Dear Parents, Staff, and Students,

Greetings from Oakridge!

As spring sets in, we are reaching the mid of our 2nd term of the school year. The school continues to buzz with learning experiences, art exhibition, and IB submissions for our MYP5 and DP 2 students. While our grade 3 is out for their one-night trip, our secondary students had a blast with house competitions and gearing up for Relay for life next week.

While we continue to work to enhance our practices, we have spent a considerable time this year evaluating our own practices and using stakeholder feedback both through direct communication and via our surveys. Building teacher capacity, enhancing wellbeing and working to organise our student data from learning and engagement are our main goals to work on for this and until next academic year.

To build teacher capacity we are not leaving any opportunity to learn and showcase our team talents. The SEAMEI conference on the theme “Leadership” held in Abu Dhabi was attended by a few team members both from Primary and secondary, we learnt and shared our expertise. Our Sports HOD Mr Joseph Collen presented a session on “Shaping Lives Through Leadership: Empowering Future Generations”, focusing on sports leadership, teamwork, and goal setting-skills. The workshop led by Ms Divya Saxena & Ms Dorothy Bosco explored strategies for inclusive leadership and collaboration within educational settings. Ms Liju and Ms Maria George recently published their article “Co-Creating Success: Empowering Learners through Collaborative Assessment on NAE Connect-Ed Teacher magazine. Ms. Swapna presented her paper, “Research as a Catalyst: Transforming Teaching and Learning in the IB World” at IB Manthan conference at Noida. Ms.Naureen Presented her research poster on the topic” How can we make our ‘back benchers’ world leaders? – Reflections on the role and boundaries of non-academic feedback. At The Global Forum 2025 at Azim Premji University, Bangalore.

Ms. Niji and Ms. Indrani recently attended PYP and MYP coordinators workshops organised by IBO at Mumbai and a few more teachers have been registered to participate in workshops later in April. Ms. Damayanti and experienced IBDP Language and Literature teacher conducted a workshop for our English teachers last week, while a few of our team members came back empowered after attending the recent TAISI workshop, “MindShift: Revolutionizing School Wellness”, led by globally recognised psychologists in the city, to build a lasting wellness ecosystem for our school.

Steppingstones Centre continue to work with our teams to help us build structures for students with various learning needs across the board. They conducted sessions with our primary and early teachers focusing on developmental milestones, early identification of red flags, and classroom strategies, highlighting how small yet meaningful teaching adjustments can create a lasting impact on learners. Ms. Payal Sinha, an early and primary years expert will be visiting us again in April to continue to work with us.

Our staff engagement survey from Gallup shows positive results about staff morale. The results say that there is recognition for their work, however, we still have further scope to make the team feel they are cared for. It’s also lovely to see many of your appreciation notes for our teachers which says, thank you for this. Our staff wellbeing committee continues to come up with engaging events for all of us which is a welcome break.

As a part of our school wellbeing initiatives, we had conducted the GL PASS (Pupils Attitudes to School and Self) survey for grades 5 to 12. The key findings show that our students’ perceived learning capability, attitude towards attendance, and confidence about learning are high. Response to curriculum demands and preparedness for learning are areas we need to work on. As a community we will continue to encourage our learners to be the best version of what they want to be. Teachers received a training recently on how to look at the information from the PASS data and are planning to build in some interventions in their class action plans.

Last week, our DP1 & DP 2 learners attended a workshop on “The Role of Sleep in Optimizing Mental Health” by Dr. Shantha M Wilson Rajaratnam, Head of School of Psychological Sciences, Professor of Sleep and Circadian Medicine at Monash University. I am also excited to announce that Cricket ACT (Australian Capital Territory), of Canberra University is bringing their women’s professional cricket team to meet with our students on 20th March. This will ensure that our school is well-equipped with the latest coaching techniques and methodologies.

We are looking forward to our Relay for life overnight walkathon on 21st to 22nd March, this is an opportunity to come together as a community to enhance our students’ experiences. Thank you to parents who have registered to participate and have donated for the cause and the event. There is still scope to add participants, donors and sponsors. Do follow the updates posted on Instagram page https://www.instagram.com/relayforlife.oak/

Hope you all enjoy a festive Holi with your family over the long weekend.

Best regards,
Kavita Sukhani