Secondary Newsletter No. 30 – April 12, 2019
Grade 10 Career Investigation Week
Dear Parents,
We have had a busy start to Term 4. On Thursday afternoon, eleven Grade 6-8 students went to Kuala Lumpur to participate in the Model United Nations (MYMUN) Conference. On Friday, four Grade 9 students headed off to Manilla for the Global Issues Network (GIN) Conference. Our Grade 10 students have been gaining some valuable real-life experience in various workplaces through Careers Week. Grade 12 students are continuing to prepare for their fast-approaching final exams which commence on May 3. Next week, we will have a visiting team from our accrediting agencies CIS and WASC doing a pre-authorisation visit. We will also have the Indonesian government inspection for our Primary and Grade 6-9 Indonesian curriculum.
Is your teenager getting enough sleep?
We want our students to lead a balanced and healthy lifestyle. We see students playing sports, participating in the arts, taking their academic responsibilities seriously and this is fantastic. We are becoming increasingly aware of some students arriving to school not in optimal condition to learn due to a lack of sleep. Some informal discussions with some students this week indicate that they are getting well below the necessary number of hours of quality sleep each day. There has been a lot of research into sleep patterns of adolescents and I would like to share some findings from https://www.sleepfoundation.org/articles/teens-and-sleep.
Facts
- Sleep is vital to your well-being
- 8-10 hours a night needed for teens
- Helps you to eat better and manage stress
- Most teens do not get enough sleep – 15% reported sleeping 8 ½ hours on school nights
- Irregular sleep patterns affects body clock
Effects of teenage sleep deprivation (https://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/health/healthyliving/teenagers-and-sleep)
The developing brain of a teenager needs between eight and 10 hours of sleep every night. The effects of chronic (ongoing) sleep deprivation may include:
- slower physical reflexes
- clumsiness, which may result in physical injuries
- reduced sporting performance
- reduced academic performance
- increased number of ‘sick days’ from school because of tiredness
- truancy
- concentration difficulties
- mentally ‘drifting off’ in class
- shortened attention span
- memory impairment
- poor decision making
- lack of enthusiasm
- moodiness and aggression
- depression
- risk-taking behaviour
Solutions
- Make sleep a priority – keep a sleep diary
- Take naps
- Make your room cool, quiet, dark – no devices!
- No pills, vitamins or drinks can replace good sleep
- No caffeine close to bedtime
- Establish a bed and wake-time and stick to it, even on weekends
- Don’t leave deadlines to last minute
- Avoid TV, Computer, telephone in the hour before you sleep
Grade 9-11 End of Year Exams
From May 27-29, Grade 9, 10 and 11 students will sit end of year exams. These exams will be conducted under IB DP exam conditions and we have introduced them for Grade 9 and 10 students this year in a bid to better prepare them for success in the IB Diploma Programme. Teachers will design the exams and inform the students on what will be assessed. The schedule is viewable below
CAS Corner
Alba Romero (STUCO)
Demonstrate how to initiate and plan a CAS experience
The constant goal which the STUCO team has committed to upholding throughout the academic school year has been to organise activities that would foster a positive and supportive atmosphere in which the student body would be able to thrive. This term we aimed to create a new event that would allow us to achieve said goals. When brainstorming we focused on coming up with ideas that would help the student body recover their motivation, as we noticed that during the last term many students experience a lack of drive. Therefore we decided to create an event to acknowledge all of the student’s hard work. The initial idea was tied to easter, but we quickly realised that it would be best to not tie the event to any religious beliefs and decided to simply call it “Student Appreciation Day”. During the day we plan to deliver motivational card and a chocolate egg to each student, as well as holding sportive activities during lunch to incentivize students to participate and engage with people from other grades in an active manner. Overall we hope to initiate an activity that will have motivate students and relieve them of some of the stress that comes along with the last term and exams.
Grade 10 Career Investigation Week
This week and last our Grade 10 students were out of their classrooms and into hotels, businesses, parks, offices, movie sets, and editing labs for their Career Investigation Week experiences around Bali and overseas.
As the College and Career Counselor, I had the chance to visit students at their internship sites and see them in action! I visited Sinan and Han at Waterbom in Kuta where they were making compost from biodegradable debris, food, and plant matter for the park’s many garden areas. They were also learning about water waste management and mosquito reduction. Lani, meanwhile, was learning about the physical operations of Waterbom, their community relations practices, and studying their marketing designs, this being her area of interest.
“I think I got more motivated after having to meet them (management and guests services Directors) and I started to feel good about my work experience because I’ve achieved my goal which is to talk about the guest service and the team management here in Waterbom.” Lani-Waterbom
“Environmental sustainability is something that I do want to work towards in the future so this I feel like is a great experience and lesson for me.” Sinan-Waterbom
I then went to Dekom Bali Surf at Kuta Beach to find Malikha preparing for a group due to arrive for an afternoon surf lesson. She was learning how to respond to online orders, update their social media sites, create new bookings, and give people information about the various surf packages offered at the company. The previous day she’d helped handle a group of 15 overseas tourists and had even taken a surf lesson herself! The day wrapped up with a visit to an import/export company in Kuta whereAnastasia was busy entering orders from around the world into the company’s online database and getting ready to learn how to package the orders for shipment.
The next day began with a visit to Seung Gun’s internship site in Seminyak. He was busy at the factory location for Divine, a handbag company, where he was surveying the company’s inventory, and had learned sales techniques, how to discuss product details with customers, store layout, and pricing.
Next, I moved on to Bali Go Live, a film production company where I found Raihan busy in the editing studio helping with final touches on the BIS school video. He had participated in all aspects of pre-production and production for a coffee company ad as well, including casting, photography, lighting, and film editing, and even created his own short film while in the studio, after learning to use the Premiere Pro editing software. We may just see Raihan in in an ad or two in the future, as he was invited to participate in casting!
I completed the site visits with a trip to Jimbaran to find Charles who stepped out to speak to me from the kitchen at Jimbaran Puri Belmond Hotel where he he’d been busy cutting vegetables, prepping seafood, preparing a barbeque for 150 guests, and enjoying friendly banter with the kitchen staff while learning about food service, hygiene, and kitchen safety.
Overall, the students reported that they were learning a ton, able to really put their skills to use in their internships, and had discovered aspects of the careers they’d chosen that they’d never considered before (like the need to wear thick, durable shoes when working in a hotel kitchen, for example).
They learned what they might like to do in the future and what they definitely do not want to do (like killing mosquitos at Waterbom, or sitting for long hours at a desk behind a computer). This has been a rich experience for all involved and we congratulate our grade 10 students on a job well done!
“I feel amazing but at the same time it is very tiring. Maybe it’s because we’re not often working and we usually go to school. What we do is just go to school, study and learn something, but in working, we experience something new. We know how’s life going on, knowing the highs and lows when working.” Morisa-Bali Zoo
“Every career needs skills. If you master that skill you can have a good career, (and) also have a career that you think is fun.” Gung Ale- Waterbom
By Rachael Gerbic
BIS School Counselor