Dear Enka families, Graduations for Grade 8 and Grade 12 This Saturday 14 th June and the following 21 st will see two Graduation Ceremonies for our Enka Students. We are always proud to have our students achieve success and move onto the next step in their lives. This year we are especially happy as we have a graduation for our first ever Grade 12. They have finished their school life at Enka and are our first graduating class. It is a milestone not only in their lives, but in the life and times of our whole school community. In discussions with the two men whose dream it was to start Enka Schools, Sinan Tara and İbrahim Betil, two important ideas came through very strongly. İbrahim Bey talked of the wonderful excitement of having the dream of setting up the school and then the challenges along the way, followed by the satisfaction of seeing it now in place. His story emphasized the importance of not only having dreams to achieve, but having the determination to achieve them in spite of difficulties. It is a good reminder to all of us that the world grows into a better place when people have dreams to inspire them, along with the determination to make them happen. I wish this strength for all our graduates as they take their next steps forward. The second discussion was with Sinan Bey, and he spoke to me of the importance to Enka of the families who gave their children into our hands and trusted us to give them the best education we could. These parents joined the leaders who set up Enka Schools in wanting something better for their children and showed great courage in taking a risk to achieve something extremely worthwhile. This too is an important characteristic that I wish for all our graduates. They must have courage to stand up for what they believe in and take risks to achieve great things. We believe all of our students, not only those who are graduating this year, show just how significantly different the education is that students receive here at Enka. We are enormously proud of them all, and wish them and at this time, especially our Graduates, the very best for the future. Sports Festival and Ceremony: Last week we had a three day Enka Sports Festival here, with 20 schools from all over Istanbul and nearby competing in a variety of sports. It was a wonderful competition and I want to thank our teachers and sports teams for their organization and participation in the Festival. Results of the competitions can be found further in EI. We look forward to the Festival next year and hope we can encourage some overseas schools to participate with us. This year we will have a new Ceremony to recognize the achievements of our best sports students. These awards are being given in front of the whole school, and recognize those students who have achieved 1 st - 3rd place in local, national or international competitions. The fact that we have 160 students being given awards gives an indication of just how strong our school is in sports. We invite you to come to the ceremony at Eşref Denizhan Open Air Theater on 17 th June at 10am. Next year, we hope to extend this type of recognition to other areas such as performing arts and the Arts, as we know there are achievements in all areas of school life. Art Exhibition Sakıp Sabancı Museum and Enka Schools Enka Schools’ students will be exhibiting work from the year long collaboration between the museum and our school next week. Students have developed transdisciplinary works of art that extend ideas from the original work ‘Taksim Square’ by Nazmi Ziya Güran. There will be music and reflections on the project at the Sakıp Sabancı Museum and you are invited to join the students and their families between 7 – 9pm on Monday 16th June, at the museum. We hope to see you there as this is the first time a project like this has been done and the students are eager to share what has been accomplished. End of year thanks: It’s hard to believe that I am writing the last EI for the 2007 – 08 school year. However when one is busy, time flies, and we have certainly been busy. Every EI has been full of activities, festivals, sports achievements, news about our students’ academic achievements, international visits and visitors, art exhibitions, evening workshops for parents and weekend workshops for teachers, and more. We are a very busy community and I want to thank everyone for their contribution to making it such a successful year for Enka Schools. And by ‘everyone’ I mean everyone, from the students to the parents and the teachers, the academic support staff, the business department and the cleaning and technical staff, security and catering staff, and anyone else who had a hand in making this a wonderful and successful year. Without everyone making their individual contributions, something would have been missing and it would not be as great as it has been. My very sincere thanks to all for contributing in their own way to the success of our students. No smoking zone As you will know from public announcements, there is now no smoking allowed on any school property. This also includes prohibition of visitors smoking at functions in the school grounds. There will be signs up to remind all visitors, but you can help us by supporting the establishment of the school as a ‘No Smoking Zone’. Thanks to PTA As this is the last EI for the year, I want to thank the PTA for all their work and determination to provide opportunities for our students and support for other schools. The Fun Day celebrations were outstanding this year, and many other activities throughout the year owe part of their success to PTA support. I want to thank their President Gün Osborn for her leadership and the strong PTA team who supported her. To all members of the PTA, our sincere thanks and best wishes for a great holiday. For their final contribution to this year, they have worked on a system for helping parents buy some books second hand. See below for more details. Second hand books In the PTA section of EI you will read about the second hand book drive for Maths and Science books for Grades 6 – 12. The lists of books are given in the PTA section, and are for some specific books which will be used next year. If you would like to support this drive, please have your son or daughter donate their text book (after they have finished using it of course!) and place it in the collection box outside Enka Store. They will then be sorted and sold at the same time as the new books will be available in August and September. Please help us help them to encourage recycling, as anything that helps save trees is a good cause. Best wishes My very best wishes to you all for a wonderful summer break. Do come back rested and refreshed and ready for an exciting new year.
Darlene Fisher
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