Collège des Frères Maristes Champville

The Collège des Frères Maristes Champville is a private French-language, Marist Catholic educational institution set in Dik El Mehdi, Metn, Lebanon, which teaches all scholar levels. It is one of the educational institutions in Lebanon, and one of the remaining two Marist educational institutions in the country, the other one being Collège des Frères Maristes Jbeil - Amchit, also known as Collège Notre Dame de Lourdes. The school, commonly known as Champville took its name from Saint Marcellin Champagnat, founder of the Marist brothers, and it means La Ville de Champagnat, or The City of Champagnat.

Collège des Frères Maristes Champville

Champville
Type	Private
Established	1966
Religious affiliation	Catholic
Principal	Édouard Jabre
Location	Dik El Mehdi, Lebanon 33°56′5.02″N 35°37′1.68″E
Colours	Blue & white
Nickname	Champville

Presentation of the institution

The Collège des Frères Maristes Champville is a private, Christian institution which declares its role to be to "serve Lebanon's youth within its rules and following the priorities set within its Educational Project".[1] The College is directed by the Marist brothers with the help of an educative team.

Facts and figures

The College was founded in 1966 in continuation of the Collège du Sacré-Cœur located in Jounieh and founded in 1903. It lies upon a green hill in Dik El Mehdi, Northern Metn, Lebanon over about 22 hectares (1 ha = 10,000 m2, so 22 ha = 220,000 m2) of surface. It now holds around 3000 students.[2] The College teaches fifteen scholar years, divided into eight couples (except for the last year which comes alone). These eight are, in order:

1. Nursery (Maternelles)
2. Benjamins (Benjamins)
3. Minimal (Minimes)
4. Junior (Petits)
5. Sophomore (Moyens)
6. Seniors (Grands)
7. Secondary (Secondaires)
8. Terminal (Terminales)

The school usually averages highly in official exams, and enjoys a high standing among the Lebanese schools

Teaching and learning

As one of the leading educational institutions in Lebanon, the College prepares its students to two baccalaureates (that is, the Lebanese and the French), the students can opt to take the Lebanese certificate only or both. The School provides a bilingual teaching of Arabic and French languages since they start. In the fourth grade, the College provides English language courses. From another perspective, the College gives scientific subjects the utmost importance and teaches Math and Sciences in preparatory classes, then Math, Biology and Physics - Chemistry in secondary classes. The three forms of baccalaureate a Collège des Frères Maristes Champville student can get are General Sciences (mainly Math and Physics), Life Sciences (mainly Biology and Chemistry) and Social and Economic Sciences (mainly Sociology and Economics). There is no Linguistic baccalaureate formation within the College which is why some people say that it is a purely scientific school (in French: Une école purement scientifique). In parallel, the College provides DIY courses for students between the second and the eighth grades; Computer Studies between the second grade and second secondary grade; Media Instruction between the sixth and the ninth grades; and an initiation to editing TPE documents (French TPE = Travail Personnel Encadré, which translates to Personal Coached Work).

Timing

The timetables of Maternelles and Benjamins spans over thirty weekly classes of fifty minutes' length each. The timetables of all other classes, except Double-Baccalaureated classes in Second Secondary and in Senior level, span over thirty-five weekly classes of fifty minutes' length each. A particularity of this College in its recesses is that after each fifty-minute class, the students get a ten minutes' break, but for the third and fifth fifty-minute classes. After the third class, they get a fifteen-minute break; and after the fifth, they get a forty-minute break, during which they may head for one of the three cafeterias for lunch. Double-Baccalaureated classes get four additional classes, on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, in order to be able to satisfy the required learning for their two official exams. A usual day at the College starts at 07:40 am and ends at 03:00 pm for usual classes. Maternelles and Benjamins start at 07:40 am as well, but leave at 02:30 pm, they also have breakfast served at school.

Extra-curriculars

The College provides five options for extra-curricular activities: Sports, Cultural activities, Scouting, MEJ, and GVX (Christian Life Teaching).

Sports and cultural activities

The Sports department of Champville organizes inter-grade tournaments in football, basketball, and more ball games. It also has the concept of Afternoon Athletism, which means that the sportsmen and sportswomen of the student body are able to train professionally with coaches after school. For the cultural angle, the school welcomes all types of people to activities such as ballet, dance, painting, judo, tae-kwon-do, aikido, and other such activities, on Saturdays, between 9:00 am and 12:00 pm. Every year, the Activities' members (the member of any or both the sports and cultural activities) present a show in which they display what they have learnt during said year.

Movements

To aid the formation of any young member of the society, the College also provides three choices in Movements, which are optional to all students and to anyone not in Champville. These are Scouting, MEJ (French = Mouvement Eucharistique des Jeunes which translates to Youth Eucharistic Movement), and Groupe Champagnat. All of them meet on Saturdays between 2:00 pm and 4:30 pm. Besides those two movements, the scouts are the biggest community in the college, they work on the youth personality, organize big fundraising events, and finally use those funds in the service of the society.

References

1. The Collège des Frères Maristes Champville Agenda 2009 - 2010, Educational Project, Presentation of the institution.
2. The Collège des Frères Maristes Champville Agenda 2009 - 2010, Educational Project, Presentation of the institution.