Welcome to the second quarter of the 2023-2024 school year!

Dear Faculty & Staff, 

Welcome to the second quarter! For faculty and staff on fall break, I hope you had a wonderfully relaxing holiday. And, for the staff members who worked through the fall break, thank you for your continued efforts with campus maintenance and school operations. I wish to extend particular thanks to the Business and Finance Office, the HR department, WaiMun’s team, and all involved in developing the 2024-2025 school budget. We had several meetings with the Board during the week and expect to have the budget for next year approved shortly. 

As always, SSIS will be exciting for the next few weeks. In addition to the excellent teaching, learning, and student activities, some other activities and professional opportunities warrant mentioning. Tomorrow morning, assuming good weather, we will have the rescheduled fire drill. We appreciate your support of an organized and quiet evacuation of the school to ensure we are ready in case of any such emergency.

This week, a significant number of us from the leadership team will attend the EARCOS leadership conference in Bangkok (from Tuesday to Saturday). I will attend the EARCOS board meeting on Tuesday and then participate in the conference for the rest of the week. The theme of this year’s conference is ‘Creating Safe Harbors’ and features a host of excellent keynote speakers and workshop presenters. This is the most significant leadership conference for all of us in leadership positions in the Asia region, and we look forward to a very productive time and meaningful collective learning. In the spirit of ‘building safe harbors’ for our students here at SSIS, our full faculty meeting will be dedicated to the critical topic of Suicide Prevention led by Tony Loue, Learning Strategies, on November 8. In addition, our team at EARCOS will focus on articulating further strategies to foster belonging in our community.

We look forward to sharing our learning and recommended strategies when we return.

Upcoming Exciting PD and Events

• We look forward to the upcoming architect visit with Madeleine Le of Flansburgh Architects from October 30 to November 1 
• That same week, we welcome Megan Holmstrom, who will work with math teachers across the school on Math PD.
• And, the first ever ARWAE (Asia Region Workshop for Art Educators) conference to be held in Vietnam will be hosted by SSIS, Nov 3-5

I hope you have a wonderful week ahead. In my absence this week, WaiMun Fong oversees the school. Thank you, WaiMun. I hope this is a peaceful, productive week for everyone. 

All good wishes,

Catriona