An Update of Nikki's News

So what have i been up to the last few months, as i have not been that good at communicating - sorry!

Monday marks a big day for the Mercy Ships Academy, it is our first Accreditation visit from ACSI. Although an exciting time it has taken huge amounts of preparation and planning getting to the point we are now. After this visit we have our work cut out for us as we aim to host a full accreditation team next May.

We are very excited that we almost have a full team of teaching arriving in July. At the moment we have 11 position confirmed out of 12, waiting the final response from the 12th member. After starting the beginning of this school year with 7 teachers - wow! Over the last few weeks we have been interviewing and finalising all this placements.

One of the biggest challenges we face as a school is have the right and enough resources available for successful teaching. Budget is always a challenge, but this year with more accurate budgeting and better understanding of our needs we are able to order the resources we need. Because of container delivering we need to place orders 3 -5 months ahead of time. Over the last 2 years we have been working accurate ordering and putting systems in place to make this happen. The past few months have seen the fruits of this plan as we have been able to place good orders and we are happy to say they are on their way and should be here in good time.

We only have 2 weeks left of our school year - i am still not used the concept of ending and beginning a school end midyear :) We have a few teachers and students leaving which is always sad but part of life in this community.

Over the Summer Holidays we have a team of 6 people coming to run a fantastic Summer Program for the students staying on board. The ship is still fully functional and parents need to work so the children will be cared for by this team. It is real blessing for the students and for the remaining staff on board or else we would have needed to do this! As much as we love our students it is good to have a break before we start the new school year - for us and for them! There will only be 3 teachers staying for the summer so we will have a chance to work on policy documents, handbooks and curriculum planning - to most people that sounds really boring but these kind of things work of my black and white brain so i am looking forward to having the time to focus on these projects.

Another thing to look forward to this summer is that my Mom is coming to visit! This is something we have talked about for such a long time that it is hard to believe that it is finally happening.

I'll try and be a little more detailed and faithful in blogging once schools out!