Our ISR Community: Strong cohesion despite physical distance
Our ISR Community: Strong cohesion despite physical distance
Tuesday, 12 January 2021
At ISR, we are especially proud of the strong parent community that helps shape and enrich our school life. During these times, it is especially important to maintain a constant exchange with our ISR Parent Network! For this reason, all Parent Network meetings with our ISR Management Team take place virtually. This allows families to interact with school leadership, exchange ideas, and for the ISR community to come together virtually. We thank all Class Reps for their participation and are grateful for the positive meeting yesterday.
Face-to-face contact with students is also especially important during this time. In addition to our virtual meetings as well as virtual classes at ISR, our committed Academic Coordinators offer a Zoom Session each day where parents or students can dial in to discuss questions, exchange thoughts, make appointments with class teachers, or simply to meet again virtually after the long time.
All this to say – we miss our parents and students, but we are happy and thankful to be able to keep up the communication virtually!
ZDF Interview with Mr. Soliman, Ms. Vrem and Ms. McGee
ZDF Interview with Mr. Soliman, Ms. Vrem and Ms. McGee
Thursday, 7 January 2021
Today, ZDF visited us to interview three of our American staff members about yesterday’s riots in Washington D.C.
ZDF is the main program of the broadcasting company Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen and the second public national television program in Germany.
The interviewees included our Executive Director Peter Soliman, our Head of Kindergarten Alex Vrem, and our Upper School Director Samatha McGee. “It’s a shame, a sad day for the U.S.,” Peter Soliman said of the events in Washington. “It is very right that the Senate and Congress came back to the Capitol to finish their work. That was highly professional.”
Dr. Alexander Schröder-Frerkes, a member of ISR’s Advisory Board and Chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce in NRW, was also interviewed in this context. As a representative of American interests in Germany, Dr. Schröder-Frerkes is an indispensable advisor at our international school. In 2010, he received the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany for his services to the development of German-American relations. The interview was broadcast this afternoon on the Mittagsmagazin.
SLOⓇ Activity - Creative Minds
SLOⓇ Activity – Creative Minds
Wednesday, 23 December 2020
Creative Minds is an SLOⓇ activity teaching children through hands-on activities to expand their creativity, critical thinking and problem-solving skills using STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Math) and Design Thinking Methodologies. Creative Minds allows children from KG through Grade 10 to understand issues and find solutions whilst allowing the students to grow outside of the daily school curriculum.
Our Creative Minds students have been very busy making gifts for others this holiday season.
Last year, our Inspiring Girls, a class of 5th and 6th Grade girls learning about women who excelled in their field of work, visited the St. Augustinus Memory Zentrum with homemade gifts and a show featuring their many musical talents. Due to COVID-19, we could not visit the center this year. Instead, our girls took warm socks and creatively packaged them up as cupcakes for the residents. The socks were delivered on Tuesday, December 15th to the Memory Zentrum in Neuss for the residents to enjoy!
On Saturday, December 12th, Creative Minds held it’s first online zoom session! Students joined the session to make their parents a surprise holiday present! The children enjoyed the session and look forward to surprising their parents this week.
Many thanks to Creative Minds Leader and ISR Mom, Susie Seum!
Ded Moroz Celebration
ISR Ded Moroz Celebration
Monday, 21 December 2020
To celebrate Ded Moroz again this year, our dedicated Russian community came up with something very special. They acted out the story of Ded Moroz and shared their wonderful video with our ISR community. We are very grateful to be a part of this tradition and would like to thank everyone for their efforts! Enjoy watching!
Virtual ISR Alumni Reception
ISR virtual Alumni Reception
Friday, 18 December 2020
Yesterday, for the first time in ISR’s history, our ISR Alumni Reception took place virtually!
Many ISR alumni joined us from different countries around the world to share special experiences, talk about their career choices and to look back on their time at ISR. Another fascinating feature of the meeting was that one of our students from the second IB year of ISR was part of the group and enriched the event with his exciting stories.
We would like to thank our UCC team as well as our Deputy Director, Mr. Cete, for this invaluable event and we are happy that despite the circumstances we could keep up with the tradition of our ISR Alumni Reception before the Winter Break!
We wish you all a reflective Christmas season and look forward to seeing you again next year!
ISR Kindergarten Düsseldorf: Winter Concert & Santa Visit
Tuesday, 15 December 2020
As we are so close to the vacations, our ISR Kindergarten children in Düsseldorf spent an especially exciting day full of events and wonderful surprises!
In the morning, the first ISR Winter Concerts took place, in which the children proudly presented their parents with joyful Christmas songs that they had rehearsed together over the past weeks. Of course, the parents could not be there live – so the families joined the concert virtually! The rooms were filled with merry winter songs, happy children and an exceptional proud ISR Kindergarten Team!
