How can your child increase their confidence?
The start of the school year always brings up mixed emotions for everyone in a school community, be it students, staff or parents. Given that FIS counts around 7,500 people in the community as a whole, there are clearly a wide range of emotions at play this week now and some of these will change once we reach cruise speed.
Our school vision and mission strategy has as one of the major aims to develop students to become both confident and spirited. As the first day of school arrived, I wonder how many felt this way? The fear of the unknown generally puts people, adults or children, in a slightly nervous state and this can be particularly the case when you enter a new community. So think what it is like for students new to the school. How many of our returning students, those that have been at FIS for a few years, went out of their way to make these new students feel welcome? If they did, how did they do so?
A fellow Principal in a leading SE Asia school writes a regular blog entitled Serendipities. This week he observes that by holding the door open for someone, and looking at them whilst doing so, we can take the opportunity to connect and see other people in our community. At FIS there are few doors for us to open at BPR, however your children would do well to return the friendly “Bonjour” or “Good morning” salutation that greets them when they enter our campus on the ground floor or 6th floor entrances in the morning or when they are in and around the campus. That extends to how our students greet each other around the school too. The confident child will say “hello, how are you?” with a smile on their face and thus ensure that others around feel more confident in themselves. It is something that we can all practice and get better at, children and adults alike.
Confidence does not come naturally to anyone, and so as the significant adults in our children’s life it beholds us to encourage them to practice being confident with others by actively using traditional ways of engaging in building relationships with those others around them. The more they practice, the better they get, and the more the FIS community benefits! Next week I will build upon this idea of building relationships to improve confidence, how collaborating with others can be confidence boosting rather than a draining experience! Meanwhile I hope you have all enjoyed the first week back at school.
