We are now entering the second week of the first Pillar of our wellbeing programme – Nurturing Healthy Bodies and Minds.

One of the takeaway points from this pillar is “How important is sleep?”. We find it a crucial topic for the students to explore when discovering how to take care of themselves and how they can maintain a healthy body and mind.

During our Boarding House assemblies this week, we will be talking to the students about the effects that can be caused from lack of sleep, and how it can impact many areas of our lives.

Lack of sleep reduces focus and it will make it more difficult for student’s to learn. Studies have shown that poor quality sleep, or not enough sleep, can lead poor organisational skills, a decrease in mood or behaviour, reduced attention span and even memory loss. We would like to outline the importance of sleep to our students so that they are fully prepared and they give themselves the best opportunity possible to achieve their full potential – in all aspects of their lives. Allowing the brain the sufficient amount of time to rest and recover means we give ourselves the best chance to succeed.

Also throughout this pillar, we are running a Daily Fitness Challenge across our Boarding Community. This is to encourage our students to get active, have fun and take their minds off things that may be causing them stress. The participation, competitiveness and enthusiasm the students have shown so far has been fantastic and we hope to see this continue throughout September with even more students taking part. Please find some photos below from the challenge so far…..

We have had fantastic weather here in Geneva for the first full weekend of the academic year. Our students have had the opportunity to join some amazing activities including forest walk, paddle boarding, beach volleyball, golf, horse riding, photography and more! There was even a boat trip into Geneva organised for some of our new students to show them sights, they all enjoyed it very much. It is safe today we took full advantage of the incredible lake and beautiful forest that we are lucky enough to have on our doorstep!

On Wednesday after our first Boarding Assembly, we had a Swiss Welcome Dinner. This was a lovely occasion for the students to dress smartly, enjoy some Swiss cuisine and meet each other.

This morning we showed our new students the sights and pointed out some important points of interest in our local town.

Yesterday evening we had a BBQ and we organised lots of sports and activities for our new students. Everyone had lots of fun and relished the opportunity to meet new people. Welcome everyone.

Leman 1 is open and we can not wait for the school year to start.

We look forward to welcoming back our returning students and hearing their adventures from the summer. Additionally, we look forward to welcoming our new students who get to experience CDL for the first time.

This year the House will be staffed by Mr Rob, Mr Max and Mr Gordon.

MIKHAIL

KIRILL

LUTHER

Samedi du Partage is an event organized twice a year in order to collect food donations for the Partage Charity.

The Partage is a food bank in Geneva that collects unsold food items from local supermarkets in Geneva and redistributes these to where they are needed. Over 13,000 people receive aid from the food bank each year. In addition, the food bank packages 5000 emergency food aid bags each week which are distributed globally.

This weekend on Saturday they had one of their food drives in which they mobilse the public of Geneva to donate food items. We had volunteers from CDL located at the local supermarkets in Versoix to help with this collection.

This Saturday we had two teams competing in a tremendous feat of endurance.

Arsenii from the Olympus Boarding House had a vision and brought it to reality. At the start of the year he joined the weekend Running Club organised by Mr Rob. After completing his first 5km run he set his goal on being able to complete a marathon by the end of the school year.

Arsenii challenged his House Parent Mr Tom who is a cycling enthusiast to a competition. Could Arsenii complete a marathon in a faster time than it took Mr Tom to ride around Lake Leman? This challenge grew over recent weeks to create two teams.

The runners were Mr Rob, Coach Pierre and Arsenii. The cyclists were Mr Tom, Coach Jamie and Coach Moores. They did this challenge in aid of the World Bike Relief Charity.

STEAM club helps pas-ta time on Sunday afternoon.

Bau loads his bridge with stones to measure its strength.

The strongest bridge wins! Carlos is up for the challenge to design and construct a bridge out of spaghettis. He’s the fastest glue gun slinger in town.

Leman 1 came to victory again in their 2nd tournament match this time against New Portena.

Another step closer to winning the Boarding Championship!

Admir, Amir & Iman brave the heights and clime high into the canopy at the local rope course.

Best friends Amir, Bau & Murat had a great day avoiding the rain outside at the Jumping Park.

This week the tournaments continued and Leman put forward a worthy team for the Basketball.

They competed against the Concha Attack team and were victorious.

This Weekend Mr Usher gave students the amazing opportunity to enjoy some time on the Lake. In the schools speed boat, they jetted to Geneva and back enjoying the warm water spray and views from the middle of the lake.

Another beautiful weekend here on campus with plenty of opportunities for the students to enjoy the many activities on offer. With the sun shining it was the ideal time for them to get out and enjoy the wonderful scenery we have so close.

On-campus we had- badminton, table tennis, horseriding, cooking, tennis, biking, running club, golf, chess, body shaping, stretching, speed boating and our sports complex Olympus.

We also had the option of a visit to Nyon to explore the city and see the Castle.

Please do talk to your son to see which of these options he took part in.

Leading on from our explanation of the Teenage Brain– The part of the brain called the prefrontal cortex is the last to fully develop and is responsible for critical thinking and behaviour control. From young, we learn there are consequences and learn how to make decisions. However, under the age of 13, children do not have abstract thinking skills. At that age, they are operational in their thinking. This means they understand only what is tangible and in their own environment- these are things they can see, smell, taste, hear touch etc. Conceptual thinking only starts in the teen years when they start to understand grey areas of decisions or theory. Understanding an action has consequences demands that the person understands all aspects of a decision before making that informed choice.

Therefore we as House Parents need to adjust our expectations to suit the age of development they are at. Consequences should never be given to punish a decision. We need to first help a student problem solve an alternative solution, instead of paying for their behaviour with a punishment.

Ultimately we know students will at times make the wrong decisions. However, we need them to understand these decisions, not just in relation to breaking a rule, but rather the harm they can cause to themselves, others, relationships, the community, their reputation etc.

We would much rather they take Active Responsibility for their actions.

Passive responsibility is when you do not break any rules for the fear of being held accountable by teachers or house parents, and consequently being punished.

Active responsibility is when you follow the rules because you understand that boundaries are a form of self-care and rules are there to protect you and to ensure a safe and healthy school (and house) environment for all of us!

The question for any parents is how do you get a teen to that stage. Can they learn this through education or through experiencing only the negative consequences of their actions?

During the week we started up our volleyball tournament again. Now that restrictions are starting to allow team sports the Leman House put the best together and competed against Olympus.

And we WON!

On Wednesday night we started our Basketball Tournament after many months of not being able to do so. It is another small step towards a positive future of normality and being able to do our team sports again.

Leman played against Olympus and was victorious on the court winning 38-32 and onto the next round.

After our Boarding Assembly last week and sharing the Pillar with the students, this week we start on debunking myths and understanding the process of the brain.

We watched a quick video explaining the key aspects of;

• Adolescent Brain Myths
• Pruning
• Myelin
• Use it or Lose it Pinciple
• Neuroplasticity
• Integrated Brain
• Pathway to Wellbeing

The students watched attentively as I gave them each a different question at the beginning that they had to answer at the end 🙂