DCIS Newsletter June 2018

Letter from the Principal:
June Highlights
Our Principal Christopher Short reflects on an amazing year
at DCIS.
Dear DCIS Parents and Guardians,
I do hope that you have had the opportunity
to look through the 2017/18 DCIS Year Book
with your children, it really has been an
amazing year and this will serve as a great
reminder. Because of print timings, some
of the later events this term haven’t been
included. These include Year 3’s first ever
Residential trip outside school, where the
children got to spend an exciting night at
Singapore Zoo, as well as Years 8 and 9’s
Global Campus trip to the NAE expedition
centre in Les Martinets, Switzerland.
The 20 students that participated in this
opportunity had an excellent time and were
definitely challenged as they hiked and
climbed in the Alps. After a week of teambuilding
and making connections with
students from our family of NAE schools, the
students came back beaming, some with
ambitions to graduate to the next level of
mountaineering.
After country heats earlier in the year,
five secondary students headed to Kuala
Lumpur last week to compete in the regional
final of the World Scholar’s Cup. For the
uninitiated, the World Scholar’s Cup is an
academic competition in which schools from
all over the world take part. After a week of
intense competition we are delighted to
announce that three of our students have
qualified for the grand finals which will take
place at Yale University, USA, in November.
Congratulations to all who participated.
This term MIT challenged our primary
students to investigate self-driving
vehicles. This STEAM project focused on
recent developments but also asked them
to question both the safety and ethical
aspects of this ground-breaking technology.
A selected group of students from years
3-6 also visited Nanyang Technological
University this week to witness driverless
buses in action. We are very grateful to one
of our parents, Dr. Agarwala who both came
into school to talk to the students about
her work as a researcher and organised the
exciting and educational visit to NTU for our
students.
Last week we were delighted to support our
Year 12 IB students as they organised our first
Model United Nations. The MUN delegates
had a timely debate on the refugee crisis and
proved that if DCIS students were in charge
of the world, things would be better.
Mr Holmes’ magic control of the weather
continued with the swimming galas running
almost to schedule. They were the final
opportunity for the houses to earn points
in this year’s House Competition.The
new house system is now well and truly
embedded in DCIS life and it was great to see
staff and children wearing their house shirts
through the week and really getting into
the house spirit. We have already started to
plan the house activities for next year, which
again will be a mix of social, academic,
creative and sporting events and will further
instil the sense of belonging in our students.
Thank you to those of you who supported
our DCIS Proms on Wednesday evening. It
is a unique format for a school performing
arts celebration and it gave a fantastic
opportunity to the performers to hone their
craft in front of a revolving audience. I am
grateful to all our staff who continue to go
above and beyond to create these brilliant
opportunities for the young people at
the school. We are providing further staff
support for PE and Music to ensure the
expansion in these areas continues, so we
look forward to even more success next year.
On Monday the DCA hosted a Teacher
Appreciation Tea. As last year, this was
organised as a surprise for teachers and
teaching assistants, who were delighted to
be applauded as they entered the Cooper
Hall. As well as some delicious sandwiches
and pastries, each teacher was presented
with a booklet of notes from their students.
It was a truly magical afternoon. The DCA
plays such an important part in the life of the
school and I am indebted to Karyn and Efe,
our co-chairs, the committee and the army
of volunteers who help run fantastic events
and support the school in such diverse ways,
from organising second hand uniform sales
to serving drinks at school events.
As you may have noticed already, the
summer will be busy as we improve some
of our shared facilities. The library is being
expanded and improved and will create
separate areas for Secondary, Upper
Primary and our IBDP students. The medical
centre is also being extended to improve our
care facilities as it will now contain shower
facilities and additional beds. The office is
being remodelled to help manage visitors
to the school more easily and house our
admin staff more efficiently. We are building
a new science laboratory which will ensure
that all our science lessons continue to
be conducted in a lab environment as our
Secondary School grows. We are improving
the acoustics in Cooper Hall which will
improve our drama and music productions
as well as our weekly assemblies. We are
building a new play area for our Pathway 4
students and are putting in decking in the
Lower Primary playground. We are creating
a new music room and a new ICT suite as well
as adding more computers to both libraries.
We are renovating 10 classrooms and by
October we will have 2 new sensory rooms.
As you can imagine we also have some less
exciting but important work happening
over the summer on our infrastructure and
ongoing security enhancements.
I would like to personally extend my thanks
to you for your continued support of your
children and our staff as we complete
another successful year at DCIS. I hope all
members of the DCIS community have an
enjoyable holiday and we look forward
to welcoming you back for the 2018-19
academic year. I wish children and staff
leaving all the best in their new ventures and
countries.
Christopher Short
PrincipalChristopher Short
Principal
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