On Friday, February 4 Form 1 pupils had an exciting opportunity to participate in the MYP Community Day centred around the idea of Goals and Goalkeepers. In broad terms, Oakham’s MYP Community Days form part of its MYP Service and Action provision where pupils are given meaningful opportunities to articulate and embody the School’s core values of Care, Courage, Connection and Contribution.
During the day they focused on the exploration of The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) or Global Goals which are a collection of 17 interlinked global goals designed to be a “blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all”. The SDGs were set up in 2015 by the United Nations General Assembly and are intended to be achieved by the year 2030.
The pupils had an opportunity to develop their understanding of the SDGs and how one might go about helping to achieve any of those particular goals. At this point, the pupils were introduced to the notion of a Goalkeeper as somebody who commits to achieving a goal by standing up and taking a sustained action. Goalkeepers are those who care about making their schools, homes, communities and countries better for everyone now and in the future. Each of the pupils identified one Sustainable Development Goal that they wanted to take an action upon and, as a culmination of the day, those goals were expressed through posters, creative writing stories, mindmaps and even songs!
Lucy Breag who is the Head of Library and the MYP Community Project Coordinator observed: “It was a very rewarding day and I am particularly impressed with the levels of pupil engagement in exploring how the SDGs apply to the many communities that our pupils belong to and, importantly, the many actions that our pupils pledged to take in order to contribute to this worthy initiative”.
Dmitriy Ashton, the IB MYP Coordinator, remarked: “I really enjoyed the creativity, thoughtfulness, enthusiasm and determination demonstrated by all of our pupils during the day! Oakham Learners have once again proven that they are firmly on track to continue their development as open-minded, compassionate and caring global citizens!”
