Thank you to the over 50 parents who attended yesterday’s Annual General Meeting. I hope the information we presented was useful and gave you a better understanding of the state of the school. Congratulations to Yun Jung Shin (photo right) who was elected Board Trustee for the next two years. She won in a close election and will be taking the seat of out-going trustee, Hyun Ju “Joyce” Lee. We thank Joyce for her two years of volunteer service. The TIS Board of Trustees relies on parents and others to dedicate their time, energy and expertise to govern the school. Thanks to the efforts of volunteers through the years and especially lately during the trying times of a global pandemic, TIS is in good shape and continues to grow and improve in the interest of serving our students.  

Early Learning Your Soung Garden

PS1 and PS2 Families are all invited to join us this Friday 29 April at 08:45 for Your Song Garden.  This will be a celebration of all our learning.  The morning will include a showcase of things we have done in all our specialist areas, including Music, Uzbek Studies, Russian and PE.  Parents will be encouraged to join in and experience some of our learning activities.

Student Led Conferences

Student Led Conferences for Elementary will be held on Thursday 19 May.  This will be an opportunity for your child to share with you all of their learning, growth and development across this school year.  Families will be asked to book at time.  Signups will be shared with families next week.  There will be no classes for Elementary students on this day.

Sports Days

Our Annual Elementary Sports Days were a great success.  We were very happy to welcome parents on campus to join in our celebration of sport and athletics.  Our Elementary students were able to challenge themselves, learn new skills and work as teams.  It was a great opportunity to connect the Physical Education curriculum with a day of fun.  We also got to play in a bit of water.  A big thank you to Ms. Katie and Mr. Fozil for the work they did to organize these events.

Book Character Day

Book Character Day was a fantastic opportunity for us to come together to celebrate books and reading.  Everyone dressed in amazing costumes to help us bring book characters to life.  In the morning our TIS Grade 6 students shared stories with classes outside.  In the afternoon, the rain forced us inside but the Grade 10 students came to our classrooms to read and show us that books are still cool when you are 16.  We even had Grade 10 students reading in Russian and Korean.  A huge thank you to our Librarian, Ms. Sayyora, for organizing the day's event.

Celebrating Our Grade 12 Students

Friday was a great opportunity for our Elementary students to celebrate our Grade 12 students on their last day.  Over the past 6 weeks, each one of our Elementary classes has “adopted” 3 or 4 Grade 12 students.  We learned about their interests and plans for the future and designed individual posters and cards to use during their parade.  We were all very excited and very proud to be TIS Owls.

As part of our developing Outdoor Learning Program in the Elementary school we are taking more trips to engage with our Environment.  Today our Grade 4 classes visited Fruit Development International where they learned about all aspects of growing apples. Our students were able to get hands-on experience with everything from planting to irrigation and orchard management.  As a school we are working to form partnerships with organizations so that our students can have ongoing experiences during the school year.

Celebrating our seniors

Friday saw the farewell to our senior students. Grade 12 has now gone on study leave to prepare for their IB World exams which are starting off this Thursday, with a physics paper. The senior students were delighted with the badges and posters that the elementary students had made for them. We held a farewell assembly for them, seeing them out in style with a guard of honor and a Karnay Surnay. Please take a look at their amazing exit. 

Grade 12 Korean Class - From Ms Minae Park

G12 Korean students celebrated the last lesson of the Korean literature class in Hanbok on Friday 19th April. "Hanbok" is the Korean traditional clothes for men and women, which literally means "Korean clothing". For modern Koreans, Hanbok is the formal clothing worn during Korean holidays or on special occasions, such as a new year day, wedding ceremony or graduation ceremony. Also, Koreans have the tradition to celebrate the last lesson of a class. So the G12 Korean students and Korean teacher Ms. Minae celebrated in Hanbok that they had finished the course of DP Korean A. It was a meaningful time for the students' identity as well as for sharing cultural diversity with the school community. 

School Without Walls

Planning for our School Without Walls (SWW) is well underway, and the excitement is rising. Last week, grade level coordinators sent out all the information, regarding itineraries, permission and emergency slips, codes of conduct and packing lists. Please make sure that you complete the permission and emergency document, sign it and send it back to school. They will be collected in the homerooms. Please go through the code of conduct document with your child and sign it once they understand all the expectations. 

It would be great if you could send the forms back to school by Thursday, 28 April. 

Access to the all the presentations can be found: 

Grade 6 and 7: Supra Mountain Resort (Mr. Hughes and Mr. Schmidt)

Grade 8: Kumushkan (Mr. O’Connell) (additional information sheet and packing list)

Grade 9: Chimgan Aksay Valley (Mrs. Becker) (additional information) 

Grade 10: Yangikorgan (Mr. Tate)

Grade 11: Layner Resort (Mr. Mythen)

General Information Presentation about safety on trips

 

TISMUN Tashkent

This past Saturday, April 23rd, TIS was a place of fancy suits and dress wear as the first-ever Tashkent-wide TISMUN ( TIS Model United Nations) conference took place. Around 100 students participated in the event with students from a variety of schools around Tashkent coming to TIS to develop their skills as delegates. The conference focused on the theme "Combating overconsumption and resource development" which prompted discussion about the usage, regulation, sharing of resources in the committees, of which there were 4. Environmental Committee, Human Rights Committee, ECOSOC, and Security Committee. Each committee successfully passed both of the resolutions that were debated, no small feat, and many new friendships were made between students from different schools.  Overall, the first-ever (Tashkent-wide) TISMUN was a major success and could not have happened without the hard work of the MUN club and leadership team who had spent the months prior preparing. TIS can only hope to see what will become of TISMUN Tashkent in the future!

