At every SIS school, community is one of the core elements of our educational concept. Each member helps enrich it, from our kindergarten children, school students and parents to the teaching and administration staff. Together, we live out our school values every day and, above all, treat each other with kindness and respect.
Our school community has four house teams, four “families”, with each student belonging to a specific house. These teams not only foster positive competition with regards to academics and sport but also bring the school community even closer together. The house captains are from the two oldest year groups and, together with the older students, they take care of the younger ones and help create a school identity, especially during whole-school activities.
At the beginning of each school year, SIS Regensburg holds an integration project. The aim of this project is to bring the students together in their houses, help them get back into the school routine after the long summer break, aid new students in integrating into their classes and the school, and strengthen the feeling of the school community. This school year’s project focused on the school values: honesty, appreciation, personal responsibility, and commitment. The students, on the first day of school, were placed in groups
according to their house teams to discuss the school values and what they mean to each student. They were then asked to imagine these school values in an image, which could include words, symbols, and suitable motives. Mrs Christine Sabel, the secondary school art teacher, supplied the students with detailed instructions as well as a variety of ideas to inspire their own creative thoughts. The students were then asked to make a first draft in preparation for the project on Friday, 13 September 2024.
On that Friday, students came together again in their house teams to start working on the final project. Mrs Sabel had created paper squares on which each student would bring their ideas to life. These images would then be brought together to form a collage. After working diligently throughout the morning, making sure that their images represented not only the school values but also their house colours, students came together to form their collage. The students, led by their house captains, discussed all the individual images and the values that they represent and then, as a group, decided where to place them in the collage.
The end products are amazing works of art, showcasing the students’ talents and their visualisation of the school values in their house teams. Every house team had the chance to
view all the collages as a whole and celebrate what the school community has done together. The students are extremely proud of their work, and the project brought the school
community closer, deepening not only our understanding of our school values but also encouraging us to live them out on a daily basis.
Dr. Danette Brink, Principal