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ISA Green Team springs to a successful start of the year

May 1, 2017/in All School, Extracurricular

The first half of 2017 has been a successful and busy period for the ISA Green Team with a number of successful events, presentations and fundraisers highlighting the school’s commitment to sustainability and environmental awareness. The ISA Green Team hosted its annual Room to Read Book Sale in April this year, with thousands of books […]

Congolese refugee shares story of risk and perseverance with ISA students

April 12, 2017/in All School, Primary School

Grade 3 students and Upper School French-language students were given an insight into the first-hand experiences of an asylum seeker when Justin, a Congolese refugee, visited ISAthe school to share his story. Brett Preiss, ISA Lower School English as an Additional Language teacher, invited Justin to come and speak with his grade 3 students as […]

ISA Green Team springs to a successful start of the year

May 1, 2017/in All School, Extracurricular

Congolese refugee shares story of risk and perseverance with ISA students

April 12, 2017/in All School, Primary School

Full Sized Blog Element (Big Preview Pic)

ISA Green Team springs to a successful start of the year

May 1, 2017/in All School, Extracurricular

The ISA Green Team hosted its annual Room to Read Book Sale in April this year, with thousands of books donated by the ISA community. It was a wonderful success, raising €7520 which will be distributed to Room to Read, a charity that provides educational scholarships for girls in developing communities.

Grade 2 student, Noga, thanked everyone who helped support the book sale, “the book sale was brilliant because we got to buy books at a great price and it was a great way donate money to help send girls to school.”

Not willing to solely rest on the success of the Book Sale, grades 2 and 3 Green Team members also hosted a parent workshop that featured over 20 tables filled with informative projects developed by the students. For the workshop, students brainstormed their passions and created group projects that highlighted environmental challenges and promoted sustainability and eco-awareness. Some of the projects included ‘Save Our Bees’ providing information about the importance of bees; ‘Lost and Found: Label Your Things’ promoting responsibility for personal items to avoid waste; and ‘Cafeteria Clean Up’, a project encouraging other students to clean up after themselves in the cafeteria.

Teaching students to think about real-world environmental challenges is reflected throughout the ISA Curriculum, particularly in the Primary Years Programme (PYP) Transdisciplinary Theme called “Sharing the Planet” which explores questions such as to how to share the finite resources of the world with all its living inhabitants. In 2016, a new strand was also added to the Social Studies Curriculum for Preschool through to grade 5 called ‘Resources and the Environment’.

Lower School Green Team Coordinator, Marta van der Meer said that being active in the Green Team provided students with another learning platform to expand on their curriculum. “The students learn through their own inquiries and discover new passions, all the while learning that they have a voice and they can make a difference.”

The Green Team has also been busily involved in other events including the second ISA Beach Clean Up which saw a large number of students, parents and staff visit Zandvoort in May to help collect all manner of beach waste while raising awareness for cleaner oceans and waterways. The vegetable and herb gardens at ISA are also flourishing in the springtime with students using their green thumbs to carefully tend to the gardens. The Green Team is a great example of the different ways that students and staff engage with real-world environmental issues to help make a difference, reflecting ISA’s commitment to building sustainable futures and communities through a variety of local projects and eco-initiatives.

Congolese refugee shares story of risk and perseverance with ISA students

April 12, 2017/in All School, Primary School

Brett Preiss, ISA Lower School English as an Additional Language teacher, invited Justin to come and speak with his grade 3 students as part of their recent unit of inquiry, Believe it or Not. The unit explores students’ understanding of beliefs and belief systems and challenges them to see how this affects their own lives and the broader world in which they live.

“We wanted to invite Justin to share his experiences and how his similar or different his beliefs and values are to those of the children.” noted Preiss.

Justin left the Republic of the Congo five years ago, and arrived in the Netherlands without a home, his family, or any local knowledge of the Dutch culture or language. In the years that followed, he was able to teach himself English and Dutch, and took advantage of social opportunities opportunities to integrate himself in the community, including joining acting classes where he met that are also attended by Preiss.

Applying the PYP to Real Life

The PYP curriculum has a strong focus on the 10 IB Learner Profile Attributes—inquirers, knowledgeable, thinkers, communicators, principled, open-minded, caring, risk-takers, balanced and reflective. Preiss chose to use these attributes as a tool for guiding the discussion with his young students.

“We focused on the IB Learner Profile attributes and asked Justin to share how he has been a risk-taker by leaving his family and country, and moving to a totally new land.” explained Preiss.

Being an international school, this concept of relocation was familiar to the students. However, the circumstances in which Justin had to move gave them new insight into how his journey to Holland differed from theirs and allowed them to reflect on the plight of refugees and the sacrifices they must make to start life over again in a new home.

“Justin also emphasised another attribute by discussing how caring he wants to be by improving himself and his life so that he could one day be in a position to care for his family back in the Republic of the Congo.”

To that end, the school also connected Justin with the ISA IT team, after learning of his interest in video editing and development. He was shown some of the latest editing tools and software used in an ISA student’s daily life to guide him on the technologies that are shaping the future.

Preiss hopes that Justin’s connection with both his students and the Upper School French classes made a lasting impression and that both he and ISA can continue to help Justin and other refugees to get their stories out there to discover new connections in the Netherlands as they build their lives.

Justin also showed a keen interest in video editing and development, so during his visit to ISA, he was able to connect with one of the IT Station staff who showed him some of the editing tools and software used at the school.

Mr Preiss said that he invited Justin to present to students in Grade 3 who have been learning about different beliefs through a unit of inquiry called, ‘Believe It or Not’.

“We wanted to invite Justin to share his experiences and how his similar or different his beliefs and values are to the children. We also focus on the Learner Profile attributes and we wanted Justin to share how he has been a risk-taker by leaving his family and country, and moving to a totally new land. Justin also emphasised how caring he wants to be by improving himself and his life so that he could one day be in a position to care for his family back in the Republic of the Congo.”

Students and staff all relished the opportunity to listen to and learn something new from Justin, and while his story was at times challenging and confronting, there was opportunity to be inspired by his incredible story of perseverance through adversity.

“For Justin, this visit was a really memorable and rewarding experience, because he truly believes his story should be shared and that by doing so he is able to help our students and others appreciate what they have” noted Preiss.

“He wants to inspire others to help each other and I think he has done that. I know I’ve been inspired by the fact that he has been able to remain true to himself and his beliefs and values, despite having everything taken away from him. He’s overcome obstacles and really taught the children that once you achieve something you really should give back to help make things better in this world.”

Half Sized Blog Element (Single Author Style)

Half Sized Blog Element (Multi Author Style)

ISA Green Team springs to a successful start of the year

Congolese refugee shares story of risk and perseverance with ISA students

ISA Green Team springs to a successful start of the year

Congolese refugee shares story of risk and perseverance with ISA students

Full Sized Blog Element (Big Preview Pic)

ISA Green Team springs to a successful start of the year

Congolese refugee shares story of risk and perseverance with ISA students

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