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“FAILURE IS SUCCESS IN PROGRESS” Albert Einstein
Would he have revolutionized our understanding of space, time, gravity and the universe if he didn’t fail first?
Editor’s letter
Welcome to the IB Global Conference, New Orleans 2019
We have all encountered failure at some stage. Many of the world’s most famous figures have openly spoken about how failure is neccessary to success. But, it is still considered a negative experience. In true IB fashion, teachers and parents are encouraging students to become risk-takers (p4). They are motivating children to see their mistakes as opportunites, and accept that failure is ‘OK’ and an essential part of learning. Two IB Diploma Programme (DP) students didn’t give up after they faced obstacles during their mission to provide medicine to those in need in rural India. If they did, they wouldn’t have helped hundreds of people (p6). You might be looking for a good book to pick up over the holidays. Turn to page 8, where the IB community share the books that have postively impacted their lives and teaching careers.
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ducators across the IB continue to develop generations of students with the boldness, creativity and belief in themselves to embrace their personal ambitions and their dreams for a better, more peaceful world. This is ‘Generation IB’ – the theme of this year’s conference. The conference provides an ideal professional development opportunity for educational leaders, decision makers and practitioners from schools, universities and governments from the Americas and beyond, to share best practice.
Motivated by the IB’s mission, the conference fosters partnership and participation, providing a forum for discussions on educational quality, pedagogical leadership and international mindedness.
Sophie-Marie Odum, Editor Follow me on Twitter: @Sophie_Marie_O
Each year the IB hosts several conferences. The next IB Global Conference will take place in October 2019 in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. For more information on upcoming events, please visit www.ibo.org International Baccalaureate ® | Baccalaureate International ® | Bachillerato Internacional ®
COVER PHOTO: MPI/GETTY IMAGES
You will discover new ideas to further develop your IB programme and leave with inspiration and renewed energy.
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IB World Editor Sophie-Marie Odum IB Editors Jane Wynn, Freddie Oomkens Managing Editor Ilana Harris Designer Sandra Marques Picture Editor Dominique Campbell Printed by Stephens & George Print Group, UK Published on behalf of IB by Wonderly (a Haymarket
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Contents
45 COVER STORY Embracing failure can help students succeed
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67 COMMUNITY ACTION Two students in India created an NGO to provide free medicine to locals 89 THE POWER OF A GOOD BOOK IB teachers share their book recommendations 1011 MYP IS 25 Baltimore City College explains how introducing the MYP had a positive impact
Read more stories online
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1214 MEET THE SPEAKERS Our keynote speakers on reforming education and how to inspire the next generation
You can read more IB World features and community stories online at blogs.ibo.org. If you would like to contribute feature ideas or tell us about your inspiring community projects, please tweet us @iborganization. Please note that all submissions are subject to editing.
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PHOTOS: SIMON STANMORE; GAMMAKEYSTONE, TIME & LIFE PICTURES, VETTA, DIA DIPASUPILVULTURE FESTIVAL/GETTY IMAGES; IMTMPHOTO / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO; CARLOS DIAZ
July 2019
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Albert Einstein struggled during his school years, but went on to develop the theory of relativity and win a Nobel Prize in 1921
etbacks and failures are inevitable. It’s easy to believe that to get far in life, you have to avoid failure, but the opposite is true. In fact, we have to seek failure because this is where we find invaluable lessons, says actor Will Smith. This is “a massive part of being successful”, and it’s essential to get “comfortable” with failing, he believes. This attitude develops creativity, persistence, problemsolving skills, and selfawareness. In most parts of the world, student success is no longer measured on test scores alone. Mistakes are recognized as a part of learning and can be a great lesson in resilience. Educators are encouraging children to take ownership of their failures and to look at them as challenges to defeat, rather than obstacles to fear.
