Context as a starting point

At Deutsche Schule Medellín, the environment is a fundamental element when teaching. We want boys, girls, and young adults to learn by doing. 

At the end of the 80s, the educational environment and the way information is delivered started changing. Teachers are not just giving a masterclass; they are providing tools so that their students can learn actively. Today, knowledge is not transmitted or delivered; it is created, built and processed through practical and technical concepts. Students build from action. 

That is our vision at Deutsche Schule Medellín. We understand that learning is not limited to the classroom, and we foster observation places in which context is fundamental. 

We are aware that we must foster learning through different methodologies. Our teachers are there in every part of this process. They let students transform information into knowledge through presentations, spontaneous discoveries, experiences, experiments, and problem resolution. 

We let our students explore and discover our Campus, a biodiverse space. They get to experience everything it has to offer. It is not unusual to see, for example, boys and girls from Kindergarten taking care of some plants together with the school’s gardeners: they water them, fertilize them, and reap their fruits. It is also common to find students from Grundschule admiring our flora and fauna. They do this during their Science classes, sometimes even during their math class. 

We want them to be citizens of the world. In order to achieve this, they need to know their environment. We also want them to get to know their city and the world around them. Educational field trips to parks and museums in our city, and the route on the school bus from different locations in Aburrá Valley to our Campus, are moments that we take advantage of to reflect on the world around us. We don’t live inside a bubble, and we think that it is important to know the context in which we live. Besides, Klasse 7 and Klasse 10 travel to Germany, and these trips enlarge that global vision. The importance of this model —a model in which we see the world as a classroom—, lies inon significant learning, and learning to develop skills. Learning is significant when it is incorporated into a person’s knowledge structures; when that new knowledge acquires a new meaning from previous knowledge. 

We understand that learning is not limited to a classroom and we foster observation spaces in which context is fundamental. 

We also aim to participate in events around the city, and we want our students to be the main participants. That way, events such as the Artistic Display or Musiknacht are created not just for our Educational Community, but for the inhabitants of the Metropolitan Area as well. We want them to see what we do and how we generate knowledge. Additionally, we always try to create alliances with other educational institutions to carry out joint projects. Thus, our students meet other students to talk about history, sciences, politics, or to compete in a sports tournament. 

On the other hand, the CAS program (Creativity, Activity and Service) —which is part of our International Baccalaureate— is an opportunity for our students to get immersed in solidarity projects, to get to know different realities. This also happens with our students’ trip in Klasse 10, in which they have significant experiences. We then turn our environment and our context into learning tools. Our students learn from society, and they gain knowledge by actively participating.