We are delighted to welcome several new staff members for the 2012-13 school year. Please find below some information on each of them: Adam Robinson joins us as a Middle School English Teacher. Born in New York City, he attended University of Texas in Austin. He holds two master’s degrees, one from British Columbia, Canada and the other from Rome, Italy. He has lived in Brussels since July 2011 and substituted in the Middle School last year.   Debbie Corcoran joins us as a third grade teacher in the Elementary School. She comes to us from Centennial School District in … Continue reading Welcome to the new St. John’s staff members!

St. John’s is participating in the Flame Challenge’s World Wide Assembly on May 9, hosted by Alan Alda. The Flame Challenge is an international science cotest sparked by an editorial Alan Alda wrote in the journal Science.  Scientists from all over the world have submitted answers to the question Alan asked as an 11-year-old, “What is a flame?”  Hundreds of their answers have been judged by panels of 10- to 12-year olds from 131 schools, from California to Western Australia, including your local school.   The judging process will culminate on May 9 in a Worldwide Assembly, a video conference of 10 schools, … Continue reading The Flame Challenge

IB Visual Art Show and Auction on Friday the 27th of April wowed the visitors and showed them the skills and uniqueness of each artist. Three words, ‘outstanding,’ ‘interesting,’ ‘unique,’ those three words would be the best ones to describe the work of the IB Visual Art year two students. However, the first question would be, why was it called a message in a bottle? While I was interviewing the teacher, mentor, and person who organized this show, Mr. Alan Mitchell, he told me that “a message in a bottle is a way to communicate to people from different distances, … Continue reading Message in a Bottle has been placed into the Sea of Success!

We would like to congratulate our senior economics team for making it to the third and final round of the monetary policy competition organized by the European Central Bank in Frankfurt in which more than 50 international and European schools in the 17 countries that make up the Eurozone participated. The team will now go to Frankfurt (as guests of the ECB) for the final round in which they will compete against 5 other schools. Well done! Continue reading Senior Economics Team reaches final of European Central Bank competition!

Communication, according to many experts, is the creation and sharing of meaning. Is there a form of communication that transcends linguistic boundaries and cultural divides?Can art, dance, drama and music speak to all people everywhere? If the Arts are a Universal Language, are they capable of uniting all of us? The arts can be used to develop intercultural relationships, inspire creativity and influence how people “see things” and open them up to new possibilities. Just as the painter gazes at the blank canvas, and the actor steps onto the darkened stage, and the musician is surrounded by the silence that … Continue reading Are the Arts the Universal Language?

St. John’s hosted the 2012 ISST Girls Division 1 Basketball Championship this past week, March 8-10. The tournament lived up to its slogan, “Peace, Love, Basketball”. The three days of competition were filled with great spirit, sportsmanship and wonderful basketball. The tournament was made up of 12 teams from 9 different countries and a total of 120 athletes. ACS Athens was the dominant team of the tournament, winning its five games by an average margin of 41 points, and beating the American School of Paris in convincing fashion in the championship game, 69-26. The St. John’s girls finished in a … Continue reading Lions End Winter Season On A High Note

Dear parents, Last week, more than 200 highly capable high school musicians from around the globe graced St. John’s with their energy and enthusiasm for music.  The Association for Music in International Schools (AMIS) has been coordinating fantastic music opportunities for more than 20 years, and this was the 4th time St. John’s has hosted and event, this time the AMIS Mixed Choir and Senior Orchestra festival.  Guest conductors David Lawrence and Jonathan Mann worked amazingly well with the students to prepare them for the concert on Saturday night last week.  It was indeed a pleasure to host this wonderful … Continue reading St. John’s hosts AMIS, PYP, and ISST’s with great success!

ISSTs are only a week away. You may know that the Girls Basketball ISST tournament will take place at St. John’s from March 7-10. We hope you will come and cheer on the Lady Lions for their games. Please click here to see the schedule. Go Lions! Continue reading Come cheer on the Lady Lions at the ISSTs next week!

