After an intense first term, we want to wish you a happy, well-rested winter break. During these last few months, we have made a huge effort and put a lot of love into offering new opportunities for all members of our Craighouse School community. Among various activities, back in March we had a successful dinner for the 2021 generation; a number of sports events, including the Charles T. Darling Tournament and the Interhouses; and community service in the different levels. In April we opened our doors to receive applicants to Prekinder 2023 on our Open Day, and in June we repeated this experience with our parents of Prekinder and Kinder 2022. We also commemorated Earth Day with the inauguration of our much-anticipated greenhouse, and celebrated Book Week with parades, storytelling activities, costumes, and activities for everyone. Then, in July we inaugurated the Year 12 IB Art exhibition of the 2022 generation, and a group of pupils of Year 8 took part in the sports tour to Northlands School in Buenos Aires.

The good news is that as long as the current health conditions allow, we have scheduled many more activities for the rest of the school year, including the Personal Project presentation, the UK sports tour, the Year 12 graduation ceremony and the generation dinner in Senior; the UK study trip for Year 7, the sports tour to Argentina, and great musicals in both Primary and Middle. In Primary we will be inviting parents to take part in classroom activities with their children and we will have the PYP presentation. We look forward to receiving you with open arms on Monday, July 25th when we return to Craighouse School!

A group of 66 pupils of Year 8 visited Buenos Aires (Argentina) from Monday, June 27th to Friday, July 1st to take part in the traditional Craighouse School sports tour. The pandemic forced us to put this enriching experience on hold in 2020 and 2021, but this year it returned in all its glory, led by Mr Pablo Salvador, Head of Middle, and five teachers of the Sports Department. Our students were received by Northlands School in its Olivos and North Delta campuses and were generously hosted by families of that community. During the five days of the tour, the pupils played friendly matches in all three disciplines—hockey, rugby, and volleyball—against Florida Day School, St John’s, and the host school. On their last day they went on a city tour around Buenos Aires and at 4 in the afternoon began the return journey to Santiago.

In the early morning of Wednesday June 29th, the 2022 Art exhibition was inaugurated in the patio next to the Headmasters’s office by pupils of Year 12. The event was attended by school authorities (led by our Headmaster Mr Lyons), our young artists, and their proud parents. Mr Hugo Cisterna, head of the Visual Arts Department, was in charge of receiving the guests and said that this exhibition is the result of the work done by HL and SL pupils over the last two years. Most of their work was done in quarantine and online classes, which made the creative process even harder and their achievements even more impressive.

The 20 pupils who showed their artwork were: Viktor Bocic Molinari, Victoria Díaz Bruzzone, Julieta Dib, Isidora Escobar Castillo, Sofía Holguin Blanco, Monserrat Kozak Fernández, Isidora Mizón Zunino, Lucas Moreira Coppieters, Isidora Navarrete Barrera, Montserrat Pagola Sainz, Cristina Peralta Aedo, Nicolás Poli Cabrera, Antonia Ríos Izquierdo, Vicente Rojas Bertens, Antonia Ruddoff Flen, Josefa Saenz-Diez Suárez, Iñaki Sarralde Santis, Rafaella Schiller Labbé, Dominique Van De Meirssche Baumlis, and Constanza Villamán Vidal. 

Working with The Newspaper Club, one of the multiple extracurricular activities offered by our school, a group of six Middle Section pupils created The Craighouse Sun (https://kdecker23.wixsite.com/my-site/all-news).

Led by Miss Karri Decker, teacher of the English Department, students Dominga Freig, Tomás Grubb, and Sebastián Scheller (Year 5); Gabriela Llévenes, Sofía Labarca, Helena Seade, and Dominga Abud (Year 6); and Santiago González (Year 7 C) get together every Wednesday after class to give life to this great project. It is they who come up with the ideas, define the topics, write the articles and interviews, and take the photographs.

“They've been working diligently to pump out quality articles and I am proud to say that I only taught the structure and now I help with narrowing down writing topics, and editing their final text”, explains Miss Kerri.

‘Historic’. This is the term that best describes the participation of three of our old girls who took part in the Field Hockey Women’s World Cup as part of the “Diablas”, our country’s national team. They are Sofía Filipek (2012 generation), Josefina Khamis (2010 generation), and Domenica Ananías (2016 generation). This event, which took place in the Netherlands and Spain, began on July 1st and for the Diablas finished on Tuesday, 12th July, after beating South Africa 1-0, coming up 13th in the tournament.

In Rugby, seven Craighouse School old boys were called up to be part of the 23 “Cóndores” that make up the national team: Rodrigo Fernández (2014 generation), Alfonso Escobar (2015 generation), Nicolas Garafulic (2016 generation), Salvador Lues (2017 generation), Matías Garafulic and Diego Escobar (2018 generation), and Santiago Pedrero (2019 generation). On Saturday, 9th July they played a great game against the USA in the France 2023 Rugby World Cup qualifiers. With a truly legendary individual try scored by Craighouse old boy Rodrigo ‘Yoyo’ Fernández, they are just one point behind their opponents and will now try to qualify in Denver (USA) on Saturday, 16th July, to keep the dream alive of the first world cup for Chile.

In a ceremony full of emotion led by Father Rodrigo Domínguez, 120 pupils of Year 5 and two of Year 7 received their bibles on Wednesday 22nd June at 7 p.m. at the María Madre de la Misericordia parish. The next big milestone for this group of students will be their confessions, which will take place on October 13th, and finally their First Communion, on Saturday, 22nd October.

Por: José Manzanares, Mentor TIC Senior.

On Friday, 24th June the Association of British Schools in Chile (ABSCH) held the Computational Committee event for pupils online. Craighouse School hosted this activity, attended by pupils of Years 7 to 8 from twelve schools. The purpose of this event was to develop computational thinking skills among students through activities related to the Arduino board and Python language. Darío Riquelme, Zornow Project Manager of the Engineering Area of Universidad de Chile, attended the event as special guest.

Pupils Martin Plass and Emilia Jarufe (Year 6), and Juan Ignacio Abadie and Elisa Castaño (Year 7) represented our school, accompanied by Miss Sachy Bravo. Cristina Escobar, Director of Digital Transformation at Craighouse School, welcomed the participants while highlighting the importance of developing computational thinking to face the world of technology.

Our students worked collaboratively with enthusiasm, and stood out for their comments, participation in the chat board, and successful completion of the challenges.