76. Chapters of Our International Careers and What They Teach Us: Meet Long-Time Veteran Mark Lewis

As international educators, like so many others, in a sense, we tend to write chapters to our life stories. These stories can be organized by countries, schools, travel, and, of course, the regular categories of relationships, family, children, aging, and so on.

We were fortunate to catch our guest, Mark Lewis, just as he was reflecting about the chapters of his international experiences, with his retirement coming up in a couple of months.

Mark is a seasoned international educator with experience at the International School Manila, American International School Riyadh, Concordia International School Shanghai, Bodwell International School, International School Ho Chi Minh City-American Academy, and BASIS Park Lane Harbour. He is currently a principal and teacher in the public school system in Canada.

One of Mark’s core beliefs is that many of the world's future leaders will emerge from students educated in international schools. These students are often multilingual, have received top-tier education, networked with ambitious peers, come from families of means, and almost always pursue higher education degrees—traits that are well-suited to leadership roles. This leadership may manifest in local communities, small business ventures, significant corporate positions, or even public office. It is crucial that international schools continue preparing their students for leadership roles by fostering a skill set that goes beyond academic excellence.

We asked "soon-to-be-retired" Mark the guiding question: “What are some of your lessons learned from the various roles you experienced during your years of going global?”

With such a long career in international schooling, Mark had a lot of gems to share with us:

• Commonalities of international schools in Asia
• Characteristics of international schools specifically in China
• Clarifications between legacy international schools, bilingual schools, and local-student-majority schools
• A look at for-profit schools and the various forms they can take
• Working with school boards
• “Leaky boundaries” in international schools
• Repatriating to one’s home country
• A rapid-fire sharing of lessons learned from Mark’s career overseas

Resources mentioned in the episode:

EARCOS East Asia Regional Council of Schools

NESA - Near East/South Asia Council of Overseas Schools

Mark’s Contact Information: 

LinkedIn

This episode was recorded on March 23, 2025. 
Categories: Leadership | Change | School Life | School Types

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Music: YouTube. (2022). Acoustic Guitar | Folk | No copyright | 2022❤️. YouTube. Retrieved October 11, 2022, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOEmg_6i7jA.