Director's Wave | Volume 5 Edition 15

Something to Ponder
“Who breaks a resolution is a weakling; who makes one is a fool.” - Farquhar McGillivray Knowles

Happy New Year - may 2025 be generous to you in health, happiness and peace. Welcome to the 2025 portion of our school year to our incumbent families. Welcome too, to our new students and families who are joining CIS in January.

Family School Association, Yard Sales, and International Festivals
We hope to see you at the next FSA (Family School Association) meeting on Tuesday 14 January at 6:00pm in the MPR. Our parent conferences and parent coffees are good sources of information, as are our handbooks. Digital and print resources provide many avenues to communicate, but face-to-face time is still very important. Learning celebrations, sports tournaments, performances, activities, parent meetings and much more, all provide great opportunities to come to CIS.

Two upcoming family events at CIS this month include,

• The Great Declutter Yard Sale on Saturday 18 January 2025 from 7:00 am to 12:00 pm.
• International Festival on Saturday 1 February 2025 from 2:00 pm to 5:00 pm.

The Earth’s Largest Land Animal, Math, Roads, Parking Lots, Courtesy, Newton’s First and Third Laws

• Roads, Parking Lots and Courtesy - The weeks of a new calendar year when students resume schools involves families settling and adjusting their routines of student pick-up and drop-off. Inevitably, this means greater traffic in the parking lot and roads near CIS at the start of a calendar year. This is exacerbated this time of year with the volume of rental cars on the roads and an increase of drivers who may be less familiar with driving in the Cayman Islands. Please drive with care, watch for people and be patient with fellow drivers. The speed limit within and around our campus is 15 mph (24 km/h). Our security team and others will be visible in the parking area to assist with the safe flow of cars and people, yet ultimately we count on you to drive with care and courtesy. 
• Math, Maps, Road Safety, Newton’s First and Third Laws and the Earth’s Largest Land Animal - To hopefully further illustrate the societal importance of road safety the following example is shared. The drive from Barkers National Park to Rum Point going the long way around through the East End is 44 miles or 71 kilometres. The average speed limit (factoring the stretch of road that is 50 miles per hour and other stretches that are 40 miles per hour and 25 miles per hour) is 40 miles per hour. Thus to drive at the speed limit, it takes 1 hour and 6 minutes to drive from Barkers to Rum Point going the long way. If you drive 25% over the speed limit (which is 50 miles per hour) it would take 53 minutes. Speeding, in this case allows one to traverse the island by road 13 minutes faster. The speeding fines in the Cayman Islands is 20 KYD per mile per hour over the speed limit. Therefore saving 13 minutes to travel the island could cost 200 KYD. If one was in an accident at 50 miles per hour, whilst saving this “precious” 13 minutes traversing the island the impact would feel like being squished by 181,000 pounds or about 18 African Elephants. If one was in an accident at 40 miles per hour, traversing the island using the speed limit, the impact would feel like being squished by 116,000 pounds or a mere 11 African Elephants. It is important to note that the above is assuming the person forgot to put on a seatbelt. If the person was wearing their seatbelt in the above example and speeding the impact would only feel like being squished by 4 African Elephants. For a person wearing a seatbelt and driving the speed limit, it would feel like being squished by just 2 African Elephants.

Youtube, Super Marios Bros, Meta, Snapchat, Instagram, Sleep, Vegetables and Walking

• Digital tools, devices and platforms clearly have a lot of power. Fortunately, much of their power can be leveraged for learning and unfortunately, much of their power can also be deterrents to learning and community, as well as personal function. To help further support learning, resilience and community, please be mindful of social media and cell phone use.
• It is unequivocal that proper rest, appropriate nutrition and regular exercise help us learn and contribute positively to physical and social/emotional health. The above can be easier said than done. Nonetheless, please do all you can to ensure your child is well rested, eats well and engages in movement. And if all else fails, in the words of the Smothers Brothers, “Red meat is not bad for you, now blue-green meat, that is bad for you.”

Thank you for being part of the CIS Community. On behalf of the CIS team, warm wishes to all students and families in 2025. Wishing you health, happiness, peace and first steps in 2024 - may 2025 provide you enough strength to keep a new year resolution and enough wits to make difficult enough yet plausible.

Sincerely,

Jim Urquhart
Director - Cayman International School