Summer News and Back to
School 2022
Summer is the time to do
all the necessary maintenance work needed on campus. This year it was
time for the building of Industrial Mechanics and Car Mechanics to get a
full paint-job. This building was not painted
for the last twenty years. It was due for a major job. Workshops, classes, windows, and doors,
both inside and out, were painted and restored to a clean fresh look.
We transformed one of the large rooms in the building to a teachers' and
trainers' lounge. For some strange reason only the academic teachers had
a lounge. It was time to correct this and make sure teachers and
trainers of the vocational department had their lounge too.
Two main sewage pipes serving the building of BBH3 (Boys Boarding Home 3),
the Kindergarten, gate-house, and the main office building were replaced
with new ones. Roots of trees had penetrated the old sewage pipes and
completely blocked them. A new sewage pipe was connected from BBH3 to
the recently installed one of the Seminar building. The three buildings of the main
office, gate-house, and kindergarten were connected to the
public sewage system with a new pipe.
All paint-jobs that were needed around the school were done.
Maintenance
work was also conducted around the campus as necessary.
Our dear friend Rolf Bartel travelled from Germany and stayed in JLSS
from 25 September till 2 October 2022. He provided training to Mr.
George Shawool who is in charge of the Energy Department. He supervised
his work and provided him with the technical know-how in adjusting and
controlling all central heating and solar systems. We thank Rolf for
continuing to support our school with his technical expertise helping us
make huge savings on diesel expenditure year after year.
We thank
SVS (Schweizer Verein für die
Schneller Schulen im Nahen Osten ) for supporting his travel
expenses.
SVS also kindly supported the Summer School program which was held from
12 till 23 September. Underperforming children of the junior school were
given extra lessons to help them get ready for the coming school year.
We thank SVS for supporting our Summer School programs year after year.
The new teachers who joined our team the last few years didn't have any
training in using Microsoft 365 in teaching. We organized a two-day
training seminar for them to ensure they can shift to this modern
system. The seminar was conducted on 22 and 23 September by Mr. Ziad
elSamad of Midway Data Systems, our Microsoft local partner. The
training included OneNote, OneNote Class Notebook, Teams, Forms, and
other elements of Microsoft 365. This badly needed training will help new teachers
meet our
requirement to use this modern system in teaching. Our new teachers can
now enhance the learning experience of children and bring their teaching methods to the twenty-first century
on a par with the rest of the Schneller team.
The number of student applications this year was huge, especially for
joining the boarding school. This was due to the economic crisis in
Lebanon that pushed 80% of the Lebanese population below the poverty line.
Most public schools have a low standard of education.
The wages of public school teachers are so low now they are not enough
to pay for transportation to reach schools. Teachers have been objecting
to their desperate situation through endless strikes.

The very high fees of private schools restrict them to the very rich.
The reasons above explain why we had so many applications this year.
We
are now operating the boarding department at full capacity with many
applications on the waiting list.
The new academic year began with Grade 9 of the academic department
starting classes on 19 September. All other classes started lessons on
30 October 2022.
The start of the academic year 2022/2023 was transformed into a very
joyful one through the visit of Rev. Dr. Fabian Vogt and producer Parviz
Mir Ali from Germany. They stayed in JLSS form 21 till 28 October to
produce the JLSS version of the EMS (Evangelical
Mission in Solidarity) jubilee song: "Together We are Free".
Our children had a fabulous time that week while Fabian had the
challenge of teaching them the song and Parviz toiled on his
film-making.
We look forward to watching the final version.
We thank Fabian and Parviz for their wonderful visit, the joyful time
they gave our children, and especially for helping JLSS produce its
version of the jubilee song.
We express our sincere gratitude to EVS/EMS for all the support we
receive covering every aspect of our program and enabling JLSS to
continue its special mission to underprivileged children.
