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The Monthly - November Issue

As The Monthly celebrates its official one year anniversary from the launch of our first issue, we are back with the magazine’s November 2021 edition! It has been a jam-packed month and we hope that you can enjoy this multifaceted issue and enjoy all of its intricate articles which mainly explore An Era of Technology.

In capturing the diversity of November- from Rememberance, to Movember, The Pegasus Scandal and Kidney shortages - we wanted to choose a theme pertinent to the 21st century and the current dynamic of our education system. Our issue An Era of Technology analyses the transformative world we live in, and the political, social and economic implications of technological development. Covering everything from the fundamentals of blockchain, discussions with the ex-CEO of Care, and an interview with our very own Mr Trodd. When reading this month’s issue, make sure to look at our table of contents- so you are able to read different articles and find where they are by clicking on their titles- since they are hyperlinked!

We would like to congratulate and applaud Veda Varma, our talented Inspirational Writer who is Editor’s Choice of this month. Her thought-provoking and impactful writing has only continued to improve, and she is a true asset to the team! Lastly, make sure to follow our Instagram @themonthly_ for more information about everything related to our magazine, and email us if you are interested in being a Graphic Designer for The Monthly.

Thank you for your continued support in bringing high quality student-led and composed journalism to your screens every month!

Food Technology

Year 7 have been in the school kitchen demonstrating their knife skills and using the ovens. The smells wafting around the corridors have brought many teachers to the Food Technology room this week to find out what is being made. Well done Year 7.

A Level PE

We were lucky enough for Mr Guzy to do a dissection for the year 12 A level PE class to finish our unit of work on the cardiovascular system. The whole class loved it and it was a very exciting way to finish the unit!

Cross Country

Our team numbers are growing and we had a record turn out at last weeks running club, it was so lovely to see so many students enjoying the cooler weather! On Sunday night our increased team travelled to Bahrain school where the U13’s ran 1.6km and our U15’s completed 3km. The team were so much more relaxed going in to the event having more training and experience behind them and they did not disappoint, it was a fantastic demonstration of tactical racing. Sama absolutely stormed the U13 girls race with great strategical racing and one of the best sprint finishes I’ve seen in a long time and Hajar was hot on her heels to finish in 3rd place! James finished 1st again making it 3 out of 3 races for him and new comer Jack delivered a faultless race! At U15 Heidi went in to the event concerned about her pacing but didn’t need to worry as she cruised home in to first place with Mira and Yasmeen thoroughly enjoying their non-stop running! Our U15 boys had great success too with Oliver finding his competitive streak to see him finishing in 2nd place and Juma putting in incredible effort towards the finish to make sure he finished in 3rd place. The rest of our U15 boys also did us proud with Hriday knocking nearly 2mins off his previous effort. Eyad had a fantastic run for his first event and stormed his way over the finish line! Yusuf is also a fantastic edition to the team with a strong performance in his second race with the team.

Art Trip

KS4 and 5 art students visit the Bahrain Annual Fine Art Exhibition in the culture theatre situated behind The National Museum.

On Tuesday the students had an opportunity to enhance their studies by seeing up close some of Bahrain's very best fine artist’s work.

This year's exhibition was particularly special for us because one of the artist’s exhibiting there was BSB alumni Alanood Alkhayat.

For more information visit

www.culture.gov.bh

https://data.culture.gov.bh/vt/VR/fineart47/

Anti-Bullying Week

As anti-bullying week draws to a close, it has been wonderful to see the school spirit shine throughout the week. We saw some fantastic odd socks on display today to celebrate the individuality of our students, but behind the scenes has been an important message across all lessons. Kindness is not confined to just this week; we are incredibly lucky at BSB to have such a caring and considerate community who are always kind to each other, and when someone is not it is called out. We stand up together for what is right and value respect, diversity and equality. We all deserve to be treated in a way that makes us feel happy and valued, and we will continue to spread that message throughout our school community. Thank you to everyone in the school community for your support this week, but in particular those students who have been involved in organising assemblies, videos, decorations and presentations. Without you this week would not have been the same.

