South Island School – A Happy Community
What a great start to the term it has been!
On Monday, our teaching staff arrived back for their pre-term Planning Day. As usual, it was great to welcome a number of new Teachers, EAs and Support Staff to join the South Island community.
On Tuesday, our new students arrived – and as usual, our Prefect Team did an amazing job of making them feel welcome. I have said many times that we are truly blessed with the skills, dedication and maturity of our senior students, who make a difference to our younger students (and indeed to our older students as well as our staff) on a daily basis. I told our new Year 7 and Year 8 students that by Wednesday, when the rest of the school arrived, we wanted them to think of being at SIS as ‘normal’ rather than ‘new’. Sure enough, as I walked around the school, and in and out of lessons on Wednesday and Thursday, it was great to see lots of confident, smiling, happy faces learning to navigate South Island School. It was also great to see our returning students showing us how pleased they were to be back, and reminding us how proud we all are of South Island School, and of everything we do.
Someone said to me this week that SIS has a reputation for being one of the happiest schools in Hong Kong – and we definitely intend to keep it that way! Whilst learning is undoubtedly a high priority for us at SIS, the well-being of our students and staff is an even higher priority – it is at the core of everything we do. To safeguard your children’s well-being, please remember to keep a regular eye on our website for any updates regarding travel or logistics – and please press here for further information about possible travel disruption on Monday 19 August.
Given our reputation for happiness at SIS, we made this something of a theme during our start of term assemblies today. After informally gauging the happy-ometer within The Hall (which was high), I was delighted to be able to introduce to the school our new Vice Principal, Ms Lucie Purves, whose role is specifically to oversee Guidance and Well-Being at SIS. Ms Purves was able to remind our students of the many ways in which they should seek help and advice if necessary. We will be featuring Ms Purves and her new role in an e-bulletin article in the near future.
Have a great weekend – and we look forward to seeing everyone on Monday!
With best wishes,
Tom Vignoles
Principal, South Island School
