25/26 year: Going into CAS in the second year was much more comfortable. I had already learned the things that were important, and how best to manage the needs of the students. Trying to juggle a weekly check-in of over 70 students became challenging at times. The most relevant outcome to pass along is that students would prefer to have a centralised list of school-centred service opportunities, and the dates and times volunteers are needed.
I also became a Community Project supervisor for the first time ever - an opportunity that is allowing me yet further learning of the MY programme.
Within PSPs, the curriculum and culture was the definite focii for the 2025/26 year.
Leadership 5.1: The school funds adequate resources to implement the programme(s) and meet programme requirements. (0201-05-0100) DP 1: The school allocates resources and provides supervision for the creativity, activity and service core component, including designating a CAS coordinator. (0201-05-0131)24/25 year: This was the first IB conference I had attended in 20 years. It was really interesting to see what things had changed and what had remained the same.
Apart from the obvious semantic adjustments (A2 is now called A: Language and Literature), the concerns were more around how to handle the growing numbers of students involved in the IOs and how AI was making itself felt.
There was plenty of opportunity to network and to get a feel for how other schools are setting up their SOW requirements, given the recent changes, and also what the new grading will look like for Paper 2.
24:25 year: While the Purpose element of my role is easy to translate across borders, the Culture and Environment one requires a bit of time to understand and internalise, so as to best support student (and my) learning.
I very much appreciate how the staff are required to question before correction. Just such a simple position allows for relationships to build.
My first foray into the Creativity, Action, Service part of IB meant jumping into the deep end. Thanks go to the colleagues and mentors who enabled me to be helpful to students as I rapidly upskilled.
This was my first time using Managebac as a system. It has been a very sharp learning curve, as I navigate the multiple requirements for DP, MYP and CAS.
I am still getting to grips with using this again, as I'm using our internal OneDrive for most details.
2005 was my first foray into A2, and I re-crafted the Media and Culture part of our A2 programme so that parallel timetabled teachers could teach to their particular specialty.
I loved English B; students who were 3rd language speakers doing Spanish + family tongue for Group 1, or who had joined the school without coming through a bilingual system. Text flexibility meant I was able to use high interest yet demanding source material that aligned well with TOK.