Dear Parents, Under the apparently smooth surface the water has been flowing fast and this has been a busy half term at our school: here are some of the news highlights from Greenfield recently. This last weekend we hosted a series of International Baccalaureate training workshops for over 200 delegates, who hailed from as far afield as New Zealand and Finland. The workshops were aimed at Primary and Secondary, and focused on topics such as the teaching of Mathematics and Science or assessment strategies. A number of our staff took advantage of these professional development opportunities. It is a privilege for Greenfield to be able to host these IB training events and to provide the forum for rich collaboration and discussion. It raises our school’s profile and allows us to connect with and serve the broader IB teaching community. The presence of these workshop leaders enables us to benchmark our standards against international best practice. Our staff spent Sunday at a variety of in-service seminars. In the Primary School we focused on our English as an Additional Language Programme. There can be few schools as internationally diverse as Greenfield. With children from 86 nationalities speaking 50 different home languages we have a rich and diverse language programme. For many of our children, this is their first experience of being taught in English and they require particular support and encouragement. We have, under Barry Burns’ leadership, a well-resourced EAL department: the purpose of this session was to give the classroom teachers a set of tools that they can use to help students who, in addition to arriving in a new country and new school, have to get to grips with a new language. Later in the day Lisa Thorpe led a workshop on writing and the assessment of writing. I participated in the Google in Education workshop, led by external Google Educators, at which 20 staff participated. We had the opportunity to learn how to make use of a range of programmes and do fun Google ‘stuff’. Search engine optimization, creating class or group web pages, using Google hangouts for collaborative planning, editing documents simultaneously, the Google cultural institute, and fun uses of maps were amongst the things we learnt about. It was a rich and full day and I need to spend time going back over the notes practicing my new skills. What is exciting is that all of these are freely available on the internet and require a low-spec computer with good bandwidth. The days of computer rooms in schools are coming to an end: what schools and children need is good bandwidth, firewalls and switching infrastructure. With that the role of the IT teacher is changing from the person who teaches computer lessons to that of learning supporter and problem solver. In Primary School we need to teach children to use a computer, in Secondary they use a computer to learn. More of that to follow...

The Secondary staff spent the morning discussing teaching and classroom management strategies. OB Sealey started the day with a session on outstanding teaching and what a well-planned lesson looks like. Time was set aside for subject departments to sit down and undertake detailed collaborative planning. This underpins and supports effective learning: it is the soil in which good teaching is rooted. We welcomed two new members of staff this week: Ingrid Pretorius as our Counsellor and Sahar Kreidli as our ‘Parent Relations Officer’ in the marketing department. Please do introduce yourself to them and welcome them to our school. Richard Drew, our Vice-Principal, has been seconded to Central Office where he will be working with all Taaleem schools on teacher performance management. Greenfield will remain his base camp. Adora Woznic our Director of Development has reached retirement age and UAE legislation has required that she hang up her boots. We welcome Sahar Kreidli; she will deal with admissions, interviews and the ‘on boarding’ of families into our school. We say farewell to Stephanie Tawfiq in our HR department and Ghina Frangie Aoun in marketing. Zeina Ward joins the school administration office and will support both the HR and Admissions department. It gives me great pleasure to inform you that Theresa Cormican has been appointed as our Creativity, Action and Service Co-ordinator. She has a heart for community service, a love of young people and plenty of energy that will bring a great deal to the role. Thank you to Mike Worth who has shouldered this role for many years and has done a great deal to build up this dimension of the life of the school. Our SMT is very aware of the need to ensure that, with these changes, the handover of administrative, HR and admission functions goes smoothly and that the school continues to run as efficiently as possible. Last week we were visited by Adel Zarouni, the Taaleem Executive vice-chairman, Ros Marshall, the Taaleem CEO and Kapil Kapoor, the Finance Director. They were here to examine a number of infrastructural needs in our school. Having done the ‘look see’ they have given approval to upgrading the sports hall change room facilities, the stage, sound and lighting in the auditorium and the canteen furnishings. The Taaleem team will be here soon to look at the design, specifications and QS of these projects. A big word of thanks to the staff who accompanied the Grade 5’s on camp to Dibba last week. It was a very successful, fun and worthwhile trip.

The marketing banners in DIP are in need of replacement. As I looked at the various drafts of new banner layouts that our marketing team prepared; it was clear that our current stock of pictures was quite frankly, tired, and that we were in need of a new set of professionally taken pictures. We have taken a series of pictures along the theme of the Learner Profile: our children being inquirers, principled, balanced, etc. Thank you to the staff that assisted with this marketing photo-shoot. Congratulations to our U18 boys’ soccer, after several lean seasons, had a good win last week against Jumeirah College. Thank you to Mike Worth and Tim Jervis for the coaching, inspiring and refereeing that they have invested into the team as this has clearly paid off. The Grades 7, 8 and 9 barbeque last week was delightful to attend: these fun events are the glue that draws our school together. The Model United Nations day last week was a tremendous success. It allowed our students to focus on international-mindedness and to develop their public speaking skills. The students dressed formally and took the whole day seriously. The assembly was a student-led event which ran very well and set a real positive tone. All of these activities, whilst good, must not distract us from our first focus which is the quality of teaching in the classroom. In the business of the life of a school we need to guard against the urgent getting in the way of the important. Philosophically, we are committed to an inquiry based approach to learning, one in which we teach students to research, assess and evaluate. A good IB education balances academic rigor, the mastery of skills and knowledge and critical thinking. However, first and foremost, we need to focus on making sure our school is a Happy school. There is a great deal more that I could share with you, but I see that I have exceeded my allotted time and space. A très bientôt... Andrew Wood