SES Blog

On Friday 24th August 2018, the children of Surabaya European School celebrated Indonesia’s Independence Day with fun games on the school’s field. The children from Montessori, Primary and Secondary keenly sang the national anthem to start proceedings. All children were seen actively participating and getting wet in the water balloon toss, jumping or running quickly in the sack race, munching rapidly in the kerupuk eating race and running with determined focus in the marble race. The morning finished with the ‘tug of war’ competitions, with all House Teams pulling furiously to put their team into the lead. The morning’s overall winner was the Sura House Team.  All of the parents, children and teachers agreed that ‘participation’ and ‘fun’ were the main focuses of SES’s annual Independence Day Games.

On Wednesday evening, the 6th June, many of the children came back to school eager to watch a movie with their friends.  The Year 2s and 3s settled in to watch Moana, the Year 4s, 5s and 6s sat waiting for The Lego Batman Movie and the secondary students were keen to start The Man from U.N.C.L.E. The children all enjoyed their movies and some even sang along to the songs. The children were seen feasting on snacks provided by the Silver Screen Snacks team from Year 6.  A big thank you should go to the Student Council who organised and ran the event.

We had an exciting and emotional final assembly on 31 May, which was a great celebration to end the year. Children in Year 3 performed Adele’s hit Skyfall from the Bond movie of the same name. Our Y10/11 students gave a presentation with lots of memories from their time at SES. Many of them have been here from Montessori right the way through to now. Reagan gave a super and sincere speech thanking all the teachers and highlighting some of the milestones from his learning journey at SES. Our senior students also gave their teachers a group photograph as a souvenir.

Leaving students were presented with photo albums containing a variety of messages from their peers and teachers, as well as beautiful pictures. These are some wonderful memories and will be something to reflect on in future years. Some of our teachers are also leaving us and we wish them all the very best and our sincere thanks for their hard work and dedication.  We said ‘goodbye’ to Ms Odette, Mr Lawrie, Ms Chris, Miss Allana and Mr Nick. Mrs Cindy Reynolds presented a bouquet on behalf of the parents to the Principal and gave a short speech thanking him.

Our first Biathlon was a great success and students who participated were presented with certificates from this event. We had children from both Primary and Secondary taking part. We concluded with all the Primary children singing the famous Randy Newman song, You’ve Got a Friend in Me. It was a fitting and fun end to what has been a productive and brilliant year in the life of SES.

Year 4 enjoyed their class trip and planned their bus seats as soon as the trip was announced. They were very excited to be able to go inside the submarine at Monumen Kapal Selam and to see all the original dials, switches and torpedoes. They were amazed at the lack of space and the size of the beds and enjoyed squeezing through the hatches from one compartment to another. After chosing and enjoying a refreshing ice cream the bus took them to Gedung Siola. The children spent a lot of time investigating the different exhibits in the Surabaya museum and took a lot of care to sketch them in detail. Some of the favourites were the telephone, the school desks, the money and radio and the calculator. They enjoyed having a sociable lunch at the tables outside the museum before heading back to school.

The sport of biathlon or aquathlon consists of a continuous, two-stage race involving swimming followed by running. On Monday, May 7^th, with the sun shining upon us, Surabaya European School held it’s first aquathlon. Staff, students and parents made their way to the pool to get ready for this new event. The Aqua Tiger Swimmers were divided into age groups beforehand, with the Under 8s going first, swimming 5 laps and running 1 lap of the big field. The last group to go were the Over 11s who swam 11 laps and ran 4 laps of the big field. Some of the races were only separated by a few seconds. This was a new experience for the majority of the students but they took on the challenge with enthusiasm. The following were the overall winners for each age group: 

Under 8            Age 8-9              Age 10-11              Age Over 11

1. Langit          1. Langit               1. Daniel                1. Ollie
2. Kyul             2. Kyul                  2. Erwin                 2. Michelle
3. Hiro             3. Hiro                  3. Reynard             3. Viggo

With the year well and truly underway, Surabaya European School had its annual School Swimming Carnival on Friday, May 27th. With glorious weather upon us, staff and students made their way to the Pakuwon Family Golf Club pool to get ready for the competition. Students participated throughout the day for the trophy of Swimming House Champion. This battle saw students participate in swimming races using all four strokes: freestyle, breaststroke, backstroke and buttefly. The day was highlighted by the relay races at the end with the students competing against the lifeguards, teachers and parents. The students team finished well out in front. Throughout the day the energy was high and the competition was fierce. The overall House Team winner was the Sura team with Garuda finishing second, Baya third and Komodo fourth.

Today has been amazing!  Early in the morning, the children arrived in a variety of costumes and dashed off to their classes to check what their friends were wearing.  After a great deal of excited chatter, the children all made their way to the hall for the catwalk parade.

Starting with Montessori, the children took to the red carpet to show off their bookish fashion statements. They twirled, walked and strutted to music and rapturous applause, delighting parents, staff and children. The joy everyone was experiencing made apparent by the sea of happy, beaming faces.

Later on after break, the Primary department used a ‘reading bell’ as a signal to the children to stop whatever they were doing and read their pre-chosen book for a period of time. Once the bell was rung again, the students would continue with their learning.  This was very successful and it was a joy to see all the Primary children reading at the same time.

Lunchtime was followed by a ‘Reading around the Classes Carousel’.  Children from Year 7 read to 6, 5 and 4, Year 5 and 6 read to Year 3, Year 4 read to Year 2 and Year 3 and 2 read to children in Montessori.  The event was a great confidence builder for the readers. The children who were being read to were enthralled by the stories told by the older students.

