St. John’s Global Citizens

St. John’s High School, Chandigarh India, has recently been ranked as the Number one school in the country for Boys. This is not without reason. What others think, we practice!

We are a part of The Edmund Rice family and the Christian Brothers have taken this mission forward in 600 schools worldwide. The motto of our school is, "Pro Deo Et Patria – For God and Country". We take pride in taking the mission of our founder, Edmund Ignatius Rice, forward in many ways.

Everyday education here comprises of values, attitudes and communication skills along with academic knowledge and skills. A lot of attention is paid to the students developing skills to understand and resolve social, political, cultural and global issues. We firmly believe that education should support peace, human rights, equity, acceptance of diversity and sustainable development.( reference UNESCO)

We empower our students to engage and assume active roles to face and resolve challenges within their environment and in the longer run to become proactive contributors to a more just, peaceful, tolerant, secure and sustainable world.

This is the latest news. St John’s ranked Number one yet once again ( 12 Septemmeber 2014)

Outreach Activities carried on in St John’s High School

Outreach programs for each Class(Kindergarten to Senior Secondary School)

Session 2014-15

Kindergarten- visits the Old age home

Class I and II visit the Institute for the Blind

Class 3 –Old Age Home

Class 4 They visit a school for the underprivileged to help children with resources

Class 5- visits and contributes to the resource centre of the NGO-Developing Indigenous Resources

CLASS 6- SCHOOL FOR THE BLIND Children visit the School for the

Blind and interact with them in order to comprehend their problems and

bring some cheer into their lives.

CLASS 7- KHELSHALA Class 7 works with the wards of Khelshala, an

NGO which empowers poor children through sports. These children come

to our school every week to be part of our educative program. Our students are making a special effort to teach them English and communication skills.

CLASS 8 –WORKING WITH THE BLOOD BANK SOCIETY OF

CHANDIGARH

Blood is red gold. Recognizing the importance of blood donation, this year

Class 8 decided to work with the Blood Bank Society of Chandigarh. As a

part of their outreach programme, the boys of class 8 motivate people to

donate Blood and have been part of various programmes and rallies

conducted by the Blood Bank. These boys have also been an important

part of the annual Blood donation camp

conducted by the school.

CLASS 9-BIG BUDDY PROGRAMME( teaching younger EWS children in

school after school hours) and creating environmental awareness and

taking care of plants in the school.

CLASS 10- Class 10 have an outreach programme which will make our youth aware of the traffic rules and the importance of road safety in their

life. They took this initiative in order to make our young learners assimilate

the importance of traffic rules and safety measures to be implemented on

the roads. They also work with the traffic police and help on road crossings

to gets hands on experience.

Eco Justice campaign

On the occasion of World Biodiversity Day, The Johnians for Justice and the Eco Club-The Eco Warriors of St John’s High School, Sector 26, Chandigarh, held a peaceful, Stand up Speak Out Eco Justice Campaign to urge citizens to stand up for their right to Eco Justice, at the Sukhna Lake, on 22nd May. They were joined by the students of Carmel Convent and Sacred Heart Senior Secondary School. Also present and raising their voices were underprivileged children from the NGO-Khelshala.

Disaster management drill- A practice evacuation of the entire school is done regularly to maintain preparedness for a fire disaster or an earthquake.

Even the visiting students of Khelshala who had come for their outreach were made to participate in it.

Animal Adoption by Kindergarten in a local zoo. This year we have adopted 10 animals :- a tiger cub, a crocodile, a monkey, a peacock, a kalij pheasant, ducks, common cranes, doves, pigeons and parrots.

Every year during the observance of Wild Life Week the school takes pride in taking children to the zoo so that they can meet their new friends over there. In this way children also become aware about the conservation of their environment and undertsand their responsilblity towards it. There is a special signboard displayed at the zoo which displays the school’s name as well as the classes which have adopted the animals.

Eco Club

Best out of waste

Creating awareness about E waste management, a growing problem in the modern world

Junior school children creating awareness about clean air

St John’s supports pandas

St John’s contributes to WWF for its panda protection program.

SWARM( Segregation of waste and recycling management) group organizes cleanliness and waste segregation drives once a week where this group of enthusiastic and dedicated children empty out bins and segregate waste.

Posters to be put in each class to encourage recycling

Carrying out cleanliness drives

Celebrating Earth Hour and Save the pandas campaign

Heritage Club

To celebrate Valentine’s Day in a unique manner, the students, parents, teachers and alumni of St John’s High School, participated in a Walk-a-thon at Sukhna Lake which was flagged off by The Deputy Commissioner, Chd Admn, Sh.Mohd.Shayin. The students along with their families expressed love for their city and vowed to preserve its rich heritage. Pamphlets designed by the Heritage Club-Sampada of the school were distributed and badges were pinned depicting their love for Chandigarh city. The lake was chosen as a spot because the school’s heritage club has adopted the waterbody.

