Welcoming Environment
Students also grow up within the context of our international community and develop a deep understanding and respect for other cultures. Their bilingual and bicultural experiences make them naturally open to new perspectives and ideas.
Character education
Our character education program centers on the belief that students can only learn in an environment that allows them to feel safe, loved, and self-fulfilled. Having core values, common to all, is critical. At FISW, character education is more than just an educational buzzword. We have developed a program that is woven throughout our teaching. It is a program tailored to our students' needs and instills values such as respect, gratitude, love of learning, perseverance, kindness, social intelligence, critical thinking, teamwork, and forgiveness. Students will carry these values with them into middle school and beyond.
This program dovetails with our staff's desire to promote a welcoming environment at school, and it has given us the opportunity to revisit our practices, redesign our working spaces, rethink our rules and procedures, and implement a set of values and virtues that reflect the characteristics that graduates will take with them beyond FISW.
Co-Teaching
Co-teaching is a time each week that French and English teachers spend together in the classroom, modeling teamwork and cross-cultural cooperation. By making connections between what students have learned in both languages, the learning process becomes more meaningful and impactful. Co-teaching is the foundation for projects in which the students use resources in both languages to create products such as plays and newspapers that alternate between languages intentionally and coherently.
