NLCS Jeju Newsletter 11 February 2022

NLCS JEJU NEWSLETTER 11 FEBRUARY 2022

UNIVERSITY ACCEPTANCES LNY CELEBRATIONS ACADEMIC SUPPORT IN BOARDING CHEMISTRY IN ACTION WEEK

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A Letter From The Principal Dear Parents, Students, Staff and Friends of NLCS Jeju The Republic of Korea is now facing a new challenge in the global pandemic but with the exceptionally high vaccination rates here and the different strain the situation is very different to previously. We are all aware from the new Government and Health Authorities’ guidelines that the expected responses from all of us are very different as we move to a new phase of ‘living with COVID. I would like to reassure our community and ask for their trust that we have put in place all protocols and checks to keep us all safe. Please also trust that our response, when we have a confirmed case of COVID, will be timely, appropriate and in the interests and safety of all our community. We have to be prepared for (and we are) the fact that over the next few weeks there will undoubtedly be more confirmed cases of COVID. I would like to celebrate with you the ongoing successes of our students so ably taught and prepared by our excellent faculty staff. As you will read below we have successes already for our Class of 2022 who will graduate in the summer and have received many offers from prestigious universities across the world in a variety of courses. There are many more offers and acceptances to come and we will celebrate these with you over the coming months.

Our students begin a journey from the moment that they join us at NLCS Jeju, whether it is in the Reception Class or in the Senior School in Year 7 or at any other point. This develops their love of learning and prepares them for a global life experience in many different countries. Our students are instantly recognizable as they are responsible young people who have a worldwide and responsible outlook in line with our values and ethos. Our holistic approach to education provides these opportunities to help them follow their passions and make a real contribution to improving the world.

Your sincerely, Lynne Oldfield Principal

North London Collegiate School Jeju

IB SCHOOLS - FIRST IN KOREA We are delighted to share that our Class of 2021 have once again been proven truly exceptional. They all did exceptionally well at their IBDP last year with an average point score of 39 for the second year running. NLCS Jeju is once more a Global Top 50 School and once more we are the Number One School in South Korea. We stress, as always, that NLCS Jeju performed better than thousands of schools around the world.

Head of Sixth Form and IBDP Coordinator, Justine Oliver says “ The Class of 2021 were an exceptionally committed year. They overcame many challenges throughout their sixth form years with the COVID pandemic as well as producing the expected fine work, extended essays, CAS projects, examinations and all the extra efforts required of an NLCS Jeju education. I am so proud of them all and am delighted for our students, parents and teachers that we have received this accolade. Well done, everyone!”

Justine Oliver

UNIVERSITY ACCEPTANCES - FIRST NEWS As you will all know, offers and acceptances come in gradually and students may hear at any time over these few months from their preferred universities around the world. It’s an exciting and nerve wracking time for students, teachers and parents and NLCS Jeju supports each student through the process.

Oxford and Cambridge Acceptances We are delighted to share news of several crucial groups of offers . Firstly Oxford and Cambridge - the premier universities in the UK, famous throughout the world - prestigious and highly desirable. This year NLCS Jeju has two students accepted at Oxford and four at Cambridge. Each student is a source of great pride to us all and each journey is different.

We’ll be sharing some of the stories over the next few weeks.

Oxford Joshua Chang - Computer Science and Philosophy - Balliol College, Oxford Wonjin (Sunny) Choi - Engineering - Keble College, Oxford Cambridge Jun Keun Choi - Economics - Trinity College, Cambridge Sean (Seonghyun) Yoon - Mathematics - St Johns, Cambridge Moojo (Joe) Kim - Engineering - King’s College, Cambridge Flora (Minju) Park - Human Social and Political Sciences - Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge US Universities - Early Decision/Early Action Our students at NLCS Jeju can choose to study anywhere in the world. The most popular destinations are the US and the UK. In the US the application process spans many months and students often elect Early Decision (a binding offer from ONE favourite university) or Early Action (These are early non-binding offers which show the university’s interest in a student). Both are ways to secure popular destinations and courses.

We have some exceptional results already from these and we would like to acknowledge these and congratulate the students involved.

