Principal's Message - 3rd September 2018

Dear Parents and Students 

Welcome to the start of a new academic year. I am embarking on my twenty-first year of teaching and have never been so excited for the year ahead. In the coming newsletters, I will provide you updates on our facilities, as there has been a significant amount of improvements to our campus during the summer.  We are also about to start building our new Secondary School, changing rooms and pool.  We also installed the shading for our new sporting facilities over the weekend.   

However, it’s not the bricks and mortar that make NAISAK special.  It’s the people in our diverse community that make us unique. We have a brilliant cohort of new staff that have joined the school.  If you haven’t already, please visit our NAISAK Facebook page where you can meet your child/ren’s teachers.  You can also read about our new Head of Primary, Nick Jefferson who brings with him an incredible amount of experience in leading schools both in the UK and across the world.   

Both the Primary and Secondary School teachers spent two days taking part in some fantastic training on Positive Discipline in the Classroom last week. We now have sixty-one teachers that are certified Positive Discipline practitioners. This was the most inspirational training I have ever been involved with and I am confident this will help transform the way we approach discipline and develop the social and emotional well-being of our entire community.  We have two colleagues that are also certified to lead the Positive Discipline Parenting workshops and will share more details with you in the coming weeks.       

As many of you will be aware, we had a thorough review of our guiding statements last year and this training will enable us to realise our mission in a way that supports our High Five Core values:
 
 

In addition to revising our guiding statements last year, we had an extensive review of our curriculum which will help prepare our students for the ever-changing world in the twenty-first century. A key feature of our new curriculum includes the adoption of our partnership with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Maths (STEAM) education.  In the coming newsletters, we will share more information on how our curriculum has evolved to develop creative, curious learners.   

We are hosting ‘Meet the Teacher’ events for both schools. The Primary School will be hosting their presentation and meetings across three days. Sunday 16 September will involve Foundation Stage, Years 1 & 2. Years 3 & 4 will take place on Monday 17 September and Years 5 & 6 will take place on Wednesday 19 September.  The Secondary School will host their event Tuesday 18 September for Years 7-12. The timing will be from 16:00 - 17:30 each afternoon. Should you have children in various year groups and prefer to not have to come on multiple nights, we will arrange for teachers to be available for an informal discussion allowing you to meet all of your child/ren’s teachers.