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| 12 May 08 (05:42 EAT) |
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International School Moshi Letter from the CEO - 22nd April 2008 |
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Dear Parents,
Family Day
I want to thank all our families who participated in the ISM Family Fun Day
last Saturday on Arusha Campus. I especially want to thank the Parent
Association who organized this first all-school social, the parents who
volunteered to help run the events and serve food and the Arusha Campus
social committee who helped with refreshments. The PA was able to raise TSh
2,694,500/= through the raffles and I want to thank all the generous
sponsors who participated. There was a great variety of events for children
and parents and the highlight for me was the mini-talent show - many thanks
to Andy Gorman for organizing the performances. The weather cooperated and
it was great to see parents and children playing games together. Thanks to
the many families from Moshi who made the drive to Arusha Campus. I
certainly hope our Family Day will become an annual feature on our ISM
calendar for the whole school in the future. Again, the Parent Association
deserves full credit for this idea and for all their cooperative hard work
that made the day a big success.
School Polo Shirts in Primary
The Parent Association has requested that administration explain the
reasoning and timing behind introducing school polo shirts on Arusha Campus.
There may have been some confusion about the process that led us to decide
to extend school polo shirts in Primary to Arusha Campus. This idea was
first raised in a strategic planning committee meeting back on Feb 21st
2007. On August 22nd, 2007 the committee recommended that the polo shirts be
introduced between December 2007 and February 2008. All ISM stakeholders, including parents, were represented at the strategic planning meetings which have been going on for the past 18 months and the minutes of all the sessions are posted on the school website. Introducing the polo shirts is only one of many initiatives, that you can read about on the website, recommended by the committee to improve our school. Although there was considerable pressure from the committee on management to implement this part of the plan immediately, we preferred the measured approach to give us time to ask for feedback from parents. The reasons the strategic planning committee recommended that we introduce uniforms in Primary on Arusha Campus are straightforward:
We felt it was important to get parental feedback on the issue. The minutes from the PA meeting were published well after this feedback was requested and collected which may have led to some confusion. The parental feedback was fully considered amongst feedback from other stakeholders which led ultimately to the decision to implement polo shirts across the primary school. In future, we are reminded of the need to communicate more clearly. MYP Open Days
We will be showcasing our IB Middle Years Programme (MYP) in the first week
of May on both campuses: May 5th on Arusha Campus and May 7th on Moshi
Campus. Our MYP coordinators, Steve Brown in Arusha and Jeff Holcomb in
Moshi have put a lot of work into organizing these days and we hope you will
find time to attend and see what our middle years students are doing. If you
can bring along a friend who would also like to learn about MYP at ISM, we
would delighted to share our work.
Catherine Kayila
Finally, I am pleased to announce that Catherine Kayila ('06) has found a
seat, which is fully funded, at Cottey College in the United States.
Catherine, who is from Shinyanga, graduated as a Tanzanian ISM Scholarship
student in 2006. She has been applying for the past two year to colleges and
universities around the world, but has had difficulty securing the full
funding she needs to study abroad. Congratulations Catherine! I want to
thank the Courtright and Lewallen families in Moshi and in Colorado for
their strong support of Catherine during the past two years. I am happy to
know that their support will continue when Catherine arrives in the United
States later this year. I also want to thank Mrs. Beth Beveridge, our
College Counsellor, who has worked closely with Catherine during her quest. When our scholarship students are unable to secure the full funding they require, we look for ways to support them while they continue to make their applications. One scholarship student worked in the Moshi library for a year before getting his acceptance to Duke University and two other students, including Catherine, have worked in the Kilimanjaro Centre for Community Ophthalmology (KCCO) adjacent to KCMC in Moshi. Many thanks to Dr. Paul Courtright and Dr. Susan Lewallen, the Directors of KCCO, for their amazing support of our ISM scholarship students. Best Regards, Barry Sutherland Chief Executive Officer | Available on the web... |