Friday August 9th |

Welcome back everyone!

To our returning students and families, welcome back and I trust that you all had wonderful summers (or winters for our southern hemisphere travelers) and are refreshed and ready for the new school year. I also welcome nearly 50 new students to the High School at ISB, who join us from other schools from here in Thailand or from overseas. I have had the pleasure of meeting many of our new students and families at today’s new student/parent orientation and although they might be a little bit anxious and nervous they were certainly excited about joining their new school.

I would like to extend a sincere thank you to our parent volunteers and representatives who are welcoming new families and a bigger thank you to the large group of student ambassadors who have smoothed the transition for our new students. The work that you all do in making the transition a successful one for our new ISB’ers is greatly appreciated.

Preparations have been underway at school for more than a week, with my colleagues working hard to ensure we are ready to welcome nearly 600 High School students on Tuesday August 13th. We will open school with a HS assembly at 7.20am in the Chevron Theatre before moving into an advisory session where students can reconnect with their friends and review the schedule for the first few days of school. Mr. Andy Vaughan will share more details later in this newsletter about the opening day of school and other logistical details.

As we welcome new students to ISB we also welcome some wonderful new teachers to the HS faculty as well. They are very experienced and skilled set of teachers who are excited to join us from a variety of other International schools from all over the world. Please join me in welcoming the following teachers to the High School this year.

Matt Barker – Learning Support (Yokohama International School, Japan)
Alex Becker – College Counselor (Colegio Nueva Granada, Bogotá, Colombia
Katya Friedman – Mathematics (Pan American School of Bahia, Brazil)
Ian Galbraith – Mathematics (The International Nido de Aguilas, Santiago, Chile)
Xiaoling (Ellyn) Gao – World Languages – Chinese (International School of Beijing, China)
Peter Kratz – Social Studies (International School of Yangon, Myanmar)
Julie Lamontagne – Science (International School of Yangon, Myanmar)
Justyna McMillan – Dean of Academics/IB Coordinator (Seoul Foreign School)
Triston McMillan – Social Studies (Seoul Foreign School, Korea)
Sonya Ohlsson – College Counselor (Y.K Pao School,Shanghai, China)

We also welcome two Annual substitute teachers (Jessica Coates, Mary Greaves) and a Learning Support Associate (Ann Jarell) who will be working with our students in the High School this year.

All the best for a wonderful year and I look forward to meeting many of you in the coming weeks.

Regards
Justin Alexander
High School Principal