Latest / IB Unplugged / The Double Diploma Playbook: What It Takes to Balance Two Curricula w/ Richard Jones-Nerzic

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The Double Diploma Playbook: What It Takes to Balance Two Curricula w/ Richard Jones-Nerzic · IB Unplugged

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Welcome to IB Unplugged, a Kognity podcast for IBDP educators
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that tackles your submitted questions and challenges by connecting you with
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experts and peers who share their ideas and stories from real classrooms.
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Hi everybody.
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Welcome to an episode of IB Unplugged.
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I'm Courtney Marline. I'm John Patton.
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And this week's episode we're talking with Richard Jones Nerzic
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about the double diploma program at his school.
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So he's running a double diploma program in the Swiss Maturité program
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and the IB diploma.
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And we're really excited to
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yeah, learn a little bit about what he's doing,
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how they've figured this all out and how it can hopefully help you too.
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Yeah, a little bit about Richard.
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He first moved into international education 25 years ago.
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Helped to set up
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Europe's first laptop school at the International School of Toulouse.
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He has since developed a wide range of experiences
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in multiple curricula across different schools throughout Europe.
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He has an impressive educational background, including teaching
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history, politics, sociology, geography,
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theory of knowledge, and IBDP film.
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On top of that,
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Richard is a senior examiner for the IB Global Politics Course,
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coauthored multiple history textbooks, including the one for Kognity.
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Currently, he's the IBDP coordinator at Swiss Maturity
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at Francophone École Moshe in Neon.
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He is responsible for overseeing the unique Swiss
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maturity IB diploma double program.
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And that's basically what we're going to explore
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in a little bit more detail in this episode.
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Yeah, exactly.
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I think, it was a great conversation to hear about how he's kind of juggling
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and how over these years, they've been able to figure out a really good way
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to do the IB diploma program and also the Swiss program,
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when they're very different programs, very different mindsets, curricula,
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everything that kind of goes into the way that the whole,
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structure is built.
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And I think that one thing that I really appreciated
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in the conversation was hearing about how it wasn't a burden.
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It wasn't this idea of now my kids are overwhelmed.
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Now the teachers are overwhelmed.
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It was really more of this positive way of saying, these are the best,
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benefits and kind of opportunities that come from each program.
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And this is how we're going to find a way for the students to really gain
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so much more from having both, rather than suffering or losing from each of them.
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Yeah. Yeah.
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I mean, what stuck out for me is just,
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you know, it's an organizational task for sure.
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If you really gotta have your coordinators working
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well together and get an idea of like,
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how are you going to structure this so everything can come together.
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And I guess from that
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you maybe lose a little bit of that freedom of choice.
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But what was, yeah,
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along the same lines for me, what really stood out is just
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the opportunities that are presented when you're doing both
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and therefore getting a little bit greater perspective.
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And, you know, in the conversation, we spoke quite a bit about critical
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thinking and theory of knowledge
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perspectives and how important it actually was to have the Swiss maturity
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along with the IB diploma, because it gave both teachers and students
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that opportunity to reflect on both and the differences that come from them.
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Yeah, exactly.
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No, I think that it was great.
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And I think that we love a lot of parts of the IB diploma program, and it's
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generally a much more progressive program than what most national curricula are.
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So probably whichever ones you might be having to also cover in your classes.
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And I think that it's a really nice mindset to think about.
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What are the benefits of a more traditional,
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program and curriculum that you can bring into the IB,
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where it's not necessarily taking away from the mission of the IB
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and what you're really trying to achieve there.
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Yeah. So we've got a great episode for you.
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We're glad you're here.
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Enjoy the show.
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Hi, Richard.
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Thanks so much for joining us today.
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Thank you very much. I'm honored.
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We're super excited to have you here today.
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We're talking about the double diploma
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and kind of your work that you've been doing behind it.
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Some ways that it's working at your school,
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some things that you've learned along the way.
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So we're really excited to talk to you about this.
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And at the beginning of each episode, we want to do some warm up questions.
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Just got a little bit of background on you.
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So I will start with, the question, why education?
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Why have you built your career around education?
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I thought that would be a big question.
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I have absolutely no idea.
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It’s the short answer.
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I was hoping to find some sort of like,
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you know, Road to Damascus moment where I saw this great teacher
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or, you know, I just was inspired or none of those things happen.
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I had a pretty, pretty poor
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education experience, I think in school. That was in Wales?
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Yeah. Wales.
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Not to get specific. We don't need to call anybody out.
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But I would say,
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being in South Wales actually, at a certain point in the 1980s
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because I'm that old, in school, politics became unavoidable.
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And so, you know, at the age of 15, I was going to be a rock star.
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And obviously the world didn't agree with me.
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And so I needed to find something else and the politics
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found me.
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So I went to university, did politics.
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And that's, I think, what I found my moment in that,
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ultimately, I think it was the
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it was the libraries and the bookshops
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and the smell of them and archives and all of that sort of thing.
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And I got into I just read.
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So I started off
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actually wanted to be an academic because I felt that was the easiest way
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to carry on doing all of those things for the rest of my life. Yeah.
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But, I could, you know, the academic life changed at some point in the 80s
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in the UK and, the teaching part of it, which was, I think, something else
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I was probably naturally drawn to, that was no longer available.
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It was all about research. It was all about research points.
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And I basically remember going to a one of these conferences
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and sitting in a room with all these, what I thought were elderly academics.
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And I thought, you know, if I want to do this job, I'm going to have to be,
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you know, 15 years in a library,
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without doing much teaching and probably
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writing something that only these guys in this room will ever be interested in.
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I thought, well, there's got to be more to life than this.
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Yeah. So that's what led me into education.
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I said the natural teaching part, I think I'd always thought
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I taught my first class at age 13
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when I took on,
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I took on the under 11 cricket team because they didn't have a coach.
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So I taught them.
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And I love that, I loved, I loved, I loved the achievement,
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not the attainment, but working with kids and seeing them.
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Kids, they were two years younger than me, but working with people.
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Working with my colleagues.
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Actually just seeing what difference you could make.
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Yeah, I love that. I still do.
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I think that's what keeps me going and that's why I'm, you know,
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the other thing is, after 25 years, I be 30 odd years of teaching.
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I'm still teaching.
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We're a rare breed.
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You know, most of us have succumbed to senior management and semi-retirement.
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But, you know, I maintain about 50, 60, 70% in the classroom.
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I mean, it sounds like you really developed a love for learning,
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like, right from the beginning, just wanting to get in, read
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and take in some new knowledge and continue to dive into that.
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I mean, ultimately, that's kind of what we're aiming for
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when we get into education itself, right?
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Yeah, I think that's exactly that.
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I've always been challenged by the idea of,
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whatever's excites me at the moment,
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even if it's really complicated trying to pass that on.
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Trying to make it understandable, trying to get through to kids
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now, obviously. Really.
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Okay. It's not just that colleagues, but.
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Yeah, that's always been my
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that's a great thrill every day.
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I mean, I did in less than half an hour ago, which I've never done before. And,
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for me, that's the thing.
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You know, I had a new idea.
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We just had some exams last week in the Swiss maturity.
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There was a question asked
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that we didn't really teach very well, so I rewrote it and, you know,
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had these kids hopefully interested in what I was excited about.
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But it's that constant dynamism of teaching.
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Right? You're constantly kind of shifting.
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And so even though you might have done it for, you know, you said 25,
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30 years, like there's always ways in which it's constantly developing.
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And I guess that kind of leads onto the next question.
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Like, in what ways do you see the role of educators evolving and has evolved?
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And then also what's coming up,
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what's going to be coming in the next decade or so?
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What might the future of secondary education look like?
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How do you see that sort of changing in the coming years?
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I mean, as history teacher, I look at the past, not the future.
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I've made a mistake before.
