At BSS, we encourage and engage our students’ voices.

In our English classrooms, students explore and create a range of meaningful texts. We look to the past to read and study innovative thinkers and inspiring writers whose work endures. We investigate contemporary writers who wrestle with questions that perplex us, who offer a compelling vision, who work in genres in groundbreaking ways.

In the Senior School, we cultivate a community of writers and readers who engage in a regular writing practice. Through the routine of writing and sharing, we record and reflect upon our understandings. As writers, we learn both to share, orally and in writing, “early” emerging work and develop skills in refining and deepening our thinking and expression. We learn to discuss, question, and analyse through student-led discussions. In our learning community, we foster a culture of critique through which we learn to revisit, revise and polish our work in ways that feel safe. At the core of these enterprises lies the principle of social engagement. Our engagement arises from our questions be they personal questions, class-generated provocations, or text-based investigations. We build the core values and behaviours, which learners must embody to collaborate.

We become confident and independent as we read and re-read, and write and re-write.

Our classrooms are hubs for conversation, investigation, practising and refining. We interact with our communities through exhibitions, presentations of learning, book-publishing, letter-writing, and visiting experts.