After these concerts, there was a very special surprise for the children: Santa came to visit, to reward the children for the successful concerts, and to bring in the end of the year in a festive way. This year, Santa had come up with a very special surprise for the children: they all received a special toothbrush container in the shape of rubber ducks and frogs!
We thank everyone involved for this wonderful day, look forward to the last days in Kindergarten before the vacations and are already excited about what the new year has in store for our ISR Kindergarten in Düsseldorf!
ISR Model United Nations
ISR Model United Nations
Friday, 4 December 2020
We are happy to announce that our 5th ISR Model United Nations simulation ran successfully last Thursday to Friday. MUN on the Rhine is a simulated United Nations conference that is planned, set-up, and hosted by students at ISR. This year’s theme was “Remembering the Past and Preparing for the Future: The Effects of Universal Militarization”. Within this theme we hosted have three separate committees discussing past, present, and future issues. The objective of this year’s conference is to remind ourselves of the detrimental effects militarization has had in the past and work together internationally to prevent more catastrophes from happening in the future.
Despite the ongoing pandemic, the team of students didn’t only manage to host a conference, but also to broaden the conferences’ portfolio by taking on new challenges, as this was our first time to have a Historical Committee, the Committee on the Peaceful Use of Outer Space, and the Security Council. The conference required students to research their topic and prepare for in-committee discussions with their peers about matters of political or historical interest. The two-day conference was filled with fruitful discussions, innovative solutions, and outstanding resolutions.
We are very proud of the achievements of our students, who have put a lot of time and passion into the preparations and conferences. Thank you for your hard work! It´s cool to be good!
ISR Twelfth Graders Support Environmental Awareness
ISR Twelfth Graders Support Environmental Awareness
Thursday, 3 December 2020
Four of our dedicated students went out on the streets to clean the city from garbage and pollution again. Our students Penelope, Kazuki, Gordon and Mona met last Saturday at Düsseldorf Central Station to carefully collect and dispose of the garbage lying on the ground.
For several months some of our Grade 12 IB students have been involved in a CAS project with the initiative ” Wir machen Deutschland sauber “, which was initiated by the Japanese community of Düsseldorf. The goal is to promote environmental awareness and at the same time to present arriving guests and residents to the City of Düsseldorf with an welcoming clean environment at the train station. It was another successful day and we are incredibly proud of the commitment of our students, who among other things, are wonderful role models who are keen to demonstrate the importance of environmental awareness.
Digital Career Day in Cooperation With Deutsche Bank Düsseldorf
Digital Career Day in Cooperation With Deutsche Bank Düsseldorf
Friday, 20 November 2020
Today, a very special digital event took place at ISR with our long-standing partner, Deutsche Bank in Düsseldorf.
Deutsche Bank Aktiengesellschaft is the largest credit institution in Germany in terms of total assets and number of employees. The company operates as a universal bank and for many years has offered our students the unique opportunity to experience the fascinating everyday work of a Deusche Bank employee at trial days.
Since a physical visit was, of course, not possible this year, we developed a digital trial day concept in close cooperation with Deutsche Bank, named “Digital Career Day”.
During a total of eight virtual workshops, Deutsche Bank employees advised selected Upper School students from ISR, enabling them to gain valuable information and exciting insights throughout the day.
“We attach great importance to such an intensive exchange right now,” emphasizes Marcel Brünnen, Director of Deutsche Bank Düsseldorf. He adds: “The students should know what their best paths are in their studies and career if they are interested in the banking industry”. Brünnen even sees new possibilities in the virtual organization of discussions, “Some explanations, such as on “Robin”, our digital asset management, can be made even more directly and clearly in the video call”.
We would like to thank the dedicated team of Deutsche Bank for their time, their profound expertise and the provision of various exciting workshops, through which our students were able to gain exclusive insights into the team’s everyday work – even in the times of COVID-19!
We are looking forward to continuing our cooperation with Deutsche Bank and the opportunity to show our students the broad spectrum of career opportunities through this important collaboration!
St. Martin at ISR
St. Martin
Wednesday, 11 November 2020
On November 11th we remember a story of mercy and charity with colorful lantern processions, songs and the stories about St. Martin. The story reflects important values to us and we are pleased that, despite the circumstances, at ISR we are able to share this beautiful tradition with our students today on a smaller scale – not least through the distribution of traditional Weckmänner, once again organized by our ISR Parent Network.
For G12 our Parent Network prepared a special surprise: each twelve grader received a wonderfully decorated mug containing a voucher that enables them to pick up a tasty hot chocolate at our in-house kiosk! In addition, our Kindergarten Team organized their own mini parade, acted out the story of St. Martin and all sang together. Thank you all for making this possible!
Also our ISR Kindergarten in Düsseldorf celebrated a colorful and fun-filled St. Martin today! We’re thankful to share this special tradition with our international kindergarten children and wish everyone a wonderful St. Martin!
We would like to thank everyone who helped to make this day unique and to introduce this beautiful tradition to our international school community.
