Director Update!

Black History Week

Our students have been busy all this week immersing themselves in a variety of black history activities, and I believe that you will see many photos of these in this week’s AWOKO. On Thursday morning an excited group of Grade 4 students came to see me to show me their Black Lives Matter posters. I even found myself talking to some of the classes about Stephen Biko and the Black Consciousness movement in South Africa in the 1970s. I hope that your children had something interesting to share at home.

International Women’s Day and a Long Weekend

Monday 8th March is International Women’s Day and is a public holiday in Sierra Leone, so the school will be closed and our families can enjoy a long weekend! The theme of International Women’s Day 2021 is “Women in Leadership: Achieving an equal future in COVID19 world.” That is certainly a goal worth striving for! My mother was born into a working class London family way back in 1918 but, when I was a child, she told me more than once, “Brian, there’s no such thing as men’s work and women’s work. There is simply work and it has to be done.” Now that’s a very simple statement about equality.

During the short week that follows (March 9-12), we will have Women’s History Week here at AISF. Even if we can’t open our doors to the public at this time, we can certainly keep meaningful theme-based learning happening.

School Photographs

We will be taking class photos and individual student photographs on Friday 12th March. Since it is an Africana Friday, we will stick with the “Africana” theme, so please send your children in their Africana best!

Once the photos are ready, we will email you both the individual photographs of your children and their class photographs. Don’t worry…we will allow them to remove their masks—very briefly and only outside(!)—for their photos. The photos should also appear in the electronic AISF yearbook that we will publish in June.

Important Upcoming Dates

22nd—26th February Black History Week

Thursday 4th March World Book Day

Monday 8th March International Women’s Day (public holiday; school closed)

9th—12th March Women’s History Week

Friday 12th March School Photographs: Africana Theme

Thursday 1st April Last day of Trimester Two. Trimester Three school fees due.

2nd—11th April Spring Break

19th—23rd April Earth Week

Tuesday 27th April Sierra Leone Independence Day (school and national holiday)

Quote of the Week: The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed. Bantu Stephen Biko

24 Hill Cot Brow Hill Station Freetown, Sierra Leone

Phone: 076 622453

Website: www.ais-freetown.net

“Preparing Students for Success in an Ever -Changing World.”

Volume 20/21 Issue 021

February 26, 2021

We learned about black history and the brave people who desperately wanted slavery to stop and worked towards it. We particularly admire the courage of Harriet Tubman who never lost any passenger throughout her travels to free slaves. We turned all the lights off and followed the lead of Harriet in class as we traveled through the Underground Railroad to Pennsylvania; the students quietly walked and crawled into different corners of our classroom and were watchful of the slave patrols. Today we made banners and marched around school and protested against segregation and discrimination. We agree as a class that everyone is equal regardless of our skin color.

What a glorious noisy week Pangolins have had. We made music in Science and learned about how sound waves travel. We began to learn how our whole number system is established on Base Ten by counting in tens and ones using our ‘counting sticks’ (fingers). And best of all each day we’ve heard about some inspirational black people who the changed the world including Wangari Maathai, Ruby Bridges, Mae Jemison, Pirate Queen Sayyida al-Hurra and others. We recreated the moment when Rosa Parks defied the bus segregation rules and had huge fun mixing up the bus and sitting

wherever we darn well wanted, next to our friends 🙏 This made us consider how lucky we are today because of the great people who have gone before us, and how it is our turn next to ‘blaze a trail’ and make the world a better place for ourselves and others.

What a busy week we have! Firstly, exploring Black History and also doing some research because of a letter that we have had from the Museum of Kenya who have heard about our work on fossils. Mr. Brian came in to introduce the Crocodiles to World War II. He described a Japanese-Canadian family he knew who were discriminated against because of their Japanese background and were sent to live in a camp during the war. We acted out in role play to help us to decide what we would have done. We have created fossil copies from salt dough. The ammonites were particularly tricky. Some children have begun sharing their own ideas about how dinosaurs became extinct.

What a fun and emotional week we have had commemorating Black History Week! We began the week by learning about the traditions and customs in Africa before slavery. The following day, we stepped into the shoes of those who were/have been segregated or experienced discrimination based on the color of their skin. Using an experiment carried out by American retired teacher Jane Elliot, we separated the class into 2 groups. One group had extra privileges such as extra playtime and the use of iPads, whilst the other group watched in dismay and went without.

Mr. Brian taught us about apartheid and Steve Biko. The end of the week was more relaxed as we learnt how to dance to STEP moves and historical black athletes and singers. We even had our own karaoke session, singing songs sung by black people from the 1960s to the current day 2020s.

In Social Studies, 5/6 has been learning about the four empires of Mesopotamia. In groups of 4, students have been working to create 'mechanical dioramas' of their assigned empire; these 'exhibits' will highlight the major achievements of the Akkadian, Babylonian, and Assyrian Empires. In 7/8, students created skits in order to teach us about Samurai training in medieval Japan. They created simple props to show us the rigorous training Samurai had to go through. In Language Arts, 5/6 conducted peer reviews of their persuasive advertisements; each student gave and received constructive and actionable feedback. Next, students will take the feedback they received and apply it to their second drafts. 7/8 learned how to take notes from research, and then spent the week conducting research on their topics for their argumentative essays.

Grades 5-8 kicked off Black History Week by watching Hidden Figures. This movie is about the African American women who worked at NASA during the Space Race. These women broke barriers in the fields of mathematics and engineering; this has been in the news recently as the real woman featured in the movie, Katherine Johnson, just passed last year. We continued with this theme by engineering our own rockets as a STEM project and competing in the areas of accuracy, aerodynamics, speed and distance. The students also researched and made banners documenting the lives of famous African/ African-American mathematicians and scientists. Grades 7/8 completed their unit on volume by building robots and computing the volume of each individual part. Grades 5 and 6 completed a review on math skills we learned this year with Black History month facts. "It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men." Frederick Douglass

The Black History Week is a special week every year. The High School students had the opportunity to understand and discover more about people whose strength and determination changed the world: historical figures, artists, scientists, literary authors, activists etc. Mr. Brian had a powerful presentation about Bantu Stephen Biko and the apartheid politics in South Africa. The girls watched the Hidden Figures, a movie based on the true story of three amazing African-American women working for NASA. In the Art class, the students started to draw portraits on a grid and in PE they learnt new dance moves. As always, Mr. DeCoste and Miss Hopkins supported the students in Language Arts, Math, and Science.

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