Please find the Senior School Reopening protocols:  HERE

Aug 7, 2020 

Dear Senior School Families, 

I write this note filled with much excitement, heaps of appreciation and to be truly honest, a little bit of apprehension. Never before have I written a welcome note to start a school year that included terms like ‘reopening’, ‘state quarantine’, or ‘socially distancing’ but the global pandemic caused by the Covid19 virus has forced the entire world into a new and unprecedented reality where these terms will be very common in our lexicon going forward. 

Back to the excitement part, I speak on behalf of the SS team when I say ‘We’ are very excited at the prospects of students, parents and colleagues on campus again. We are REOPENING and with that the normal excitement that a new school year brings is very much amplified this year and we are excited to meet, greet and get connected again with everyone very soon! 

We hope you’ve had an enjoyable, restful and pleasant summer. As a SS leadership team, we have attempted to strike a balance between rejuvenation, rest and staying in touch with the ever changing reality the Covid19 pandemic has continued to impose globally and therefore on Thailand and our Prem community. In doing so we’ve kept our focus on planning for the reopening noted above in a safe, effective and in line with current best practices from other international schools around the world. And… we look forward with positive anticipation of coming together as a SS team with our fellow Prem colleagues tapping into the resilience, agility, flexibility that we’ve witnessed over and over last term and through the summer holiday. 

With this note we want to point you to our Reopening Prem Protocols shared in this edition of Community News and also available on our website. This document represents our current planning and implementation of procedures that will go towards reopening our Prem campus to make it possible for us to come back together and continue face-to face (f2f) learning in the safest possible manner. 

At the same time we are acutely aware that staff and students and their families who are outside of Thailand are facing complications trying to re-enter Thailand related to the country’s closed borders and strict quarantine protocols. Recognizing this … we anticipate beginning the school year in a Blended Learning model. While we hope to have as many students face to face (f2f) we realize that students, for various reasons, will be unable to be face to face and thus we will provide an online learning experience. 

Blended Learning (face-to-face and online learning) 

As we look at transitioning back to f2f learning at Prem’s beautiful campus, we find ourselves in a blended learning environment (where some students remain socially-distanced, but they can still 

engage with the learning in the classroom through our rigorous online provision.) The goal will ultimately be to develop our blended model that will support all students who begin the year distant to successfully transition back to face to face learning (f2f). Plans are to share out with our SS community more details of what our Blended Learning will look like in the coming week as we start to welcome some new teachers and our extended leadership colleagues back to campus. 

Once again we hope this note finds every SS family member doing well and starting to anticipate reopening Prem for this our 20th year. Thank you for your commitment to us and your patience and resilience you’ve shown through this unprecedented time at Prem, in Chiang Mai and Thailand, and around the world. I leave you with a quote from the head of the World Health Organization, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who is urging us all to come together… 

“COVID-19 has already taken away so much. We must seize this moment to come together in national unity and global solidarity to control COVID-19, address antimicrobial resistance and the climate crisis. … It’s not just the smart choice, it’s the right choice and it’s the only choice we have.” 

Wishing everyone a safe and pleasant week ahead. 

Sincerely, 

Jeff Marquis Senior School Principal for the SS team