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Like, 25 years ago,
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I remember writing a piece on the future of education.
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Reflecting on what,
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you know, what the information technology revolution at the time was going to do.
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And a lot of what I thought was going to happen hasn't happened.
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So we'll maybe come back to that.
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But I actually think that,
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we're going through a very interesting time.
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The next,
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you know, we normally say like next decade, but I think like next ten months
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where we are at the moment is going to be really, really interesting.
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The first thing I'd say, and I've been saying this for
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about two years, is that basically now three people in this relationship
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and the third person is artificial intelligence.
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And we've got to get to grips with that.
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And, you know, I've been writing for a long time about teachers
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needing some sort of digital space, some sort of pedagogic space of their own.
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I've got my own website.
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I've had it for a very long time,
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and I've been trying to persuade people to get their own as well.
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And I think that space is going to be somewhere
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where teachers will be able to, communicate
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with the artificial intelligence and their students.
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And that's going to be sort of like a triangular relationship.
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I'm looking for a better metaphor, but the one I came up
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with is a three legged stool, but it's not very sexy.
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Yeah, you need a better metaphor than that.
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But the idea is if there's only two legs on the stool
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and you're not very stable is what I'm looking for.
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But we need a better one.
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Yeah. I think I think also about 30 years ago.
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No. About 20 years ago, I, you know, I was talking
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about the laptop classroom at the time, but there was a
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there was a disappointment that the revolution wasn't
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making as much progress as I thought it would.
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And I remember doing this presentation once, when,
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you know, when a computer's actually going to start teaching history.
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Because when we first started this, back in the 80s,
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there were computer programs that were really teaching history.
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And my good friend John Simpkin had a simulation program
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on the battle of the Somme that was using the BBC.
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Yeah, which was no power at all.
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But the kids were making these,
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you know, historical decisions.
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I thought was really interesting, but we weren't doing that anymore.
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And yet you had these billions being spent on computer games.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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Yeah. So sophisticated in the classroom. Just so. Yeah.
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Poor in comparison, but I actually think we're now at that stage
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where we can actually get computers to do what we've always wanted them to do.
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They're going to take, they're going to start
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all the things we don't want to do, actually,
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they're going to start interpreting the data.
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Yeah.
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You know,
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if we're going to generate all that data on kids,
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well, let's get artificial intelligence to read it for once.
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The big one, of course, is Mark in the essays.
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You know, I'm an examiner for the IB, right?
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As soon as the IB moves towards online
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exams, they're going to be marking with artificial intelligence.
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We're going to be out of the job then, aren't we? Absolutely.
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But that's great because what it should do, and I'm going to make this very clear
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now, is the IB should therefore be significantly reduce their costs
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and it can become a genuinely global program
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because think about how much those exams are costing,
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whether it's just the, you know, the postage or the pain of examiners.
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And so, you know,
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and all that time's a nonsense.
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You just want kids can do it. Yeah.
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Anyway, that's, I think, a really, really interesting one.
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Writing reports, policy documents.
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I mean, I've had to write a lot of policy documents in the last 12 months,
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and I've got a very, very good friend in Google LM,
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who is able to just fantastically produce
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everything that everyone could possibly want.
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So it sounds like what you're talking about here is like, is
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you see the future being hugely integrated with AI.
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Sure.
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And, that we really need to embrace and kind of work with as educators
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working with students. Right?
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And I think also the assessment models themselves, I think this
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is one of the great potentials because I spoke about exams, but,
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you know, there's a lot of what we currently do is now irrelevant.
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The internal assessments that I do in history, the extended essay
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that's been dead for two years, you know, in all honesty,
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we need to move away from those sorts of models very, very quickly.
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And I think we probably will,
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you know, we might even go back in some ways,
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unfortunately, you know, maturity exams. I sit with the kids,
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they have orals in every subject, pretty much.
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So they have to be able to physically defend what they're talking about.
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And there's often a big difference between what they've done.
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You know, what they've written, what they
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they're able to defend in exam situation.
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But I think also I mean, artificial intelligence could completely change
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the way in which we assess kids.
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Well, if you think about a student working with an artificial intelligence program
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over a 3 or 4 year period,
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that artificial intelligence is going to know that kid pretty well,
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and they should be maybe making the judgments on where
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to advise the student on what to do next, which university to go to, and so on.
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You know, as a literally continual assessment.
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You know, what
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I think is, but I think, universities need to change.
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That's always going to be the big problem. Sure.
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They're the gatekeepers.
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Yeah.
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I know, that ultimately they need to be forced to change.
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And I think the IB can play a big role in that
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with some of the changes that we make.
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But in many respects, they are, you know, they're definitely
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they're kind of pushing the envelope in terms of
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what's going to be accepted and how universities are recognizing,
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you know, the assessments, exams and how people are doing. Right?
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Yeah, we're looking at, the sort of experiential learning
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that the obvious moving towards, I think, you know, into effectively
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integrating Cass into, into our assessment.
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You know, I think that's really important, really useful,
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basically getting the kids off computers so that they can't just do assessment
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sitting at a computer screen.
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I think that's going to be quite important.
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Yeah.
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I think it's, you know, at least from my perspective,
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it's always been like, if it's a question
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or if it's some piece of knowledge that can be easily Google-able
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or that they could just look up for,
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then that question
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really isn't relevant to trying to develop the human based skills.
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Right?
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Right.
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Well, I think we,
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you know,
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we come back to
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what's the purpose of education, especially
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now as we look in the next decade, we're really trying to develop,
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you know, those skills.
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And so to a certain extent, I think the ATL skills, for example,
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are still hugely relevant and trying to bring in things like critical
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thinking and research skills and how to discern like fact from fiction.
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And, you know, we know that, for example, you know, different AI models right now.
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You have to double check it.
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You have to go back and like, does this actually
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is this factually accurate or is this just sort of
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like a collection of mumbo jumbo that's not really supported. Hallucination.
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They call it like that, don’t they?
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I call that teaching.
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No, but it's true.
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And one of the weaknesses clearly is
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you drill down through the question, through data.
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The more you ask, the more it seems convincing.
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But of course, ultimately they're just inventing
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things to keep you happy because I think the,
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you know, the default mode is to keep the audience,
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engaged and happy.
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But I think the yeah, there are a number of problems.
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I mean, Charles Fidell, when he was speaking in Budapest,
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and he's actually someone who's quite closely linked,
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to e-commerce there as well.
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He's he's got a long history with us.
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But, you know, he made a really important point
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when he said that, you know, we've evolved as a species
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to cut corners and to take the pressure off the prefrontal cortex.
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You know, the heuristics, the shortcuts, the judging books by covers.
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All that stuff's useful. Right?
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And the problem is that
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we're going to abdicate that effort of hard thinking completely.
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And if we do it without students,
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you know, will we lose the ability to do it at all?
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You know, I used to know about a dozen phone numbers.
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You know, I don't know any anymore.
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You know, it's a classic example, when you can't remember something.
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You are Siri, right?
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Or something.
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You don't go through necessarily that
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for a very long.
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And I think we need to make sure that that's back and stays in education.
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You know, that we we have that hard thinking that's
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there's always that otherwise we're going to you know,
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I'm a big fan of Pixar films.
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I always get Pixar references into every lesson if I can.
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But, you know, this is Wall-E and Wall-E is the great science fiction film.
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Yeah, that's the greatest
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because it's a danger of we're going to end up if we,
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you know, it's, you know, for some people, it's a utopian,
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where we’re sitting on one of these
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floating seats just eating, drinking and watching TV all day.
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But, you know, there's more to the human spirit, I think.
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Yeah.
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You worked at Europe's first laptop school, and you already did that kind of massive
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technological transition with your kids 25 years ago. That was in Toulouse.
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And how do you feel,
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like, you mentioned that you feel like what used to be a decade
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is now ten months.
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So obviously there's that speed difference now.
