These last few weeks the Nursery children have been exploring the topic ‘People who help us’. They were due to go on a trip to the fashion park to visit the pet shop and during the visit they were going to see some animals and the people to look after them. Unfortunately, this wasn’t able to go ahead so the team had to be creative and work out how they could create a different exciting experience for the children who were so disappointed about their trip cancellation. Luckily they came up with a great idea and that was to reach out to our community to see who might be able to come into school to speak with the children. The children were able to identify many people who help them on a daily basis from their own parents to those in our wider school community. They then interviewed a whole range of people from a dentist to an architect to cabin crew. There was even a very special visit from the local firefighters! The children all had a wonderful time. From our own staff, they met the incredibly helpful Barrett, Chef John and then yesterday morning I bumped into Mr Foster who had been making brownies with some of them!
Just this week among the many emails, I had one forwarded to me which was yet again a really lovely message. It was one of thanks to a little girl’s class teacher and to the BISS Puxi team. This parent was thankful and grateful for the fact that our staff had supported her daughter in gaining confidence and skills to write her own book which has been published in Canada. It’s so easy to forget that the people who help us are not just those in the outside world but so much closer to home too. Each and every one of you is indeed someone who helps, whether we are helping children to learn or helping people in our team, whether we are cleaning classrooms whether we are making sure there is enough water in the corridor fountains because whatever their role, there is no member of the BISS Puxi staff who does not help.
It seems fitting as we near the end of the year to really reflect on that and I would like you to take just a few moments to look around you. Look at your students and give everyone, including yourself, a big pat on the back and say well done to yourselves and to everybody else involved in the care and education of those children because no single one of us can take credit for just how far they have come. All too soon it will be time to say goodbye to some children who we have known for a long time and I will be sad times but it will be also all too soon that we are able to say welcome to BISS to a whole host of new people. That’s the cycle of the academic year and the international life.
Music has been an interesting one again this week. I found myself listening to music a little bit more than usual and I started off with a firm favourite in Moby. It takes me back to the time when I was revising for my finals and he would be playing through my portable CD player. Who would’ve thought that all those years later I would be listening to the same guy only this time through a computer on YouTube. Sometimes the old ones really are the best. Coincidentally, I had a WhatsApp message from a very old friend reminding me of the year we went to Saundersfoot in Wales on Girls’ Brigade camp. It was the year that we had a storm with gale force winds and our tent fell down in the middle of the night. The camp song that year was Lionel Richie and now, 23 years later, she was listening to it on the radio and it reminded her of then; our camp song from that year.
This weekend is a very well-deserved long weekend and I wish everybody a happy and relaxing three day break. Have a very Happy Friday everyone!
Comments