A LESSON ON FAILURE The education sector is embracing failure and recognizing it as essential to success and key to student confidence 4
Promote a growth mindset Author Carol Dweck’s work on the ‘growth mindset’ highlights the importance of learning from mistakes to avoid repeating them. Those with a growth mindset believe that basic abilities can be developed through hard work, persistence and dedication, according to Dweck. They feel encouraged to take
COVER STORY risks and not cower away from failure, seeing it as necessary to success. This highlights the IB learner profile attribute risk-takers. However, those with a fixed mindset believe qualities like intelligence or talent are inherent traits and are likely to avoid developing these, meaning they avoid failure and remain static. Teach failure The mantra “mistakes are opportunities” is posted at the front of Paul MacKay’s classroom. He is a Primary Years Programme (PYP) teacher at the International School of Nanshan Shenzhen, in China. To help students embody what it means to have a growth mindset, he and his team revamped the ‘Who We Are’ unit to focus on it. Under the central idea ‘Challenges can impact the way we make choices in the future’, students explored the misconceptions of easy success, the challenges all humans face, and the benefits of failure. Guest speakers were invited to share their stories of perseverance and resiliency, and students researched famous figures who had failed at some point. They also chose their own goals to work on. “At the end, we reflected on our failures and how we should see them in a more
positive light, as part of the human experience, and as opportunities,” explains MacKay. One student says: “I learned that without failure there is no success. It is also about making goals and achieving them. We can learn a lot from failures and mistakes.” IB parent Inês Gonçalves agrees that children can take positives from failure: “I tell my children that the process matters more than the result. “Teach children to take all the good points from their experiences. This will help them discover their strengths. Failure is an invaluable lesson.” Students at Eastern Public School, in India, are also learning how to overcome the fear of failure and adopt a growth mindset. “We teach students that it’s OK to make mistakes. This helps them become reflective and critical analysers,” says Humera Riyaz, PYP Coordinator. Change the meaning While the benefits are clear, negative connotations are associated with ‘failure’. A fear of failing can cause a pessimistic attitude towards learning, according to the British Psychological Society. To get around this, IB 5
Diploma Programme (DP) student Alyssa Burns, from Campus High School, in Kansas, US, suggests we scrap the term ‘failure’. “I would rather use ‘challenges’, ‘obstacle’ or the phrase: ‘bump in the road’,” she says. Alyssa has overcome her own obstacles: “I almost dropped out of the DP. I faced a lot of challenges in my first semester. I felt like a failure until I spoke with my mentor. “Challenges that push you outside your comfort zone help build character and can have a positive impact on you.” Provide a safe space Many students experience anxiety related to school performance, numerous studies have found. But, could this be prevented if they are given a safe space to make mistakes, and embrace failure? “Yes”, says MacKay. “It’s essential to teach a growth mindset early on. If children learn that failure is natural and beneficial then they begin to build resilience and confidence that will carry on throughout their lives.” Many notable figures in history are perfect examples of risk-taking and determination after failing, such as Albert Einstein. He famously said: “Failure is success in progress.”
Arjun and Shawn distribute medicines at a health camp in Maharashtra
Making an impact in India Two DP students started an NGO, providing free medicine to those who cannot access healthcare
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rjun Shukla was shocked to discover that someone in his local area died of diarrhoea because she didn’t have access to hydration supplements. He later realized that this is not uncommon. Around 649 million people in India and 2 billion people worldwide
do not have access to medicine, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). “In India, we have a culture of using medicine for the slightest of ailments. So, how could two separate worlds – one where such a vital resource is treated like any other commodity, 6
and one where it’s a scarce and rare item – exist?,” questions Arjun, an IB Diploma Programme (DP) student at Dhirubhai Ambani International School, India. To address this issue, Arjun and his classmate Shawn Chauhan created an NGO in 2017 called Swasth, a Hindi word meaning ‘healthy’. They collected unused and unexpired medicines from the community and distributed them to the underprivileged through medically verified and supervised channels.
COMMUNITY ACTION
“We realized that our work could have a widespread impact” “I knew that we, as a community, had much more medicine than we’d ever need and, using our resources, we could at least attempt to make some changes,” explains Arjun. Swasth later became a Generation IB project, where students were asked to share their solutions to global problems as part of the IB’s 50th anniversary. Health camps Arjun and Shawn started small. They went door-todoor in seven different neighbourhoods in their home city of Mumbai and established a sustainable medicine collection system. They also asked doctors to donate medicine samples. It was a challenge at first, but they persisted. Soon, pharmaceutical company Cipla Inc. donated around 137 kilograms of medicine. The students organized a health camp in the rural town of Parbhani where the medicine was distributed. They worked with the Setu Charitable Trust – an NGO dedicated to assisting HIV and AIDS
patients – and the Maharashtra State AIDS Control Society. Around 400 people attended. “This was when we realized that our work could have a widespread and significant impact,” says Shawn. Word spread via social media and they also received medicine from abroad. At the time, the Indian state of Kerala was experiencing significant flooding so Shawn and Arjun donated their collections to a local NGO in Kerala. The students have also since collaborated with the Myna Mahila Foundation, which works to improve women’s menstrual hygiene in India. Together, they held a medical camp with Doctors For You – an organization that provides healthcare and medical support to the underprivileged and Bombay Hospital. Learning new skills Establishing Swasth helped the students learn more about their community. “We had to approach every new person with an open mind and had to ditch our own ideas of how the world works,” says Arjun. They displayed many IB learner profile attributes, says DP Coordinator Soma Basu: “The students were inquirers as they conducted 7
research to find out the needs of the society. They were caring, knowledgeable and good communicators during the planning and execution of the project. They were risk-takers, as they were ready to venture into an unfamiliar domain of providing healthcare. The uncertainty they faced at times did not suppress their initiative, energy and effort.” Both students plan on making Swasth an international initiative. “This project is something that’s really close to my heart,” says Shawn.