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But how else do you feel like it's different?
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Well, let's be clear about the space
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bit first because I think it's a critical difference.
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I mean,
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if you look at the great, you know, I'm a history teacher.
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I knew we’re going to get one.
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It was inevitable.
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You do all this stuff and it's like, no, history teacher, I come back.
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I'm a history teacher.
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Go on.
16:53
Okay, but listen, you've got
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a number of significant innovations in the history of communication.
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And the first is written language.
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Okay. What's that? 5000 years ago.
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And you got to remember even that at the time,
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it was Socrates who was not very happy about people writing stuff down.
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You know, it was cheating for Socrates.
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You know, you can lose your memory if you write stuff down.
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So even then, you know that very first technological innovation
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and communication, there was opposition, but it took thousands of years,
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literally thousands of years before that was a global significance.
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And then you probably have to get Gutenberg in, you know, the 15th century,
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the printing press
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and that took hundreds of years before it makes a difference.
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Okay.
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And then you've got radio and television, then you in two decades
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and the internet revolution, and you're into years.
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Okay.
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And I think the internet revolution was the most important
17:44
since rising
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because it actually broke down the barriers of time and space.
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You had this ability to convey information instantly.
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And it didn't matter the amount of information, you know,
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as long as you were carrying books around, you could always control information.
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So the genie was out of the bottle with the internet.
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But what we've got now is on another level entirely, I think.
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And so the changes we've seen, I mean, it’s just over two years old,
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and yet it's been completely integrated into so many.
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Well, if you haven't integrating whatever you're doing in your life,
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then you're falling behind.
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And that's again, one of the things that you know is inevitable, you know?
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So we have to embrace it and we have to use it effectively.
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But I'm not going to predict.
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I mean, I've already suggested a few ways in which I think it will make
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a difference.
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And, you know, let's be optimistic, let's be positive and say, well, it's
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going to save us a lot of time and do an awful of the chores for us
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and give the students probably better targeted feedback
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and allow us to do the things we've always wanted to do.
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The experiential stuff, you know, better give us more time for it.
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But there are dangers, obviously.
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So, you know, your outline, basically
18:51
this massive responsibility that the educators have now, right?
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I mean, we're trying to prepare students
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for this, this dynamic future and this like way of navigating
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what is not just content, of course, but it's sort of skilled then.
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And there's multiple ways that, you know, different systems are approaching it.
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Right.
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Obviously, we're a podcast that kind of talks a lot about the IB diploma program,
19:11
but you have this unique position and actually it's not so unique.
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I think there's many educators out there that are doing like a dual diploma.
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They're doing the IB diploma
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and they're also doing their
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their sort of country or their national curriculum as well.
19:23
So I wonder if you could just sort of explain
19:25
very briefly for our listeners,
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like what are you doing
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in your specific context and how are you kind of bringing these ideas
19:31
that we were just discussing into delivering both diplomas?
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And, you know, you mentioned the Swiss maturity as well as in the IB diploma.
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Can you just give us an overview of what's going on at your school?
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Yes, this is my job.
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This is what I do.
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About five years ago, I was, I applied for it for a, yeah,
19:48
a part time job in a school
19:49
because I was writing for Kognity at the time,
19:51
and I was looking to do some work on the side, and,
19:54
I got a text back or a message back from the school I'd sent my CV to.
19:57
So tell us about the idea.
19:58
What's all that? So I went to an interview and they said,
20:03
we're thinking of possibly combining the two.
20:07
Would you think it'd be possible? And they told me that they work.
20:10
We are unique.
20:11
There are a number of schools in the German speaking part of Switzerland
20:14
that currently do this slightly differently to us, about 8 or 9 of them.
20:19
So we went and visited, we spoke to them and,
20:21
they said, okay, this, this will work. This this is possible.
20:23
So we spent 2 or 3 years then trying to gear up to it,
20:27
going through the accreditation process and all of,
20:29
you know, the various, challenges that you have to go through.
20:32
And our first cohort went through last summer.
20:35
Okay.
20:36
So, yeah, congratulations to them.
20:38
They have,
20:39
I think the 14 of them, it's about 20%, 30% of our students in general who do it.
20:43
Okay.
20:44
So they basically, set their maturity exams,
20:48
which are done in two stages, which will come back to
20:50
because that helps us, you know, organize the time.
20:53
But they graduate from the maturity in January
20:56
and then they focus on the IB exams coming up in May.
21:00
And so that's the way that is done.
21:02
But the big thing I think the big challenge,
21:04
of course, for us is that it's completely different systems
21:07
in terms of, you know, they are opposites, polar opposites
21:12
educationally.
21:12
Just in terms of like philosophy or in terms of like the specific content
21:15
that's covered, or what do you mean when you say,
21:17
like those polar opposites, like, what are the major differences?
21:20
I thought it was that I made a list.
21:23
Yes. I got a piece of paper.
21:25
I wrote this down, because I didn't want to miss anything.
21:29
Right? But you're right.
21:30
Well, there are two pedagogical philosophies that are,
21:34
you know, you might describe one as,
21:37
progressive, right?
21:39
That's the IB, you know, let's face it, we are missionaries in a world,
21:44
that is not progressive.
21:45
And what most national education systems are, what we think,
21:49
you know, used to happen 30, 50, 100 years ago in some senses.
21:52
And the Swiss maturity is about a hundred years old, really.
21:54
Okay. So I'm just going to outline.
21:57
Let me just outline Swiss Matthew and then I'll then I'll,
21:59
you know, explain the differences.
22:01
So the Swiss Matthew first of all is 12 subjects.
22:04
All right. It's a three year program.
22:06
The second and third year have exams.
22:08
You do six of your subjects in the second year and six subjects
22:12
in your final year. There's also an extended essay.
22:14
By the way, the Swiss invented this, and the IB stole the idea from the Swiss.
22:19
So it's a 4000 word extended essay.
22:21
We're going to say borrowed.
22:23
You can if you want. Go for it.
22:27
They basically
22:30
to make this work have to do the IB
22:33
subjects that correspond closest to those 12.
22:37
Okay.
22:37
So when I say 12, I mean we are talking
22:41
obviously maths in the first language, but they have to do two foreign languages.
22:44
They have to do geography history.
22:45
And so they have to do chemistry, biology, physics.
22:48
And so they have to do philosophy. So all these. Yeah.
22:50
And it's it's an extraordinarily broad
22:53
knowledge base curriculum.
22:54
Okay.
22:55
So the word I think we like to use nice knowledge rich.
22:58
It's about as rich as you're going to get it.
23:00
That makes a lot of sense when you look at like
23:01
universities throughout Switzerland, who of course, are typically requiring,
23:05
you know, someone wants to go into engineering,
23:06
it's like you have to study all three sciences, for example.
23:08
And then the IB students are just going, well,
23:09
it's not possible in my curriculum, right?
23:11
Because I can't get three sciences. Exactly.
23:14
And one of obviously, one of the things about us is
23:17
as a maturity school, we are preparing students
23:20
for Swiss universities, and all they have to do is pass.
23:23
And if they get their thought, they can go to any Swiss university.
23:25
So that's a real attraction.
23:26
It's not like another scale on that as well.
23:28
It's not like an idea where you pass and you can pass to a certain degree.
23:31
Right?
23:31
You got like a 45 to 24 or something like that.
23:35
Okay.
23:36
So it's a demand exam.
23:38
And only about 25% of Swiss people actually do it anyway.
23:41
So it is selected in its own right. But
23:44
obviously the IB gives us another dimension to that in
23:46
so far as our students who are applying abroad and there are few
23:50
often find it easier to apply abroad with the IB than with the Swiss.
23:54
Because then they,
23:56
the foreign universities, will then start saying okay pass isn't enough.
23:59
We want an average of and sometimes they're completely unrealistic.
