Pillars
Our pillars express the essence of the Belgrano Day School educational project: an education that combines tradition, innovation, well-being and a global vision to form whole, autonomous people prepared to learn throughout their lives
FAC RECTE
Fac Recte orients our educational task: educate to be and do good, and to live meaningfully. Inspired by our historical motto, it expresses a way to live, learn and coexist with integrity and purpose.
Our founders summarised the core of character building in the expression “play the game” as a metaphor for rightful and honest behaviour in all acts of life. The rules of the game “on and off the field” are sustained by the values that define us: honesty, strength, companionship, bull-dog courage, justice and happiness in the face of adversity.
Fac Recte is also seen in the openness to transcendence and spiritual life, the generous outreach to others through community service, the responsible care of the common home, and the search for a purpose to guide our own life: “…helping others and possessing the spirit of solidarity and sharing with others…” (Hugh Green).
Belgrano Day School´s motto “Fac Recte” was created around 1916, inspired by a verse of the poet Horatio: “Si recte facies, rex eris”. Our founder, John Ernest Green, and the British ambassador, Sir Reginald Powers, defined as its translation the phrase “Play the Game”: to play rightfully the game of life. More than just a sports motto, it represents a way of living based on honesty, respect, friendship, justice and commitment to others, all values which are present in the everyday life of the whole BDS community.
APRENDER A APRENDER
The purpose of Belgrano Day School is to educate autonomous learners. With that in mind, we educate lifelong learners, capable of building knowledge from a sound literacy base and the development of skills and predispositions that allow them to get on in different and changing contexts.
We promote critical and creative thinking, autonomy, self regulation and metacognition, collaboration and communication, and a global and ethical consciousness, within the frame of care for personal and emotional wellbeing. As a consequence, every student learns to manage their own process of reflection and responsibility.
The teaching of literacy, together with logical-mathematical, scientific and critical thinking, constitutes the basis in which every student becomes an active protagonist of their learning journey. Learn to Learn also implies learning with and for others: we understand collaboration and communication as ways of building knowledge inside the community.
Essentially, Learn to Learn means learning how to think, feel, create and coexist, to keep learning our whole lives and contributing, from our own individuality, to the making of a better world.
COMPREHENSIVE DEVELOPMENT AND WELLBEING
We promote safe, sustainable, and emotionally aware environments, where positive bonds, healthy habits and a school environment of happiness and support make learning a meaningful and enjoyable experience.
Within this framework, we understand inclusion as an active commitment to individuality. Each student is recognised from their own identity, pace, interests, strengths, and challenges. To personalise implies including each person in the common educational project, respecting their individual ways of learning and participating in school life.
We see to the physical, emotional, social, and spiritual aspects of each student in a comprehensive manner to support the development of their unique potential.
At the same time, we promote a culture of conscious and sustained effort, where each student learns to take on challenges, persevere in the face of difficulties and develop resilience.
We value commitment, perseverance, and personal responsibility as an essential part of human and academic development, always supported by teachers who orient, encourage and recognise every instance of progress.
GLOBAL CULTURE AND BILINGUALISM
Bilingualism is a distinctive trait in Belgrano Day School´s DNA. Conceived as a school part of the English community in the City of Buenos Aires, Belgrano Day School sees internationalisation as a way of learning in and with the world.
Global culture and bilingualism are expressed in a real bilingual mindset: a cognitive, cultural and relational disposition that broadens mental flexibility, and transforms the way of thinking, learning and relating oneself to the environment, which entails much more than simply the ability to speak two different languages. This approach supports cognitive adaptability and strengthens critical and creative thinking.
This is complemented with the development of intercultural intelligence, understood as an ethical and cultural competency, and with the active exposure to diversity through in-person and virtual experiences
This international calling is engraved in our school’s origins: our Houses system (North, South, East y West) symbolises the cardinal points, and represents, from its conception, an educational project open to the world.
MOONSHOT MINDSET
Belgrano Day School adopts a stance that defines it: to revise its own practices with honesty, question inherited ideas and ask a genuine question about the future of education, even when it is uncomfortable.
Moonshot Mindset refers to this institutional attitude. It is not an uncritical celebration of innovation nor the search of disruption for disruption’s sake, but rather the intention to explore in depth new ways of teaching and learning. And to do so from a place of interdisciplinarity, personalisation and smart use of technology, in a constant productive tension with the best parts of our tradition.
In practice, this becomes a range of actions that go from micro-innovations –such as new ways of evaluating, a redesign of the environment, an interdisciplinary proposal– to larger-scale projects that reformulate the core educational experience. Belgrano Day School researches new trends, analyses them in the light of its project and transforms them into concrete decisions.
The tension between Fac Recte and the Moonshot Mindset is not a contradiction, it is the energy that drives our school. Tradition and vision need each other so that BDS´s educational project remains alive, relevant and true.
Teachers´ role
Our teacher profile is defined by our teachers´ commitment to an education centered around learning, on what and how students learn, oriented towards individual comprehensive development, and permanent interaction with scientific, technological, social and cultural changes in the world.
Within this frame, teachers are no longer central content distributors but rather become designers of learning experiences, tutors of different paths, and a guide between students, knowledge and technology.
Learning environments
We have the conviction that every space is a possible learning environment, be it in person or digital. Classrooms, playgrounds, halls, and digital spaces are thought of as scenarios where both formal and informal learning take place, intertwining, promoting significant interactions, collaborative work and active knowledge construction.
