It’s December. We’re into the last two weeks of term at St Andrews International School Bangkok as we celebrate a new monthly theme, a new Art Department, and get ready to celebrate Christmas and the end of Term 1.
It was great to see so many Year 7 and 8 parents and students at last week’s Parent/Student/Teacher Meetings - the Sports Hall was full of the sound of discussions about the progress that students have made since August and, consistent with November’s Monthly Theme, how they can “learn from their mistakes” and continue to make progress in the future.
This month’s Monthly Theme, “We are empathic, always considering how other people are feeling”, is illustrated with a photograph I took of Peter (Year 13) in Tanzania in March. This year’s Tanzania Expedition students will be fundraising for their service projects both this week, on Friday with a Tanzania-themed Non-Uniform Day, and next week, at our annual Christmas Fair. There are still a few places available on this amazing opportunity for students in Years 10 or 12. Please see my Newsletter articles from last year (Mr Roo’s Tanzania Diary: Part 1 and Part 2) including the photo used on our December Monthly Theme poster, and contact Ms Claire (claire.fl@standrews.ac.th) or Ms Sammy (samantha.wi@standrews.ac.th) if you are interested in your son or daughter joining this year’s Expedition.
Last Thursday all High School parents were e-mailed a link to this year’s Annual Parents Survey. This survey covers all the key areas of the school including the learning environment and teaching we provide, the way in which we support your child’s social development, our range of facilities and the way in which we communicate with our families.
Each family should only complete the survey once and your responses are anonymous. The views of all of our parents will be used to inform our strategies for continued improvement. The closing date is Sunday 20th January 2019. Thank you in advance for your participation and we look forward to hearing your views.
Last week was Book Week in the High School, with a huge range of activities, including Friday’s traditional Book Character Day, and two visiting authors: Oliver Phommavanh and Prapas Cholsaranon. The Student Journalists describe these two authors visits:
Last Friday, Years 7, 8 and 9 had a talk with a comedian author, Oliver Phommavanh, from Australia. He was very funny and hilarious, but I suppose he is a comedian! He explained to us what we need to include in a fantastic story, telling us that what we need to do to be a good storywriter is to write about the things that you love and about your life. It is best to write about things based on your life because you know what happens best and you know how to describe it best. You will also know the feelings.
Oliver Phommavanh writes funny things about his life and the funny things that have happened to him, describing his life as a Primary teacher, how he dared a boy to eat 900 Tic Tacs and disgusting stuff such as stories of him him picking his nose. Like his books, he created laughter and enjoyment.
Ayumi, Isabell and Kiersten (Year 7)
On Friday afternoon, the STA Thai Department organised a guest talk from Khun Prapas Cholsaranon, a Thai author, songwriter, film director and cofounder of Workpoint Entertainment. This event was arranged after the success of the talk with Khun Boyd Kosiyabong last year. Khun Prapas’ talk focused mainly on the beauty of the Thai language in Thai literature, and on his life as a child in the Thai countryside, attending Triam Udom Suksa School and Chulalongkorn University, the most well known High School and University in Thailand, and become one of the notable person in Thailand.
During the event many Thai students were involved in making this talk more enjoyable. Sand (Sk) and Matrix (Sj) were the MCs, Year 10 Thai students performed “Ter Moon Rop Chun Chun Moon Rop Ter” and Aoon (11c) performed “Pror Arai” (both songs written by Khun Prapas), Niya (11e) and Oan (Sb) discussed the work they have done about Khun Prapas in their Thai lessons. The talk ended with a Q&A session with questions from STA students. The talk gave the audience both entertainment and education and we are very pleased to have Khun Prapas visit our school. Thank you and well done to the Thai Department and all Thai students involved in making this talk successful.
Oan (Year 12)
Today we have opened our new Art Department, with three classrooms and two studio spaces, as well as five new Physics labs, on Floor 5 of the Red Building.
If you have visited the school today, and forgotten your ID card, you may have seen our new kiosk, where students, parents and teachers who have forgotten their ID card, and visitors to the school, can now sign in and out much more efficiently than before. This means we now have an even more accurate track of who is in school at any time, which is obviously very important for health and safety reasons.
This week we have two performances of Peter Pan (see the Drama section for more details), a public holiday for Father’s Day on Wednesday, the final Parent/Student/Teacher Meetings of the term, for Year 9 on Thursday and then the Tanzania-themed Non-Uniform Day on Friday. I look forward to seeing many of you at Thursday’s Year 9 Parent/Student/Teacher Meetings as the students decide on their Free Choice Options before completing the Google Form by their deadline on Tuesday 11th December.
Next week we have a public holiday for Constitution Day on Monday and then our Christmas Fair (from 2:30 - 3:45) and Christmas Concert (from 4:00 - 5:15) on Thursday. At the Christmas Fair, there will be a number of stalls run by CAS, Service ECA, Business Studies and Tanzania students stalls in the Atrium, as well as food vendors outside the Gold Building and other vendors in the Library, and this will be followed by the Christmas Concert, featuring music from a number of our Music ECAs as well as Years 7, 8 and 9, in the Sports Hall.
Next Friday, we will end the term with assemblies for KS4/5, during PSHE, and then KS3, from 11:00 - 11:30, when we welcome any parents who would like to end the term with us. This will be followed by lunch, for those students who would like to eat lunch before leaving school, before the School Buses leave at 12:30.
I look forward to seeing you all at these events over the next two weeks.
Roo Stenning
Head of High School
With the goal of providing meaningful help to the flood victims in the northern regions of Thailand, our entire community at St Andrews Bangkok came together to raise funds and donations for the affected families. In the span of a few short weeks, added to donations of food and clothing, we managed to raise an astounding total of 386,676.50 THB in donation funds. To all students, teachers, parents, and staff who participated in our efforts and contributed to this cause—thank you!
