Last week, many students were excited to see the changes of our Tee Bar. More selection of snacks and fruits were added into the list. Tee Bar has also launched a new coffee machine and this has given BIST a greater-tasting coffee! The working team have also brainstormed about how to improve the quality and taste of food. We finally reviewed the menu by getting input from parents and students, have more live-cooking demonstrated not only lunch time, but also in some evenings for Boarders. Miss Rachel Scannell, Marketing Manager of Bromsgrove UK visited our school as usual to exchange key learning, practices of Bromsgrove UK, etc. We normally incorporate all best practices from various sources in the world to come up with the best learning & development plan for our children. And to build capability of our staff, on Saturday Sep 26’15, we have organized the training on “Professional Selling” , by Khun Marote Vananan, who have extensive knowledge and experiences in sales area from global, regional, and local companies. We plan to provide more training in several areas for our staff to ensure that they are capable team to support our academic team effectively and efficiently.
This week, we have had some excellent Thai cooking lessons, led by the Thai teachers helping with boarding in the evening. The spring rolls that the students cooked were particularly popular, with all those that shared eating them! Thursday also brought the opening of the boarding shop: this proved to be very popular indeed with the students, and I would like to congratulate the boarders who have worked on setting this up. I am sure that the boarding community will find this service invaluable for snacks, toiletries and stationery supplies. Friday was the prefect and sixth form evening out, for which the students chose to go to Fashion Island for some food and shopping. The trip this weekend was to Combat Paintball, where 15 players signed up for the trip and thoroughly enjoyed playing airsoft; a couple of the weekly boarders also joined us for the trip, which was great to see. We hope to use this venue again more in the future, as it was very safe, the arena was clear and hazard free and the marshals did an excellent job of ensuring that all had a good time in a safe way. The activities on offer at Sport and Spa have been postponed to this week, and we are having an open day on Wednesday so that the students can try the activities first before signing up. Finally, I would like to welcome Miss Jessica Amante to the Boarding team: Jessica joins us from the Philippines and is a qualified teacher and tutor. Jessica will be working in both Windsor House and Tudor House as a House Assistant, and, with her arrival, we will now be able to open up our tutoring programme in the evenings. This week, our mid-week activities on offer are: baking, crafts, origami, circuit and fitness, Sport and Spa open day, Polio Points rock concert, year 9 and 10 night out, and, finally, a weekend trip to Safari World.
Student Voice has been an integral part of Week 5 at Bromsgrove. We not only had the Head Boy and Head Girl ‘hustings’ on Tuesday, but also interviews for the Learning and Wellbeing committees. Following the hustings, the Senior and Secondary Leadership teams spent a long time debating the merits of each student. I am thrilled to announce that Pat and Jade will be our Head Boy and Head Girl this academic year and we are all looking forward to seeing their fantastic ideas for the development of BIST, from the students’ perspective, taking shape as the year progresses. We are very proud of Pat and Jade as they take on these pivotal roles, but we would also like to congratulate all students who applied for the roles, as their applications were exceptionally strong. The Learning and Wellbeing committee selection process also took place and the students who were on the committees last year were fully involved in both the shortlisting and interviews. I particularly enjoyed listening to the students who had applied giving a one minute presentation, detailing an area related to Learning and Wellbeing at Bromsgrove that they would like to develop further. Once these two crucial committees are finalised, we will be ready to continue our pioneering Student Voice work and to be a role model for other schools in the region.
There was much excitement in Year 1 this week as the teachers and children organised a tea party to build language and first hand experiences of their book ‘The Tiger That Came to Tea’. Just like in the book, there was a surprise visitor: it wasn’t a tiger, but the Bromsgrove bear! Luckily he was a better guest than the tiger in the story and shared his food with the children rather than eating it all himself. Another literary character visited the WP campus this week. Drifting gently above the atrium was Mrs Twit: released by our Year 2s as part of their Science topic, she flew with the aid of 15 helium balloons. Mrs Twit chose a great week for her first flight, and, from her vantage point, she had would have been able to see the first ever Primary Student Executive being elected. I would like to congratulate all of the children that applied for the roles: they represented themselves fantastically, and even those who were not successful showed themselves to be reflective young leaders keen to ensure that every student’s time at BIST is as happy and productive as possible. We will be implementing many of the ideas that we heard at interview in the near future. It was an incredibly hard decision to make but I would like to congratulate Jamie and Sakura (Head Boy and Head Girl), Min Heo and Jazzy (Deputy Head Boy and Deputy Head Girl), Harry (Chair of the Wellbeing Committee) and Weili (Chair of the Learning Committee). I look forward to working with the Primary Student Executive to ensure that student voice is the cornerstone of the outstanding education we offer at BIST.
On Friday, K. Mint, our School Director, and I attended an important meeting of ISAT (International Schools Association of Thailand), at which we learnt about critical developments in terms of government education legislation, and how we, as a bold and innovative international school at the cutting edge of best global practice, can be empowered and autonomised to achieve the very best for your children. It was a refreshing experience, and made us very optimistic and excited about the future of Bromsgrove. Equally exciting, as Ruth and Hannah have explained in their updates, is the burgeoning Student Voice programme at BIST. We aim to be the leading school in Asia in terms of democratising learning and developing student leadership, and the appointment of this year’s committees and student leaders is an exciting step in this journey. Finally, on Thursday 1 October, we are hosting our first, annual Polio Points Rock Concert. The concert will start at 6.30pm, and will finish by 8.00pm. There will be a nominal entrance fee, and proceeds will go towards our Polio Pointsfundraising. The band performing will be ‘Morning Four’, who impressed the audience so much at the Performing Arts Opening Ceremony last year. Trained at Rockademy music school, consisting of students from Bromsgrove, ISB and Shrewsbury, and having performed at BITEC, Big Mountain and a host of other venues and festivals in Thailand, theirs is amongst the best youth rock music in the city. All students are invited, so please encourage your child to attend. Parents are also, of course, most welcome too – so please let K. Trini know if you would also like to come.
