Interview 

Mr. Conan De Wilde and Mr.
Emiliano Cori, the Head of the school and the Head of IB.

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Interview with Mr. De Wilde

Interviewer: Good evening Mr. De Wilde. Just to give you some background information,
we’re doing a couple of interviews with the new staff which will later be featured in the first
edition of this year's newspaper.

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Mr. De Wilde: Great, ask away.

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Interviewer: Could you please give us an introduction – so your name, job title, and what
said job entails?

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Mr. De Wilde: Okay, so my name is Conan de Wilde. I have two job titles, I’m Head of School
here and I also work with the school in Vicenza, so I work with the Head of School there to
make sure we have similar learning approaches across the H-IS schools. We’re both IB
schools with PYP, MYP, and DP, so we have similar kinds of educational offerings and it’s
just good to share practice.

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Interviewer: How about your personal history? Where did you work before coming here and
why did you decide to move here?

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Mr. De Wilde: Yeah, so I was at the International School of Geneva and there I was the Head
of Academics for the secondary, which started in year 9 and went up to year 13. I had been
there for a very long time; it’s a school with different campuses and I’ve worked on more than
one of them and I’d been there for about 15 years. I used to work with the CEO Antonello
Barbaro when I was in Geneva, so we knew each other from then. I later came to visit the
school when we were exploring opportunities to collaborate. When he invited me to come
over here, I saw the campus, saw it was an exciting school. The fact that I had been in one
school for so long meant that I was tempted by something of a change. It’s hard to know
exactly what it is that leads to making that decision, but it was a big one, also because I have
a family and three children. Trying to fit all the pieces together to make this happen wasn’t
easy but there is something really exciting about a school that tries to bridge gaps in
education, that sees things as a challenge rather than just trying to replicate. There is a sort

of innovative DNA here, and part of that has to do with its tradition as an incubator and
business consultancy hub, and all of that approach to thinking about problems and thinking
about how to build connections with local communities.

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Interviewer: You mentioned that you were at your previous school for many years. What are
some of the differences you noticed between H- Farm and your previous school?

Mr. De Wilde: One of the points of comparison is that my previous school was overall around
4,500, so, big, big school. Even on the campus where I was, there were significantly more
than 1,000 students, so I was there for many, many years, and even then it was difficult
knowing everybody. Here it’s a lot easier to know the teachers, and many of the students,
even if I’m not in the classes as much as I would like. I feel like I know the faces, and you get
a sense of the place much quicker, which I really like. I love how open it is and how relaxed it
is as an atmosphere. What I would like to try and figure out is how to convince students that
hard work is actually enjoyable, in the sense that there is a lot of joy that comes with really
investing ourselves into something – that it is much more interesting to live a life where we’re
connected and we’re working with others productively, rather than being apathetic and
disjointed. The student body seems extremely open-minded and full of very nice people. I
don’t always get the sense that they necessarily value thinking as much as I’d like them to;
that level of intellectual engagement and the fact that if you’re always asking yourself the
pragmatic question of, “Why do I have to learn this?”, you miss out on the power of
education, because a lot of the power doesn’t come from that individual piece of knowledge
but from connecting that with a hundred other pieces of knowledge that you’ve recruited.
That does take time and a significant amount of commitment; it takes a lot of curiosity and
open-mindedness. That is what I’d like to bring here.

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Interviewer: What is the best part of your working day?

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Mr. De Wilde: I really like it when I can talk to teachers about something that they’ve taught
in class because I almost always learn something and I enjoy it. That, or help students solve
some kind of problem. There is a lot of work that I have to do which doesn’t always feel like
it’s addressing a human need, but when I can learn something from a member of staff and
when I can help someone solve a problem, I feel useful, and that’s what I want to be.

Interviewer: Do you have any future plans for the school (that you’re allowed to disclose)?

