"You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have."
Maya Angelou
It’s been a really long hard term and indeed a tough year as we live with the regulations that restrict some of the most wonderful human social learning interactions that characterize top schooling. As the term comes to its end we also engage the familiar routines, albeit in slightly different forms, and I am truly humbled with respect for the extraordinary creativity of our teachers and students keeping the healthiest learning alive.
It is good to emphasise the aspect of creativity in our school, one of the first dimensions to be so obviously challenged by Covid and despite all best efforts from the virus the creativity that is a core component of the DNA of NAS Dubai will not go away.
On Tuesday it was wonderful to sit in the audience at The Theatre of the Mall of the Emirates and listen to the National Youth Orchestra perform. Twelve of the fifty-one students who comprise the very top musical talent of the schools in Dubai are students at NAS! By order of their position in the orchestra and programme of the night.
Ayla Mudaress
Eason Wu
Emaan Sufi
Ferial Dajani
Kenisha Ellen
Leyth Elmani
Carina Shenouda
Gia Harfouche
Suelynn Lee
Lexie Shenouda
Tamara Khawaja
Zein Khawaja
Then I came to School on Wednesday morning and took part in the judging of the musical submissions from across the School seeing the emerging talent that is already very accomplished and may in time join the National Orchestra. All of the entries that I saw showed students performing at very high levels proud of how hard they had worked throughout the year and smiling at the cameras with light in their eyes as they shared their performances. I cannot yet name the student winners from our internal music awards as this has not been formally announced.
Thank you to Mrs Fouad, Mr McEneny and Mrs Stibbs for all that you have done this term bringing our musical achievements to such heights.
And then within our Nord Anglia Education Global Campus awards that link students from across the globe, look at the awards our students have obtained.
Virtual Musician of the Year:
Special Mention (woodwind 10 - 14)
Luther King Mahalingham
Visual Arts Competition
Category Runner Up (8 and under)
Cleophee Chaillot
Category Winner (11 - 14)
Gabriela Arango
Performing Arts – Great Shakespeare Festival
Nicolas Wood Y6 (drama 8 - 11)
Yutian Zhou Y4 (drama 8 - 11)
Alexander Danishmand (drama 15 - 19)
Yutian Zhou (costume design 8 - 11)
5 - 6 years old boys: Alexander Turrini, Edward Phoenix & Haden Buchawiecki - Gold medal winners
5 - 6 years old girls: Safran Dik & Reynah Singh Gahlaut - Gold medal winners
9 - 10 years old girls: Fifi Dajani and Lara Khawaja - Bronze medal winners
Triathlon individual:
5 - 6 old years girls
Sofia El Bahroui - Silver medal
Nil Kavuklu - Silver medal
Konstancja Pajak - Bronze medal
Triathlon Relay:
5 - 6 old years boys:
Zackery Soubra, Dougie McSweeney & Hutch Henwood - Gold medal
Nil Kavuklu, Tobias Williamson & Elliot Herbert - Silver medal
Ilyas Alfahan & Nicholas Elias - Bronze medal
5 - 6 years old girls:
Konstancja Pajak, Sofia El Bahraoui & Valentina Bahl - Gold medal
Lara Weissenfeld, Camilla Alice Tredgold & Daisy Amina Jefferies - Silver medal
Sarah Boriawala and Nala Ndebele - Bronze medal
7 - 8 years old girls:
Cleophee Challiot & Taanya Balwani - Bronze medal
9 - 10 years old boys:
Daniel Brunero, Serge Hallak & Thomas Wilkinson - Bronze medal
9 - 10 years old girls:
Katie McLauglan, Tia Abd El Rahman and Poppy Henwood - Bronze medal
11 - 12 years old boys:
Thomas Cannon, Tommy Chaters & Hjalmar Rasmussen - Gold medal
11 - 14 years old boys:
Eben Farrell-Morton, Kenzie MacLean & Stanley Wade - Gold medal
Josh Key & Alexandre van den Bergh - Silver medal
Thank you to Mrs Banfield and Mrs Britton for compiling this list of this terms successes and supporting these programmes throughout.
