guiding statements
MISSION: We prepare minds and hearts to face the challenges of the future.
VISION: To be part of a community of members who transform and positively impact the fields they practice.
VALUES: Respect, Tolerance, Responsibility, Solidarity, Honesty and Justice.
MOTTO: “Gentes Moresque Docendo Iungimus” (included in Latin in the School’s logo). We unite peoples and cultures through education.
SLOGAN: Corazón Colombo – We Are One
IB LEARNER PROFILE: The main purpose of the International Baccalaureate Organization (IBO) Programmes adopted by Colegio Colombo Británico is to educate people with an international mind-set who are aware of the condition that unites them as human beings, the responsibility they share of watching over the planet, and who will contribute to creating a better and more peaceful world.
Members of the CCB educational community strive to be:
Inquirers: We nurture our curiosity, developing skills for inquiry and research. We know how to learn independently and with others. We learn with enthusiasm and sustain our love of learning throughout life.
Knowledgeable: We develop and use conceptual understanding, exploring knowledge across a range of disciplines. We engage with issues and ideas that have local and global significance.
Thinkers: We use critical and creative thinking skills to analyse and take responsible action on complex problems. We exercise initiative in making reasoned, ethical decisions.
Communicators: We express ourselves confidently and creatively in more than one language and in many ways. We collaborate effectively, listening carefully to the perspectives of other individuals and groups.
Principled: We act with integrity and honesty, with a strong sense of fairness and justice, and with respect for the dignity and rights of people everywhere. We take responsibility for our actions and their consequences.
Open-Minded: We critically appreciate our own cultures and personal histories, as well as the values and traditions of others. We seek and evaluate a range of points of view, and we are willing to grow from the experience.
Caring: We show empathy, compassion and respect. We have a commitment to service, and we act to make a positive difference in the lives of others and in the world around us.
Risk Takers: We approach uncertainty with forethought and determination; we work independently and cooperatively to explore new ideas and innovative strategies. We are resourceful and resilient in the face of challenges and change.
Balanced: We understand the importance of balancing different aspects of our lives—intellectual, physical, and emotional—to achieve well-being for ourselves and others. We recognize our interdependence with other people and with the world in which we live.
Reflective: We thoughtfully consider the world and our own ideas and experience. We work to understand our strengths and weaknesses in order to support our learning and personal development.
(Taken from the International Baccalaureate Organization document ‘What is IB Education’, published in June 2015).
ETHOS
Excellence:
Empowering each student to reach his or her full potential in a holistic way.
What do we do? We encourage students to take responsibility for their learning and think about their successful and difficult times, so that they always find ways to improve their performance, in whichever field they are learning about or getting involved in.
High Quality Teaching and Learning:
The mission of Colegio Colombo Británico (CCB) is to prepare minds and hearts to face the challenges of the future. The purpose of CCB is for students to develop an international mindset and global citizenship through a bilingual education that allows them to see the world from multiple perspectives while respecting and celebrating diversity.
To achieve this purpose, CCB strives to foster balanced and well-rounded students who will become lifelong learners with creative minds. We use inclusive, inquiry-based, and concept-based teaching strategies to provide students with learning experiences that are flexible, collaborative, holistic, and student-centred. By developing and strengthening their critical thinking, self-management, and agency skills, our students take ownership of their own learning and seek knowledge and understanding beyond having “the answer.” We provide learning experiences that promote the development of international mindedness, social and environmental responsibility. The IB Learner Profile is holistically integrated into all aspects of CCB student life: academics, arts, sports and community service.
Throughout their learning process, they become lifelong learners prepared to face the challenges of the future. CCB students are exposed to meaningful learning and experiences in real contexts. These authentic experiences enable them to develop the skills to be critical, flexible, and reflective thinkers as they become authentic significant learners with voice, ownership, and choice.
British Tradition:
What do we do? We have ties with Great Britain and its representatives in Colombia; we conduct House activities, we offer students the opportunity to study in the United kingdom in private schools and universities, and celebrate aspects of the British culture.
Holistic Development:
What do we do? We promote a balance between intellectual, physical, and artistic development, along with the good use of free time.
Good Human Beings:
What do we do? We favour the emotional-social development of moral conscience, the strengthening of values and positive behaviour. We encourage healthy lifestyle habits and self-care as fundamental cornerstones of quality lifestyles.
