House Spirit Week 2021
House Spirit Week
The week commencing on Monday the 18th of October was House Spirit Week at Dulwich International High School Suzhou. House Spirit week was a week full of events and fun activities that was complemented by Sports Day on Thursday.
House spirit week was designed to focus both students and staff on the House system with opportunities to participate whatever their interests. The House system provides opportunities for students to grow and learn, in terms of personality, morality, creativity, knowledge and skills. The system promotes the values of fair play, teamwork, citizenship, mutual responsibility, as well as self-discipline, initiative, perseverance, and resilience. It provides opportunities to take on responsibilities, to grow and develop leadership skills and brings everyone in the school together. The House system also allows our four Houses to compete against each other in a supportive environment. The house system is part of the DNA of Dulwich International High School Suzho. For our Year 10 and IG1 students, this was their first opportunity to represent their new House.
During house spirit week, many House events took place during normal CCA time from Monday to Wednesday. These included an art competition (designing portraits of the House figure heads), a House Minecraft creative build-off competition, football, badminton and a series of House themed movie nights, showing films about each House figure head. During the Spirit Week competitions, amazing efforts were shown by all of our students, in every activity.
Here are some visual highlights of House Spirit Week
Movie Nights
Invictus (Mandela)
On Monday night, the movie in the Lecture Theatre was Invictus, a film about Nelson Mandela and the enormous challenges his presidency faced in the post-Apartheid era.
Imitation Game (Turing)
On Tuesday night, the movie was Imitation Game, about the life of Alan Turing. The film's title quotes the name of the game cryptanalyst Alan Turing proposed for answering the question "Can machines think?", in his 1950 seminal paper "Computing Machinery and Intelligence".
Radioactive (Curie)
On Wednesday night the House Movie was Radioactive, a moving biopic about the incredible life of double Nobel prize winner, Marie Curie. Mrs. Gibson brought along her pop corn machine to make the experience even more cinema like.
Soong Sisters (Soong)
On Thursday it was sports day, so the Song Sister Film (which has a fantastically long running time) was split over two nights the following week). The Soong sisters were Soong Ai-ling, Soong Ching-ling, and Soong Mei-ling, three Chinese women who were, along with their husbands, amongst China's most significant political figures of the early 20th century.
This is what Luke Webb, House Co-ordinator at Dulwich International High School Suzhou had to say about house spirit week:
"A huge thanks from me for all your involvement in our first House Spirit Week! The students have loved it and they enjoy it so much more when they see staff involved and supporting them, whether it is art, football, badminton or Minecraft. Special thanks to the Heads of Houses (Mrs Lange, Ms Adriaan, Mr Ashton and Mrs Chintapalli – as well as Mr Harrison for stepping in). Thanks also to those involved in organising the events. It wouldn’t be possible without you. Also special thanks to the night owls who stayed for the late movie nights. Also of course to Mr Rees and PE department for organising a fantastic sports day and supporting the sports events through the week."
The House Spirit week art competition produced some incredible outcomes. We clearly have some very talented artists at our school. In the competition, students had to compete to create the best artwork portrait of their house figure head. It was difficult to select the winners from each house, as the artistic standards were so high! Below photos show some of the winning art works for Houses.