You pick on me for no reason at all,

You make me feel powerless and small,

After your hate on me, I feel alone and weak,

Sometimes too scared to even speak,

I never want to be known as a tattle-tale,

Each time I try to stand up to you, I always fail,

I always make the wrong decision,

But I should learn to expand my vision,

The things you say, the things you do,

Would you like it if it was you?

So today I'm fighting and staying strong,

Since I am innocent and have done nothing wrong

By: Lina Hamour 7A

How much more longer can I take ,

Constantly trying not to break

It goes on every single day

Another piece of me chiseled away.

How am I supposed to put up with that ?

Being called ugly, weird and fat

I don’t know why this is happening to me

I’m just asking you nicely, please let me free !

Bullying hurts, don’t you see ?

Don’t you think what could’ve happened to me ?

You did it all for the fun

You didn’t know what could’ve been done.

Stop bullying. No one deserves to feel worthless.

By: Mais Dayyat 9A

The BSB Big Question

It's all too easy to consider the benefits of extended project-based learning for those taking part until the presentations and big reveals are made to the whole school. From that point on, you suddenly realise that the students, teachers and families visiting the displays come away with just as much shared learning and thought-provoking concepts. The students and families taking part in The Big Question Autumn Series 1 this half term have certainly taken to it with gusto and it was a lovely BSB community feel on Wednesday evening to listen to them sharing their learning from the younger key stages to the older ones with equal confidence and excitement. Congratulations to all and looking forward to the BSB Big Question Winter series 1. There are some students who are very eager to capture all the seasons in this first year!

The BSB Big Night Out

What a fantastic way to end the week. Staff, students and parents from all areas of the school coming together to enjoy the many talents of members of our community. The atmosphere was wonderful as the audience were wowed by the performers. As Mr Broun reminded us all at the end, it is very easy to forget that there have been no performances for nearly 18 months due to the necessary precautions and restrictions, but the quality of performances would lead us to belive otherwise. Well done to all performers, thank you to our audience members for their support and special thanks to all of those who make these events possible. Without your work behind the scenes these events simply couldn't happen. We cannot wait for the next Big Night Out!

The Monthly

After a long month, The Monthly is finally here with our October Issue for 2021.

In capturing the busy life of October- from Think Pink, to Black History Month, Gandhi Jayanti and various school events- we wanted to choose a theme that covered all of our bases. Our issue Culture in a Cosmopolitan Century analyses the existence of certain ideas, structures and devices in our modern international world of today. Covering everything from medical racism, schizophrenia to the suffragette movement- this issue is the perfect read for the global citizen of today. When reading our issue, make sure to look at our table of contents- so you are able to read different articles and find where they are by clicking on their titles- since they are hyperlinked!

We would like to congratulate and applaud Husam Al Qallaf, our hardworking graphic designer who is Editor’s Choice of this month, and has been an asset to The Monthly! Lastly, make sure to follow our Instagram @themonthly_ for more information about everything related to our magazine, and email us if you are interested in being a Graphic Designer for The Monthly.

Thank you for your continued support in bringing high quality student-led and composed journalism to your screens every month!

With Love,

Co-Editors-in-Chief

Anoushka Subin, Charlotte Rodney and Kaviesh Kinger

The Breakfast Club

The smell of toast gently wafted down the corridors this morning as the exclusive Breakfast club got underway today. Students crafted themselves scrambled eggs, checking pan temperatures, worktop organisation and practised the most important skill of washing up! The comments and feedback from all the students involved was a satisfied 'mmmm' as they polished off the final morsels.

Business Lecture at BIBF

Saturday's lecture at the Bahrain Institute of Banking and Finance was an informative and interesting practical session. It allowed our Trade Quest team to grasp a greater understanding of concepts—such as reliable methods of risk management—that will be beneficial to our performance in the competition. We look forward to attending future sessions and applying the theory we have learned in our own practice.

The session combined theory and practice in the same way that we will be required to do in our trading. We first reviewed share price information on Yahoo Finance to familiarize ourself with the geography of this important site. Much of the session was devoted to considering the relationship between risk and return of a share involving practical exercises on an Excel spreadsheet to calculate the standard deviation of returns and the beta value of a share.

