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Staff

Mar 12
0

“Hoops for Habitat” charity basketball event!

By | GIN & Clubs, Staff | No Comments

Hoops for Habitat is a fundraising campaign organized by Habitat for Humanity. Hoops For Habitat is a tournament aimed to generate interest for the cause of Habitat among the Upper School, in order to make them more aware about the inadequate housing situation in the world.  The main advocacy components were the lunchtime quiz regarding Habitat’s goals and what our club does, and the shirts promoting the name of Habitat. At the lunchtime game, we chose to incorporate the quiz into the basketball game, by giving both teams chances to earn points by answering correctly. This made not only the teams but the audience very interested in this quiz game.  The shirts have the Hoops for Habitat logo printed on them, and many students still wear it regularly as a shirt for sports. By making the shirt look good, students participating in the event can wear the shirt outside of this event and it may assist in raising awareness for Habitat.  Enjoy the photos of the event (need to have a school student account to view)!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mar 26
1

E-club’s Shek O beach cleanup and zero-waste veggie potluck lunch!

By | GIN & Clubs, Green, Staff | No Comments

Sunshine, a sea breeze and the smell of rotting meat with maggots?! What a way to start our Sunday!  Members of the e-club, friends and family joined on Sunday, the 25th of March to spend their morning cleaning a section of Shek O’s rocky shore near the Instagram-happy “Lover’s Bridge”.  Fifteen big bags and buckets of styrofoam, juice boxes, bottles, plastic rope & shreds, bags of rotting meat, shoes and straws were amongst the common types of trash we collected.  This was also no ordinary beach clean-up as we collected single-use plastic for a Lower School art installation being developed by Orca house members of Gr.s 4-6 involved in the recent Leadership Education & Action Planning workshop (LEAP) for the upcoming GreenWeek, and we finished with a no-waste (bring your own utensils) vegetarian potluck lunch, complete with a green E-Club cake, on the beach!  We had a meaningful day out in Shek O this past weekend, and we hope to have more people join us for our next environmental event – the City Nature Challenge on the 28th of April!  Thank you to the Sternby parents for also joining Ms. Safaya as the adults on this excursion, and the E-club execs for organizing this event: Yvette, Aisha, Jameson, Lolo and Kyra!  Enjoy browsing through the photos taken by Jameson, ace photographer and environmentalist!

Jan 16
0

AYP: action within CDNIS & beyond!

By | GIN & Clubs, Staff | No Comments
The Award for Young People (formerly known as Duke of Edinburgh) is a program spearheaded by Mr. Hamilton years ago and has since developed into a comprehensive experience that is topped-off with a multi-day expedition with the supportive help of many Lower and Upper School teachers.  This year, a few Gold AYP students came and taught the Bronze students map reading, and as Ms. Tupling (an AYP supervisor) observed, “It was fantastic to watch as the younger students were super engaged and the older students did a great job explaining, and were articulate and very knowledgeable. I was impressed!”  She continues to explain that “part of AYP is community service that is usually done at the hostels we stay in, for example the students have to clean the washrooms, sweep the floor, pick up trash from the ground, etc.”  Thus, AYP students take action beyond CDNIS walls!
Comments from the Bronze AYP students who learned from the Gold AYP students:
I liked how it was informative and fun. Mathew
I liked the first hand experience given to us by the gold level students. Elio
I liked how it was interactive. We learnt how to read maps by doing it ourselves and not just the teacher explaining. Anon
I liked the game we played, it made map reading more fun. Theron
Everything was well explained, clear and not confusing. Heiyui
The practise with maps was very effective in learning the parts. They were helpful too. Nicola
It was taught very well and was clear. Adrian
Jan 03
0

How Education is a Right; and what a CDNIS teacher has done about it

By | Staff | No Comments

A Lower School Teacher, Rebecca Tupling truly believes that education should be accessible to everyone and has created two projects (one in Ontario, Canada and the other in Mwanza, Tanzania) to help promote educational opportunities for others. Both projects help make education accessible for students, which creates more opportunities for the individual’s involved.