This morning I attended the Year 11 graduation as Year 11 Tutors commended the individual achievements of each and every student in the year group identifying specific talent and individual contribution to the form. We look forward to receiving their academic results in August and believe they will do very well. How important these results are and we realise how important everything else is as we uphold the broadest curriculum experiences that prioritise personal growth in the time of Covid.
Also in this newsletter, we report back on school philanthropy and the creative ways that students have managed the fundraising for this year’s charity commitment to Little Wings. Thank you to Mrs Qureshi and Mrs Harding for your relentless positive reminders of our duties to support those less fortunate than ourselves.
I hope you enjoyed our last newsletter report on the Regional Steam Conference that was held virtually at NAS Dubai and which brought together students from all of our Nord Anglia schools in the Middle East. It was a wonderful occasion and again, showed how education can unleash the creative and collaborative energies that are central to children’s selves which develop and grow through healthy use. Thank you to Mr O’Hara, Ms Middleton and Mr Jones for making this happen and making it happen so well.
The challenge of drawing attention to creative achievements is twofold, once you start it is hard to know when to stop, and once you get going you are left conscious that you will have left someone out of the lists. If this newsletter is overlong or if the oversights are all prevailing please forgive me. The fact remains, creativity is alive and well at NAS Dubai, it features all of the time on Facebook and Instagram and remains essential to the School and every student’s personal growth. See here for a compilation of this year in visual arts.
Finally, please join me in wishing all the very best to Alyson,Alyson.Pickin@nasdubai.aewho has served the School so very well over the years managing me and helping to keep us on the right course. We will all miss Alyson very much while welcoming Amanda Duthieamanda.duthie@nasdubai.aewho has bravely stepped into those big shoes. With far better happy healthy things to go onto as you move forward, we thank you Alyson for all that you have done to help make NAS Dubai the great school it is today.
Matthew Farthing
Whole School Philanthropy
Philanthropic work at NAS Dubai
When we first decided to support The Little Wings Foundation in their medical treatment for children who cannot afford or have access to the resources we have, never did I think we would be their largest donor for the work their volunteer doctors and nurses carry out in Gaza Palestine and other afflicted countries. In January 2020, we had decided as a school to fund a whole medical mission, raising money to pay for medical supplies, surgeries, necessities for the volunteer doctors and nurses going out to Gaza. Our target was 100,000 AED, but then lockdown came along and fundraising became another challenge to add to the long list of challenges that COVID 19 bought. I have never, and am unlikely to ever witness again the collegiality of a community, the care and creativity that the NAS Dubai community have demonstrated. We have not just reached, but have exceeded our target and have last week donated an extraordinary amount of 150,000 AED to the Little Wings Foundation, for which the Al Jalila Foundation (umbrella charity for the Little Wings) have invited us in for a celebration ceremony on the 1st July.
A heartfelt thank you to all parents, staff and students for the commitment shown to this cause and for the part played in this fundraising project. A special thank you goes out to our younger students from EYFS to Year 6 who have been inspiringly creative with their fundraising efforts, with spelling bee competitions, walkathon, selling canvas paintings, duathlon/triathlons, donating sponsorship and personal money and much more, you have simply been phenomenal. Another thank you to Mrs Harding and the charity committee who have been working behind the scenes to raise awareness and organise events for us to achieve this target. It has been an honour to work with Dr Marc Sinclair who is the founder of the charity and has been in awe of the work our school has done to change the lives of many little children. He has taken the time to present to our students on many occasions with a recent personal thank you message to our students delivered in assemblies this week. We look forward to seeing the work the mission will undertake when the borders open and travel is safe. We are proud to have been a part of two of the biggest fundraising projects for UAE charities with the sponsorship of the Little Wings medical mission, as well as our previous Adopt a School project in Nepal with Dubai Cares. Put simply we are NAS Dubai! We are trailblazers who are nurturing and educating our future leaders with an ambitious philosophy, cultivating students to be the very best they can.