Early Decision Sihyeong (Daniel) Ha - Hotel and Tourism Management - New York University Zion Kang - Media, Communication, and Culture - New York University In Kang(Alex) Hur - Environmental Engineering - New York University Woojin(Sam) Choi - New York University Dohyun(Tony) Kim - New York University Sujung Woo - New York University - School of Hospitality and Tourism Juyoun(Janis) Park - Natural Science and Neuroscience - Johns Hopkins University Jowoon (Judy) Lee - New York University Seungmin (Janice) Yoo- Northwestern University Narim (Claire) - Studio Art - Tufts University Hoejae (Jim) Kim - Mathematics - Cape Western Reserve University

Early Action Offers from - Northeastern University, California College of the Arts, School of the Art Institute Chicago, The New School, Georgia Institute of Technology, Louie Pratt Institute, Tufts, University of Michigan, Case Western Reserve University, Michigan State, Purdue, Pennsylvania State University, Nova Southeastern, Adelphi University, University of the Pacific, University of Detroit Mercy, California College of The Arts, Indiana University Bloomington, University of San Francisco, University of Wisconsin Madison

OXBRIDGE

Ms Iza Sloczynzka - Head of UGC adds - “We stress that many results are not in yet. Most students are still waiting for university decisions as many universities are still assessing numbers and choices and have yet to make their offers - both the UK and the regular decision US offers are due by mid May 2022. The support offered to our students by UGC, academic and pastoral staff has once again been instrumental in assisting students to achieve offers at the world’s leading institutions. We are very proud of each and every one of this wonderful group of students.”

INTERVIEW WITH SUNNY CHOI We are immensely proud of all our students and will be sharing many stories over the next few weeks and months. We hope you find them interesting and inspiring.

We start with Wonjin (Sunny) Choi who is a founding student of NLCS Jeju. After 11 years at NLCS Jeju she is about to fly our nest and take up a place at Oxford studying Engineering.

Sunny has been an inspiration to other students throughout her career here and has particularly promoted Girls in Sport - as a key member of the Sports Council and on the Netball and Basketball squads.

Sunny tells us “ I know it’s still relatively uncommon for girls to choose Engineering. I thought about Pure Maths and Pure Physics but I was attracted to the idea that Engineering does not just deal with a problem - it also provides the solution. It feels like real life. You can fail - and failure is a good thing - it’s one step on the way to success.”

In deciding on Engineering - and feeling prepared to decide Sunny is grateful to her teachers. She mentions Mr Will Hebbron in Maths and Mr Paul Scott - Physics. “They both really helped me. They inspired me with their passion for their subject. They wrote letters of recommendation for camps and they challenged me - not just at the level of our study but further still! I also thank Ms Tramner who really helped prepare me for my Oxford interview. She also gave me tips on being a woman in engineering.”

Sunny chose Oxford because “Who wouldn’t want to go to Oxford!” Starting the IBDP course made her realise that she wanted to narrow her focus and therefore the UK university specialist system would be more appropriate. “Oxford has an amazing research programme which attracts me for the future.”

We asked Sunny for her advice. We have so many amazing younger students who may one day be in the same position!

• Girls - Gender doesn’t matter in any subject - even if it’s traditionally male. Don’t doubt yourself. Don’t be afraid. There is no difference between boys and girls in any STEM field.

Change the narrative!

• Sleep a lot. IBDP is challenging, of course, but there is a big difference between study and efficient study. Better to do three hours of good study than ten hours sitting at a desk procrastinating • Play sport - relieve stress, build outside interests and create the fuel that you need to study.

On a final note, Sunny is grateful to her amazing family. “They never put the traditional study pressure on me. They wanted me to do what made me happy. They gave me freedom of choice. The emotional support from them all has been incredible.”

North London Collegiate School Jeju

LNY CELEBRATIONS Happy Year of the Tiger! Before the holiday, our Junior School students were celebrating and learning in their Mandarin classes. Through drawing, writing, listening and creating they explored what the New Year means for us. Here is just a tiny selection of their wonderful work.

