Dear AAS Community, 

We are so grateful for your engagement during last week’s conferences. Thank you for your words of encouragement and support which teachers appreciated very much. These conferences are important opportunities that allow us to strengthen the relationships and common understandings between students, teachers, and parents.  

The current situation is impacting members of our community in different ways. To help us better understand how you feel and how we can support you and your family best, please take a few minutes to answer this short survey.

The wellbeing of our students and families continues to be our top priority. We are pleased to present parents with an opportunity to bring wellbeing home through a workshop with AAS consultants, J Christopher Dadefumi and Cathryn Berger Kaye. This workshop is tentatively scheduled for 5:30 pm on Tuesday, December 15. We only have 30 spots available due to the interactive format of the session. Please sign up here to participate! 

Thank you to all of the parents who joined our Penguin Athletics focus group. It was a productive and collaborative conversation that resulted in new ideas for AAS and our parents to experiment with in order to better support our student athletes on and off the field. AAS Community Relations will be hosting another focus group tomorrow on the topic of communications, I thank you in advance for your interest and participation. Please fill out this form if you would like to be on our mailing list for future focus groups invitations. 

If you have a few moments, I invite you to engage with the learning stories being shared online and to consider supporting our AAS Community Challenge, which is a wonderful service learning initiative started by our high school students. Finally, we are looking for ways to collaborate with our PTO to engage our community in our annual Taganka Gift Box Campaign as there are children at the Taganka Foundation counting on our support. 

Thank you once again for your engagement, support and perseverance as we model these and other positive behaviours for our students.  

• We were thrilled to welcome back to campus PK-Grade 2 this week. Thank you to all of our educators and parents who have worked hard to make this transition as smooth as possible.
• Educators needed to move materials back to campus, adapt to a new schedule and ensure continuity of learning. All were incredibly flexible as we strive to do what is holistically best for our students while ensuring the health and safety of our community.

• The students on campus have been decorating our ES Office holiday tree. It is beginning to look very festive.
• If your child is coming to campus and would like to add a home made (preferably recycled materials) decoration to our community tree, please feel free to have them do so.
• If they would like it returned, they should put their name and class code on it.

• First, the equipment needs to be shared between students, which creates a bit of a challenge during COVID. PE Teachers find that in order to support students in both getting their skates on and being close to them when they fall/need assistance, they might not be able to maintain social distancing.
• Last year, the weather didn't cooperate and we were unable to create a usable rink. This year, we have committed to two weeks of DL after the Break, which will reduce the amount of time the rinks would be used, even if the weather did cooperate.
• While we know that ice skating is a valuable part of our program and a wonderful opportunity we have in Moscow it has been decided that for this year we will forgo it.

Have a wonderful day,
The ES Leadership Team

On Thursday, December 3, we are hosting the second of our wellness meetings, this time the topic is specifically on student motivation. We will look at what students are reporting and our multi-pronged support structures in this one area. Please join us using this link.

If you weren’t able to join us last week during our coffee and want to see an overall picture of the student-reported wellness data, please see this Webex recording. 

Your HS Counselors have two grade level presentations this week - one for Grade 12 on university interviews and the other an annual child protection lesson for Grade 9. It is a pleasure to meet with all of the students and we are incorporating interactive components to enhance engagement. 

Institut Polytechnique de Paris and University of the Arts London.
Both presentations are at 12:15PM on Wednesday, December 9th via Webex. 
More information about each university is located in Maia Learning along 
with recordings of prior visits - click on past events.