New International School of Thailand
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The New International School of Thailand (NIST) is an international school located at Sukhumvit Soi 15 in the downtown area of Bangkok, Thailand. It is widely considered as Bangkok's most elite international school, as it attracts families affiliated with embassies, large non-governmental organizations, and multinational corporations. These entities pay for the education of the children of their white-collared employees, and such families are considered highly desirable by international schools.
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[edit] Nist Logo
Due to the copyright issues that wikipedia exerts, the Nist Logo cannot be pasted on to the Wikipedia page, however, a short description will achieve the same effect. The Nist Logo is an isoceles triangle, the two base angles are both of 45 degrees and with the top angle at a right angle, often discussed in Mr. Mick's math class for its useful educational properties. The triangle consists of a round circle along with a star of five edges to the right of the triangle. The background of the triangle is black most of the times, however, when printed with color ink, these background linkes look blue suprisingly. Nist Logo can be found on the Nist Home Page, however, you can also spot them easily in schools, luckily, they appear to be on the top left corner of student's uniforms.
[edit] History
The school opened its doors to students in 1992. The founding of the school was assisted by a seed grant from the United Nations. The Nist campus is owned by the Church of Christ, which has given the school a 30-year lease.
[edit] Class naming system
Unlike most schools, NIST uses the "Year" system. The first year of kindergarten is called Early Year 1, the second called Early Year 2. The third year of kindergarten is called Year 1, the second Year 2 and so forth right up until Year 13 (Grade 12). In genearl, all year groups are sub-divided into 4 groups, in elementary, these groups are name after the the teachers' first letter of the firstname with the first letter of the lastname, and the groups are then called: "(year level)(first letter firstname)(first letter of lastname). An typical example would be (5AB). This teacher would have his/her firstname starting with A, and lastname starting with B, and he/she is teaching year 5. However, the class naming becomes more complicated in the secondary school, because an English alphabet from A-D is automatically assigned to the choosen group of the four groups in each year. The selection of the alphabet is still a mistery and the school official alphabet chooser is unwilling to explain how these letters are chosen.
[edit] Curriculum
Nist has two schools on the same campus: the Elementary School and the Secondary School. Nist is an IB World School that runs all three academic programs of the International Baccalaureate Organization (IBO). These are the Primary Years Program (PYP), for students aged 3 - 11, the Middle Years Program (ages 11 - 16) and the IB Diploma Program (ages 16 - 18).
The school is run by a not-for-profit organization, the Foundation for International Education. That organization chooses a board of directors, who are elected from the body of parents. The primary task of the board of directors is to select the Head of School. The current Head of School is Mr. Simon Leslie, an Australian who was working in Tanzania before joining Nist. He replaced the popular and much loved Keith Wecker Nist serves families from more than 40 countries, with an approximate enrollment of 1350 students.
Nist markets itself as a "truly international school," meaning that it does not adhere to the national system of any one country but combines the best of many national systems with its own educational philosophy. The teaching staff come from Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the United States, and a host of other nations. Most of the teaching staff are recruited at international job fairs.
As part of the curriculum, Nist Students learn a Language Other Than English (LOTE). The choices include Spanish, Mandarin, French, German, Finnish, Thai, Hindi, Japanese, and more.
[edit] Nist Portal & New Technology
Since the academic year of 2005-06, Year 10s have been using tablet PC's as substitutes of text books and work books. This huge achievement in the technology department has made a very positive results. Therefore, the experiment of tablet PC's have been successfully promoted to the current Year 10s. Most recently, in the academic year 2006-7, tablets and laptops have been offered on a optional basis to years 12 and 13.
There has also been a development in a section of the Nist website called the "Nist Portal", it is a server where works, homeworks and other academic related files are stored and obtained.
[edit] Sports Teams
Nist athletic teams compete in the Bangkok International Schools Athletic Conference (BISAC) and the Southeast Asian Schools Athletic Conference (SEASAC). Nist excels in basketball, soccer, volleyball and softball at the varsity level, frequently finishing first in local and international tournaments, both for girls and boys. Nist also has varsity teams for tennis, badminton, swimming and rugby. Nist teams are called "The Falcons" after the school's sport mascot. They play in blue and silver/grey/white.
