student offers
In order to give our students the opportunity to actively shape their school day themselves, to contribute their own ideas and to be able to participate in decisions, we have created various offers at our school.
Here, our students can choose from various fields of development according to their own interests – e.B. by living out the social vein in our sponsorship concept or by representing the students' interests in our SMV (SchülerMitVerantwortung).
The aim of all these offers is to sharpen the sense of responsibility of our students.
Our SMV – SchülerMitVerantwortung
Students have a voice at our school and are actively involved in the SMV SchülerMitVerantwortung. Elected members of our student body have a share of responsibility in everyday school life. With 350 students, there is a variety of opinions and wishes that must be represented. The students themselves are responsible for this and are supported by the SMV liaison teachers.
At the beginning of the year , two class representatives or course spokespersons are elected in each class . These are automatically members of the student council. Each member now elects the two student representatives in a general assembly. All together form the student council.
In order to further promote the commitment, the SMV is also open to voluntary members. Each student is invited to the sessions to get involved or take a look at current projects.
At the beginning of the school year, the goals and actions for the coming year are set. Traditionally, this includes the St. Nicholas action and the friendship action for Valentine's Day, as well as a large SMV breakfast for the entire student body on the last day of school before the summer holidays. All milestones and particularly good achievements are honored and celebrated together. The basic tasks also include mediating between teachers and students, as well as between the students themselves.
Co-determine the topic "School Baden-Württemberg"!
It is not known to many that such an SMV does not only refer to the respective school, there is a nationwide and nationwide SMV network for exchange between the schools. There is e.B. the LSBR (Landesschülerbeirat). Those who are ambitious can make it to the board and influence the concept of schools in Baden-Württemberg at the political level.
For the members of the SMV, further training measures are also offered, so these students get to know their rights and possibilities and also the implementation.
For our school with boarding, the SMV has set itself the goal of a beautifying redesign for the years 2021 and 2022:
- Our school clothes get modern designs, elaborated according to student wishes.
- A concept for a school's own garden is in the elaboration phase.
- A charity run is also planned at the end of the school year.
The ideas are always passed on to the following student representatives, who then often advance ideas during their term of office that could not be implemented before. The trust teachers actively help with this.
For students who are part of the SMV, it is an enrichment. You get to know many new students from higher and lower levels. New friendships are formed. The sense of responsibility increases , as does self-confidence. One sees oneself in a role model function. "You voluntarily take on more responsibility and it is also easier to cooperate," says one of our SMV students.
This includes giving other students the opportunity to get involved and become part of the community... "just to give a voice"!
The SMEPers: Student Media Mentors of the Schloss-Schule
We at the Gymnasium boarding Schloss-Schule Kirchberg also know that they also learn – and especially – from other children and young people how they use digital media. That is why we have decided to actively absorb this effect and to allow students interested in digital topics to participate in the Baden-Württemberg State Media Centre for Schools (Gymnasium, Realschule ...) Baden-Württemberg's offered student media mentor program (SMEP) and thus to become one of the Baden-Württemberg SMEP schools.
Some Schloss-Schul children and young people in grades five to ten have been trained as "SMEP" in 40 hours and now contribute their knowledge specifically to lessons and everyday life at our school.
The range of their activities is wide – ranging from creating videos for classroom projects to helping with hardware problems or questions about security settings. In fact, a kind of SMEP school company has even been founded in the meantime, through which multimedia or audiovisual contributions can be "ordered" from the SMEPers. At least one SMEPer is represented in each grade level of the school and inquiries are coordinated in such a way that younger SMEPers are supported by the older ones if necessary.
In order for the SMEPers to be able to act, we have equipped ourselves with appropriate equipment. Among other things, the group has a high-performance camera, an audio recording device, tripods, a high-performance (and adequately insured) drone, as well as its own laptop for image and sound editing, as well as for research. In the near future, this technology is to be successively supplemented.
The effort of the training is worthwhile for the SMEPers in any case, because they can not only live out their hobby, but also get a certified additional degree from the state of Baden-Württemberg and can help others at the school to cope better with the possibilities of modern digital and media technology.
Our castle school sponsorship system
School transition made easy at the Schloss-Schule Kirchberg with the school sponsorship system – a benefit for younger and older students
The school transition from primary school to secondary school and above all to a grammar school in Baden-Württemberg is an important milestone for school children. He often succeeds better with student mentors. It has been proven that school transitions to secondary school can trigger not only anticipation, but also fears in pupils. Among other things, this has to do with the fact that children and adolescents are in a phase of life during this time in which fears are more likely anyway than in other stages of life.
The good news: There is acclimatization support that teachers, educators and parents as well as the students themselves can use to give the young students a good and safe start in the new school. These have been used by us for many years.
An American professor of educational sciences, Geoffrey Borman, has found out that the school transition can be so difficult for students because they have to leave the familiar, mostly loving-caring atmosphere of the primary school and settle into a still quite unknown and foreign school. In fact, some fifth-graders of the Schloss-Schule also tell their class teachers in the first weeks of the school year about their homesickness for the old school and the old school class. Borman's studies showed that the following measure in particular helps with school transition: Older pupils, for example from the tenth grade, offer their help to fifth graders as sponsors in all questions relating to school. Children demonstrably listen to adolescents much more relaxed and relaxed than adults and are much more likely to accept their help.
The result is clear: Both sides benefit from the mentoring system at the school, which has been established with us for years. Already the first mutual acquaintance between the big and the smaller on the hiking day at the beginning of the school year and the choice of sponsors on the playground is always an exciting and fun experience for everyone.
If the sponsors and their "godchildren" already know each other a little better after the first half of the school year at the Schloss-Schule, they also organize a small event together: The sponsor carnival for grades 5 and 10, a joyful foolish affair that not only the students are looking forward to.