Last Friday, June 7th, we had the great honor to welcome our J4 families to celebrate our students' graduation, a stunning and emotional ceremony where everyone could feel that our students' experience at UNIS goes beyond the excellence of their learning, to the honest and vibrant relationships between teachers and their students. Shared below are the Principal's speech and, more importantly, a video of the graduation. We encourage everyone to watch to the end as the last few minutes when the...

a·dult /əˈdəlt,ˈadˌəlt/ noun: a person who is fully grown, developed and mature. June 12, 1998, 21 years ago. A group of students walked away from the Teachers Training Institute in Bordeaux, France after completed their final task - presentation of their memoir to a jury of experts in education "à la française". The smiles on their faces expressed the feeling of finally being free, financially independent, and the achievement of a first major goal in their life: receiving an education that s...

Isabella (J4AF) was hoping to win the "Principal for a Day" raffle prize during the International Food and Fun Fair. And she did! Last Wednesday she spent a day as the Junior School Principal. And, as one of the Principal's responsibilities is to inform parents about JS events, Isabella is the main editor of this Newsletter #35! Mr. Vallet picked me up from my classroom and took me to his office, walking into his office was very exciting. Mr. Vallet shared the agenda he created for the day an...

"Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." -Antoine de Saint-Exupery. Some might think that quoting The Little Prince's author is an obvious attempt to justify this short newsletter introduction. And they might be right as the art of concision is a skill to be practiced! But some who are aware that The Little Prince was created when Saint-Exupéry was "an expatriate and distraught about what was going on in his country and in t...

speech·less /ˈspēCHləs/ adjective, unable to speak, especially as the temporary result of shock or some strong emotion. We could have written a thousand words. To translate the outstanding accomplishment of our young authors. To express our admiration to our teachers. We will express it with one picture that says it all. Thank you, students, for your effort, thank you, teachers, for supporting them in their success and thank you, parents, for celebrating this great UNIS event.

Save the Date! Our "Storybook Parade" will be held this coming Friday, May 10 from 8:30 - 9:15 All JS students and faculty are encouraged to dress up as their favorite book character and carry the book while their parents and administration and faculty from other divisions are invited to cheer on the parade. Please make time that morning to join us! We will celebrate the same day our young writers with our traditional "JS Author’s Reading" from 5:00-8:00pm. Please hold the evening of Friday, ...

Denis Diderot, French philosopher, a prominent figure during the Enlightenment, co-founder and chief contributor to the "Encyclopédie" was also a well known... art critic. Diderot, when discussing the art of acting, believed that sensitivity is the "characteristic of the goodness of the soul and the mediocrity of genius". He developed his theory in the Paradox of the Actor, a dialogue between two speakers. The first one believes that a great actor is characterized by the absence of feeling, b...

behave: be·​have | \ bi-ˈhāv  , bē-\ behaved; behaving Definition of behave = 1: to manage the actions of (oneself) in a particular way / 2: to conduct (oneself) in a proper manner. This is a word that many of us heard as a child, or its translation in our own mother tongue. This word may be charged with childhood memories and can resonate very differently for each of us. It can even be understood with very different perspectives, as a child or as a parent. For both child and parent, behave c...

Every week at UNIS is unique. Last week stood out for three major events held within our community. On Tuesday, April 9 our JS Peacekeepers held a Peace Pole Ceremony in the 2nd floor Garden. It was organized by JS Music Teacher, Truike Boekholt (who has worked with our Peacekeepers throughout the year), in collaboration with JS Art Teacher, Anne Dohna. In this Newsletter we publish the moving script shared with the guests at this very special ceremony, so closely aligned with the UNIS core ...

Last Wednesday, at our JS Parent Coffee, we had the opportunity to share with parents information related to our Math curriculum and the implementation of our new standards. While preparing this Coffee, we thought that the best way to talk about mathematics would be to talk less and instead give the opportunity for everyone to experience it: "Let's do a video capturing students doing mathematics!". It was on a Tuesday afternoon that I walked into the classroom next to my office, Ms. Payne's J...

