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Parent Teacher Organization Newsletter

on February 10, 2023

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From the Preschool/Elementary School Principal

*This week's images come from the Grade 5 residential trip to the Nethy Bridge Outdoor Activity Centre, where the children had the opportunity to develop bonds, to push themselves to take risks and to learn more about themselves and their classmates. A Week Away & the Power of Classroom Communities Early in my teaching career, I used to start the school year having the children in Grade 5 read E. L. Konigsburg’s classic children’s novel, From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler . The story follows a brother and sister who, despite their frequent squabbles, decide to run away together and take up residence in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. At its heart, the book carries a profound truth: that the true point of going on a journey or adventure is to return transformed . We would read it with our students as preparation for the week-long residential trip, encouraging them to step away from the comforts of routine, face shared challenges in an outdoor setting, ...

From the Head of School

Artificial Intelligence at ISA - Head of School Coffee, Next Friday from 8.30am Plato was the first great writer in the Western Tradition. He was also the first known, and certainly greatest, critic of literacy. Ironically, two and half thousand years later, we can still connect with Plato’s arguments because he wrote them down. In Phaedrus he creates a dialogue between the Egyptian God Theuth, the inventor of writing, and King Thamus, whom Theuth is trying to persuade to take it up. He claims writing will improve memory and wisdom; Thamus counters by saying that writing is in fact a tool for reminders and not true memory; because we don’t internalise the knowledge, we will have the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom. Phaedrus is, like Plato’s other works, a dialogue - writing that imitated an oral form. No wonder Plato worried that writing was a technology which threatened to diminish a human process (spoken language). Curiously, he still couldn’t resist the allure...

From the PS/ES Principal

*This week's photos come from the Grade 3 art classes (showcasing their digitally-created mandalas), a Preschool inquiry into Piet Mondrian, Wednesday's ES Veg Club Harvest Sale, and our cafeteria (with our new shared water jugs!) Embracing Setbacks: Mistakes are the true engine of learning For many people (children and adults alike) the prospect of making a mistake carries a sting of anxiety. That fear of getting something wrong can be so daunting that it holds us back from trying new things or causes us to throw in the towel at the first sign of difficulty. Even more so if we feel that others might witness our error-filled attempts. Yet, we know true learning cannot happen in a vacuum of perfection. Mistakes are not evidence of failure ; they are the fundamental mechanism by which our brains adapt, reflect, and grow. As author and philosopher James Joyce famously wrote, mistakes are "portals of discovery.” For children to walk through those portals, they must feel psyc...

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