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Alumni
Connect.
Engage.
The International School of Arizona alumni community represents individuals living throughout the United States and around the globe. ISA is not just a school! It is a small community which is expanding more and more.
The alumni program seeks to connect people in this diverse, multilingual group with one another – as well as provide avenues for engagement with ISA as it is today.
It has probably been a long time since you have had a chance to hear from friends, former teachers, and classmates at ISA. Want to stay connected? Interested in volunteering? Contact us via email: jpalmenberg@isaz.org. We’d love to be updated on your activities in the years since ISA.
Sigrid Wilson
ISA Alum in Engineering Program at Australian Maritime College
Sigrid (“Sigi”) Wilson was one of the International School of Arizona’s first students. She arrived in the fall of 1997 without a word of French and was able to communicate quite fluently only a few months later. She was later joined at ISA by her sisters Astrid, Ingrid, and Brigid. She continued to develop her French over four years, before moving on to Anglophone and French schools in San Francisco, Pennsylvania, and Auckland, New Zealand. She completed her International Baccalaureate with Higher Level French in 2010. She also obtained the DALF at C2 level. This is the highest level of French language certification within the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages and exempts the holder from language exams for entry into French universities.
Sigrid’s recent choice of engineering would resonate with ISA’s founders,since most of them were French engineers. She is currently studying Ocean Engineering at the Australian Maritime College in Tasmania, which will prepare her to work in coastal and offshore industries including oil and gas, and wave energy. Kay, Sigrid’s mother, says that bilingualism is a rare skill among Anglophone engineers, and it “...will give Sigi an advantage in the corporate world with full fluency in a major European language.”
Maya Abou-Haidar
Maya Abou-Haidar began her educational journey at ISA when she was 2 ½ and graduated from 5th grade in 2011. It felt like a “big family and really helped me with other languages, since I’m now learning Spanish at school and being tutored in Arabic.” Maya was in the French track. “I remember all the good times we had at ISA.” Many of those good times revolve around her teachers. Small classroom size allows for deeper connections between student and teacher. Being so close to teachers from so young an age, Maya feels she is less shy about raising her hand in her new school, since teachers are there to help their students.
Maya’s mother, Maha, mentioned this nurturing environment at ISA when she stated, “Little kids start their educational life in a comfortable environment at ISA.” Maha, fluent in French herself, also mentioned ISA’s native faculty help students speak the language correctly, with no accent. When Maya visits French-speaking relatives in France and Lebanon, she said, they marvel at this.
How was the transition to 6th grade? Some of what she is learning now in math she already had at ISA in 5th grade. To keep up with her French, Maya (and other former ISA students!) takes weekly lessons with a native French teacher. To practice her conversational skills, she also has lunch once a week with her new school’s high school French teacher. She has made new friends easily, she said, "because at ISA, we welcomed new students as if they had always been there.” Maya has “straight A’s”!
Maya would like to see an alumni group begin at ISA. If you know other grads of ISA, please let us know their current contact information, by contacting Jackie Palmenberg, Director of Development, at 602-503-9307. Thank you.
