Introduction
The likelihood that K-12 international school leaders will have to respond to an actual crisis both internally and externally is quickly becoming a real concern. There are many factors that put international schools’ head of school, superintendent, and principals at risk, ranging from a natural disaster, revolution, political unrest, economic recession, devaluation of the currency, and terrorism. Modern-day K-12 educational leaders are faced with more challenging circumstances than in any other time in history (Patterson, Gowns, & Reed, 2009). With that in mind, the challenges faced by international school leaders are even more challenging. The strain on international school leaders during times of crisis in their country is immense, and yet, there has been little discussion of the physical and emotional effects of that strain on the individual leader or of the factors that may help leaders cope with those effects.

There has been plenty of news coverage of schools in the USA experiencing internal crises. And as a result experts are putting systems in place to help those who have experienced trauma from the crisis. However, there is very little or no attention given to one of the fastest growing industries, over the past 20 years. In June of 2017 there were more than 8,000 international schools, serving 4.5 million students with 420,000 teachers (ISR, 2014). With the increase of international schools there will be an increase in leadership. These leaders will need to be trained to handle crisis in a different manner than their American counterparts. Partly, because the countries they are working in, the lack of government support available to them, and the community they serve. As the world mutates (OECD, 2003), the crisis leadership competency and crisis management theories best practices become outmoded, and even lethal pitfalls.

International school leaders are not fully trained to deal with the crisis they may face. For example, what is required of a leader who turns up to school to find corpses lined up against the wall of the building? If faced with such a situation the first enemy is the barriers in the leader’s mind. These barriers may present themselves in many ways such as anxiety, fear, instability to comprehend and thus create an emotional toll on the leader. Therefore the goal of this study is to understand how do international school leaders cope during times of crisis? Not to find the perfect script, “the right answer”, but to develop a way to help international school leaders muddle through challenging times. The purpose of this research is to sketch out a new understanding and handling of today’s crisis.

International school leaders’ responsibility during times of crisis is not just for the well-being of the faculty and staff. The responsibility of an international school leader is very complex. They are responsible for the hiring and retention of the faculty. It is their responsibility to uphold the mission and vision of the school. If the school is a non-profit school, the superintendent or the head of school report to a board of elected trustees. But if the school is for profit they may answer to an individual or a group of investors. Global demand for an International School education continues to grow rapidly. According to International School Consultants Research, at the start of 2019 there were more than ten thousand international schools, educating close to six million students (2019). The schools collected in the range of fifty billion dollars in fee income, while employing more than half-a-million teachers from Canada, United Kingdom, United States of America, Australia and New Zealand (ISC Research, 2019).

To better understand the world of international schooling, one must understand the past. During the early 1900s the workforces became more internationally mobile, and therefore pockets of expatriates would be assigned to important commercial and trading hubs around the world. The idea of leaving the children back home in a boarding school, was never an option and thus international schools emerged to take care of the children of the parents working overseas (ISC Research, 2019).

As it relates to international schools, the leaders’ ability to manage effectively, lead, inspire, and project confidence during moments of crisis is critical to the success of the communities they serve. This study explores the complexities of crisis management, emotions, and decision-making attributes of current and former leaders. As well as, how they responded during different crisis scenarios. When crises occur in an international school the leader must exercise some form of cultural sensitivity because his or her decision is not only for the safety and concern of the expatriate teachers. It involves the local faculty, his or her family, and the safety of the institution. As a result, there is much scrutiny on the decisions a leader must make because of the various stakeholders who will be impacted.

In times of crisis, when the crisis manual of the organization could be altered or cease to exist, the strain of this responsibility places a heavy burden on the leader. When families are evacuated from an international school, students can suffer trauma, therefore, resettling back quickly into school in their home country is pivotal. Normalcy works best for families who are quickly evacuated in order to help the healing. Without quick resettlement, students and parents have known to suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). An effective and decisive leader is needed to ensure that families are evacuated. Understanding the experience and decision making process of leaders who have experienced such crises can better prepare current and future leaders to better handle such situations

In the past two decades, multiple crises have destabilized international schools. On the 12th of May 2003, 39 people were killed, and over 160 wounded when bombs went off at three compounds in Riyadh—Dorrat Al Jadawel, Al Hamra Oasis Village, and the Vinnell Corporation Compound. As a result, the American School of Riyadh was evacuated. Unrest in Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo, spell an end to the Mobutu regime when the disgruntled people of Zaire’s underpaid and undisciplined army mutinied, the capital city of Kinshasa in 1991. The civil disturbance left at least 100 dead, 1,750 more injured and sent thousands of foreigners and government supporters streaming across the Zaire River to safety in the Congolese capital of Brazzaville. The American School of Kinshasa was evacuated. The first Ivorian Civil War was a five-year conflict that occurred in the west African country of Cote d’Ivoire (also known as the Ivory Coast) between 2002 and 2007. The International Community School of Abidjan was evacuated for five months. At the close of this chapter, I will offer some definitions of crisis to highlight the type of situations that may affect international schools around the world.