24:02
So for us that was the initial attraction
24:04
actually because we were getting more international students.
24:06
Yeah.
24:08
So we do six IB subjects that correspond as closely as possible.
24:12
And this is what we do, which is quite interesting.
24:14
We do two of our standard level
24:15
subjects as anticipated, exams at the end of the DP one,
24:18
so that they correspond with
24:21
two of the six subjects they've just sat in the first partial exams,
24:24
as we call them.
24:24
Presumably it's going to be more along the lines of
24:27
like the language acquisition kind of courses or something like this or?
24:30
Interesting. No.
24:31
Because because we are well, our reputation is a trilingual school.
24:36
It's a francophone school. I should point that as well.
24:38
And the fact that I teach history in English is just the fact that
24:41
when they do the Swiss bilingual charity, they're not just getting English lessons.
24:44
They have to do,
24:46
for example, all the humanities in the second language.
24:48
Okay. It's a very high level.
24:49
It's a much higher level than it would be saying the IB in that respect.
24:52
Okay.
24:53
So in fact, what we do is we choose a chemistry
24:56
which is done in the first partial with the other sciences and history,
24:59
which is done in the first pass, along with the other humanities.
25:02
In the final year.
25:03
They do, in fact, the languages and maths and philosophy and so on.
25:07
So that's how we do it.
25:10
So, mostly like your HL subjects, I guess
25:12
are the ones that you would wait until the second year.
25:14
We have this limitation to 240 hours have to be done over two years.
25:18
Yeah.
25:18
Whereas we can squeeze in 150 hours in the first year.
25:21
Yeah. In the first year. Okay.
25:23
Because we have obviously,
25:24
we were focusing on those and there's more or less on time
25:26
given to those subjects that would normally be the case.
25:29
Yeah.
25:30
And the other thing
25:31
obviously we had to is we had to train all the teachers
25:34
and go to all the workshops, which was difficult
25:37
during Covid, but,
25:40
for us, I think the most exciting thing, the real reason why we did it, by the way,
25:44
is that we weren't actually interested in the sort of academic rigor of the IB.
25:47
We weren’t interested so much in university entrance.
25:51
Right?
25:52
What we were interested in
25:53
is what my managers like to call the soft skills.
25:57
Right? But it's not.
25:58
It's the TOK,
25:59
It's CAS. It's the critical thinking.
26:01
That's what we wanted.
26:03
Yeah.
26:03
The fundamental skills
26:04
that,
26:04
you know, at the top of the show right now, we were talking about
26:06
these things that are going to be transferable everywhere. Right?
26:08
So it's that sort of focus that you get with the IB.
26:11
Yeah? Yeah.
26:12
Let me talk about those differences
26:14
because I've written this down for a reason. Okay?
26:20
So, assessment
26:22
of learning which is the Matthew, assessment for learning.
26:25
See what I did there? Yeah okay. Yeah.
26:27
Grades in the Matthew.
26:29
Feedback in the IB.
26:31
Okay.
26:32
Testing of performance, right?
26:36
Assessment of learning.
26:38
Teacher prescribed goals.
26:39
Student defined goals.
26:41
Attainment versus achievement,
26:42
extrinsic motivation, intrinsic motivation, fixed mindset, growth mindset.
26:47
Yeah.
26:47
So that's a a wonderful list actually I love that.
26:50
You know and I think that's very idealistic as well.
26:52
Like that's exactly what we're aiming for.
26:54
And that's I think what every IB educator is aiming for.
26:57
There's probably an argument to be had where, you know,
26:59
as we get closer to the exams, it feels a little bit more like that
27:02
first part of the list that you mentioned, right?
27:04
Where suddenly the IB
27:05
and I think many teachers might feel this way
27:06
where something's like, okay, but ultimately we got to do some tests here.
27:10
We had all this formative time and now it's like, here's your summative,
27:13
let's get it all out right now.
27:15
As I wrote my piece,
27:16
I also felt that it was not only within the final two years in IB that you shifted
27:20
towards it, but you also shifted it through the whole IB program.
27:23
You know what I mean? The NYP
27:25
it was very, very much
27:26
on that list of the idealistic view of what the IB’s about.
27:30
And then you, you know, the 28% sort of thing,
27:33
the 80% of it was, you know, not content.
27:36
It was all about developing skills.
27:38
And so whereas when you get the final, IB exams in the DP,
27:42
you had shifted more towards learning some content.
27:45
Yeah.
27:45
Anyway, so that's how we do it.
27:48
It's something that in the IB it is already very content heavy as well.
27:53
Sure.
27:53
Like that's something that always comes back with IB diploma
27:57
program teachers is that there is so much content.
27:59
How do I juggle getting through all of this while also prioritizing
28:04
the skills and what we're not calling soft skills of the IB?
28:09
I mean, how do you juggle that with a huge content
28:13
in the Swiss program, but also huge content to cover in the IB as well?
28:19
Yeah.
28:20
I mentioned the different exam schedules.
28:21
So we have seasons.
28:23
We have four seasons.
28:24
Basically we start with a little bit of an IB season.
28:32
Then we actually end
28:33
finally with with the IB again.
28:37
We have a bit of time in prio, but let's the first thing to say
28:40
is that there's about 80-90% overlap in content.
28:43
Okay. Right?
28:44
So we chose the subjects that were closest match
28:48
what we're already doing.
28:49
And in some subject areas it's exactly the same.
28:53
The language is actually the second language
28:54
is because we do two second languages, which is easier for us.
28:57
Yeah. So they're doing German and English as a second languages.
29:00
And there's very little different for that.
29:03
Math is quite close.
29:05
History in terms of the content is fine, but the skills are miles
29:11
and miles appart. But so we just manage that really.
29:15
I think the fact we do pre IB here,
29:18
we can't do any less than time, but basically
29:21
all we're doing is skills based stuff is taking them through what they need.
29:24
You know, it's a process.
29:25
The learning IB stuff, it's a bit of pre TOK,
29:29
It's writing essays where they wouldn't normally write essays,
29:32
those sorts of things.
29:33
And we perhaps most importantly,
29:35
you know, they do all their science without any lab time at all.
29:39
In the majority.
29:39
It's all theoretical.
29:41
What? What, exactly.
29:44
I just fell through my chair.
29:45
I can't imagine doing that.
29:46
I mean, you know, obviously I'm a biology teacher as well.
29:48
And, you know, one of the things I love about it is doing all the pracs.
29:52
Let's get some practical experience with this and let's take the theory out to it.
29:55
Yeah.
29:55
So when you keep thinking about that because when we're selling this,
29:59
the students were saying some, look, you've got to do 20, 30 hours lab time.
30:03
And we start preparing them because the thing is, we've learned also
30:06
is that when we first got them in, because we can only start obviously,
30:09
in the last two years, they must choose a three year course.
30:11
We start in the last two years.
30:12
So we go get back in school in August.
30:14
We give an extra week by the way.
30:16
That's another way in which we can do an extra week.
30:18
Just the IB students.
30:19
In both DP one and DP two.
30:21
And in that first week we used to say, what was all the lab stuff?
30:23
Now we'll start working on the internal assessments that we can on,
30:26
you know, but we found that they had no skills.
30:30
Right.
30:30
And so it was it was health and safety for a week,
30:33
you know, don't know don't you know, what do you do.
30:36
We started on that now
30:39
serious lap time in pre IB, which is great for the kids.
30:42
So you know, for them it's just massive value
30:44
added as a science leads, you can appreciate. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
30:47
But it's also that it's
30:50
enhancing so much the theoretical stuff
30:54
because the vaccines actually see it and understand it and touch it
30:56
and smell it because we were blowing stuff up yesterday. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
30:59
I mean that's basically what I do all the time. Just playing. Yeah sure.
31:01
Fine.
31:02
Yeah. So okay so let me just make sure I got this right.
