News & Weekly Letters

Let me be frank: the decision to close school for two days for the parent-teacher conferences (PTCs) will probably not feature in my top 10 most popular decisions ever. My ears are burning in a record-breaking fashion—and being an incurable hypochondriac, I’m beginning to worry I’ve got a ruptured eardrum.

I’ve already written to you about the village I grew up in and the mapped-out futures on offer for me and my classmates when we were kids. As I wrote, living in New York was not within my conceivable realm of possibilities as a child. And yet, I remember my first English class with Brother Roche–I was educated by Marist Brothers–and the sudden, unexpected, long-burning passion it ignited in me for the English language.

Yesterday, I was John Travolta in Pulp Fiction. I danced – with the confidence that comes with having long hair and being married to Andria / Uma Thurman – amidst manga pirates, cowboys, zombies, Kens, Barbies, Cruellas, witches, and many others. I don’t know what the desire to dress up occasionally says about grown-ups – our psychologist, Stéphanie, is better placed than me to comment on the phenomenon – but I do know that children do it all the time. As it says in the French Ministry of Education’s curriculum documents, children love costumes.

The World of Work is back for its tenth season at The École in 2023-2024! We are delighted to be welcoming a variety of industry experts to meet our 8th Grade students in their classroom—either virtually or in person—and share their professional experience, values, background, and knowledge with them.

This week at The École, we all made a long paper chain of unity. Inspired by the House Captains, our students decorated the links with a word, a sentence, a drawing, or stickers expressing their love for kindness, acceptance, and inclusion. On Wednesday, we all wore a touch of orange to show how much these values mean to us. Thank you to everyone for your participation – Unity Day is becoming quite the tradition at The École.