Statement of the Problem
International school leaders face consistent uncertainty and experience intense pressure to lead during a crisis. Unfortunately, many international school leaders are not trained to deal with these kinds of situations. There must be literature or documentation gathered from the experiences of international school leaders beyond the outdated crisis management guide to help them prepare for a crisis situation. Although international businesses have a plan, it is not the same scenario for an international school. Many international schools are made up of international students. If the family is evacuated and the student is studying the International Baccalaureate diploma programme they will need to be quickly enrolled into another IB school. The resources to offer support to families and students after a crisis isn’t always available. There are situations where the family is separated due to the embassy keeping only essential workers and sending home non-essentials (mother and children).

The challenges and responsibilities of a school leader is described by Goodman and Zimmerman (2000) as formidable and sophisticated. In the international world I would add that it can be daunting and complex based on the scenarios shared above. In an ideal world, international school leaders would all be trained as crisis managers to handle the crisis experiences they are likely to encounter while working overseas because there are international schools in developed and developing countries. As we have seen terrorist attacks and similar crises could happen anywhere. The case for preparation seems to be even stronger when we consider the argument of futurists such as Schwartz (2003) who argue that current trends in technology, population change, medicine, terrorism, ethnic conflicts and others, will produce ‘inevitable surprises’ which to a large extent we can anticipate. With this perspective in mind, the task of international school leaders, policymakers and crisis managers is to establish institutional procedures and create cultural climates that develop capacities to cope with whatever extraordinary threats come their way.
In order to make the case for the importance of the international school head of school, emotions and decision making, since there is such a gap in the literature, I will use crisis scenarios in other sectors, presenting ample learning opportunities that can be garnered from these examples. In addition, there are leadership lessons to be learned and emulated from those who deal with the crisis in the field on a daily basis, such as the military.

Purpose of Study
The purpose of this qualitative phenomenological study is to explore the experiences of international schools leaders who were directly affected by a crisis. This research provides a starting point for readers to continue to study and refine their own leadership skills in preparation for the crises their organizations will certainly face. The goal is to help current, and future international school leaders better understand situations they can prepare for but never hope to experience.
The intent of this current phenomenological study of the human experiences of international school leaders is to analyze how leaders must be prepared for the inevitable, unexpected, and unprecedented. The participants in the study will be current or former international school leaders. The information garnered includes the participants training as an international school leader, number of years working in international schools, leadership philosophy, decision making and sense-making during times of crisis. The data collection process will involve in-depth interviews in an effort to ascertain the experiences that contributed to the problem statement.

Contextualizing leaders’ emotions, decision making, and sensemaking during a crisis needs to be researched. “Sooner or later, we are faced with a crisis and how we meet it determines our future happiness and success. Since the beginning of time, every form of life has been called upon to meet such a crisis” (Collier, 1950, p.8). In most cases, the concept of crisis is not as categorical as it appears to be. While every school’s situation will be different, schools that experience a real crisis share unique characteristics from which lessons can be learned (Pepper et al, 2010).
Therefore a crisis manual might be the answer for an organization, but it will not work as effectively for an international school leader overseas in a developing country. In our globalized world, crises are less predictable, longer-lasting, and infinitely more costly. It is paramount that more attention is given to the international schools around the world and their leaders.

Learning about the perceptions of school leaders, how they changed their focus and altered their behaviors after a crisis will provide future leaders with valuable evidence as a resource during times of crisis (Pepper et al, 2010). Therefore the perceptions of international school leaders after a crisis can inform international school leaders and help them face complex problems that do not have easy answers. It is during a time of crisis that leaders may learn of new and better strategies to conduct operations and lead their organizations (Jones, 2010).

Rationale for the study
While many articles have been written about leadership, crisis preparation, crisis management, and the tactical elements involved in addressing a crisis, little research exists on the perceptions of international schools educational leaders during a time of crisis. The contextual differences working under crisis are apparent; however, despite the massive implications of unfortunate crisis leadership, most theorists and practitioners pay passing reference to the process of crisis leadership and management (Heath, 1998). The preparation and readiness of organizational leaders to handle crises remain in question, and many do not seem to worry much about it until the crisis hits, and it is too late. Even less is known about international school leaders responses to crises. This study is important because international school leaders are at a loss, when it comes to crisis management.

