Environmental Wilderness campus

This year, ISB was able to host all of our Wild Panther Grade 7 and 8 outdoor education trips to our Environmental Wilderness Campus (EWC) as well as various student clubs and classes. ISB is one of the few schools in the world with its own outdoor campus and a tailored experiential education program that reflects our curricular goals and objectives. Despite another challenging year, the 2021-22 school year saw further development and improvements to these programs.

Our Grade 7 program saw the development of a new orienteering course testing students’ navigation skills in a timed event and new rock climbing routes that proved both challenging and extremely rewarding for the students. Although our Water Management Authority worked on increasing the capacity of the reservoir to store water, which directly impacted our water programs for kayaking and canoeing, we successfully executed the Grade 8 water program. In this program, students were challenged to complete a search & rescue scenario in canoes and kayaks while navigating the lake.

The High School Astronomy Club also came to the EWC for their annual retreat. Using telescopes kindly donated by the ISB Parent Teacher Association, students experienced the stars and planets without light pollution. International Baccalaureate (IB) students also visited and utilized the EWC on 3-day expeditions to complete their internal assessments - from IB geography mapping to biology to environmental systems & societies (ESS) fieldwork.

This year also saw the return of Grade 5 students to the EWC for their “Crossing the Bridge” program. This program celebrates and reinforces the learning and personal development that each student has gained in elementary school and prepares students for their future learning journey in middle school.

This year we improved the EWC by replacing the solar water heaters with new units with a ceramic lining that ensures greater insulation and more environmentally sustainable use of hot water, reducing electricity consumption. Program-wise, we also opened new trails for orienteering activities and a new hiking trail in the hills immediately north of the EWC. Lastly, building on the previous year’s efforts, ISB partnered with the local Ban Phu Sai community and saw the completion of the village center community project.