Stories Untold - 1

Stories

Design |

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Untold International School Basel Magazine

Arts

Robotics

Sustainability

Pippin

Robo clash

Caring for our

Winter Musical

& alliances

neighbourhood

January 2023 | Winter Edition

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Design

CONTEN 6

Appreciating the World of Design

As part of their unit of inquiry on Design Used to Inf luence, Grade 9 students visited Vitra museum.

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Robo Clash & Alliances

ISB robotics team hosted our first official Robo tournament.

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Understanding Feminism & Racism Grade 11 IB students visited the Kunstmuseum learning about the existence of feminism from different time periods.

12 Fun with Robots

Building robots can be fun with your children.

The Robotics & Design department introduces new courses.

20 24 An Evening with the Arts

SGIS Travelling Exhibition

The Arts evening is a great way for families and faculty to see what creative options exist for students.

ISB Basel exhibited a total of forty seven artworks from ten international schools.

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NTS 26 32 36 Pippin Secondary Winter Musical

Grades 6–12 Winter Concert

Caring for our Neighbourhood

Our aula was filled with excitement and unforgettable music and performance by our ISB students.

The music was in the air as two campuses come together to inspire everyone.

ISB participated Switzerland’s annual Clean Up Day event, raising waste awareness.

38 40 42 Make it Count!

A Fashion Statement

How the IB Prepared Me

Formerly known as Run4Trees, Kate organized a schoolwide campaign fighting for our future.

A group of students aiming to spread awareness about the dangers of mass production in the fashion industry.

Former ISB student, Sarah Martinez Cornejo talks about her journey as she enters one of the world’s top fashion schools known for its notoriously hard to get a place,

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Design

Editor’s Column Joanne Rodriguez Senior School Head of Arts

International School Basel (ISB) has always been & will always be a place of stories, the hubbub of events & activities centered around its students, staff and members of our school community. In a desire to record the many stories and events unrecognized and the thoughts and feelings behind it all, this publication founded its humble beginning.

Eliana, our Yearbook editor-in-chief last year, aptly named this wonderful undertaking ‘Stories Untold’.

Outside the Senior School’s office, our ever reliable Yearbook Executive committee went to work creating fun, engaging & challenging articles. It is only appropriate that I dedicate this first edition to them and to our contributors. May our collective voices be represented by these stories untold.

Introduction

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From our Senior School Principal Ian Hoke

Algorithms feed us highly specific and tailored images, reels, articles, videos, doing our research for us and constructing views of the world out of opaque mathematical processes and enormous data sets. Even before the graphic internet, people debated if it was possible to produce original writing given how many books, magazines, and newspapers flooded the world. Now, that question seems quaint, or naive. No matter how critically we consume the media in our phones and browsers, we are absorbing huge amounts of information every day, very little of that sought intentionally.

So, when we write, what are we writing about? What ideas are getting mixed and remixed in our minds, like the AI bots that have digested every open source text ever created in every language? How original do ideas need to be, and how do we determine what’s truly original?

Why write? It’s an old question, and a valid one. After all, artificial intelligence is now generating high quality text in seconds with a single request, and has been behind simple text in journalism, commercial writing, and even coding for years.

Within these pages, our Dragon writers are answering these questions by publishing - taking their ideas, however synthesised, out to you, the audience. Public communication is inherently risk-taking, combining two essential elements of the IB Learner Profile. And you are asked to be open-minded thinkers as you read, and maybe as you share your thoughts with your classmates whose ideas are included here. When we test our ideas, and talk about our ideas together, we build community. Thanks to all our writers - and readers - for that!

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Stories | Grade 9 Students Photos | Design Department

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APPRECIATING THE WORLD OF DESIGN Grade 9 Vitra Museum Trip We are currently identifying a negative space or area and generating some design ideas to transform this into a positive environment. To prepare us for this unit of inquiry, the Design department arranged for a guided architecture tour to Vitra Museum in Germany. It was exciting to see different architecture designs.

We especially like Frank Gehry’s Vitra Design Museum building, Tadao Ando’s Pavillion and the Umbrella House of Kazuo Shinohara. Frank Gehry’s design deals with something simple and organic elements. The Pavillion was probably the odd one, having a traditional Japanese style.