The purpose is not to provide plans and tools to avoid surprise, instead, it is to prepare to be surprised (LaPorte, T. R., 2007a). Proponents of this argument believed transformation of the current system requires a paradigm shift, “ if you know neither the risks nor yourself, you are bound to be defeated in every battle” (Sunzi, 1999). We must move our focus from the answers and start focusing on the questions. Through further research we will be able to invent new intelligence, attitude, and practice for a chaotic world (Lagadec, 2007). Our responsibility is to create a system of education and research that “can develop leaders capable of thinking in a new way” (Barry, 2004, p. 5). There is a sense of urgency that is not recognized, after all, the international school community is an after thought for agencies who are developing these crisis management preparedness. For this reason it would be unwise to train the next generation of leaders to manage the last century crisis.
While there are many articles about leadership, crisis preparation, crisis management, and the tactical elements involved in addressing a crisis, one of the most significant challenges confronting school leaders today is the reality that school communities are vulnerable to unforeseen crisis events (Schlafer, 2009). In the words of a US House of Representative on their report on Katrina
“ Why do we continually seem one disaster behind, and this applies to every country? Crisis intelligence, crisis management, crisis preparation are globally a war behind. For all our efforts at catching up, the idea of practicing crisis management still are legacies of an obsolete set of paradigms, namely: “an accident, an answer; a larger accident, a larger answer” (US House of Representative, 2006: 39).

Instead of continuously chasing the crisis, it is time that we create ideas and change the education of leaders in international schools to be leading the journey in crisis management.
However, for leaders to move forward we have to consciously change this mindset for one that is precisely its opposite in practice. Modern day crisis needs more than a ready made answer as a solution. Emerging crises call for other paradigms and other strategies. It is my goal that this paper will be a potential resource for future leaders who are facing a crisis.

Significance of the study
The greater demand for international school leaders justify the need for more effective crisis
management approaches. Thus leaders who apply the recommended framework derived from
this study will be better at managing their emotions and decision-making. Leaders will be
learning from others who have managed crisis during their times of leadership and will
be guided based on what experience leaders thought were essential.

The study will also be beneficial for Board of trustees or investors who have an
international school. The results will provide evidence and recommendations for how these
leaders can better adapt crisis management practices. It will also help with professional
development for leaders and counselor who at the moment do not have enough resources or an
at all to help them during these turbulent times. The data gathered will assist profit and non-
profit international schools better train their leaders with the handling of a crisis. The study will
also be shared at international schools conferences to foster collaboration amongst leaders to
help plan the advancement of crisis internationally to improve their crisis management
preparedness of leaders.

The results will identify why crisis leadership is relevant for future international school leaders because they will have a better understanding on how to handle danger, and faculty and staff emotions, in critical life and death situations. Thus needing to manage their own emotions and what decision they will need to adapt and avoid during a crisis. James (2005) stated that there is a uniqueness to crisis management that has been neglected, and it is the emotions and decision-making of a leader during a crisis. Other researchers outline the fact that not enough attention is given to the emotions of the leader. With the growth of international schools around the world, this phenomenon of crisis leadership is worth studying in more detail. Very little attention had been paid to the psycho-physiological implications of crisis management on the leaders of organizations, mainly as the crisis unfolds (Pearson and Clair, 1998). Therefore this study will outline the pressure that international school leaders endure during times of crisis in international schools around the world.

Research Questions
International school educational leadership has become exceedingly stressful due to the unpredictable crises that often appear in their countries of work. With a new emphasis on crisis management, K-12 international school leaders are reevaluating their crisis management plans. Crisis management can be hard for educational institutions at any level because crises are frequent and often unpredictable events (McCullar, 2011). Pepper et al. (2011) have separated school crises into four distinct categories “(a) internal-predictable, (b) internal-unpredictable, (c) external-predictable and (d) external- unpredictable” (p. 9). External-unpredictable crises come in the form of terrorism, war, sexual scandals, financial impropriety, and natural disasters (Pepper et al., 2010). For this study, the focus will be on the external-unpredictable occurrence of crises, like the Arab Spring 2011 that has impacted international school leaders throughout the Middle East but more severe in Egypt, Lybia, and Tunisia. It is these moments of crisis that this study addresses, not simply dilemmas of significance, but how a true crisis can differ from one perspective to the next; in an attempt to provide a learning tool for current and future K-12 international school leaders. Therefore, this study investigates the following research questions:

RQ1: How do crises influence the emotions and sensemaking of international school leaders?
RQ2: How well do traditional training and professional development programs for school administrators prepare international school leaders to deal with crisis situations?
RQ3: What is the international school leaders role during crisis situations? And what support do they have?
RQ4: How important is emotional intelligence to a leader’s success?