 

The Elijah Tupling Fun Run

Rebecca comes from a small rural farming community in central Ontario called Stayner. She grew up there until the age of 18 where she went off to university. Today, both her parents still live there and she has strong roots to the people and the community.

On September 21, 2008 tragedy hit Rebecca’s family when her older brother (Elijah) passed away in a car accident. Grief shook Rebecca and her family hard and the next few years they all grieved separately. However, in 2012 Rebecca, her sister and her Mom decided to do something positive and started the annual charity run called ‘The Elijah Tupling Fun Run’.

This past year (2017) Rebecca and her family are very proud to announce that they celebrated the 5th annual run. Each year around 150 people participate through actively running/walking in the event, volunteering or on-line donations. The donations are then returned directly back into the community through scholarships for students graduating from the local high school (where Rebecca, her brother and sister attended, and where her Mom taught for twenty years). These students are entering college or university in either Early Childhood Education or Teaching. Over the last five years Rebecca and her family have awarded ten students this scholarship. These students who receive the scholarships portray a drive and passion for education, and are exactly what Rebecca’s brother (who was also a teacher) would have loved to see as a teacher.

For more information (regarding updates and pictures), please like the facebook page ‘The Eliljah Tupling Fun Run’.

Mwanza Matters

In 2011 when Rebecca and her two friends were travelling through Tanzania and Kenya they stayed for six weeks in a city called Mwanza, Tanzania which is in the north-west part of the country. One of Rebecca’s friends that she was travelling with had lived in Mwanza a few years prior and had made heartfelt connections with the people and the community. One specific person was Josephine John, who was a devoted and inspiring teacher who promoted inclusiveness for special needs. A few years later Josephine’s school made changes to the enrolment and asked the special needs students to find a new school; which there wasn’t at that time. Josephine, being the truly remarkable person that she is decided to open up her own school and called it St. Paul Nursery. Rebecca has been in close communication with Josephine since this occured in 2013 and wanted to help Josephine’s dream come true. In 2014 Rebecca started the project ‘Mwanza Matters’ while she was living in Canada. At that time she started to import goods made by a special needs school in the same community of Mwanza (called Tunaweza), sell the goods at markets in Vancouver and Toronto, and then send all the proceeds back to Josephine to help build St. Paul Nursery. The first year of the project Rebecca helped pay for the roof of the school, then has continued to help pay for such goods as classroom material, a water purifier, the teachers’ salaries and teaching resources. CDNIS has played a huge role in helping St. Paul with individual teachers supporting the project through a charity night, attending yoga sessions and donating over 500 books that have been sent over the last year.

Rebecca returned to Mwanza in 2016 during a break at CDNIS and when she returned she told her students all about her travels. One specific student (on his following birthday) decided that he would ask for donations to the school, instead of gifts for himself. This incredibly thoughtful act has created a long term friendship between this student (Gabriel) and a student’s tuition he has paid for at St. Paul Nursery (Andrew) where they continue to communicate. In addition, to the money Gabriel raised it helped build new classroom furniture.

For more information (regarding updates and pictures), please like the facebook page ‘Mwanza Matters’.

Nov 17
0

Staff Action: Animal rights in Abu Dhabi

By | Animal Welfare, Green, Staff | No Comments

Ms. Bonnie Calanchini (Lower School) writes:

While living in Abu Dhabi, I was broken hearted to see the ponies at the local shopping mall, standing for many hours in the heat without food or water, on hot concrete. Kids would harass them, and they were tied to tight that they couldn’t lift their heads. They had no sparkle in their eyes.  Long story short, I ended up getting the mall to remove them. Later, I followed up where they went, and although their lives were probably not much better, they were at least taken to a park where they were on grass and had some shade.
https://www.thenational.ae/uae/pony-rides-no-more-at-marina-mall-after-facebook-complaints-1.24747
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