Teaching Empathy in High School
Written by Darren Nicholas, Head of School, British International School of Boston
A happy child is more likely to be a productive child, therefore children and young people should enjoy their education. While the British International School of Boston (BISB) has 82 different heritages in their school, they consider themselves one body. This mode of inclusive thinking makes the classroom a safer, more empathetic place to be. Our EdTech company gained valuable input from Darren Nicholas, the Head of School at the BISB about how the school is framing their curriculum around empathy and how teaching empathy to high school students can benefit their future.
A Focus on Personalizing Education
The BISB runs a fundamental British curriculum, but they’re able to incorporate the best of international curricula throughout to create an exceptional and bespoke education, with an IGCSE (International General Certificate of Secondary Education) for the first two years of high school and an IB (International Baccalaureate) diploma for the last two. It is differentiated and personalized for each of their 450 students. Students work in pods or individually and do very different pieces of work based on their strengths and what they need to develop.
All of the lessons are built upon each other, interwoven. For example, the English department knows what the history department is teaching, and the history department knows what the English department is teaching, so teachers explicitly merge the subjects together. The school does the same throughout all subjects, as they believe disciplines shouldn’t be mutually exclusive.
The Correct College for the Individual
The BISB starts the process of explicitly preparing their students for college as early as grade 6, where teachers start focusing on the skills their students will require to be successful in college. This ranges from academics to cooking, cleaning, and finances they will be responsible for as adults. Everything BISB teachers deliver relates directly to skills young people need to be successful in adult life. They focus on the skills that students require for the 21st-century world and spiral the acquisition of these skills from the youngest to oldest grades.
The focus is the correct college for the individual. For some, it’s an Ivy League school, but for others, it could be a small liberal arts college. (Learn more about how to create a college short list.) BISB students attend a wide range of colleges and universities both in the US and internationally after they graduate, and the school measures its success by the fact that every student from BISB has successfully graduated from the college they first attended. We believe this to be a tremendous achievement.
Activities That Push Students Out of Their Comfort Zones
There’s no limit to what a student can achieve. Every student can succeed if we provide the right opportunities through which they can achieve a sense of positive self-worth. We have a moral obligation to stand by and promote acceptable behavior and worthwhile activities.
We try to give a broad opportunity for everyone to participate in extracurriculars. For example, BISB pushed Model UN, and began working with Knovva around the Model G20® Summit. What BISB is looking for are activities that take the students out of their comfort zones. By pushing those boundaries, there’s potential to get students outside of the classroom and honing the skills they’ve learned by putting them into practice.
What Education Should Be
Education has a competitive element, especially in North America. And yet, in jobs now, there is a need for cooperation and collaboration. That’s a hard change that requires a fundamental shift. To us, education needs to be holistic. At Model G20® last year, one of the most valuable skills students learned were soft skills. Model G20® pushes down boundaries around culture and race that should never have been there in the first place.
The students came from different places, yet they could communicate and become best friends the way teenagers often do.
A Global Perspective Through Nord Anglia Education
Being part of Nord Anglia Education with 66 schools worldwide means that every day the BISB students gain an international perspective. The Global Campus is an online platform for students to communicate, share ideas, and practice with Nord Anglia students anywhere in the world. BISB students can share their ideas about sustainability with someone in India, Indonesia, or Poland.
This week’s School Voice belongs to Darren Nicholas, Head of School at the British International School of Boston. The BISB is a Nord Anglia Education School that enrolls 450 students from preschool to high school.
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