Community and Sustainability
Perhaps the most challenging types of enrichment activities to continue in an online format are in the realms of community and sustainability, where our actions directly impact the lives of others within BIS and within the HCMC community. Our Community Partners need our support, and we are continuing to provide this through fundraising activities and CAS projects, including joining the Marathon Walk for Blue Dragon Children’s Foundation.
Our sustainability-focused Virtual CCAs and activities are encouraging students to keep working towards a more sustainable lifestyle while they are at home, from actively reusing or recycling household plastic through the annual Plastic Diet House Challenge and making EcoBricks, to reducing their carbon footprint by cleaning up their emails and documents held online. You’d be surprised how much of an impact deleting old emails can have!
Student Leadership
And finally, a word about Student Leadership at BIS during Virtual Learning. Student Voice and Student Participation in the life of the school is perhaps now more important than ever, and across all of our campuses we are making sure to foster connections and keep our development projects going by appointing our new Student Leaders. Our House Captain team from Year 6 and above is poised to develop even more House events and activities, to enable students to both collaborate and compete with each other across sporting, creative, and intellectual pursuits, some leading into being chosen to represent BIS in NAE competitions. Our CCA Leaders are providing fantastic opportunities for students to connect, and very soon our Year 10 Pastoral Mentors will help to run Form Time Activities for our younger students. Our Subject Ambassadors are also supporting departments with the IGCSE and IBDP Options processes that are under way for our Year 9 and Year 11 students, providing them with advice about particular subject content and lessons. Our Student Council will be sharing how their Form Classes are coping with Virtual School, helping us to continue to improve our provision with their input, and at the Junior Campus our newly elected Student Council Executive Committee have begun meeting with Ms Dee and Mr Anthony Woolley, PSHE Leader. Their first task is to support our new students to BIS and as such will be meeting with all new students in the coming weeks for some peer to peer support. We look forward to student leaders from across all three campuses working together to have a positive impact on students, particularly their wellbeing during this period of virtual learning.
As you can see, there are so many opportunities for students at BIS, even within the Virtual School Experience. It’s important that we maintain our community spirit and commitment to each other even when we cannot physically be together. After all, a school is not a building; it’s a group of people, working together, to achieve amazing outcomes.