Dear SIS Community,
It was great to host my Head of School Coffee this week and meet up with so many passionate and committed members of our SIS community. I sincerely appreciate the advice and insights that were generated through the coffee chat. I gave an overview of some of what had been taking up my time so far this year, with a focus on hearing the views of parents, staff and students.
We covered a lot of topics and maybe the following will be of interest.
The important role that our parents and families play in highlighting our cultural diversity was highlighted in both such examples as Halloween and Diwali celebrations. The joy of connecting, learning and celebrating together was very obvious across the school over the past week with food treats, costumes, special events, and cooperation being on show. Such community involvement in events - and all the work that goes into making them such a success - is the mark of a truly international community.
We are on a quest to make our SIS ParentEdu Workshops more valuable for parents. We talked about the value that book clubs bring and how the sharing of experiences was very useful and informative for families. Undertaking regular surveys of our families to see what topics are creating interest will help to ensure that we are giving parents what they are looking for through the year. We will also look to improve the advertising of topics so everyone is sure to come to the right events.
We had quite a few disrupted days early in the year due to the number of typhoons and storms around the region. These disruptions cause students to feel anxious, and can also lead to a break in learning. When we create our annual calendar, we create some flexible times within the regular events so that some time that is lost to events like typhoons can be made up within normal routines. This adjustment happens divisionally and is suited to the age of the children. On occasion we may also need to adjust the whole school calendar to accommodate time lost to emergency events, and this year we will convert April 7th from a school development day into a regular teaching day. I appreciate that some families will have already planned their vacation for this date and so any student unable to attend will not be penalized.
In the first three months of this school year I have had lots of conversations about the school, the future of our students, and our programs. As a result, I'd like to outline some of the themes that will be a focus for the next five years in our next strategic plan. Some focus areas will be developing our strengths, and others will be building into new areas.
We will continue to be the truly international school and community in Shenzhen. This includes how we focus on language, parent involvement, curriculum, and great teaching.
We will prepare our children the future of universities. To do this we will grow our partnerships and connections and explore new ways of ensuring all our students and their families can see pathways into the right university. We know that options after graduation are evolving rapidly and will prepare our families for these changes.
We will focus on supporting the needs, interests and strengths of our students. This may mean programs for talents and gifts, or additional ways to be successful in traditional or flexible programs. We want our students to have the best holistic education experience possible.
Over the next five years we will be developing new ways to follow these directions. We will do this in partnership with our community and I welcome your ideas and feedback.
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