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 school are not separate spheres but combine together to help nurture and develop them.
In the same way, it is important that ISA students do not see Aberdeen as an unconnected world, that the rest of the world suddenly reveals itself as you leave our drive and emerge onto the North Deeside Road.
ISA organises all kinds of trips to that wider world - from book festivals and art galleries in Edinburgh to away sports and forest walks . But we also invite the world in: from visiting authors to police talks. On a staff level, we meet with city services, fellow child protection officers, nurses and even headteachers.
Ultimately we want ISA students to become global citizens. Citizenship starts with connections, about seeing that we are part of a series of communities. That is true for our students; it is true of our school.
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