I
hope you enjoyed the holidays and the Lunar New Year celebrations. Although we
have returned to school, these celebrations have continued.
On Tuesday we held
a whole campus assembly led by students and our Mandarin department. The
assembly included some wonderful music, a beautifully choreographed and
performed fan dance, a quiz, key facts about the Lunar New Year and some drama. Thank you to Ms Lee, Ms Low, Mr Ng and all
the students involved. The celebrations culminated today with Chinese dress and
the fantastic Lion Dance which is always an incredible experience to behold.
Today
was also Fleming House charity day with a number of interesting activities,
stalls selling a range of items, including those designed and made by students,
and the Fleming ‘gunge a teacher’ event. Students and staff have been voting
all week to see who would be gunged on the day, with Mr Dickens, Ms Aziz Khan
and Ms Doyle the chosen three! I’m sure some photos will follow.
In our assembly on Tuesday, I also spoke about
community. A few years ago I read a story about an anthropologist who, when working in Africa,
proposed a game to the children in a tribe. He put a basket full of fruit
near a tree and told the children that whoever got there first would win the
sweet fruits. When he told them to run they all took each other’s hands and ran
together, then sat together enjoying their treats. When he asked them why they
had run like that as one could have had all the fruits for himself they
said: “Ubuntu, how can one of us be happy if all the other ones are
sad?" * Ubuntu in the Xhosa culture
means "I am because we are".
If
we look around school on a daily basis we can see examples of the concept of ‘ubuntu’. Working together and
supporting the community at events such as the Charity Dinner, Fleming House
day, students and staff working together to create the assembly, incredible
spirit and camaraderie at the House sports day, and also within sports, the
quote overheard from one of our SEASAC basketball team “if you make a
mistake don’t worry, we will all be here to catch you!”
Let’s continue to
work together to even further strengthen our community. An important aspect of
this is sharing views, understanding each other and working together to
improve. In the coming weeks, I will be inviting parents in each Key Stage to
come to school for a series of coffee mornings when we can talk and share views
on what is working well in school and how we can continue to further develop.
Finally, if you
haven’t already bought your tickets for our production ‘Oh What a Lovely War’,
with performances on the 3rd, 4th and 5th
March, and the KLASS Charity Dinner which will be held at the Shangri-La Hotel
on Friday 6th March, can I
please encourage you to join us? Tickets for both are on sale at the Primary and Secondary
Campus Finance Departments.
Have
a lovely weekend.
Sarah Howling
Sarah Howling
Principal Secondary Campus