinct differences between them. Her two oldest haven’t had nearly the same degree of Spanish immersion, but their friends are from all over the world, she says. Not so for the other two.
“My two younger kids identify themselves more as Argentine than American,” Dehart says. “It’s been really neat to watch them be fully immersed in it. They don’t have accents. All their things are Argentine.”
Many families Lincoln caters to, like the Deharts, know they’ll be in Buenos Aires for a limited time. Often, they are permanent expatriate families who move from country to country, following a parent’s career as a career diplomat or executive within a multinational company. But the Dehart approach is the exception. With so much constant change, these families need stability where they can find it. This need has led to a “archipelago of globalists,” an international community of expatriates who have more in common with one another than with the country in which they happen to reside.
Baines calls it the “international mishmash.” She shares more with friends who now live in countries around the world, such as Indonesia or Japan, she says, than with Argentines who attend a nearby school, even one with a similar academic pedigree to Lincoln.
As Hines puts it, the most comfortable place for this population is a specific third-culture space; they can struggle to identify with even their home country. He recounts what a French friend who spent much of his time in Argentina once told him: his French friends couldn’t understand his global lifestyle.
“I guess there’s an expression there: ‘Don’t you feel like you’re halfway sitting on two chairs? Isn’t it uncomfortable?” Hines says. “And his response was, ‘Well, I have two chairs.’ I think that’s an interesting way to look at it.”
Source: Buenos Aires Times
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