Cebu International School (CIS) values educating the whole child and provides rigorous and engaging opportunities for students to grow academically, socially, emotionally, physically, morally and ethically. While academic growth and physical development are part of other schools’ curriculum, it is only one aspect of what it means to teach children to be contributing and compassionate members of society.
CIS’ Guiding Statement promotes and demonstrates belief “…in the strong universal moral values of respect, integrity, and social responsibility.” This is at the core of everything students and teachers do in classrooms so that today’s students grow up to be respectful leaders, who act with integrity and promote social justice.
CIS teachers and students engage in regular activities that help children develop perspective and open-mindedness, to be compassionate community members. Through classroom and after school activities, students learn about inequality, how corruption destroys social justice, moral values, and how people bring action for positive change to life. Students learn to take action for things in our world that they feel strongly about.
One way in which CIS students take action is through their Week Without Walls campaign. Week Without Walls is a program for elementary, middle and high school students, which places action at the center of learning to support communities around Cebu. Through work with Gawad Kalinga on building sites in Naga and with rebuilding the Looc Elementary School San Remegio, student groups spend a week on construction sites helping to finish buildings for displaced students and families in need. These family homes and the school have not been rebuilt since the damage caused by Typhoon Yolanda.
Other student groups worked on and off campus to support community literacy and built five “Little Libraries” that have been placed in local barangays. The CIS community continues to donate and stock books for these “Little Libraries” to bring needed resources to community members thirsty for the magic of books. Others built shelters for animals and worked with a local pet rescue group whose work seeks to educate people about animals, and caring for God’s creatures that have no voice of their own.
Another group created a professional internship with several cooperating businesses right here in Cebu. Students were given a first hand opportunity to work within the medical, hotel and arts community of Cebu to see how their knowledge and skills would translate into real-world working opportunities. The students saw first-hand what they need to do and know to contribute to the community and be prepared to support future growth.
Other students purchased and prepared two Yellow Boats of Hope to donate to school communities in Bantayan where students currently have to swim to school. These same students visited the Mandaue dumpsite to work with children who live at the dumpsite. Nothing can convey the need for social justice and support for those disenfranchised from society than spending a morning with young children who know no other home than living among the garbage we throw away each day. It is the people who have no voice that Pope Francis speaks of when he highlights the need to embrace the true works and words of Jesus Christ.
CIS understands that to prepare students for the future, academic rigor is important, but is only one facet of what it means to be a compassionate and engaged citizen. Moral and ethical decision-making is as important as academic and physical growth.