Welcome to BSB Staff, Friends and Guests

Dear BSB Staff, Students, Invited Friends and Guests,

“Active, Ethical and Purposeful Engagement with the World Around Us”

Thursday 16 and Friday 17 February, 2023 at BSB

Firstly, thank you so much for the support and energy you will bring to this unique symposium, to be held in a week’s time.

The symposium themes have been drawn from our BSB Guiding Statements and Whole School Development Plan, in addition to our staff and student led inquiry into our Curriculum and Learning Review. We believe these priorities will resonate with many schools across the world.

Additionally, the symposium builds on the value we place on connecting, collaborating and creating; it reinforces the relationships we hold as a professional learning community within and beyond BSB. We aim to come together as like-minded international practitioners to explore education as a force for good.

Continuing in the spirit of our previous PL days, the symposium is being shaped by the BSB community for the BSB community. We are confident that we will all enter into the two days supportive of our 80 internal colleagues and students who have volunteered to present and remain open-minded to any improvements that may need to be made for the future.

Professional Learning at BSB allows for both learning in the classroom, but also learning within our professional roles, regardless of function in the school. Many of the sessions are open to everyone from any background to attend, and we aim to be mindful of this in the examples and inclusive language we use.

At the Symposium there will be:

• sessions centred around the symposium themes of: Student Agency, Relational Learning, Sustainability and Creativity and Enterprise.
• sessions, run by staff from a range of roles and responsibilities, across the school in our commitment to training for all as one-school.
• workshops, mindmeets and a panel discussion led by our BSB guests.
• key invited guests in attendance across the two days, who join us in the capacity and spirit of either speakers, or friends who will enable us to reflect on our learning within and beyond the walls of BSB.
• some students will join us in key sections of the days, presenting to us, acting as ambassadors of the school, reporters and also delivering our opening key-note address.
• wellbeing activities over the course of our lunchtime

Whova App and symposium information

At the symposium we will be using the Whova App. This app will show all of the session details, times, locations and biographies of the staff and guests who are speaking. If you prefer not to use a smartphone, you can also access this information on your laptop.

You will shorty receive two emails from Whova. One will be to download the app should you wish, the other will be to access the webview. If you have already used Whova in the past it will ask you to log in. Don’t worry if you can’t remember your password as you can easily reset it.

We advise you to take some time to plan which sessions you wish to attend, including back-up sessions if the room is full.

We will place print outs of these details on the blue noticeboards in the coffee areas and staffroom.

Additional information about how to use this app can be found here.

Sign-ups

Most of the sessions will be operating without a sign-up. Please can we ask you to respect the session capacity – when the room no longer has any chairs available, it is full – and in this case please can you attend an alternative session.

There will, however, be sign-ups for some of our more practical sessions as we need to know numbers in advance. These sessions include Thursday: ‘Learn how to make a simple hand-tied bouquet’, Friday: 90-minute Workshops and Bus Evacuation. Please respect the sign-up registers for these sessions. 

 Please click here to sign-up. https://www.signupgenius.com/go/10C094EA5AA23A4FFC16-bsbprofessional

Swoosh as a hub – coffee and connect

Over the two days, the Swoosh Lounge will serve as a hub and central point to the symposium. A place to connect, collaborate, create, and to talk over tea, coffee and cake and a chance to record some of your thoughts from the day. Additionally, our Professional Learning Partners will be sharing some of their inquiry from the last two years and we will have a Professional Learning book swap table. Bring along a book from home if you would like to swap one.

Lunches and catering

On both the Thursday and the Friday, lunch will span over an extended period. A hot, sit-down meal will be available in the cafeteria, and a standing buffet-lunch will be available in the Swoosh. If you arrive at the cafeteria as soon as the lunch session starts and the queue is longer than you had hoped, it may be best to return later!

Bus Evacuation Activity

All BSB staff from all roles need to take part in the bus evacuation activity. This is to ensure we all understand the quickest and safest way to evacuate a bus in an emergency. We will be adding a competitive element to this with the quickest (yet respectful!) evacuation team winning a prize.

