Last spring, our staff spent several weeks really digging into what it means to be an IB school. Our primary text was the IB Middle Years Programme Principles into Practice. This document provides all the guidance for offering the MYP, but we focused our attention on one section: "What is an IB Education?" As a group, we examined our beliefs and understandings around conceptual learning and learning in context. We explored how to engage our students in service with and for others in our local and global communities. We thought about how this aligns with our current classroom practices and how we might have to rethink our current classroom practices.
At the conclusion of the school year, we had the tremendous good fortune to send LOTS of teachers to training this summer. Teachers traveled to Atlanta, Keystone, and Austin, to engage in meaningful professional development that was content specific and IB centered. Teachers from every grade level and each discipline were exposed to the key components of the MYP and were charged with bringing that knowledge back as we engage our whole staff in the MYP planning process.
To start this school year, our whole faculty participated in a full day MYP training, Launching the MYP. This 6-hour professional development asked our teachers to engage across disciplines to review the IB mission as well as the Learner Profile. The second half of the day teachers were with their disciplines and thinking critically about conceptual understandings in their course, and how can we best communicate those with our students. Finally, teachers infused the conceptual understanding with one of the six global contexts to flesh out Statements of Inquiry to drive student learning.
So here we are on the first day of the 2018-19 school year, our first year as a candidate school, and as I walked in and out of classrooms all over campus today, I can honestly say that I am already seeing elements of the IB on our campus. From the learner profiles to the global contexts, to elements of international mindedness in our 6th-grade orientation, to the new name of our school, we are truly on our way to being IB. To say that I am proud and encouraged by the open-mindedness and inquiry of our teachers would be an understatement. I am so excited to be on this journey with these people at this school.
Let's do this!
