Happy New Year to all our Chinese Families, Students and Friends!

Thousands of young people from schools and universities around Switzerland went on strike on Friday to demand greater action to combat climate change.

Their protest was inspired by Greta Thunberg, who began a solo climate protest by striking every Friday in Sweden in August 2018. She was invited to address last year’s climate summit (COP24) in Poland, where she accused world leaders of behaving like irresponsible children by not doing enough to address climate problems. Thunberg tweeted that she will be attending the World Economic Forum in Davos from January 23 to 25.

Thousands of students have followed her lead, striking in Australia, the United Kingdom, Belgium, the US and Japan.

On Friday, Switzerland was the stage for the latest protest, where organizers said more than 20,000 students from schools and colleges in 15 cities took part in the action.  Organizers have said another strike is planned for February 2.

This is not the first protest of its kind in Switzerland. Around 1,000 school students took to the streets of Bern, as well as Zurich, St Gallen and Basel in December 2018. They were angry about the recently rejected revised Swiss CO2 law. The House of Representatives watered down and then rejected an amended law on carbon dioxide emissions during the recent winter session.

On Friday, they were joined by other student protestors in Geneva, Lausanne, Neuchâtel, Fribourg, Sion, canton Jura, Lucerne, Zug, Baden, Aargau, and Chur. Official attitudes to students taking time off to strike vary between cantonal educational authorities. Certain cantons, such as St Gallen and Valais have expressed their disapproval over the strike action.

Demonstration von Schuelerinnen und Schuelern in der Zuercher Innenstadt am Freitag, 21. Dezember 2018. In mehreren Schweizer Staedten gehen Schueler am Freitag auf die Strasse. Der Grund: In Sachen Klima soll sich endlich etwas bewegen. (KEYSTONE/Walter Bieri)

Dear Families and Friends,

Welcome back to our House Blog and Happy 2019!

It is so good to have all the boys back and it is particularly rewarding to see that all of them are happy and in good spirits after the long break.

With this first post of the new year, we would like to share a few important upcoming dates to help you with your exeats and holidays’ plans and to keep you in the loop of what the boys will be up to in the next weeks until the February Break:

PASTORAL TOPIC OF THE MONTH: 

• Self-esteem and body image (includes nutrition)

MOUNTAIN WEEKENDS:

• JANUARY 25th-27th
• FEBRUARY 8th-10th
• MARCH 1st-3rd

FEBRUARY BREAK:

• FEBRUARY – Friday 15th (last day of school) – Monday 25th (school starts)

PARENT TEACHER MEETINGS:

• Tuesday 19th of MARCH

We would also like to take this opportunity to share with you our wish for the new year. In a world that is changing faster than in any other time in history, where it’s becoming extremely hard to predict what things will be like in the next 10/15 years, actually ours it is not only a wish but rather one of the main forces that guide us as educators, one of the most important answers to the question “why do you work in education?”. It is clear to us that the most import outcome we wish for our kids out of their experience in our House and in our School is that through all the attention, care, example, activities, we give and exposed them to, our students can learn how to really love and take care of themselves. We strongly believe this is the only solution that will eventually enable all of us to create a fairer world.

Happy New Year!

Wish you fantastic holidays boys! Enjoy your families, friends and beloved ones! We wish you the best…you deserve the best.

Champ des Bois will reopen on January 12th 9:00 am. We’ll be here welcoming you back!

“Mr Salva Claus” by Richard Z.

During our House assemblies this month, the boys have been working on a project to explore the pastoral topic proposed: “Respecting Differences” including diversity in many ways such as sexual orientation, race, religion, mental and physical disabilities. The boys have come up with the idea of interviewing students of different ages in our community in order to have first-hand information which could help them understand better how we are doing in our school in terms of tolerance, maturity, and respect. This project has been run entirely by our boys under the supervision of our House Captain Arush, from the choice of the questions, interviews, editing etc…

Thank you to Arush, Agastya, Kevin, and Richard for their work and for showing genuine interest towards this important topic.