Issue No. 24 (1 March 2019)

Recently, we have been reflecting a lot about the importance of our community – and in the last few weeks, we have received so many positive illustrations of this. Following the success of the ESF Run, we were privileged to host the third and final day of the ESF Festival of Music here at SIS, during which the audience were treated to an exceptional extravaganza of vocal performances from several special choirs, combining students from across all seven ESF secondary schools and sections. Music has always had the power to bring us together, and it is clear that our Music Departments at ESF are collectively in very good voice!

Last Saturday, it was a great privilege for my wife and I to attend the PTA Social Event in Causeway Bay. Parents and teachers are together united in one common objective – to do the very best we can for the students of South Island School. Circulating the room and talking with parents and teachers during this very special afternoon, it was clear to me how much synergy exists in terms of our desire to work together. CIS noted in their recent report the ‘very strong sense of mutual trust’ at SIS. Thank you for trusting us with your children.

Our community is quite unique. We live here in Hong Kong, a community that thrives through its combination of Chinese and International heritages and cultural influences, so we must always work hard to ensure that we celebrate our international diversity, whilst also fully embracing the customs and culture of our host country. Following on from our wonderful Chinese New Year celebrations, we are proud to look forward to our Chinese Drama Production, Butterfly Lovers. If you have not yet reserved tickets, please be sure to do so, as this will certainly be a performance to remember! This also comes just after we celebrated International Mother Tongue Day, and following last month’s International Evening and the Diwali Night in November. We will be looking closely at our vision for international and intercultural education going forward, in collaboration with student and parent representatives, and we look forward to further thoughts on this important element of school life in due course.

Ultimately, the ethos of our community is what binds us together. After seven months in role as Principal of South Island School, it remains a great honour for me to walk forward with our student, staff and parent communities, as we seek to articulate our next steps. Please do take the time to complete the CIS Community Survey, if you have not already done so – our community is strongest when we ensure that every voice is heard, and that every good idea is harnessed in our future plans. Thank you for all you do to support SIS.

Tom Vignoles
Principal

Hello everyone!

In collaboration with the Bahay MaD week, The Sustainability Council is introducing SIS’s very first GREEN WEEK!

There will be 4 main activities running throughout the week from the 4-8 March:

Micro-greens

• This will take place on Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday break in the LOWER PLAYGROUND (if it is raining, come to the area outside of The Space)
• We will be teaching you how to plant your own edible greens with simple methods you can easily replicate at home!
• If you would like to join in, make sure you Bring Your Own Up-Cycled plastic pot – can be made out of a yoghurt cup, or even a plastic bottle cut in half – the perfect opportunity to get creative!

Plastic Free Wednesday

• The CEO of Urban Springs Hong Kong – a social enterprise working towards a plastic-free Hong Kong, will be coming in to talk with students about how she ran an extremely successful business campaign and how her enterprise is working towards a sustainable future.
• This is a great opportunity for students to meet a pioneering businesswoman and ask questions about her success and mission.
• This will take place in C57 during LUNCH

To attend the talk, sign up here: https://goo.gl/forms/cMuD99qoZSftsn0w2

Meatless Thursday

• On this day, ALL hot meals will be replaced by 3 delicious vegetarian options in both the Refectory and Atrium
• Consuming one-pound less of meat saves over 2400 gallons of water – that saves enough water to supply one person’s showers for 6 months!

Power Down Day

• On the final day of Green Week (8 March), all electrical devices in SIS will be switched off! There will be no AC, no lights, etc.
• Bring your own pencils and notebooks for lessons – laptops will be switched off.
• Sports equipment will be available in the lower playground for you to use!
• Be sure to check our progress on ENTRAK – Let’s aim to reduce our energy use by at least 10%!

BONUS: Be sure to check out our INSTAGRAM and FACEBOOK pages, where we will be posting facts, statistics, and tips to be more sustainable, made by our Sustainability Ambassadors, daily!

We are all looking forward to this event – it is the first step in achieving the ultimate goal of making Sustainability an integral part of South Island School.

The Sustainability Council

On 21 February, we celebrated International Mother Tongue Day with a range of activities promoting the incredible linguistic diversity and cultural heritage of our students and staff. All Chinese, French and Spanish lessons that day focused on celebrating students’ home languages, students brought in objects representing their culture to discuss in class, there was a Cantonese Drama production for some students and there were poster and video competitions as well (the winners of which will be receiving some great prizes!). All in all it was a great day…bring on Mother Tongue Day 2020!

Students brought things that represented their own languages and cultures: