It has been a whirlwind of a week with the main focus being the International Evening, one of our biggest school events. A lovely taster for this event was the Francophone celebrations this morning in which students enjoyed all things French, including the national cuisine. Thank you to all those who organised this lovely event, especially Mr Provencher.
I heard a rumour on the grapevine that Grade 7 and 8 classes were being combined next year, which is not the case. Grades will continue to be taught separately by a range of teachers unless it is in PE, Personal Project, Dance or Music where there is an advantage to combine them. To do so in other subjects would disadvantage students and be contrary to the part in our Mission Statement that encourages students to reach their full potential.
As Neil shared last week we have added to our team for next year and will have two extra teachers, one being a ‘generalist’ ( Cathy Marchmont) and one being a second scientist (Jorge Castano). A ‘generalist’ is not a term that I particularly like as it is vague and suggests mediocrity even though it is the term commonly used in education. Ms Marchmont has 26 years experience teaching a range of subjects mostly in middle schools though also at IB Diploma level. In addition she has administrative experience, is highly student centred and will help us develop our pastoral programme. We believe that there is nothing general or mediocre about Cathy!
Cathy, Amy, Francoise, Jorge, Andrew and Jon interviewed extremely well and have very strong and positive references. We consider them to be a very lucky catch but of course only time can truly judge this. We are confident that we will continue to have a very strong team of student centred, effective teachers in the Secondary School. We are already working on how to help the new teachers settle in smoothly so that they can hit the ground running.
If you have any questions in regard to your child or the operations of the Secondary school whatsoever I am always happy to meet and discuss them with you or answer your enquiries by email. Of course we also always welcome suggestions to improve what we do.
I hope to see you at the International Evening this evening, which we hope will be the best one yet!
The featured photo is Mr Kearney in action discussing revision strategies with Grade 10 first thing on Sunday morning. You may note the count down clock to the exams.