Continue reading Why students should come to St. John’s

We are getting towards the end of the second Big Ideas Week to be held here at St. John’s. Big Ideas Week is our innovative program for group-based experiential learning that allows students the space and time to recognize and stretch their innate capabilities and reach their own conclusions about their own performance.  It brings together the 7 competences which underpin our curriculum in middle school; Thinker, Creator, Explorer, Communicator, Collaborator, Contributor and Self assessor.   The week kicked off with a collaboration between the St. John’s and the organizations Green Light for Girls and Levi Strauss as well as … Continue reading Big Ideas Week on water

It’s great to be back after a winter holiday break. Before the holiday, we had to say goodbye to the departing students whose parents’ assignments took them to new posts. But on Monday, January 9th, we welcomed numerous new students and new families to the school to start the new year: 10 new students in Elementary School and two new students in Middle School.  Some grades are now completely full, but we still have some seats available in specific grade levels. We held an orientation meeting and two coffee mornings this week for the new families and those who joined us … Continue reading Happy 2012!

The videos of this morning’s Santa Lucia performance are now available on our Youtube page at http://www.youtube.com/mystjohns. Enjoy! Continue reading Santa Lucia videos now available on our Youtube page

Congratulations to alumnus Alexander Devrient (or Wiegand which was his name while at St. John’s) for his role in the movie Sherlock Holmes, starring Jude Law and Robert Downey Jr! http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1515091/fullcredits#cast Continue reading Alumnus features in Sherlock Holmes movie

St John’s Welcome Committee is calling new and existing volunteers for a Coffee Morning on Monday, 5 December at 8:45 (after drop-off) in the Sports Foyer. Help us welcome new families to St. John’s this January! Learn more about our upcoming events: -New Parent Coffee Morning, Monday 9 January -WC Coffee Mornings, Tuesday & Thursday 10 & 12 January -Winter Welcome Wine & Cheese, Friday 20 January We need all nationalities & languages represented! Incredible opportunity to help a family adjust more easily! If you are unable to join and are interested, please contact: Gretchen Morrison (morrisongp@cox.net) or Colleen Gilbert … Continue reading Welcome Commitee coffee morning on December 5

The St. John’s International School Advisory Board is delighted to announce the appointment of three new Board members: Mr. Geoffrey Furlonger, Dr. Gary Wilton, and Sr. Brenda Wallace. With the retirement from the Advisory Board of Mr. Christian Varin and Mr. Andrew Renshaw after many years of service, the Advisory Board was looking to fill the vacation positions with people that have specific expertise and background relevant to our school. The aim was to bring in one new Board member with extensive educational expertise and another with legal experience and background. In addition, the Faithful Companions of Jesus (FCJ) have … Continue reading Appointment of three new Advisory Board members

We believe that art and design, dance, drama and music are essential components of human life, a doorway to a whole new world of expression. In an international school like St. John’s, with a diverse student body from different cultural backgrounds, the Arts become the language of all students. Most academic classes exercise the left side of the brain and the Arts enable us to have a balance as much of what we do is, in essence, is “right brain” activity. Howard Gardner has been making sound arguments for a broad and balanced curriculum based on the theory of multiple … Continue reading Why the arts?

How About Better Parents? By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN Published: November 19, 2011 In recent years, we’ve been treated to reams of op-ed articles about how we need better teachers in our public schools and, if only the teachers’ unions would go away, our kids would score like Singapore’s on the big international tests. There’s no question that a great teacher can make a huge difference in a student’s achievement, and we need to recruit, train and reward more such teachers. But here’s what some new studies are also showing: We need better parents. Parents more focused on their children’s education can … Continue reading From the New York Times

It has been an eventful and positive start of the year for the Athletic Department. One highlight of the past three months was the visit of Genazzano FCJ College from Melbourne, Australia. They stopped by the St. John’s campus for a day as part of a three-week tour of Europe. Genazzano is an all-girls school and our teams played games of soccer and volleyball with our fellow FCJ students from Australia. It was wonderful to welcome the girls to St. John’s and to strengthen our FCJ legacy. Another great moment was hosting the Alistair Thorpe Memorial Cross Country Meet and … Continue reading Athletics at St. John’s

Dear parents, Once again thank you for supporting our High School Coffee on the issue of ‘Parenting Teenagers through a rigorous academic programme”. Here are the hand outs which were produced by Mr. Fronk and Mr. Johnston. This event is merely the first of a series we wish to host concerning several aspects of parenting and the partnership between home and school. Please contact us if you would like more information and please send us any ideas for topics for future coffee mornings. Best regards, Deborah Brook – HS principal Continue reading The HS parent coffee morning presentations

