August has been filled with learning for our ISP employees as we launched into the 2022-23 academic year. Free of masks and COVID restrictions, faculty and staff were inspired and engaged in pedagogical approaches that will ensure learners’ curiosity is nurtured through significant contexts and transferable ideas.
Julie Stern: Learning That Transfers
From August 9-11, all ISP educators (faculty and teaching aides) had intensive training with Julie Stern, international education consultant and author who synthesizes the best of educational research into practical tools for educators. Our educators had three days of keynotes and targeted IB programme specific professional learning with applied practice. While it was a very fast and intense three days of training, principals, learning coaches, and teachers were resoundingly positive about bringing their learning to our students.
As part of our shift to an IB Full Continuum school, we asked Julie to focus on helping teachers design learning that creates greater depth of disciplinary understanding and an increased capacity to transfer learning with agility.
This shift in our practice will ensure that our students become more powerful mission aligned learners, while also aligning to the conceptual requirements of the IB full continuum.
Julie and her team of specialists will be supporting ISP teaching teams and leaders throughout the year to ensure that we have a coherent and consistent implementation of practices.
| Mark your calendars: Julie will be offerring an “Edge in Education ” session for parents on November 15 at 9:00 in the Blue Room. | |
Late Start Wednesdays
Learning Design Teams met from 7:30 to 9:00 Wednesday morning with a focus on this year’s NEASC Commission on International Education (CIE) reaccreditation and how that connects with the ISP Mission + Learning Principles and the IB Full Continuum authorisation. Facilitated by our Educational Leadership Team, disciplinary based vertical design teams built an understanding of the overlapping criteria so they can begin to identify, document, and collect evidence for analysis of student learning.
Teachers, Aides, Coaches, Principals and other leaders gave consistently positive feedback on how valuable this first session was for them. They are . . .
- Reassured that reaccreditation will support our efforts to realize our ISP aspirations and meet the IB Full continuum requirements;
- Ready and eager to dig into the next steps of collecting and discussing student learning;
- Appreciative of meeting and working with colleagues from across the sections; and
- Appreciative the coherent and consistent whole school approach to this work
“I notice a lot of overlap in vocabulary and ideas across both ISPs mission, vision, etc. and that of the IB and accreditation. Which is good. As much consolidation as possible is a good thing.”
“The definitions as they apply to the ISP Mission for Curious, Competent, Compassionate, Changemakers are very helpful and appreciated.“
“Being a new teacher here, I think this process will help me identify where ISP is right now and where we are going.“
“I think the new style of accreditation is pretty cool. We are way past accreditation being just the nuts and bolts of how a school is organized. Clearly the days of creating long lists of bullet points about curriculum are long gone, and I’m proud to be part of an institution that is forward-thinking and genuinely considering the lofty goal of going in a more conceptually based direction.“
“I’m excited about working vertically with this group. Thank you!“
“These are good matches for the school – lots of connections and similar core principles & concepts.“
As the 2022-23 year unfolds, we will share more glimpses, and more in-depth learning stories, of both young and adult learners as we all become more curious, competent, and compassionate changemakers.
