Author: wrpvincent

Originally posted on June 2, 2020 @ 3:20 pm

I am not a language teacher. In this post I want to share some scenarios surrounding language level placement in the IB DP and I would love to hear feedback to the questions raised.

In my experience, one of the most murky, opaque areas of the Diploma Programme is language placement in the group 1 and 2 subjects.

Having worked as a university guidance counselor and diploma programme coordinator for around five years in total (at the time of writing), I have been involved in the discussions around this topic in two schools on two continents.

It can be a highly contentious issue it seems; lots of people want to give their view, including me!

So whats the issue? Surely if a student is a native speaker they should take the language at group 1 and if non-native then they should take it at group 2, right?

Well, no. It isn’t that simple.

International schools can be very complex places and students language profiles are no exception to this. Add to the fact, that schools may have a medium of instruction that is different to the host country language as well as first language of the majority of students in the school, who may come from a country other than the host country or any country that uses the medium of instruction.

Let’s imagine a student. This student lives and attends school in country X where the local language is language Xphone but the schools medium of instruction is Zphone. This students family speak neither of these languages but students parents moved to country X from country Y for work 8 years ago.

The family speak Yphone. At home this student speaks Yphone every evening, but at school they are taught in Zphone for all their academic subjects and studying Xphone as the host country language is mandatory. Ever since this student was in upper primary they have studied at school primarily in Zphone and but also have had lessons in Xphone.

To make matters more challenging this student has been in the langugae aquisition stream for both language X and Z since upper primary and, whilst their language use of both language is strong, they are not fluent or at the level of a native speaker in either of the languages.

How should a student in this scenario be treated when undertaking their choices for the IB DP? None of the language teachers feel that they are strong enough for Language A courses and all recommend Language B HL. Should this student not be allowed to take the full IB DP because they can’t “do” a language A course?

The student in question wants to take school supported self taught literature A in Yphone. Should they be allowed to do this? What if they do not have the requisite skills to analyse literature in that language? They may have been speaking it at home all their life but they have not formally studied in it or with it for many years and so their reading and writing skills in this language skills are somewhat reduced.

What do you recommend? How should we approach this scenario as DP Coordinators?

Let’s imagine another student. This student holds a passport for country C because they were born there but their parents are from country D and moved back soon after this student was born. The family speaks Dphone at home. The school is located in host country D but teaches in language Cphone for most of its academic subjects.

Because of a quirk in the admissions process, despite being a mother tongue D speaker, this student was placed in D acquisition classes in upper primary and has stayed in these classes all the way through secondary. The teachers cite his slow progress in the acquisition class for language D and the fact that he holds a passport from country C as reasons that he has never moved into the main language D classes.

Now it comes to IB subject selections and the student is in acquisition classes for both language D and language C but cannot take both as group 2 subjects – one must be in group 1 but which one?

How do you decide which course would be most appropriate for a student? What would you do to resolve these issues if you were presented with them?

In next weeks post I hope to provide some thoughts of my own.

Originally posted on May 24, 2020 @ 10:55 am

I am not a language teacher.

I am a biology teacher by training but being diploma coordinator requires me to become a generalist in other subjects. In this post I want to summarise my understanding of the coursework requirements of these courses, so as to better understand their placement in an assessment calendar.

The changes in the International Baccalaureate group 1 and 2 courses in the last couple of years appear to have been positively received by the educators I have spoken to.

Aside from the exams at the end of the courses coursework components for these courses has been streamlined, a positive change for both teachers and students a like.

In group 1 subjects HL students will have an externally assessed essay to complete, which replaces the written task. At the time of writing, I suspect that this essay will be submitted as an early component. SL and HL group 1 students will have to complete an oral.

In group 2 subjects HL and SL students need to complete an oral.

The guide for group one subjects recommends that orals for these subjects are placed at the end of year 1 or the beginning of year 2 of the programme.

Teachers and experienced coordinators that I have spoken to recommend that group 2 orals are placed as close to the IA upload deadlines as possible, as this will give students the greatest chance to demonstrate fully developed speaking and listening skills, which makes sense for a language aquisition subject.

Therefore for my assessment calendar, in addition to blocking the internal assessment for the maths courses to occur at the same point in the year, I recommend:

• Placing group 1 orals in June of DP 1
• Students taking 2 group 1 subjects they can opt to take one or both subjects at this time or one of their subjects in a second slot in September of DP 2
• HL essays to be completed between October and February of DP2. There is a potential conflict here, affecting HL group 1 students, with the TOK essay which also needs to be submitted in the early deadline
• Placing group 2 orals in the middle to end of March of DP 2 allowing 2 to 3 weeks of processing and uploading to the IB eCoursework system.

Thinking about it, while all coursework needs to be checked for authenticity, language orals are the closest in likeness of an exam in terms of the conditions that they are held under. They are less likely to be affected by academic integrity issues.

Are you a IB language teacher? What do you think? I would love to hear from you.

Originally posted on May 15, 2020 @ 11:32 am

“I’m talking about quality assurance not quality control, they are two different things”

Yes, perhaps. But your insistence on checking every teachers work down to the exams they are setting for the end of the year is not only a MASSIVE waste of valuable time with a syzygetic opportunity cost but will only serve to undermine quality, long term, in the educational programs you are trying to assure.

Teachers are generally a hard working lot, who care about what they do. Yes, I have encountered one or two who genuinely were out for what they could get but that is not the modus operandi of most of the professionals I have met.

And I refuse to base management decision based on a few bad apples.

Subjecting colleagues to a work scrutiny is patronising at best and at worst sends the message that we don’t trust you. If I am a hard working colleague trying to balance a quizillion other work tasks alongside regular teaching this scrutiny is going to demotivate me, not inspire me to deliver my best.

