learning outside the classroom
The JAS CAS program
“CAS” stands for Creativity, Activity, Service. A CAS program is an approach to experiential learning that reflects best practice in international education. A range of activities are offered under the three headings; for example, Creativity might include design, drama, drawing; Activity might include soccer, basketball or dance; Service might include working on a Sustainability project with an NGO or an organisation such as Sustainability Education www.sused.org. The central tenet of CAS is that teaching and learning that happens outside the classroom is just as important as teaching and learning that happens inside the classroom, as we nurture student wellbeing and cultivate a good heart, a balanced mind and a healthy body. A CAS program is a modern iteration of what might be known as an “Extra-Curricular Activities (ECA) program” and is characterised by a broad range of activities led by students, teachers and local partners in business, NGO, sport and social entrepreneurialism. Over time, at JAS, students create a multi-media CAS portfolio of their experiences, a portfolio that carries increasing weight in College and University admissions, as CAS allows Colleges to positively differentiate between one student and the next. Many Students receive College scholarships on the basis of their CAS portfolio. Moreover, a coherent CAS program develops the skills and attributes for students to become happy and successful in their lives as we work together towards a better, more peaceful, more sustainable world.
“CAS” stands for Creativity, Activity, Service. A CAS program is an approach to experiential learning that reflects best practice in international education. A range of activities are offered under the three headings; for example, Creativity might include design, drama, drawing; Activity might include soccer, basketball or dance; Service might include working on a Sustainability project with an NGO or an organisation such as Sustainability Education www.sused.org. The central tenet of CAS is that teaching and learning that happens outside the classroom is just as important as teaching and learning that happens inside the classroom, as we nurture student wellbeing and cultivate a good heart, a balanced mind and a healthy body. A CAS program is a modern iteration of what might be known as an “Extra-Curricular Activities (ECA) program” and is characterised by a broad range of activities led by students, teachers and local partners in business, NGO, sport and social entrepreneurialism. Over time, at JAS, students create a multi-media CAS portfolio of their experiences, a portfolio that carries increasing weight in College and University admissions, as CAS allows Colleges to positively differentiate between one student and the next. Many Students receive College scholarships on the basis of their CAS portfolio. Moreover, a coherent CAS program develops the skills and attributes for students to become happy and successful in their lives as we work together towards a better, more peaceful, more sustainable world.
CAS(e) in point
The Model United Nations (MUN) experience presents our students with a superb opportunity to engage with young people from across the region in passionate, informed debate about the most urgent issues facing humanity. Our students will be ambassadors for our school and Jerusalem, and through their own research and direction from our MUN leader Ms Flavia, they will learn what it means to be ambassadors for countries around the world. Our students will seek out a range of views and perspectives when solving problems and will come to understand the danger, in a globalised world, “of a single story”. They will examine ideas that challenge their own, and come to enjoy the complexity of multiple perspectives. I hope that increasingly, our students will make connections between what they are doing “outside the classroom” through experiences such as MUN, and in their subject area studies. Students who engage in MUN invariably come to understand that diplomacy requires a spirit of compromise and that we, as humans, are here for the sake of each other. MUN is a transformational experience – a signature of the JAS CAS program - and one that cannot be recommend highly enough.
