ISB All School – Best wishes for the New Year!

ISB’s 2nd Annual Pathways Career Fair

The ISB Pathways Program aims to provide High School students with valuable work experience and guidance. We do this through internships, job shadowing, the career fair and visiting guest speakers.

The Career Fair brings professionals from our alumni, parent and the wider Bangkok community to join a panel discussion and a fair. The panel addresses student questions about how to choose the right path of career, how to approach career choices and opportunities, and gives our speakers a chance to share their personal story and their journey on their career path. The fair that follows gives students the opportunity to ask particular, more detailed questions to the visiting professionals about their job and industry.

We’re currently looking for parent speakers to join the panel and Pathways program for the next Career Fair on January 24th, from 10am to noon.

Should you be interested, please register here.

Raising Multilinguals Parent Workshop: Unlocking the World with a Family Language Plan

On Thursday, January 24, 2019, from 7:45 to 9:15 a.m. in MPB 1, ISB EAL and Native Language faculty will offer a workshop for parents from all divisions (ES, MS, HS) about maintaining students’ native languages while they also study in English at ISB. This will be similar to the Raising Multilinguals workshop offered last year, and is especially useful for new families.

At this workshop faculty will:

• Present reasons to maintain native language, based on research
• Describe native language classes and resources available at ISB
• Discuss the importance of making a family language plan

Faculty will also lead small group discussions of how to nurture particular languages, how to support native language development at home, and how to make a language plan work.

Please join us! Parents of students in PreK through Grade 12 are welcome. For further information, please email: nativelanguage@isb.ac.th

Save the Date for International Family Fair 2019

The most fun and festive event of the year is coming back to ISB! The International Family Fair (IFF) will be held on 23 February from 3-7:30 pm. What you can expect at IFF 2019? Fabulous food booths featuring food from over 30 countries around the globe brought to you by our wonderful ISB country groups, games, bouncy houses, entertainment, and fun for kids and adults of all ages. Mark your calendar for an afternoon and evening of great food and fun for everyone!

PTA – IFF
pta-iff@isb.ac.th

Counseling Department: Latest Parent Session

Parents expect their children’s school to give them the academic skills to succeed in university and life, but what about the skills to manage the social demands that they face in feeling good about themselves and making smart decisions about friends and relationships?  ISB strives to impart the additional skills our students need to survive “life beyond ISB” from PreK to Grade 12 – setting boundaries and fully understanding consent. We feel that learning these skills is every bit as important to a healthy, fulfilling future.  So how do we promote learning about safety, consent and boundaries at ISB?  Come find out!  We’ll have two sessions (same content, repeated) on Wednesday, January 23rd, in the MPB 1, 8:00-9:00 AM or 6:00-7:00 PM.

Contact:
Kevin Callahan, High School School Counselor
kevinc@isb.ac.th

First Friday with Andy

The next “First Friday with Andy” will take place on Friday 11th January at 8:00am in the Orange Room (near the admissions office).

“First Friday with Andy” is an open forum for parents to meet informally with the Head of School and address any topics of interest or concern. No signing up is necessary; simply come and participate if you are free and interested.

Dr. Andrew Davies, Head of School
andrewd@isb.ac.th

ISB School Board Meeting, January 15, 2019 (Tuesday)

Bangkok Pollution Levels: ISB’s Monitor

As we approach the time of year again when the air quality in Bangkok deteriorates a bit, I wanted to share some updates and publicly accessible information.  

At the end of last school year, ISB installed a calibrated air quality monitor on campus.  It is located on the roof next to the 25m pool.  This monitor is provided by a company that works extensively with schools in China.  The monitor checks PM2.5, PM10, Humidity and Temperature.  There are two other schools in Thailand, ELC Sukhumvit and Harrow, who also have this system installed.

Our vendor has created a live display page that calculates the AQI and Heat Index in real time, based on US EPA and NOAA standards. You can access the data here https://views.measureofquality.com/isb.  It is also displaced on the bottom of our school website, www.isb.ac.th

There are many different websites, apps, and links that provide air quality readings around Thailand.  Unfortunately, none of these sites provide a reading close to ISB, and all only provide hourly updates.  Therefore, the ISB monitor will be the official reading for all school activities and guidelines.

We have set up the system to send out email alerts to ISB staff, when the AQI or Heat Index, reach our threshold limits, based on the current policies as listed below.

Please remember, the live data is updated every minute and environmental readings can fluctuate from minute to minute.  We do store all the data points so we can look back at the historical information if need be.

Since the time the system was installed, we are showing a substantially lower AQI than downtown areas during higher polluted days. 

Related to this, we have also purchased an AirVisual Pro desktop unit.  This is the same devise that many other Bangkok schools are using.  We have this as a back up unit.  Unfortunately, it has limitations on where it can be installed and what data it can provide.  It is located just outside the Safety and Security office and provides a live display monitor.  This data is available on the AirVisual app, but isn’t used to determine outdoor restrictions, it is merely for comparison with other similar units in the area.  

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me directly.

Contact: 
Mark Hevland, Director of Risk Management
markh@isb.ac.th

Air Quality Guidelines
ISB Heat Management Guidelines

Survey on behalf of The Rink

Survey from The Rink: The Rink has approached ISB seeking feedback about the interest in on-ice sports. They have a view to build a temporary facility nearby if there is enough interest from the local community. Please click on the link if you would like to assist “The Rink” with feedback.