The grass is green across the hill,
But yellow blooms the daffodil.
It’s sunshine on a little stalk,
A friendly flower, I bet they talk…

Of little kids, too long inside
They burst outdoors to play and hide.
Tracking mud and bringing bugs.
Look, there’s footprints on the rug!

Tiny whirlwinds, these little tykes,
They skin their knees while riding bikes.
They rip and roar, they’re running wild!
What fun it is to be a child.

It grows warmer every day.
Shoo the children out to play!
Pick the flowers, play in mud.
Too much rain, here comes a flood!

My snowy, winter days are gone.
I mourn them, but I hear a song
Of birds in trees; wind chimes ring.
I guess it might as well be spring!

By Lhtheaker

We use our electronics in every part of our lives – whether at work or in our free time. However, it is the imbalance of use in our free time that can then cause issues. Who is guilty of being with friends but still checking their phone and sending messages; or watching Netflix but sneaking in a game of Candy Crush; or ignoring the moment in favour of getting the best picture for Instagram. Addiction is a strong word, but obsession may be more appropriate in these scenarios.

1. Are you conscious of how much time you spend on your phone?
2. Who really wins by you spending more and more time on your apps?

The boys have shared the amount of time they have shared on their screens today and in the last week. Hours and hours and hours 🙂 We challenged them to try to minimize this and find other sources of interest to spend their time on.

We couldn’t be prouder of our school, of our identity, of who we are, what we share and how we grow up together: students, staff and families.

Today was CDL Day, the day we celebrate all these things and we celebrate it by sharing our passions.

Music, art, sports … all the things that make us RISE as a big happy community, who tries hard, does its best and helps others.

Happy CDL Day.

A nice afternoon for Mateus, Parga and Quique who treated themselves with some snacks while watching the Bahrain F1 Grand Prix with Mr Rodrigo 😀

Exciting weekend at CDL today and particularly for the Léman 2 boys.

Here is Parga showing his swing on the tennis court on Saturday. Parga is a fan on tennis and plays it also during the week during the Extracurricular activities

Justin had a lovely nature time on Horseriding. Here he is taking care of a horse.

At the same time, Rakann joined the Running Club for a good jog.

On Sunday, Jeff joined the trip to the Aquarium of Lausanne. He was happy with his choice and for getting to know about this place which is one of the highlights of the city.

Finally, Mark joined the group heading to the Swiss Tech Convention Centre for the Legends of Space show.

The conquest of space is an exciting topic and it is extremely rare to get to see and hear “live” heroes of the Apollo missions, who landed on the moon, and other more recent astronauts and icons of the history of space

Charlie Duke – Apollo 16 – and Dave Scott – Apollo 15 – these two men walked on the moon

From the right, clockwise: Jean François Clervoy ( former French ESA astronaut ); Claude Nicollier ( former Swiss ESA astronaut ); Ellen Ochoa ( former NASA astronaut and former Director of Johnsons Space Centre in Houston; Kathy Sullivan (former NASA astronaut, first woman to perform a spacewalk); Gerry Griffin (former NASA flight engineer and director during the Apollo missions); Dave Scott (former NASA Astronaut, Commander of Apollo 15), Charlier Duke (former NASA astronaut, Apollo 16)

We were lucky as well to get to see the son and granddaughter of Neil Armstrong, first man on the moon, who gifted us with some music.

Finally, we got to feel a little like astronauts on the moon… but in a cool, relaxed way 🙂

No doubt this was an exciting weekend, here 🙂

Good plan to relax after an intense week at school, a basketball, 4 friends and a hoop. Jeff, Parga, Quique and Amir, they have shown us their skills, there is a lot of talent in Léman!

Parga spotted the paparazzi

Having dinner in the House is a special treat we have once a month and it is quite appreciated since it allows us to interact together in a different way, even if we are still having our meals together in the dining room.

Today we had kebabs and Roger seemed much more excited than Rakann 🙂 However, the reality is that Rakann was much more excited than Roger but wanted to have a serious pose for the photo.

In any case, the kebabs were good 🙂

Am I the same person for real and in social media?

This was the main topic for today’s Wellbeing session. On the follow up of last week we kept analyzing the way we operate online, the image we convey and how it affects the links we establish with others.

As we post online we acknowledge that we are looking for two things: sharing with friends and family and public approval. If the former is absolutely legitimate (as we create personal links by sharing with others), the latter is a new phenomenon, result of the online society we live in and we use it project ourselves and gain a different level of recognition that we couldn’t imagine to have years ago.

This virtual world opens a different dimension to the perception we can have of others and the perception we create on others too. Likes, views and followers represent now this new dimension of who we are… or who we aim to be, or how we want to be perceived.

If in one hand we can cast a real image of ourselves in social media, most times we are unconsciously looking for a general acknowledgement of ourselves according to these virtual standards. This can be innocent and harmful at the same time.

 Parga and Aryan checking their privacy settings

As a result, and falling again on the conclusions of last week, it is very important to filter carefully who we connect with, how we interact and how does our online image damage who we really are. It is something personal, difficult to define and hard to shape.

Finally, we agreed that our group project will be to have an accurate check on our privacy settings and challenge ourselves to delete from our contacts, anyone we don’t really know, who we see as dubious or whose interactions are not positive. The goal is to ensure we are increasing our online safety… as we all agree that despite this, there is an extremely positive side to social media.

This weekend our amazing boys returned to Crans Montana for the last trip of the season, just before Easter. As usual many fun activities were organized like Bingo, Skiing, Realfly simulation, excursions to Sion and everyone had a really great time. Check out some of the moments captured these days:

Online safety is our 4th Pillar for the Wellbeing Programme.

We will be working on this pillar for the weeks to come and today’s topic was:

‘What you post….in that moment’

To help us with the reflection we used two starting points:

When we think we are being funny or witty or purposefully insensitive towards someone else’s post are we really aware of the potential harm or hurt we can cause? Most often not. Our intentions are often simple, we don’t intend any harm… simply sharing a laugh, joking with our friend, having a good banter, probably like we do when we have a situation in person at school, or in any social situation. However online our words are engraved and the tone is not present. Misunderstandings can happen and disagreements can follow, with one of the sides taking offence from our comments

 Posting a funny picture or video of someone or your friend can be online- forever! Here is an extremely important  layer of consideration to cast once we do something of this nature. What goes online is in a way or nature, forever there. Even if we can delete posts on social media, the content is not totally delete from the depths of the net. And the person victim of this post, might not access to deleting it either.

So in terms of morality and values we need to thoughtful of what we comment and what we post. Our mind should consider that by being insensitive in these scenarios we can be provoking major ongoing distress to someone else.

Thank you Aryan for helping us leading the session.