Secondary Newsletter 30 – March 13, 2020
Principal’s Message
Play in a Day
Counselor’s Corner
CAS Corner by Lani Manda Kasim
Grade 7 Final Projects
Principal’s Message
Dear parents,
Thank you for your support and cool heads over the past few weeks leading into our decision to close the school yesterday. The school will continue to be in regular contact, primarily through Mr. Wyncoll. Our teachers are ready to provide engaging and relevant learning experiences to be completed from a distance. Please continue to oversee your child’s learning at home and communicate with their teachers if you have queries or suggestions along the way. Online learning will commence on Monday morning until Wednesday. We will then break as previously planned and return to online classes from March 30 until April 13. You can also contact me by email anytime. Please stay safe and enjoy being with your family over the coming weeks. I will endeavour to showcase some of the online learning achievements in our next newsletter in three weeks.
Ross Ferris – Secondary Principal
Play In A Day 2020
Though the ISTA MS Festival had to be postponed we still marked the original start day by holding a special day of wonderful Drama! The Grade 6, 7 and 8 ISTA students spent the day with Miss Alborn and explored the world of ‘shadow and light’ through movement workshops, Balinese shadow puppetry with Ibu Ina, spoken word poetry with Miss Erickson, humans shadow puppetry and more. They pulled together an impactful and poignant performance about who we are and the contrasts and contradictions we all embody. They performed at 3 pm to a full audience!
Amazing creative work!
CAS Corner by Lani Manda Kasim
CAS Project – Volleyball Coaching
This is my first CAS project, and throughout this volleyball season, I reached a point where I started to realize how I grew as a person by becoming more confident and really stepping out of my comfort zone, which is just being quiet and not taking leadership with almost anything. I made this my project because I wanted to grow and really become more confident. I wanted to take the lead for once, especially with a group of people that I don’t know well enough. Adding to this, I also improved on balancing my education and becoming a coach, where it would take my lunch and afterschool time to help these girls. It was challenging at first, but I managed to pull it through and balance it both at the same time so that I would not miss any of my training or assignments.
In the end, I did reach my goal to become more confident and have taken that leadership. Becoming a coach automatically makes me have to take leadership, and this was one of my strategies to grow and achieve that goal. At first, it was difficult because I had never spoken to the members of my team or are close to them. This made it difficult because they felt that because I am older than them, I shouldn’t be laughing around or make any mistakes. I solved that issue by discussing with them that there will be a time to laugh and one not to laugh and that making mistakes is alright because you can learn from it and many more.
Personally, I feel like my team and I have grown and shown the improvement of our bonds together. Training three times a week made it somewhat easier for us to interact. We saw each other more often, and we could reach our goal much faster, rather than only one-time training. The girls definitely grew as individual players. Some were shy or not open/comfortable with giving their ideas to the team when we gather together each time after a game or training. But towards the end of this season, all of them began to speak up when someone made a mistake and helped them out. They also shared their ideas about what drills we could do or their thoughts on the game and training.
5th December was when we had our semi-finals and we came back with second place. To begin with, I am proud of how my team played and how far they have improved with their volleyball skills. They all improved on calling mine, help, and out. Also, they improved serving, digging, and setting during a game. It wasn’t my intention to become first because my goal is to help them improve as a player, and I’ve achieved it. It would’ve been great to come back with first place, however, making it to the finals is already enough to pay off the hard work my team and I have done for this volleyball season.
Creativity: Coming up with my own drills and strategies that will help my team grow as a volleyball player and to come up with their game plans during their tournaments.
Activity: Training sessions and tournament games.
Service: Helping students who are interested in playing volleyball to improve on their weaknesses. Give them feedback that would motivate them to succeed in their goals, which are to improve on things that they find themselves weak in.
Here is a small teaser of our final English book creations based on the novel The Lions of Little Rock. Students showcased their work and gave excellent feedback to one another. Well done, Grade 7 students!
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