Well done to the boys that completed this years Escalade race in the centre of Geneva. The weather was far from perfect but this did not dampen spirits and even raised the satisfactions levels on completion as it required that little extra grit and determination.

This weeks wellbeing tutorial was continuing on the second pillar of Protecting against Bullying and Respecting Diversity.

This week we moved to the topic of Charity.

Firstly we started out by gaining a definition of what Charity was to us. The answers from the boys ranged from ‘giving money‘ to ‘helping someone in need‘ to ‘helping the poor be less poor‘

The definition that we will use is A charity is an organisation set up to provide help and/or raise money for those in need. Charities usually raise money through donations and have volunteers that help

We then wrote down on the whiteboard as many different charities that we knew. This was quite surprising by how few actual charities the students collectively knew. However, it also did highlight some charities that students were actively giving to or had a liking to.

The students were then shown a list of fictional charities;

They were asked to state which of these charities they would most likely give to. The top charity was ‘Hug a Dog‘. This then led to a discussion as to why they would choose to support animals instead of humans. The explanation from some was that humans can help themselves whereas we have a responsibility to look after the animals.

The second most popular choice was ‘Train the Teacher‘, students felt that educating the next generation is of vital importance. That if lower economic countries also had better education that their countries economy would benefit in the future. They also felt that having better-educated children in less developed countries would lead to an impact on all of the above-mentioned charities.

The third most popular was ‘Forest friends‘. These students felt this issue had global importance and would have an impact on more people. As with declining forests, this will have an impact on climate change which affects everyone.

We finished our tutorial by posing the question of whether we had a greater responsibility to be giving to charity as we have the ability and means to do so. This was summed up as a personal choice but also the point was made that charity is more than just giving money. We can give time to help someone. We can educate someone. We can donate clothing. We can reach out into the world and spread happiness.

Today celebrates Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving Day is an annual national holiday in the United States celebrating the harvest and other blessings of the past year. Thanksgiving occurs on the fourth Thursday in November.

Today Mr Usher and his wife hosted our American community for a wonderful meal in their home.

On Sunday this past weekend, our excursion was to Aquatis in Lausanne which is a spectacular Aquarium. Here you can travel around 5 continents of the world making your way through 12 different environments. Europe, Africa, Asia, Oceania and South America are represented with wildlife and specifically fish from those regions on display. Our students went on a guided tour around these zones and learnt about these elaborate and delicate ecosystems.

This weekend we had the 3rd School Trip of the year. The destination was Paris and we had Luther from Leman 1 joining the group. They travelled by train on Friday and returned on Sunday evening. They had a guide and members of the Boarding staff with them and were able to see all the sights of Paris. The weather was not spectacular but that did not dampen spirits and everyone enjoyed themselves.

We still have 7 more trips this year going to Europa Park, Rome, Barcelona, Vietnam Cambodia & Laos, Madrid, Copenhagen and Berlin- so please do keep this in mind.

On November 23rd, CDL borders visited the Patek Philip Museum in Geneva. Unfortunately, we couldn’t take pictures inside the museum. But there were many valuable and expensive watches there. At the museum, the guide picked up some interesting watches and explained them one by one in an easy-to-understand manner. And not only did we see the watches on display, but we also saw a repairman repairing a watch in the workplace. Even though we were looking at the repairman, he was working on the repair of the watch. I saw it and thought that professional watch repairmen were much more focused than when we were studying.

It was a very interesting and important experience. I strongly recommend going there.

By Tomohisa

This weeks wellbeing tutorial was continuing on the second pillar of Protecting against Bullying and Respecting Diversity.

This week we continued on our topic of Community Service.

Following our discussions on this last week, it was time for the boys to put words into actions. Our time was limited and our opportunities were also slim, however, the boys were challenged with doing something for someone else for the next 40 mins. Some took to this task with pride and others reluctantly ventured into an area that was obviously uncomfortable for them. This in itself was a great insight into the fact that some students do not actively share our vision of living in a community and doing things only for the sake of helping others. This highlights to us the importance of the Wellbeing Tutorials in challenging some of the student’s internal dialogue.