The Myna Mahila Foundation thank Arjun and Shawn
THE POWER OF A GOOD BOOK
YERKO SEPÚLVEDA LARRAGUIBEL @ysepulvedal
“These books transformed my approach to teaching English in the middle grades!”
Creating Cultures of Thinking: The 8 Forces We Must Master to Truly Transform Our Schools by Ron Ritchhart
We took to Twitter, asking IB educators to share which books made them better teachers... RYAN GLOBAL SCHOOL, ANDHERI @rgsandheri
ALANA PETERSON @alcp
Book Love: Developing Depth, Stamina, & Passion in Adolescent Readers by Penny Kittle
SAMANTHA @Sam25268951
“This book includes real-life examples, and understands different perspectives, which is imperative for all educators.”
Maker-Centered Learning: Empowering Young People to Shape Their Worlds by Edward P. Clapp, Jennifer O. Ryan, Jessica Ross and Shari Tishman
Making Thinking Visible: How to Promote Engagement, Understanding, and Independence for All Learners by Karin Morrison, Ron Ritchhart and Mark Church
MARWA DOUARA @MarwaDouara
Write Beside Them: Risk, Voice, and Clarity in High School Writing by Penny Kittle
PAM RICHARDSON @mrspamrich
What Got You Here Won’t Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful by Marshall Goldsmith
The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything by Ken Robinson
The Power of Inquiry by Kath Murdoch 8
The Thread That Runs So True by Jesse Stuart
BEST BOOKS SCOTT CARPENTER @ScottCarpEdu
JOHN LAYMON @LaymonEDU
KATE HEBDON @katehebdon
Better Learning Through Structured Teaching by Douglas B. Fisher and Nancy Frey
Under Pressure: Confronting the Epidemic of Stress and Anxiety in Girls by Lisa Damour
“These two books move a little beyond pedagogy and into the world of class environment/ relationships. Both great reads!”
Enough As She Is: How to Help Girls Move Beyond Impossible Standards of Success to Live Healthy, Happy, and Fulfilling Lives by Rachel Simmons
MY MOST INFLUENTIAL BOOKS... Trust Matters: Leadership for Successful Schools by Megan Tschannen-Moran
Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships by Daniel Goleman
JACQUELINE WOODSON @JackieWoodson
Author and keynote speaker Jacqueline Woodson reveals the books that have had the biggest impact in her life. And recommends stories younger audiences can read to help them as thinkers, writers and doers...
The Selfish Giant by Oscar Wilde
Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor
The Little Match Girl by Hans Christian Andersen
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Zeely by Virginia Hamilton
If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin
Students take ownership of their studies, which is a powerful tool for a lifetime of self-directed learning
“The MYP has changed the culture of our school” Baltimore City College introduced the programme in 2010 and has seen significant improvements
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he ultimate goal for Baltimore City College, US, is to provide a rigorous academic programme that helps ensure students are admitted to the best universities in the country. That’s why the IB Diploma Programme (DP) and Middle Years Programme (MYP) are a perfect fit for the school. Baltimore City College began offering the MYP in 2010, in the hope it would increase enrollment and diversity in the DP (which it had run since 1998). It has been successful in its mission and the MYP has had a positive impact on the school community, as MYP Coordinator Sarah Jeanblanc explains… “Introducing the MYP has created a roadmap for continual school improvement which ultimately has changed the culture of our school. The programme’s specific
MYP TURNS 25 guidance around planning, instruction and assessment has prompted teachers to develop meaningful learning experiences. “Our teachers consider more than just content when they plan lessons. They also think about concepts, skills and interdisciplinary connections that focus on real-world problems and solutions. This has made learning purposeful and focused for our students and inspired communitybased arts integration, real-world language learning, social justice advocacy and practical science applications in our community. “The curriculum engages students, who have an innate need for selfawareness, to concurrently study our local and global community. This gives students a broad understanding of the world and themselves. This is a
valuable insight for students, which helps them both empathize with others and develop their own identity. “With this selfawareness, our students have become more purposeful and strategic in their studies. They take ownership of their studies, which is a powerful tool for a lifetime of self-directed learning. MYP practices have helped support students to challenge themselves and succeed. “All students have different academic strengths and needs. The MYP framework, which emphasizes concepts, skills and content, gives students multiple access points to a challenging, interesting curriculum at any grade level.” The MYP is turning 25 this year and, to celebrate, IB World magazine is sharing the stories of schools who offer the MYP. Visit blogs.ibo.org for more content.
