1. OVERVIEW

CLISE is an educational programme designed to build up, practise and develop characters and skills necessary for Vinschool students, thereby improving their academic performance and character development, and ensuring their school and social success.  

CLISE programme focuses on honing students’ personal skills, which serve as a vehicle for their positive and meaningful contribution to the development of themselves, their family, school, community, and society. CLISE is a multicultural and purely skills-based curriculum which exposes students to various cultures and religions, through the lens of respect, for the diversity and universally appreciated values of those cultures and religions.  

Characters and skills in the CLISE curriculum are developed based on a hierarchy of specific expectations for each educational stage. They are a combination of social-emotional skills, learning skills, and 21st century skills. These skills are intrinsically interrelated, intertwined, interdependent, mutually supported and they closely follow CASEL (Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning) framework of intrapersonal and interpersonal competencies.  

One of the strengths of this programme is that it’s based on research about best practices for behaviour change. It’s also piloted in real classrooms to make sure it meets the needs of a diversity of students in a range of learning contexts. And all members of the curriculum development team have first-hand experience as teachers and counsellors. This means we understand the realities of school life and drew from this when we developed the programme.

CLISE intentionally creates learning experiences that will help students develop and maintain positive relationships, become lifelong learners, and contribute to a more caring just world. CLISE provides a process through which students and adults acquire and apply the knowledge, skills, and attitudes that help us to understand ourselves, connect with others, achieve our goals and support our communities. We all need opportunities to learn and engage in environments where we feel safe, valued, and a sense of belonging. So, how does CLISE help schools, families, and communities work together so that all students have these kinds of learning experiences and achieve success in education, careers, and life?  

CLISE programme is designed based on CASEL’s framework that identifies five areas of competence that together help students develop a healthy sense of who they are, manage stress, understand the views of others, and work together to create schools and communities where everyone can grow their strengths and interests.

• Self-awareness is about how we think about ourselves and who we are. It includes understanding our culture, our thoughts, feelings, and what we believe we’re capable of and understanding how these things can influence our behaviours and beliefs.

• Self-management is the ability to manage those emotions, thoughts, and actions in different situations so that we can achieve individual and collective goals. This includes coping with stress and anxiety, persevering through challenges, and taking action to create positive change.

• Social awareness is how we understand others, how we learn to take different perspectives and empathise, even with people who are different from us. It also includes understanding how the broader norms and systems around us influence how we develop and create a sense of belonging.

• Relationship skills are how we connect and engage effectively with others and how we form lasting friendships and connections. This includes communicating clearly, solving problems together, managing conflicts and disagreements, and standing up for ourselves and the rights of others.

• Lastly, responsible decision-making is how we put it all together to make caring and constructive choices. This includes thinking critically about consequences, analysing the impact of our actions on ourselves and others, and identifying solutions that support our collective well-being.

Students will continue to develop and practise those skills throughout their lives and can adapt and apply these competencies across different contexts and cultures. How students develop those skills is impacted by their environment, which is why we need to work together across classrooms, schools, families and communities.

In the classroom, students are explicitly taught CLISE skills, and also practise and apply those skills during core subjects, like discussing different perspectives in Social Studies and Vietnamese Language or collaboratively problem-solving in Science or Maths.

Beyond the classroom, CLISE skills can be intentionally promoted throughout the school experience from the way we greet each other in the morning, to how discipline practises are carried out, how adults themselves develop and model positive relationships, and how the other CLISE competencies are implemented.

Outside of school, families provide the earliest and ongoing learning and interactions for their children. So it’s important that schools listen to and authentically partner with families to help shape CLISE priorities and strategies for supporting their children. Similarly, when schools partner with community organisations to align their efforts, CLISE opportunities can be strengthened, and students benefit even more. With CLISE, we can help create schools and learning spaces where all young people feel connected, inspired, engaged, and ready to contribute to the world around them.        

• The CLISE Primary programme can help students to calm down when they get angry and participate more in class. Moreover, all students will no longer feel invisible or left out, be able to talk to others, and ask questions in an assertive way. Research shows that students need to be equipped with a foundation of self-regulation, or self-control, in order to be able to both behave in the classroom as well as take advantage of instructions and be able to focus on and apply themselves to their work. A simple definition of self-regulation is the ability to control your thoughts, emotions, and behaviours. It’s a broad concept that covers a lot of ground. Specifically, we try to focus on some of the aspects that really relate to the ability to learn. In particular, we focus on some of what we’ve called “the skills for learning”, as well as the specific executive-function skills, which are attention, working memory, and behavioural inhibition.

• The CLISE Secondary and High school programme helps students achieve a growth mindset, the ability to plan and act accordingly to realise their goals, as well as the ability to better manage their relationships to actively and effectively participate in their learning and in life. In addition, all students learning this programme will have their problem-solving skills taken to a higher level than in Primary years and know how to apply such skills to handle personal and social conflicts, make responsible decisions and take better ownership of their lives.

2. COURSE OBJECTIVES

• Cultivate students’ skills and character development, perfecting their personality 
• Empower students to achieve academic excellence and lead a fulfilling and joyful life 
• Encourage students to make positive impacts on themselves, their families, and the broader community