Teach Middle East Magazine Mar-Apr 2018 Issue 4 Volume 5 | Página 25

Featured School ST CHRISTOPHER’S SCHOOL BAHRAIN- HELPS ITS STUDENTS TO BECOME AUTONOMOUS LEARNERS, COMPETENT INDIVIDUALS AND GLOBAL CITIZENS St Christopher's students are from 3 to 18 years old and come from seventy nations W e here at Teach Middle East Magazine, have been hearing of the wonderful work, taking place at St Christopher’s School in Bahrain (St Chris), for several years, but in 2017 while attending the British Schools Middle East (BSME) conference, in that country, we had an opportunity to experience this, first hand. St Chris is a large British Curriculum school with over 2300 students who hail from approximately seventy nations around the globe. The success and notoriety of the school is so far reaching, that you would be forgiven to think that it has always been this way. However, like many schools across this Middle East region, St Chris had a very modest start in a villa in 1961. The success the school enjoys today, is down to the hard work of the principal Ed Goodwin, featured later on in this issue of the magazine, the dedicated teachers and staff members, the school’s governing body as well as the students and parents. The students, who range from ages three to eighteen, all benefit from the excellence, dedication and hard work of the teachers and support staff of this noble institution. In this issue, we take you inside St Christopher’s school, as they share with us what works well in their school. We also celebrate the legacy of the principal ED Goodwin OBE and Head of Junior School Wendy Bataineh, on their upcoming retirement at the end of this academic year (2017-2018). Promoting Staff and Student wellbeing at St Christopher’s. There are three core values, enshrined in the St Christopher’s symbol, these are; Learning, Caring, and Communicating. The ethos of the school is that, caring has to be extended in all directions and between all sections of the school. Making wellbeing a priority, is very hard to achieve but at St Chris they seemed to have cracked the code. The relationship between staff and students is of the highest caliber. The emphasis is on the whole-student, not just the academic. The pastoral leaders in the school offer immense support to the teachers and they work together to ensure that all students have the academic as well as the social and emotional support that they need. The school boasts an extensive array of extracurricular programmes. During our visit in 2017, we had the opportunity to hear the school choir’s enchanting rendition of the Bahraini national anthem during the BSME conference. The performance was talked about long after the event was over. The school is also heavily involved in the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award, which is a The Leadership Team - Ian Fellows, Wendy Bataineh, Nick Wilson and Ed Goodwin Class Time | | Mar - Apr 2018 | 23