District Administration - April 2012 - (Page 46)

Widening Participation to an IB Education Binghamton (N.Y.) High School juniors, left, in Approaches to Learning, a key IBCC class, ask FEMA representatives, facing the camera, about contaminants that have exacerbated flood clean-up in Binghamton. In the class, students (right) learn how global issues impact working conditions and examine ways in which technology impacts our lives. Above right, juniors use a whiteboard to study ways to alleviate future upstate N.Y. flood damage. program does that,” Spahn says. Secondly, each student must complete a career project—a sort of practical “minithesis”—guided by a mentor. “You’re getting an individualized approach to work on a project,” Spahn says. “It’s going to be, ‘I’m actually going to redesign and reengineer an engine,’ which is different from, ‘I worked in an automotive workshop.’ You learn to innovate.” Thirdly, Spahn cites the foreign language requirement for both years, and lastly, a requirement that students take a concentration of academically rigorous coursework in an area that interests them. For example, a Mexican-American student might want to refine his or her use of the Spanish language. “That’s meant to tap into the spark of genius,” Spahn says. “Everybody has something they’re good at. We call it personalized learning.” Final grades in IBCC courses are based heavily on how those projects are constructed and presented. “They’re forced to construct something and show how they’ve done the research,” Beard says. History of IB Founded in 1968 in Geneva, Switzerland, the IB traditionally has consisted of 46 April 2012 three programs—a primary years program for students aged 3 to 12, a middle years program for those aged 11 to 16, and a diploma program for those aged 16 to 19. The curriculum emphasizes teamwork, critical thinking skills, and cultural and linguistic fluency, and it encourages students to think about issues from different points of view. “The teacher will ask leading questions: Why is this important? Why do you think this way? Students are forced to articulate,” says Beard. Rather than lecture, teachers use discussion and writing assignments to pull out concepts. “It’s ‘explain, define, compare and contrast,’” he adds. “The skills they pick up, as a result, are at a much higher level.” The IB curriculum is based on a “hexagon” of academic areas—language acquisition, language and literature, individuals and societies, mathematics and computer science, experimental sciences, and the arts. Those who progress through the diploma program must complete an extended essay based on in-depth study of one of their subjects, examine different ways of knowing (such as perception or emotion) and different kinds of knowledge (like scientific or artistic), and undertake a service task outside the classroom. Spahn remembers asking Alec Peterson, the first director general of IB, what makes a great education. “He said very simply, ‘If you drop a person anywhere in the world, can they thrive?’” Beard believes the IB program meets Peterson’s criteria. “Increasingly, the call is for students who can understand the world, understand other cultures, speak different languages, have the ability to relate to other cultures,” he says. “That demand happens to line up very well with what we promote automatically: teamwork, cultural skills, critical-thinking skills.” Initially developed for private international schools aimed at the children of diplomats, IB has become increasingly public-school-focused: 95 percent of current IB World Schools in the United States are public. “The notion that International Baccalaureate is for private schools, elite schools, is false,” Beard says. “We are now primarily in public schools.” Miami Beach, Fla., has become possibly the only city in America to have the IB curriculum throughout all of its schools— and very much at the municipality’s initiative. Although the city is not officially responsible for education, Miami Beach District Administration

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of District Administration - April 2012

District Administration - April 2012
Contents
From the Editor
News Update
Special Ed Update
Facilities Update
District Profile
Administrator Profile
Robust and Safe BYOD
Success Breeds Success
Funding Building Projects in a Tough Economy
Widening Participation to an IB Education
Why All the Chatter about #EdChat?
Supervisor’s Opinion
Going Mobile
New Directions
Crisis Response
Student Counsel
Product Focus
Online Edge

District Administration - April 2012