Author: Damian Rentoule

ITEMS: Parent-Teacher-Student Conferences; American Scholastic Mathematics Association (ASMA) Contest 2019-2020. PRINCIPAL'S MESSAGE Dear HIS Community We are not far away from the October Break and with the parent-student-teacher conferences on Monday, all Secondary students out on camp next week (Tuesday-Thursday) and both Boys and Girls Varsity Volleyball teams playing tournaments in Nagoya and Kobe on Friday and Saturday, it is a busy week to send us into the break. For this week's TED Talk, I really liked the ideas presented here by Elif Shafak and with our identity at HIS so closely tied to Diversity, Inclusion and Peace, it is very relevant to us. The speaker askes why we underestimate feelings and perceptions and this reinforced the importance of the Social, Emotional, Ethical (SEE) Learning program that we have been…

ITEMS Halloween Decorations Congratulations to a National Chess Champion PYP Parent Information Workshop Baseball Glove Donations PRINCIPAL'S MESSAGE Dear HIS Families I hope you have enjoyed the week. We had some great news earlier in the week which was the decision by the Board of Directors after receiving input from the Board of Trustees to proceed with construction of the new building. The new space will be a great improvement to our facilities with a series of larger classroom spaces.  We now have the opportunity to fine-tune the final design and we will be asking members of the school community to help us with the final details.       We will partly fund the project from existing reserves and also a bank loan.  This will ensure that operational costs associated…

ITEMS: HIS Hoodie Order; BOD & BOT Meetings; Nominations for BOT: PRINCIPAL'S MESSAGE Dear HIS Community It has been a very interesting couple of weeks in terms of climate change action with quite a few of our students being inspired by Greta Thunberg and the global action that she has prompted. I posted a TED Talk by Greta Thunberg on the Crane last year and it was quite a remarkable talk. It was just over a year ago since she walked out of her school to organize a school-strike to raise awareness of global warming, protesting outside the Swedish Parliament. This address, below, to the UN Climate Change Summit a year later has an added note of urgency. A group of HIS students spoke with me yesterday with some ideas…

Items: Camps; MYP Information Morning (Thanks); Typhoon Principal's Message Dear HIS Community We had two guest speakers in this week and I would like to thank Noh performer,  Kinue Oshima sensei, who introduced Noh to our PYP students and also Professor Machida from Hiroshima University who gave a presentation to our DP students on language and thought. These were great learning experiences for our students. We also have six students from Shudo University who will be visiting over the next two months as part of their service program so we appreciate the support from our wider Hiroshima community. I teach the Grade 12 DP Language and Literature class and we have been looking at some powerful speeches, each influential in unique ways. I particularly like this message by spoken word poet…

Items: Board of Trustees Nominations; Message from the Volleyball Teams; After School Clubs. Principal's Message Dear HIS Community I hope you have enjoyed the week and have fun plans for the long weekend. I have a letter on the noticeboard in my office from Rinoka and Mahiro (Gr5 now) urging HIS to put up solar panels for a range of good reasons. I saw the following TED Talk by Elon Musk where he shared some thoughts for the future and it reminded me of this letter. The talk is longer than a regular TED Talk, but I found it really interesting to hear the speaker's thoughts on why he thinks the way he does. Our HIS vision specifically states that we will develop a lifelong commitment to a sustainable world and…

Items: MYP Coffee Morning, September 20th Board of Trustees (BOT) Guardian Positions Parent-Teacher-Association (PTA) Event Leads Principal's Message Dear HIS Community Thank you to all of the parents who joined us for the Parent Information Night. We hope that you enjoyed the evening. The partnership between the parents, child and school is so important and meeting face-to-face early in the year really helps us to develop this relationship. Thank you for participating in our activity in the gym. It was just a short insight into the Social, Emotional and Ethical learning program used to support our Approaches to Learning skills. The short presentation SEE Learning that we used last night can be viewed here. Although there are links to many of the Approaches to Learning skill areas, self-management skills are very closely…