Dear Parents and Students,
Welcome home! I mean this literally for our boarding students, who are already starting to arrive on Campus this week. And I hope that all of you, whether you are new to the school or returning to H-IS after many years in the school, feel that your ‘back to school’ is also a kind of homecoming.
This week, teachers and the leadership team are re-examining what we teach our students and how we do it. This means refining different units of study and checking for meaningful connections to previous knowledge as well as connections horizontally across the different subjects students are learning. We learnt from experts on subjects as diverse as Artificial Intelligence, optimising the classroom environment, teaching mathematical and computational thinking, and introducing restorative practices to support improved relationships between all members of the community.
The student office, teachers, the leadership team, cleaners, gardeners and technical staff have been on Campus for over two weeks to prepare for your arrival. We are confident that this will be our best year yet as a school. If that is going to be true it must also be the best year ever for our students and their families. If there is anything I can do to help you or your children over the coming weeks and months, please do let me know. We are committed to making this a success for all of us.
What does success mean, here at H-FARM International School?
One of the distinctive features of this school is that we are pluralists when it comes to defining success. A cornerstone of our approach is to provide opportunities for success for every student. It is this success which feeds curiosity, confidence, and collaboration. We hope you join us in celebrating all forms of success. We especially want to nurture appreciation for the following forms of success:
- Emotional success – being happy, feeling good through self-awareness.
- Social success – feeling connected through friendships.
- Learning success – feeling fulfilled by your school work – enjoying school.
- Community success – awareness of the wellbeing of your friends, family, and larger community which are supported through inclusion/cultural literacy.
- Language success – ability to communicate effectively and confidently in more than one language.
- Prepared for the future – technological capabilities, innovator’s mindset, computational thinking/coding.
How can we better support learning this year?
Learning, whether socio-emotional or academic, is based on good habits and, to try and instil these we will be supporting successful learning habits through our 6 Principles of Learning. Whether you are a student or a teacher the challenges are the same:
- Ask better questions.
- Explore connections.
- Apply your knowledge to new contexts.
- Collaborate (with people and technology) to create better.
- Evidence your learning.
- Reflect on process and product.
If we do this habitually, learning will be a deeply satisfying endeavour.
Of course, the real test of successful learning is not if you blindly follow a six step plan, but if you can answer: “Do you want to learn more?” with a resounding “yes.”
Learning is not always easy. In fact, we aim to make it challenging. And we also hope that every night, when students turn in, a lingering question will take them back to something earlier that day. And we hope that this desire to learn something new accompanies them into the next day.
I very much look forward to spending time with all of you. This year starts, for new students and their families, at 08:30 AM on Monday, September 4th and for returning students from 08:30 on Tuesday September 5th.
In the meantime, if you have any questions about the start of the year for the Primary Years Programme, please feel free to contact Ms Jane Andrews, Primary School Principal or Mr Emiliano Cori, Secondary School Principal and they will make sure that you have the answers you need to start the year with clarity.
Sincerely yours,
Conan de Wilde
Head of School, H-IS Venezia