Yes, I can think of reasons why you say we should do it too, but they are baloney compared to the long term impact it has on morale and therefore the quality of our educational product.

Of course, staff need to be held accountable but we need to allow them the space to make mistakes so that they can formatively develop. There is a difference between supporting someones development as a professional and operating on the assumption they can’t be trusted to get it right.

To my mind this way of thinking goes in the bin alongside, making personalised exam timetables for students for their mock exams: A massive waste of leadership time and a massive learning opportunity cost for the kids.

Originally posted on March 17, 2020 @ 3:59 pm

In my first term of teaching in 2008 my mum was hospitalised.

She had been unwell for several years. There were some really quite alarming events surrounding her health for us as her family over the years leading to her hospitalization, and there were lots of strange explanations from GPs who clearly, in hindsight, failed to diagnose her illness properly.

Mostly, as her family, we were quite confused.

Until she got admitted.

When she was admitted, her condition in intensive care rapidly declined, until a specialist finally correctly diagnosed her issues and was able to treat the underlying problems.

During her alarming decline, my dad called me to say that this may be it and that I should come and be with her.

After 6 weeks in my job as unqualified, untrained teacher I had to request leave, to go up to London, and to visit my mum in hospital. I wasn’t sure how much time I needed and I said so.

After a few days staying in London with family and visiting my mum at UCH in Euston I had a call from the “Undermaster”.

I don’t really remember much about the call except that he asked “Is your mum really dying?” and said “The kids are missing you”.

At that stage, at 25, it was enough to make me feel guilty and with my mum’s condition improving I felt the I needed to go back. I felt the pressure to go back. Infact in 2008 I was lucky to have a job as a recent MSc graduate.

I had to go back. After all who would look after my classes for one more day? What would happen to my students learning if I stayed away even one more day to help my Dad, to spend time with my mum who I very nearly lost.

In hindsight, and soon after my mums recovery I am ashamed to say that I even questioned my own motives for going to see her. “See, she was fine!” “There was no need to go.” “I just wanted an excuse to not be in work”. This was the self talk I gave myself for a few years until I had convinced myself that she wasn’t really dying when I went up to the hospital in 2008.

My sister put me straight recently. Her memory was very clear. Mum very seriously nearly died.

I realise now, that hindsight is a wonderful thing.

Mum’s situation could have not recovered and I may not have gone. What would I think about myself then? It is very easy to look back at an event and to look at is skewed. Facts just don’t seem the same after an event as they did before.

Unintentionally or not I was manipulated. My senior colleagues’ concern was not for my welfare in light of my mother nearly passing. He just needed me back in work to keep the ship running. Thats true. But it is also true that this motive was probably obscured even to himself.

Teachers really are amazing people. Mostly, they go above and beyond all the time, continually making personal sacrifices in the name of the learning, and of their students. And they can be easily manipulated into doing so.

But where does that stop? When do we draw the line? When is it more important to focus on the wood than stare at the trees or even scratch, up close, at the bark?

Often I think about the focussing illusion and how it impacts our working lives as teachers. I think that this is a major factor in our working, day to day decisions to sacrifice for learning. We spend hour after hour, day after day, week after week, thinking about other people. How to help them learn, how to differentiate for this kid, how to hook in another, how to enthuse, how to inspire, how to bend ourselves backwards and spend all night making whizzy animations on our PowerPoint just to engage a student.

When we are in this mode, learning is the MOST IMPORTANT THING OF ALL TIME.

Unfortunately, the downside of this thinking like this is that we lose the ability to recognise when learning isn’t the most important thing in the world.

Learning is important in so much that it benefits an individual and enriches society by having well educated individuals collectively. Often we place our students learning above our own wellbeing but no one can keep sacrificing themselves indefinitely.

Eventually you get to a point where you have to stop going the extra mile today, so you can keep walking tomorrow.

In this age of the coronavirus, I hear stories of teachers complaining about loss of learning time if schools close. The focussing illusion is rearing its head again. We are anchored on learning. We think learning is more important than keeping people alive and keeping people healthy.

In this age of the coronavirus I hear other Diploma Coordinators complaining about their teachers who, after staying away from a virus hit country will not come back as the dust settles. They forget that this is now going on all over the world. They are anchored on their schools, on their concerns.

For international teachers, the game has changed. The rules have changed. No longer is it just about school closures in one country. It’s about global travel bans. Border closures. Indefinite quarantine. It’s about family members on the other side of the planet who are now also exposed. It’s about the limited and decreasing availability of flights. It’s about uncertainty about when this may be over. And it will be over, eventually.

And yet, while this forest grows round us, some of our school leaders are focussed on one tree and mending it – school closures and getting them reopened. They forget about the rest of the forest that has grown up around them. They forget about how some of their staff may now have other considerations, they didn’t have a month ago. They will even ignore government advice in their pursuit of re-opening a school.

My mother said its barmy. The UK government wants to self isolate over 70s for up to four months. She can’t understand why COVID is so different to SARS, MERS, Swine Flu, Ebola, that causes the global government reacts so. It is hard to comprehend.

COVID is way more infectious than any of these other diseases. It can be transmitted without the individual evening knowing they are infected. Super infectious and super transmissible. Thankfully it isn’t as deadly as Ebola, but is probably 10x more deadly than seasonal flu.

I just hope that school leaders, in their eagerness to re-open schools and get learning on campus up and running again, step back from scratching the bark and look at the wood and the myriad obstacles it presents for their staff.

I just hope that school leaders can be strong enough to allow their teams to be humans when they need to be.