IB Workshops: Professional Development in a Global Community

“The beauty of the IB is that it’s a global education community. All schools around the world face the same challenges, enjoy the same benefits and can connect with one another. “

– JOHN NICHOLLS

BILINGUAL EUROPEAN SCHOOL, ITALY

 

As in an IB school, our teachers are always being a part of professional development, making sure of their expertise to deliver the IB programmes that prepare our students to be eligible global citizens. On Friday 22nd and Saturday 23rd November our teachers were able to participate in IB workshops, part of the abundant professional development opportunities BIS offers every year.

 

Early Years & Elementary School 

Concept Driven Learning

Our Early Years and Elementary School teachers worked together in four of our elementary classrooms on a workshop about concept driven learning. Concept driven learning is a way for students to make links between their subjects and previous learning. For example, the concept of culture can be used in language learning, art, music, PE and health to create connections that otherwise would not be explicitly explained to the students. The workshop brought together homeroom and specialist teachers from the Early Years and from the Elementary School, giving them an opportunity to see one another’s work and listen to ideas.

The workshops in Early Years and the Elementary School were led by John Osmar and Chandrei Choudhury, both highly experienced IB educators and workshop leaders.

 

Secondary School 

Creating Authentic Units

In the Secondary School, our secondary team worked together on an IB workshop about creating authentic units. This provided them with a chance to examine the breadth of their units, and ensure that the planning process gives our students access to the experience and assessment opportunities they need to be successful. Teachers were able to talk about the significance of global contexts to their units, and discuss strategies that are successful with different content areas and with different grade levels.

Our Secondary School workshop sessions were led by Jesse Donnelly, who has led face to face workshops with BIS before and who now works in Cambodia, and by Martin Mathieson, an experienced IB teacher who works in Beijing.

 

In addition to IB workshops, our teachers have always and will continue to generate professional dialogue on these subjects in planning meetings and in our Teacher Inservice Program meetings. Boston International School is very pleased to be able to give our teachers such high quality opportunities for professional growth and values the input of all our teachers to the discussions.