CIS Winter Holiday Wishes | Annual Address from the Head of School: Reflecting on Achievements, Shaping a Future of Excellence

Prior to sending you off on a break, I wanted to take a moment to reflect and share a few moments of joy and great achievement that we have been experiencing here in CIS Foshan.

Over recent months, I've seen much positive evidence of families, teachers, leaders and indeed students collaborating together, working hard for the betterment of our whole school community.

I've seen moments of joy and celebration where our teams have started to cooperate and play together on the courts and celebrate success.

I've seen our community come together, such as most recently at our Winter Festival, wherethey were working hard for creating a moment, creating community and sharing an opportunity to enjoy one another's company.

Whether it be outdoors, on the stage in our winter concert, or in our beautiful W Hall, seeing the children perform on stage has brought us great joy.

The joy on their faces, the smiles, and the proud achievements that they've shared—whether in a festival, a concert, an assembly, or in a celebration of their learning in their classrooms—are truly inspiring.

This community, this group of families, these students and these teachers are coming together beautifully to actually represent what CIS is all about: to be a caring community for one and all.

For those who have just joined us recently, or those who have been with us since the beginning of last year, to strive together for shared academic excellence, to strive for our own personal best, to see children grow, to see them learn to read for the first time, to see them experience success in other academic areas of pursuit.

I'm proud that we have made progress in this time, but I'm also proud that there is a commitment to improvement, a commitment to listen to one another, to work through challenges, to recognize that there are differences, that there is a different set of needs, but we have a united priority, a united belief that forward and onwards for us is the way to move as a community, to believe that there is a better tomorrow, to believe that there is an opportunity for individual and corporate success.

So as we head off into our holidays, I hope you take the time to refresh, take the time to reflect, and pause for a moment on the wonderful achievements that have been made already, and then be ready to come back in the New Year with a reinvigorated and united approach to actually going after more of the same achievement, improvement, progress.

I believe we can do that together. I believe if we put our minds to it, we can continue to innovate today, see our classrooms, our learning environments, our staff rooms, our community experiences become something that is unique to this community, andbuild within our whole community a spirit of leadership, of determination as we head into our second semester.

As we head into our second semester, I want to thank everyone for your support. Our community is a special place to belong to, and our parents make that all the more rewarding.

You have supported us within the academic team, within the operations team and in our front office. We appreciate that and we look forward to working together in semester 2.

I want to wish all families a very Merry Christmas and a very healthy, prosperous and joyful New Year.
There's a lot to look forward to in our New Year—events coming up in January and February that we'll be able to share together, opportunities to celebrate our learning, opportunities to actually go into a new pathway of academic excellence.
The release of our academic semester one reports will take place, there'll be student-led conferences, many other great events as well such as our Innovation Fair.

Last year's success was a great start for us, but I'm looking forward to even more opportunities to allow our students to express themselves, to be creative, and to innovate in many different areas of expertise and personal interests.

But for now, I just want to express my thanks for all that has been in our first semester. We look forward to seeing you again after the winter break, real soon. Bye for now.

Nathan Gray

Head of School