For today's Newsletter I step back with humility to offer this space to Adam Jaouad, J4 teacher and coordinator of our Mural Project, and Anne Francey, Artist, who guided us through the entire process. The Mural Project seals a unique, challenging, exciting and sometimes overwhelming school year that required all of us, students, teachers, staff, parents to demonstrate the characteristics at the root of our UNIS curriculum: Inquirers, Knowledgeable, Communicators, Principled, Open-minded, Car...

Inquirers, knowledgeable, thinkers, communicators, principled, open-minded, caring, risk-takers, balanced and reflective. These are the IB profile attributes embedded in our curriculum. These are the qualities we support as your children acquire them, side-by-side with academic competencies in mathematics, literacy, social studies, languages, sciences, visual art, music, design technology, and physical education. Last Wednesday, we dove into those attributes at our last JS Parent Coffee of th...

While we are approaching the end of this school year, we still have some important celebrations ahead of us: Celebrating our Tut House students with the T4 graduation on Friday, June 4. Celebrating our J2 students with their famous Wax Museum on Friday, June 4 that will be documented as much as possible in order to share their talented realizations. Celebrating the J4 students with the J4 graduation on Friday, June 11, broadcast for everyone to see. Celebrating our community and a year unlike...

Learning the skills to be successful in life: a quick Google search with the key words "How to succeed" will lead you to tons of literature on that topic, with multiple experts sharing their strategies to support success, financial, social, physical, etc. success (n.) 1530s, "result, outcome," from Latin successus "an advance, a coming up; a good result, happy outcome," noun use of past participle of succedere "come after, follow after; go near to; come under; take the place of,". Success is ...

On February 12, 2021, J4JH launched our service learning project: Beat the Boredom Blues for a Good Cause. This project, inspired by our first Humanities Unit, Why does Geography matter? was initiated by students at the beginning of November after parts of the Philippines were struck by a number of terrible typhoons. It then took us a few months to work as a class to decide what we wanted to do, to create our website, to create advertisements, and of course to create our “How to…” videos to s...

When a photograph combines composition, strength of the subject and appeals to emotion, a photo can rise to the rank of image-icon. This is the case with the "Green-eyed Afghan" - arguably Steve McCurry's best-known photograph - taken in 1984 in the Nasir Bagh refugee camp in northern Pakistan. It was on the cover of National Geographic in June 1985. Since its publication, it has become a symbolic image of Afghan refugees - fleeing a devastating war in neighboring countries. "The girl with gr...

We have noticed an increase in the number of students who are at home because of illness, but are still logging into class remotely. When your child is sick with stomach ache, fever, headache, etc. there is no expectation from the school that they should attempt to learn remotely. If your child has symptoms that would normally have kept them at home prior to COVID-19, please do not have your child log in to classes. We hope that time will be taken for them to rest and recover. It is difficult...

As indicated in last week's JS newsletter and the email from Dr. Brenner, beginning Monday, April 26, the Junior School is offering the following models of learning for our students: For PreK, JA, and J1 (as before): Fully remote (as before), Fully in person (as before). For J2, J3, and J4: Fully remote (as before) Hybrid (as before), Fully in person (new option available). Based on the replies to the survey we asked parents to complete last week, we are anticipating more students on campus o...

Tokuriki Tomikichiro came from a family line of Japanese artists who have shared their work for more than 500 years. Tokuriki’s passion lay with the sosaku hanga (creative prints) movement. Sosaku artists were freer in their choice of subject and modes of self-expression. Artists following this movement believed that printing became fully participatory, as opposed to the traditional delegation of the printmaking process between artist, engraver, printer, and publisher that stretched through u...

A year like any other. For you. For us. And more importantly for your children, our students. A year, more than any other, when celebrating our students' achievements and resilience is tremendously important. A year when looking back to who we were yesterday, as the Junior School, what defined us, is necessary so that we can accommodate the current circumstances without losing who we are and why you are part of this community. The Junior School Talent Show is a Junior School tradition. A trad...

Barracks lined up in the California desert: Manzanar was one of ten camps opened by the United States to park its citizens of Japanese origin after the attack on Pearl Harbor, a dark chapter of the story that is often overlooked. "We were treated like enemies," remembered Rosie Kakuuchi, a survivor now living in Las Vegas. "We lost our freedom, we were forced to get used to the horrible conditions," she recalled, as the 70th anniversary of the first nuclear bombing raid in history - Hiroshima...