The questions proposed seek to understand what insight leaders have developed regarding their personal leadership growth by experiencing crisis. Learning from first-hand descriptions of shared phenomena enables future administrators to understand what it is like to be called upon to lead during the most difficult of times.

Definition of Terms
This research study will contain frequently used terms that have unique relevance to the study. Due to each term’s relevance and inferences, a definition is included to provide an explanation for these terms. Because of many interpretations, it is essential that the concepts of leadership, crisis leadership, crisis, international schools, crisis management, emotions and sensemaking receive special attention early in this study.
Leadership
Defining leadership is an ambiguous and opinionated goal (Yukl, 1989). Scholars of the subject have their own unique set of criteria to define this obtuse concept. However, for the purpose of this study, Northouse’s definition is used. “Leadership is a process whereby an individual influences a group of individuals to achieve a common goal” (Northouse, 2001, p.3). This definition provides the key concepts of process, influence, groups, and goals. When leadership is viewed as a process suggests that leadership impacts leaders and followers in a situational environment, and is not adequately described as a characteristic or trait of the individual leader (Hughes, Ginnett, & Curphy, 2006). Again the process is complex and multidimensional. It includes individuals, situations, groups, technical functions, emotions, feelings, relationships, internal environment, and external environment. Influence involves how a leader affects followers; without influence, there is no leadership (Northouse, 2001).

International Schools: An international school provides an international education for an international community made up of foreigners and nationals. International schools originated in the mid-nineteenth century. The first international school, Spring Grove School, was established in the UK in 1866 (Sylvester 2002). By the mid-twentieth century, the number of international schools increased to approximately 1000 worldwide (Matthews 1989). The international school movement was started in 1949 when the Council of International Schools (CIS) was formed (Hill, 2020). Since that time, international schools have increased in numbers. In June of 2010, there were 5628 English-medium international schools worldwide attended by 4 ,153,618 students (ISC Research 2010). At its inception, the schools were only for children of expatriates. However, the nature of the students attending international schools has changed as the number of institutions has increased. The table below will give a better understanding of which cities have the most international schools and are growing the fastest.
Top Ten Cities in the world and Their Enrolments
Cities Number of Schools Student population
Dubai, United Arab Emirates 309 279,797
Shanghai, China 174 83,281
Abu dhabi, United Arab Emirates 163 150,174
Beijing, China 151 56, 584
Doha, Qatar 142 103, 935
Singapore 135 70, 537
Tokyo, Japan 125 24, 886
Phnom Penh, Cambodia 121 37, 323
Bangkok, Thailand 119 45, 713
Karachi, Pakistan 109 35, 466
Data from ISC Research 2019

They are usually found in major cities and cater to children from expat families as well as the host country. The tuition for these schools varies depending on the school. The majority of companies usually pay for the families who are relocated to another country as a part of the employment package. The case is different for host country nationals however, they usually pay out of pocket, which can become expensive for a family of two to three children. In many instances, the local economic elite believe that such an education will provide better opportunities for higher education possibilities in North America or Europe (Langford et al. 2002).