Walking from the World War II Memorial in Washington DC, crossing the Constitution Gardens last week, I could sense the memories of thousands in the Reflecting Pool on the way to the Lincoln Memorial. Thousands of people joined together there on August 28, 1963, listening to a 17 minute speech (1) which still resonates today. With my twelve year old daughter by my side, heading to the steps where Martin Luther King, Jr. shared with the world his dream for a better one, I was overwhelmed. My d...

Dear parents, JS Student Led Conferences are this week and, if you have not registered yet, it is time for you to click on the button below as sign-up will close today, Monday, March 11 at 7pm! To help you make the most of the time you spend with your child at conferences, you will find below an extract from the Parent Coffee held last week where parents received information about the conferences and how to support their child's success. WHEN?Wednesday, March 13 from 5:00 until 8:00 pm (J1 - ...

Dear Parents, there is no better way to begin the week than to start it with a riddle. I am a Harshad number (divisible by the sum of my digits), the sum of my digits is 1 and all of my divisors is exactly 217. Benjamin Franklin is my distinguished face when I am on a dollar bill. I was celebrated by many students last week, and I am the exact number of words in this newsletter's introduction, the number of days since the beginning of this school year...

The Student Led Conferences are an opportunity to: Give students the responsibility for, and ownership of, heir learning, take the time to reflect on their learning journey, encourage meaningful communication about learning, encourage self-evaluation, discuss challenges in a safe and supported environment, celebrate  the student's own success! "It’s hard to imagine a more high-leverage practice for improving learning than this. It brings the family in as a partner in the child’s growth—instea...

Exactly one year ago, an interesting record was broken in the history of politics. When looking at the longest political speech ever written, many would think about Fidel Castro who gave a seven hours 10 minute speech during the 1986 Communist Party Congress in Havana. While he held also the record of the longest speech ever at the United Nations General Assembly, four hours and 29 minutes delivered in 1960, India’s former finance minister V.K. Krishna Menon’s speech in 1957, with seven hours...

Gustave Flaubert's "Letters" is, by unanimous opinion, one of the finest and most beautiful bodies of letters in French literature. The 19th-century French novelist wrote these letters from 1829, when he was 7 or 8 years old, to a few days before his death in 1880 and they share his views on the world, politics, education, economy... with his sharp eloquence and without any hesitation to say what he thought or to shock or repel his correspondents. It is one of his letters to his friend Caroli...

This week’s Newsletter is going to be “beautiful” and will “green the blue”. And not because we are excited to share with you a mysterious teaser about our “Green Guides”, but because we are going to talk about Mathematics. While I know that some already agree with me that Mathematics can be beautiful, I understand that many more will expect the topics more aligned with the idea of beauty to be art, music or literature. Proclus Lycaeus (412 – 485 AD), a Greek Neoplatonist philosopher, however...

We are depending on you to complete a task today. Erik Erikson was a German-American developmental psychologist and psychoanalyst known for his theory on the psychological development of human beings. In this newsletter we will not reflect on his model of identity concept within the developmental psychology perspective, or articulate his concepts of “ego identity”, “personal identity” and “social identity”. We will, however, reflect on another one of his concepts through the lens of the Junio...

I am privileged to be your children’s Junior School Principal. Privileged for many reasons (and this letter could surely take on the sound of a thank you speech at the Academy Awards by an inexperienced winner). So, I will not list all the reasons why I feel so privileged to be their Principal. Not all, just one: Emotion. "Let's not forget that the little emotions are the great captains of our lives and we obey them without realizing it." -Vincent van Gogh. Our JS students were entering the T...

Last Friday, all parents received an email from Sochenda Samreth, our Interim Chief Academic Officer, and the UNIS Academic Team regarding the new report cards. As it contains important information, we are replicating the content of their message below, keeping only the information relevant to the Junior School.  This Wednesday, January 9 at 8:30 am in the cafeteria, the Junior School Parent Coffee will focus on a brief introduction to the revised report card format and terminology.  Dr. Dana...

“Writer's block” syndrome refers to the “condition, primarily associated with writing, in which an author loses the ability to produce new work, or experiences a creative slowdown.” Called also the “blank page syndrome”, it manifests as the fear a writer feels of not finding inspiration when starting or continuing a work. This phenomenon may be due to the strong desire to do perfect work, so that any idea that comes to mind seems systematically bad, making it impossible to begin or complete t...