The raw, simplicity and striking design of Tadao Ando feels like a monastery. You feel very calm because of how the building was designed. Our favourite part was the Schaudepot. We saw several coloured furnitures and one of our tasks was to take photos matching our outf its!

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Design

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Vitra Design Museum Tour The museum’s collection on furniture and interior design with 7,000 pieces of furniture from 1800 to present.

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Story

Arts

| Jasmijn Hendriks, Grade 11

Photos | Joanne Rodriguez

UNDERSTANDING FEMINISM & RACISM Grade 11 Kunstmuseum Tour

Getting to spend a day at the Basel Kunstmuseum and their library was exciting. We got to spend a whole day discovering new artists and their artworks and then researching about the ones we were studying was very intriguing.

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With the guided tour I found it interesting to look at the artworks with a different and new perspective.

It was interesting to learn about the context of the paintings and what happened in the artists lives that could have affected the outcome of the artworks.

The tour focused on Feminism and Racism and it was intriguing to learn about the way those subjects were represented in artworks throughout time. I was fascinated by the discussion around Pablo Picasso’s Seated Harlequin from 1923. Another artwork I found captivating was Ta matete (Le Marché) by Paul Gauguin from 1892 and why he painted so many women in a certain way.

The library from the Kunstmuseum has a lot of different resources about many artists and artworks. Getting the chance to spend an afternoon there helped me a lot with finding fascinating information about El Greco and his influence on Picasso.

I also learned a lot about Hokusai and the art of Japanese woodblock printing.

I found it a very successful and an educational day.

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Design

FUN WITH ROBOTS Family Robo Builders Event In October and twice in November the robotics department arranged a robot building course for younger children at the school.

Story

| Caroline Nielsen, Grade 11

Photos | Design & Robotics Department

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We did a trial run in October with teachers and their children and used that feedback to design the course.

We have courses for children in Grades 1-3 and 4-5. For the younger kids, the construction focuses on getting the basics in for building and one work also requires programming the robots. They can try to steer their robot around a maze using codes, not necessarily a controller.

We use VEX GO kits that are simple, colorful pieces of plastic that can be put together, similar to lego. The programming is done on the VEX app, it uses simple bubble world commands that can be put together to make instructions for the robot. For the older kids, we started with the robot that requires programming and navigating through a complex maze. After this we let them browse through the VEX GO website where they could choose anything from that list to build, so they could choose something they found cool but also fit their level.

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We plan on having this course monthly and we hope to have this as a permanent thing that will be carried out for years to come.

The courses so far have been led by Olivia Avalos Villar and I, Caroline Nielsen, as co-presidents of the robotics club and we have led the planning of these events. For the next course we will invite other members of the robotics club to help lead the course so we have more people involved and so that the course can continue after Olivia and I have left the school.

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ROBO CLASH & ALLIANCES Inter-school Robo Competition On Thursday the 1st of December the ISB robotics team hosted our first official tournament with the International School of Lausanne (ISL) and TASIS Lugano in attendance. We had a total of 8 teams competing, 5 from ISB, 2 from TASIS and 1 from ISL.

Teams are put in ‘alliances’ where two teams compete together against two other teams that have an alliance. You win a match having a score with most points within a minute of driving the controls and 30 seconds autonomous. We do this by pushing the discs into your zone, rolling the roller, at the side of the arena, to your team’s color or by shooting discs into the high goals. A disc in your zone is worth 1 point, the roller in your color is worth 10 points and a disc in the goal is worth 3 points. The skills section is split into parts; driver control and autonomous, in

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Story

| Caroline Nielsen, Grade 11

Photos | Joanne Rodriguez driver control you have 1 minute to score as many points as possible with only 1 robot in the arena. The autonomous section is based only on programming skills and how many points you can score when your robot completes a path that you coded. The last section, notebook/ interview, is a combination of your design notebook that documents your building and designing process, and your interview, conducted by one of our referees, where you are assessed on how well you can answer questions about your robot and process.

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ROBO CLASH & ALLIANCES Inter school Robo Competition

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| Caroline Nielsen, Grade 11

Photos | Joanne Rodriguez

Our ISB senior team came out on the top after tying with our girls team and winning the tie break skills challenge.