31:04
So it feels like you got this Swiss material which is essentially three years.
31:07
And is it in my right in thinking that like the first year
31:09
that Swiss material would be the pre IB year? Yeah.
31:11
And then DP takes over in those other two years.
31:14
Yeah.
31:15
And then the assessment is kind of staggered around there.
31:17
So some students are getting some of their
31:19
IBDP assignments done in what would be year one of the DP,
31:23
but year two of the students mature
31:24
and then they finish everything off after two year or three as well.
31:27
So I can just explain what's happened there.
31:28
So the Swiss mature exams have just finished.
31:32
And there are only two stages.
31:33
So the premier pastoral group have just done the first lot.
31:36
They're going to come back in a couple of weeks.
31:38
They're coming back next week after the holiday,
31:40
to finish off their internal assessments in history and chemistry.
31:44
And the second group are coming to come back DP two to finish
31:47
the system, they've got the qualifications they can go to university if they want,
31:50
but they come back.
31:51
There's no Swiss maturity lessons at all.
31:53
And so it's just they have a three day week long weekend.
31:58
But like university, a lot of sort of in and out when they want.
32:00
And they're focusing on the four remaining subjects.
32:02
But there's a big rush at the beginning
32:04
to hit the 15th March, 20th April deadlines. Right.
32:06
For the extended stuff,
32:08
the external assess stuff and the internal list, that stuff.
32:10
So that's how we spread it out.
32:12
And that's what we call that semester six, because we have like six semesters
32:16
for the Matthew.
32:17
That's last semester makes it possible.
32:19
I see, I see I mean, you know, with my coordinator hat on right now,
32:22
it just seems like, you know, coordinating the diploma program I felt is pretty,
32:27
it's a challenge in and of itself.
32:28
So I imagine in your position where you're trying to coordinate
32:31
all this stuff at the same time, it just sounds like,
32:34
you know, your coordinators really got to be on it.
32:36
You know, I think if you're a teacher in those schools, it's one thing.
32:39
But also I think if you're coordinating that whole program,
32:40
you really have to say, this is where things are going to take place.
32:43
And make sure everybody's on board with that as well.
32:46
It sounds like an organizational project.
32:48
One of the big differences,
32:49
one of the shocks of the Swiss teachers is we have to have meetings.
32:53
That's not a that's not a thing.
32:54
Swiss teachers, or
32:56
for teachers in general,
32:57
you know, have this meeting time where we.. No labs, no meetings.
33:02
Just like the IB. It's a completely different,
33:04
mindset, you know. This is another point I would make
33:07
is that the teachers of maturity are often the most highly qualified people
33:12
you can imagine in that subject. Sure.
33:15
I've got more PHDs
33:15
on my staff than I've ever, you know, that I've ever seen in my life.
33:19
You know, I feel underqualified and under experienced
33:22
compared to these guys, but that, you know, that's the way it is.
33:25
They are doing that job because they are subject specialists.
33:28
So much more like university. Right.
33:31
Absolutely. And it's seen as very much like that.
33:33
And preparing for Swiss universities as well.
33:34
And the particular demands of that.
33:37
So I think that's a,
33:38
you know, it's a big cultural difference.
33:40
So get them into meetings.
33:41
And I do a lot of TOK meetings and it helps also. I mean I'm
33:45
let's face it,
33:46
I'm the only experienced IB teacher in the whole school really.
33:51
Well that's not quite true.
33:52
We have recently made appointments
33:54
in primary and we're looking to make one in probably in secondary one,
33:58
which is our high school middle year’s program,
34:01
to getting somebody like me so we can start to shift the lowest
34:03
and to the school in that sort of direction in that,
34:06
you know, towards those IB schools we talked about earlier.
34:10
But generally speaking, it, you know, it helps that I'm TOK,
34:13
I'm an extended essay examiner.
34:17
I teach the history program and that's in the first year.
34:20
That helps as well.
34:20
So I like doing the whole pre IB program.
34:22
So it's not
34:25
it's not impossible to manage it all when you're involved all the time.
34:28
I think.
34:29
And I'm also a mature teacher and I have to depend heavily
34:32
on the coordinator, the maturity program, who
34:35
who basically fits it does my coordination in,
34:39
in his in a sense, so I don't have to worry too much about that.
34:42
You pan off all the responsibility.
34:43
Somebody else do it. Now I get it.
34:45
I actually said that in the graduation speech.
34:47
I openly said this.
34:49
You know, I this is a misnomer.
34:50
I'm not a coordinator.
34:52
I just all the fun stuff.
34:53
Yeah.
34:54
All right.
34:57
So, I mean, you figured
34:59
this is kind of way out for the teachers to be juggling them.
35:01
You just finished your first cohort this past summer?
35:06
Yeah. Are they okay?
35:08
Are the students okay?
35:10
They did it. They passed?
35:13
Yeah.
35:14
I mean, that's I think the first cohort,
35:16
they were always considered to be the guinea pigs, right?
35:18
They knew they were the guinea pigs.
35:19
And we made a lot of mistakes, which they pay,
35:22
you know, they pay for, we gave them too much choice.
35:25
We were too ambitious, you know, we had them in on Saturdays,
35:28
on the weekends, working on stuff that they should have been able to do before
35:33
it's taken us, I think, 2 or 3 years to really smooth that system out.
35:38
But I think, we're getting there now.
35:39
I mean, I interviewed them all right at the end,
35:41
you know, I'm a film studies teacher, so I film them all talking
35:45
after I came out of that French exam, which was the last exam.
35:47
And they all have to hang around outside
35:49
until they done the green screen business with me.
35:51
And I interviewed them all. Good timing.
35:53
Oh, it was fascinating, you know, absolutely fascinating to hear them talk
35:57
because they they could see the differences
35:59
between the two programs and they appreciated that.
36:02
You know, that was the thing for me.
36:03
I said, look, tell me about what you've just done in these exams.
36:07
Think back to the match.
36:09
What do you feel you've got out of doing both.
36:12
And they had so much to say.
36:14
And it was just, it was wonderful.
36:16
It was really wonderful. I mean, my favorite was the
36:18
one of the girls who said, you know, I just, I feel it.
36:20
I'm using different parts of my brain, which is exactly what happens.
36:24
These are completely different skills.
36:26
So they survived, good grades.
36:30
I think we averaged 34 something, which is not bad for a first cohort.
36:35
We had a couple over 40 as well.
36:37
All of them went to Swiss University, so they didn't need those numbers.
36:40
Oh, except for one.
36:41
Oh, we have one very good story in that she did the Swiss Matthew
36:45
and didn't get what she needed.
36:47
I think for the British University, she wants to go to
36:50
and so then had to carry off.
36:51
She was going to carry on anyway, but then she got what she needed with the IB.
36:54
So she got to go to her first choice because she did both.
36:57
That's cool. Yeah.
36:59
Are you an IB educator wanting
37:01
to improve your practice and needing a just a bit more support getting there?
37:05
Have you ever wanted to learn more about a specific aspect of the DP program, or
37:09
ask a question to an educational theorist about a specific IB aspect?
37:13
IB Unplugged is the place for you.
37:15
Simply visit kognity.com/ibunplugged to submit your question to us,
37:20
and have your question explored in more detail in an upcoming episode.
37:24
And now, back to the show.
37:27
Do you mean meaning in a little bit more into that sort of skills overlap?
37:30
I thought that was super interesting to hear you talk about,
37:32
like a student who's saying, oh, I'm using different parts of my brain.
37:34
Yeah.
37:35
And I guess, like when you think about the two programs
37:36
kind of going side by side, like
37:38
where are those skills kind of overlapping, where is like the
37:41
where's the stuff that they're definitely doing things
37:43
and then like the skills that are drastically different.
37:45
You kind of commented on that at the start,
37:47
but I wonder if we can dive into that little bit more, more deeper.
