Arusha Campus News – 5 Sep 2020

Pictured above are some of the new teaching staff on Arusha Campus, who took advantage of a kind weekend duty schedule to spend the day in Tarangire NP last Saturday.

Our Diploma students have been working hard on college applications this week. Many thanks to Ms Nathalie Vignard who has stepped in to support these students in the absence of a College Counselor on this campus. She has been ably supported by the expert Miss Cassandra who was on Arusha Campus for the whole of Friday and Saturday this weekend.

Our first year Diploma students have the opportunity to attend the first of a series of on-line University Fairs next week on Tuesday 8th September. We will be making the event available to the students from 9am on that day.

News from Primary is that we can congratulate Aidan van der Goot (President) and Bannen Green (Vice President) on being elected to lead the Primary Student Council. Congratulations boys.

There are more contributions to the newsletter this week and so I will let you read on. Maybe leave you with the news that the ageing staff football team managed to beat the Under-19 boys team by 4 goals to 2 yesterday! No doubt the staff must now brace themselves for a backlash next week!

Have a lovely weekend

Phil

Some M2 Students recreate the Deathly Hallows from Harry Potter during a particularly arduous bout of outdoor learning this week.

 

Miss Willett’s Diploma 2 Class also spent the week outdoors. In their case they read and performed Act One of Hamlet. Here they are (pictured above) enjoying the script in the morning sunshine.

Vasty and Jamshed collect soil for sampling during an ESS lesson this week

As my first contribution to our weekly newsletter, I am delighted to say that most of our D1 and D2 students are now on campus despite a few D1/D2 students still waiting for their visa or their country to reopen. While walking around the campus this week, I couldn’t help thinking how lucky we were to be able to reopen unlike many other schools around the world.

Nevertheless our D2 students have started what will probably be the most challenging semester of the IB Diploma programme, with Internal Assessments (IA) to complete, as well as their university applications. They can count on the full support of their teachers, mentors as well as the residential parents for the boarders.
A big thank to Ms Cassandra, our counsellor who came from Moshi on Friday morning for a presentation to both the D1 and the D2 students, before setting up D2 help sessions and some individual meetings during Friday afternoon and Saturday morning. In the next few weeks, Ms Cassandra and I will be following and supporting individual students applying to the UK with the 15th October deadline and the students applying for Early Decision/Action in the US.

Having met all the D1 students individually upon their arrival on campus to discuss their subject choices and make a few changes, the students are now settling in nicely. Any new subject change will now require a formal request including a talk with their teachers and the DP Coordinator to make sure their best interest in taken into account.

I am looking forward to working with these students during this new academic year and I wish them all the best for what will I hope be a very exciting year for everyone!

Nathalie Vignard

EC show off their extremely tempting rainbow toast!

Please come along to the Parent Workshop  –  An Introduction to the PYP on Tuesday 15th September 2020 at 8.00am in the Primary Art Room. During this session we will share the PYP philosophy and the terminology related to the program.

Agency
What is agency?
Agency is the power to take meaningful and intentional action, and supports voice, choice and ownership for students, teachers and the wider learning community.
Students with agency:
have voice, choice and ownership; and a propensity to take action
influence and direct learning
contribute to and participate in the learning community
By differentiating instruction according to the students’ needs, interests and learning profile, the students receive the message that we appreciate who they are as learners.

Amanda

As you may know, our Early Childhood section of the school has grown this year and we even have a new class. Our Nursery Class is brand new and the teacher is Ms Glory Mollel with our new assistant in that class Miss Stella! This week, Nursery and EC joined forces and the children ‘had a blast’ and sang songs and played games.

We continue to try and make our student experience as normal as possible after the pandemic-enforced school closure. CCA’s started this week, albeit without the benefit of outside leaders. All our CCA’s were managed by the teachers and Diploma students. And who needs outside support when our teachers have such creativity. Look at the work accomplished in Miss Alley’s Photography CCA above.

As the finishing touches to the new buildings are being applied, work has just started on the new Restaurant complex here at Arusha Campus. The architects rendition of this magnificent building is shown below. In the meantime the tough work of landscaping has started in earnest and our terrific gardening team are doing a super job. Pictured above are Reuben, Silas, Enoch, Paulo and Rama proudly showing off their latest construction at Miss Christy’s house.

The impressive new restaurant as it will be seen from the air.

…and again from the primary football field.

Camp Craft Adventures (above) with M1

Last year we saw increased interest in Outdoor Pursuits trips and as a result increased the number of trips and the total number of spaces available for students.  We also streamlined costs and optimized trip numbers to reduce costs as far as possible to encourage participation.  Our efforts were more successful than we imagined and we have had an overwhelming response to OP trip sign-ups.  As a result, despite this increase in available spaces, we have to meet demand.  As we look to next semester, we are looking at ways to provide opportunities for those that missed out this semester to get into trips of their interest.  This may mean increasing further our planned offerings.  I thank you for your interest in the program and ask that you bear with us as we reorganize the next semester offerings.  We will get the sign-ups for those out as soon as we can.

Last weekend, we M1 students participated in our first Outdoor Pursuits trip to introduce us to the basics of camping. We started off our trip making the journey to Moshi, where we met up with M1 students from the Moshi campus. During the trip, we went through a lot of challenging experiences such as going through waterfalls, hiking up steep mountainsides, ice-cold swimming, and preparing our own food. We enjoyed putting up tents together, cooking, and playing games. The hike up into the mountains taught us to pack lightly and go slowly so that we wouldn’t exhaust ourselves. Now we feel more confident and comfortable with our camping and hiking skills, and are ready for more OP trips in the future.