In school year 2015/16 two exchanges took place with the above mentioned Flemish school, with which St. Stanislav’s Institution has been in cooperation for long years.
In April 2015 a group of 21 DCG students accompanied by two teachers spent in Belgium a lovely and educative week, in September  2015 the Belgians came over to Slovenia. The common thread of the exchange revolved around the centenary of the beginning of WWI and getting to know Slovenia and its highlights. Afternoons were dedicated to the sightseeing of Ljubljana and its surroundings, as well as Bled, where we rowed to the island in the middle of Lake Bled. One of the most memorable parts of the exchange was a visit to the Slovene Littoral, where students got acquainted with the Isonzo Front and its role in WWI, visited the famous Lipica stud farm and eventually enjoyed a late-summer swim in the Adriatic Sea.
The mentors of the above mentioned exchange in Slovenia were the following teachers: Andrej Bartol, Mirjam Erce Vratuša and Špela Zupan.

On Saturday, 10th October 2015, Alojzij Šuštar Primary School organized an international conference on outdoor learning, as a part of the international project. Around 50 teachers and pedagogues from all over Slovenia attended the conference.
In the first plenary session Ela Rupert and Dragica Radojevič from the Alojzij Šuštar Primary School presented the outdoor learning methods and principles used at their school. The second plenary speaker was Jan-Kare Fjeld, a Norwegian teacher from Borge Skole, who presented the outdoor learning activities and techniques he has been practising for 10 years and enthused the participants.
The second part of the conference was practical. Some of the Alojzij Šuštar Primary School teachers carried out different practical workshops. Other organizations that also presented educational workshops were Slovenian Catholic Girl Guides and Boy Scouts Association, Triglav National Park, Slovenia Forest Service, Planet Zemlja and Čarobni gozd.
Regarding the participants’ feedback, the conference has achieved its main goal, which was to motivate the participants to practice outdoor learning and to provide useful outdoor learning activities teachers could use in their everyday work with students.
Ela Rupert, project manager

Eleven second year students of DCG visited Collegio Rotondi near Milano from 2nd-7th October 2015. They rarely set off on an exchange by train, however, this was the case this time. The weekend was spend with the hosting families, when mostly the highlights of Milano were enjoyed. During the weekdays students attended the classes and visited the Expo Exhibition in Milano. The main emphasis of the exchange was laid on geographical and cultural topics.

The mentor of the exchange was Mateja Gomboc, teacher of Slovene and Italian.

Congratulations go to the entire Slovene team of eight high-school students who participated in the 2015 International Genetically Engineered Machine competition. Naturally, we are especially proud of Nina! Students’ hard work and achievements are truly worthy of celebration!
Nina Jerala was chosen in the Slovene team based on her previous research work performed in academic year 2014/15, which was carried out in the National Institute of Chemistry Slovenia. The research was aimed at the reprogrammed E. coli for sustainable production of bio butanol, a highly effective biofuel, from butyric acid, which is a side product of anaerobic fermentation of waste. The research work took place throughout the academic year 2014/15.
Slovene students took part in the competition and iGEM HS conference from 24th-28th September, 2015 in Boston, USA. There they presented their poster, had a presentation and set up their web site. The Slovene team was nominated for the best Wiki, best presentation and the best integrated human practices. Moreover, they presented one of the five nominated projects for Grand Prize among 35 high schools worldwide. The Slovenes were awarded gold medal for the best high school project.
This was the first Slovene high school team to take part in the iGEM HS competition.

The 11th international football event was organized from 21st- 25thSeptember, 2015 at the DCG. It hosted young athletes from Italy (Liceo Scientifico Arturo Tosi, Busto Arsizio, Varese), Germany (Gymnasium Johanneum, Ostbevern), the Netherlands (St. Gregorious College, Utrecht), the Check Republic (Biskupska Gymnazium B Balbina Hradec, Kralove) and Slovenia (Moste Gymnasium) for the third time. Six boys and six girls teams took part in three-sided football. The Italians and students from Moste Gymnasium proved to be real masters of the game. This was not only sports competition time, but also days of culture and fun. Students went to see the Alpine area of Slovenia, Upper Carniola, where they visited the biggest and most modern Nordic skiing complex Planica Nordic Centre and some natural sights.

Next year the tournament will be held in Busto Arsizio in Italy.

The Chamber of Architecture and Spatial Planning of Slovenia conferred on 9th October, 2015 professional awards for the most important achievements in architecture, landscape architecture and spatial planning. The Golden Pencil award for the outstanding realization in architecture and spatial planning was presented to Studio UR.A.D. for the project of The Alojzij Šuštar Primary School.

From the award justification:

This substantial annex accommodation appears to draw itself out from its historic institutional context as if to free from former constraints and regulations, creating new space, meaning, and occupation with distinct qualities of lightness and a sense of liberty.

The new development is unabashedly contemporary, set as it is against the backdrop of its predecessor in both form and scale. Yet it has been carefully conceived to sensitively align with the existing by following the grain of the former, maintaining a central spline through the site, and at its perimeter reading. This approach has interestingly allowed a somewhat previously out of place detached sports hall, to now be successfully integrated within the overall ensemble. In fact it is the clever structuring of external spaces set between these features, in conjunction with the introduction of two new positive entry facades and adjoining activity spaces, that stand out to demonstrate an accomplished degree of planning, whereby these built forms have been unified in a kind of natural progression.