Overall though, the boys put thought and energy into their efforts. Some helped others clean their room, others tidied the communal areas, some did litter picking up outside, some cleaned the kitchen, others taught someone else a skill..etc.

On Sunday 17th from Leman 1, students went to the Nature museum in Geneva.  At the museum there were exhibitions of creatures ecosystems and how they work.  For example, there were exhibits explaining dinosaur fossils and the lives of people in the primitive era.  And the museum staff explained to us a lot of exhibits very clearly.  The staff taught us how creatures live in their ecosystem, how they hunt, and their success rate, using several predators as examples.  The staff also showed us what the prey eats, how it escapes from the predator, and how it benefits the ecosystem.  There were many other interesting exhibits at the museum.  They will have a very positive impact on students’ desire to study science.

Our very own Coach Javier from Boarding House Concha Annex arranged a ten-a-side badminton game. Leman One`s Junqi , Leo, Henry & Spenser played their hearts out.

As  the tennis season comes to a close, our boys continue to turn out every Saturday morning to practice with our tennis coach.

Our next exciting instalment of CDL Talks will be with Mr Reginald Bien-Aimé.

The title of the talk will be The Future of Work

We encourage all of our Grade 11 and 12 students to attend this talk as it will give them an informative insight into their future.

This weeks wellbeing tutorial was continuing on the second pillar of Protecting against Bullying and Respecting Diversity.

We focused this week on Community Service. One way of showing respect to others is helping and serving others regardless of their differences to you. We promote community service within the Boarding House and also in the wider boarding community. As part of the student’s academic REACH program, they must also obtain a certain amount of hours of Responsible Citizenship per year.

Therefore we focused the students on what different acts they could perform in order to obtain these community service hours. It opened up a debate for some students on what is goodwill for themselves and what is goodwill for others. Touching slightly on the aspect that just like charity it should be done selflessly without the need for reward. While this is true, in this instance the reward is achieving the necessary hours and therefore not quite selfless.

The students were also reminded that we have a Community Service group within Boarding. This is a Whatsapp group that the students could voluntarily join and as and when different initiatives arise they will be notified and can opt-in as they choose.

On Sunday we had our fourth House Competition.

This was the MasterChef competition in which Leman 1 was tasked with creating a dessert to impress the judges. We put our best creative minds together and thanks to their culinary skills managed to put forward a good creation.

Our dish was a Trio of Desserts based upon the weekly fruit delivery that we received. Each week we are fortunate to receive two deliveries of fresh fruit which consist of bananas, apples, pears, oranges, etc. As sometimes we have more fruit than we need, we get creative and make desserts. However, for the competition, we upped our game from our traditional cakes and crumbles.

We had Red Wine Poached Pear with Swiss Chocolate drizzle. We had cooked Apple stuffed with Apple Crisp Crumble with custard. And finally homemade banana Ice Cream!

Our boys dressed up well and adorned the judge’s table with place settings, napkins, candles and classical music.

We have now successfully installed our Committee Member board in our Leman 1 hallway which is now alongside our House Captain Board.

The Committees are an important part of the Boarding Community and allows the students to have a voice and for their opinions to be sought on issues of importance to the student population.

We have our House Representatives who act as ambassadors for the rest of the Leman 1 students. They meet twice a month with Boarding Management to discuss issues which affect the Boarding House and to seek their thoughts on important issues.

We also have our House Mentors who are trusted members of the Leman 1 House who we have been given roles of responsibility to act as mentors to new House Members and those who need extra help or support.

We have our Dining and IT Committee Members who represent the House in sharing their views towards IT and the Cusine

So far we have had three House Competitions this first marking period.

Our first competition was the Sports Day, in which we had to compete head-on against the other houses in a series of different sporting events.

