Dear Parents, Families and Friends!

Yesterday evening we have formally started our Pastoral Programme. At this initial stage, the idea is to expose our kids during formal House Assemblies to those values and topics that represent the guiding principles of our School and community: Respect, Internationalism, School Spirit, Excellence etc

We do not think these are easy things to understand and attain, but we firmly believe that basic values such as Respect, Tolerance, Integrity, Accountability, Altruism and even how to live a happy and meaningful life can be taught in the context of community life through moment of open discussion, where things are stated explicitly, without assuming that our kids will eventually learn things on their own. Once again we would like to stress how your support it is essential in enhancing our messages so we kindly ask you to engage in conversations with your kids in the days following these assemblies.

Yesterday’s topic was “Getting to know each other“, which falls within the theme of “Self-Awareness“

Circle time with questions followed by open discussions:

• what upsets you? (so that as a family we can avoid doing/saying that particular thing)
• did anyone upset you in our House since you arrived? (please explain why. forgive. move forward)
• what makes you “you”? which image represents what you truly are?
• what makes Champs des Bois different from other Houses? which image and sentence (motto) shall we choose to describe our House?

We had a great time together and the boys were asked to look within themselves and they were confronted, some of them for the first time in their lives, with this sort of introspective questions. They shared interesting insights of their inner world and we were very pleased to notice that they did it without embarrassment. Please try to find out more by asking our boys about the image the chose to represent their “true self”!