IB in Action: How Year 12 Students Are Leading the 2026 Fall Festival

On Thursday, November 5, 2026, BISC-SL’s Year 12 students will present the annual Fall Festival. Four teams of Year 12 students handling marketing, operations, stalls, and activities have been collaborating to plan a wonderful celebration of Halloween and the fall season!

We have planned a variety of fun activities for the school community to enjoy. This year, the Fall Festival will feature everything from bounce houses, trick-or-treating, and fall games to “pie the teacher,” a photobooth, and school band performances! Plus, it wouldn’t be a festival without plenty of treats to eat!

On top of being an exciting student-led community event, Fall Festival is an opportunity to support something greater, as all proceeds from the celebration will go towards the Year 12’s service work in Tanzania in February.

Supporting Service Work

Every year, our school’s Year 12s have the incredible opportunity to travel to Tanzania and get involved in important service work for local communities. We work with two NGOs to work on service and sustainability projects in the Arusha region of Tanzania, giving back, gaining new perspectives, and developing as global citizens.

Planning the Fall Festival gives us the chance to start getting involved early. Over the course of three months, we collaborate with local businesses, sponsors, and members of the school community.

All proceeds from sponsorship and selling BISCoin is donated to Umoja and Seeway Tanzania, the organizations that we get to work with in Tanzania. Last year, the Fall Festival raised about $18,000 for building girls’ dorms for a school in Tanzania to ensure they could be safe when traveling to school.

This is an incredibly unique and powerful partnership that we are excited to continue to support through the 2026 Fall Festival!

IB Learner Profile

Organizing the Fall Festival is also a key part of the International Baccalaureate (IB) program completed by years 12 and 13. Planning the Fall Festival is a weekly opportunity to get service experience relevant to the IB’s CAS (Creativity, Activity, Service) core component. It is a service experience which we will reflect on to grow as learners.

This community and service work integrates many important elements of the IB Learner Profile. Between developing communication skills throughout the school community, approaching risk-taking with critical thought, and being reflective upon our experiences, leading the Fall Festival links directly to the core attributes of the IB program.

Teamwork and Collaboration

Our team – Marketing, Finance, & Sponsorship – has been diligently tracking the festival’s budget, since every dollar saved on the event goes to funding service work in Tanzania. We have contacted parents and talked to local businesses about sponsoring elements of the festival, created standardized branding and posters, written this blog post, and much more!

The Operations team oversees the important aspects of catering and navigation. They have mapped the areas involved in the Fall Festival, talked to our food provider to schedule and price the catering, and designed signage for the food stalls.

Meanwhile, the Entertainment & Activities team has been busy ensuring the event is lively by auditioning and booking musical performances from school bands and writing purchase orders for activities like bounce houses!

The Stalls & Community team has the critical job of planning the event’s activity stalls! From trick-or-treating to “pie the teacher” to fun games, they are busy designing the activities, finding reusable materials from inventory, and purchasing any needed new materials.

We have all been working together during weekly meetings to prepare for November 5, when the event will take place throughout school classrooms, the gym, and the field!

Please enjoy the Fall Festival!

We look forward to presenting the Fall Festival on November 5! We invite the BISC-SL community to enjoy the event, which has been passionately put together by your Year 12 group in support of Umoja and Seeway Tanzania!