Exactly one year ago, we quoted Blaise Pascal when in 1656 (1) he wrote “the present letter is a very long one, simply because I had no leisure to make it shorter." It was our attempt to justify a very short Newsletter, “as short as the school week ahead of us”. Again, this year, we succeed where Blaise Pascal failed. Not because this week will be a short one, but because 15-year-old Greta Thunberg (3) has something much more important to say than we do, as she recently shared with the UN Sec...

Talent is a noun defined as “a special natural ability or aptitude”, a “capacity for achievement or success”. In the Collins Dictionary, talent is “the natural ability to do something well”, the Cambridge Dictionary adding “especially without being taught”. This idea that talent is inborn can also be found in the Merriam Webster Dictionary defined as “the natural endowments of a person”. The freedictionnary.com says that talent is “a marked innate ability, as for artistic accomplishment” and ...

Richard Phillips Feynman was a renowned theoretical physicist, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965, and an exceptional scientist in many fields. Feynman's notoriety went beyond the reach of advanced physicists to gradually win the attention of much of society, demonstrating that Feynman's open mind, friendly character and infectious passion for Mother Nature conquered many, far more effectively than any other Nobel Prize winner in the world. From an early age, Feynman was passionate ...

We hope that everyone was able to spend an ​enjoyable time reconnecting with friends and family over the long holiday weekend. And now, as you are heading back to school, we would like to remind everyone to follow the instructions below:

• Log in to School Dismissal Manager (SDM)

• If you don’t remember your password, you can reset it on the “Forgotten password page” on a desktop/laptop...

William Faulkner, American writer and 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature winner said: “If I had not existed, someone else would have written me, Hemingway, Dostoyevsky, all of us.”. And the Korean poet Ki Hyung-do famously brings winter to life with his words. But last Thursday "Winter" made certain to remind writers that he does not need literature to exist. Winter disdainfully spurned our Korean poet by reminding him, and all New Yorkers, that “the road to hell is [NOT] paved with adverbs.”(1) ...

Parent Teacher Conferences are an important and very well attended bi-annual event. They are days when the concept of parent and teacher partnership, shared with you in last week’s JS newsletter, takes on its full meaning. As we did last year, we would like to share some informative data with you:

• During the three days of fall 2018 conferences, UNIS parents will meet 209 teachers for a total of 8,249 conferences (versus 8,024 in fall 2017), to give feedback and...

Etymology is a word composed from the ancient Greek word, ἐτυμολογία / etumología, which finds its root in two ancient Greek words: τὸ ἔτυμov, «real meaning», and λόγος / logos, "discourse, reason". The etymology of the word etymology defines it as the study of the real meaning of a word. It is in “Cratyle” that Plato exposes his conception of etymology. Why is Plato interested in the science of words? Simply because etymology is indispensable to knowing the true nature of things, what philos...

We are delighted to welcome our students back this Monday morning and hope they have all enjoyed their well-deserved break. This week you will be able to book conference appointments with your child's teachers. Detailed instructions in order to secure your appointments using our online booking system will be provided in a separate email from our IT Department. Parents meet JS homeroom teachers, as well as mother tongue language, ELL and learning support teachers for 20 minutes and other speci...

Each year, UNIS celebrates UN Day, the anniversary of the entry into force of the UN charter. This day is very special at UNIS, and includes traditions such as the parade of nations and international shared meals. UN Day will be celebrated at UNIS on Friday, October 19th. WHOLE SCHOOL: DRESS AS WHAT DEFINES YOU: All UNIS community members are invited to dress in cultural wear that represents their background, or a place that speaks to their heart. We know that many of our students have wide e...

In an effort to improve our dismissal protocol, to increase the security and safety of our students, for the convenience of our families, and to support the homeroom teachers as they focus on their primary mission: teaching, we are pleased to announce that we will begin utilizing a new on-line dismissal management system for all JS families beginning in late  October. This dismissal management system is dependable, easy-to-use, and can be updated regularly by parents and guardians from the co...

“One can't paint New York as it is, but rather as it is felt.” My first exploration of New York was in 2000, and Georgia O'Keeffe’s words echoed my experience and excitement to be surrounded by the New York City skyscrapers immortalized in her paintings. But beyond the splendor and scale of the city for a young French teacher from the green Basque Country, my most memorable moment took place in the New York Public Library. While I studied philosophy in high school, it’s really while I was at ...

