Welcome back to have an incredible start, SCIS Dragons!

On May 6, the long-awaited moment finally arrived as we welcomed back our students to the Shanghai Community International School Hongqiao Main and Pudong campuses.

As our grades 10 and 12 walked off the bus and through the campus gates, they were warmly greeted, with proper physical distancing, by our leadership team and an excited faculty.

With our schools coming back to life again, seeing students reunite with their classmates and reconnect with teachers has given us a sense of anticipation as we move safely toward life at SCIS as we know and love.

Now heading into a new normal, our priority remains on ensuring the safety and health of our entire community. Returning students were exceptional in following all the newly introduced physical distancing, safety guidelines and regulations across different areas of our campuses.

With students filling classrooms again, we then recognized that was also a bit of bittersweet moment for members of our community who were not able to be with us on campus.

Despite the challenges we face, we’ve had an incredible start to our new on-campus “blended learning” experience. On day one alone, we had teachers in Italy, Turkey, Australia and Canada teaching live lessons along with our teachers on-site in Shanghai, with learners as far away as Brazil tuning in.

The reopening of our school doors is a testament to the shared effort and dedication of our community. From operations staff, support staff, administration, our Return to Campus Committee to of course our faculty, everyone has played an important part in achieving this milestone.

Thanks to the continued support of our whole community, this back-to-school has been a successful first step toward a gradual reopening of our classes. We also welcomed back our grades 9 and 10 on May 11 and grades 4 to 8 on May 18.

(This piece is contributed by Mikael Masson Perez, digital marketing and communications officer at SCIS.)

Ti Gong