37:51
Look, I think there are enormous benefits in the Swiss program.
37:54
I'm on an IB scheduling team, and I might be teacher, but,
38:00
one of the things I've learned in my experience is I did seven years
38:03
in the European school in Brussels, which is again, a very traditional 13
38:07
subject curriculum.
38:08
And I went into that experience right thinking I had nothing to learn.
38:12
You know, I'm from the IB.
38:14
This is the future. You guys, you know, dinosaurs.
38:17
I didn't say that.
38:18
But that was my mentality, I think.
38:20
And to be honest, it took me a while, but then I,
38:24
I did begin to appreciate certain things about
38:28
the traditional program, about those, you know, it's not necessarily skills.
38:32
Sometimes it's maybe experiences, sometimes it's,
38:35
sometimes it is just the breadth, you know, breadth of knowledge.
38:42
You know, thinking about critical thinking.
38:43
Right?
38:45
It was Greg Ashman.
38:46
I didn't remember his name, Greg Ashman.
38:48
He famously said, and this wasn't a question about physics.
38:51
He said, if you want to,
38:54
to think critically about physics,
38:56
First, learn a lot of physics.
38:59
Sure. Right? Sure.
39:01
I mean,
39:02
like you need to know stuff before you can really kind of start
39:05
sharing on it, before you can really like dialog about it.
39:07
Right?
39:08
As a TOK teacher, you have no idea how pleasurable it is
39:12
to teach TOK to kids who know what history is.
39:15
Sure. Right?
39:16
And in most IB schools, the TOK class doesn't know history.
39:21
Right?
39:21
And I'm a history teacher.
39:23
And one of the best things actually about Swiss material, the French back at German
39:28
is they do history to the end.
39:30
You can't opt out of doing history.
39:31
So they come into this idea of like
39:33
let's do some critical thinking with a broad knowledge base.
39:36
And so with that knowledge base,
39:38
now they can actually dive into deeper depths of TOK, for example,
39:42
or just understanding their own position as a nowhere as they would have acquired
39:45
that knowledge.
39:46
Absolutely.
39:47
And I think
39:49
there's other things
39:49
in the traditional education system that we underestimate the importance.
39:53
I think one of the most obvious things
39:55
is that you could never do this the other way around.
39:57
And I've been in schools,
39:58
which were IB schools, who wanted to get the kids through the Swiss Matthew
40:01
and it will never work.
40:02
There are obvious reasons why it would never work, but
40:05
one of the most important things is that students in Swiss Matthew
40:08
who come from that system, are used to not being stimulated all the time.
40:13
You know,
40:14
one of the great things about the IB.. You know where I'm going with this right?
40:18
I don't know where you going.
40:19
Oh, come on.
40:22
All right.
40:23
There is a criticism that can be leveled at progressive education.
40:27
That is the word edutainment.
40:30
Okay.
40:30
That we have,
40:33
lowered our expectations of what students can do without being entertained,
40:37
without being engaged, without being told that, you know,
40:42
this set of lessons is going to do the following for you,
40:47
and you're going to enjoy it, you know, and it's going to be rewarding.
40:52
A lot of what you students are very good at is been told you need to learn that.
40:55
Go away and learn it. Yeah. Right?
40:58
And it cut corners.
40:59
That's the only way you can get through tough subjects to be perfectly honest.
41:03
Yeah.
41:04
And they're good at it and they're good at memorizing.
41:07
They have phenomenal memories because this is something
41:09
you can train kids to have skills in.
41:11
It is a skill to learn content that later on you're going to need to use the point.
41:17
My criticism and I've used this with the parents, of course, I talk about,
41:21
you know, Bloom's Taxonomy is a classic place
41:23
to go with this and that you have at the bottom of Bloom's Taxonomy
41:27
this pyramid of sort of learning hierarchy.
41:30
At the bottom you have remembering and comprehension and explanation,
41:34
and then it moves up the picture
41:37
and it moves up to the top.
41:40
And at the top you have things like creativity, analysis
41:42
and, you know, analytical thinking, critical thinking, those sorts of things.
41:45
But one of the things about having that broad base and moving up through the IB,
41:50
I think that is really interesting, is that if you combine both,
41:55
if you build on the fundamental skills
41:58
and this is what the kids actually see happening
42:02
and can feel happening themselves, so that for me,
42:06
I would go back, I think to, you know, those interviews like that with the kids
42:10
and how they were reflecting on it and I thought about it afterwards.
42:13
It's a bit like
42:16
My own kids are bilingual, right? My wife's French.
42:19
And one of the advantages of bilingualism
42:20
in children is that they're able to distinguish
42:22
between the object and the word for the object,
42:25
because they have two words with the same object, right?
42:27
And that develops critical thinking very early on in children,
42:31
because they'll be able to, they have this detachment.
42:34
Right? And I think it's a little bit similar.
42:36
That's sort of detachment is similar with doing both,
42:40
because if you only do the IB, you think that's education.
42:43
That is the education system. That's how it works.
42:44
That is what learning is about.
42:46
But this is an alternative, particularly if it's been very heavily grounded.
42:50
It's very traditional. Right.
42:52
You have an outside perspective on that.
42:53
You know, education isn't fixed.
42:58
They understand that education can be a variety
42:59
of different things and different approaches.
43:01
And I think there's a value in that, that as
43:04
IB missionaries out in the world, we sometimes
43:08
I think neglect.
43:08
I realize there's one other thing as well.
43:10
I mentioned earlier about my my teachers, right?
43:13
I shouldn't say my teacher, the teachers in the school. They're yours.
43:17
This is my team. Yeah.
43:19
You know, I hate it when people do that.
43:21
I'm just I see myself doing it anyway.
43:23
So the teachers, these subject specialists, if you get to watch them
43:27
teach, there's something about that.
43:30
There's something about expertise
43:33
in real time.
43:35
Explaining and being able to do so for an hour and keep you interested.
43:39
Right?
43:42
There's no inquiry based learning there.
43:44
This is just the guy on the stage explaining stuff to you.
43:47
And that's what often happens in the Matthew.
43:49
That dichotomy you're talking about, though, I think is what that
43:52
it kind of creates that good opportunity to be a little bit more metacognition
43:55
about what's going on. Right?
43:56
And recognize like, okay,
43:57
when I'm in an IB specific type of room, I'm really focusing on my inquiry.
44:01
It's like you mentioned before, it's that sort of student led focus.
44:04
Right? And we'll dive into this further.
44:06
Whereas as you're describing now, it's more of,
44:09
let me gain some new knowledge.
44:11
And I guess knowing that difference exists is what, as you say,
44:14
builds up this fundamental
44:15
skill of like, critical thinking, because without multiple perspectives,
44:19
you can't really think critically about the perspective you're getting.
44:22
Right?
44:23
And I think it's fascinating
44:24
how the students are so and the teachers, by the way, how we switch,
44:28
because we have the same you know, I've just finished the Matthew
44:31
I've got history IAs coming up next week.
44:33
I've got to suddenly remember what's involved with all of that, you know?
44:37
Okay. So hold on.
44:37
If you're teaching this like I say, okay, I'm teaching biology in this,
44:41
do I kind of go from let me orate a little bit.
44:44
Let me just sort of sit and let me tell you all the theory
44:45
and you're going to take it and then like, okay, now I'm in a biology or an IB
44:49
sort of classroom, let's flip this around and we'll do this all very inquiry based.
44:53
Like is it literally
44:54
that sort of like shift your position as the educator depending on what
44:57
type of course you're doing?
44:59
Partly I think obviously.
45:00
And this is one of the limitations is your conditioned by the exam.
45:05
Okay. Right?
45:06
So you've got different sorts of questions,
45:07
different sort of skills that the students literally have to acquire
45:11
for that moment.
45:13
And it's just and this is actually one of the,
45:15
you know, one of the advantages
45:16
of doing both of these things, you can't do anything.