In an elegant way, Jean de La Fontaine reminds us that Peace should always prevail against War. Peace, the cornerstone of the first Article of the UN Charter: "The Purposes of the United Nations are to maintain international peace and security, and to that end: to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace, and to bring about by peaceful means, and in conformity with th...

The "parcours" are composed of a series of obstacles and physical challenges, more or less easy to achieve. In Pre-K and JA our PE teachers, in collaboration with our homeroom teachers, utilize this activity to develop very specific skills, beyond motricity skills. "Parcours" have many benefits indeed such as:

• Coordinate the students' motor skills: muscle stimulation through obstacles, and depending on the size of the course, it can develop endurance...

In 1824 the term curriculum was defined as "a course, especially a fixed course of study at a college, university, or school". But the first known use of the term curriculum in an educational context can be found in the “Professio Regia”, a document published in 1576 by Petrus Ramus, a French philosopher, logician, and rhetorician. In the 16th century, some aspects of what students learned at the University in Paris, such as logic and metaphysics, or the characteristic of the medieval arts, w...

Theophrastus was a Greek native of Eresos in Lesbos. He became the head of the Lyceum, the academy in Athens founded by Aristotle, when he retired in 323.  For Theophrastus, “Time is the most valuable thing a man can spend”. And I have spent some time preparing this Newsletter for you, hoping to honor Theophrastus’ belief about time. Time. While I am mindful of your time, and should not take too much of it for this introduction, the concept of time is interesting enough to spend a bit of time...

“Most of us can point to a teacher who changed our lives. In my case there can be no doubt that that teacher is Francis Bartels. Each day takes me a little further on the road he helped to pave. Each day I look back in gratitude. Like so many of you here, I first met Headmaster Bartels in the classroom. I was one of a group of boys who sat on the floor of his office for our weekly lesson in spoken English. Back then we were not yet aware how much more we would take away from this class and it...

Last Friday, June 8th, we had the great honor to welcome our J4 families to celebrate our students' graduation. This Newsletter is an opportunity for us to share with the full Junior School Community, parents, faculty and staff, this unique celebration, a great illustration of what the Junior School is all about. You will find below our speakers' speeches and a short slideshow which we hope will allow you to feel the intensity of this wonderful event. UNIS Graduation 2018 Speakers: Pascal Val...

"Once when I was six years old I saw a magnificent picture in a book, called True Stories from Nature, about the primeval forest. It was a picture of a boa constrictor in the act of swallowing an animal. Here is a copy of the drawing. In the book it said: "Boa constrictors swallow their prey whole, without chewing it. After that they are not able to move, and they sleep through the six months that they need for digestion." I pondered deeply, then, over the adventures of the jungle. And after ...

Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) spent thirty-five years as an inspector of schools in Europe as well as in England. The Victorian English poet and cultural critic hoped education would humanize pupils and weaken the prejudices of nation and class. As an educator, Matthew Arnold recognized that “one must [...] be struck more and more the longer one lives, to find how much in our present society a man's life of each day depends for its solidity and value upon whether he reads during that day, and fa...

Over the past four years, I have witnessed my commute evolving. My morning drive to UNIS is a sacred ritual where, based on my mood, I travel through time, inviting into my commute Georg Philipp Telemann, Stravinsky’s revolutionary “Firebird” and Khachaturian’s “Sabre Dance”. I welcome Procol Harum, the famous English rock band formed in 1967 and their mesmerizing "A Whiter Shade of Pale", and the notorious “Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen. Regardless of the season, Janis Joplin’s “Summertime” is...

UNIS. Friday 4:36 pm. The only sound I hear is the frenetic noise that my fingers produce by typing this letter. The one you are reading at this exact moment. But this Friday is not like any other. This quiet atmosphere which usually launches the weekend will not last long. Soon, hundreds of young feet will appear, following the same path they follow every morning of the week, carrying our students to their classroom where they will stand, proudly, sharing their original stories with their au...