HOUSE COMPETITION - TUG OF WAR Junior School House Competition is always extremely exciting - and never more so than Tug Of War. These Year 5 and 6 pictures really sum up the atmosphere - though every year group took part in different venues. Students - and teachers - had an amazing time, right across the school! We think the teachers took it even more seriously than the students!

TUG OF

F WAR

ACADEMIC SUPPORT IN BOARDING We believe that our boarding homes, our boarding teams and our boarding activities are second to none. A boarding life at NLCS Jeju will prepare a child for a successful future.

Last term we introduced our Academic Boarding Support Programme. This programme runs across all the Homes every evening - Monday to Thursday. This ensures that every student studies in the best way for them - and any student who wants to talk to a teacher of any subject can do so. Teachers offer support with projects, homework and lessons.

Every teacher, every department and every subject is involved. Here’s a snapshot of one evening in the boarding houses. Watch out for our film coming up so you can see what really goes on in the Homes every evening.

SKIING SUCCESS! Well done to two of our amazing young skiers who have been competing with some success recently!

Lael Kim (Year 6) Recently, Junior School student Lael Kim competed in the 74th National Ski championships (Ski/ Freestyle / Ski Cross) and gained 2nd place (Junior Girls Y 5~6 group).

Eban Seo (Year 7)

Eban Seo (Year 7) Yebeen (Eban) Seo is another amazing skier who has recently had several stunning plac ings in National c hampionships. Recently she won first plac e a t t he Korea Open Racing Competition and second place in the YMCA competition. She has another competition coming up and we wish her all the best

STUDENT PUBLICATIONS Take a look at Equilibrium - the student-led NLCS Jeju Humanities magazine edited by Eunju Seo and her very talented team. Inside you will find diverse features on Tension in the Time Periods in Chekhov and Distribution of COVID Vaccinations. Take a look!

CHEMISTRY IN ACTION WEEK What a wonderful week we had with Chemistry In Action Week just before Lunar New Year. As well as thought provoking classes, lectures and assemblies there were so many creative activities and competitions including Elephant’s Toothpaste making , Hot Pack making, Water droplets activities, Treasure Hunts and more! Guess The Apparatus was also very popular. The corridors outside the library thronged with would-be chemists!

Thank you to our amazing Chem Soc team and all our great teachers for really making this fun! You can see some of the activities here - and also check out the Year 7 film HERE.

CHEMISTRY OLYMPIAD A part of Chemistry in Action Week was the Chemistry Olympiad run by Dr Henry Liu. The Olympiad involved ten students from three schools - NLCS Jeju, KIS and SJA. The students - from KS4 and 5 answered three rounds of 20 questions to find the victorious team… NLCS Jeju! Well done to everyone who entered. Certificates will be presented to all participants.

ECONOMICS ENRICHMENT WEEK This week we have had Economics Enrichment Week in Senior School. The subject is offered at IBDP level so this is a great opportunity for younger students to find out more about this fascinating subject and for Years 12 and 13 to delve deeper.

Head of Economics, Mr Raymond Maher is passionate about Economics and the importance of Economics as a subject which can prepare and support students for all manner of university courses and for many careers. He says “Economics studies a subject we are all familiar with, scarcity. Resources are scarce relative to our desires for them. Our time is precious and we would like to know how best to use it. Are we getting the most out of the resources we have been given? Can we get more? What is the best system for generating the best use of resources - a free market system or a centrally planned system or a mix of both systems because the fact of the matter is that the extreems have failings?

Economics will help you decide answers to these important questions and lots more.

Economists have something to say on how best to preserve endangered species, use the environment, get people back into work, look after the well-being of the less fortunate and the consequences of too much exports for a country amongst other things. As we make our way through life governments want a slice of the value we create. How much should we give them and what will they do with these resources? Currently, the candidates for the Korean presidency are debating these issues. Economics helps you make sense of what they say.”

Trust Game https://ncase.me/trust/. Students had to identify how they would build trust with the person they were playing against in order to maximise their returns. On Monday evening a series of mysterious red arrows appeared on staircases around the school. Students were attempting to see if they could nudge people into changing the direction in which they used the stairs. They also repeated the experiment on Thursday.