Families from the United States often choose to send their children to American international schools, but there are international schools aligned with other countries, including the UK, France and Germany, among others. According to Terwilliger (1972), international schools enrolment has a significant number of students not citizens of the country in which the school is located (diversity is the main essence), a teaching body made up of teachers who are passport holders from one of the following countries, USA, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
A board of directors made up of ‘foreigners and nationals in roughly the same proportions as the student body being served.’ The student’s education is transferable across international schools. They can also transfer back into their home education systems, or to university either at home or in another part of the world.
There are two types of schools, for profit and non-profit. Does is meet the needs of expatriates, possibly highly internationally mobile pupils and /or does it enhance international awareness and cooperation. That has changed drastically over the years according to research by the International School Consultancy Group, English language international schools educate nearly 5.1 million students throughout the world making US$51.79 billion. (Galegher 2018).
Crisis: A Crisis is defined as “a serious threat to the basic structures or the fundamental values and norms of a system, which under time pressure and highly uncertain circumstances necessitates making critical decisions” (Rosenthal, Charles, & t’Harrt, 1989: 10) The defining features of a crisis are the threat and inconceivability of the situation (Rosenthal, Boin, & Comfort, 2001). In fact, the perception of a serious and credible threat is considered to be the “requisite feature of all crisis events” (Seeger, Sellnow, & Ulmer, 2003: 8) Several characteristics assist in defining a crisis; they include the cause, the locus of responsibility, the emergency response, the size, and the length of the crisis (Heath & Miller, 2004). Urgency and surprise can set the crisis apart, and thus make it a dynamic process that disturbs the status quo. Categories of crisis include economic catastrophes such as revolution, terrorism, political uprising, coup d’ tat and currency devaluation (Mitroff, 2004). Although some attention has been paid to these major crisis events (Mitroff 1988, Shrivastava 1991, Pauchant 1988,) the lesser received little attention, still many international school leaders are facing devastating unpredictable crises. Anywhere from the child protection act, sexual harassment, discrimination, visa process change, devaluation of currency, and many similar events do not normally make the newspapers but cause severe challenges for international school leaders today. As a result of the challenges of global competition, there is an increasing pace of international schools being built around the world. We have to take into consideration that eventually, we will have to put leaders in roles they are not ready for. Therefore, there will likely be far more reaching consequences of mistakes, errors in judgment and intentional failures, afterall, leaders are confronted with increasing risk and “unpredictable” organizational danger (Smitts, & Ally, 2003).

Crisis communication: The dialog between the organization and its publics prior to, during, and after the negative occurrence. The strategies and tactics are designed to minimize damage to the image of the organization.
Crisis management: The process of strategic planning for a crisis or negative turning point, a process that removes some of the risk and uncertainty from the negative occurrence and thereby allows the organization to be in greater control of its own destiny.

Response: Response is taking immediate action to a crisis event, which implements the schools emergency crisis plan to reduce injury, loss of life and loss of property (Taneja, Pryor, Sewell & Recuero, 2014).
Preparedness: Preparedness is a process designed to develop strategies to mitigate
potential threats capable of causing harm. Preparedness is a system that involves planning
training and an evaluation process to determine the response to a crisis (Kennedy-Paine & Crepeau-Hobson, 2015).
Sensemaking: Refers to processes of meaning construction whereby people interpret events and issues within and outside of their organizations that are somehow surprising, complex, or confusing to them.
Crisis leadership: Leaders who have an action plan in place are the ones that can act quickly, manage rumors, and respond to victims and shareholders sincerely and adequately while keeping their organizations running. A crisis leader in an international school is usually the head of school or the superintendent. They are in charge of the day to day running of the school and they report to the board of trustees or the owners if the school is a for profit school. It is important to remember that although we are discussing international school leaders it could look different from school to school. A for profit school teaching faculty could look entirely different than a non-profit school. The for profit schools tend to have more local hired teachers. While the non-profit schools usually have a majority foreign hired teachers. Therefore, should there be a crisis and the need to evacuate it could be more stressful for the leader in a non-profit school. Primarily because he or she would have to make sure that the foreign hired teachers have safe passage out of the country.

Assumptions and Limitations
The application of the findings and conclusions of this study to other situations, companies, environments, or conditions is limited by the following;
1. Limitation of the researcher’s ability to gain access to an international school board room for first-hand observation during crisis situations.
2. The researchers ability to select the international school leaders who have experienced a variety of crises and open to answering all research questions.
3. There is little research on crisis leadership available. Despite this limitation, I will utilize research from former and current international school leaders decision-making, crisis management and emotions struggle. However certain attitudes and measurable observations about the nature of crisis leadership are possible.

Nature of the Study
The qualitative phenomenological approach is the most appropriate way to integrate the answers from the research questions into an actionable conclusion that is useful to today’s leaders. Since there is no research done on crisis leadership in international schools, this exploratory study will provide vital evidence-based data and findings for current and future international school leaders. For companies who would like to start up overseas but are uncertain about the skill set their leader would need to have. To inform boards of trustees and corporations who have invested in the international school market. Being able to collect the measurable belief and opinions and applying the knowledge gained from their analysis to known crises can provide insight that may answer the question of successful crisis leadership practices. For that reason, this study employed a qualitative methods approach to accomplish the stated purpose. The researcher will use qualitative techniques to analyze the results from the survey questions provided by current and former international school leaders to describe the most successful crisis leadership practice.