The wonderful Food and Fun Fair last Saturday brought many of you together to celebrate diversity through the lens of culinary arts. This event would not have been possible without the generosity of many of you who worked hard to share delicacies from your country of origin and without the Parents Association who worked tirelessly to ensure this day would be a successful moment of sharing and joy for everyone. And, thumbs up for our Security and Maintenance teams for always giving their best!...

This past week, a conference was held in New Orleans welcoming principals, curriculum coordinators, teachers and scientists from a network of schools to which UNIS belongs. It was a great opportunity to collect the most current information in some very specific areas which will enhance the work we are doing with students in our respective schools. We learned about “Bilingualism and codic alternation”, which provided interesting insights for developing our plurilingual offerings at UNIS. Pasca...

During my Masters in Education I had the fantastic opportunity to study with a teacher in my child psychology course who had worked with Jean Piaget, a Swiss psychologist and epistemologist known for his work in child development and his pioneering research on socio-constructivism, the root of the inquiry-based learning approach, and with Françoise Dolto, the most prominent and famous French pediatrician and child psychoanalyst. I sat for a full year in the amphitheater, absorbing her knowled...

As we're sure you've heard your child rave about, the JS faculty performed an original play on Thursday, March 15 for our Junior School community audience.  We are pleased to share the video of the full performance of Ella below. Stunning! The sense of elation, joy, communal bonding and positivity has spread from the theater to the halls. You and your family can experience these same feelings during the last week of April as Singin' in the Rain takes over the Sylvia Howard Fuhrman Theater at ...

The Junior School Student Led Conferences will be held on the following days: Thursday, April 19 from 5:00 until 8:00 pm (J1 - J4), Friday, April 20 from 8:30 am to 3:00pm (PK/JA - J4), Monday, April 23 from 8:30 am to 3:00 pm (PK/JA - J4), Tutorial House will not have parent-teacher conferences on April 23. It is a regular day for Tutorial House students. Sign up will be available from Thursday, April 12 at 7:00 PM until Tuesday, April 17 at 11:55 PM. If you are already logged into the P/T b...

In March 14, 2018, Stephen Hawking left a World he helped us to understand better. He was not only one of the greatest scientists of our time, known for his groundbreaking work with black holes and relativity, and the best selling author of several popular science books including “A Brief History of Time.” (1), but he was also a model of resilience. Hawking stood against the illness he was diagnosed with at age 21, the amyotrophic lateral sclerosis that was supposed to have killed him more tha...

Wishing all of our Junior School families a safe and joyful Spring Break. We look forward to welcoming everyone back on Monday, April 2nd. While you relax, please enjoy these photos from the performance of “Ella” on Thursday, March 15, a theatrical production written, produced and directed by our own JA teacher Virginia Whitelaw, as a gift from the JS faculty and staff to their students. As one JS class parent*wrote, “The show today was amazing and it almost made me cry because I can feel the...

As you may be aware, Salvador Uy, as UNIS Head of School, has joined more than 100 Heads of School in the New York City metropolitan area and across New York State in signing an open letter to the United States President and legislative leaders in support of gun reform legislation to make schools safer. The letter was published as a full-page ad in the New York Times on Sunday, February 25, 2018. With one voice they implore “the President and the national legislative leaders, to do everything...

Last Wednesday, I had the opportunity to go back in time and become a J2 student. Welcomed in the morning by Lucy, who agreed to let me shadow her, and by her friends in J2JH, I followed their class through the school day. My main focus was, "How does time impact the learning experience of our students?" For that specific purpose, I targeted quantitative data all through the day. However, I also needed some qualitative information from Lucy and her friends: "What do I learn? What do I feel? H...

What book would you carry with you if you climbed the “Plomb du Cantal”?  Plomb du Cantal is a volcanic peak in the Massif Centrale of the Auvergne in France made famous in a well known German novel for being identified as the midpoint of isolation, the point at which all human beings are equally and maximally distant from it. I would bring The Rebel (L'Homme révolté), a philosophical essay by Albert Camus (1), which treats both “the metaphysical and the historical development of rebellion an...

This week at UNIS we celebrated Friendship and how caring for each other can support a Better World. Through our flowers and bake sale on Wednesday, and through our special friendship assemblies last Monday, we explored alongside our students, and learned from them, how we can be kind, be courageous and be a good friend. The event in Florida this past week reminds us, in a dramatic way, how important our mission is, once again, and how crucial it is to celebrate caring for others.  As Plato s...

