Dear Parents, Students, Staff and Friends of the DSK - Deutsche ...

New Leading Positions:
Ms Nellie Zimmermann has taken on the position as
grade head of Grades 7-9.
Ms Gesa Witte has become deputy principal of the
primary school.
Next year Dr Uwe Neumann will take over the post
as study- and career guidance counsellor from Mr
Meures. To ensure a smooth change over, he will lead
the study trip to the German universities this year.
Also this year Mr Norbert Krieg is preparing to take
over the coordination of the “Kombi” stream and
Abitur from Dr Schultz-Gutschke with whom he is
presently cooperating very closely.
Fixtures and Equipment
At the beginning of this school year more classrooms
have been newly equipped. All the rooms in the Gblock
got new desks and chairs to the value of R 140
000; in the H-block there are new curtains to block
the blinding rays of the sun - value R50 000; in the E-
and F-blocks tables and chairs will be resurfaced.
Equipping the high school (from Grade 5) with smart
boards - made possible with the generous support of
the Parents’ Committee - has almost been completed.
Only three rooms in the high school still lack such
electronic equipment.
Implementing the new administration computer
program „Atlantis“ is moving ahead. All data concerning
students, parents and teachers have been captured on it,
enabling us do all statistics and lists with the help of this
program. Mr Machhadi is preparing in-house training
for the teachers in the second term in preparation for
generating the reports using Atlantis. The mailing of
the weekly bulletin and informing parents via SMS in
case of an emergency will also happen through this
program. Soon all staff and students will have passes
with photos which will be issued using Atlantis.
School development
The year 2009 is another important one in terms of
school development: We have already put together
a new steering team according to the different
groupings:
Local staff: Michaela Fernandez, Andrea Springer
Seconded teachers from Germany: Dirk Heiss,
Christiane Kolb
Principals: Hermann Battenberg, Christa Dietterle
Parents’ Committee: Yvette Küng
School Board: Alice Zidek
SRC: invited according to requirement
Dirk Heiss has taken over the post of PQMrepresentative
and is concerned with the continued
process of the „Pedagogical Quality Management“.
Focal points for development will be:
Feedback culture
Smart board training
Method curriculum
Promotion of German
Preparation has been done in all these areas. In this
year we will have to submit to a Peer Review (probably
in October/November). A selected team from the
Deutsche Schule Pretoria will visit us for three days
and evaluate our school according to criteria given to
them by us, after which we will receive a report from
them.
A Peer Review Team from the DSK will conduct a
similar survey at the Deutsche Internationalen Schule
Johannesburg in May.
This Peer Review serves as preparation for a thorough
school inspection from Germany which will probably
take place in 2011.
Double Period Model
Something new for this school year has been the
implementation of as many double periods as possible.
It was a tough job for Mr Meures to reorganise our
time table from the fifth grade upwards in double
period blocks. We hope to ensure a calmer school day
and that more intensive work with several teaching
methods will become reality. We will evaluate this
model later in the year.
Afternoon Care
A new model for the aftercare has decidedly improved
the quality of the care. Special thanks goes to Ms Kohrs
who developed this model in conjunction with our
students who are doing community service, Philipp
Stürmer and Stefan Dahse, as well as with Ms Müller
and Ms Siegel.
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