Dear Parents,
I hope you are keeping well and that all is well with your family. In this newsletter, I would like to update you about some events and take the time to remind our community about our Restorative Practices Policy.
This past weekend I visited Hangzhou International School to present on accreditation at the ACAMIS Spring Leadership Conference. HIS is a school quite similar to ours with a beautiful campus and some fantastic support staff. During the conference, much of the talk was about XLIS hosting the event next year. This will be an opportunity for us to share the beauty of Xi’an and the power of our community with school leaders from all over China.
Congratulations to all our sports teams who ended their season this past weekend. Our MYP boys and girls teams won the local football tournaments. They were over the moon. We hosted a basketball tournament also and students had a lot of fun.
Restorative Practices
All of our academic policies may be found on our website here. I encourage you to take the time to read our restorative practices policy and if you are interested, do a bit more research into the philosophy behind it. The goal of what was traditionally known as “behavior management” at our school is education and the restoration of relationships.
To restore means to bring back or to restore to a former state. At XLIS we are learning to own up to our mistakes and to do what is required to restore any damage that has been done. There are consequences for poor choices such as suspension, but these are all opportunities to reflect and change. Just last week I needed to apologise for a poor choice and work to restore a relationship. It is a wonderful skill to have.
Happy Holiday
I hope you enjoy the upcoming short break and have some quality time with your families. I always love to hear from you, so if you have a few minutes, please reply and let me know how your family is doing. Anytime you would like to book an appointment to meet with me, please let me know.
Sincerely,
Mr. Lalor
Deputy Head of School