Lectures Students Woon Kim, Adam Kim and JH Na prepared lunchtime lectures delivered on Wednesday by Adam and Woon on the national debt and by JH on Friday on environmental economics.

The subject of Mr Maher’s lecture to Year 12 on Wednesday morning was the impact the Fintech revolution will have on economies and the impact digital currencies will have on money in the economies in the future - all relevant to the future lives of students who will live through and work in these new forms of money.

Tutor Group Quiz A tutor group quiz was prepared but you needed to be up with the news and your history in order to score well, Economics is sensitive to the time and place in which it develops, and Nayun Chloe Kim, a scientist with a wide general knowledge, won the prize in 12HRMR. Library Display and Game The library created a display of some of the recent books they have purchased to help students in their studies and wider reading. Year 7, 8 and 9 had an opportunity on Thursday to take part in an experiment testing how honest they were as a collective group.

ANECDOTES DAY IN YEAR 5 On Friday, January 21, we had a wonderful day in Junior School celebrating the stories and anecdotes of our whole community. There were many visitors to the Year 5 classes - teachers with stories of adventures, travel, sports, nature and more. Listening, asking questions, sharing - a wonderful, interactive way to learn! Here Ms Alison Tuck, Senior School Head of Geography - shares stories of the rhinos she met on her travels in Africa.

RECEPTION CLASSES We are happy to share two lovely Reception class topics from just before the break.

Bear Hunt Ms Jenna Hall and Ms Melissa Woo, Reception teachers, shared pictures of a lovely activity.

“Reception has had an exciting week with a visit from Mr Bear! He left footprints into our classroom, as well as a note explaining that he had gone off with Red Ted to play. We will be reading and learning about the book, “We’re Going on a Bear Hunt” this term.

Students had lots of fun doing a sensory bear hunt. “ We love this book! Take a look at the pictures and revisit the story.

Art Class Reception students made 3D line artwork using different shapes and sizes of colour paper.

What a wonderful display of creative and imaginative art! Take a look at some of the finished results!

SENIOR SCHOOL ART Rachel Donaldson has shared some great monoprints from her Year 9 boys and girls’ classes on the theme of identity. We love all of these. Take a look - and, as always, make sure that you pop down to the Visual Arts area and take a look at everything that’s on display.

AEWOL ART Thank you to ABM, James Tuffs for sharing the Aewol Art session earlier this term. One of many fantastic and individual activities going on around the Homes, he tells us “Masks on, hands sanitised, the Aewol students entered the pre-set Common Room for the briefing. The briefing introduced the students to the concept of transient art, starting with Matisse cut-outs at the Tate Modern and going via Andy Goldsworthy to the Ice Hotel and Food Art. The students then had to create their own art using the materials provided.”

Take a look at some of this food art. Very creative, boys!

MODEL PAINTING CCAS Thomas Carter Stead runs the Mini-model painting CCA and recently he inspired his students to enter a friendly competition requiring each to paint two tiny figures. As an incredible bonus, Sorastro - a world-renowned professional painter - acted as a guest judge of the entries.

He chose Ji An (Jennifer) Lee (7CH3) as the overall winner.

He commented - “It was pretty tough to decide; the kids did incredibly well - especially if this was their first time painting! Eventually I chose Jennifer to be the winner. The colour scheme was pretty simple but effective and pleasing to the eye, there was some quite careful detailed work on the bow. I liked the transition on the hair, and there is a bold clarity about the face, and the eyes especially, that really drew me in. Very well done indeed!”

2nd and 3rd place were judged in school as follows: 2nd Seoha Shin (M10A) 3rd Hamin Kim (M8A) Well done to everyone who entered. It takes patience and creativity - but what a satisfying CCA!

Sorastro

1st Place

Second Place

Third Place

CCA RAFFLE TICKETS WINNERS Congratulations to Yesung (Khan) Chi and SungHyuk (Ricky) Choi, the recent winners of the CCA Raffle. Mr Mark Ramsey’s Tuesday CCA created and built a computer which was then raffled to students. The raffle raised an incredible 705,000 KRW which will be reinvested for the next project.

