Items: New HIS Website; Groundbreaking Ceremony; Photography Contest; HIS PTA Treasurer’s report 2019-20; Winter Program 2020/2021.
Principal’s Message
Dear HIS Community
I hope you are all enjoying the summer and stayed dry during our rather lengthy rainy season. Our three new teachers who are coming in from overseas are all arriving in Japan within the next few days and will have their PCR tests before being released from the airport and will stay in a quarantine-hotel for 2 weeks in Narita before travelling to join us here in Hiroshima before school starts so we are very happy about that. We are keeping an eye on the COVID situation of course, but are expecting to open as normal on Monday, 24 August with all of our health procedures in place. Fortunately, we had an opportunity to practice them all for the last few weeks of school before the summer break and everyone did a great job with those. Take care and we are looking forward to seeing you all again.
Regards
Damian Rentoule
New HIS Website
I would like to express my appreciation to Nanako and Leela, two members of our Class of 2020, who have done a wonderful job, supporting Mr Barker in the creation of a newly-designed HIS website. Leela and Nanako came to school many times after their final exams to work on the project and we really appreciated their creative contribution to the HIS community. The design looks great! Many thanks.
Groundbreaking Ceremony
In July, we had the groundbreaking ceremony for the new building which was an exciting moment in the history of HIS. It was great that the Shinto priest who conducted the groundbreaking ceremony also did this for our main building over thirty years ago, as well as the Annex more recently.
The construction is now well underway and we are looking forward to seeing the process during the year. Initial estimates of completion were for the end of May, however, Hebel Haus seems confident that we will be in there sooner than that, so we will wait and see how it all goes.
Foundation Stones Project
Just a reminder that if you are near a river over summer and you have not already made your Foundation Stone, grab a smooth river stone and be creative. You can write or draw your hopes and dreams for the future of HIS on the stone and we will make a garden with the stones once the new building is complete. (Oil-based markers are more durable than paints.) I have been taking some photos of them as they come in and the images appear on the HIS Facebook and Instagram pages. Your chance to be creative!
Photography Contest – Artifacts in our Lives
We received a message regarding an interesting photography competition called Artifacts in our Lives that we wanted to share with students. This one is only for students who are at least 16 years old, however, the idea behind the competition is great so we would like to open this up to all members of our HIS community (students, teachers, staff, parents etc) for a display at HIS, as well, at the start of the school year.
When school starts, we would like to collect any of the artifact photographs from members of the HIS community for an artifact display in the HIS genkan. You can also add a paragraph explaining the photo using the competition prompts. There are some links for you to follow and learn a little bit more about the nature of artifacts in our lives.
In this contest, students will photograph an artifact and tell its story. The guiding question is: What memories of your cultural and family heritage exist within the objects of our lives? This reminded me of some great conversations in the EC classroom when they learned all about artifacts. The guidelines for submission to the contest can be found on the link above if students (16+) would like to enter. Otherwise, get the family together and find an artifact to capture as a photo for our genkan display. Good luck!
HIS PTA Treasurer’s report 2019-20
Dear Parents, （日本語は下にあります。）
We hope everyone is well and having relaxing summer.
Please find the attached final version of the HIS PTA Treasurer’s report 2019-20. Thanks to your generous contributions for the Teacher’s Appreciation Lunch, we collected 62,550yen in total and spent 28,353yen. The balance is 34,197yen and we would like to consider them as PTA income.
We greatly appreciate your generous support and kind understanding.
Best regards,
Sayaka (Mum of Shiori (G7) & Shun (G5))
保護者の皆様へ
いつもお世話になっております。
2019-2020年度最終のHIS PTA会計レポートを添付しております。Teacher’s Appreciation Lunchへの寄付は、皆さんのご協力のお陰で62,550円集めることができ、28,353円使わせていただきました。残りの34,197円は、PTAの資金として入金させていただきましたこと、何卒ご了承ください。
皆さんのご協力に大変感謝いたします。ありがとうございました。
Sayaka （Shiori (G7) とShun (G5)の母)
Winter Program 2020/2021
This year, we did not run our Summer Program due to the ongoing COVID-related public health crisis, however, we are planning to run a 5-day winter program between 26-30 December 2020. We tried out a winter program two years ago and had only about 10 students from HIS as families tended to be quite busy at this time of year. In order to be able to run the program with a smaller number of HIS students, we are partnering with a travel company who will promote the program within the Chubu area and place a number of students in the program from outside Hiroshima. This is the first time we have done this so are looking forward to the partnership which will enable us to continue the winter program and potentially expand our summer program.