November Flag Raising Ceremony: Wellbeing, Every Day
The fragrance of sweet-scented osmanthus blossoms filled the air in autumn and the sound of books filled the campus. The most pleasant season of the year has arrived, and it is a time of harvest. On November 14th, SUIS Qingpu held its third combined Flag-raising Ceremony, hosted by the Middle School. The theme for this particular ceremony was “Every day is Wellbeing”.
Wellbeing can be interpreted as “happiness and peace in life, with comfort and pleasure in both body and mind”. This month, we used wellbeing as the key term to help focus our thoughts and discussions among our students and teachers.
The Middle School’s Dragon Dance CCA members gave us a fiery and exhilarating opening performance. The two long dragons looked upon us with bright eyes, and proceeded through a series of different moves, inseparable from the performing students’ dedication to their task.
For late autumn, the fragrance of sweet-scented osmanthus is one of the most important features of the season. Every golden autumn, its flowers are in full bloom and its scent so noticeable around the campus. Osmanthus has beautiful meanings in both Eastern and Western cultures. During our first “Golden Osmanthus Festival”, we arranged many acitivities such as smelling osmanthus, tasting osmanthus honey, folding osmanthus branches, singing osmanthus songs, and observing osmanthus flowers, bringing great joy to all.
A few weeks ago, Chinese teachers from Grade 6 led their students to appreciate, smell, photograph and write about osmanthus. Lessons were moved from the classroom to the osmanthus tree. While appreciating and feeling the beauty of osmanthus, they took pictures of osmanthus from their own unique perspectives to reflect on and record their ‘wellbeing’ in life. After that, they made bilingual posters about the flowers, creating bilingual poems accompanied by their unique osmanthus pictures. Class 6A’s Andy Hu and 6E’s Miley Yu shared their experiences and feelings after participating in the Osmanthus Festival.
For this Flag-raising Ceremony, we also invited Co-Principals Ms. Sunny Huang and Dr. Adam Neufield to unveil the placard announcing the opening of the “Grade 6 Osmanthus Photo Exhibition”.
A small osmanthus flower can bring us such rich wellbeing feelings. In fact, wellbeing will always be with us if we have hearts that love life and pairs of eyes that are good at discovering happiness. Teachers and students from the three divisions also shared about their own wellbeing experience.
Each grade from our primary school invited a representative to share about their wellbeing happiness. For Grade 1 students, who have just recently become primary students, happiness is a big playground and delicious meals; Grade 2 children think that happiness comes from the lovely teachers and classmates in the school, from their aunts and uncles, and also from various activities; Grade 3 students shared that wellbeing comes from the diversity of world cultures, from experiencing the charm of Chinese traditions, and from experiencing the infinite joy of learning; fourth-grade students found their own wellbeing from their interests and the highlights in their wonderful classrooms with their teachers; Grade 5 children reviewed their past five years at SUIS Qingpu and shared with us the happiness of growing up.
Jason Guo, a student from Grade 9, spoke about his successful experience of setting up a Science Club – he has always had a strong interest in science. His Science Club has developed and grown through the guidance of his teachers and continues to attract members. What is more, the Club has thus far published two original articles.
In this harvest season, high school students in our first graduating class, the Class of 2023, entered the final stages of the university application process. Grade 12 student Elvis Wong shared his thoughts about how to prepare application materials and essay writing patiently and meticulously, and how to co-exist while under pressure. Everyone was able to genuinely experience his particular method for maintaining wellbeing – to persevere in expoloring himself.
Indeed, there is a need to maintain wellbeing every day. Wellbeing needs to be felt from various experiences, needs to be experienced through mutual help and love, and needs to be created in daily learning and life. It is our wish and hope that you all cherish the moment and keep discovering your own wellbeing!