By Claire Kim and Sang Ho Lee

To further improve their leadership skills and learn how to better guide the student body, HSSC junior members attended the Association of International Schools in Asia (AISA) Leadership Conference from Jan. 29-31, which was held at the British School of Beijing. Members including Yoon Lee, junior council president, Dongin Kim, junior council treasurer, David Moon, junior council vice president and Jean Cho, executive council treasurer engaged in various leadership-building team activities in the conference.

“We are planning to apply many features that the British school system has adopted, such as the house system, alleviating the class system we have today,” Yoon said. “By having freshmen, sophomore, junior and seniors in one house, students will be able to interact, which is harder in the current system because there are distinctive divisions between the classes.”

While HSSC members attended the leadership conference, the representative team of Mu Alpha Theta (MAT) participated in the AISA Math Competition at the same school. MAT executives Jenny Lee (12), Jessica Chung (12) and John Kim (11), as well as member Youngwook Park (11) competed and placed first in the group division among six international schools, despite the increased the competition due to the addition of two Chinese schools. Unlike previous years, however, the competition did not host any individual rounds.

Not only because it was the first time that the British School of Beijing hosted the AISA math competition, but also because every school hosts AISA tournaments differently, the MAT representatives faced some unanticipated quandaries.

“This year’s host school struggled a bit in organizing the competition because it was their first time hosting AISA,” Jenny said. “They gave us questions that had errors and allowed too little time to solve the problems. However, because the competition was larger than last year, the atmosphere was more competitive and exciting.”

While experienced MAT members are looking forward to next year’s AISA, which will be hosted in Osaka, younger members of the team are planning to participate in North East Asian Mathematics Competition in March of this year.

“Other teams were better prepared than last year and stronger competitors than before.” said Peter Valerio, MAT adviser. “Because our members have been participating in competitions since their freshman year, there were no difficulties. As we have more strong juniors and sophomores, I think we will have an even stronger team in the future.”