Dear Community,
Welcome to 2024! It has been wonderful to see everyone returning to learning this week. The Grade 10 and 12 students began 2024 by sitting their mock examinations, and all across the school teachers and students spent this week re-establishing our routines, reconnecting with colleagues and friends, sharing stories from the summer break, and preparing to make the very most of this new semester.
Planning for the present:
In 2024, we will be planning for the future while making the most of each moment. This year will see several important milestones for our school:
There will be a new assessment and homework policy that incorporates the appropriate and ethical use of generative artificial intelligence.
We will have our IB MYP Authorisation Visit. You may remember that the IB MYP Consultation Visit took place on 4-5 December 2023. Over the break, the school received a report with the MYP Consultant’s findings, and the assessment of our programme’s progress was glowing. Our MYP Coordinator Mr Adrian von Wrede-Jervis will be sharing details from this report with the community next week. Suffice it to say, that the MYP consultant has found that WIS is well on track for our verification visit next school year. The report’s recommendations were essentially three in number - and all were action items we had already planned to begin incorporating in this current semester:
To schedule in more meeting time for teachers to focus on collaborative unit planning and standardisation of assessment,
To complete our registration for IB workshops so that all subjects have a teacher who has undertaken their subject-specific training, and
To launch the MYP Personal Project for our current MYP4 students during this coming semester.
With our expanding number of students ages 3 and 4 (turning 5), we were able to split our Early Years 1/2 classroom into two separate classes. We are delighted to share that Ms Desiree Husselmann will be joining our community as the new Early Years 2 Teacher. With this change, Ms Virginia Uapunduka will be the EY2 Educational Assistant. Ms. Vicky Hamukoto will be the EY1 Educational Assistant, with Ms. Ekaterina Shino continuing as the EY1 Homeroom Teacher. We are accepting applications into these classes, so please let your friends and colleagues know that WIS now has space within our school for students in ages 3-5!
We will be bifurcating the Secondary School so that there is a Middle School Principal and a High School Principal. This will allow for a greater focus on instructional leadership and an emphasis on building healthy social and learning environments in Grades 6-8. We will also be appointing new responsibility posts which help us ensure that every student at WIS is included, tries their very best, and experiences success.
In 2024, we will undertake a new Strategic Planning Process. It will be led by a noted leader in the field of international education and a former WIS Educational Director Kevin Bartlett, and we will launch this process at this year’s Annual General Meeting. Please plan to attend this AGM in the WIS PLC Auditorium at 18:00 on 31 January 2024.
Planning for our future:
Holidays allow us to step back to see the bigger picture of things, and to clarify which actions must be prioritised to make an impact in the here-and-now. As a school, we are focusing on improving the learning that happens during each moment of the day, but as we begin our school’s strategic planning process it will be helpful to begin a community discussion about the changes and challenges that lie ahead.
It sometimes feels easier to see the world in dystopian terms than in irresistibly hopeful ones, but our school’s mission, people, and curriculum give me hope for the future of Namibia and our world.
It is hard to believe, but our current Early Years students will likely only begin retiring from work in the year 2085. What do we want today’s students to accomplish as their life’s work? What is our vision of a future that is worth fighting for? We would be curious to know your thoughts. If you have time, could you complete this survey?
2-Question Survey:
With hope and high expectations,
Ethan Van Drunen
Director
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