Dear Parents
WELCOME
Welcome back to school! I hope you have enjoyed restful holidays and I wish you a peaceful and productive 2018. Welcome too to our Pre-Prep boys who have moved across to Grade 3 as well as the 16 boys across the grades that are new to Bishops this year. We hope that they and their families will settle into the school quickly and enjoy a very stimulating and happy time at the Prep.
NEW STAFF
I welcome our new staff: Gareth Jordan (HoD Maths), Mandy Gloak (Gr 4M) and Xolani Mathyeke (Gr 5M); Laurelle Fry who has moved from the Pre-Prep (Gr 3F) and Mandy Hunt who is substituting in Grade 3H while Leanne Hamman is away on maternity leave. Also to Laura de Klerk who interned at the Pre-Prep and is doing a year with Grade 3s and Njabulo Mwelasi (stooging from Natal). Congratulations to Brendan and Leanne Hamman on the birth of Kylie Elizabeth!
ROWAN PIORKOWSKI
I am pleased to report that Rowan is making good progress. He completed his second and third sessions of chemotherapy during the holidays. He was also able to spend time at home including Christmas which, of course, was such a bonus for him and his family. Rowan remains so positive that he really is an inspiration for us all. He begins his final round of chemotherapy at the end of next week so please continue to keep Rowan, Julie, Adam and Neave in your thoughts and prayers.
DROUGHT
We are continuing our “drought uniform” until further notice. On any day that your son has Phys Ed or a sports practice/match he may wear sports dress. It must be the correct kit for the relevant sport and be worn with track shoes and short socks or Bishops rugby socks. He may wear the tracksuit with it if necessary but not a school jersey. On days when he does not have sport, he wears his normal khaki uniform.
WATER
The water crisis in the Western Cape continues to affect all of us and sadly “Day zero” is fast approaching. Level 6B water restrictions will be in place from 1 February and these are very severe. Bishops is fully committed to managing water and a number of municipal water reduction measures are being implemented throughout all campuses. Please note that sport remains a fundamental part of our education process for boys and is integral to our offering at Bishops and for both educational and safety reasons we will continue to water pitches, fields and hockey astro and fill our swimming pools with borehole water. This will happen at appropriate times when there is less evaporation and every effort will be made not to over use borehole water. Ornamental gardens will be manually managed after 6pm in the evenings on a rotational basis.
We are currently assessing which toilets on campus are in key locations (Boarding Houses, specific classroom precincts and selected sports venues) and their water source will be changed from municipal water to borehole water.
We encourage all boys to be very frugal with their water consumption and we will get through this crisis together.
EXECUTIVE FUNCTIONING
We are going to be working with our boys in a particular way on their executive functioning skills over the next few weeks. These are of course not new skills; they have been developing these since early childhood but with life becoming busier for our young people time management, prioritising and planning, for instance, become more critical for their success. So we are going to focus on very simple weekly planning sheets for Grades 4-7 where they record deadlines, activities and plan the breaking up of work into manageable portions across the week. Form teachers will be assisting the boys to complete these and manage their time accordingly. Please have a look at their planning – you will no doubt be able to add events that they might have forgotten or even household chores.
Executive functioning incorporates a range of skills so I will write a more comprehensive letter on this next week and discuss how we as the adults can walk alongside our boys to assist them in growing these skills.
I hope that your sons are going to enjoy a wonderful year at the Prep: progressing, achieving and succeeding. But there will no doubt also be some disappointments and difficulties. As adults let us teach them to weather these and learn from them.
Kind regards
GREG BROWN
HEADMASTER
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