Mr. De Wilde: Yeah, sure. I think the goal of this school is learning, so the more time we can
spend on that and talking about that, whether it’s with the leadership team or getting into
classes and talking to teachers about what they are teaching, those kinds of conversations
are very valuable. When students are truly engaged and interested in learning, which is what
we’re trying to achieve, even the disciplinary issues go away. In terms of a plan, I think it all
involves talking more about what it is that we’re teaching, why we’re teaching it, how to
enrich it, and how to make sure we’re not just filling time with content with learning outcomes
that are not demanding enough to really involve deep thinking. If it requires deep thinking,
then we’re doing something good. And if the students get through their day without thinking
deeply, well then we’re messing up. So, yes, there are a number of different priorities that I
have that I’m talking about with the staff. Ways that we might better do that certainly involve
allowing teachers to develop professionally, whether it be by attending courses or meeting
together, collaboration between teachers is essential so that students can benefit from
making connections between the classes. We also need to make an effort to make sure that
students reach an academically proficient level in their targeted language, in this case,
English, so that they can easily access the material in their classes and engage intellectually.
Language and perceived intelligence are very closely linked; if you don’t speak a language
well, it is very hard to express yourself and very hard to think deeply, and exhausting to be
translating all day. There are many other ways that we want to support a more challenging
intellectual environment. By challenging I don’t mean hard, but engaging, so it’s not easy –
there is not a silver bullet, a single step we can take to suddenly transform it – but it will
involve getting students engaged by whatever means necessary in every class.

Interviewer: You took the IB Curriculum as well. What is the best advice you would give an IB
student?

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Mr. De Wilde: There is this sense sometimes amongst students that the exams and the IB is
a judge of intelligence, and it really isn’t. The IB, more than anything else, is a test of your
ability to prioritize and organize your time. You can be a brilliant person and not do well in the
IB, and vice versa. You don’t have to be particularly intelligent to do well on the IB. It has
similarities with life; you need to juggle many things at once in life and that is what is so
exhausting about it, so it’s important to prioritize all subjects and aspects of school. So my
advice would be to learn to use a calendar! Learn to account for your time and what you are
doing with your life. Our lives are an accumulation of the ways we spend our days and our
hours, so looking back, is the way that you are spending your time now going to lead to the
goals that you say you have? That doesn’t mean that everything has to be productive all the
time. Sometimes you need to have fun, but then be clear about what fun is so you’re not just

hanging around and then feeling bored – make sure you know what you’re doing with your
time.

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Interviewer: As Head of School you are the “image” of the school, so what would you say if
you had to recommend this school to someone?

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Mr. De Wilde: So, first of all, it goes without saying that this is a beautiful place. Getting to
work and coming to school here every day is beneficial for us all. But the quality of the
school is determined by the people in it, not by the building, and looking at the teachers I
truly believe that they care. There are a lot of people here that really want learning to happen
and are engaged, who care about the learning of their students. My impression looking
around is that teachers are largely very available for students. This school also tries to
recognize different types of students’ successes. It is not a school where if you are not
successful in sports you’re a loser, or if you are not academically brilliant you don’t have your
place. The idea behind this place is that we want to reward many different kinds of talent.
The teachers and their desire for relationships with their students are special, and I think that
the student body is special in the sense that people who are rooted here feel a strong sense
of identity to the Veneto region, to this place, and yet are clearly open to the world; so having
that combination of knowing where they come from and knowing what their culture and
identity is but wanting to know more about what is beyond that is the best possible, the most
fertile “soil” for international understanding.

Interviewer: Just to move away from the topic of school for a second, you recently moved
here after living in Switzerland for many years. What are some of the “cultural shocks” or
differences you’ve noticed?

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Mr. De Wilde: I don’t know if I’ve had any cultural shocks, and that may perhaps be partly
because I haven’t been immersed enough in either culture – this is one of the challenges of
moving between international bubbles. I spend most of my time here on the campus, and in
Geneva which was a very international, cosmopolitan space, I knew plenty of Swiss people
but most of the time was spent among internationals in a very international community, so, I
guess that in itself is surprising. I found the fact that I don’t speak very much Italian at all,
which has clearly made communication with our community, our landlord, and neighbors a
bit more complicated. I guess, though this is not a “cultural shock”, the biggest difference
would be that people here on the whole have been incredibly welcoming. We live in the
countryside and on Saturday and Sunday people stop by the gate, they come into the
garden, they talk to us; there is really a big sense of community. The Swiss society on the

whole is a little more private than that. But it is so nice to see the openness, the curiosity
people have in finding out who you are and why you moved here, and also how patient they
are with the language. I mean, my Italian is very, very bad but some of them persist for half
an hour with me talking in Italian, and that is really nice.

