Welcome to our January newsletter in this, the year of the Ox. Inside you will find out about the many fantastic things that have been going on while we were away. In ancient Chinese and Wikipedia rune the Ox is a sign of power and of prosperity arrived at through fortitude and hard work. It’s a sign packed with good portent for Green thinking and sustainability, as the world seeks out creative ways to save money and energy, to meet the challenges of the year ahead. Ox people, it is said, have a tremendous imagination and an unparalleled appreciation for beauty, and an innate ability to achieve great things. A fitting epitaph for Green School as we move into the next stage of our evolution. Please do send in feedback to marketing@greenschool.org to help us make our newsletter useful and relevant to you. Here’s wishing us all a special Happy Year of the Ox in what is already proving to be a very new, new year, for Green School Bali.

Media attention for Green School continued to gather speed at a rate of knots over the holiday, with a report by CNN in January, and a supreme piece of strategic media placement of a piece which, kind supporter Cynthia Rosenfeld magically placed in the inaugural issue of TIME Magazine last week. Media attention is so essential to our success. As a non-profit, we need quickly to find sponsors for our initiatives, and to do this, we need to build awareness of the incredible potential of Green Education and what it offers the world for the future. Many thanks to all our media supporters and watch this space. In the coming months we will be working with media across Asia Pacific and the rest of the world, as Green School continues to reach out. Closer to home, the Bali Advertiser announcement marks the beginning of a closer relationship building between Green School and the local community.

Click here to enlarge image

The really big news of the month is that Green School made a significant hire, in the appointment of Ronald Stones OBE as the new Director of Green School. One of a very few top tier heavy-weights in education in Asia, Ron joins Green School at a critical time in it’s evolution from pioneering piece of educational brilliance into a school of academic and creative substance and global renown. Sending a sign to our children, parents and the world at large, of the seriousness of Green School, the appointment of such a senior educator as Ron - whose on-going contributions to education in Indonesia and Singapore have been recognised and honored twice by Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II’ – is anticipated to be a major benefit to the school in 2009. As a first indication of this, Ron’s hire is followed by 4 equally important new additions to the teaching faculty, in Jonathan Wright, Anna Parr, Jamie Woodall and Ben Tamblyn. As for me, I am delighted to be joining the team to provide direction for our marketing and communications as we continue to build a vibrant, innovative and creative school community for all of our children.

The latest performance of Mepantigan—the newly emerging Balinese martial art that Green School is helping to sponsor—was blessed with a campus cleansing. The performance began with an Indian Hindu cleansing ceremony, Agni Hotra. Right on cue, the minute the ceremony was over the skies opened and the campus received a physical cleansing with a torrent of heavy rain. These two factors combined, made January’s Mepantigan the most dramatic performance yet. In addition Green School was honored to receive some very distinguished guests. Some of the most influential members of the Bali government were kind enough to take time to come visit us and explore our campus. Distinguished travel writer Cynthia Rosenfeld also attended. Cynthia has been extremely helpful in generating great press coverage for us and her continued kind support of Green School is much appreciated.

This month sees the launch of Green Camp. An initiative which sees Green School reaching out to students in Bali, Indonesia and around the world who are not lucky enough to be able to enroll at Green School permanently, but who can still access a Green Education in concentrated spurts, by signing up with Green Camp in the holidays. Youth Education and development professionals from Canada, Ben Tamblyn and Jamie Woodall have devised a series of programmes designed to help students develop skills sets so that they may extend themselves and be empowered to build great lives as realized people, stewards for the world and ultimately our next generation of leaders. Green Camp Bali is providing holiday learning adventures for youth aged 7-16 . Directors Jamie Woodall and Ben Tamblyn bring to Green Camp Bali over 15 years of experience designing, implementing and instructing summer and semester programs. Green Camp Bali will offer a variety of programs for children and young adults that are educational, challenging and fun! Programs will involve hands-on activities that teach Green Leadership, environmental awareness, teamwork and problem solving. Opportunities will include week-long day camps for students aged 7-12 and longer residential programs for older students aged 12-16. Stay tuned for more details in upcoming newsletters. For more information please contact Green Camp Bali Directors, Ben Tamblyn (ben.tamblyn@greenschool.org) and Jamie Woodall (jamie@greenschool.org).

In the first whole School Assembly in our newly established calendar of monthly assemblies, held in the first week of term in our brand new gym, Principal Kathleen Fry MC’d and event which brought our school community together to celebrate and bond and to welcome all new members to the Green School team. New teachers, new camp directors, new business team members and—most importantly— our new students. Our new school director Ron Stones and fearlessly took the stage to be introduced to the student body and he expressed his joy of being here by telling us the Sunshine Story. A warmhearted story of his own devising, the Sunshine Story tells the tale of a day the sun decided to sleep in because he was taken for granted. During the rainy season, we all know what it's like to miss the sun. Therefore, when Ron told us how the sun decided to wake up and go back to work everyone felt a renewed hope that the clouds will soon burn away and the sun will shine on our faces once more. Sufficiently cheered and inspired, the school gathered in a large circle—the size further demonstrating the strength of our community—and belted out the Green School anthem, “Living in Bali.” Co-incidentally, it didn’t rain for a week afterwards.