Capturing and Recording the 2023 Symposium

Over the two days we will have student reporters capturing key moments from the symposium. They may reach out to you to hear your ideas and reflections from across the sessions.

Several other opportunities will be given to enable all participants to contribute their views throughout the two days, such as our impact activity on Friday afternoon.

Your reflections will be valued to contribute to our understanding of Professional Learning at BSB.

Additionally, there will be photos and videos taken across the two days by our Communications Team and our usual photography company. For BSB staff, please be assured that we know who is on our no-photo list and our Communications Team will review any images before publishing. For guests joining us from outside of BSB who do not wish to appear on any social media, please contact PLP_admin@britishschool.be.

Mind-Meet

At 15.15 on the Thursday colleagues are invited to come together to discuss their learning, explore their thinking and connect through dialogue on shared areas of interest. Taken from several of the strands that we have established across the two days, staff and guests are invited to join a session of their choice to explore some key questions in their particular field of interest. Each group will have an ‘enabler’ and ‘co-enabler’ to facilitate the dialogue between colleagues, allow everyone’s voice to be heard and help take our thinking forward.

Thursday drinks

At 16:00 on the Thursday, all staff and guests are invited to join us in Rubens Hall for a more relaxed and social moment; a chance to have a drink and chat with colleagues, friends and guests.

Information for BSB staff presenting:

Logistics

Please look carefully at the programme to see where you are presenting. You may wish to visit the space the evening before to check how the room is set up and that your laptop docks easily. Please organise any handouts in advance. Pens, paper, blu-tac etc will be available from the Campus Operations office in the days leading up to the symposium -please collect in advance of the event. Members of our ITS team will be present in the corridors if anyone should run into technical issues, in addition to being available at ITS helpdesk.

Please can you respect the session timings – especially if you are running one of the back-to-back 30 minute sessions on the Thursday or Friday morning- as the next session leader will wish to set up to start promptly.

Practical points to note as a guest:

Travel

Unless you have already been in personal contact about your arrival arrangements, upon arrival in Brussels, please take a taxi from the taxi-rank to your hotel (those leading a session in the Symposium, please keep your taxi receipt and submit with your travel expenses). Transport from Hotel Soret and Rastelli to BSB will be provided each day. As there is no taxi rank close to our school, when departing BSB on your final day, a taxi will be arranged for you as per the information you provided on the Microsoft form.

Hotel information

If you have requested that BSB book your hotel room, you should have now received confirmation from plp-admin@britishschool.be . The majority of our guests will be staying at Hotel Soret, but some guests have requested to stay at Hotel Rastelli which is much closer to BSB. We advise you to print off the name and address of your hotel to show the taxi driver when you arrive.

Hotel Soret- Kapucijnendreef 1, 3090 Overijse

Hotel Rastelli - Hoornzeelstraat 63, 3080 Tervuren

Arrival at BSB campus

Upon arrival, please head to our main reception in the Jacques Rogge building where you will be greeted by our Professional Learning Partners: Susan, Juan-Luis, Rachael, Emma, Stuart, Paul, Rory, Mukami, Carrie, and Charlotte at reception, for registration. You will also be assisted with directions to the room where you are leading a session. 

If you are leading a session, would you please ensure that you forward by 10^th February any photocopying you need to be done by BSB.

Presenting – IT and Setup

If you would like to project whilst presenting, please could we ask you to bring your presentations on USB and/or saved on the cloud, so that you can dock to one of our school computers. We find that when guests bring their own laptops that we can experience AV issues so we will have one of our laptops available for you.

Thursday evening meal

On Thursday we have invited you to join us at Tembo restaurant, located at the African Museum adjacent to our school. You should have now completed the Microsoft form sign-up if you wish to attend. Travel will be arranged to return to Hotel Soret and Hotel Rastelli after the meal.

Contact phone number

If you have any unforeseen issues whilst travelling or during your stay and need to speak to one of us, please call our Events Team mobile number: +32 497 48 16 61 or Melanie Chambers +32 478 73 45 22

With best wishes,

The Professional Learning Partners.

Thursday 16^th February

Friday 17^th February