45:19
You can't change those things. That's fixed. Right?
45:21
You got the Swiss Matthew exams, you got the IB exams.
45:23
And the kids are sort of stuck in between.
45:26
And so you have to move in both directions and they have to see the value in both.
45:31
You can't
45:32
try and integrate them or allow one to dominate the other.
45:36
There has to be that balance.
45:38
And you know, I watched, I said watch the chemistry lesson yesterday.
45:43
Which was
45:44
an IB after school on Wednesday because one of the other things we do is
45:47
we have to do some lessons after school.
45:48
I'll talk a little bit about that as well,
45:50
because think it's quite an interesting dimension.
45:51
But hearing the chemistry teacher go from he has his iPad, he's
45:55
talking on the board. Okay.
45:56
Now we've done this in chemistry
45:57
right this week and he writes down some sort of an equation.
46:02
Then he flips it.
46:03
Okay. Now we've just done an experiment.
46:05
Why didn't the experiment work?
46:08
You know, you start to ask those sorts of questions, which you would
46:10
you would never ask in a match if you just move on to the next problem.
46:14
Okay. All right.
46:15
And in history, it's I talk in history all day long. But
46:18
I think the big difference also is that this is a process we're going through.
46:21
And I've been through that process.
46:23
So my history lessons are a blend.
46:26
And I switch back and forth constantly because I have that experience today.
46:29
So my teachers are two, three years after
46:31
the teachers are two three years into the system.
46:33
Right.
46:34
And so they're only beginning to work out when they can do the IB.
46:38
Yeah. When it's good to do the IB
46:41
when it's better that they just stick to the lecture.
46:43
Yeah.
46:44
You've talked about a lot of the benefits between the two.
46:47
But obviously there are you're going to lose some elements of each curriculum.
46:53
You can't possibly do both of them perfectly to fidelity what
46:57
you've taught in pure IB programs plenty of times.
47:00
What do you feel like you've lost in doing the double diploma?
47:06
I wouldn't say it's superficial,
47:09
because we actually focus on what I think is really important is the IB.
47:12
And we put a lot of time into.
47:15
I will get I will answer the question.
47:16
But we do put a lot of time into things like
47:18
in CAS, like we have a whole week
47:19
where everyone has to go in the CAS camp for a week and so on.
47:24
And as I said, we integrate the various approaches,
47:26
the learning with the teachers in those horizontal pieces.
47:29
Okay, all of that's there. But,
47:33
we clearly don't repeat and embed
47:38
as often as you would in a normal classroom.
47:41
You know, these are added on top because they enhance what we do
47:47
and the students benefit enormously from doing so.
47:51
I think we do enough to make it all certainly make it all worthwhile.
47:56
I think the experience is enhanced for the students.
47:58
I think they get, you know, the best bits of both worlds.
48:02
Yeah.
48:04
On so many different levels.
48:06
I just think it's a fantastic experience.
48:07
It's like that they put themselves through it, but clearly it's,
48:12
Yeah, I would love to spend longer
48:16
as a history teacher teaching things in the way that I would normally teach them
48:20
in the IB classroom, and there are lots of activities
48:24
that I would normally do and lots of inquiry based things that I cannot do,
48:28
because simply there aren't enough hours in
48:31
what is already a very crowded curriculum.
48:32
But there's one thing I wanted to say
48:35
about how we make this work, which I hadn't said.
48:37
Well, when I arrived at the school,
48:40
you know, this is five years ago.
48:41
There was something going on.
48:42
At the end of the day, I found really strange,
48:43
which nobody was really talking about.
48:46
The school finishes like
48:46
3:30, but all the teachers, all the kids stay till five
48:50
every day.
48:52
Okay. And I thought, well, what is this?
48:53
You know, I had no idea.
48:57
It's halfway out the door and he's like, why is no one with me?
49:01
That's literally what I was just envisioning,
49:03
like Richard, even though I like, oh, wait, come back.
49:07
We actually still stick around, right?
49:08
Well, the thing is, I didn't appreciate,
49:09
first of all, they're going to pay me this thing.
49:11
So I ended up staying right.
49:12
That was the first thing.
49:15
And what actually happens, it started off, is we don't have homework in our school.
49:18
You can stay behind in the hour and a half at the end of the day to do it right.
49:21
Okay.
49:22
But it evolved, particularly in exam season time into this
49:26
fantastic
49:28
and I
49:29
because I presented to the parents about this and I've sort of done
49:33
a bit of research into how this would work,
49:35
but it's what I'm calling is this third space.
49:38
It's not school, it's not home.
49:40
It's in between.
49:42
And the guy who came up with this, this guy called, Railton Burke.
49:46
I think Google used this model of how they do their innovation.
49:50
Right.
49:51
It's very relaxed environment.
49:54
It breaks down the barriers
49:55
between teachers and students because there's no curriculum.
49:58
There's no timetable.
49:59
It's just teachers sitting in rooms and kids go and talk to teachers
50:02
or talk to the other students and whatever to solve often issues.
50:08
I call it just in time learning as well because
50:10
they have to get something done.
50:12
They have a problem they need to solve in maths,
50:15
and they'll go and find a maths teacher who will explain to them
50:16
again, it's extraordinarily efficient.
50:20
I mean, it's that honestly, that sounds pretty enticing.
50:22
I'm not going to lie.
50:23
That sounds like a really cool thing, and I'd be interested
50:25
in getting that going.
50:26
My question, I guess, would be
50:27
then what does that do to like your CAS program?
50:30
You know, I mean, for example, when I think about our students,
50:33
a lot of their CAS experiences are built directly in that time that you just spoke
50:36
about that sort of 4:00 to 6:00, here's some activities or some ways that we can
50:40
engage in the community. Now,
50:43
does the CAS program suffer?
50:44
Does it kind of get sacrificed for that space?
50:46
If I go back to what I said earlier in terms of,
50:49
we don't have the perhaps the repetition and depth.
50:53
I think CAS is one of those areas where we rely upon the students
50:58
to do it in their own time, much more than would perhaps be the case.
51:01
But and this is the interesting thing, because they've never, ever
51:04
had anyone valorize what they do outside the school.
51:08
They love it because we have a school system
51:12
which doesn't have any sport or theater or drama
51:16
or music or anything really like, okay, they have lessons, okay.
51:20
You know, and those things to some extent are options. But
51:24
if you're doing those things, nobody in the school, you know,
51:26
we don't have that assembly tradition of kids performing on a stage.
51:30
This suddenly allows us, allows them to to say,
51:34
actually, no, I'm world class athletes.
51:37
Actually, I've been doing this, that and the other.
51:39
Oh wow. Okay.
51:40
So, you know, to the extent to which we are working on a,
51:44
a future program for the school where we're going to roll out
51:47
an equivalent of CAS
51:49
right the way through the whole school, right way down to the 4 or 5 year olds.
51:52
You know, to build that in.
51:54
Because as I said at the beginning,
51:55
that was the attraction in the first place.
51:57
I was doing a double diploma was TOK.
51:59
And CAS, these are the things that we wanted to add.
52:02
In that time between 3:30 and 5,
52:05
we also do some of the IB extra stuff which is our
52:09
which is our problem, you know, in a sense,
52:11
because they don't necessarily
52:12
get all that free time that they normally have to solve
52:15
those maths issues for the exam or the test they have coming up
52:18
and they have to sit with me doing TOK for an hour or whatever.
52:23
But, you know, as you said, you can't have everything.
52:26
And we just feel that we've got a pretty good balance.
52:30
And the students come out of it, benefit from it.
52:33
That's kind of what I want to dive into there is,
52:34
you know, I mean,
52:36
we've seen each other at the conferences and that sort of stuff.
52:38
And, you know, I'd like to really bang on about like the mission of the IB.
52:42
Right?