In 2008, the Harvard Family Research Project (HFRP) published some interesting research: After School Programs in the 21st Century: Their Potential and What It Takes to Achieve It*. This project summarized 10 years of research on afterschool programs and aimed to address two essential questions: does participation in after-school programs make a difference, and, if so… what conditions appear to be necessary to achieve positive results? Little, Wimer, and Weiss, the authors of this research, s...

1999, Orsay Museum, Paris. After walking through the room dedicated to Van Gogh's work and the one celebrating the outstanding Toulouse Lautrec, driven by the excitement of my naive curiosity, I stepped into Monet's Universe. Thanks to an amazing music teacher when I was a Middle School student, I developed a sensibility for classical music which has never left me. I am the person at a concert shivering (well, crying, to be honest) while listening J.S. Bach's Concerto for Two Violins in D Min...

Calvin Coolidge was the 30th President of the United States, from 1923 to 1929. He was nicknamed "Silent Cal" for his "quiet, steadfast and frugal nature".  Some may wonder, if not everyone, what leads me to evocate Calvin Coolidge in this Junior School Newsletter. It is not because he "cleaned up the rampant corruption of the Harding administration and provided a model of stability and respectability for the American people in an era of fast-paced modernization"(1). It is also not because he...

Collecting data is an important task for a School in order for a leadership team to make decisions, set and prioritize goals, and monitor progress. "The anchor for school improvement efforts is a schoolwide focus on teaching and learning. Toward that end, successful school leaders attend to school effectiveness indicators that are rooted in leading with data."(1) Data helps to: Measure student progress, Measure program effectiveness, Assess instructional effectiveness, Guide curriculum develo...

As I engage in the so-called "bull sessions" around and about the school, I too often find that most college men have a misconception of the purpose of education. Most of the "brethren" think that education should equip them with the proper instruments of exploitation so that they can forever trample over the masses. Still others think that education should furnish them with noble ends rather than means to an end. It seems to me that education has a two-fold function to perform in the life of...

Last Tuesday, my 2018 resolution in mind, and after adding the right ingredients to ensure my green salad was not going to feel too lonely, I stood in front of the dressings. My wife had just requested the "Classic French Dressing". I looked at her with amusement: “French dressing, really?”. And I was about to choose the "Rustic Thousand Islands". Her facial expression changed. I looked back to the dressings, realizing that using my Indonesian wife to choose my dressing was only an excuse to ...

Blaise Pascal was a French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer, and philosopher.  His contribution to the research in Mathematics and Epistemology is outstanding. Blaise Pascal had an influence on my life, not only because his last name is also my first, but because he made, while still in his teenage years, a working mechanical calculator that inspired the first programming language I learned at school, published in 1970 and named in his honor. But why is this last Newsletter of 2017 ...

Peace is a concept that denotes a state of calm or tranquility and the absence of disturbance, disorder, war, and conflict. It corresponds also to a social and political ideal. Peace is a key concept for the UNITED NATIONS, one of the main missions being the maintenance of international peace and security (1). Analyzing the concept of peace can be done through a variety of lenses. We could look at it through the lens of History. We would learn that "of the past 3,400 years, humans have been e...

May 1998, University of Bordeaux, France. Me, seated in a large room with hundreds of students. Guy Brousseau, the leading researcher in the central field of mathematics education in France suddenly appeared in front of us, joining our teacher for one memorable demonstration of how we learn mathematics. But while many expected him to dive into his Theory of Didactical Situations in Mathematics or his "Paradox of devolution", he played a game with us: "La course à 20" (“Counting to 20”), a cou...

THANK YOU to Karen Ager, the Junior Council, our parent volunteers, our teachers and all of you for being so CARING in helping to make our UNICEF and City Harvest collections so successful. Ms. Ager shares the results of these two campaigns: UNICEF 2017 - A milestone has been achieved! Our 2017 Trick or Treat for UNICEF donations were among the highest in recent Junior School history. We are very pleased and excited to share that the Junior School students collected a total of $6472.14 to hel...