Culture of Well-being:
At CCB we understand that building a culture of well-being for all members of the educational community is the basis for high-quality teaching-learning.
The purpose of our culture of Well-being is to create a school environment where personal relationships and learning processes promote and sustain positive effects on the physical, mental and social health of the members of the educational community.
The institution has a network of policies and programmes that promote the safeguarding of students. Safeguarding includes protecting minors from the risks of abuse and discrimination while promoting their well-being.
Among the policies that support this network we can find: the Inclusion Policy (see IEP), Child Protection Handbook (see Child Protection Handbook), and Coexistence Policy (see School Handbook, numeral 3.5). They establish as institutional policy the recognition and appreciation of diversity, the search for equity, and a solid commitment to the prevention of discrimination in all its manifestations.
As an educational community, our mission prioritize the relationships that children and adolescents experience at school as the basis for building confidence in oneself and in the environment. We seek to empower members of the educational community to assume an assertive position in the face of safeguarding concerns and the promotion of well-being.
This culture of well-being’s ultimate goal is to prepare students to face the challenges of the future and create a better and more peaceful world that values diversity.
A Catholic Vocation, with respect for other religions:
What do we do? We educate students in the values of the Catholic Church throughout their schooling, thus offering religion classes, preparation for the sacraments of First Communion and Confirmation, and celebrating the most important events of the liturgical calendar of the Catholic Church, involving the whole CCB community. We educate students to appreciate and respect the input of community members who profess different religions and beliefs.
Global Citizenship:
A global citizen is someone who explores and engages with the world around them. We recognize that fostering an international mindset is a continuous learning process.
As a school that embraces diversity, we practice and embrace universal values, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Through a deep understanding of their local context and in connection with global perspectives, we encourage our students to develop and live the IB profile attributes as well as CCB’s values. Additionally, a global citizen demonstrates these qualities in virtual contexts by applying digital citizenship skills.
Our students are engaged in constant conceptual investigation. As a result, they develop skills and explore knowledge by considering and contrasting the ideas and beliefs of others, as well as by embracing difference and diversity to enrich their understanding of the world and its many cultures. Through this process we want our students to find creative solutions to build a harmonious future for humanity.
The essential elements in this constant process are a wholehearted and collaborative willingness of the entire community, a coherent curriculum that aims to build sustainable and peaceful societies, the assertive use of English as a second language and French as a third language, and a committed membership with international collaborative organizations, school networks and educational exchange programmes (Round Square, LAHC, VHS Learning).
Social and Environmental Responsibility:
What do we do? Members of the CCB Community engage in work and activities with communities in which they show solidarity and empathy. We strive to protect the environment through curricular and extracurricular activities. We educate students to appreciate and respect the environment.
Bilingualism and other languages:
What do we do? We promote and encourage the use of English and Spanish in the school context and support those who choose to learn other languages. We support the learning of French as a foreign language. We learn language, through language and about language.
Leadership and Collaborative Work:
What do we do? We carry out the training and education process encouraging collaborative work among members of the educational community. Students have the chance to develop leadership skills, understanding that collaborative work encompasses the possibility of assuming different roles.
Lifelong learners:
What do we do? We seek that the members of the educational community enjoy the learning process, so they long to learn for the rest of their lives. We engage students in learning activities to stimulate research, critical thinking, and action-driven initiative. We offer training plans for teachers and employees and organize workshops and conferences for parents.
PHILOSOPHY
The Colegio Colombo Británico:
Grounds its philosophy on the institutional values and the IB Learner Profile attributes.
- It recognizes, respects and appreciates cultural, religious, ethnic, intellectual, and social diversity.
- It develops moral, social and intellectual autonomy as an integrated process through meaningful learning.
- It creates the conditions necessary for students to reflect on how they learn.
- It stimulates investigative, critical and analytical thinking, and the development of creative capacity.
- It offers various scenarios for the identification and development of talents in students.
- It promotes healthy life habits and self-care as fundamental pillars for quality of life.
- It fosters a culture of caring in which the education, safety, and well-being of students and others are paramount.
- It collaborates together with the family and the community, in the mission to educate students.
- It is committed to the preservation and care of ecosystems belonging to the environment.
- It develops awareness of the condition that unites us as human beings to identify social problems and acts in favour of the solution, in a collaborative way.
