Blog

Skiing is a big part of Brillantmont life. Our amazing location means we can be in the ski resorts very quickly, enabling our students to hit the slopes every weekend.

Despite the pandemic, we've been really lucky as the government allowed ski resorts in Switzerland to stay open as long as they strictly applied measures to protect public health. This has been literally a breath of fresh air for our students. Being able to get out into nature, having fun with friends and breathing the clean, fresh mountain air has given them the invigorating break that they need. They've been able to disconnect from the learning environment and try something different.

This academic year the advanced Economics and after school Young Enterprise Society Club students have deeply benefited from Brillantmont’s connection with the Zurich based financial and entrepreneurial training institute the Young Enterprise Society (YES).

Reading Week at Brillantmont is an annual event, eagerly awaited as it brings with it lots of exciting activities.

We all love pictures and when those pictures tell a story, what is there to not love? From  Disney comic strips,  to the philosphical ponderings of Snoopy in the Peanuts cartoon, to the questions posed in newspaper strips - they all get us thinking about the message behind the picture.

"When I arrived at Brillantmont, the school already had a long-standing commitment to International Model United Nations (THIMUN) conferences. For the past 16 years, I've had the great pleasure of being involved and taking students to the annual conference in Singapore and in The Hague.

Each year I look forward to seeing the students' reactions and not just to the conference situation and the skills and attributes it develops. In Singapore, it's great to see how they react to the climate, food, history and culture whilst The Hague trip brings its own special memories, with the cold gales from the North Sea and grey winter skies not diminishing the beauty of the city of peace which is home to the Dutch Royal family, Peace Palace and numerous International Organisations from Interpol to the International Court of Justice. 

However, as the pandemic has prevented these trips from happening I was at a loss of how I would attract students to join the Model United Nations (MUN) club.

 One of our core values at Brillantmont is to nurture collaboration and leadership skills through challenge. A great way to do this is through YES - The Young Enterprise Switzerland Club (YES Club). This after school club at Brillantmont is dedicated to bridging the gap between theory and practice in relation to investing and entrepreneurship. Our intrepid group of scholars meet every Wednesday in a classroom overlooking beautiful Lac Leman (Lake Geneva). Our team competes in two separate stock market game challenges and learn the fundamentals of investing, starting up and operating their own business. The YES Club’s talented members reflect our cultural diversity and includes students from Switzerland, Mexico, Spain, India, Luxembourg and Iran and are led by Mr Joe Brogan, our Economics /History teacher.

Here is another update from our STEAM Coding classes where our main aim this year is to enable Brillantmont International School students to develop practical and flexible skills relating to technology. We believe that there is space alongside the traditional curriculum to develop creative and technical skills with the use of robotics and computer programming. We want our students to be aware of the exciting possibilities out there when they leave school and enable them to have the confidence to study anything they want to in the future.

Election fever is the subject of numerous headlines across the world right now and never more so than here at Brillantmont for this year’s Student Leaders for House.

One of our core values at the school is to nurture collaboration and leadership skills through challenge, building courageous, confident critical thinkers. Our House system offers the ideal opportunity to enable this. We have five Houses at the school , all named after famous people linked to Switzerland – Rousseau, Chaplin, Einstein, Anker and Piccard. The Houses meet on a weekly basis and are composed of students of different ages and nationalities, day and boarding. The purpose is to bring them together, to build and strengthen relationships and to help them get to know each other. Through teamwork and collaboration, they work to plan House events which are fun, memorable and create a sense of belonging.

The new school year has begun, and our students have already picked up some new skills in their STEAM Coding classes! Grades 8 and 9 have been working on programming for animated sequences, with some very creative results. 

Students have been getting familiar with HTML and Scratch, building instructions to get animated animals dancing in time with music tracks.

Below you will see some of the work our students have produced. They had a lot of fun producing these sequences, and we think the results are pretty cool, too!

Our quarantined students have now completed their compulsory ten days and have joined the rest of our boarding and day students. Our whole, family community, with students from all over the world, is reunited once again and beneath our masks, we are all smiles!