Hillside Newsletter 20 August 2019
Hillside Kindergarten’s latest newsletter is available to read now. Find out the latest news from around the school and upcoming events.
Important Dates
Click HERE for the Full Hillside Calendar and instructions to subscribe.
| 21 August | Year 1 Admissions Parent Info Session |
| 2 September | K2 Meet the Teacher |
| 30 September | ESF-wide CPD Day (School Closed) |
Principal’s Message
Greetings to the Hillside School Community, and a very warm welcome to both new and familiar faces joining us at Hillside!
We have had a very smooth start to the new academic year. It was lovely to catch up with all the returning children, parents and staff the past week, and I look forward to getting to know our new children and families.
At Hillside, we have a strong commitment to partnership with our parents. Building a strong home-school partnership is one of our school priorities for this academic year, and we have planned a series of events for parent participation to take place over the months ahead.
The “Coffee Meet and Greet” kicked off our budding partnership with K1- and a few new K2- parents. This was a very casual event, hosted by the Hillside leadership team. It was an opportunity to share some practical information, ask questions and connect with other parents. Please Click HERE for the slides. Don’t worry if you did not make it, there will be plenty of other opportunities to meet.
Our Learning Community
I am grateful to remain as the Acting Head of School for the new academic year whilst ESF undertakes the recruitment process for a new Principal.
We are pleased to have Laura Bousfield taking up the role of the Vice Principal / SEN Coordinator and Brenda Yuen as PYP Coordinator of Hillside for the academic year 2019-2020. Both Laura and Brenda are well-known teachers within the Hillside community and will do a fantastic job in supporting my leadership of the school in the months ahead.
We are also very fortunate to have a number of additional staff members supporting our team. Ruty Yau is continuing her role as a Class Leader. Barbara Lo, Vivian Sit, and Vicky Tang will be providing extra support in different ways as our non class based Educational Assistants.
Last, but not least, we have our helpful admin team supporting us behind the scene. Jasmine Lau, Senior Administrator and Admissions Manager, is supported by Ces Defeo and Stephanie Kao both our front of house Administrators.
Here are our class teams:
K2 Teams:
| Dragon | Gecko | Tiger | Turtle |
| Juliet Kenyon (Teacher)
Dan Cheng (EA) Joyce Tang (EA) |
Aylish Franklin (Teacher)
Joey Chiu (EA) Yvonne Cheng (EA) |
Amy Lau (Teacher)
Isabella Hobbs (EA) Maggie Tang (EA) |
Rebecca Smith (Teacher)
Kenton Chan (EA) Queenie Bou (EA) |
K1 Teams:
| Dolphin | Frog | Monkey | Panda |
| Sharon Hubber (AM Teacher)
Michelle Wong (PM Teacher) Delphine Lee (EA) Yoki Lau (EA) |
Dawn Semple (Teacher)
Marie Angeles (EA) Vivian Tang (EA) |
Sara Burton (Teacher)
Hollie Collins (EA) Rochelle Camps (EA) |
Fiona Tudor (Teacher)
Faith Baguisa (EA) Lanny Ramirez (EA) |
School Priorities
We’ve reflected on the last academic year, and decided on the following key development priorities for this academic year:
Pedagogy:
Unpacking the Enhanced PYP – focusing on Learner Agency (defining what is learner agency) and continuing our work on Inclusion (removing barriers for all learners).
Curriculum:
- Arts, with an emphasis on developing Music and Drama
- Incorporation of Chinese in Units of Inquiry (UOIs)
Community:
- Home-school partnership – focusing on engaging parents in school participation, and ways to share our learning and teaching with parents (both virtually and physically).
- Staff development – building leadership opportunities/roles for staff that enhance professional growth and have a positive impact on our learning community.
- Sustainability – building children’s environmental awareness and living values.
Current Situation in Hong Kong
We are all aware of the current disruption around Hong Kong at the moment. We want to assure you that our first priority will always be the safety of your child. As an organisation, ESF will be concentrating on maintaining a safe environment for children to learn and staff to work. If your child is impacted in any way by travel disruptions, please let us know. We will understand if your child is late or unable to attend for this reason.
K2 Meet the Teacher
We cordially invite those K2 parents who would like to meet their child’s teacher to come along to Hillside on Monday, 2 September to say hello and see their child’s classroom from 4.15-5.00pm.
Please note: This “meet and greet” session is intended to serve as an informal opportunity for parents to meet your child’s new teacher and see their new classroom. It is not intended to be a time to discuss your child’s progress formally. Parents are not required to make an appointment.
Summer Maintenance Work
One of the major maintenance works during this summer was the repainting of our interior and exterior walls. We are so pleased to see all the newly painted walls returning from the summer break.
One of the other significant maintenance projects is the replacement of our air-condition chiller plant system. The current ventilation system has been in place for many years and is coming to the end of its course. As you can imagine, this is a massive project. We have explored different options in the past few months, and we intend to secure a project consultant to manage this project for us. Our preliminary plan is to conduct any heavy works during school holidays, namely over Christmas, Easter and Summer 2020, to avoid any disruption to our regular classes.
You would have received the 2019-20 fee announcement for Hillside in late March, part of this fee increase is related to the above maintenance projects (painting & air-con). We hope you would appreciate that our ongoing maintenance plan ensures that our school environment is conducive to learning and is safe for everyone.
We will, of course, continue to keep parents informed of any updates involving our school maintenance projects.
We normally send out a newsletter every second week, except for special ones, so our next newsletter will be Friday 6 September.
Kind Regards
Audrey
Acting Head of School
Learning Blogs
Please click on the links below to visit our class blogs on the Hillside Learning Hub for your child’s latest class news and photo gallery. Please contact kinder@hillside.edu.hk if you cannot access the Learning Hub.
| K1 Learning | K2 Learning |
Inspiring Futures
Data Privacy The information we collect from you is in accordance with the ESF Personal Data Handling Policy and its related Personal Information Collection Statements (“PICS”). Our PICS statement is available online. http://www.esf.edu.hk/privacy
