Dear Parents,
First of all I would like to wish you and your family a very happy Christmas. May this holiday season be a special time for you all. I hope all of the XLIS community can grow in our love and care toward one another. Let me share some good news with you.
EARCOS Full Membership
XLIS received an early Christmas present this week. Our application to The East Asia Regional Council of Schools (EARCOS) was accepted. This organization is the leading professional development organization in Asia. All of our staff will now have access to a range of PD opportunities such as these. Only accredited schools whose mission aligns with the EARCOS mission are included in this organization and XLIS looks forward to contributing and possibly hosting EARCOS events in Xi’an in the future.
The goals of EARCOS include:
- All member schools use EARCOS as their primary resource for the professional development of their learning community.
- EARCOS activities positively impact intercultural understanding.
- EARCOS programs and services strive to strengthen international mindedness and endeavor to recognize the global citizenship of member educators and the students they serve.
- EARCOS will remain nimble and flexible to assure the professional development programs and services consistently meet the high standards of its membership and the ever-changing professional educational environment.
Inclusion Policy
In this email, I would like to share with you a very special aspect of our school. XLIS is an inclusive school. This means that all students are welcome. One of the requirements of our accreditation through ACS WASC is that we constantly work to improve our learning outcomes and the well-being of all students. Whether students are gifted, have a physical disability, have different sexual orientation, or are dealing with a learning barrier such as autism, all students are welcome at XLIS. This makes our school quite different from an exclusive school. For example, at XLIS we encourage all students who are able to take the DP. Many schools will select students for the DP so that the school scores will be higher. This is not the case at XLIS.
Please find attached the XLIS Inclusion Policy. I have taken out only the parents’ responsibilities section so that you may know the kind of partnership we need in order for us to work together to support all students.
The parents’ responsibilities are:
• to inform the school of known learning challenges of the child upon admission.
• to provide the school with any relevant documentation required for inclusive assessment arrangements and/or additional learning or language support.
• to incur expense and comply with requests for Psychological Educational testing.
• to incur expense and comply with requests for One-on-One Aide support.
The Arts & PHE
Finally well done to our arts gropus, sports teams and their coaches. Our strings ensemble and choir brought the house down in the Ritz Carlton last weekend. Our high school basketball teams are on a role as they defeated another school last week also. Will you be coming to support them in the upcoming Chang’an Cup? It will be on January 13th and 14th.
As always I love to hear from you. Please take a moment to reply to this email and tell me how you and your family are doing during this challenging time.
Sincerely,
Brian Lalor (M.Ed.)
Deputy Head of School