St John’s Heritage Club students get prizes for making documentaries on Heritage trees

Heritage Day

The Heritage Club-Sampada, of St John’s High School, celebrated World Heritage Day on 8th May, in the school auditorium by organizing an interschool contest. As St John’s always does, this time too, they did things differently!

One area was dedicated to rangoli making wherein, the students had to depict the folk art of an Indian state through rangolis, using eco-friendly materials. The colourful rangolis brought out the theme very well. Some of the states represented were, Punjab, Rajasthan, Kerala and Gujarat.

And the other realm was heritage trees. Students presented skits and presentations on how to conserve heritage trees like Neem, Triveni etc in the country. Apart from having medicinal and ecological value, these trees have a place in Indian mythology. Living a technologically oriented life, these days, young people are forgetting the meaning of these symbols in their culture.

This competition was an attempt to revive that age old culture of our great country. In keeping with this thought, each certificate presented to the participants was hand made to add that special touch and as a tribute to the Indian tradition of using handmade goods!

Kindness Club

The school children visited the local police station and thanked the police personnel for their constant support with a poem and chocolates.

For the police, who are used to receiving brickbats rather than gratitude, this was really a pleasant surprise for them!

Interact Club

In this club, students work with the Rotary club. This is their school student division and they mobilize fund collection and other initiatives for

community service. Recently our school collected Rs1,00,000 for polio eradication ( a program supported by WHO)

Value education exhibition

This is a unique annual Endeavour. Each class chooses a theme and displays it . eg: Respect for parents.

Theme- Compassion

Blood donation ( an annual Endeavour by our Alumni association in which boys from the Senior Secondary wing of the school who have attained the age of 18 take pride in donating blood for the first time)

Nine is Mine activities

Teachers and Students are involved in various campaigns under the international Nine is Mine campaign and its Social Justice group – Johnians 4 Justice. They campaign to encourage governments to dedicate 9% of their country’s GDP to education and health.

The NINEISMINE campaign is an international advocacy initiative • OF THE CHILDREN • FOR THE CHILDREN • BY THE CHILDREN and led by the Wada Na Todo Abhiyan. Children of the NINEISMINE campaign seek to ensure that India keeps her promise of dedicating 6% on Education and 3% on Health at least by 2014.

Making ourselves heard through our campaign in the heart of the city(Sector 17) to encourage people to vote before the 2014 general elections

Attending the Nine is Mine International workshop at New Delhi in July 2014

Celebration of May Day, Founders Day( fete), Teacher's Day and other national festivals in school

Celebrating Independence Day 2014

Celebrating Teachers Day( honoring your gurus)

Every year we have a fete on Founder’s Day and the proceeds go entirely to the outreach programmes of the school.

A typical school day starts with the guard guiding the traffic in the right direction, which, we sitting in our cozy cars do not even notice… but yes, we will definitely notice it if he is missing because there is chaos !!

We enter clean classrooms and at the end of the day, have no qualms about leaving them in a mess because we know that they will be cleaned! But one day, if the sweeper does not come, there is a problem!

St John’s High School does not boast of empty values..

All classrooms are supposed to be left clean at the end of the day, children pick up bits of paper etc and leave the classroom manageable. They even dust their classrooms. But the scene on May 1, the Labour Day is incredible! All the helpers in the school are given the day off, and are treated with a movie, lunch and gifts. The children and staff descend on the classrooms and grounds and clean the whole school and leave it spic and span! Dignity of labour is thus encouraged among the staff and children.

Such is the importance and care given to helpers in our school.

Indradhanush program

The school has nearly 300 students from the economically weaker section of the society getting education free of cost. The school provides them with uniforms, stationery and books as well. There is also a nutrition and health programme in place for these children as well as after-school tutorials. Their parents are provided with adult education classes.

Selection of Salman for Shri Ram Ananta Aspen Leadership Programme

Salman was selected to participate in the Shri Ram Ananta Aspen Leadership Programme held in Rishikesh from 18th to 31st of May, 2014. The Shri Ram Ananta Aspen Leadership Programme is a Summer Leadership Programme for students of Grade 9 to 12, and is designed to build values-based leadership skills and enlighten them to move from thought to action and from success to significance.

Ranvijay Award

This is a unique award at St John’s by the alumni association, SJOBA, in memory of one of their old boys who was a very decent human being. This award is given to the nicest boy in the school annually, a boy who upholds all the values taught to him in school.

This year Charandeep Singh( Class 10) getting the Ranvijay award

Our student, Chirag Thakur, chosen for Japan East Asia Network of Exchange for students and youth program(JENESYS).

A page out of our School diary which acts as a guide for the boys

We would like to conclude by saying that Johnians are reared to be responsible citizens of whichever community they choose to belong to later in life. It’s their responsibility as well as their privilege to be so!

And their award is this service itself………