52:42
And like this
52:43
kind of what we're coming back to the philosophies of it itself, creating
52:46
knowledgeable, caring, inquiring young people,
52:48
you know, committed to creating a better and more peaceful world.
52:50
This sort of stuff.
52:53
How do you do you feel like you're able to maintain that integrity of what the
52:56
what the IB mission is trying to do, you know, not just the subjects itself,
53:01
but if we look at to like, what's the core?
53:02
We're developing the IB learner profile, we're developing people
53:05
who are going to go on and create a better world.
53:07
Do you feel like that can still have its thrust, or is it like we just need
53:12
to kind of balance all these subjects and therefore get through those subjects?
53:15
And we have little touches on IB philosophy, but ultimately we're
53:18
we're getting everybody qualified for both of these things.
53:22
My answer that would be give us time.
53:25
But ultimately sure that is the goal.
53:29
I mean, at the moment we are working out ways to try and deliver
53:33
to academic programs as efficiently as we can
53:37
whilst recognizing,
53:40
and I think this is an important thing to keep repeating, but recognizing
53:43
we're doing it because we believe in the mission statement of the IB.
53:47
Right?
53:49
We believe in the learner profile.
53:50
We've in fact, one of the very first things we did
53:52
was the school mission statement got changed,
53:54
and we developed our own version of the learner profile to fit that.
54:00
But we are a Swiss school.
54:01
We're not an international school.
54:03
We don't just do IB, we have the Swiss maturity there, but
54:08
we are looking to develop this throughout the school.
54:11
As I said, we're looking at we've made an appointment in primary.
54:13
We're looking to make something similar happen in the middle year’s
54:16
program to change not just what is taught
54:19
and how things are taught, but also just change the way in which,
54:23
the students are engaging with the community in particular.
54:25
I mean, one of the big differences wasn't on that list of differences
54:29
is the Matthew is a school curriculum, right?
54:32
And the IB as a community thing. There's a world outside the classroom.
54:36
And I think that for me is something that we're trying
54:40
to achieve as well.
54:43
I think what's
54:44
also really interesting about your school is that you've done this by choice.
54:49
You've
54:49
signed up for this where I think a lot of IB schools
54:52
that are juggling two curriculum, it's not by choice.
54:55
It's okay.
54:56
In our country, we have to do these certain national standards.
55:00
We can't get away with being a pure IB program.
55:06
Where you've done these things deliberately.
55:10
And I'm wondering
55:11
if you have any reflections, thinking about what you think you've done
55:15
well, because you've had the chance to think really critically
55:18
about what pieces you want to take and give between the two programs,
55:22
compared to if you were teaching in a school
55:25
where you have to, you're forced to do both.
55:29
Yeah.
55:29
It's an interesting question.
55:32
I mean, I think it'll always depend upon whatever the local system is.
55:36
Yeah.
55:36
Look at the learner profile and apply it to your teachers as well, and apply
55:40
to yourself and try and look at the, you know, the opportunities
55:44
that are presented by maybe working within
55:47
a local education system or,
55:50
you know, you might see them as constraints,
55:52
but they're, you know, always opportunities in that.
55:54
And I think, as I said earlier, you know, having
55:58
two different systems operating at the same time
56:01
can be enormously stimulating for both kids and for the teachers involved in it.
56:05
Don't dismiss it.
56:06
See what you can learn.
56:07
Be open minded.
56:10
I just feel that, you know, you can achieve some..
56:13
There is synthesis to achieve,
56:15
as well as, you know, you find all these hurdles to overcome.
56:18
But there'll be some positive things that possibly come out of that, I think.
56:21
Okay.
56:21
So let's go to like, you got a teacher who's in a similar situation.
56:26
Right?
56:26
And they're kind of balancing both at the same time.
56:29
You know, in your experience
56:30
over these last few years, what would be like some really simple wins
56:33
for that teacher or that particular that individual
56:36
in their educational program where they're doing both these things?
56:39
What can they kind of take away from this talk that you're like,
56:41
do this thing, this thing, this thing doesn't really help you quite a bit.
56:45
Well, I think you've got to separate the sort of day to day practical
56:47
running of the program, which is you've suggested is a nightmare.
56:51
Yeah.
56:52
And overcoming those hurdles, if you can get that bit done,
56:55
then you can
56:56
sort of allow yourself the reflection,
56:59
and allow yourself the opportunities to, you know, talk to the students
57:03
of the teachers, reflect as a team about what's going on.
57:08
I come back to that, which I said about the learner profile,
57:10
you know, and critical thinking, it's an opportunity for you to reflect.
57:14
It's one of the big things IB has added over the last 20, 30 years.
57:16
You know, is the end of a teaching unit or,
57:20
you know, whatever the students done reflect, reflect on it.
57:23
Yeah. And I think that would be for me.
57:25
Once you've got the organization complete
57:27
and once you've got the program running and it’s okay, well,
57:30
Yeah, think about the metacognition.
57:32
Think about the critical thinking. Thinking about the opportunities
57:35
that are there.
57:37
You know, I don't stop thinking.
57:39
I'm always looking for ways in which we can
57:41
develop and improve everything we're trying to do.
57:44
For me,
57:46
John Stuart Mill's quote has always, always been,
57:50
this is from On Liberty when he said, look.
57:53
Teachers and learners fall asleep at the post with no enemy in the field.
57:57
I think if you get so
58:00
embedded in a system,
58:02
that it becomes a habit
58:06
and you never see an alternative, then you can become lazy.
58:11
You can become complacent.
58:12
Yeah.
58:13
And I think having two systems
58:16
for both students, but particularly for teachers,
58:18
in response to your question, I think there's there are opportunities
58:21
there to allow you to see the world in slightly different way.
58:25
Which, you know, if you're on the IB treadmill,
58:31
and you're part of the IB,
58:33
I'm not going to use the, the cult, the missionary organization,
58:37
you know, with its own language and what I'm not going to go down the road
58:40
for sure, but you know what I mean.
58:42
But yeah, they're all they're all censored.
58:45
And then I look, if I was forced to choose, this is the big question.
58:48
I was forced to choose between the two.
58:49
What I go with, you know, I have I was forced to choose.
58:53
I chose for my kids think that the IB. Yeah.
58:55
I mean in many respects. But you know, I like what you commented there.
58:57
So, so essentially, you know, kind of get organized.
58:59
Do some reflection on it.
59:00
And if I could summarize what you just said, it's
59:02
like almost appreciate
59:03
the opportunity that you have here with kind of a duality of diplomas here.
59:07
And see that there's really great benefits in both of them.
59:11
Yeah, I think so.
59:12
I think we've covered a lot of ground and, and really started to clarify
59:15
some of the key things that we were hoping to get from this conversation.
59:17
You know, talking with an expert such as yourself,
59:19
who's doing both of these things at the same time.
59:21
And, and I really yeah.
59:22
I appreciate the way you went through this.
59:24
You know, we know that you're in the middle of your teaching day.
59:26
And we were just really prepared for making the time to chat with us on it.
59:28
Good. Well, thank you so much, Richard.
59:30
I really appreciate the conversation.
59:32
I think it's been fantastic to learn about how you've been juggling them.
59:35
And it's just. Yeah, nice to see you again.
59:38
We've worked with each other for a very long time,
59:40
and it's nice to take some time to reflect on, yeah,
59:43
what you're doing now and how your school is progressing and doing this program.
59:46
Well, listen, thank you very much for the invitation.
59:48
It was it was great fun.
59:49
I love talking about education.
59:52
As you probably could tell.
59:54
And, it's great to see both again.
59:56
Thank you, thank you.
59:58
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1:00:08
If you'd like to submit a topic, request or a question, please do
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so on kognity.com/ibunplugged.
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Let's keep the conversation going
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and support each other in teaching with confidence, creativity, and joy.
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See you next time.