Pre-conference workshops

Presenters: Melissa Cuculich, Laura Lane, Renee Illhardt

Are you the Champion of the IB in your school district, state, province or group of schools? This session will engage and support system-level leadership in leading and managing the operations, deep implementation, and marketing of an IB World School (IBWS), or multiple IB schools. The session aims to provide an efficient and supportive way for system-level stakeholders to embrace the IB and support their IB programmes. System-level leaders will learn about all IB programmes, IB systems, requirements and expectations, available IB data, professional learning opportunities and various other supports in a succinct and supportive way to help them better understand how to grow and sustain their IB programme(s).

Presenter: Cheryl Tradewell

Every IB programme requires teachers to include differentiation. Yet many teachers do not have a clear understanding of their students' needs and/or how to help them without the support of the special education team. This workshop will provide teachers with explanations of diagnoses, suggestions for technological options to support students and general classroom techniques that will help make learning more accessible. Participants will have the opportunity to delve into universal design for learning (UDL), universal instructional design (UID) and universal design for assessments (UDA) to explore how to tailor their curriculum and assessments so all students can experience a higher level of success and less stress in their IB programmes. A resource of differentiation techniques aimed at supporting inquiry learning will be co-developed by the participants to implement in their schools.

Presenter: Sabrina McCartney

This workshop is designed to reflect on current school practices of professional development and to engage in ideas to bring more teacher agency to a school’s professional development offerings. Participants will explore choice frameworks, create ideas to implement in their school context and reflect on the implementation of the IB standards and practices within school-based differentiated professional development.

Presenter: Heather Michael

This workshop will focus on 10 (fun!) strategies for storytelling, reflection and social mapping that directly support schools and classrooms striving to be inclusive, culturally responsive and differentiated.

School leaders and teachers will spend the day engaging in the 10 activities that can transfer into existing practices and assessments in their Primary Years Programme, Middle Years Programme, Diploma Programme or Career-related Programme classrooms or contexts. There will be opportunities to make authentic connections to international-mindedness, the learner profile and approaches to teaching and approaches to learning.

Woven through the day will be critical conversations about equity, inclusion, culturally responsive pedagogy and differentiation that connect to the activities presented. On the day, participants will reflect on their own practices and consider ways to become more inclusive. Finally, there will be time to come up with an action plan so that everyone leaves ready to get to work in their own contexts.

Presenter: Rebecca Hodges

This workshop will provide research-backed techniques to achieve consistent student success on rubrics. Participants will practise through a variety of role-play and simulation exercises that will build their comfort and confidence using the techniques in their own settings. There will be a large number of activities applicable to any relevant IB rubric (Middle Years Programme, Diploma Programme, personal project, extended essay, theory of knowledge, etc.).

Topics include identifying command terms, structuring lessons for critical thinking, demonstrating knowledge and understanding of terminology, considering differentiation strategies, committing to a conceptual focus, building metacognition and reflection into lesson activities, understanding the role of student choice, modelling exemplar samples, scaffolding new material and rubric elements, and integrating approaches to teaching and approaches to learning. Participants will leave the workshop empowered with greater capacity to help students achieve consistent improvement and success on any IB rubric.

Presenter: Jessica Jasso

This workshop, run in Spanish, will explore the definitions of quality education and inclusive education, with a focus on Latin America. In the session, participants will explore different approaches to inclusion that have, up until now, been seen as traditional. The educational changes needed to be made in order to build a future that is both sustainable and shared will be discussed. We will develop a much deeper understanding of what educational quality means by applying different approaches to teaching and learning through a series of interactive activities. The global and local contexts of each of the participants will be reflected upon as well. We will also discuss values and the keys to shaping philosophies, policies, systems, and inclusive practices. By the end of the workshop, each participant will have at least five basic tools they can use to promote inclusion in their schools. This will enable them to create differentiated evaluation strategies for their teachers and/or learners.

Presenter: Cherissa Vitter

This session is designed for IB administrators, coordinators and teachers who serve as instructional leaders. Participants will explore IB resources that may be used to promote equitable coaching and they will have the opportunity to rehearse professional conversations. Structured evaluation systems that include mandated rubrics are used to score teachers and may even have financial implications. Teachers who are never observed do not engage in administrative collaboration which would inform standards and practices. Rarely may an evaluation system be changed to accommodate the complexity of IB teaching, but we can learn to work within our individual system by growing it to capacity.

This pre-conference session focuses on the facilitation of an environment where IB teachers are supported for professional development. Participants are encouraged to leverage electronic devices to actively engage in developing professional practices and coaching plans. They are also encouraged to study the data that informs individual practice. Participants will leave the workshop with an action plan to support teacher growth and professional environments for success.