I love this time of the year and weeks like this, leave me filled with pride in the school and a tremendous sense of optimism for the future. Our termly Governance visits from the team in the UK and our local New York Advisory Board Meetings, are always preceded by a flurry of preparation and galvanised effort across the school. We have made our virtual meetings work exceptionally well since November and Monday’s visit was a positive celebration of your children and the road ahead to September 2021 for WPNY. It was a glorious showcase of all that has been achieved since we reopened in September – well done to us all, as this has been a strong community effort.
I am sure you will agree that last Friday’s Family Assembly was one of our best yet with a diverse range of activities and people to celebrate and some strong messages shared by our guest speakers, Ric Salizzo and Andy Ellis from New Zealand and RUNY. I thought these two celebrity figures spoke very well and their down to earth, yet high set of life standards have clearly been key to their happiness and success in all they have achieved. I would like to congratulate our two WPNY pianists at the assembly – Aldana Alrowaiei and Moritz Heusgen from Grade 2. They played beautifully and I hope this will inspire more of our talented musicians to come forward over the course of the year. It takes courage to perform in front of a big audience, virtual or in-person and we were all impressed. We look forward to welcoming you all to our Final Assembly on Friday 19th March, ahead of finishing at 12pm that day for Spring Break.
Before then, we have much to enjoy. I am polishing up my general knowledge for the parent and staff Inter-House Virtual Quiz Challenge on Saturday 13th March at 2pm. Calling Braeburn, Russet and McIntosh! All to play for in terms of the winning house for the Spring Term 2021 and house points collected at this exciting event will all go towards the final count-up in two weeks. I have obviously been limbering up and rehearsing with a few of the ‘Brainbox’ card games which I have in my office and then I realised, I had given away my Harry Potter Trivial Pursuits Game as a pupil prize today, and was most upset that I had not consumed that trivia ahead of next week. (Then I had to quietly remind myself, that it’s the taking part that counts and showing up in good humour might serve me better!) See you all there and thank you to the PA for drumming up support for this wonderful community event.
We are also eagerly awaiting the second annual ‘WPNY’s Got Talent’ production on Friday 12th March. I hope as many of you can join us for the showing – it looks like a terrific line up, thanks to Mr Anderson and his team. As I mentioned in the Family Assembly, it is such a privilege to have the three Judges, Weston Sprott, Yolanda Wyns and Vincent Reina with us that day. You will also have seen the launch of the WPNY Summer Camp, which will run for 3 weeks between Monday 14th June and Friday 2nd July, this year. Thanks to Mrs Friend for championing this excellent three weeks of activity, learning and fun and I do hope as many of you can sign up as possible.
See you at the Inter-House Quiz Challenge – coming soon!…
