Identity and commitment

Bogaerts International School North Campus is 4 months old now. Walking along the corridors framed by white walls and seeing shades of brown at the bottom, and letting our eyes wander along with the displays of students learning confirm that we are indeed growing. Our growth has had momentum and has been brought to fruition thanks to a team filled with positivity, thirst for learning, and a desire for being relevant to students’ lives.

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From the first day the founding team members met up to the weekend prior to this blog post, I have been repeating the following lines: we are school committed to implementing Concept-Based Curriculum and Instruction model (CBCI); we are a school that believes in inquiry; we are a school that seeks to navigate the waves of thinking and reflection; we are a school learning for anyone in our community must never be compromised. Thus, when walking the corridors of our school, sitting at class, sharing professional development, or actively participating in a collaborative experience, I can see what we are, and what I see is what I want us to be.

Our team developed our policies with our mission, aspirations, and students in mind. We slowly constructed and continue to shape our learning spaces not following trends or what trends tell us we need to display, but reflecting on what can support our promise to learning, what amplifies our efforts, and what will marry with our systems without considering the choice of divorce.  In short, everyone’s contributions are not only welcome, but palpable.

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As part of our commitment, we model values that we hope students and parents embrace; we design and choose routines that allow us to learn about our students as learners, and human beings; we engage them in scenarios that allow us to witness how they use information to shape thoughts, and how they discover meaning, patterns, and relationships.

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I am proud of the community we are. I am proud of the fact that we do not need filters to embellish and glamorize the idea of who we want to be. We planted our first seeds with devotion and intention, and climate has been good to us, for we are noticing the fruits of our efforts.

Is the work done? of course it is not!

But oh Captain, my captain, these foundations are solid and strong, and I truly believe they will sustain the next layer of experience, expertise and self-actualization that lays ahead of us, like challenges, waiting for our minds and our hands to tackle them.

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