Internally, new school accommodation spreads in wings from a central atrium cum assembly hal1/ auditorium featuring direct engagement with extei’iia1 landscape areas at ground level and light-filled classroom spaces on the first floor to provide positive, purposeful facilities. A substantial new multi-function gymnasium hall set partly into the ground, along with ancillary accommodation, is included, yet these elements have been structured so as to be subservient to the primary facilities.

A delightful and beautifully conceived additional feature comes in the form of a small chapel set floating within the main auditorium space. This discrete piece, with its oblique entry, modest adornment and well considered detail, is further example of a successful yet unpretentious overall design.

It will be interesting to see how external landscaping work develops in and around the new accommodation as these external rooms offer further opportunity to enhance the overall scheme.

This was the fourth exchange in a row, taking place in mid-September 2015 in Graz, Austria. The focus of the Graz exchange was traditionally on culture and language, as all 16 students from the DCG are learning German, and the visit to their Austrian peers offered plenty of opportunities to brush up their German.
Most of the exchange meant taking active part in school activities, getting to know Graz and its highlights and learning about the Austrian way of life, as all participants had the privilege of staying with host families. A special treat was a visit to the Dachstein glacier, which, with its 2,700 metres, offered stunning panoramic views over the peaks of Austria and the Czech Republic as well as Triglav, the highest mountain of Slovenia.
The exchange visit will take place in April 2016. Irena Bolta, teacher of German at the DCG, is in charge of the exchange.

If these become silent, the stones will cry out (Lk 19,40)

St. Stanislav’s Institution endured bright and dark moments in the history of the 20th century. Its creative life was first interrupted by WWI, when a large area of the building was turned into an army hospital. During WWII there was first a Nazi camp to assemble Slovenes who were to be expelled from the homeland, and immediately after the war the institution served as a concentration camp for the extermination of anticommunists. Most of the prisoners were taken to Kočevski Rog or other massacre sites in Slovenia. St. Stanislav’s Institution has thus become on several occasions a place of extreme human suffering. The memorial site Peace be with you honours all victims who suffered in this place. Visitors are invited to embrace silence, consider the respectful memory of the victims and refrain from any hatred and violence.

The memorial consists of seven stone blocks, which like the prisoners who occupied this space seventy years ago lie scattered over the entire area of St. Stanislav’s Institution. Five blocks can be found in the park and on green lawns, one is at the forum, and one is in the main building. The stone blocks are reminiscent of ruins, the ones in the park of nameless graves. Instead of names, the words Peace be with you (3 Jn 1,15), are engraved in the languages of those who suffered while here or after they were taken to execution. Are the seven stones actually seven graves? Are the engraved words possibly the voice of the dead, coming from the grave, or are these the words through which I would, if I could, talk to my dead brother? The memorial epitomizes Jesus’ answer to the question, how many times I shall forgive?: “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy-seven times.”

Peace be with you was designed by architect Robert Dolinar in 2015 to comemmorate the 100th anniversary of the beginning of WWI and 70th anniversary of the end of WWII. The commemorative year was observed in St. Stanislav’s Institution under the motto: “I am here to love, not hate.”

 

President of the Republic of Slovenia Borut Pahor and the Minister of Education, Science and Sport dr. Maja Makovec Brenčič received on Saturday, 19th September, 2015 the cream of the crop of this year’s high-school Slovene graduates, who attained all possible points at Maturity examination. There are eighteen such graduates in Slovenia this year, among which also Ela Hudovernik, the DCG student, who not only gained all 34 points, but also obtained the best possible result in the country in mathematics. We congratulate Ela on her outstanding achievement and wish her all success in her future endeavours.

The PE teacher from St. Stanislav’s Institution, The Diocesan Classical Gymnasium Joži Čepon attended from 23rd July – 2nd August 2015 a course entitled In Search of the Azores. There were 8 participants altogether from Finland, the Netherlands, Spain, Greece, France and Slovenia. Each participant had to write a seminar paper on a topic that presents a part of the cultural heritage of his/her country. The organizers designed a booklet and all our contributions were published there. My paper had a title Triglav – Mountain of Slovene Mountains http://chain.eu/?m3=38746. In this way participants have learned something about the national heritage of all the above-mentioned countries.

The course concentrated on two themes. Firstly it focused on the concept of Europe. Europe is the Western part of the Eurasian continent, comparable to the Indochinese peninsula in the South-East. Taking thins into consideration, the Mid-Atlantic ridge can be seen as a geographical border of this (sub-) continent. The Azores and Iceland are surface manifestations of this ‘edge’ – Europe ends here. The second focus lied on the ‘urge to the west’ in Europe, which considers the Atlantic as a barrier and a challenge. In European history there is a trend of trying to reach the ‘evening land’. There may be an urge to ‘follow the sun’, to pass ‘the pillars’. Both aspects gave us a perspective to the Azores’ unique geographical and cultural heritage: landscape and volcanoes; discoveries, colonisation and migration; whale hunting and fishing; ecology and the oceans as part of the world. The course was a wonderful travel through four elements: fire creating the archipelago – volcanoes and earth; water being the birth of the archipelago and all life; air/wind – man sailing into the unknown land, discoveries and whale hunting.

I broadened my horizons and obtained lots of new knowledge about these wonderful islands, which are a perfect destination that I will recommend to my students for spending active holidays. During the course, we were very physically active in difficult moist conditions so I, as a sport teacher, took it as body training for the next school year. /Joži Čepon/