The world is a different place compared to the last time we were at an in-person IB Americas conference. It was with much anticipation that we were able to attend this year’s event in sunny San Diego, California, which brought together IB educators across the Americas for the first time in three years.
It also provided us with the opportunity to talk to you – the IB community – about what’s on your mind and what your school is prioritizing for the upcoming academic year. We heard from principals, coordinators, librarians, and subject teachers across the IB curriculum, from coast to coast in the US, Canada, across Central and South America, and beyond.
To better understand your priorities, we invited educators to take part in our interactive research. Taking three coins, educators voted on the top three priorities for their IB school in 2022–2023. Read on to see what was said…
#5: Investing in and embedding EdTech (8% of total votes)
The pandemic fueled the rapid adoption of technology in schools – and was instrumental in providing continued access to education during global lockdowns. But it’s not just about having access to educational technologies, it’s knowing how to effectively implement them.
Teachers need to have the necessary pedagogical and technological skills to make effective use of new EdTech, and be able to support their students in integrating the technology into their learning. But this isn’t always easy, as one coordinator told us: “Having students with technological competence is essential in helping to close the equity gap,” they said. “But the problem we’re having is that we have the tech, but the students don’t know how to use it effectively.”
#4: Improving attainment and results (17% of total votes)
Teachers are grappling with ways to build back student levels of engagement and attainment to pre-pandemic levels. However, this post from the IB Community Blog suggests that having formative assessment goals that focus on student agency and thinking skills helps teachers to ‘identify the essential concepts, skills and knowledge that students require to flourish’. Teachers are, therefore, well-equipped to support learners in their IB journey by helping them understand how they learn.
#3: Teacher retention (20% of total votes)
Teacher staffing concerns are varied across the Americas. Teachers in the United States were more likely to tell us that this is a growing issue in their IB programs, and that it’s becoming harder to find qualified teachers to fulfill empty roles.
“In previous years, we had 30 teachers applying for one position, and they were all senior teachers will many years of experience. This year, we’ve only had 5–6 applicants. The one we’ve hired is a student teacher who still needs to finish her training.”
Schools are trying to retain their staff through making sure they feel supported. “We’re trying to incentivize good teachers to stay in the role through supporting them with continuous professional development opportunities,” one Texas-based coordinator told us.
#2: Closing the equity gap (25% of total votes)
Disparities in educational outcomes across demographics – be that race, socioeconomic background, gender – are nothing new. And it’s been well-documented that the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated many of these disparities. One Elementary teacher from California told us that the social-emotional learning gap between her students is getting bigger. “It’s hard for teachers to make up for learning loss and at the same time try to take care of our own wellbeing,” she said.
But the switch to remote ways of working had some unexpected benefits for one school in Canada. “We’re a competitive program and want to be accessible to a more diverse array of students”, the coordinator told us. “During the pandemic, we switched our in-person informational sessions to virtual. We found it was an effective way of reaching more prospective students – they weren’t forced to travel to the school (which is hard to reach by public transport) to attend the session, and the fact that it was recorded also meant that it was more accessible to ESL parents and children, who could slow it down or replay the information.”
#1: Supporting teacher and student wellbeing (28% of total votes)
The number one priority that emerged was, not surprisingly, supporting teacher and student wellbeing. Even before the pandemic, teachers were reporting record levels of burnout. Amidst the challenges that teachers and learners continue to face, supporting mental health has never been more important. “The school does tell us to be mindful of our wellbeing and not to forget to practice self-care”, one teacher told us. “But they still expect us to work hard to enable our students to achieve their potential.”
But other schools are finding creative ways to manage the situation. “We moved back the start of the school day so that students could get more sleep. We’ve also added four ‘wellness days’ to the school calendar to support teacher and student mental health.”
It’s been an undoubtedly tough time, but it was inspiring to meet with educators at the IB Americas conference who are committed to finding creative strategies through the challenges, while continuing to show up for their IB colleagues and learners.
Click to learn more about our support for teacher and student wellbeing.
Thank you to every teacher who stopped by to talk to us last week. We very much appreciate you sharing your insights. Thank you to IB Americas #IBGC2022 for hosting the conference!
*A small number of votes were in the ‘other’ category and have not been captured here.
