TOUCHB A S E TOUCHB A S E - The International School Of Penang

A Message from the PrincipalMany teachers, parents and students arrived back to Uplands in August to find a campus they did not recognise due to the attachment often temporary ‘portacabins’ dominating that part of the car park adjacent to the Art and Technology areas. They are not pretty, as manyhave already observed, but they have fulfilled two needs that the School has felt for some time, namely better Science facilities and moreclassrooms. In the last academic year there were several times in the secondary timetable when there were simply no classrooms free, givingthe time-tabler and the teachers no flexibility and allowing no room for what has been a steadily-growing school.Provisions for ScienceAs a teacher of sciences I am acutely aware that they are an expensive activity, at least when taught through the desirable route of real empirical sciencerather than those of ‘white-board’ science. Any school with at least some British origins should be firmly committed to to the proper teaching of sciencesthrough real experimentation, but the facilities we had last year (one excellent ‘large’ lab, two reasonable ‘medium labs, and two unacceptable ‘small’ labs)did not allow the proper operation of all our practical classes. I have already spoken, and written, about the increased importance we have given science inthe middle school curriculum, with more time and a balanced curriculum where all students will continue all three sciences until their sixth-form choices. Butthese changes would be of lowered value without equally improved facilities across the sciences so, during the last term of last year, the Board of Governorscarefully considered and accepted my proposal to improve our science facilities. As the short-term possibilities of our compact site are quite limited, the onlyoption available over the summer break was to hire the portacabins as extra space for the Senior Library and IT Room 1, and to convert these two rooms, asthe only sufficiently large rooms we possess, into new science rooms. At this point I need to acknowledge the flexibility and tolerance of all those who haveconsequently moved their rooms, namely Mikk Towers, Rosie Sebastian, and Sharlotte Bernard, without whose sacrifice this greater good would not havebeen possible. I also must acknowledge all the work, over the ‘vacation’, of the Buildings and DevelopmentCommittee (Leigh Pratt and Bibi VanGemert), the entire Management Committee, andof course Kingsley Charles and his entire team in Administration. Although some terrible weatherand a few unforseen problems have, as always, delayed completion I do think it is remarkable thatLeigh, Bibi, Kingsley, and our contractors have managed to squeeze so many improvements intojust a few weeks!And the improvements are not only in the sciences. Although one might think moving the SeniorLibrary to temporary classrooms was a downgrade, we took the opportunity to reorganise ouravailable resources to consolidate our library space into one large, dedicated reading roomcomplete with a handful of workstations for internet access plus a large ‘Media Room”, controlledby the Librarian, which is bookable by classroom teachers to support their subjects. Although thecampus has had two IT rooms, mainly for the formal teaching of IT, the times when these werebookable by, say, a biologist or economist have been limited, so this is the first time we have aroom of workstations dedicated to support work in other subjects.Reorganisation of Office SpaceOutside of direct teaching resources, we took the opportunity to revise and rationalise some of our office accommodation. The re-modelledend of Block B now houses six newly-created rooms, in three of which you will find pastoral heads (Craig Skinner, Nigel Whittlestone, andJohn Cadman, along with two parental meeting-rooms, space for secretarial support and space for archiving files. It may look the sameas you approach from the bus-stop but, inside, you will find it very different. On the academic administration side we also made changes,enlarging the offices below the Principal’s area to house key curriculum staff (Phil Neild, Isabel Davis, and Geoff Newton, plus secretarialhelp). Visitors to the school will now also find Alexis Kerr in that same geographical area, Alexis having moved from last year’s administrative/teachingrole in the Junior School to a similar role in the Senior. Alexis has been appointed as Academic Administrator and, in additionto her classes, she will be helping to organise many of our internal events, as well as assisting the SMT with calendar issues, supervising allECA’s in the school, and coordinating the CAS activities for our IB students. So, for visiting parents the choices are now simpler and the walkingshorter: for curriculum matters plus all ECAs visit the Academic Offices, while for non-curriculum matters you hardly have to leave thecar-park: in both areas you should find the help you need without trekking around the School.BoardingOur other main area of building and decoration work was among the Boarding Houses. We have 20 boarding students as we go to press andthose Houses accommodating this group were updated and decorated to make life even more pleasant for those long-term guests. On thehuman-resources side of Boarding we sadly lost Anna and Miguel as Houseparents, Anna deciding to concentrate on her pastoral duties inthe School by taking on the Head of Year 7, but Miguel maintains his links with his work last year as Boarding Assistant. Miguel will be supervisingmost of the day-time activities that need to occur in the Houses when Carol Marshall is away teaching, and also helping with manyadministrative tasks, such as visas and weekend activities for the boarding students. Carol and Rohan therefore remain our only house-parents,but the School has already begun recruitment for the vacant Heads of Boarding, a position that will not necessarily entail academicteaching activities but will, we hope, allow the greater development and promotion of our boarding facilities.New StaffAs described in the last issue of Touchbase, we were very eager to welcome the latest batch of recruitsto the teaching staff in August, not least because they seemed to be a tremendously well-qualified andinteresting group of people. I think I would be universally supported by existing staff if I said that wehave not been disappointed: from their initial dramatic performances, co-ordinated by Randy Moss duringtheir induction week, to their performances during a dramatic first week of school, they have takenall the novelty and uncertainty of a new job in their stride with extreme good humour and professionalism.I certainly look forward to seeing the impact their presence will have in the School, both in theirformal roles and as part of the wider community of teachers, parents and students. In addition to the listof new teachers described in the last issue of Touchbase, we have some late arrivals, partly due to staffleavers, and partly due to changing elective and timetable requirements. The first is that we welcomePage 5