This is the week when your children will be celebrated: the Student Led Conferences. As a reminder, you will find important information regarding these conferences in this newsletter: the video and slides from the March 3 JS Parent Coffee on the topic of Student Led Conference, a link to all of the information shared in our previous Newsletter, a link to the upcoming March 17 Student Led Conferences Webinar to help you navigate your conferences and to answer all your questions before the day,...

The Student Led Conferences for our JA to J4 students are approaching. They were implemented in the Junior School in 2016 and have been through a few iterations since then. One year ago we were not able to roll out this very important milestone in the learning journey of our students. UNIS closed just a few weeks before we were scheduled to bring parents and students together to reflect on the learning experience. This year the unique circumstances we are facing will not stop us in this endea...

Back in December 2017, in the Junior School Weekly Newsletter, we paused to reflect on the concept of Peace. We noted that the word Peace interestingly only referred to when there is evidence of conflict: it is ironically defined by the existence of war. It can also be perceived as being related to the victory or the oppression of the parties involved. This was a misunderstanding as "Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding" (2). This need for understanding in o...

120 families have already registered for the series of 6 workshops "Mindful Parenting in an Upside-Down World!" offered by the Junior School in collaboration with the Parents Association and, if you are not one of them, there is still an opportunity for you to register! This series of workshops will help families find elements of answers to these questions: Are my kids going to be okay? Am I going to be okay? How can I help all of us to manage our stress and anxiety? Now more than ever, paren...

Last Tuesday, Rachel Henes, experienced facilitator, trainer, and social worker, who is the former director of Hallways, an innovative program that partnered with schools and parents to increase student health and well-being and prevent high-risk behaviors in affluent and independent school contexts, held her first workshop for our JS faculty and staff on "Regaining Equilibrium: Finding Our Way Through Collective Stress & Trauma". The feedback collected after the workshop shows that 91% of th...

In October 2020, Pediatrics®, the official Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics published a study (1) with daily survey data collected before and after the COVID-19 crisis that investigated the hypothesis that the pandemic worsened parents’ and children’s psychological well-being. The conclusion was, as expected and consistent with their hypotheses, that the pandemic has an impact on parents and children. In their conclusion, they indicate that "as the crisis continues to unfold, ped...

Semester 1 Report Cards for Junior School students will be published on Friday, January 29 at 5:00pm on the Veracross Parent Portal. We encourage you to review this report card with your child to celebrate his/her achievements during this past semester and engage in conversation about their potential growth. Friday, February 5 is the deadline for questions about a specific JS teacher’s grading. Please contact the teacher directly by email no later than the 4th. Your child’s academic achieveme...

Celebrating Martin Luther King Jr. is an important moment during this school year, and it has always been. In past JS Newsletters we have paused and reflected on Martin Luther King Jr.'s heritage and our common responsibility to stand for Social Justice and Equity. This year, even more than during the past three, I have been honored to be your child's Principal as we celebrate the memory and actions of Martin Luther King Jr.  The current situation in the United States and beyond reminds us th...

George Washington's Farewell Address 1796 - "Friends and Citizens, I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the State, with particular reference to the founding of them on geographical discriminations. Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party generally. This spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human mind. It exists unde...

The earliest recorded New Year's celebrations date back some 4,000 years to ancient Babylon and were deeply tied to religion and mythology. For the Babylonians of ancient Mesopotamia (Iraq), the first new moon following the vernal equinox - the day around the end of March with an equal amount of light and dark (on this day the Sun is exactly at the zenith on the Earth's equator) - heralded the start of a new year and represented the rebirth of the natural world. Babylonians marked the occasio...

Thanks to our students' outstanding resilience, teachers' impressive commitment and creativity, and parents' countless efforts, we have completed some very unique weeks of school this past fall, allowing our students to learn and our teachers to teach. It is now time for us to wish you a wonderful and safe winter break. While the anti-virus supports our optimism for a resolution to this unprecedented pandemic, we continue to strongly recommend that every family stay completely committed to th......

As we can agree that students of all ages need to move their bodies and stay physically active, getting outside for fresh air and movement on a daily basis is important to support physical and mental health. We are pleased to announce that in collaboration with the UNIS Maintenance Team and the Physical Education Department, we will be able to offer more opportunities for our JS students to be part of outdoor and physical activities: Students from JA through J4 will be able to use indoor spac...

