Ice Rink Week
The International School of The Hague (ISH)
ISH is one of the largest international IB schools in Europe and with over 100 languages spoken, it’s also one of the most multi-lingual schools in the world. Coinciding with the Winter Olympics in February, the school set up a 200 square meter ice rink on campus, to create a unique learning experience for its community.
‘‘The idea of setting up an ice rink at our school came out of a conversation between the Director of Operations, Erwin Mossel, and myself. Erwin was very taken by pictures he had seen of an ice rink that had been temporarily constructed to serve a local community. We felt that after such a long period of enforced Corona restrictions, an ice rink would bring a much-needed light-hearted spark back into our school life. It would be something that students, parents and teachers would enjoy together and remember. As the idea developed, we connected it to the start of the Winter Olympics and built on the local Dutch tradition of Elfsedentocht. We had intended to open this up to everyone in the evenings so that our extended local community could come and enjoy the moment. But unfortunately, Covid restrictions prevented this from happening. We had also hoped to make this available to both secondary and primary students, but logistically with 2000 students at ISH, this proved impossible. We constructed a smaller rink instead and focused on the primary school. Every child was able to participate more than once as we simply replaced regular PE lessons with Ice Skating lessons for one week. Our PE team worked alongside a group of volunteers made up of staff members, secondary students and over 50 skating parents, who were happy to give up their time to support this great initiative.’’
‘‘The company we used to set up the ice rink arrived over the weekend and constructed the 200 square meter rink, as well as an enclosed glasshouse attached on the side, which was used to store hundreds of skates and support equipment. We employed a nightguard to oversee the facility and maintain the ice so that it was in pristine condition at the start of each day. Looking at the learning outcomes for our community, it was an outstanding success. We are still talking about it weeks later. The fact that we reached our highest attendance levels for the entire year tells its own story. Many students who had started the week barely being able to stand on ice, ended the week dancing on ice and challenging themselves to new tricks. Apart from challenging themselves physically, students engaged in numerous related activities, including writing volumes of persuasive letters asking whether it can be repeated annually. We may do, but in the meantime, we are looking into roller skating in spring, and maybe even some bungy jumping.’’
Author: Alan Lorenzini, Primary Principal at The International School of The Hague
Find out more about learning at ISH: www.ishthehague.nl
