Sale of New Senior School Uniform

The new Senior School uniform will be sale in school from 5-7 May 2009 in classroom 4T1 from 12 noon to 5pm. An order form indicating sizes and prices will be given to Grade 11-12 students on Monday, 20 April. If parents wish to pre-order and pre-pay for the uniform, this order form should be returned to the school office with cheque payment (made out to “ESTA Pte Ltd) by 28 April. Otherwise, students can just purchase the uniforms directly from the vendor in school on the 3 sale days. Senior School girls who wish to purchase pants as part of their uniform would need to place an order with the vendor during the sales days, and have their measurements taken. The pants will then be ready in two to three weeks.

Senior School debate team through to National Quarter-finals

The Senior School debate team has worked hard through the holidays as they battled with 28 other junior colleges, polytechnics and international schools in the MOE Invitational Debate Championships (MIDC). Winning 3 of the 4 rounds so far, the team has successfully made it to the quarter-finals this Saturday, 18 April. What made the wins sweeter was that all 3 wins were accompanied by the best speaker awards as well, for Jose Hong, and Tan Zhen He (twice). The team will be meeting Anglo-Chinese Junior College (ACJC) for the quarter-finals this saturday, 18th April.

Grade 11 Biology Fieldcourse at Tioman

In the week before the holidays the Grade 11 Biology students traveled to Tioman Island to study various ecosystems in order to compliment the current topic, Ecology and Evolution.

On the five day course students studied in depth the ecology of coral reefs, primary and secondary rainforests and both coastal and estuarine mangroves. Each student completed two major pieces of work while away; one involved collating data through various techniques to compare primary and secondary rainforests, the other was a personal project. The personal project requires them to develop a research question regarding a particular ecological aspect of Tioman Island. They then spend an afternoon in the field gather data relating to their question. This year we had personal projects relating to the claw waving behviour of fiddler crabs, the angle of bending of coconut trees, the attraction of insects to different coloured paper flowers and the distribution of different species of sea cucumbers. Our students worked hard and the time spent was very worthwhile.

Dr Jensen Hjorth, Head of Science

The Next 8 Weeks (13 April - 5 June)

Welcome back to school. The remainder of the term may be short but looking at the calendar of events it is certainly going to be a lively and intense 8 weeks. Here's a preview of upcoming items:

16 Apr - Public Service Commission Scholarship Talk
22 Apr - Senior School Founders' Day Dinner
24-25 Apr - Senior School Spiritual Retreat
27 Apr - Final Submission of Grade 12 Extended Essay to supervisors
1 May - Labour Day Public Holiday
2 May - Assisi Hospice Carnival
4-5 May - Grade 12 IB Chinese A2 SL & Vietnamese A1 SL Examinations
5-7 May - Sale of Senior School Uniform in School
11 May - Commencement day for the new Senior School uniform
7 May - Grade 11 Parent-teacher Meeting & Challenge Week Briefing
8 May - Grade 12 Personal Grooming Course (Session 1)
14 May - Grade 12 IB Hindi B SL Examinations
15 May - Official Grand School Opening cum Founders' Day Celebration
20 May - Blood Donation Drive
22 May - Grade 12 Personal Grooming Course (Session 2)
29 May - Grade 12 Reports
29 May - Deadline for first Grade 11 CAS journal submission & consultations
29 May - Deadline for third Grade 12 CAS journal submission & consultations
1-5 Jun - Music & Drama Week
5 Jun - Grade 11 Assessments
7-12 Jun - Grade 11 Krabi Expedition
8 Jun - Start of school holidays (5 Weeks)

Results of the Grade 11 Senior Council Elections, 23 March 2009

The top six candidates with the highest total votes (in alphabetical order by last name)are:

Amanda Ang Qi Qi
Petrus Bosa Layarda
Bradian Muliadi
Shobha Padmanabhan
Benjamin Teo Zhong Yu
Christopher Yuen

They will join the six Grade 12 elected councilors to form the 12-member Senior School Council.

Fireside Chat with Dr Stephen Riady

On 19 March 2009, the students of the Senior School spent an hour with Dr Stephen Riady hearing from and discussing his views on doing business, managing and motivating people, as well as service to community. Dr Riady is President of the Lippo Group of Companies who has many philanthropic projects in the region, especially focused on building schools and hospitals in rural areas. This is the second in the series of fireside chats, which present opportunities for the Grade 11-12 students to hear personal tales from successful people and to be inspired by them. It also provides them opportunities to seek the views of the guests in their respective fields and interests.