Grade 10 Support Elementary school Sports days 

Grade 10 were actively involved in supporting our Elementary School Sports days. Lots of fun was had by all but it was great seeing the Grade 10 connect and challenge our younger TIS students. 

Feedback from Parent-Teacher-Student Conferences

Please take a moment to give us feedback on our latest set of conferences. We will be looking at all the feedback from the year and develop a proposal for the coming year, taking into account factors like working parents, online versus in-person. The link to the feedback form can be found HERE.

As we are approaching the end of the school year, the PTO team is preparing for the annual reelection of some of the PTO Board positions. We are encouraging TIS parents and teachers to apply and become a part of the dynamic team to support the TIS community.

We are now accepting applications to the following position openings on the board for the 2022-2023 school year:

1.   PTO President: Leads the PTO team and helps set the vision for the upcoming year; works closely with the Director and the Principals; creates agendas for and presides at the PTO Board and General meetings; works with the Treasurer on developing and implementing budget, makes executive decisions for the PTO Board.
2.       Secretary: Prepares and keeps minutes of all meetings; assists the President by sending emails and social media notices and updates about monthly meetings, events, and activities; communicates with the TIS Promotions and Communications Coordinator to announce the PTO upcoming events and to build communication between the PTO and the TIS community; helps create poster announcements for the PTO events.
3.       Volunteer co-Coordinator: Responsible for recruiting volunteers for all PTO events and activities; may also recruit for some school activities; works with other members of the PTO Board to determine volunteer needs, supervises and keeps records of current volunteers and their contact information.
4.       Room Parent Coordinator: Recruits room parents for each elementary class; organises and trains volunteer room parents; helps room parents create class funds towards teachers’ gifts/end-of-year celebrations, and Spring Gala baskets; works with Elementary Principal to maintain communication channel with parents. 

The elections will take place on Friday, June 3, during the PTO General meeting. Please come and support your favorite candidates.

Email us at pto@tashschool.org if you have any questions or would like to apply for any of the positions.

First grade has started a vermicompost in connection to their unit about how minibeasts exist in specific conditions. We are exploring what they look like, where they live, and the roles of the minibeast in the environment.

To prepare for the Red Wigglers arrival students gathered materials from around the school to create the bedding for the compost worms. Then they closely observed what minibeasts look like under magnifying glasses and even held them in their hands. One student said, "I used to be afraid of insects and now I love them!"

Each week the students collect their food scraps and add them to the compost bin. After adding the compost worms to the bin, we have started observing how Red Wigglers help humans to decompose food and create rich soil for gardens. Through weekly observations the classes are documenting how the worms break down an apple core.

The goal is to harvest the worm castings at the end of the year and add them to the 4th grade garden.

Jenna Cirillo

“Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.”

-The Lorax

 

People’s choices influence the sustainability of essential life resources.  The choices we make as consumers and as habitants of our beautiful planet have an impact, as our grade 3 students witnessed first hand.  On Wednesday, April 13th, our students visited Lake Charvak for the purpose of cleaning the beach.  It was a field trip to support their learning and understanding about the delicate balance between human activity and our planet.  Our unit of inquiry, Sharing the Planet, allows for students to make deep and personal connections to how we live, how we consume, and specifically about the choices we make in our lives everyday, and how it impacts the environment.

We began the day with a beautiful drive through the mountains.  Upon arrival, the students had a quick snack, and we embarked on the walk down to the lake, admiring the grazing cows and sheep.  

Once we arrived at the beach, we donned our safety gloves, armed ourselves with garbage bags, and began the uphill battle against an ocean of plastic bottles, rusty pieces of metal, old tires, shoes, discarded batteries, broken glass and shards of pottery.  The sheer amount was staggering, causing one student to remark, “we could be here for a week.”  We quickly ran out of garbage bags. The sun was hot, and the work was arduous. It was time to go.  We carried as much garbage as we could back up to our base at the dachas.  We packed up as much of the garbage we could to dispose of properly, and to recycle. Unfortunately, we were unable to bring all the trash we gathered.  However, a group of teachers is returning to Charvak in a couple of weeks, and they plan to retrieve the garbage the students had to leave behind.  After a quick lunch, it was time to board the bus to return to Tashkent.   We want to thank the parents and siblings who accompanied us for their support. 

Below are comments and pictures to tell the story of our day. 

“I saw a bunch of plastic and glass. And in June all of this space is going to be water so people are going to come and probably they are going to swim there and get hurt.  I think we did a great job and I hope it's enough for those people.

I wonder if other people care like us to help cleanup.”

-Noga in 3P

“We saw plastic bottles, pieces of metal, glass, and even old tires. I think most of it was thrown in the water very recently, though some of the plastic bottles were filled with dirt, so possibly they were there before. I wonder why people can’t use garbage bins, instead of throwing the trash in the water.” 

 - Conrad in 3A     

 

I think people should think about the choice of throwing trash in such a beautiful lake. People should take action.

-Diana in 3P

“I wonder how much more plastic trash is inside the lake.”

 - Bobur in 3A

 

“It was so sad to see so much trash on the beach. I would like to come back here next week with my dad, and continue cleaning up the beach by collecting the plastic trash.” 

-Hahee in 3A

 

“I wonder why do people ruin our planet earth by trashing it?”

-Sardor in 3P