By Jordi Ginjaume – St. Peter’s School General Manager
The course has started in an intense and vibrant manner. As such we continue with our strategic plan, while holding meetings with the families of our students so that they are aware of the challenges we face this year. Given that our aim is to anticipate the needs of our students in the coming decades. It is important that the whole community is involved, especially to welcome and integrate those who are new to the school this year.
We are very satisfied with the way the classes have started since the course began a few days ago. The projects and challenges that form part of our academic plan for this year are proceeding as anticipated and we are confident that they will be a success.
Organizations, like living beings, need to evolve and adapt as time progresses. For living beings, this is a necessity that allows them to survive, perpetuate themselves over time, and maintain their competitive advantages over the species with which they coexist. Similarly, this approach enables organizations to remain competitive. More importantly, it enables them to maintain their mission over time by adapting or even anticipating the environment and its needs.
I would like to highlight 3 challenges that will be present in the lives of our students and their families throughout the course:
1-IB Continuum
5 years ago we opted to become certified for the IB Diploma (Baccalaureate) program. Shortly afterwards, we decided to become certified through the equivalent program for Primary (PYP) and Secondary (MYP). This will grant us the IB Continuum certification,being one of the few schools in Catalonia that have this certification and one of the first to offer it in English.
Why is this certification important? Firstly, it is a seal of quality awarded by what is currently the most recognized organization in education worldwide (www.ibo.org) which guarantees that our processes and methods have the utmost rigor and commitment.
Secondly, the essence of its approach based on inquiry, understanding and critical thinking dovetails perfectly with our methodology, and allows us to continue developing our project in accordance with our mission.
2-Syllabus
The content that our students work on is as important or even more so than the methodology followed. We have worked very hard in recent years to adapt our syllabus to the type of content that our students will need in the coming years, and we are going to consolidate the model to ensure that this content anticipates future developments.
This content is already designed in detail, and our families will receive detailed information about it. It will be a recurring theme in our communications with the whole community throughout the course.
3-Community life
In this aspect, we are responding to a growing demand from families joining the school. There is a growing need to interact with our community, to be interconnected with each other, in an international and multilingual environment.
At the same time it also highlights the importance not just for our students, but also for their families and for our teachers, to be connected with other members of the community, exchanging knowledge, leisure activities , or just establishing and maintaining social contact.
In this respect , we have developed an ambitious community outreach project, of which its members will receive detailed information throughout the course, and which will ultimately benefit the welfare of our students.
