Dear MIS Families,
What was your favourite event from school year 2024/25?
So many wonderful events made this past school year memorable and unique. Can you remember any of these examples?
- The grand opening of our new Learning Nexus
- The Schultütenfest with Grade 1 students and families
- Check, please! & 15-minute Hamlet, our SrS theatre productions
- The first-ever MIS vs. BIS varsity basketball derby
- The Grade 8 Winter Market
- Mahalo – the specially themed PTV staff appreciation lunch
- The Addams Family, our MS musical theatre production
- Our literacy week readings in more than a dozen different languages
- Our first-ever Grade 4 overnight excursions
- The Middle School House competitions
- Our PTV-led Frühlingsfest (in the pouring rain!)
- The Jungle Book, our JS singing and dancing extravaganza!
- The visit of more than 20 industry professionals to our Pathways Day
- The visit of MIS parent-alum, Dr. Eva Umlauf, who shared lessons from her life as an Auschwitz survivor
- Our Grade 12 graduation at the Prinzregententheater
- The JS multi-age sports day in the glorious Bavarian Spring sun
- The PYP Exhibition
- These are just a few of things that spring to mind – not included are grade-level retreats, athletics and academic competitions, and the huge range of student life activities.
School life at MIS is busy, vibrant, student-centered, and, sometimes, exhausting! And we wouldn’t have it any other way.
All of the wonderful experiences that make an MIS education impactful, memorable, and unique are possible because of people. Teachers, staff members, our Parent-Teacher Verein, parents, alumni, Board members, coaches and many more people contribute their expertise, their time, their creativity, their energy, and . . . well . . . they just do a lot of hard work to make extraordinary things happen for our lucky students. And I want to take the opportunity of this installment of your MIS Weekly Update to THANK all of these people.
In a school where hundreds of well-planned lessons and learning experiences are taking place each day, and dozens and dozens of special, large-scale events are densely packed into our annual calendar, it may appear like it all happens automatically. It may seem like all of these things are easy, simple, or even effortless to organize. But that could not be further from the truth!
Roger Federer gave a graduation speech last year at Dartmouth College in the United States. In his speech, he complained that commentators often got his game all wrong:
People would say my play was effortless. Most of the time, they meant it as a compliment...
But it used to frustrate me when they would say, “He barely broke a sweat!” or “Is he even trying?”
The truth is, I had to work very, very hard... to make it look easy. I spent years whining... swearing… throwing my racket…
Federer went on to explain to the university graduates that hard things look easy for some people because their investment of enormous amounts of effort, energy, and hard work go unseen. It looks easy at the moment when it all comes together. But loads of invisible hard work is the reason that the final product can look easy. And a school community can be similar. At MIS numerous interlocking gears are turning each day in order to keep this huge clock ticking. This whole organization, made of over 300 employees, more than 900 families, and over 1,300 students, accomplishes wonderful things because deeply caring and committed people do the hard work required to make them happen.
And, therefore, I want to THANK YOU.
Maybe you are one of the many parents who volunteered dozens of hours to the school (in the case of the PTV Board, the Board of Directors, and some of our athletics parents it’s probably HUNDREDS of hours).
Or perhaps you are a teacher who gave up evenings, weekends, and holidays to plan and chaperone special student activities and trips.
Or maybe you’re an alumnus who mentors the next generation of professionals and shares your expertise through Pathways Day or through an internship at your company.
Or perhaps you’re a donor who funded student trips or made our Fitness and Athletics Building or our Learning Nexus possible.
Whatever you contributed to make this a year of extraordinary learning experiences at Munich International School, THANK YOU!
I look forward to working together with you in school year 2025/26 to create another wonderful year of inspiring, challenging, and empowering learning.
With gratitude,
Tim Thomas
Head of School