What a spirited and rewarding week it has been!
Thanks to your participation, the community-building activities helped us mark GivingTuesday and kick-start our December with some colour, smiles, and laughter. Our student leaders have outdone themselves coordinating the ‘reverse advent calendar collect’ events interwoven with some healthy seasonal fun and daily house competitions. Joy refuses to be dampened. Click here to see the WIC reverse advent calendar with next week’s campus activities.
Patience, passion, and perseverance
As we strive to finish 2020 on a high note and develop our capacities for a braver new year, a recent BBC article about the value of a ‘paradox mindset’ got me thinking about the importance of embracing contradictory emotions and ideas. Indeed the generative power of conflict is inherent in the Confucian notion of yin/yang, which markedly shaped my development as a teacher and leader during my years in the Asia-Pacific region.
In particular, the crisis we have been living in 2020 has amplified for me the value of applying a yin/yang lens in my daily life. Seeing the world as ‘both/and’ instead of ‘either/or’ is useful to navigating the COVID hardships that impact all parts of our lives. Have you tried reframing competing challenges as opportunities for growth and a source of motivation? By adopting a paradox mindset, we can more richly identify problems, understand how these interact within our inter-related systems, and get the courage to explore options that may bring together opposite yet complementary forces to achieve a solution.
As has emerged through our 2020/21 together, WIC students and teachers are finding constructive ways to learn and teach, to be and to belong, in this ‘new’ blended COVID environment. It has pushed us all well out of our comfort zones for sure. But with patience, passion, and perseverance, we are making it happen. Thank you, families, for continuing to play your part at home on this shared front: stronger together, tous ensemble.
Eric Jabal,
Head of School