Dear FIS Community,
Yesterday, we welcomed our students back to school and officially began a new academic year. There is always something special about these first days: familiar faces returning, new friendships beginning, classrooms coming to life again, and the sense of possibility that comes with a fresh start.
This year, that sense of possibility feels particularly meaningful as we begin to bring our new Mission and Vision to life.
As shared in our final newsletter of the last school year, the Board, Extended Leadership Team and our wider community worked together over several months to develop two new guiding statements that reflect who we are as a school and where we aspire to go together:
Our Mission:
To inspire our community of lifelong learners to grow through an engaging and challenging curriculum, to thrive together in a welcoming and supportive environment – to boldly and joyfully meet the future.
Our Vision:
Reimagining what’s possible in education.
During our Prep Days, we concluded our work together as staff by beginning to unpack what these statements mean for us in our everyday work. Over the coming months, this will become an important conversation across our entire community. We want to explore not only what these words mean, but what they look like in action – in our classrooms, in our relationships, in the decisions we make, and in the experiences we create for our students.
I had the opportunity to explore this with students in 11B yesterday morning, when I was covering for their advisor. One of our students, Emilia, captured beautifully what these statements can become for us: “They are our compass which will guide us.”
I could not have put it better. Our Mission and Vision are not simply words to display on a wall or website. They are intended to be our compass – helping us navigate decisions, set priorities and keep our focus on what matters most as we shape the future of the FIS.
The next step will be to define our strategic direction in greater detail. We will begin this work with a strategic retreat involving our Board of Directors and Extended Leadership Team, once again guided by our external consultant, Abbi DeLessio. Certainly, this conversation will not remain within our leadership teams. We look forward to continuing to engage our wider community in exploring what our Mission and Vision mean for the FIS and, most importantly, how we can bring them to life.
Our next opportunity to explore our new guiding statements together will be our Coffee Morning on October 19. Please mark the date in your calendars – we would love to continue this conversation with you.
Welcoming New Members to Our Community
We are also delighted to begin the new school year with so many new members of our community. More than 80 new students have joined the FIS, bringing our total enrollment to approximately 750 students. We are also very pleased to welcome 14 new faculty and staff members and three FSJ (Freiwilliges Soziales Jahr) participants, who will spend the year contributing to our school community.
Every new member brings their own experiences, perspectives and stories, adding another layer to the rich diversity of the FIS. At the same time, we have created new roles to strengthen our support for students and our continued development as a school.
Among these is our new DEIJB Coordinator, whose role will help ensure that important topics around diversity, equity, inclusion, justice and belonging are meaningfully embedded in school life. Our ambition is for this work to happen by design, not by chance.
We have also added a Student Mentor to our Secondary Team, providing an additional layer of support for our teenagers as they grow into young adults and navigate the many challenges of daily life, both inside and outside school.
As we begin this new chapter, I am excited about what lies ahead. A new school year inevitably brings challenges, but it also gives us the opportunity to ask questions, try new things, learn from one another and, together, reimagine what is possible.
I wish all our students, families and staff a fun, successful and inspiring start to the 2026/27 school year. May it be a year in which we continue to grow, thrive together and – true to our new Mission – boldly and joyfully meet the future.
I look forward to seeing many of you at our first Secondary Parent Information Night on Thursday, September 3.
Warm regards,
Petra Niemczyk
Head of School
