Thank You for an Extraordinary Intercultural Week!
Intercultural Week 2022 was an incredible celebration of our cultures coming together as we celebrate the intercultural connections in our community! Through the daily parent facilitated learning activities, students were able to learn how cultures use music, dance, games, language, artwork and crafts to connect and communicate.
Intercultural Week is one of our biggest parent partnership events of the year where our PTA coordinators and country community members work together to strengthen our students’ intercultural understanding — thank you to all the parent volunteers who made each day special for our students!
Intercultural Assembly Link
Thank you to the hundreds of parents who were able to celebrate the conclusion of Intercultural Week with us this morning in Rajendra Hall! We would also like to thank the Intercultural Week Planning Committee: Akiko Nagamine, Guofang Tang, Jess Vaughan, Johanna Nichols, Kathy Love, Kelly Hevalnd, Kylie Harter, Lianne Taruc, Matt Enders, Nube Crimi, Patty Vidayanakorn, and Susan Giles. Thank you to supervising teachers of the AMAZING performances: Mrs. Wong, Mr. Enders, Ms. Tang, Mrs. Crimi, Ms. Millana, Khun Ying and Khun Charuwan. Thank you to Khun Apple and her staff with the set-up, and to Khun Sathit and the EdTech/Theater team. And finally, thank you to our student emcees Gemma, Adi, and Erika!
Please find the link below to the recording of the assembly:
Intercultural Week Assembly 2022
Early Dismissal – Wednesday November 16, 2022
All ISB students will be dismissed at 1:10pm on Wednesday, November 16, 2022. On Early Release Days, school buses will leave ISB at 1:25pm. Early Release Days allow faculty members and administrators to collaborate and further their professional development.
Weekly Message from Principal Allen
Building strong home-school partnerships has always been at the heart of Intercultural Week at ISB…and this year the ISB planning team, including faculty representatives from across the elementary school teams of teachers along with our PTA ES Coordinators and Thai community representatives, came together to develop a common purpose for Intercultural Week as we emerged from the pandemic. In addition to building strong home-school partnerships, we articulated these key purposes at the start of our planning for Intercultural Week 2022:
- Focus on student learning connections between cultures – “intercultural”
- Celebrate humanity
- Focus on themes that unite cultures
- Provide an opportunity to connect cultures
- Reconnect our community post-COVID
- Develop caring, globally minded individuals
- Ensure that all students see themselves represented in Intercultural Week
- Create unity through our diversity
- Fun! Celebration!
With these clear purposes in mind, the planning team discussed a wide variety of ideas as to how we might do a better job of uniting the cultures. From there the idea to focus on how different cultures use music, dance, games, language, artwork and crafts to connect and communicate emerged. In addition, the planning team had a strong vision to unite cultures and develop a structure that would invite the ISB parent community to work together across cultures to help make important learning connections for the students as well as model intercultural collaboration for them.
While we knew this was a significant change from the past, the planning team was hopeful parent volunteers would be willing to “give it a go” and collaborate in this cross cultural manner…and they did! The cultural connections the volunteers made this week were extraordinary. For example, on Tuesday, all Grade 1 students learned about how the matching game of dominoes is played in different ways across the variety of cultures in Thailand, China, Israel, and Puerto Rico. The parent volunteers then developed a unique set of dominoes uniting these cultural aspects which the students played. This is just ONE example of dozens of activities that occurred throughout the week.
Over the coming weeks we’ll be reflecting on Intercultural Week 2022 as we begin to think about what enhancements we might want to make for next year. In the meantime, a tremendous THANK YOU goes out to everyone who worked cross culturally to help make Intercultural Week 2022 a positive learning experience for our ES Panthers!
Your partner in education,
Michael Allen
michaela@isb.ac.th
Visiting Author – March 2022
We are excited to welcome visiting author Christina Soontornvat on March 20, 21, 22.
Please see her information here.
Click here to order books for Christina’s visit in March!
ES Cafeteria Menu
Please find the ES Cafeteria menu for next week linked here, and here is the menu for Allergen Free.
Leaving ISB at the End of the First Semester?
Parents of students who are not returning to ISB in January need to notify the ES Office, Khun Kunlawan (kunlawan@isb.ac.th) as soon as possible and fill out the ISB’s official online withdraw form to enable us to process school records for their next school. Thank you for your attention to this important matter.
ES CARDBORDIA EXHIBITION
Come see our elementary school artists’ ridiculously cool collection of construction projects in Chevron Theater Gallery now through December 12.
Invention Center After School & Saturday Programs
Come to the Invention Center on Saturday, November 12th from 9 to 10:30am and learn to make a car with square wheels. Then learn how you can make your car roll smoothly!. This is a free project available to any elementary students and their parents. We will have supplies for the first 10 participants that sign up. Contact Travis Dynes at travisd@isb.ac.th to sign up.
A reminder that the Invention Center is open to students, parents, and staff every day after school until 6pm and on Saturdays from 8am-2pm (elementary students need to have a parent present for supervision). Please note: the Invention Center will be closed on Saturday, November 19th, but will be open until 7pm Nov. 14th-18th.
Season 2 Spirit Night
Mark your calendars! Season 2 Spirit Night will take place on Friday, November 25th. Our Varsity Rugby/Touch, Tennis, Basketball and Swim Teams will take to the fields, courts and pool against local and international teams! We will have food vendors, activities and more! Come join the fun and show your Panther Pride!