Today’s message comes after Parent Conferences, where hundreds of Zoom conversations have taken place to enhance what you know of your child’s intellectual and personal experience at ASD. We hope you gained insight and assurance through these visits, and as the school moves forward we will evaluate whether the efficiency of online conferences eclipses that of face to face meetings.

Looking ahead, meetings with our administrators and parent leaders confirm that another treasured ASD celebration -- International Week -- is best moved to the month of March. Rescheduling, we believe, provides us the best opportunity to celebrate the diversity of ASD and the excitement of celebrating 80+ nations inclusive of our opening ceremony, international buffet, and offerings from host country culture.

Reconnecting sometimes involves repeating past learning. Following this theme, we will spend time over the next weeks to repeat what we hope are helpful messages for parents regarding the communication and connection tools available, inclusive of Sahifa, Teneen, and Classlink. It is important we provide parents with as much help as possible to know how to effectively and easily follow our communication and information channels.

Each week, Sahifa is sent to around 3,000 members of our ASD Community. In the past 2 weeks, approximately 55% of those who received the Sahifa email clicked a link in that email to access various pages in Sahifa. In total, Sahifa is accessed by approximately 1,700 members of our community every Thursday afternoon, with some viewing on Friday mornings.

We also want to say thank you to the many members of our community that completed the questionnaire about our guiding statements. In doing so, you have helped shape the future guiding messages of our school - our Identity, Mission, Vision and Core Values. Additional details regarding ways you can contribute to the direction of our guiding statements will be shared in the coming weeks.

Lastly, we also want to share a friendly reminder based on our school core values of Respect and Responsibility. We have a responsibility to be gracious neighbors and want to remind our community that during pick up and drop off we must all be courteous to the many families who live in the surrounding area of the school. If your family is using a service for pick up and drop off of your students, please relay our message as well.

Sincerely,

Steve Razidlo

Director of the American School of Doha