2021/2022 Annual Theme at Jules Verne Campus: Take a walk in my shoes!

We have a new annual theme for 2021/2022: Take a walk in my shoes. We chose the theme by the entire JVC team, realizing we need all need to “find our footing” again after a year and a half of instability due to the Corona Crisis. We need to find our human connections again and show empathy, imagining what it’s like to walk in someone else’s shoes.

As Afghanistan was taken over by the Taliban again and women are afraid to succumb to oppression again, can we imagine what that feels like? How did we feel when we saw images on the extreme flooding over the summer in Germany? When others face discrimination of any kind just for being who they are, when they face depression, addiction, or illness, are we strong enough to reach out, to imagine what that feels like? I dare say that we at Jules Verne Campus should focus on and live empathy and compassion by example.

We also see from the many shoes collected by our entire JVC team that people are different, and the footsteps and paths that led us here, all to this common place and time, are as different as we are. What do the scuff marks on someone’s old hiking boots tell us? What shoes were we wearing when we tried something new, met a friend, or heard some sad news? You can wonder about the stories told by our shoes with our collection in display in our foyer. We invite you to have a look at the shoe gallery when on Campus.

On our Journey Day in September, always held before school starts, I invited the entire JVC team to brainstorm on the annual theme and depict ideas in a mural on our Oasis wall. We worked with a young designer who created the blue print, and the team filled in the mural with colorful shoe outlines, ideas for projects, questions, and interpretations of the theme to explore with your JVC learning partners this year. We invite you to have a look at the beautiful results in the Oasis when you’re here on Campus for the upcoming parents’ evenings. In our first edition of the Campus News, we’ll share the many new projects on Campus that arose from the brainstorming with you. On this note, let’s step into the next school year together with new hope and anticipation.