Dear Parents,
I hope you had a great weekend with friends and family and are ready for the special week before the Chinese New Year.
Throughout the school year, there are events and opportunities for the school to come together to celebrate our different cultures, appreciate why we celebrate them and enjoy being part of an international community.
This week, we are looking forward to school celebrations of the Chinese New Year. This is a time of year when the children learn about the history and traditions associated with Chinese New Year and where learning in school is related to this celebration. In this way, we aspire for our children to have immersive cultural experiences.
From a school perspective, the impact of these celebrations is more significant than the events themselves. By acknowledging and celebrating the mix of cultures, traditions, and special days in school, we are signaling that cultural understanding and acceptance of differences are healthy and important parts of modern society. We learn more about each other and, therefore, learn to build levels of communication, trust, and relationships that will help shape our understanding of the world around us.
If we accept, reasonably, that our actions and behaviours are a vote for the kind of people we wish to become, then we are role-modelling behaviours and actions that will hold our children in very good stead. Our children learn much from the sum total of their environments, the people they are around, and their actions. Here at NAIS Hong Kong, we want to instil a school environment where the actions and behaviours of our school community are helping to shape young minds into culturally and globally minded individuals.
I look forward to celebrating my first Chinese New Year in Hong Kong this year and wish you all a wonderful holiday at the end of the week.
Happy New Year!
新年快乐!
Take care,
Stephen Sharma
Head of Primary
