After you’ve read the text below, please also watch this film in which four students and their teachers explain what the Mission Statement means to them.
‘A Community learning for world citizenship’
The International School Utrecht is an IB World School, offering a complete and connected International Baccalaureate programme for students from 4-18 from diverse international backgrounds. We continuously strive for academic excellence in the delivery of this programme. Our mission statement consists of four equally important pillars.
We are a close-knit and welcoming community of students, staff and parents. We all approach life from a different culture and background and with the languages we know. We find each other in our common goal: to create a stimulating learning environment in which everyone feels at home. We strive to be culturally competent; we are grounded in our own cultures, yet curious about others.
We communicate across cultures, using music to form strong bonds. That is why we offer an exciting music programme accessible to all students and connected to the rich music tradition of the city of Utrecht.
We give special attention to the physical and social environment we learn and work in. We value and care for the natural world and model responsible behaviour. Our learning environment is one in which every person can express themselves safely and freely.
We use technology in an innovative and sensible way to enhance our teaching and learning. We equally appreciate the value of sensory and tactile experiences. We approach the virtual and real world as one, behaving consistently as we are moving from one to the other.
We are a community of life-long learners
High quality learning and global citizenship
With the whole staff together on one of our study days we developed definitions of what we think is “high quality learning” and “international mindedness/global citizenship”. This is what we believe:
Learning is a lifelong process where we make new connections to help us discover and increase our understanding of the world around us. High quality learning builds on prior knowledge and is driven by natural curiosity.
Global citizenship starts with internationally minded people. People who have an awareness, understanding and acceptance of other cultures and beliefs as well as their own culture and beliefs. Global citizens embrace diversity and know that different perspectives have a great deal to offer.
We are still talking together to discuss what these definitions mean in our day to day teaching and learning. Asking ourselves and others questions like: how does culture, gender, generation, environment influence our perception and implementation of high quality learning? Where in our school can we see the examples of global citizenship? We plan to revisit our definition to see how it develops and changes as we grapple with our understanding of them.