Dear All,
Welcome back! My hope is that everyone has had a terrific
summer and is ready for another productive, successful
year.
We will begin this academic year with lots of changes that
I believe will make us much better. The investments done
over the summer, in terms of resources and professional
development, will boost the quality of the educational
experience provided by our school.
This year is a special one; our young school has reached
the age of ten. It seems unbelievable but it has been almost
7 years since I joined IBSB and ten years since the idea
of an ambitious family (Mrs. and Mr. Cohen) became reality.
I do not know if anyone has ever imagined that this school
will go so far in such a short time, but here we are at
the beginning of a new academic year after ten years of
continuous devotion, growth and development.
Looking back, IBSB started with 12 children in 2000 and
it now almost reached full capacity.
IBSB is here for its students and it aims to offer a broad
and balanced international education in a safe and happy
environment. We give our students opportunities to develop
their mental, physical, creative and social skills. We believe
that it is very important that our children get all the opportunities
to attain high standards and develop as citizens of the world.
IBSB is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare
of children and expects all members of the school community
to share this commitment.
There is a special link on the website dedicated to the
ten year anniversary of the school. We are also preparing
a festive celebration, but I will give you more details about
it later this year.
The 2009 – 2010 academic year is another crucial year
for our school. You all know we had our ISI inspection last
year (the report will be available on the website within
the next two weeks), and we are now working on finalizing
the Action Plan based on the ISI recommendations. This will
also be available on the school website. The inspection was
a very good experience for all of us as it underlined the
many good things we are doing, but it also gave us a few
recommendations on how we can improve. I am happy to say
that many of these recommendations have been already completed.
It is enough to look at all the new resources and facilities
of our school. I am not going to mention everything as you
will have the chance to see for yourself. I will have to
mention though one of the big improvements – this is
the new building for the Early Years/Preschool and Examinations
Room. This will give our Primary School children more space,
an improved play area and of course a better educational
environment. Also the professional development programme
of the school has been improved as we already sent three
teachers over the summer to the UK for training on different
areas of responsibility. Not only this, but we have had a
two day training session in school with two well regarded
experts from the UK on Independent Learning, Learning Styles
and Differentiation for all our teaching body. All of these
will become more regular and will definitely have a great
impact on the teaching and learning experience in our school.
We are committed to constant improvement. Therefore the
self-evaluation process will be part of our school routine.
We will continuously monitor the educational process at all
levels in order to facilitate the best possible teaching
and learning experience for our students. This is a process
in which we are all involved: managers, teachers, students
and parents.
Our teaching body has grown to 41 professionals.
I welcome our new colleagues:
-
Theresa Cormican – Primary School Year 1 teacher
-
John Nosowski – Primary School
Year 5 teacher
-
Alexandra Thomas – Secondary School Mathematics
teacher
The events calendar is very busy starting with this month
when we will invite parents to meet teachers at the Parents-Teachers
BBQ on the 26th of September.
October and November will be extremely busy months. It is
enough just to mention the CIE Autumn exam session which
will start in early October. The Halloween party is on the
calendar and UN day will take place on the 23rd of October,
the last Friday of this first half term. Also IBSB is organizing
the first trip to the American College of Greece (http://www.acg.edu)
in the half term break. This is our latest affiliation and
it gives our students a very good option for their higher
education careers.
I will finish this message by mentioning the PTF (IBSB parents/teachers/friends).
We had a good year, in terms of PTF events last year, but
I am planning the extension and improvement of this organization.
A new PTF constitution will be available soon. I would like
to take this first opportunity to invite all the parents
who are interested in joining this organization to email
me on ciprian.tiplea@ibsb.ro. As a preamble to the constitution
I just want to mention that the PTF exist to enhance the
quality of provision and whole school experience for children
studying at IBSB.
So there is much to prepare for and there is more to come
after the half term break.
Ciprian Tiplea
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