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Arts

| Brent Mcavoy

Photos | Arts Department

AN EVENING WITH THE ARTS MYP Arts Evening

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The Arts evening is a great way for families and faculty to see what creative options exist for students. With hands-on visual arts experiences, theatrical performances, and musical sessions organized throughout the evening, there is something for everyone. Creativity takes many forms, and the Arts evening allows everyone to explore a range of cultural options, which are powerful forces that shape our connection to others.

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| Tala Altahan, Grade 10

Photos | Arts Department

AN EVENING WITH THE ARTS MYP Arts Evening

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I enjoyed this art evening by supporting talented musicians, performers and friends and also having the opportunity to try out new art techniques. In addition, both learning and creating artwork as ways to express and communicate different emotions, messages and meaning is a very valuable message this evening was able to celebrate. I learned a lot about glass painting and having everything so well prepared and organized made this experience especially fun!

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Arts

SGIS Arts Event

Story & Photos | Joanne Rodriguez

THE TRAVELLING EXHIBITION

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November 14 saw ISB as the host to the first SGIS Travelling Exhibition. Geared towards promoting a sense of community International School Basel

International School Basel

International School of Zug & Luzern

Ilse, Grade 9, Pen Drawing

Teagan, Grade 5, Linoprint

I.L-J, Grade 12, Acrylic

through shared interests in a mutually accepted form of medium - Art, the exhibit was a collaboration of ten schools from different regions all members of the Swiss Group of International Schools (SGIS).

ISB Basel received a total of forty seven artworks which were

Aiglon College

Collège du Léman

International School of Schaffhausen

Kazuki, Grade 11, Pencil on Paper

Ela, IB2, Digital Illustration

Sophia, Grade 7, Coloured Pencil

prominently displayed in the Reinach campus. The sense of excitement, of glädje was apparent as students, staff and invitees were drawn to the different works produced in different media.

Displaying high technical quality, it was no surprise that the digital media artworks drew the

ICS Zurich

Brillantmont Int’l School

Brillantmont Int’l School

Maggie, Grade 7, Acrylic on Paper

Taisiya, Grade 9, Acrylic

Nadia, Grade 11, Acrylic on Board

most crowd.

This January , ICS InterCommunity School Zürich will host these traveling artworks next.

We cannot wait to see them! You can follow the exhibit on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook with the hashtags #SGISArtTravel #SGISarts

Verbier International School

ICS Zurich

International School Zurich North

Oliver, Year 9, Pen and Ink

Amelie, Grade 10, Acrylic

Aryan, Grade 8, Acrylic & Watercolour

Participating Schools International School Basel International School Zurich North ICS Inter-Community School Zurich Collège du Léman Brillantmont International School

International School of Zug & Luzern Aiglon College International School of Schaffhausen Verbier International School International Schoo of Geneva - Campus des Nations

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The Musical Theatre production Pippin follows the

PIPPIN Winter Musical

main character Pippin as he finds his place in life.

A mysterious circus pulls him into adventures in search for his true meaning, a grand spectacle with a glorious finale.

The rehearsal process was one of 4 months in which we systematically learnt all main assemble pieces with Mr.Norris as well as choreographies

Story

| Felicitas Jessner, Grade 11

Photos | Peter Paul Vester

with our dance coordinator Danae.

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Once the main chorus numbers were well learned and the main choreos were taught such as the opening scene, we started to assemble act 1. This was mainly blocking, which means rehearsing where we are standing, sitting, etc. during a scene and what individual lines are assigned to which actor/s.

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| Felicitas Jessner, Grade 11

Photos | Peter Paul Vester

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PIPPIN Winter Musical This process can take a while, especially when Mr.Herzig is working with only a few people individually, which means that sometimes concentration can slip away, but that was when focus was even more important. After the October break, we were “off-script” meaning that no scripts were allowed on stage.

The musical consisted of many different scenes, where the larger cast was not needed ie. the scenes were only between the main characters. These were worked on and blocked in separate rehearsals with only Mr.Herzig and the actors who were needed, so that the main rehearsal times on Tuesday and Thursday could be used for scenes which consisted of the entire cast.

