We have continued this 2nd semester with our Wellbeing Programme. We are now onto our 3rd Pillar which is Building Positive Friendships. While this title may seem simple and straightforward, there is a lot more context behind it. Friendships are without a doubt an important and essential part of our existence as humans. We are sociable beings and now more than ever like to be connected with people. It is however important that these Friendships are positive, that the relationship is healthy, symbiotic and mutual. And finally, within the Boarding context, we are given the instant opportunity to build new relationships as soon as we arrive, from the diverse population we have. Therefore, bringing these three features together we understand its important we share without students how to Build Positive Friendships.

Within this Pillar, we will be looking at

• Authentic Connections
• The Power of Listening
• Peer Pressure
• Conflict
• Changing Friendships
• Online Friendships

In addition, we will be asking the students to again be working towards and Individual and Community Project.

He’s no couch potato,  Karim puts his practical skills to good use as he successfully attends to a few homes improvements alongside Mr George.

Carlos & Shintaro made π this morning. They turned out a total success and were incredibly delicious. Yummy

Waiting For You!

@thatboardingvibeWaiting for your return ##welcomeback ##comebacksoon ##safetravels ##timeforschool ##thatboardingvibe ##cdl ##happiness ##lovelife ##versoix ##emptyschool♬ Aesthetic – Xilo

We wish all our students and their families a very Merry Christmas, Happy Holiday, and a Happy New Year!

Admir is a fungi when he is making pizza on his Saturday morning.

Luther learnt how to make his own pizza for his lunch on Saturday. It looks delicious.

On Friday 4th it was 4 months since the explosion which devastated the lives of so many people in Lebanon. As we have a Lebanon community within boarding we wanted to show our respect and remembrance of this occasion. The students from Lebanon created the ‘Light for Hope’ event which was then embraced by the boarding community on Friday evening.

As part of Pillar 2- Respecting Diversity and Protecting against Bullying the students again undertook individual and community project.

For Leman’s community project we wanted to demonstrate the diversity but also similarities among us.

We are reaching the end of Pillar 2- Respecting Diversity and Protecting Against Bullying. 

Part of our program for this Pillar included a presentation by Ms Jody on Non-Violent Communication. This is about being conscious of how our language and communication can influence other people. It helps us think more empathetically about others and thus improves our relationships.

When we become conscious of how our communication skills impact others, we can see this from both the negative and positive. We can see how the words we use can either be for good or bad. If we can train ourselves to take accountability for or own actions and communication then we can avoid conflicts and help to inspire others.

Vladislav is learning one of the most important life skills – how to cook an authentic Italian pizza… yummy

Karim enjoys a chilly morning ride along the stream to complete a 10km loop back to school.

Shintaro offered to use his wood-crafting activity to help the birds that live on the Léman One terrace by providing a very well made nest box. It didn’t require any owlgebra or a crow-bar, but to put it up we might require a crane and receive a very big bill.

This weekend seen us compete in another House Competition. This is a great way for us to show our House Spirit and what we can accomplish as a team. Iman took the lead this year is baking our entry. He did an amazing job and we hope our cake does well.

We hope you enjoy a bite,

Of our winter snowy delight.

Tomohisa finds time to relax and apply some TLC to his routine.

Iman joins his second of three activities this weekend, the running club. He manages a respectable 7.5 km and is very supportive to the youngest member of the group.

Raphael nicely captures the sunny autumn morning today with a couple of splendid abstract and landscape shots.

This past week we celebrated ‘Spirit’ from our school motto and each section of the school did a project to demonstrate their Community Spirit. Within the Boarding Community we aligned this with our Wellbeing Pillar 2- Promoting Diversity and Protecting Against Bullying. We believe we have a strong bond as a Boarding Community and that together with the diversity among us we bridge cultures to come together and show our community spirit. To demonstrate this we created a video.

This weekend we again had a multitude of different activities available to the Boarders. This included tennis, horse riding, badminton, table tennis, zumba, photography, boot camp, biking, woodcraft, yoga and fashion club.

While the student’s opportunity to go off-campus is limited we, therefore, promote and encourage them to get as active as they can on campus. Staying fit and healthy is important for our wellbeing as we continue to act on the lessons from the Wellbeing Pillar 1

As we continue to think about our healthy diet, let us share with you our food options for Sunday Brunch.

This is always something to look forward to and a meal that is enjoyed by all. There is a huge variety to satisfy all.

As part of our House Competitions which aim at building House and Community Spirit we had our traditional pumpkin carving competition. The boys did excellent with their creation (with ALOT of help from Mr George), but we are proud to say that we came 1st!

How does it work?

Many people are familiar with the STEM acronym (Science Technology Engineering and Maths), but fewer are familiar of the more recent STEAM acronym which also includes the Arts. With the addition of Art, typical STEM projects can be made fun and more engaging to all students while encouraging imagination and creativity which before was typically limited.

This Halloween presented the perfect opportunity to demonstrate how art plays such a fundamental role in STEAM by creating a spooky Arduino pumpkin project. Arduino is a highly versatile and open source mechatronics platform that many schools with STEAM being a fundamental part of their curriculum have adopted. It was used in this pumpkin project to control the ghostly sequence of opening and closing of the jaw and activation of the lantern and eye lights in response to inputs from the ultrasonic distance sensor installed in the nose of the pumpkin.