Overall, the session improved our theoretical understanding as well as our confidence in using Excel. It was an excellent introduction to quantitative techniques in finance.

A Level PE

This week we have been continuing to study the cardiovascular system. When you are exercising your stroke volume decreases while your heart rate increases and your cardiac output remains the same. In turn, your body tries to transfer the excess heat through vasodilation and sweat. The reduced stroke volume initiates a heart rate increase to maintain the cardiac output; this is cardiovascular drift. Athletes then need to make sure they rehydrate to counteract or limit the effects of cardiovascular drift. So we made some rehydration drinks of our own and compared them to some famous brands, we actually preferred our own!

Games Development

We conducted a very successful external speaker talk yesterday on game development. Joy Dey has worked in the gaming industry for 13 years. She has worked at different companies, such as EA, Microsoft and Headstrong Games. She has had a few different roles starting as QA and is currently a senior designer at Creative Assembly where she is working on Total War: Warhammer 3. There were 3 talks for our students in BTEC IT, GCSE IT and Computer Science about the different stages of computer game development.

Race 4 Good

The energy, drive and commitment shown by the Race4Good team is unrivalled by any other project I have ever taken part in. In under 2 weeks they have managed to compile and edit 4 videos and create detailed lengthy plans explaining exactly what needs to be done to complete each of the tasks at hand, working long hours after school and throughout the weekends ensuring that their task was completed before the tight deadlines given.

This hard work alongside their empathy and desire to improve the lives of those who are less fortunate than them was heart-warming and a great credit to the students. Over the 4 rounds they were lucky enough to win one of the mid race challenges and to see the happiness on the faces of those whose lives have changed due to their efforts and ideas.

However, the team were unable to go through to the final round and continue in this competition. Nevertheless, the students will never forget the fond memories of late-night zoom calls, video bloopers and deciding what angle they film best from. But most importantly they will never forget how fortunate they are, and I hope they will continue the good work they started by actively taking part in future charity events.

BTec Engineering

Students have been busy this week with some further practical experience to support their learning. First, the engineers were generating analogue and digital signals using a microphone, a CRO, LEDs and a signal generator. They also learnt how to use the soldering gun. This was followed with a field trip today to 3 Salmabad workshops to see the engineering process in action. They even gained some practical experience under the direct supervision of field experts. It was wonderful to see our first school trip in almost 2 years run so successfully, and we look forward to seeing more over the coming months!

AlAatah Legacy for Public Relations - Student Voice Conference

BSB was delighted and honoured to host the first AlAatah Legacy for Public Relations student voice conference last Friday 24th September for a select group of students. Students eloquently debated 3 topics:

1. The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on mental health

2. Favour of STEM subjects over the arts

3. Standardised testing is the most effective indicator of student performance.

The students thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to attend an event once more and also discuss such topics with their peers. We are most grateful to the Chairman, Sheikh Rashid Al Khalifa, and the Board of Directors of AlAatah Legacy for Public Relations, for inviting us to be a part of their launch event and we look forward to future collaboration.

The Monthly

The Monthly is expanding as a multifaceted magazine, with a larger range of subjects in each of our issues. In our September Issue, we are proud to announce our newest addition: STEM.

Our theme for the month of September is ‘A World in Crisis’, encompassing the uncertainty of the world as we know it. We have recently witnessed significant events take place from the takeover of Afghanistan to the natural disasters that have shaken Europe as a result of global warming. In our first issue of the year, we as a team have worked tirelessly to compile a magazine which will not only allow you to catch up on world events, but also on celebrity drama and appreciate the fantastic photography in the style of Henri Cartier-Bresson.

Thank you for your continued support,

Editors-in-Chief

Anoushka Subin, Charlotte Rodney, Kaviesh Kinger

Food Technology

Very pleased to see the kitchen open and smelling wonderful again. Well done to the students who have started back to practical in school. I am looking forward to seeing many more over the next few weeks.

Mrs Reid