Here at Leysin American School in Switzerland we believe in the importance of experiential learning and creating a family-like atmosphere. LAS offers students the unique opportunity to experience boarding school life while learning about different cultures, gaining new skills, and interacting with our community from all over the world. In turn, we encourage our students to forge lifelong friendships and develop into innovative, compassionate, and responsible citizens of the world.
A core component of our boarding school curriculum involves cultural trips and many other out-of-classroom activities. These opportunities often center around our students’ studies, allowing them to experience different cultures and create lasting connections with their friends and faculty members. By nature, students at boarding schools forge strong bonds with the people around them, and traveling to different countries on cultural trips and developing skills outside the classroom promotes empathy, leadership, and problem-solving. These social and emotional skills help students feel confident in leading their peers during activities, teaches them the importance of including students outside of their traditional friendship groups, and helps them think outside the box when solving problems.
Our faculty members love the interactions they have with students while traveling. Our Dean of Students reflected that travel allows him to connect with students in a different way than at school. Last year he supervised a trip to Barcelona and one morning he and a student went on a run through the city together. What followed was a great conversation where they shared their interests and learned things from one another. Traveling facilitates a great rapport with others and allows students and faculty to connect on a deeper and more human level.
Another out-of-the-classroom program that encourages student growth is our Alpine Institute, which take students into the outdoors and allows them to work on skills such as rope work, navigation, and first aid. These transferable skills encourage leadership, teamwork, and goal setting, and these trips always promote personal growth amongst students. During these trips a great connection is formed between students and faculty, a connection which strengthens their bonds even when they are back on campus.
After graduating, many former students stay in touch with the faculty that they bonded with and our alumni describe the LAS community as a family. By nature, boarding school life facilitates these fantastic connections, however, LAS encourages these bonds to an even greater degree with our travel and experiential programming. This feeling of a Global Family and shared cultural knowledge are all connections that students would otherwise not be able to forge as profoundly solely in a classroom environment. We are proud to offer our students these opportunities and we are always so excited to see the deepened connections made between faculty and students upon returning from their travels and activities.
