We are hard-wired to be curious. Have you ever been around a little baby before? When a newborn begins to realize that they have a body and becomes fascinated with their hands, they study them intensely. They put them in their mouths, they linger on different textures, wanting to squeeze them to feel them oozing through their fingers. …
When you read words, you are actually reading different versions of the world. Most of us never pause to consider that. We see written words as fixed truths, and depending on the perceived credibility of this source, we take for granted that every author has a unique experience of the world and applies their imagination …
Recently an educator asked me what is the difference between the Primary Years Programme (PYP) and a “normal school”. I really stumbled in describing the value of an IB education. Yes, we do “transdisciplinary learning” with the use of our framework to develop conceptual understandings, but there’s plenty of international schools that attempt to mimic …
As I walked my daughter to her summer camp’s team table in the lunchroom, I noticed that there were signs on the walls. Since I am an educator, I love coming into schools to examine the clues about the school’s culture. (Student art is my favorite!) But I stopped and gawked at the walls, having …
I’ve heard this word translanguaging tossed around a lot on Twitter and among educators, but, honestly, not only does its spelling baffle me but also what it looks like in education. Recently a colleague of mine presented a workshop on it which got me curious about what this elusive term could mean in classroom practice. …
This past year we trialed a new PYP planner, and the intentions were good with letting the students’ responses to our provocations direct and lead the unit, but we ended up having a planner that was so complex that it became cumbersome to actually fully complete. It was christened “The Big Book”, which should have …
Report cards! Dreaded and hated by most teachers due to the time and effort it takes to create it. Over the years, the trend from personal comments to letters or numbers has meant that children’s identities are rooted in generalized achievement scores. The tidal wave of standards-based curriculum and standardized testing that we have seen …
With 2 weeks left of school, the reality of summer holiday feels palpable. My favorite part of summertime is sitting either by the lake or pool with a good book. I find long periods of reading to be restorative and energizing. However, there are so many good books out there that it’s not easy to …
Most of us have been brought up by the “Shoulds”, an unrelenting group of people who we have given our power over to. We have been socially engineered, and they influence how we design and navigate our lives. And now, as educators, we are presented with a challenge to create agency in our students, something that many of us never had a direct experience of as a child. This paradigm shifting requires a deep examination of our beliefs about education and what it means to be “educated”.
Time, a precious commodity in our world. The more I think about what needs to change about education, I think the concept of time and its usage in learning needs to be evaluated. The school year often feels like a rush, and I think there’s great value in “putting on the brakes” on the frenetic …
