Dear Parents,
If we talk about key issues in any organization, communication comes always on top of the list. You are at this moment obviously taking on what we offer, but a bi-weekly newsletter is clearly not enough. Communication needs to happen on all levels and in all forms at the school. This is why we are especially grateful that the Parents Association has organized a system of class and year representatives who regularly meet the Deputy Heads (thanks for their time too!) to discuss items of success or of concern. Everything which contributes to learning (of both the children and us as an organization) is much appreciated. Please be reminded that for major structural points you would like to raise, there is of course the legal representation of the MR (Chair: Mrs. Mak, Parent members: Mr. Court, Mr. Houweling and Mr. J. Areso y Salinas) who meet regularly with me.
For questions about individual students to teachers, please do contact them directly first, and in the case you are not satisfied with the answer, feel free to approach the next level. E-mail is nowadays the best medium to contact the teachers. Please bear in mind that they as well are faced with increasingly full mail boxes and allow two working days for answering your concerns. In urgent matters, we will of course react immediately, and there are still phones to be used too.
The digital age has brought about a paradigm shift in the way we communicate and how we deal with information and knowledge (and sometimes mix up the two…). Web 2.0 with the growing social networks asks for new patterns of behavior, of care and of safety. In ICT and other classes, these ethical issues are of course a topic. Parents could assist us too, as the virtual space extends to your living rooms and to children’s desks. Cyber bullying in the last weeks went on via facebook and other sites, in years as young as Y7, and children report to us that they meet in the evenings to chat (or twitter), and this is when you come in: as some parents have done already, show your children how you can restrict the circle of friends on e.g. facebook or ning, that you can remove somebody from your private virtual space or even that you can delete an account. As we leave traces everywhere, the internet has to learn in the future how to forget, and we all can play an active part here. Our teachers will be glad to assist all of you with this, and if enough interest is in the community, we could run last year’s parent platform on this topic again (just mail to me directly).
Thanking members of the ISH family this time has to include those who initiated the Memorial concert in the Auditorium for the late Malcolm Davies, amongst them Puranjay Sudan, Robert Verloop, Cheryl Oosterman, John den Exter, Elisabeth Mink and many more like Jutta Clarke who organized the cakes and Gerard Zuijderduijn who organized the building. See the article in this issue.
Further appreciation to the PA / PTA for organizing tonight’s event at the Gemeentemuseum (Kandindsky! Fashion!) with more than 500 registered participants, all for free. A generous gesture by the City of The Hague to us as part of the international community.
A less exciting topic is life after the school day. If your children are unsupervised, please enroll them in the homework club, open as of 1 April also to Y9 students (so far 7 and 8). Letters will go out next week. After having received the expressed wish for a homework club from so many parents, we are surprised that at the moment only 7 students are enrolled. All other students waiting to be collected will have to stay in the Waiting Area behind the reception in future. I hope you understand this arrangement as we cannot provide supervision throughout the school building after lessons.
Please have a look at our Sports results – we are very proud of our teams, again!
Best wishes,
Peter Kotrc
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