Head of Secondary Blog

This week in Secondary we were in the full swing of lessons and pupils really engaging in their learning. I witnessed some excellent lessons in English and PSHE where a rigorous curriculum was being delivered by extremely engaging teachers. 

On Tuesday we had our Nord Anglia Education (NAE) Performing Arts Festival presentation, which in partnership with The Juilliard School, will provide our performing artists at The British College of Brazil (BCB) a once in a lifetime opportunity to go to Florida to be trained and perform alongside other top NAE performing arts students from the other NAE Americas schools, truly international! This will be taking place on February 5th - 10th at North Broward Preparatory School, part of NAE. If you missed the presentation then make sure you speak with Ms Baldwin our Head of Performing Arts.

Next week student leadership becomes the topic on everyone's lips here at BCB. The act of leadership is a personal journey that involves bringing ourselves to our leadership experiences, development and learning*. One example of student leadership at BCB is the ´new´ house captains. This year we have the four cats; lions, tigers, panthers and jaguards. Student involvement in this initiative will inevitably strengthen an already tangible connection between pupils and the school. On Monday we look forward to our leadership hustings assembly which will allow for ambitious pupils to state their vision for leadership. We also welcome our student council for the new academic year which is exciting with a view to pupil and adult leadership working together to move BCB forward in terms of the well being of our pupils. It really is the process of leadership which is evermore relevant in education which teaches students important life long ´soft´ skills**.

In the school vision statement it mentions that BCB is a place where ´individuals are confident ethical leaders who make a positive difference to our global society´ and we have high hopes for our pupil leaders for the academic year 2019/20 working closely with Mrs Davis our Deputy Head of Secondary, responsible for pastoral support. In PSHE we have spoken with pupils about how serious we think student leadership is and that they can be real agents of positive change. So pupils, make sure you remember to come dressed in your house colours for Monday´s assembly!

*(Haber - Curran; Tillapaugh, 2017)

**Shertzer et al** (2005)