Head’s Lines: Working towards sustainability and inclusivity

Primary School at St Andrews International School Bangkok was blessed by visiting musician Andy Gleadhill to help with students’ World Peace Day activities… Our ECAs and sports programmes have a record number of participants thanks to a wider range of opportunities and re-thinking of how these programmes should be offered to our student population.

Last Friday, the Primary Assemblies featuring Andy Gleadhill, a visiting musician who whisked the children away on a musical journey across the history of drumming from Africa through to Southern and Central America. Our children also celebrated International World Peace Day by singing a song about peace which they had been learning and rehearsing during music lessons. Mr Andy captivated the audience with his drumming and by continuingly bringing out a mind-boggling number of musical instruments from an only apparently small wash bag. Mr Andy also inspired Primary children and teaching staff through a series of musical workshops held over his two-day visit producing fantastic rhythms and beats from around the world along equally enthralling stories to match. Suffice it to say that young and old alike emerged from these workshops with a huge smile on their faces while also learning a thing or two about drumming and percussion.

The International World Peace Day theme was also a great segue into the most important issue facing our whole world community - climate change. As our climate deteriorates and becomes even more unpredictable, all countries have or will be affected by the vanishing checks and balances that keep our world at peace. Spurred to action by the magnitude of this issue, several members of our student community sought approval from their parents to participate in the Climate Strike event held in the centre of Bangkok this Friday. However, at our  Primary and High School campuses, inspired students seized the opportunity to engage in thoughtful discussions and heartfelt pledges on many of the issues highlighted by this global event. We look forward to hearing from the children who attended the Climate Strike to share their reflections of their experience. The call-to-action from so many people around the world should galvanise each and every one of us to tackle the problem of climate change and shine a spotlight on the ongoing destruction of our natural environment. I look forward to hearing and embracing our students’ ideas on how to operate St Andrews in a more environmentally sustainable manner.

Continuing this theme, next week our High School focuses on sustainability with activities promoting more awareness and understanding of this key issue. A central goal of this period will be to come up with concrete actions we can take as individuals, families or as a whole community. A couple of weeks after this, Primary School will hold their ECO Beasts Conference where many other international school will attend workshops focused on sustainability activities. Throughout this week, our Primary children will be recommending actions we can all take to help make these goals a reality.

ECAs and Sports

Sports are a great way for everyone to have an active healthy lifestyle that allows you to challenge yourself while also spending time with like-minded people and building strong friendships.  This is why it is so important all across our school to have our children participating in a rich selection of sports and physical activities that develop balance, movement control and coordination.  This can be done through the development of ball skills through team games or racket sports, or through physical fitness activities like athletics, dance or gymnastics. From an early age and throughout their time at St Andrews, all children have opportunities to be involved in these activities as part of their curriculum as well as after school.

The Extra-Curricular Activities (ECA) programme at St Andrews makes it easier for everyone to be involved in activities they may want to improve. Our sports teams and representative squads have developed from being just basketball and football teams to now including excellent swimming programmes, dance, athletics, badminton, volleyball, golf, rugby, gymnastics and tennis.  These groups have improved year on year and are a vitally important part of our school allowing young people to enjoy healthy competition.  

This year we have made changes to the way we have traditionally offered our sports activities in order to have as many individuals as possible being able to receive training from specialist coaches across the school. Sports squads can be much larger so that as our student athletes improve and develop throughout the year, they can also get new opportunities to compete in numerous  tournaments and competitions our school attends.