The concept of cross-grade teaching at the GISB

Your decision to join the German International School Boston entails your children being taught in cross-grade learner groups. This modern concept of instruction is a philosophy that places the child at the center:

HIS/HER COGNITIVE AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT AS AN INDIVIDUAL AND HIS/HER OWN LEARNING PACE!

This approach requires that all involved take a new perspective on learning. In addition:
"a school where each child takes center stage, a school that supports each student, that focuses on the most diverse abilities and maximizes undiscovered potential."*

In educational systems that concentrate on comparison of achievements and test scores, the introduction of new educational standards and the newest guidelines for lesson parameters from the ministry of education, the needs of the individual child will easily fall through the cracks.

We are a school whose students exhibit an extraordinarily diverse number of talents, abilities, strengths and weaknesses, as well as linguistic, social and cultural origins, providing a community of very diverse backgrounds. This diversity is the very strength of the GISB. In this brochure we would like to shed light on the question as to why we have made diversity the core of our program.

There is no one child who can do everything. There is also no child, however, who can do nothing. It is imperative to no longer view this reality as a threat, but rather as a basis from which to create lessons and a learning program which strenghtens each child's motivation to learn and enhances his or her sense of self-worth. This will be achieved when the school's expectations are on par with the child's competencies and when learning is perceived as a joyful opportunity to master challenges.

Christian Nitschke, Head of School