Thank you.
Tayyba Qureshi
Message from the Head of Secondary
Today we had the graduation of our Year 11 students.
Within my own speech to the students I shared with them one of my favourite quotes, from Dr Seuss;
Sometimes you will never know the value of a moment until it becomes a memory
I reflect on those words and they help me look back on what we have achieved over the last 7 years. We rush through life at such a pace and always look forward to the next challenge without ever stopping to really appreciate the now.
So today with the Year 11 class I stopped and took time to appreciate the moment. A moment that helps me look with great pride on the young people who have grown up at NAS Dubai. Children are children and at times they make mistakes but we are here to guide them through. However, most interactions we have on a daily basis with students, teachers and parents are moments that make us laugh and smile. That is why this career is so rewarding.
With this in mind, I know the yearbook is now on sale, I recommend you order a copy, sit with your child take time to look, talk and listen to the stories and the moments they have experienced. In these uncertain times it is very easy to look at the negatives, however, we all deserve time to celebrate the good.
I look forward to the next few weeks in Secondary when we have our awards assemblies to celebrate the achievement of our students. We also have 2 days dedicated to Sustainable Development Goal 16.
Events like this are crucial in education, in a recent PISA Global Awareness study it was highlighted that only 9% of young people know the difference between fact and opinion. It is important that as a school we upskill our students with the ability to critically analyse, to understand and question the integrity of the information and sources they have access to.
Our students are hungry to learn, ready to change the world but we need to give them the qualities and attributes to be able to do so.
Liam Cullinam
News Bites
Dino Day!
The children in Year 1 have been learning all about dinosaurs this term. We have even had a T Rex here in NAS Dubai! Our Year 1 explorers have been studying a range of animal classification groups in Science including herbivores, omnivores and carnivores. They have researched significant figures of the past such as Mary Anning and even designed their own fossils to sell and raise money for charity.
World Expo Trip
When we went to EXPO, we got into another bus and we went to the Terra building. In the Terra building we went to a place about the jungle. In the jungle place, we learnt about something called mycelium. At around the end of the jungle area there was a “would you rather?”. There was also another place in the Terra building called "Under The Ocean" inside of there was an echo-like effect. When you talk, it was like whales communicating. Then we had another would you rather? To finish, there was a question, “What 3 things would you take if your house was flooding?” This is a hard question to answer!
Jie Hao 4D
The trip to Expo it was amazing because we got to see our future! The decisions we will have to make as future adults will have a large impact up on the world. My favorite part was when we learned about the wildlife.
Jonas Leine 4A
Last Wednesday, I got the opportunity to go to Expo 2020. I really enjoyed Expo because I got to see things that most people have never seen before! My favourite part was the real life glowing jellyfish! I really liked how there was a lot of interactive games and how they were teaching us to be always ecofriendly.
Laura Grubisa 4B
Last Wednesday, we went to Expo 2020 and I thought it was really fun! I definitely want to go and see it again. Thank you for letting me have an amazing experience.
Sienna Marshall 4B
The trip was amazing! We actually were able to go on a school bus and visit somewhere other than the classroom! When we got to Expo we had to get on an Expo bus. We went to the sustainability pavilion and even more cool went under the ocean! We had a snack and explored further the Expo pavilion. It was amazing. I can't wait to go back.
Kiara Chacra 4A
The Big Shakespeare Festival
Thank you to everyone who took part in this year's Big Shakespeare Festival - we have been so impressed with the level talent! Global Campus launched the Big Shakespeare Festival and received thousands of festival entries and after many days of deliberation across time zones and continents, the judging team announced the performances and creations they wished to showcase.
A huge congratulations to the following students who were THE BEST IN SHOW!
