The start of a new academic year is an exciting one for pupils, parents and staff. There is an atmosphere of excitement around school as resources and learning environments are prepared. There is a lot of planning for parents too! As a parent myself, I remember only too well the tasks needed to be done for the start of a new term, buying school uniform being one of them, often a tricky one, especially school shoes!
Over the past year, students, parents and staff have been looking at the qualities that make a 5-star school; one of which is a strong commitment to developing the school community. Our community is defined as local, national and global.
My role as Assistant Principal this year is to promote community involvement in our school so that the strong partnership between students, parents and staff can be further developed. Parents, who have been with us for a while, will know of the fantastic efforts of our Parent, Teacher and Staff Association (PTSA) and how, despite the pandemic, the PTSA remained active. They have just held their first event of the year, Pink Day, which was fantastic. As always, we remain positive that the PTSA will be able to organise many events over the forthcoming year. The PTSA Committee are still recruiting Class Rep’s. Thank you to those parents who have sent their forms back to school. The role of Class Reps was created to manage the class WhatsApp group page by providing parents with updates and reminders of class events, offering support with lines of communication to the school and raising any general feedback from parents.
There are many other ways to get involved in school life. We all know how challenging it can be coming to a new country and we have therefore established Contact Volunteer groups. Contact Volunteers are parents who are willing to assist and support parents from their home country in their own home language.
Parent Volunteers are those parents who support class events or educational visits where extra pairs of hands are vital. Offering support with our French and Spanish languages programmes or by sharing your expertise with our students are great ways to get involved. Although it is not possible for parents to be invited to help in school at the moment, we will be able to invite you back when the current restrictions are lifted.
If you are interested in becoming a member of the PTSA committee or in becoming a volunteer please go hereand download, save and complete the relevant form. Return the form to PTSA@oryxschool.qa. Parents can also forward their suggestions of how we can develop our community ethos via the same email address.
Over the course of the term, we will continue to host parental workshops where we inform parents about our curriculum and how to actively engage in their child’s learning journey with us. We do hope the Zoom sessions held so far have been useful and insightful.
We hope to be in a position after the mid-term break to re-launch our English language sessions for parents, so please look out for these dates, and how to access these sessions.
I am looking forward to working together again this year and to our partnership growing for the benefit of our whole school community, both near and far. In the meantime, please don’t hesitate to contact me if you have any ideas of how we can further develop the community element of our 5-star school.
Jane Rimmer
Assistant Principal - Community, Wellbeing and Development.
PTSA@oryxschool.qa
