Prize giving, fine music and drama performances and moving speeches from our outgoing Head Girl Astrid McKinley and Head Boy Parker Floris saw out the 2020 academic year.
Students achieved awards for their best efforts and achievements, and cheers greeted Principal Shauna Colnan’s announcement that Grace Truman and Orlando Read will be Head Girl and Head Boy for 2021.
Ms Colnan spoke of the theme COLLABORATE! which she had chosen for the January 2020 staff conference, and how dedicated teachers, colleagues, students and families worked generously together to keep IGS as safe as possible and further students’ learning despite the pandemic.
“In 2020 we saw with sharp clarity the essential role that schools play in our society and in the life of a child and a family,” Ms Colnan said.
“We also saw that a school like ours, with all its energy and optimism can lift us up.
“It can also wrap itself around us with warmth and kindness. And that’s our vision for tonight, to mark the end of this year with a celebration of IGS in all its vibrancy.”
Ms Colnan praised and congratulated the graduating Class of 2020 and wished them well, and announced Sebastian Saltos Palmer as the winner of the 2020 Global Scholar’s Prize for his winning essay on COVID-19.
Ms Colnan also paid tribute to ballerina and After Care Coordinator Manuela Bachmann, “other mum to generations of students, … storyteller extraordinaire and one of the much-loved legends of IGS” and thanked her for the role she and her husband, Till, played in the formation of IGS in late 1983.