In December 2017 and December 2018, I quoted Blaise Pascal, a French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer, and philosopher whose contribution to the research in Mathematics and Epistemology is outstanding. He wrote in 1656 in The Provincial Letter, Letter XVI : “The present letter is a very long one, simply because I had no leisure to make it shorter." It has been in the past one of my favorite quotes to find a way to justify that the Weekly Newsletter would be... short. Which is the ca......

It was in grade 9 that I understood and embraced the concept of freedom. What fascinated me at that age was not how limitless freedom could and should be for me personally (as a teenager already dreaming about flying independently with my own wings) but more that freedom can only exist based on the limits that define it. The idea that resistance and obedience were the two virtues to demonstrate in order to become an adult was fascinating: with obedience we ensure the societal order necessary ......

November 1985. Mimizan. A small town near the Atlantic Ocean. Maitre Cali, my fifth grade teacher, is seated at his desk facing 25 students, his eyes scrutinizing his surroundings like a hawk the moment before diving at his prey. Suddenly his eyes freeze. He is looking at me: "Pascal au tableau". I stand and walk to the front of the room. It's time to recite the poem of the week: "To Paint a Bird's Portrait" by Jacques Prévert. With sweaty hands, tight throat, I step forward. Poetry, I know i...

This coming week, Wednesday through Friday, you will have the opportunity to meet with your child's teachers for our traditional Parent Teacher Conferences. This year, those conferences will be held using Zoom, our video conference platform. You will find below important information, also sent by email last Friday from our IT department, with the instructions to book appointment with your child's teachers. You will find also a link to a recording and the presentation made during the JS Parent......

While I am writing these few words, we are celebrating the UN day, here at UNIS. We are celebrating our attachment to the UN value, its mission, and we are celebrating everyone of you, who are adhering to the UN chart and our UNIS Mission by choosing to be here with us, as a student, as a parent or as a UNIS employee. 2020 will be remembered as a critical year of the Modern Time Period. And at UNIS, it will be remembered as they year we all come together to overcome, with passion, effort and ...

This week we will celebrate UN Day, an important day for our community and one that is challenged by the current circumstances. Safety being first, some traditional events will not take place this year. We will miss the international breakfast in the morning and the Junior School Parade as we know it. This year UN Day will extend over two days to allow our students from J2 to J4 to be on campus for the celebrations. It will take place on Thursday and Friday, October 22 and 23, of this week. S...

In September 1998, I received my first paycheck as a teacher in a public school in France. I saved my first salary as an educator to realize my dream: traveling to Indonesia. Less than a year later, in July 1999, I was visiting the French School in Bali. I stepped into the office of the head of school, who graciously welcomed me for a tour. This was my first encounter with the "The Flower People" of Mentawai Island: photographs of what appeared to be an Indonesian tribe were displayed on the ...

Please join your Homeroom Teacher(s) on Wednesday, October 7 in a Zoom session: 5:00 - 5:30 with JA and J1 Homeroom Teachers, 5:30 - 6:00 with J2, J3 and J4 Homeroom Teachers. The Junior School Back to School Night will be divided into 3 distinctive presentations, asynchronous and synchronous: Multiple 5 minute pre-recorded videos from specialist teachers are available to parents in this newsletter (see below). It is meant to be easy to navigate so that you can select the curriculum informati...

When looking at the concept of gratitude, you will find plenty of research and articles describing how being grateful for the good things in your life contributes to enhancing your happiness and well-being. Interesting Research, "The Neuroscience of Gratitude and How It Affects Anxiety & Grief" (1), describes these positive effects: Gratitude releases toxic emotions, Gratitude reduces pain, Gratitude improves sleep quality, Gratitude aids in stress regulation, Gratitude reduces anxiety and de...

The challenges we face should not divert us from accomplishing our mission and celebrating the important events that makes UNIS the school it has always been. So our teachers have taught, and our students have learned. And as the Arabic proverb says... "إذا تم العقل نقص الكلام The smarter you get the less you speak". I will not say much but show you instead, with few snapshots, what it looks like inside the Junior School walls. And, as this Monday, September 21 will be the International Day of...

While preparing for the arrival of students on the first day of school, a bit worn out after 2 intense months of preparation, anxiously anticipating the future, gearing up to confront the reality of our students returning to campus after 6 months away, Erin Hunter, J1 Team Leader, and Homeroom teacher, headed towards me. Submerged in weeks of reading, reflecting, and writing protocols, I assumed she had a question about dismissal, the safe use of photocopiers, or the correct way to wear a mas...