Extra-Curricular Activities (ECAs)

“Teach me, and I will forget. Show me, and I might remember. Involve me, and I will never forget.”

As a top British school in Dubai, we believe in a whole-child education. The academic life of our pupils is therefore complemented with rich and diverse extracurricular activities. There are a number of clubs and societies for every interest, and new ones are established each year to meet the changing needs and desires of our pupils. National representation in sport, debating, music and arts is common and pupils are supported to pioneer the introduction of their extracurricular pursuits, leading to regular pupil leadership opportunities, there is simply something for everyone at Kent College Dubai.

Inclusiveness is central to our philosophy as well as the desire to enable elite performers to exercise and develop their outstanding talents. Our extra curricular activities programme aims:

• To give our pupils opportunities to explore and develop their experiences
• To teach pupils to be responsible and fulfilled human beings
• To give them opportunities that may benefit them in later life
• To expose them to leadership opportunities and skills
• To allow pupils to develop character, social skills, critical thinking and talents
• To boost their CV and/or university application with high profile ECAs that help them stand out
• To support the curriculum that is taught and the values that are installed at Kent College Dubai

Within each level there are four sections:

Service – Participants volunteer in their communities, make a positive contribution to society and demonstrate social responsibility.

Physical Recreation – Encourages young people to improve their fitness and performance and enjoy healthy lifestyles for good mental and physical wel-lbeing.

Skills – Enables participants to develop their talents, broaden their abilities, increase their self‐confidence and improve their employability.

Adventurous Journey – Young people discover a spirit of adventure and gain a deeper understanding of the environment and the great outdoors.

The Bronze Award takes a minimum of 6 months to complete. Participants are required to commit to each of their three chosen activities for at least 3 months – approximately 1 hour per week for 14 weeks. Participants then continue to do their favourite activity from one of the sections for a further 3 months.

During this time, participants are expected to attend an International Award meeting once a week. These meetings are used as mentoring sessions where participants can discuss their experiences and manage their targets. These are logged in their ‘Online Record Book’ which needs to be updated weekly.

During the year, participants also receive all the necessary training required for an unaccompanied hike. They learn skills such as:

• First aid and emergency procedures
• Guidance in how to use camp equipment
• Camp craft and cooking
• Route planning
• Map reading and navigation

These skills are developed and ultimately tested in two Adventurous Journeys which take the form of a 2 day / 1 night, weekend away.

Summary

Young people who complete the Award become more confident and resilient, and develop skills in areas such as communication, problem-solving and leadership. By creating opportunities for your child to develop skills, get physically active, give service and experience adventure, the Award can play a critical role in his / her development outside the classroom. It also allows their achievement to be consistently recognised worldwide, giving them a unique international accreditation of their experiences. We are really looking forward to guiding the pupils through this exciting journey.

The IPCC report states that at 2°C, 99% of all corals would be lost. Carbon pollution would have to be cut by 45% by 2030 – compared with a 20% cut under the 2°C pathway – and come down to zero by 2050, compared with 2075 for 2°C. At the current level of commitments, the world is on course for a disastrous 3°C of warming. As an IB World school we are aware of our obligation to achieve the aims of the IB programme: The IB learner profile aims to develop internationally minded people who, recognising our common humanity and shared guardianship of the planet, help to create a better, more peaceful world.”

Our ECOllege have identified five top goals as well as action items for each goal. These Goals are:

• Goal 1 – Reduce resource consumption
• Goal 2 – Become a ‘single-use plastic’ free school
• Goal 3 – Improve the number of resources we reuse and recycle
• Goal 4 – Offset the carbon we produce
• Goal 5 – Influence businesses to reduce their carbon emissions

To date, our ECOllege have achieved the following at Kent College Dubai:

• They have identified and partnered with a recycling company – Simply Bottles – because Simply Bottles is affiliated with DGrade – a company that spins recycled bottles into yarn which is then used to make fabrics, which in turn are made into all sorts of products such as caps, t-shirts, face masks etc.
• The ECOllege have rolled out a PET recycling initiative whereby all recyclable bottles are collected and handed over to our recycling partners Simply Bottles.
• The ECOllege’s efforts, together with other schools that take part in the SimplyBottles collections, have collectively saved plastics from going to landfill.
• Our ECOllege pupils created a recyclable sculptural installation to educate the school body on how PET plastics should not be used in the first place. They taught us that what’s even better than recycling, is not using plastics at all.

With Model United Nations, pupils don’t necessarily represent the country they live in; rather, each team is assigned a country to represent at the outset of a conference, and will need to do all of their research and debating through the lenses of the nominated country’s legislation and policies). Team members are often assigned various roles or positions at Conferences.

Delegates conduct research before conferences: they must formulate position papers and create policy proposals that they will debate over with other delegates. At the end of a conference, delegates will vote on written policies, called draft resolutions, with the goal of passing them with a majority vote. The best-performing delegates in each committee, as well as delegations, are sometimes recognized with awards.
Team members are often assigned various roles or positions at Conferences from representing countries as delegates, to coordinating the debates as the chairperson and further to coordinating whole conferences as part of an executive committee.

How to get involved:

The MUN club is open to all pupils from Year 7-13, with opportunities linked to age and experience. Pupils attend the weekly ECA, where they will learn the skills needed for the conference and also get the opportunity to review current international projects and events. Sign up is open termly on Schoolsbuddy.

The TEDEd Student Talks program takes commitment and time, with pupils working over several months to explore and present their big ideas. Their talks are performed to a real audience, recorded and then submitted to TEDEd for publishing on the TEDEd YouTube channel, to spread their ideas to their parents, friends, communities and the world.

Kenterprise is a wonderful experience enjoyed by so many of our pupils who end the project with a great feeling of achievement and confidence along with a suite of great business ideas and skills.

The format of our sessions will therefore be open discussions with a heavy practical element including role playing or designing investigations, loosely based around the GCSE topics, such as Perception, Memory, Social influence, etc.

The Society offers fun readings, movies to watch, discussions, and activities. It will also include reading far around the subject, covering topics outside of the textbook in the hope of developing students’ critical thinking towards the content presented. Speakers will also be expected to discuss career paths in the field. In the future, links with other schools for conference-type discussion sessions will also be facilitated.

The society is open to all students considering Psychology as a career path, students that are interested in Psychology, as well as those who are unsure about the topic but want to give it a try. We are here to inspire an interest in Psychology for students to develop throughout their academic careers.

The society meets every 2 weeks.