MESSAGE FROM THE PRINCIPAL :

 

 

 

 

 

What a school celebrates says a lot about the institutional values that are held therein.
Celebrations in our school were the subject of a thorough process of reflection several years ago. Questions we asked ourselves included,
“What message do we want to send to our community through the things we celebrate?”
“How can we honour tradition as well as the important changes taking place within the modern world in which we live?”
“How can we recognise the special character given to our school by our location in the host country of Cuba?”

What we decided upon was a general focus on international themes that we believe to be of value to each individual in our community. Hence we developed a programme that would assign one, as a general rule, celebration per month of the school year.  To that we added things that would allow us to showcase a wide variety of student talent as well as reinforcing some of our core values.

In consultation with the UNESCO celebrations list we made our selections;
September – The International Day of Peace was an obvious choice to start our school year as we like all societies strive to find a way to get along with each other peacefully.
October - was equally easy as UN Day falls in that month. So does the anniversary of the school opening in 1965, so for October at least we meld the tradition of honouring our Founder, Phyllis Powers MBE with our hope for the future of the world – the United Nations Organisation. After all with more than 40 nationalities represented among the student body we ourselves are a sort of mini-UN ourselves.

November – Universal Children’s Day was also an easy choice as what else is a school about if not children? We also included in November Remembrance Day to honour those that gave their lives in conflicts around the world and through time, in the search for a better future for all.

Our Winter Concert, End of Year Concert and Mid Winter festival celebrations (for the younger students) are an attempt to make everyone aware of the cultural diversity that makes up our student body and simultaneously recognise and promote the value we give and appreciation we have to and for such diversity.

January is the month we recognise the Cuban national hero and icon Jose Marti. This is our respectful tribute to the culture and history of our host country while in February values are again reinforced by our recognition of Friendship Day and Mother Language Day.
We felt that no school should ignore the situation of women around the world and so International Women’s Day was another easy choice for our celebrations list.
International Book Day and World Environment Day rounded out our selections for what I think must be obvious reasons.

Since we created that original schedule we have added things on that we consider to be important such as the value of a family. This is reinforced through Family Fun Morning at the beginning of the year in September and the Family Day lunch for all each May. We have added an event for a recognition of a value that is almost universal in societies around the world – that of keeping animals as pets – we recognise this with our Annual Pet Show.

Just as the Music part of our Performing Arts programmes is showcased by the Music Concerts so Drama is highlighted with an annual show and Art is promoted through the Shankar painting Competition and the Steve White Photography Competition. The Physical Education programme also gets showcased in annual competitions in amongst others Tennis and Swimming.

Science is highlighted through the annual Science Fair and as recognition of the importance we place on literacy we promote reading through the twice yearly programme called DEAR (Drop Everything And Read) and the other twice yearly programme SEW (Stop Everything and Write).

We truly are a diverse community but we hope to promote things of common value to us all as well as celebrate the things that make schools the important places they are in the personal formation of each and every individual that attends them.