I have committed to informing the Green School community by mid-February about our chosen way forward with curriculum particularly in the secondary years.

I decided that the starting point was in defining what we want the culture of Green School to be – the beliefs, attitudes and behaviours that characterise the school; that which sharpens the focus of daily behaviour and increases attention to what is important and valued; that which we have agreement on how to do things and what is worth doing.

As a start-up school, we have tried to be all things to all people; that cannot be sustained. By choosing a focus and a culture, it is then easy to decide on Green School’s mission and values. Then we design the organisational structure to achieve that, and decide on the curriculum to get us there, and then the resources that will be needed to deliver that curriculum effectively. The Founders of Green School have agreed to the following:

Mission

• Delivering a generation of global citizens who are knowledgeable about and inspired to take responsibility for the sustainability of the world.

By:

• Emphasising ‘learning by doing’;
• Placing great weight in developing social responsibility;
• Appreciating integrity, honesty, ethics, and compassion as core underlying values;
• Recognising the importance of a holistic education.

Through a Curriculum which:

• Combines the essential skills of reading, writing, mathematics and science with a Green, hands-on, practical education for life;
• Has a Green aspect which evolves from nature to ecology to environment to sustainability through a ‘getting your hands dirty’ and ‘getting mud between your toes’ approach;
• Recognises and celebrates the local geographical and cultural and artistic context.
• Is based on continuity and progression.

In a Teaching and Learning Setting which:

• Embraces the environment using only natural and local resources in architecturally stunning bamboo structures;
• Inspires a living sense of creative problem solving;
• Continually explores the use of alternative clean energy;
• Seeks out scalable solutions to promote the longevity of the planet.

This is the beginning of Green School’s next phase of development. It has enormous potential, and with this more focused framework, together we can achieve that potential.

That’s the story so far. This is about setting out Green School not just for this generation, but for generations of the future.

Ronald Stones OBE

Pre-School
Preschool did a lot of amazing things during 2008. The children were always excited to work with clay, making their own arts and crafts. Walking to visit and to feed the cows was one of their favorite activities. Also, building a pergola on our own playground was our greatest accomplishment. Our favorite song is definitely "The More We Get Together.” We sing it before every snack time and some of the children always remember to say "selamat makan semuanya" at the end of the song.

Some Numbers

20 prospective new parents toured the school
30 more people called in to find out about registering their children with the school
7 new students started school in January
16 new students are signed up to start in March

For a school in the first 5 months of life, these are good numbers.

Our rainbow school is growing. Here’s a tally of where we stand today. We have people from Bali and Indonesia, from Singapore, Japan, Australia, India and Malaysia, from France, Italy, Belgium, Germany, The UK, Austria, Sweden, America, Canada, Hawaii and even Zanzibar. We are anywhere from 2 years old to 15, and between us we speak over 17 languages….

Announcement

Monthly Open Days at Green School
Sunday February 15th
3pm

As numbers of inquiries continue to rise, we have decided to block off one day a month to welcome prospective parents and students to Green School and minimize the distraction that touring ad-hoc causes for students in the school day. Our first Open Day is on February 15th, please let people interested in school know and ask them to contact admissions@greenschool.org to find out more.

Our regular school tours for members of the public will continue. These are for people with a general interest in the school and happen on a Monday and a Wednesday at 3pm after the school day ends.

We do offer private tours by appointment, generally on a Tuesday and Thursday mornings but restrict numbers to one family in order to disrupt the classes as little as possible.

One of the things we’re proudest of at Green School is our commitment to maintaining a diverse student body that consists of around 20% Balinese or Indonesian children. To make Green School accessible to local families that would not otherwise be able to afford the tuition, we’ve created a scholarship program that currently serves 18 students. Our goal is to educate both expatriate and Indonesian students to become the future environmental leaders of their countries, and another strong part of our mission is to always recognize and make use of our unique cultural setting here in Bali. Having local students at Green School helps us to do both of these things.
Of the 18 students in our scholarship program this year, 10 are sponsored by generous individuals who cover the cost of their tuition and fees; the remaining eight are sponsored by Green School, PT Bambu, and others who donate to our general scholarship fund. To maintain and grow our scholarship program, we need to develop a steady stream of sponsors and donors to assure that our Indonesian students can continue their experience here without interruption. For more information on how to change a child’s life with the gift of a Green School education, please email: sponsorship@greenschool.org.

A year 1-2 student was overheard saying she knew all about the current global financial crisis. When asked whether she knew how to fix it she responded:

“I'm only one person! I'll need help from all over the world.”

On seeing the new gym, the daughter of a member of the School’s Management Team was overheard to say, ‘You cheat!’ to her father. ‘A tin roof on the gym?  This is the Green School.’

Click here to read more testimonials from our parents and students.

Fundraising activity for Green’s School’s entry at the East Asian Region Coalition of Schools/ EARCOS, March 2009. A collaboration with Official Selection Sundance Film FLOW and producer Steven Starr…