The Boundless Education project-based ‘Quests’ are a key component of each of our cohorts. The Explorers taking part in our January-March Experience will be embarking on one of our most thought-provoking Quests yet: The Quest for Equality. Before we dive into this important topic, here’s a quick reminder of what our Quests are about.
What is a Quest?
In summary, Quests are interdisciplinary projects that our students (Explorers) work on for the full duration of a cohort.
They learn about real-world phenomena and issues and are encouraged to explore beyond the content to form their own purposeful connections to the topic.
Our end-of-cohort Learning Celebrations allow our Explorers to proudly showcase their findings and project outcomes.
Our Quests are based on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs). Also referred to as Global Goals, these are environmental, social, and economic topics and issues that are used as age-appropriate learning themes in our curriculum.
Boundless Life has placed the UN SDGs front and centre in our Explorers’ learning journey with us because when young people realise they can draw on their passions to have a positive impact on the world, they discover the purpose in their learning.
Tip: You can learn more about our Quests and why they are so critical to the Boundless Education curriculum and approach here.
Social Superheroes Achieving Equality
Our 3-month winter Cohort Quest is called ‘Social Superheroes Achieving Equality’. This Quest is based on SDG 10 - Reduced Inequalities.
It focuses on issues of equality based on income, age, disability, gender, race, ethnicity, and religion. The Quest develops an understanding of human rights - including those of children specifically, stereotypes, discrimination, economic stability as a result of equality and the power of the media. Explorers are taught new concepts and apply the skills developed in their Mastery lessons to their interdisciplinary learning within their Quest.
The topic of this Quest is particularly relevant as the Covid-19 pandemic has unfortunately resulted in the largest increase in between-country inequality in three decades.
https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/report/2023/
At Exploration level (ages 1-6), children will be inspired to work on individual activities shared with them by our educators and predominantly leveraging Montessori material. Books and Questing activities will focus on ‘Me and My Community’, and cover topics including healthy eating, equality and empathy.
At Foundation level (ages 7-12) children will delve deeper into the subject of ethics and social studies to understand the global importance of reducing inequalities.
They will be challenged to further develop their skills at their own pace within their Mastery sessions - which are carefully interwoven with the goals and outcomes of their Quest
For example, core academic concepts across Maths and English like statistics, problem-solving, speech writing, debating, stories with a dilemma and non-chronological reporting are brought to life within the stimulating setting of our Explorers’ Quest.
In their local language and culture studies, Explorers will be learning about opportunities to give back locally in addition to everyone’s favourite topic: local cuisine and how to use the local language to ask for it.
Did you know?
‘Before the pandemic, the incomes of the bottom 40% of the population grew faster than the national average in a majority of countries. The impacts of the pandemic and uneven recoveries in different regions of the world threaten to reverse that trend and further worsen global inequality. Record numbers are being forced to flee conflicts and economic hardship. By mid-2022, one in 251 people worldwide was a refugee, the highest proportion ever documented. Achieving SDG 10 requires concerted efforts to address the root causes of wage disparities and access to resources both within- and between-country inequality.’
Source: United Nations
For our Explorers, these efforts start by exploring these tricky issues and working together and individually to understand these and begin to come up with the solutions required to tackle them.
If you think your young Explorer would like to embark on this Quest, give us a call. We have a limited number of spots available in Sintra, Syros, Bali and Tuscany.