The second competition was the Quiz. We had to put forward our best two quiz masters of the House in order to answer general knowledge and CDL related questions.

The third competition was the Pumpkin Carving competition. This showed off the creative side to our House and we went for the pure Halloween scare.

With a House of 28 teenage boys, it can be a challenge to motivate them in many aspects. As they navigate these developing years they have a mix of priorities which are always changing and a self-imposed pressure to confirm and impress others.

We are extremely proud that they are able to put this aside and bonded together and formed a House spirit in order to want to compete. When they have put their efforts into it they have done extremely well, placing 1st in the Sports Day, 1st in the Quiz and 2nd in the Pumpkin Carving.

This weeks wellbeing tutorial was continuing on the second pillar of Protecting against Bullying and Respecting Diversity.

We focused this week on Diversity. We have over 120 different countries represented in Collège du Léman. This gives us a fantastic opportunity to experience new cultures on our very doorstep.

In order to put this into perspective, we discussed as a group why we go on Holidays. Of course, the obvious answer is to relax and unwind, but if we think deeper about the choice of place we go to – it is usually to experience and try something new.

New food, new people, new scenery, new activities, new experiences- its all about exploring a new culture.

Being in an international school we are very fortunate to have the opportunity to learn about new cultures from each other.

We then did an exercise within our groups to really explore and gain information about each others countries.

We split into pairs and each pair had to answer the following questions about their partners country.

• An interesting historical fact
• Something unqiue to their culture
• A place in their country they would recommend to visit
• A geographical feature of their country
• The most famous person to come from their country
• What their flag looks like.

It was a very simple exercise but one that demonstrates how much we can learn from just taking the time to sit down with somebody different and to ask and listen. We encourage our students to mix with people from different nationalities and to take advantage of this international community.

Kirill blew away his opponents during tennis this morning . He seemed to be everywhere at once on the court.

This evening we had our annual pumpkin carving extravaganza.

This was also our third House Competition.

We put forward our best pumpkin designer and carver for this task who were Henry and Junqi.

They made a gruesome creation and we hope it scored well.

Bullying

We have now moved onto the second pillar of our wellbeing programme and our focus is on Protecting against Bullying and Respecting Diversity.

Bullying is a tragic part of many students school lives. A reported 1 in 5 students may experience some form of bullying. It is also an unnecessary part and avoidable!

In our small groups, we first sought to understand what the student’s definitions of bullying were. A few struggled to put into words their thoughts on this and from the different nationalities and backgrounds, we had different definitions.

What is Bullying?

When a person uses strength to harm others

When someone seeks to harm

Its an action against others to harass a single person

A repeated, unwanted, aggressive behaviour

Threatening, forcing and dominating weak people

We then discussed our views on this and agreed bullying had to be a repeated offence. That the act had to be unwanted and that it was an imbalance of power.

Our formal definition is

Bullying is a deliberate and repeated unwanted aggressive act or word, involving a real or perceived imbalance of power. Bullying can be verbal, social, or physical, and includes communications made in writing or electronically. Students who bully use their power to control or harm others. Power can be physical strength, popularity, or access to embarrassing information.

We then continued to discuss situations in which we have felt the impact of this. How this made us feel and what we did about it.

We then discussed what we as individuals and as a community could do to try and prevent bullying here.

The student’s thoughts were:

We need to be respectful of others opinions

We need to show an understanding of differences

We need to smile more

We need to be more resilient

We need to educate people on the harm of bullying

We need to show a zero-tolerance towards bullying and if we see something, then we should say something

Last weekend we finished our water programme as the water temperature starts to drop and we brace ourselves for the upcoming winter. Throughout the last months, we have enjoyed wakeboarding, banana boating, kayaking and paddleboarding. We are very fortunate to be so close to the lake and to have these activities on offer each weekend.

Last weeks heros were Vansh and Mikhail.