Dear Kairosians Last week we enjoyed an exquisite evening of bidding farewell to our wonderful Grade 7s, each of them such sterling representatives of our Kairos School of Inquiry — and yet uniquely so. This occasion was a particularly momentous event for our school, for it included the farewell of the first child who has …
Tag Archives: Article
The Value of Secular Ritual
Dear Kairosians Our fantastic team of parents, led by the extraordinary Adi Friedburg, have just pulled off another incredible success of a Halloween-Diwali celebration at Kairos. Thank you very sincerely to Adi and your team. We are so grateful to enjoy such a supportive parent body. It seems a good time to contemplate the significance …
Contemplating the Purpose of School
Dear Kairosians Recently a friend of mine shared on Facebook his belief that schooling of children should be “stopped, possibly even outlawed”. This is a very successful business person, holding a senior position in an international corporate. So I take his opinion seriously, because of his global vantage point, even though I believe he is …
Curriculum Development at Kairos
Dear Kairosians For the past few months I have been engaging in a renewed curriculum development process with the help of our piping-hot Teachers of Kairos. It’s one of the more dry yet more ambitious tasks of Kairos: to articulate a school curriculum ourselves instead of passively importing an existing curriculum, such as the National …
Headmonsterly Hmmm
Balancing educational ideals with mainstream conventions
Dear Kairosians, This has been an intense term with many important challenges we have tackled — including revising our discipline procedures, refining the format of our mid-year assessments, and significantly upgrading our admin and accounting systems with our new and wonderful Lorna van der Lith and Stephen Lindes. For this Hmmm, I would like to …
Continue reading “Balancing educational ideals with mainstream conventions”
Instilling discipline in school nonviolently
Dear Kairosians Managing a system of discipilne in a school is always an on-going conversation in all schools. And instilling an ethos of discipline in a school — not the same thing! — is seldom a conversation in schools. On the one end of the discipline spectrum there is a “Lord of the Flies” school …
Continue reading “Instilling discipline in school nonviolently”
Our Educational Objectives
Dear Kairosians Two of the parents who met me this week to inquire about the school were a mom and dad who had a particular skill in asking interesting questions. One of these was something like, “Of your various innovations in the school, if you were to name two things you intend your pupils achieving …
We are Not a Secular School
Dear Kairosians We are not a secular school. This may be a strange statement, but I start with it to be a bit provocative and maybe entice a few more readers than usual. Secular means not being connected with religious matters or anything spiritual. But we are blessed with a variety of religious traditions represented …