Dear Students and Parents,
Many thanks to all parents who attended Back to School Night this week! Many thanks to the NHS volunteers (MinHa Park, Tarun Krishna, Robert Kim, Advika Srinivasan, Asuka Hayashi, Vishnu Sriram, Prahalad Giridhar and HyeRin An) who helped guide our parents when they got lost!
Congratulations to Mr. McFarland, his assistant Monika and all club leaders for a successful activities mela this past Tuesday. Here are some pictures from the event!
Please also join me in celebrating the eight students (Advika, Anu,
Anant, Seoyoung, Sessy, Shreeja, Nivetha and Abhi) who participated in our Career Practicum Program (CPP) over the summer. CPP experiences ranged from working with with Global Adjustments to the British High Commission to our very own AISC communications office. One student shared that “the internship was the highlight of my summer. It let me explore new opportunities for what I want to do in the future.” Another said “It has been such an amazing experience, I can’t even really explain it!”
Anant, Seoyoung, Sessy, Shreeja, Nivetha and Abhi) who participated in our Career Practicum Program (CPP) over the summer. CPP experiences ranged from working with with Global Adjustments to the British High Commission to our very own AISC communications office. One student shared that “the internship was the highlight of my summer. It let me explore new opportunities for what I want to do in the future.” Another said “It has been such an amazing experience, I can’t even really explain it!”
Not pictured: Anant Bajaj, Seoyoung Park and Nivetha Kumar
Save the Date - Upcoming Parent Coffee
Our next parent coffee will be on Tuesday, September 19th at 8:45 am in the BBT. The counselors will be running an interactive workshop focussing on communicating with your teen. Please join us!
Introducing the PCA Grade Level Reps!
Please join me in thanking our new grade level PCA reps in advance for their hard work, dedication and commitment to aiding in communication and clarity between home and school. Should you want to connect with any of them directly you can find emails below.
Reminder - Next Early Release Wednesday
A quick reminder that Wednesday, September 6th, will be our next Early Release Wednesday. Students are expected to depart campus in a timely and organized fashion upon dismissal at 2:00 pm. We appreciate your patience with traffic on these days as all three sections are picking up students at the same time. In preparation, please plan on allowing longer time for entry and exit to the school at release time. For our Middle and High School students, hot lunch will be served.
Parent Coffee - Now Available In Korean!
Many thanks to Jaehun (Justin) Jeong for translating the Parent Coffee presentation about Learning Habits into Korean and doing a voiceover for the presentation! Click here to view.
Student Protection Update - Blue Whale - From the AISC Psychologist Office
News of an increasingly popular suicide game that encourages children and teenagers to self-injure and take their own lives has been circulating in the media and local police have issued an advisory. The “Blue Whale” challenge, as it is referred to, is an online game in which participants follow a social media account that instructs them to complete 50 dangerous tasks, the last of which is suicide. Because of the notoriety of the game we want to make parents aware as it is being reported on in the local news and social media.
Social media challenges are not new and can range from the silly like the “mannequin challenge”to the incredibly dangerous like the “Blue Whale” challenge. Unfortunately, adolescents are prone to get swept up in these phenomena due to peer pressure and the fear of missing out.
Phenomenons like these highlight the importance of having conversations with your adolescents about what they are coming across online and on social media. By staying involved in what adolescents are doing online, which includes opening conversations about online activity as well as sharing favorite websites and apps with each other, parents can inject their own values to counteract negatives and reinforce positives. For more tips on how to stay involved in what your adolescent may be engaging with online I encourage you to check out the Common Sense Media website.
Parents concerned that their adolescent is experiencing emotional distress are encouraged to refer to the AISC Student Protection Manual for possible indicators of self-injury or suicidal behavior. The section counsellor (ljosiah@aischennai.org or msusannah@aischennai.org) and school psychologist (hnigel@aischennai.org) are also an available resource for guidance and support.
Retake Policy - Refresher and Update - Repeat Announcement
AISC believes that students should have the opportunity to demonstrate their best learning in all summative assessments. Sometimes students do not perform as well as they had wished on such assessments and, when this is the case, we invite them to consider completing a retake (or redo) assessment. To streamline this process a group of teachers and students sat together last spring to update our retake policy. The full policy can be accessed here as well as on page 59 of the student handbook.
Here are the highlights:
Should a student wish to retake an assessment he/she should complete the retake request form (the link for which is found at the bottom of every bulletin). Then the student should request an appointment with his/her teacher to discuss whether or not a retake is necessary as well as what review may be required.
All retakes are scheduled to take place during a School Monitored Study Session. These take place once a week, mostly on Friday afternoons but occasionally on Saturday morning. Occasionally a teacher may have more than one retake of the same assessment and may wish to schedule their completion during an alternative time.
Ideally, all retakes should be completed within two weeks of a student receiving feedback on the original assessment. Further, the score earned on the retake will replace the original score, whether higher or lower.
Please note that there are a handful of reasons why a teacher may refuse to give a retake. For example, a teacher can require that all formative assessments are complete to apply for a retake or he/she may insist that all revision material is completed before a retake can be scheduled. The remaining reasons can be found in the full policy linked above.
Finally, please note that some courses have retake systematically built into the assessment process and, as such, students need not apply for retakes. For example, if the first draft of an English essay is the summative assessment on which students receive extensive feedback and additional drafts are expected, then these additional drafts represent a retake opportunity for the entire class and need not follow the application system.
Joelle Basnight
High School Principal