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Interview with Mr.Cori

Interviewer: Good morning Mr. Cori. We are here from the school’s newspaper and we are
conducting a few interviews with the new students and staff for this year’s November issue.
So could you just start with your name and job title?

Mr. Cori: Okay, my name is Emiliano Cori. I am the Head of IB, DP, and the Coordinator.
Interviewer: Great, so can you tell us a bit about your history: where you were before you
came to H- Farm and why you came here?

Mr. Cori: Yes, so I was in Switzerland before I moved here for about eight years. I worked at
international schools, the last one was called Institut Montana in Zug, where I was also Head
of IB. Before that, I was at another international school near St. Mortiz, called Lyceum
Alpinum Zuoz, where I was Head of Humanities and the Arts. Before that, I was in the UK, in
England, where my last job was Head of Classics at Epsom college. I had some experience
with Eden college where I also taught classics. And even before that – I am going back like a
flashback – I did my PGCE there, so teacher training, and before that, I was at the University
of Leeds where I did my master's in research of comparative Literature. I also worked at the
university as a lecture assistant in the department of Classics and Modern Foreign
Languages. Before that, I was an Erasmus student, always in England, where I met my wife.
The reason why we came to H-Farm is twofold. One is perhaps my age – I am 41. The other
is my background because I am Italian, and I was scared to death of coming back to Italy
where I stopped studying when I was 25 and I decided to leave. I never, ever thought I would
have come back here to work. The other side of me was attracted to the idea of coming back
here, because I have a four-year-old child, and he is half Czech half Italian, and I thought
that this was the best moment to make such a big change for him. I think the last reason was
Mr. De Wilde. I met him, we spoke a couple of times, and I thought that this was a person I
could work with really well. Of course, the campus made the magic here, but the most

important factor for me here was really human relationships and rapport with people, and if it
were a different person I think I would’ve chosen a different path.

Interviewer: If we may ask, and this is off script so there is no need for you to answer, but
what is the reason why you didn’t want to return to Italy?

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Mr. Cori: Because of the reason I initially left. There was something within the system in Italy
that was based on clientele, and this kind of rapport in which you get something if you are a
friend of a friend or if you are in a superior position to someone else, and that was what
prompted me to leave. I wanted to find a path, I didn’t want to ask anyone, and I didn’t want
to be in “debt” to anyone – I wanted to find it myself. But when I saw this opportunity of
H-Farm and I visited, it seemed to me like it was a more dynamic place, different from what I
remembered Italy was – I found it quite special.
Interviewer: How is H-Farm different from the previous school you were at?

Mr. Cori: Well, I would say something very different. The school where I was previously was
a smaller, traditional school. But it also had the IB, so I was in charge of two programs, one
more prestigious and academic, and the other more accessible. This school was more
traditional but also more conservative, in terms of the subject choices, the mentality of the
teachers and colleagues, and in terms of the dynamic of the place: it was quite stagnant.
Here at H-Farm, it is more international when it comes to my colleagues, and I really wished
to work in such an international environment. I also hope there will be a greater intake of
international students as well.

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Interviewer: What is the best part of your working day?

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Mr. Cori: I would say early in the morning when I arrive and I have a chance to speak to my
colleagues: Ms. Buckley from the other side, Ms. Fabris from here, Mr. De Wilde, the people
from the office – really, here it’s like a family. I also really like it when I teach. Currently, I’m
only teaching one lesson, TOK, which is sad because I used to teach more, and so I look
forward to Wednesday morning when it’s the only lesson I teach to students. I miss it; I wish I
could teach at least one more lesson and be in the classroom more.

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Interviewer: Lastly, what are your plans for the future of the school, or what are the ones you
can disclose?

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Mr. Cori: Ah, I have many. I would love to create more opportunities for students to find at
school what they cannot find outside. From music offers on campus, to opportunities in
terms of class debates, and subjects that are not usually offered at other schools – creating
something students can really find in H-Farm and cannot find elsewhere. I am a classics
teacher, so I am biased, but I would love an opportunity for students to learn Latin and
Greek, not as part of the curriculum, but as a sort of plus subject, where students can
explore things that interest them. I know it’s a bit general and vague, but the idea is to make
this school more special by connecting it to both the past and the future.

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- This interview is brought to you by the Burgundy Newspaper team, transcribed by Petra
Fortunati and edited by Emma Tobe.