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Writer's picturearniebieber

Practice Compassion!


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Teaching students to develop values such as compassion and respect through service learning was the topic of the latest parent workshop series, Edge in Education at the International School of Prague. During the workshop, parents, teachers and students had shared their experiences connected to service to others and how the school integrates service learning into our curriculum.

Like academic learning, we believe that values education is an essential component of a meaningful and enduring education for our children. After all, a business person who might be well educated academically, but without integrity, is not a role model that we would want our students to emulate. We strongly believe that fundamental to a holistic education is supporting students to develop values such as those found in the ISP Mission: Compassion, Integrity, Respect and Intercultural Understanding.

Values education is not something a student learns in an isolated class, but is a mindset which is integrated throughout the educational experience. A powerful approach to learning about values is by giving students the opportunity to act through service, and then provide them with the opportunity to reflect on what they have learned through this experience. This in a nutshell is the concept of service learning. During the Edge in Education workshop parents had an opportunity to view a video about service learning and then to directly hear from ISP students and teachers about their service learning experiences.


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Examples of ISP elementary school service learning can be view in this short video:


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In middle school students too are active service learners!


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In upper school students are involved in a wide array of service learning activities many of which revolve around the International Baccalaureate Diploma CAS (Creativity, Action, Service) Program. To learn more about the upper school service learning activities, click here.

Recently a group of ISP faculty travelled to India to work with the Teach for India organization and to explore possible service learning connections that might be made with this vital group.


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We at ISP view values education and service learning to be fundamental to what we call an authentic global education. The concept of values education is not a new one and was understood to be essential even in ancient times:


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The full Edge in Education workshop video can be found here:


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