At the end of last year, the Superior Council of the Gimnasio Moderno Foundation presented the community with some changes to the way the school operates. Among the most striking are the following:
Calendar B
Starting in 2024, when the District and national educational authorities give their authorization, Gimnasio Moderno will change its school calendar to start the school year in August instead of January.
To adapt to this change, from 2024, school years will be shorter and vacations will be reduced. There will be two academic years carried out in a year and a half. In this way, Gimnasio Moderno students, as of 2025, would start their school year in the Calendar B format, that is, starting the year in August and ending it in June, as most schools in the world do.
The modification of the calendar aims to adapt Gimnasio Moderno to the standards of international schools in Colombia and the rest of the world.
In addition, it seeks to align the school’s operations with the ideals of global education that it has begun to implement through its Bilingualism Program and its Certification with the Council of International Schools – CIS. The objective is also to stimulate greater motivation and participation of students to attend immersion programs abroad and summer camps.
The modification of the calendar also seeks to equalize vacation periods for the whole family, especially when a brother or sister studies in a B calendar school.
Mixture
Another of the announcements made by the Superior Council is related to the admission of female students to the school’s classrooms. An idea that had been present in the gymnasium environment for more than fifteen years.
After a reflection exercise that was carried out with the community throughout 2022, it was determined that the school would receive girls in its classrooms from 2025, starting with the first grade, “Montessori I”.
The students would grow together and occupy the school grades progressively, year after year.
Gimnasio Moderno sees its co-ed program as an opportunity to foster gender equality. It understands that, in this day and age, providing a diverse study environment helps students develop fundamental social and emotional skills, such as empathy and the ability to collaborate as a team. In addition, it believes that students may come to learn differently because of the diversity of thought of their classmates. Finally, Gimnasio Moderno believes that by being co-educational, it better prepares its students to succeed in a diverse working and social world, where they will interact with people of different genders.
The school’s Admissions Office will open, as of March 2023, the admissions process for candidates who will graduate in 2038.
Fortalecimiento al Bilingüismo
It is known by the entire community that, for 10 years, Gimnasio Moderno implemented a robust bilingualism program to its curriculum. The successful implementation led the District’s Secretary of Education, through Resolution 02023 of November 25, 2020, to recognize the institution as a National Bilingual School. Thanks to this, the school achieved its membership to start the accreditation process with the Council Of International Schools.
Today, 70% of the classes in Preschool and Primary are offered entirely in English. Students, from First through Eleventh grade, take, in alternating sequence, the exams proposed by the universities of Cambridge and Michigan, which allow them to measure their level of language proficiency. Starting this year, these tests will now be mandatory for all gymnasium students, with the purpose of being able to know, year by year, their improvement in the command of the language.
To strengthen the teaching of the language, in all classes offered in English, immersion spaces are generated, thanks to the application of the Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) methodology, which seeks to reinforce the communicative processes of the students in their second language.
In addition to teaching English, the school has also been offering French in the upper grades for several decades. In the near future, with an eye on internationalization, the need to implement other languages in the gymnasium curriculum will be determined.
Learn more about the eight points adopted by the Superior Council, here.
