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on February 03, 2023

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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...

From the Head of School

Community Requires Connects ISA is a few miles from the centre of Aberdeen, set back from the North Deeside Road. It would be quite possible to live a whole life in Aberdeen and not know what our building looked like from outside, let alone have the chance to form an opinion on our interior decoration. But we are not just a community in of ourselves; we are part of a wider community. Any community is a set of relationships and these take time to make and maintain. This, of course, starts with ISA families. In the last few weeks, we have come together at new family orientation, the ice cream social, coffee mornings and at the Friday morning head of school coffees. It was fantastic to see so many of you at the Open Houses for preschool, elementary and middle/high. The Parent Teacher Organisation plays a big part in welcoming new families in and organising spaces for parents to get together. It is important for children to feel that home and...

From the Middle and High School Principal

Learning Beyond the Desk: Why Middle School Magic Happens Outdoors The start of a new school year always brings a quiet, familiar nostalgia. My own middle school years were defined by slightly different routines to what we have at ISA, and although it wasn’t until I became a teacher that I fully appreciated the true magic of this age and stage, I look back with a fondness of the time I had in those early years of secondary school building friendships that I still have today, and enjoying getting to know my new teachers that year. Middle school is an extraordinary, transient window in a child’s life. It is a time when young people are suspended between childhood and adolescence, fiercely eager for independence yet still very much reliant on a supportive safety net. These years matter a lot, not just as an academic bridge, but as an important period for children to simply be children: to test boundaries, build self-worth, and figure out who they are in relation to the world around ...

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