It was a delight for me last week, as Principal of a four programme IB School, to meet the Director General of the IB. This meeting was for IB School Principals and allowed us to ask questions and receive updates on the overall strategy of the IB. The timing was perfect, as a few days later, I was invited by Dr Rana, our Chief Education Officer, to present on an IB panel which included Mr Pascal Ashkar, our IB World School Manager.  It is a privilege to support parents and newcomers to the UAE who wish to understand the IB more fully, given its preeminence in the world and its advantages over national curricula. Of course, if any of you have IB questions and would like to meet with me or any of the GIS team, please do not hesitate. 

We are proud of our students for initiating the incredible Future Skills Academy project. This involves inviting parents to discuss your careers, your skills, the values in life that have helped you succeed, or overcome obstacles, your motivations, your resilience and your hopes for the future for our young people. It is time that we made the very most out of our parental expertise. It is also time that we provided excellent role models from within our own community, to compete with those our children view so often on Instagram or TikTok etc. We at GIS will work with our expert parents in a structured way, throughout the year, and have therefore divided the world of work into five distinct areas. Rohan Jani (Grade 11), Ms Ennis and team hope that if you have anything to offer, whether that is a presentation, lecture, question and answer session, internship opportunities or even sharing how one of the IB Learner Profile attributes has most helped you on your journey, we would love to hear from you. If you are willing to help the students of GIS, please contact Rohan on rohan.j@gemsisak.com or Ms Amanda Ennis on a.ennis1_gis@gemsedu.com

We are so culturally wealthy at GIS, with such a large number of nationalities and home languages. However, it takes effort to build knowledge and then tolerance. We encourage cultural enlightenment and intellectual curiosity in our students and this is reinforced by days such as Mother Tongue Language Day, which was brilliantly organized by our Head of Language Acquisition, Ms Alice, on Tuesday 21st February. As Ms Alice says, ‘As such a diverse community we wanted to celebrate the languages we have represented at GIS. Students in G6-10 were given the opportunity to learn three completely new and different languages. Thank you to our parent volunteers, Marlies Klok and Paola Farchi who taught MYP students Dutch and Italian respectively. Also, to our G10-12 student volunteers and teachers teaching languages ranging from Korean to Hindi, from Hungarian to Afrikaans, from Catalan to Finnish.’

One of our parents, Mr Hicham Bou Salman, gave a puppet show for our younger students. Our children were definitely inspired by the visit and I captured these photos in the playground.

On Monday our U19 girls volleyball team played their first game of the season. After a great performance the girls fought out a 2-1 victory against Collegiate International School. Congratulations to Sofia H who was the player of the match.

On Wednesday the U11 girls hosted Gems Founders. It was great to see so many GIS girls kitted out for this fixture. GIS took an early lead but early in the second half Founders equalized. GIS finished strong and came away with a convincing 4-1 victory. Well done to Afra A, who was the star player with 2 excellent goals.

On Thursday our U16 volleyball girls welcomed Uptown International School on our court. The girls were unlucky to lose two very closely contested sets. Well done to Hannah D, who was selected as player of the match for this fixture.

Also on Thursday our PYP and MYP Dance squads were invited to the 10 year anniversary performance of Gems Silicon Oasis’ Flawless Dance Squad. The students and coaches had a great time and were inspired to continue working hard for future performances.