By Lucy M. Gowdie, Head of School
18 August 2023
It is exciting to pen my first Spotlight at the commencement of this academic year.
It is such an important year in the life of our school as we come to the end of the five-year strategic plan. We look forward to sharing with our community the inroads we have made across the pillars we identified some five years ago, before the world changed dramatically, and impacted education forever.
These next six months will be filled with opportunities for us, as a community, to reflect on the journey we have travelled, and the road ahead. We have planned over the past few months for this engagement with all, and are looking forward to sharing with you how you can be involved in discussions pertaining to the exciting future ahead.
In researching the journey of the school over the summer, I stumbled across a founding document written by the first Head of School, Mr Gerald S. Atkinson. In it, he writes of the struggle to find a campus, the challenges of an international curriculum, and the passion of the community to build a school of excellence. Here we stand some sixty years later, reimagining our campus, thriving in the IB curriculum, and igniting the passion of our community to remain the school of excellence.
As Mr Nathaniel Atherton, charged with leading the engagement of our strategic review begins to walk with you on this journey to a shared future, and in so doing, as he commences this work, I ask that you consider and give contemplation to what Mr Atkinson, wrote in his early musings, ‘Our Kind of Education.’
What does it mean to be part of this community?
What does it mean to learn in this community?
What does the future of education look like?
What makes us unique?
This is important work, and work we want to share with you. Over the course of the year, there will be numerous opportunities for you to meet with the school to share your thoughts. There will also be Strategic Information Evenings, where we share with you our conclusions of the journey travelled to date.
What we penned five years ago, and what we will pen now, will be centred on the learning of every student - this will never change. And while much has changed in their world, and will continue to, we will center this work on the values we espouse, as being central to our identity, and to our community.
We are welcoming, humble, resilient and committed.
I am excited to share with our community that the International Baccalaureate extended our school an invitation to present at the Heads World Conference in Dublin this year. The invitation was offered after the IB/NEASC Accreditation visit in April, where the team of visitors was able to garner insight into our thinking about Belonging.
This invitation is a testament to the work we are doing in this delicate space, work which speaks to our unique approach to the development of our Belonging Policy; a document that will evolve over the course of this year to define, with our community, what diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice look like, sound like, and feel like at our brilliant school.
It is my hope that the week was a successful one for your child, and for you, and I very much look forward to the months ahead.