“The greatness of a community is most accurately measured by the compassionate actions of its members.” – Coretta Scott King, an American author, activist, civil rights leader, and the wife of Martin Luther King Jr.
The above quote truly expresses the roles and duties of community members. After all, they are the ones who form a good community. In the educational world, a positive community concentrates on the growth of children beyond the four walls of a classroom. Such communities support students to help others, build strong character, grow into a good community member, and to empower them to help other organizations. Students that grow up in such communities apply their skills to the real world, see how they can help, and impact other people to do the same.
It privileges us, at The Knowledge Review, to bring forth such an institute that understands this importance and leads the educational sphere by forming a good educational community. We present you Zürich Schule Barcelona.
Zürich Schule Barcelona is a privately-owned, non-subsidized, and secular educational center for Preschool, Primary, and Secondary education. It aims to help students to grow intellectually, emotionally, socially, and physically. Forming a community, the school emphasizes on people and the relationships between them. It also encourages a sense of belonging, participation, and involvement of the entire educational community in the school projects.
The primary goal of the school is to provide quality education to its students covering all the educational stages. It also keeps its keen eyes on the educational challenges set by the constantly changing society. As such, the school prioritizes the holistic education of the pupils, sharing the same with the families, and with the whole team of the educational center.
50 Years of Historic Legacy
With dedicated endeavors over five decades to the realm of education, the school recognizes that it should not change its essence but must evolve towards it. Keeping this philosophy at heart, it trains future citizens of the 21st century. All these elements are reflected in the school’s spaces, design, planning, and methodologies used.
Understanding the role and duties, the school bears the responsibility of covering all the needs of the pupils. Shared by the whole faculty, this reflection has made the school to form part of the International Baccalaureate (IB).
With this legacy, Zürich Schule Barcelona instills international mentality and global awareness in a pupil. The school understands what a responsible and respectful vision of the world means. And above all, the school wants these facets to be expressed in the beliefs, actions, and contributions to make up the educational and learning community.
Educational Stages at Zürich Schule Barcelona
Preschool Education
In preschool, they teach all subjects in the German language. The school makes an exception for Literacy, Music Education, Psychomotricity and Swimming, which are instructed in Spanish and Catalan. The methodologies applied foster children’s innate potential.
As education at this age is crucial, the school serves throughout the year in four-month terms. It functions according to the objectives of the programme. The children, being young explorer, observe, learn, and proceed further.
Zürich Schule Barcelona is an IB candidate school in the Primary Years Programme. Hence, scholars here are active, supportive, and follow a lifelong learning attitude. This echoes on the general development of the child and his or her potential for study and learning, both in and out of the school. Kids learn by continual curiosity and accountability for their own learning.
The programme comprises six trans-disciplinary themes which are Language, Social Studies, Mathematics, Arts, Sciences, Personal, Social and Physical Education.
Trans-disciplinary themes support pupils to overcome traditional limits of learning by subjects. They discover who they are, where they are, how to express themselves, how the world works, how to organize one, and how we share the planet.
Primary Education
The school intensifies the German language in the first Primary Education in 1st and 2nd class, incorporating the written language. The groups are divided and distributed in the timetable to encourage oral and written language acquisition. In this way, the school pays more personal attention to the pupils.
The third to sixth class courses are paramount to the growth of the pupils. Thus, the school accumulates training patterns, accountability and autonomy, and basic skills development. Adding to that, the instruction of the English language starts at the 3rd level, more topics and instructors are added, classes are extended to 60 minutes, and the play time are expanded.
Class five and six students adhere to the Third Stage of Primary Education, which is fundamental for the completion of the consolidation of study habits, responsibility, critical sense, decision-making, and greater autonomy.
The IB Primary Years Programme explores the learning, social, and emotional well-being of pupils. This pushes them to develop individuality and to seize responsibility for their own learning. It facilitates their efforts to figure out the world and how to function within it. Further, it helps students to discover personal values as a basis on which a foreign mindset grows and flourishes.
Here, trans-disciplinary themes provide the IB World Schools with an ability to integrate local and global topics into their curriculum and allow students to ‘step up’ beyond the field of learning in the subject areas.
Secondary Education
Secondary Education represents the final stage in the Zürich Schule Barcelona curriculum. It encompasses four decisive years in which the pupils must be prepared for the last two years of Baccalaureate before going to university.
As an IB candidate school, the school’s Middle Years Programme (MYP) emphasizes intellectual challenge. This helps secondary school students to make concrete links between their learning and the real world and trains them for success in their future education and in their lives.
In-Line with the Technology
The school is of the opinion that contemporary technologies have brought revolutionary transformations in personal, cultural, and economic contexts. Hence, Zürich Schule Barcelona has been incorporating technology into its curriculum since 2014. The focus here is to prepare learners for the constantly changing world.
According to the school, the current advances in technology and communication make the iPad a necessary resource for the development of the pupils. The school also believes that the focus on applying new methodologies becomes even more important. It cites examples in the fields such as the approach to diversity, where the engagement of pupils and integrating different methodologies are a significant help to teachers.
In accordance with the changing world, pupils from class 1st to 10th learn on their iPad. This serves as their complementing partner in learning material. Further adapting to the benefit of innovative technologies, Zürich Schule Barcelona has opted to reduce communication channels with a tailor-made ZSB app.
The ZSB app provides a single point of access to information and communication with the school. With this platform, families will channel all of the school’s communication and information through their mobile phones.
The app provides Push Notifications such as calendar events, school menus, photos, and many more. It also lets users send attachments (send reports, images, videos, documents), aid in family-school interaction, school calendar with many more features.
Words of Trust
Let’s hear from some of the school’s graduates:
“The training of Zürich Schule is special and is deeply marked in the memory because teachers are chosen in a very specific and precise way, a factor that is very noticeable in learning and training, at least in my case.”
“Few teachers manage to motivate so much and make learning motivation and not an obligation. And is that by encouraging students to feel or find a fascination and interest from an early age makes the level of maturation and culture of the student when leaving school is surprising and serves as a solid basis for a new stage of life. “
“I hope that the Zürich school remains the best school in Barcelona! Thank you for everything and for the German.”
Visit www.zsbarcelona.com to know more about the school.