Creators

Winners

DONATION TO NEPAL Before the pandemic, our students visited Nepal every year from 2014 to provide new learning opportunities to local students by teaching music, PE, and art classes in English.

COVID 19 stopped us meeting in person but our relationship is as strong as ever! Our Service Lead, Mr Gwangho Im shared this great news that our donations are being used.

“I got a message from Shree Vindhya Vasini Secondary School, Nepal last night. Before the pandemic, we donated 24 old model iMacs from NLCS Jeju. They didn’t have enough space for a Computer room and just left the iMacs in the storage. They have now built a computer room for online learning & iCT education utilising our equipment.

Also, we donated hundreds of English & Mandarin story books for building a school library.

They made a school library as well and the Principal, Krishna Prasad Acharya said thank you very much to our school.

I’d like to thank the members of NLCS Jeju community for donating books and other donations. We are apart now but we hope we can visit there soon.”

GIVING ARTIST BRYANT Giving Artist Bryant involves members of this Bryant knitting scarves and blankets for socially isolated local elders. In Bryant Block 1, members knitted scarves with great enthusiasm before donation to DongwangHyodoVillage welfare institution for elders in Daejeong-eup. They sent us some pictures of them wearing our scarves.

The members of the Bryant were very proud that they contributed to a warmer winter for local elders. Members faced and overcame challenges while working on knitting, which involved developing new skills. Our Bryant also involves collaboration with other students who are in the middle of learning new knitting techniques. Members have overcome challenges in new fields of service successfully so far, which is an amazing achievement.

LIBRARIES Our Libraries provide so many functions. Hager Braham, Head of Libraries, explains all about a new collection of books.

“Sex, depression, gender identity, grief, hygiene, alcohol or other drugs, bullying, peer abuse, academic difficulties, self-harm are all topics that teenagers can find difficult to talk about and furthermore they are difficult for parents and untrained educators to tackle.

Reading about such potentially uncomfortable topics could be eye opening and bring students comfort and most of all a better understanding of a situation or our modern day society.

As part of its mission, the Senior Library works toward providing a diverse collection of reading material and advocates for the importance of diversity in our school community.

Besides providing an updated non-fiction collection on these subjects, the library has curated books to introduce such subjects to our students and build a better understanding as well as to provide another way of helping us talk more freely about anything.”

Take a look at all our libraries. They are growing, changing and thriving all the time!

LOOKING FOR KEEN PODCASTERS! We are excited to share the latest Spatium podcast from Shona Park. The theme this time is “Follow Your Passion” and it features a student who realised midway through his medical course that it wasn’t for him - and he wanted to be a lawyer! You can listen to his story HERE Shona is looking for new members for Spatium. Do you love listening to people’s stories?

Are you keen on broadcasting? Have you got a story to tell? Get in touch with spark24@pupils.nlcsjeju.kr

SURVEYS Visitors Survey Student Survey Staff Survey Parent Survey

CLICK OTHER LINKS AND INFORMATION Senior School Parent Handbook HERE Junior School Parent Handbook HERE IB Options Guide HERE IGCSE Options Guide HERE

MUSIC CORNER New Jazz Saxophone Teacher We are delighted to announce that we have a new Saxophone teacher, Ms Soojung Lee now available for individual lessons here in school. A graduate of the prestigious Berklee College of Music in the US, she is a rising star in Korea and she has performed extensively here and globally. She has also appeared on TV and is a multiple award winner. We were excited to have her perform in a special welcome concert in the Senior School Library today. Please sign up for trial lessons or a course of lessons by February 16 - lessons will start on Feb 28. Don’t worry if you are an absolute beginner - we have saxophones you can use. Did you know if you play the flute or clarinet you can learn the saxophone in less than 20 minutes!

Trial Lessons are available on all instruments to all students. We are also offering group lessons! A series of 4 short lessons will begin on Monday 28 February. Please sign up by Wednesday 16 February, 12.00

English

Korean

Chinese

TRADITIONAL KOREAN BUK In Senior School Assembly, Year 7, Ashley Jung gave a lovely performance of the traditional Korean buk. Have a listen HERE

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