Justin Alexander
justina@isb.ac.th
Dear Parents,
I hope that you and your families are well and looking after each other at this time. With limited travel, curfews and restrictions on social gatherings etc continuing to be in force, we now see that all families are increasingly spending more time at home working and being together every day. In nearly all cases, this is a good thing as families are able to spend time together playing board games, having breakfast, lunch and dinner together and hopefully talking more.
This can also be challenging for the similar reasons (being together the whole time) and to that end it is helpful to encourage your high school student to stay connected with their school friends through social media and even through good old fashioned phone calls. Do remind your children that their smartphones can actually make real live phone calls! Exercise is also critically important at this time, so once again continue to encourage your children to engage in physical activities and exercise during this time. Our PE/Health teachers have been sharing great lessons and exercise routines with their students so feel free to join them in their next workout.
Last week we solicited feedback from HS parents and students on the latest iteration of virtual school at ISB in the High School and it was pleasing to see so many comments of support and appreciation for the great work of our teachers and to hear stories of the engagement of our students in their lessons and their work. It is a new way of working/learning and although we would dearly all love to be back on campus and in the classroom, we continue to see excellent learning taking place. The majority of parents appreciated the extended lessons (move from 40 – 60 minutes), although some felt these were now too long. 180 high school parents responded to the survey and I have included two graphs that are helpful when considering the workload of students and how much time students are spending on their work.
As you can see from the 1st graph, whilst nearly 37% of parents believe that students are spending about the same amount of time on their learning as they would during ‘regular school’, we have 22% saying that their children are spending more time than before and 32% are spending less time than before. The second graph reports that a significant majority (nearly 74%) of parents felt that the workload was just right for the students, with a much smaller number (11.7%) of parents felt that it was too little and a similar amount (14.4%) felt the workload was too much. There were some requests for more communication from teachers about student progress but these responses may have come before we released the mid semester comments on Monday afternoon.
As we continue with virtual schooling for a longer period of time, we are now seeing teachers and students settling into a routine and continuing to look for ways to make learning fun and enjoyable in this ‘new normal’. We have re-introduced HS assemblies and our Varsity council is planning a Spirit week soon. Our Arts and activities team are working on virtual concerts and events and of course our Seniors are heading towards a new and different graduation in the coming month. There will be a graduation bulletin for our Seniors and their parents sent out later with more details as to the how and when graduation will take place.
Once again, thank you for your partnership and support during this time. Please reach out directly to teachers, counselors and administrators if you have questions or concerns and we will do our very best to address them.
Enjoy a long weekend and a well deserved break.
Regards
Justin Alexander
HS Principal