Students flood the DIS campus with the start of another splendid school year. To make it more meaningful, we asked several members of our community to share their goals for 2023~2024, and plan to revisit these individuals next June to see if they accomplished their aspirations. Let’s dive in.

Maria Park, Grade 11:

For this school year, I want to work on more cardiovascular activities to try to improve my body. And maybe work on academics. For this year, I want to do things I’ve never done before. I joined lunch clubs and ASAs in order to branch out a bit because I sort of feel like this year and last year I’ve been doing a lot of the same thing because it makes me feel comfortable. But I want to try out new things to find out and interest myself.

Alex Lee, Grade 12:

First, successfully without having troubles, graduate DIS and get accepted by one good university for my bright future. I am confident to say that I am going to have a bright future. If I don’t get into a good university, I will first go to a factory, go coal mining, or work at a salt farm. But I don’t have to worry about that because it’s not going to happen.

Jason Kim, Grade 8:  

I mainly have two. So the first one is to get taller, especially because I am, like, short, or shorter than anybody else. My second goal is to win the SKAC basketball and win the 3-peat for the first time because last year we went to the finals but we lost to ISB. Though it was our first chance to win the 3 peat, we barely missed it so I want to be the first one to win the 3 peat. 

Ms. Spaeth, Social-emotional counselor:

One goal or hope that I have is, I know the social-emotional counselor position at DIS is still new. Last year was the first time that DIS had a separate social-emotional counselor. So I guess the goal that I have is to grow the program and grow social-emotional learning and students’ well-being all over the school. I want students to feel more comfortable talking openly with me and with each other about the challenges and struggles that they have particularly around mental health and well-being. Because globally there is still a stigma around talking about those things and I feel like school is a really good place to start having conversations about that and kids can learn about that and feel comfortable talking about it.

Mr. Jang, cafeteria cook:

My goal this year actually is to save up a lot of money in order to find and establish my own private bar. I think that earning a lot of money would be the first step and also, although I don’t know how long I’ll be here, I want to enhance my cooking skills as much as I can while working at this school.

Lia Kim, Grade 3:

My goal is to get better at math. I’m not good at math. I’m not even better than my little brother. My grade is lower than my little brother’s. I don’t know what else I want to accomplish. My hobbies are art and musical instruments. I want to get better at art. 

Emily Shin, Grade 3:

I want to learn a new instrument. I really want to learn how to play the violin. I used to play piano and still play piano. The reason why I want to play the violin is because I want to play a string instrument. I also want to get better at writing in English because my dream is to be an author. I want to write about fantasy or graphic novels. 

Philip Hinkle, HS English teacher:

I have several ideas for things I want to do. On a personal level, I want to work on my fitness. In essence, like, before we were recording I mentioned that there is a level of weight I want to achieve. The other big deal is from last year I really started getting into AI. I want to find ways that I can introduce academically appropriate augmentation to our learning. In fact, literally right before you came in, I was posting something to my AP research and AP sem class about 8 websites and apps or extensions that they might be able to use to help them do their research.

Logan Nam, Grade 4:

I want to get better at music because I want to be good at music. I want to be good at piano. I am learning it right now. I want to be good at it because I like playing music. I don’t know if I’ll be able to accomplish it. 

Elena Kim, Kindergarten:

My mommy said if I do piano when I’m 7 years old or 6 years old I can do swimming (later). I want to play the Celebrated Chop Waltz on piano. I want to learn how to swim because I think it is fun because I like diving. I don’t like the ocean but only the swimming pool because the ocean goes in my eyes and it hurts.

Mr. Mayo, Student-teacher intern: 

First and foremost, very obvious, I want to learn how to teach and teach effectively, but there are a lot of skills I am looking to develop and refine while being here and also make connections in the international school community because I am planning to be teaching internationally. Some big goals here. I grew up in Maine – that’s a very isolated and insular state. Not a lot of diversity there. I mean I was next to Canada and they spoke French in that section of Canada. But I was always drawn to go and see the world and I think education is the best way to both travel the world and also give students across the world to be globally successful as well so it is a win-win.  

It seems everyone has ambitious goals for this year. What do you want to achieve? Share your own endeavors in the comments and come back in June for another poll.