Please click here to read the 2010-11 annual report. You will also receive a hardcopy of this report this week, either by Friday folder for families whose youngest child is in Elementary School, or by post if in Middle or High School. Continue reading 2010-11 Annual report is now available

Confucius is credited with once saying: Learning without reflection is a waste, reflection without learning is dangerous. This very succinctly sums up why schools, earnest in seeking to improve, choose to participate in self-studies and accrediting projects. It is only in taking the time to look within that we can move forward to becoming better. Self-studies offer schools and educators an opportunity to face the truth or ‘brutal facts’ of the current situation and find a way to make positive changes. During the school year, 2011 – 2012, Saint John’s Elementary School is participating in not one, but two self-studies … Continue reading Life-long learning

About a month ago, we launched our password-protected parent portal, The Hub. Based on the recent parent survey comments, we developed a visual that shows the evolution of The Hub. In phase 1, you will see all current online communications tools. In each of the following phases, you will see how these tools get rolled into the Hub. All tools will continue to exist, but will now be accessible from one central place, The Hub, in order to increase convenience and accessibility of all information for current parents. Continue reading Evolution of the Hub

Our next High School Coffee Morning will take place on Thursday November 10th at 9.00 in the Cafeteria. We will cover the topic of, ‘How can Parents Support Children in their Adolescent Years?’  The session is for any parent who would like some handy tips on how to support and nurture their children through the very demanding years of High School. Grade 9/10 Counsellor Robert Fronk and Dean of Students Daniel Johnston will cover topics such as, ‘School Work/Leisure Time Balance’ and ‘Setting Firm but Fair Expectations’ We sincerely hope that you can join us. A theme for the year … Continue reading How can Parents Support Children in their Adolescent Years?

Google celebrated its 13th birthday this year. That means that all of our children at St. John’s below 7th grade were born in the Google age and our 12th graders were only four or five when Google was ‘born’ and cannot remember life without Google. The World Wide Web has been with us for a miniscule amount of time in relation to the development of the human race. The industrial revolution lasted for approximately one hundred years and had an amazing impact on the socioeconomic and cultural conditions of the time. Today the internet revolution or knowledge revolution has lasted … Continue reading The Language of the Internet

Over the past few weeks since the beginning of school we, in High School, have been building structures for student representation and providing opportunities for student leadership. Dr. Wendell Hausdorff and Dr. Jesus Castillo-Coronado have been hard at work preparing a range of projects ranging from School Council to Global Conservation Alliance work. In many schools, however, lip service is paid to this very important aspect of school life. The history of student leadership is a very interesting one. John Dewey wrote about it in 1916 in ‘Democracy in Education’ and yet student representation, leadership and contribution to decision making … Continue reading Student Leadership

Following up last week’s blog post, please find below some statistics on childhood road safety from the World Health Organization (WHO): • For children 0 to 14 years, pedestrian and bicycling deaths and injuries contribute as a major factor risk factor, whereas youth 15 to 19 years have greater use of motorized vehicles and therefore greater risks to deaths and injuries from these causes. • Children are particularly vulnerable until the age of 9–10 years, owing to their weak capacity to concentrate attention on traffic. They are considered to be especially vulnerable when motorized traffic is heavy or fast, visibility … Continue reading Childhood road safety statistics

As the new chairperson of the Governance committee of the Advisory Board and a Board member of the ASBL Board, it is important to me to make it as clear as possible to the St. John’s community what the governance structure of the school is and the responsibilities of the ASBL Board, the Advisory Board, the Director and the Administration of St. John’s International School. In addition, all of the St. John’s community should understand the pertinent policies and the way the budget is created-the factors and the influences that all work together to make this such a successful school. … Continue reading The governance of the school

Was the first day of school really only last week? Feels like ages ago already. Also feels like a very good start for St John’s. I attended a presentation of the new staff in the theater: a new high school principal, 16 new teachers and supporting staff, representing 7 different nationalities. The quality and energy they bring to the school is impressive.   Green and White day last Saturday kicked off the sports season with players, parents and coaches. Again, the enthusiasm was palpable on the soccer field, along the cross country run and in the arena. The volleyball team … Continue reading Advisory Board: All will be revealed on September 8th at 19:00