Through the circus element of the musical, we were able to follow circus lessons where we learned elements of circus performances such as balancing, juggling, acrobatics and hula hoop. It was definitely something new for most of the Pippin cast, which made the overall progress exciting because of the new parts added to the show.

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PIPPIN Winter Musical

Special thanks to Vinzent, our circus coordinator who encouraged us to try new things and helped us through the learning process.

Once we were coming to the end of the 4 months, and the show days were approaching fast, rehearsals were very important but nevertheless tiring for everyone involved.

They stretched out to 6 hours during the school week, which often included full day rehearsals on the weekends, which were used for tech rehearsals and when the orchestra joined the show.

Although it was a tiring process, and nerves were running high, it was visible that with each rehearsal the show came more and more together.

In the end, Pippin was a great success, with very good feedback from the audience and from the cast. It was an amazing learning experience, and the show really portrayed all the hard work that was put in by the cast, the orchestra, tech-crew, Vinzent and Danae, Mr.Herzig and Mr.Norris.

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Story

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| Felicitas Jessner, Grade 11

Photos | Peter Paul Vester

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WINTER CONCERT Grade 6–12 Winter Concert

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performance of the year with a new group of people. On the day of the concert, I felt a wave of different emotions. I was nervous and excited for our performance but I was also anxious for my friends who were a part of other ensembles.

While I was confident that we would deliver our

This year’s Middle & Senior School Winter Concert featured nearly 200 students across Grades 6-12.

Twelve different ensembles performed a kaleidoscopic range of repertoire to a packed Reinach Aula. Grade 11 student Lavanya reflects on her experiences at the event: In the Music Department, the Winter Concert is the first major event of an academic year where all music ensembles have multiple chances to perform. It is a very exciting, yet nervous time for everyone. And as a part of the Reinach Choir, the feeling is no different.

Even after having performed in multiple concerts throughout my time at ISB, the Winter Concert always makes me the most nervous as it is the first

performance well, I was also a little stressed as I wanted to remember every minute detail that we had spent time refining. But at the end of the day, the important thing was to just have fun performing.

Another big part of the Winter Concert for me was being able to watch other students perform. Not only was it fun and exciting to listen to different pieces, but it was also inspiring to see so many talented musicians.

It has inspired and motivated me to continue working hard on being able to do my very best in future performances. I look forward to performing in the upcoming concerts and events at ISB, and am also excited to watch other ensembles perform and see their growth

Story

| Lavanya Mahendrakumar, Grade 11

Photos | Peter Paul Vester

throughout the year.

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WINTER CONCERT Grade 6–12 Winter Concert After hours of rehearsals and hard work in the prior months, this year’s Winter Concert went very well, and I’m sure all students, teachers, and parents are happy and proud of the performances.

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Story

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| Lavanya Mahendrakumar, Grade 11

Photos | Peter Paul Vester

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Sustainability

Every year Switzerland holds a Clean Up

CARING FOR OUR NEIGHBOURHOOD Swiss Clean Up Day

Day, which this year took place on the 16th and 17th of September. Clean Up Days are very important to raise awareness surrounding waste in the community and to help educate them on how it is managed in Basel Stadt and Basel Land. Additionally, it also helps make a direct environmental impact in the local area. Over the past few years, ISB has been an active participant in these Clean Up Days. On Friday the 16th, groups of students and staff volunteered for an hour to collect garbage in the

Story

| Lavanya Mahendrakumar & Felicitas Jessner, Grade 11

Photos | Sustainability Group

neighborhoods near our three campuses.

In total, 49.4 kilograms of waste was collected, making it a huge success.

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Luz Maria Gutierrez, Director of Teaching and Learning at ISB, said she was very content with the results and Clean Up Days in general as “they help generate a sense of community.” Due to these results, ISB then decided to add a second stage to the Clean Up Day regarding the Back To School Barbecue being held on the 17th. Ms. Gutierrez said that “the objective was to produce less waste than we collected.” ISB is pleased to announce that we produced only 1.8 kilograms of trash for an event with 1100 meals. All waste produced was then recycled by being separated into glass, aluminum, green waste, PET, carton and paper, and plastics other than PET. Sian Morgan, an 11th Grade student at ISB, who volunteered at both the Clean Up Day and the Back to School Barbecue, found it to be an eye-opening experience that helped her be “more aware of the trash around our school on the streets, and in the corners where we can’t see it.” ISB would like to thank all students and staff who participated and helped make this happen. And finally, as Sian says, “no matter how big or small, a difference is a difference.”

