Island School PTA Newsletter

To call this an unusual year might be an understatement, but in these unusual circumstances, the Island School spirit has shined as bright as ever. With social unrest and the CoVid-19 school suspension, we have not been able to get together physically as much as we would have wanted, but our community spirit has kept us together.

When the circumstances are beyond our control, it is our response that matters. During these difficult times the Island School community, ISPTA included, turned their focus to the online world. ISPTA continued to cooperate with the school in the ongoing development of the school’s Distant Learning programme, managed our very active WhatApp year groups to provide a platform for the community to keep in touch, and developed ISPTA’s Island School Community Buy/Sell/Swap FB Marketplace. Along with the success we had with moving our committee meetings online, we took the natural next step and moved our events online as well. Our online events included roundtable discussions for Y12 parents, a co-hosted HE coffee morning for Y10-Y12 with the HE department and Y10 and Y11 coffee morning. ISPTA was happy to be able to support the school’s biggest online events which were the graduation of our Y11 & Y13, even though we were unable to be together to celebrate we hope our mementos and gifts help mark this special milestone.

ISPTA was proud to be able to support the Island School Community during this unpredictable school year. Though our fundraising efforts were limited this year, by using our reserves ISPTA was able to donate over $200,000 services and goods that enhanced the learning experience of our students for the 2020/21 school year. These items supported various initiatives in Science, Arts, PE, Technology and English.

It is the dedication, hard work, generosity, and talent of our parents and committee members that enables us to put in place the many initiatives to enhance the community experience at Island School. Without them we would not have been able to achieve what we have, a big thank you to all the parents.

I would also like to thank the ISPTA committee members for their dedication and hard work: Manju Anand (Secretary), Lamey Chang, Eric Chen (parent rep), Alex Chin (Treasurer), Steve Coats (teacher), Alefiyah Ebrahim, Tarja Joro (Vice-Chair), Azeez Kasubhai (PTA Manager), Mary Lacey-Vittachi (teacher), C.W. Lee (Consultant), Kathrin Leung, Stephen Loggie (Principal), Soundari Mukherjea, Rosanna Nongdhar, Kandy Sum (parent rep), Jennifer Seeto, Stephanie Weathington (teacher) and Mechelle Yu.

Congratulations to those that are graduating and a fond farewell to those who are leaving us, we wish you all the best in your future endeavours, keep the Islander Spirit alive. To everyone else, have a great summer and see you around in the next school year.

Tania Shao

Chair, Island School PTA Ltd

On Friday January 10th our parent volunteers prepared hot dogs and veggie burgers for 1000+ students participating in the Whole School Walkathon. A big thank you to all our volunteers, our school fair sponsors ETAK and Vitasoy who supported the event, and to everyone supporting the Walkathon and the important work of Island School’s charities. The final fundraising number will be announced on the Island School newsletter on June 24th!

ISPTA's popular Roundtable was the first of our events to take place online via Zoom. On April 29th we had a panel of 5 parents speaking about their experience of the university application process. The panelists discussed applying to UK, USA, Canada and the Netherlands, and the option of taking a gap year. This was followed up by a smaller Roundtable with a two-speaker panel covering Australian universities on May 7th.

The Higher Education Team and ISPTA teamed up for a Zoom coffee morning for Y10-12 parents on May 14th. The HE team answered questions on course selections and HE process, submitted earlier by parents. The coffee morning was well attended, with over 80 parents joining the meeting.

Our first on-line ISPTA coffee morning took place on June 12th. 50 participants logged in to listen to vice principal Nicholas Lee. Mr Lee spoke about the arrangements of having the children back on campus, and reflected on the difficulties of the year 2019-20. The Viva Voce process of Y11 as well as the Pre-IB program were discussed. Mr Lee also spoke about the approach used for this year's GCSE marking, and the Y10's mock exam situation.

The social distancing rules unfortunately prevented us from hosting the graduation receptions. Instead, ISPTA presented every Y13 and Y11 graduate with a gift bag of chocolates to be shared with their family. Both year groups also received some commemorative stickers and Y13s a key chain to mark their graduation year.

Our congratulations to all graduates and their families.

All the resources needed for the new school year are now listed on the IS web page, under Getting Ready for School 2020-21. This web resource replaces the old "summer mailing".

Did you catch all the Weekly Wellbeing editions?

June 16

June 9

June 2

May 26

May 19

May 12

May 4

April 27

April 20

Please see ISPTA Welcome letter for the membership fee details. Anyone who is currently experiencing financial hardship due to Covid-19 can postpone their fee payment until September.

If you would like to join our ISPTA Parent WhatsApp year group chats, or volunteer for ISPTA, please fill in this online form. Existing WhatsApp group members are automatically carried forward to the next year group.

ISPTA Key Dates

• The first day of school is August 12 (August 11 for Y13)
• Orientation week

Please see school calendar at http://island.edu.hk/calendar/ for details on school events

ISPTA is collecting 2nd hand uniform and books. Please click here for the details and a list of welcomed donations. We will continue the initiative in Term 1 of 2020-21 school year.

As part of our sustainability efforts, ISPTA has launched an unofficial Facebook marketplace Island School Community Buy Sell & Swap where members of the Island School Hong Kong community can buy/sell/gift/swap school related items. This group is only for actively enrolled families, students and staff of Island School.

When joining, you will be asked to state your affiliation to Island School. Any request to join that does not include this information within 7 days will be declined. Please read the group rules before posting.

Examples of items that are approved:

• School uniform pieces
• Uniform shoes
• PE shoes
• Sports shoes, such as football or rugby boots / cleats
• Other sports equipment, such as tennis, table tennis or badminton rackets
• Musical instruments
• Bags, including school bags and bags suitable to school camps or quest week travel
• Camping gear relevant to school camps, including clothing
• IB course books
• English readers required or recommended by school
• Other books relevant to school work
• Calculators and other stationery items related to school work
• Other similar items

ISPTA reserves a right to approve all posts. ISPTA is not part of any arrangement and will not facilitate them.

ISPTA is reaching out to parents to continue donating mother tongue books – books in languages spoken at homes of our Island School students – in new or near-new condition in approximately Y7-8 reading level.

As the Library has already good collection of books in English, Chinese, Japanese, French and Spanish (languages are taught at IS), they are focusing on all other mother tongues: Hindi, Korean, Norwegian, Russian, Dutch, Urdu, you name it! Library is interested in both books originally written in mother tongues, as well as mother tongue editions of some of the very popular fiction series, like Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, The Land of Stories, The Diary of Wimpy Kid, etc.

For further questions, please contact our librarian, Mrs Emily Leung at emily.leung@online.island.edu.hk, or ISPTA at pta@online.island.edu.hk. Books can be dropped off at the library on either campuses.

A big thank you to all parents who have already supported the mother tongue books collection! Many great books have been added to Library’s collection thanks to your generosity.

We welcome your feedback and suggestions, please email us at pta@online.island.edu.hk

Island School School Council: Tania Shao

ESF Committee of Parents: Tania Shao, Tarja Joro

Island School Trust: Tarja Joro

Contact us

Email: pta@online.island.edu.hk
Website: https://island.edu.hk/pta-home/
Location: 95CJ+P9 Hong Kong
Phone: 6765 2453

Disclaimer:
Island School PTA is the owner of the copyright in all content of this publication. Distributing, modifying, copying or using any content of this publication in any manner for public or commercial purposes without written permission from Island School is strictly prohibited. Views expressed in this publication do not necessarily represent those of Island School or the English Schools Foundation.