This week in the Careers department there are several events designed to help students to make informed decisions about Higher Education and assist them in their applications for universities:
On Wednesday 30th of September the Head of International Recruitment for the prestigious University of Warwick will be running a Personal Statement writing workshop for our Year 13 students.
On Thursday the 1st of October the Manager of International Relations from The New College of the Humanities (London) will be talking to students at 3:30pm in the new sixth form centre. Students who are interested in Liberal Arts type courses are encouraged to attend.
On Saturday 3rd October there is a UK Universities Fair at the The Shangri-La Hotel from 15:30 – 17:30. We encourage students in Year 12 and 13 to attend, preferably with their parents, to meet over 100 college and university admissions representatives from all over the world and ask them questions about that important next step.
Elliot Dye, our Director of Sport and Enrichment, writes: “Despite some rather wet weather in the latter half of last week, impacting on the sporting activities, the ECA programme was again a great success. It was a delight to watch the students and staff getting so involved, and, in some cases, so wet! I believe that all students, where possible, have now made any desired changes to their ECA choices. It has also been very pleasing to see the growing number of students joining the football and swimming academies that run on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday afternoons, shortly after the conclusion of the ECA programme. With some very experienced coaching staff both on the football field and in the pool, I look forward to the numbers continuing to grow. As we look forward, our basketball players are readying themselves for the TISAC competition which kicks off on Tuesday with our U15 boys team playing away at Concordian. Our next few weeks of competition are going to be very busy and, upon confirmation of our final few fixtures, I look forward to sharing a calendar of all the fixtures with you all. Our senior girls Volleyball team also get underway this week with the first of a number of friendly volleyball fixtures.”
David Williams, our Director of Boarding, writes: “As with all weeks in boarding, this has been a busy one! Many activities, such as football, rounders, Thai cooking, a music “jam session” and even games of bingo, have been on offer this week. We have also given out the sign-up for Sport and Spa for our new, mid-week evening programme: we have classes for badminton, tennis, squash, taekwondo, muai Thai and yoga on offer every Wednesday. On Friday, we also had a night out down to Pure Place, followed by an all-boarder trip to Siam Ocean World and Siam Paragon. If you wish to be kept up to date with everything in boarding, don’t forget to add our official Line Page by searching for @bistbo. We have also sent out our list of weekend trips for this term. We have lots of plans for the rest of the year, but if anyone has any suggestions for a good weekend trip, please let us know so that we can add it into the programme. I would also like to welcome our new Assistant Head of Boys’ Boarding, Kevin Edward (kedward@bromsgrove.ac.th). Kevin is a native Thai speaker and has already settled in well to the routines here and is getting to know the boys. Next week, we have more Thai cooking, evening drama, music practice, football and indoor games – all being provided by the teaching staff in the evenings – as well as our usual bike rides, games and time to relax. Sign-up for Paintball for this weekend will also be out Monday, and the students will have to sign up for this quickly to ensure a place.
Matthew Savage, our Deputy Head of School, writes: “For me, the week was all about Polio Points. My colleague, d’Arcy Lunn’s fantastic presentations to students on Monday set the standard, and the ‘Drop Day’ was a resounding and popular success across the Windsor Park campus. On Tuesday, I enjoyed a fun assembly with our Early Years children before they threw themselves into their own Polio Points day. On Wednesday, I led a Parent Workshop on the Early Years campus to explain to a room full of parents about Polio Points and how it can transform their child’s learning, wellbeing and attitudes to learning. And on Friday, we hosted a large Press Conference, where representatives from many of Thailands top publications and broadcasters gathered together to learn about Polio Points, and how BIST is leading the world in our development of outstanding learners and global citizens. Most exciting for me was hearing five of our students, from across the Primary and Secondary schools, answer the journalists’ questions with such passion for a rewards program of which they are so proud. Like Ruth and Hannah, I can’t wait now to see the election of our various Student Voice representatives – next week should be very exciting indeed.”
Ruth Young, our Secondary Principal, writes: “Our week began with our first ‘Drop Day’ of the year, themed around Polio Points and the Global Goals for Sustainable Development. I was thrilled to see Secondary students engaging in cross-year groups to work on projects full of deep learning about Fair Trade, Polio Points and disease management, culminating in a competition to choose the winning presentation from each year group, which were then shared with the whole secondary school on Friday in our pastoral assembly. The feedback from students and staff has been very positive, with many students asking for more days like this, where they can apply their learning in different contexts and develop skills outside of the classroom. Watch this space for details of the second drop day, later this academic year. The academic and pastoral team have been very busy this week, organising our Student Voice elections which will take place this week. I cannot wait for the Hustings for Head Boy and Head Girl, scheduled this Tuesday – I am sure that it will be a close competition for all students involved!”