Between the late 1950s and the late 1970s, the world witnessed a Digital Revolution which led humanity to what we call the Digital Age or Information Age. This period, in which we are living today, is characterized by "the shift from traditional industry that the Industrial Revolution brought through industrialization, to an economy based on information"(1). This Digital Revolution has impacted all aspects of our life, economy, communication, production, social relationships, education and mo...

Parent Teacher Conferences are an important annual event. During the three days of conferences, UNIS parents will meet teachers for a total of 8,024 conferences, to give feedback and share information about 1,472 students. We note that only 117 students are without appointments. On Thursday night 4 minutes after registration opened, 2,004 appointments had been made, around 25% of all conferences booked. 2,504 conferences were held on Thursday evening, 3,817 on Friday, and 1,703 will be held o...

We look forward to seeing you during Parent Teacher Conferences on November 9, 10 and 13.   Sign up remains open until Tuesday, November 7 at 7:00pm and this is a great opportunity to connect with your child’s teachers. If you have not yet booked appointments with the teachers, you will find below the information we shared last week, as a reminder. Keep in mind that this is an adult event and childcare is not available on Thursday evening.  If you are not able to make alternate arrangements ...

We are delighted to welcome back our students this Monday morning and hope they have all enjoyed their well-deserved break. This week, beginning Tuesday evening at 7:00pm, you will be able to book conference appointments with your child's teachers. Detailed instructions in order to secure your slots using our online booking system can be found below. Parents meet homeroom teachers for 20 minutes and specialist teachers for 10 minutes. We encourage you to sign in to the system now, before book...

A multicolor parade celebrating diversity, waving flags from so many countries, spices and flavors from all over the world, multilingual songs still echoing in the hallways, a world-renowned guest speaker bringing everyone together around the concept of kindness, high school students reading, painting and drawing with the youngest ones, a mandala of flowers to express our strong connection with the United Nations. Today was a very special day at UNIS. A day that has made many of us feel that ...

On 24 October 1945, the United Nations was established after World War II in order to prevent another similar conflict, and with the mission to maintain international peace and security. The UNIS community will be celebrating the 72nd birthday of the UN on Friday, 20 October and everyone is invited to join us for this celebration.  Your family is welcome to dress in the cultural wear that represents your background, or a place that speaks to your heart. It will be a  colorful demonstration by...

We would first like to thank the many parents who joined us for our first JS Parent Coffee last Wednesday, hosted by our Counselors Amy Iamundo and Camila Dever, and our Psychologist Dr. Dana Marnin. You will find below their presentation. The 5th Annual UNIS Cardboard Challenge on Saturday was a huge success.  Inspired by the film ‘Caine’s Arcade’, this family event celebrating creativity gave our students hours of opportunity to use cardboard, recycled materials and a big helping of imagina...

Our third curriculum night on Wednesday, September 27th was a wonderful opportunity for many of you to meet our specialist teachers and to learn more about the JS curriculum. As not all of you were able to join us, we have gathered here, in one folder, the resources our teachers used during specialist curriculum night. Not all resources can be digitized, so this folder does not contain information from all of our specialist teachers. However, we trust that you will find enough material here t...

This week, as any other week, has been an opportunity for our students to learn, to learn by interacting, to learn while collaborating, to learn from their mistakes. But this week has been also an opportunity for them to be a part of some special events. On Wednesday, 12 UNIS students (representing 16 nationalities) were invited by UNICEF to attend a talk about education at the UN, moderated by former British PM Gordon Brown, and featuring Pakistani Nobel Prize winner Malala Yousafzai, French...

This week has been a great opportunity to bring homeroom teachers, principals, and parents, together for our curriculum evenings. On Wednesday, September 27th our specialists teachers will lead the discussions for their own curriculum night, the final one for the Junior School this year. I would like first to express my admiration to our teachers for hosting as grade wide teams and then individually in their classrooms at these events. And this while preparing their lessons and teaching their...

Susan and I, along with the entire Junior School team, welcome you to the 2017-2018 school year. We hope that you and your families enjoyed a relaxing and restorative holiday and we are eager to hear your children's stories of their summer adventures. We are excited to welcome back our returning parents and students and are looking very forward to meeting and learning more about the families who are new to the UNIS community. Please know that we are here to answer your questions, and to serve...