Council Updates

Hi Everyone,

Here's the councils' first update to keep you all abreast of stuff. As all of you would know, the first term has been a flurry of activity, events, and school work. So pardon us for the tardy update. But I can assure you we are working hard to try and make this school a second home for all of us, something that we can be proud of.

Here are some of the projects we are working on:

Wireless Internet Access
The lack of legitimate wireless internet access has left many students annoyed and flustered, especially with such a large proportion of students using laptops, but the school does have its reasons for restricting access.

1. A lot of the school's bandwidth is being used up by students, leaving the networks very sluggish and slow, especially when some errant students abuse the netwwork by downloading large files.

2. Some students have been accessing distracting sites during lessons, leading to class disruption and annoyance for teachers.

3. Some students have not been using the internet for the best of reasons.

However, we do know that the mistakes of a few students should not penalise the rest of the Senior School population, who genuinely need the wireless access to do their work and access the vast amount of resources that is so vital to coursework. Therefore, we have written a proposal to Mr Bennett, to ask for wireless internet access, on the basis of responsible usage by students. We have proposed that everyone will be given an individual account with which to access the network. That also means that any abuse of the network will be logged, and the offending student will have to be responsible for his actions.

On the bright side, it is very possible everyone will have access to the network, just that responsibility is the key to ensuring continued access for everyone.

So please be patient, we're working on it as much as we can, because we too know how frustrating not having wireless access can be. (:

Fireside Chats
1 done, and an upcoming one with Dr Stephen Riady coming up tomorrow, please be there! The first Fireside chat was an enlightening and engaging one with Mr Tan Tee How, Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of National Development. From the chatter so far, it seems everyone has taken away something important from the first Fireside chat. The upcoming one with Mr Riady will be a Chat I'm sure all students can benefit from, especially economics students, seeing as how his business is still fluorishing in this economic climate. On the other side, Mr Riady's well-known philantrophy echoes the Lasallian values we so often hear in school; of sensitivity the the last, the lost, and the least in our community. Please continue to support the Chats!

Founder's Day Dinner
We're organising a dinner to celebrate Founder's Day, the dinner will include cultural and band performances, as well as a speech by our Guest-of-Honour Prof Tan Chorh Chuan, President of the National University of Singapore. We will also be investing the Senior Council of 2009. It is going to be a night for the senior school to come together and celebrate our Lasallian heritage, and we are working hard to make sure it is so.

Subway Deliveries
We know of the dissatisfaction with the canteen's food, so we thought we'd continue this project from last year to allievate some of the gastronomic stress, and also to add a sense of vibrancy to the community, something to look forward to! We hope you guys have been enjoying it, so do please feedback to us, or specifically Wei Jin if you have been enjoying the Subways. Judging from the response, it has been something we all look forward to! Please do thank Wei Jin with a big hug (Wei Jin likes hugs rmb! :D) if you appreciate the Subways as he's the one responsible for making sure we all get our Subways.

Movie Night
The organisation of the Movie Night was made possible by none other than our Social Secretary David Menon. The night was a relaxing one in the midst of the sea of work we had. I'm sure everyone enjoyed the screening of the Godfather with the plentiful popcorn and hotdogs that were available. The next Movie Night will be held next term, and this time you guys will have to bring your own food, but we won't be charging $2 like we did at all.

X-Campus Run
See below for more details!

Night Study for Grade 12s
We Senior School-ers are a REALLY hardworking lot (what with some of the torture devices the teachers employ like IAs :D), so Thiru and Savy have been at 1t1 every night to ensure that Grade 12s have a conducive atmosphere to study (trust me, having friends to share in your loneliness amidst the avanlanche of work is helpful!) It's slowly developing into a very warm and cosy group (:

Notice Board
If you guys noticed, the notice boards on the second floor foyer had been taken over by us (Mrs Teo gracefully gave us the notice board on the left, thank you!), and has been overtaken by a whole array of notices!
IMPT: Every student CAN post a notice on the student notices section, to put up Lost & Found Notices, Surveys, and to bring attention to important school or world issues. Remember, it is for everyone to see, so please observe decorum (:

So these are the updates thus far.

Do drop us any feedback at sjiiseniorcouncil@gmail.com

Best of luck for the rest of the term everyone!

Ora et Labora,

Ian Chai
President
SJII Senior Council