Dear Parents

While it is unusual for a change in staffing mid year, some of you will be aware that Kym Tonkin will leave us after Term 3. Unfortunately, her husband Matt has been transferred to Singapore with his job and they plan on moving in April this year. Kym has been at GSIS for over seven years. She came as a Year 5 teacher and after two years moved to the ICT Department where she has played an integral role in developing the ICT programme for our primary students. Kym is a well-respected staff member and will be missed by both staff and students alike. Another staff member leaving us this week is Christl Haley (Classroom Assistant for Y01). Watch out for her if you fly across the Pacific as she has left GSIS to renew her career as an air stewardess. Her friendly nature, coupled with her strong work ethic, has been much valued in the Year 1 area.

Mathletics is now up and running and it has been very pleasing to see the students’ enthusiasm for the programme. World Maths Day will take place on Wednesday, 5 March and we hope to have some of our students competing live against other schools from around the world, using the Mathletics platform.

We had about seventy students competing at the recent hockey tournament at Happy Valley. While our teams did very well in terms of medals, what was most impressive was the spirit in which they competed and the excellent organisation that made the day so successful. For me it also demonstrated the strong sense of community that sets GSIS apart. There were many there to support and manage teams, secondary students and teachers umpiring, and of course all of this complemented by the spirit in which our students played as they represented the school.

Congratulations to our three chess teams who competed at the Hong Kong Chess Tournament recently. There were 26 teams in the competition. In the primary division GSIS Team A won the team championship. Team B and Team C finished fifth and sixteenth respectively. Four players in Team A also won individual awards, with Guy Cheng, Alfred Iu, Andrew Lee and Raphael Lambert achieving either a win or a draw in all of their games.

Community Service is a fundamental part of the education of the whole child. GSIS takes seriously the importance of life outside the world of scholarship, providing a counterbalance to academic excellence. The primary school collected HK$ 8,200 for Operation Cleft recently. This is a voluntary group set up to help people with untreated clefts in developing countries. Our children were able to present a cheque to Dr Lisa So for this cause at our recent Primary assembly.

Another service activity, this time by our Year 6 students, was a project with Salcedo Elementary School in the Philippines. The project involved sending books to the school to develop their library. The Year 6 classes then organised a ‘Readathon Fund Raising Competition’ to raise money to ship the books there and collected almost HK$ 20,000 dollars in the process. The winners of the competition were Larissa Li and Josephine Zschiesche. The spirit of community extended both to fellow students and to the community in Salcedo was very evident in this project. Such efforts don’t just happen and a big thank you goes to Mr Benson for coordinating this project.

Congratulations are also in order as Mr Benson and his partner Jessica ‘tied the knot’ in Hong Kong last week. I’m sure you will join me in wishing them every happiness as they step into married life. Finally, we extend a warm welcome to Jennifer Chan who will assist in the Y01B class until the end of the academic year. Jennifer has a degree in Psychology from University of British Columbia in Canada.

MARY BOURKE
Head of the English Primary Department

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