SES World Book Day 2018 was a great success and made possible with the full cooperation of all of the staff, children and parents.  This is testament to the great team spirit we have here at Surabaya European School. We are all looking forward to the next reading event which will be part of Literacy Week in the next academic year.

The year 3 assembly was a great success last Friday as the children demonstrated how talented they actually are.  Their costumes, smiling faces, dance moves and expressive words showed the whole school how much they have developed over the last year. The sweetness of the opening number ‘All Words Bright and Beautiful’, the teacher exasperation poem of the ‘Assembly Welcome’,  to the energy of the ‘Schoolkids Rap’, the drama of ‘Noise is All Around’ and the subtlety of the ‘Sound Collectors’.

The event was wrapped up by a montage of all our favourite moments of the year (so far), prepared by Ms Enya.  Tears were shed by children and adults alike when we shared our wonderful moments.

Unfortunately, a student of ours, Denis was absent from the proceedings due to family circumstance.  His involvement in the planning, practise and performing in the assembly was full of enthusiasm and excitement.  He was missed and we are all looking forward to his return for next time.

Congratulations to: Alyssa, Audrey, Denis, Evan, Hanifah, Hiro, Juliette, Jessie, Keira, Kyul, Max, Neilson, Nidhi, Rania, Regan, Ji On  and last but not least Ms Enya for a job well done!

We were recently joined by Ibu Janti Wignjopranoto (IG @alterjiwo), an ayurvedic and 5Rhythms Dance practitioner from Yogyakarta. She came to Surabaya to share her ‘Conscious Dances’ with all the primary students during the afternoon on Thursday, 5 April. Following this, she did a special dance session for all the staff.  

The rise of moving meditation and self-expression is based on the belief that the body, mind and spirit are interconnected. ‘Conscious Dance’ is a psychotherapeutic use of movement to promote the integration of a person’s emotional, mental, physical and spiritual well-being.

Students really enjoyed the dancing and many said it was fun, exciting, calming, peaceful and relaxing. Some of the comments were: ‘I had fun dancing, using my imagination’, ‘The dance made me feel happy and calm’, ‘What I enjoyed best was the meditation’,  ‘It made me feel calm, relaxed and cleared my mind from bad things’ and ‘The dance made me enjoy myself. It felt like a meditation and it was cool’.

Photos and videos from the sessions can be found the school portal.

On March 23rd the annual House Softball Tournament took place. All four houses had been practicing hard during PE lessons. The children were split into two groups, primary and secondary. Each house team played each other with each game lasting 20 minutes. After some close fought games the final results were as follows:

Overall Scores

Tie 1st Sura and Baya

3rd Garuda

4th Komodo

The Year 4 Saving the World: Habitats and Recycling assembly was a great success. The children enjoyed linking their IPC and English learning and were very keen to learn their lines from the scripts. They were happy to invite EcoMan back to help them to share the important messages about saving the tropical rainforests, the home of so many amazing animal species, and about how important it is for us to Reduce, Reuse and Recycle, to help reduce the amount of waste that has to be disposed of. Hopefully, through their assembly, the Year 4 children have helped the SES community to live in a greener and more environmentally friendly way.

MUN (Model United Nations) is an extracurricular activity in which students debate and create solutions about world problems. In SESMUN 2018, (Surabaya European School Model United Nations) there were two councils: United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), which focused on child labour; and General Assembly (GA), which focused on cyber warfare. In SESMUN, we encouraged students to speak publically, socialize and learn skills in debating.

Surabaya European School students have been participating in Model United Nations (MUN) conferences for the past three years. We especially wanted to introduce this programme to inexperienced and younger students as there are very limited opportunities for students to participate in conferences especially in Surabaya and Indonesia in general. Through this initiative, we wished to continue to develop relationships with other schools, as well as create an opportunity to share what we have learnt and be able to debate with students from different schools, and encourage young students from as young as eleven to socialise and broaden their perspectives and views on our world.

We provided a memorable experience to fellow students, not only to speak up on their own, but to solve problems and improvise for the future. We believe that through MUN, students not only gain skills and recognition important decisions such as applying to schools in the future.

On March 10^th, the SES Aqua Tigers entered a Friendly Swim Meet held at Surabaya Intercultural School. The students had been training very hard for months prior to the meet and everyone did very well, smashing their personal bests. For some students, this was their first swim meet and the experience of taking part and representing their school team is something that they will remember for a long time. Special mention goes to the following students who finished one or more of their races in the top 3: Michelle, Oliver, Regan, Aiko, Evan, Langit, Juliette, Kyul, Jessie, Erwin, Zian and Viggo.

On Friday, March 2nd, the swim team took part in a Swimathon to raise money for the SES Aqua Tigers Swim Team. In total the swimmers swam more than 2000 laps all together and raised around Rp 100 million for the team, which has gone towards purchasing swimsuits for the whole team and new swimming equipment.  A special thank you to all the parents that helped to support this event and make it a real success. We hope to hold another Swimathon at the beginning of the next academic year.

We had another enjoyable time celebrating the ‘Festival of Colour’ on Friday afternoon following the Swimathon, which was also very successful. Holi is primarily observed in South Asia but has spread across the world in celebration of love and the changing of the seasons. It is an ancient Hindu festival that marks the end of winter and the start of spring, with the first mentions of it dating back to a 4th century poem. It was even described in detail in a 7th century Sanskrit play called “Ratnavali,” written by the Indian emperor Harsha. The festival also symbolises a new beginning for Hindus to end conflicts and let go of emotional impurities from the past.

Many of our community participated and both students and adults alike enjoyed throwing the coloured powders! It was a memorable occasion for all. Being global citizens I think it is important for us to celebrate and enjoy a range of cultural events throughout the year, helping to further develop our international-mindedness.