Christmas Greetings from our Managing Directors

Dear Parents,

How wonderful it was to finally celebrate such an enjoyable Christmas concert again yesterday in our whole school community after a break of 2 years. We hope you were able to thaw out at home and still keep the celebration warm in your memories. We enjoyed it very much and we hope that you and your children enjoyed it as well.

Just like our Christmas concert, what remains in our minds and hearts for 2022 is that we were finally able to hold our standard school events again, and out of sheer motivation because of this, our team “invented” some new events. Despite of Corona, we started with Carnival in February 2022, then continued with our Platanus & Friends charity run, a table football tournament, the Open Mic event, a school-wide chess tournament, Sports week, Spirit week, Summer Fair, Sports day, Halloween, Magic Movie Night and many different competitions.

We have grown as a team with many new colleagues, new ideas and competences since the beginning of this school year! We have been able to strengthen our staff in many subject areas and would like to take this opportunity to thank our entire team for their work with our students, their passion and the special spirit that makes up our school community. Especially after the autumn holidays, when the wave of flu, RSV, colds and Corona had us firmly in its grip and brought our substitute team to the brink of despair for the first time, our colleagues gave their very best to enable the school days to go on as smoothly as possible without cancelling lessons.

We invested significantly in the future of Platanus in 2022 and completed various building measures. We can hardly believe that all this happened within one year: the Second House was opened in January; in May, the new Nawi room 2 and preparation room were inaugurated; at the end of the school year, the schoolyard, our Green Space, the chill-out area, a new playground, various new flower beds and plants and a freshly paved courtyard area C shone in a new, fresh, green splendour. The Digital Pact and significant additional investments from our school budget allowed for many purchases, such as new Surfaces and Surface cases, a completely re-equipped PC Lab, new staff laptops, new server and network technology, a fibre optic internet connection, better Wifi coverage and, last but not least, Active Panels in all classrooms and subject rooms.

Next year we will continue full of enthusiasm and our big new project – the construction of the Upper Secondary School at Platanus – will take on more and more concrete form, both in terms of pedagogical content and construction planning. Both you and your children are cordially invited to participate and contribute your own ideas and suggestions.

As 2022 draws to a close, it has been a challenging year – certainly for all of us. The Corona pandemic last winter kept us busy with record numbers of sick children and colleagues in January and February. When that seemed almost over, the unbelievable war in Ukraine began, combined with the desire to help and support where possible and at the same time new worries, uncertainties, tasks and ultimately leading to the energy crisis and inflation, which affect us all. The German Language Society has chosen the term “Zeitenwende” as the word of the year 2022.

As a school, we meet the challenges of these times with education, a good dose of resilience and, despite everything, an ever-confident view of the future.

We thank you for your trust, support and feedback this year, and now wish you and your family a well-deserved, restful and wonderful Christmas and a good and happy start into the new year of 2023!

Warm regards

Kristin Wendorf & Dr Karen Krüger
Managing Directors of Platanus Bildungs gGmbH

Addendum: At our Winter Christmas Market we were able to collect a total of 1314.83 EUR for the charity organisation “Save the Children” for the children in Yemen.