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MAKE IT COUNT! Run4Life

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The health of the planet and of humanity are very closely linked. We are living in a time when we are facing growing challenges for both. ISB has already come together in the last two years to show how much we care about the world’s forests through Run4Trees. We raised over 21,000 CHF to enable the international tree-planting organization PlantFor-The-Planet to plant over 14,000 trees in Mexico.

However looking after life on earth must include both protecting and connecting to nature and helping those around us that are in need. That is why this year we were excited to launch Run4Life which is a sponsored run (or walk) to raise awareness about deforestation, children with cancer and stay healthy outdoors. While doing this our school community raised money for the tree-planting charity Plant-For-the-Planet and the Swiss Pediatric Oncology Group (SPOG).

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| Kate Chakravarty, Grade 11

Photos | Run4Life Group

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Sustainability

A FASHION STATEMENT Sustainable Fashion

Fashion production makes up 10% of humanity’s carbon emissions, dries up water sources, and pollutes rivers and streams. What’s more, 85% of all textiles go to the dump each year (UNECE, 2018), and washing some types of clothes sends significant amount of microplastics into the ocean. [genevaenvironmentnetwork.org]

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Story & Photos | Urvi Kulkarni, Fia Manigo Farrell & Bia Benito Garcia, Grade 12

shopping sustainably, rather than buying fast fashion goods. Currently we are working on future orientated projects such as our

Within the Environmental Society, we are a

short film/ documentary-style video focused

sustainable fashion group which aims to spread

on the Basel second hand community in which

awareness about the dangers of mass production

members of the group will visit local thrift

in the fashion industry. We chose this topic as it

stores/Brockis and donate clothing we have

affects the entire ISB community. We began an

collected from some of the school staff. We

Instagram account (@isb_thrift) where we post

will further be interviewing those working in

weekly, about fashion tips and ways to shop more

the thrift stores and getting insight on how

sustainably. We also promote thrift/ second-hand

sustainable fashion makes the world a better

stores around Basel where people are able to find

place. We are still in the planning stages on

affordable, good quality clothing. We collected over

this project, but hope to start filming shortly.

200 articles of clothing as donations from parents,

We are constantly looking for new members,

teachers and students to organise a 2-week long

if you have any interest in sustainable fashion

thrift market in the school. This enabled us to actively

or thrifting then DM us @isb_thrift! We would

participate and influence the school community about

love new members.

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Alumni

Story & Photos | Sarah Martinez Cornejo

HOW THE IB PROGRAMMES PREPARED ME An Alumnus Story

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Being able to study all the time was the only thing I could think of doing during the entirety of my IB journey. Since finishing the IB, I have gone on to Central Saint Martins to do my foundation year in art and design. While I am now in an environment where I am surrounded by lots of talent and different ideas, the IB introduced me to some of the core parts involved in the process of creating artworks before I even stepped into the studio.

By far, the most valuable thing I learnt was how to approach research from many different angles as that is what allows you to become more informed about the work you create, and draw inspiration from new and contrasting places.

Artwork title: “Land of Yesterday”

For example, in the work “Land of yesterday”, a little trip to London’s iconic Natural History Museum, led me to draw parallels between the worlds of Paleontology and Jewelry. When I looked at them from the perspective of historical objects, I found many similarities between them, especially in relation to how a viewer feels around them because of their grandeur and importance. The uncanny combination of these two subjects resulted in one of my favorite pieces to date and speaks a lot where I would like my art to go in the future. I’m really at the start of my journey at Central Saint Martins, but I am looking forward to seeing how I develop my understanding of my practice in relation to sculpture, and how I will change over time as an artist.

Artwork title: “Valuable Objects” I made giant oyster pearls and I was looking at how objects loose value to more prominent they are around us. In pearl farming, people really only care about the inside of the pearl.

When looking at the pearl ring that I have, I thought about how they get the small pearl and they would have to kill the rest of the parts. I was sad when looking at the videos how they acquired the pearls.

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