Please click on the link to watch their outstanding performances!
NAS Dubai’s Contribution to the World Tour Goes Live on Global Campus
The World Tour has been running for a number of weeks on Global Campus. This week it was our turn to provide the activities to celebrate where we come from. On Monday 14th June, our activities went live on the website and other Nord Anglia schools had the opportunity to learn more about what the UAE, and Dubai in particular, has to offer.
With staff support, the students have provided activities such as a Middle-Eastern food challenge, an opportunity to learn more about the UAE space programme and a UAE inspired art project. The activities have included students and teachers from different year groups across the school. A big thank you to all of those who played a part - A real team effort!
The aim of the tour is to showcase, share and celebrate the diverse nature of our schools, therefore we encourage all students to log on and involve themselves in our section but also those that have come before and will come after. What a wonderful opportunity to tour the world whilst that remains quite difficult to do in reality!
As students can only access Global Campus, with their Microsoft 365 login details, please encourage them to access the World Tour and share it with you. Log in instructions foundhere.
Join Teens in AI!
Machine Iearning is fast becoming one of the most innovative and efficient technologies of our generation. ‘Ai Everything’ is where the global ecosystem coalesces to create the world’s most impactful, visionary and ground-breaking artificial intelligence community, where trailblazers and innovators go to inspire and to be inspired. A revolutionary event for revolutionary times. In October 2021, Ai Everything will be hosted side-by-side with the region’s leading multi sector tech event GITEX. Together, Ai Everything x GITEX Global promises 5 power packed days of international networking, learning and infinite business opportunities.In advance of this event, AI Everything and GITEX want to inspire the current young generation of high school students through their ‘Teens in AI’ event. On July 4th and July 5th, they will run a pilot hackathon focusing on entrepreneurship, innovation, programming and marketing. Teams of 5 will compete against each other to claim the top prize – entry to the ‘Teen in AI Accelerator Programme’ (worth £2500 per place). Experience in Python coding is preferable. Register before June 20th by clicking on the link in the flyer.
National Youth Orchestra
I am delighted to announce that after 18 months off the stage, the National Youth Orchestra performed a live performance to a full house on the 15th June at 7:30 at The Theatre at the Mall of the Emirates.
NAS Dubai has kindly been our Venue Sponsor offering the IC Hub on a weekly basis on Saturdays for our rehearsals for the past four years.
The concert was a huge success and the talent displayed was remarkable. The Junior National Youth Orchestra and The National Youth Orchestra performed a number of musical pieces including works by Bach, Vivaldi, Tchaikovsky, Gershwin and music from the movies. They were accompanied by a team of professional musicians including the violinist Ms Eva Gräsbeck, Head of Strings, and cellist Ms Clara Asuaje from the NAS Music Academy. The concert was expertly conducted by Dr. Munir Bakieh and was filmed by MBC Television.
We have some real young stars from NAS Dubai who performed as soloists, conductors and orchestral musicians whom deserve recognition not just for their talent but for their dedication and discipline rehearsing every Saturday throughout the year:
NAS Dubai Soloists and Conductors featured at the concert:
Leyth Elmani - Soloist and Leader of the NYO - Year 13 IB Music Student heading to the Royal College of Music London Carina Shenouda - Soloist and Co-leader for the NYO - Year 13 Gia Harfouche - Soloist Year 12C IB Music Student Lexie Shenouda - Conductor and Principal Cellist of NYO - Year 13 Emaan Sufi – Conductor Year 4E Fifi Dajani - Conductor Year 6C Eason Wu - Soloist - Year 2A
NAS Dubai Orchestral Musicians
Ayla Mudarres - Year 6A Tamara Khawaja - Year 10E Zein Khawaja - Year 8C Suelynn Lee - Year 12A Kenisha Ellen – Year 8G
Well done to all our young musicians for a fantastic concert!
Amira Fouad
NAS Music Academy
Head of Instrumental Music
