International British School of Zagreb solemnly celebrated 10 years of successful work at the Croatian National Theatre along with many people from the public life, partners, former and current students, their families and other friends of the school. “In all ten years of work, our focus has been on educating students according to international standards in English, but also with lessons in Croatian and other languages such as Spanish and German. With innovative and fun teaching methods and tools for learning, we encourage creative and critical thinking in students, as well as personal growth with importance put also on their physical and emotional health. We believe that all this will help them with better navigating their later stages of education and life, because I founded the school in 2013 with this goal in mind’’, points out the founder and director of the school, Milena Prodanić Tišma.
Since today’s children are children of the 21st century, they added the Sustainable Goals of the United Nations-UN to their curriculum with the desire that students become aware and familiar with the current world situation, how to deal with it and how they can help. “Through working with children, each teacher adds elements of the chosen sustainable goal and together with children, they work through the topic to familiarize them with the problem, but also working on coming up with a solution. This is how we prepare them and provide them with the skills and knowledge they need for their own future. Apart from school materials and learning, we also offer students various extracurricular activities, such as acting, robotics, tennis, chess, bridge, cheerleading, choir and others,” says the principal.
Among the best in Croatia and the world Since its establishment in 2013, Bright Horizons school has been providing a wide and creative curriculum with an emphasis on international learning following the British National curriculum, International Primary Curriculum (IPC-International Primary Curriculum) and Croatian national curriculum for the Croatian language. It is among the best private schools in Croatia, but also in the world according to the global register of private schools Lookup, which declared it the best private humanities school in the world for the 2022/23 school year.
Dedication to work and goals, the curriculum and all the activities they carry out with a special approach for each student as an individual, Bright Horizons school is also “more than just a school”, or as some describe it as a “school for 10”. The school strives for excellence and differs from others in its curriculum with international learning, which allows students to later easily transfer to a new private, state or international school abroad. It also stands out for its many additional activities, including the fact that Computing was introduced from Year 1, and what makes it different is that it was the first school in Croatia a few years ago, to become aware of the impact of the pandemic on the emotional health of students, which then led them to introduce the Mindfulness program as part of its already existing Wellbeing program for students.
The goal of this program is the overall well-being and positive feeling of students, in which Mindfulness techniques additionally help students in their daily work through development of concentration, focus and productivity. “The need to implement this program arose from a deep understanding of the context of which students today are surrounded by in their lives and educational process, and which characterizes hyperproduction of information. In such circumstances, we consider providing students with complete psychophysical support crucial, so that they are stable pupils who study and work willingly”, says Prodanić Tišma. In ten years, along with a good reputation and dedication, the popularity of the school and the number of students grew in the first year of working (ten years ago), there were several in the first class, and today there are 173 in the ten-year groups, among which 33 nations are represented. There are a total thirty employees for them at school, including teachers from Croatia, Great Britain, Canada, United states of America, Argentina, Hungary, Estonia…
The students ended the festive celebration of the school’s 10th birthday in an excellent and inspiring way with a version of the play “Jack and the Beanstalk”, which they rehearsed with the teachers. The celebration continued in the foyer of the Croatian National Theatre.