Message from School Committee

Dear Parents and Guardians,

We are excited to welcome our children and yourselves back to school. For the first few weeks, we will take the time for mindful reintegration into class and school rhythm for everyone.

Our Kindergarten program is based on Waldorf Inspired principles to foster natural learning in the foundational years of child development. We offer three-month Waldorf Inspired Teacher Training program twice a year, for aspiring teachers and parents. We intend all parents to take advantage of this program and learn about how children develop.

We believe that learning happens naturally when children are happy, relaxed, and feel loved. This means creating plenty of opportunities to explore, observe, participate, play, sing, draw, paint and socialise with other people. We thank parents who volunteered last year. We welcome more parents to volunteer and contribute to holistic learning environment going forward.

Our approach to engaging children to build life skills is to offer trans-disciplinary projects, No-Bagdays for Vocational Education, Subject Enrichment, School Clubs and Community Outreach Programs. Balsam has subscribed to XSeed curriculum for grades 1 to 8 to provide hands-on and integrated learning. Children shall experience blended learning and develop 21st century skills. The jobs in the future do not even exist today. It becomes imperative to prepare our children to the new jobs that are getting created as we read this letter.

Our on-going efforts to instil skills in children are to offer mentoring to students, teachers, and parents, conduct parent and student webinars, enrol teachers in many on-site and online training, provide exposure to children and teachers to participate in engaging competitions and host a number of brainstorming sessions to maximize potential in each of us. The core skills required for holistic and lifelong learning are:

• Strong foundational literacy and numeracy
• Collaboration, Creativity and Innovation, Critical Thinking, and Communication
• Flexibility and Adaptability; Leadership and Responsibility; Initiative and Self Direction; Social and Cross-Cultural Interaction
• Entrepreneurship and vocational activities

We look forward to a very productive, practical, and fun-filled year. We seek support from parents and community to build a safe learning environment for children to explore, experiment, and thrive. We urge you to volunteer with us to build a fearless yet vulnerable community where children can simply BE.

As Rudolf Steiner

"Our highest endeavour must be to develop free human beings who are able of themselves to impart purpose and direction to their lives. The need for imagination, a sense of truth, and a feeling of responsibility-these three forces are the very nerve of education."

Balsam welcomes each one of you into the folds of a thriving Balsam family!

Thank you.
Team Balsam