MYP students: What’s your most memorable lesson? “The community engagement activities that I’ve participated in with my Spanish teacher, such as the Día del Niño Festival in Patterson Park. I’ve also been a part of a world record for the longest colouring book at the Function Gallery on Harford Road.” Jarrell Rice
“It was during an interdisciplinary unit between English and biology. The unit was philosophy based with a simple question: ‘Do we have free will, or do we have a set destiny?’. I have never stopped thinking about this question, and have become more 11
observant as a result.” Donte Gunter “We studied a mobile app about famous chemists in an interdisciplinary unit between chemistry and technology. Then we learned how to make an app.” Irma Caguana
Dr Pak Tee NG shares his views on educational change and the lessons from Singapore, which has spent the last 50 years reďŹ ning its education system
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The next generation of leaders Our keynote speakers discuss how schools can help nurture the change makers of tomorrow
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he IB celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2018, and began its next 50 years (and beyond) on an excellent footing. But, it is imperative to keep up with the times so change is still necessary. In the same spirit, despite some excellent results in international comparative tests, Singapore continues to reďŹ ne and reform its education system. It is emphasizing holistic education, values inculcation and a spirit of lifelong learning. In so doing, it has to embrace the challenges of recalibrating various areas of education and ask tough questions. Questions include, for example: What academic standards are Singaporean students expected to achieve, while educators nurture and encourage a joy for learning? How important should examination results be for school choice and admission, given that Singapore is trying to reduce
MEET THE SPEAKERS unnecessary competition among schools and students? How can an education system design different pathways for students without inadvertently stigmatizing the less academically inclined students? How can a country encourage its people to acquire deep skills that are relevant for jobs, when the current culture encourages them to chase paper qualifications? There are no easy answers. There are only paradoxes and tough choices. But, the spirit of education in Singapore has always been a human enterprise of ‘paying it forward’. One generation will pay the price of change for the benefit of the next.
“Singapore has to embrace the challenges of reforming its education system” Are exam results really that important for school choice and admission?
In this regard, while there will be tensions and paradoxes in its education system, Singapore will rely on
the courage, spirit and tenacity of educators to navigate the challenges of change to shape the country’s future.
ABOUT DR PAK TEE NG Dr Pak Tee NG is a Singaporean educator at the National Institute of Education (NIE) and Nanyang Technological University (NTU). Pak Tee began his career as a mathematics teacher and served a stint as a Ministry of Education (MOE) officer before joining the NIE. Here, he has previously held the roles of Associate Dean Leadership Learning, and
Head of the Policy and Leadership Studies Academic Group. His main work is in education change and leadership. Pak Tee has authored/ co-authored numerous publications. His book Learning from Singapore: The Power of Paradoxes is a Routledge bestseller. He is currently a member of Scotland’s International Council of Education Advisers and a 13
Life Member of Clare Hall, Cambridge University. Pak Tee has been awarded the National Day Award of Public Administration Medal (Bronze) for merit and service to education; and the Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Asia Pacific Educational Research Association. He is also a Fellow of NTU Teaching Excellence Academy.
MEET THE SPEAKERS Jacqueline Woodson discusses her lifelong journey as a writer, revealing her own writing process and where she finds inspiration
“How are you going to go out into the world and change it for the better?”
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’ll be talking about how I learned as a young person and how that influenced me as a writer, an artist and as a person committed to social justice. In terms of becoming a leader and change maker in the world, you have to think outside of many different boxes. When I was growing up, I went to a public school in New York City, and my memory is of a standard academic education. I didn’t know what else was out there, and had nothing to compare it to. But, we now know New York has the most segregated school system in the country. Change makers are essential. My questions to the audience will be: How are you going to go out into the world and change it for the better? How do you plan to impact the greater good, and become a leader in the world? We have to constantly work towards a greater good, whether it’s through art or sport, academics or politics. It has to be something that is thinking beyond the self.
Jacqueline Woodson reads from her novel Another Brooklyn
ABOUT JACQUELINE WOODSON Jacqueline Woodson is the 2014 National Book Award Winner for her New York Times bestselling memoir Brown Girl Dreaming, which was also a recipient of the Coretta Scott King Award, a Newbery Honor Award, the NAACP Image Award, and the Sibert Honor Award. She is the author of the New York Times bestselling novel Another Brooklyn, which was a 14
2016 National Book Award Finalist and Woodson’s first adult novel in 20 years. In 2015, the Poetry Foundation named Woodson Young People’s Poet Laureate. She has written more than two dozen award-winning books for young adults, middle graders and younger children. The Library of Congress named Woodson the 2018 Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. Her most recent books are Harbor Me and the picture book The Day You Begin, published in 2018.
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