The IB turned 50 in 2018! This is how we celebrated, Mickie Singleton

The IB turned 50 in 2018! This is how we celebrated

Mickie Singleton marks a milestone

The International Baccalaureate (IB) is a worldwide community of students, educators and schools with a shared mission to offer the best possible international education, combined with an emphasis on human values. In 2018, the IB celebrated its 50th anniversary and is proud that its schools and teachers, in an ever-growing number of countries around the world, continue to develop students to be internationally minded, courageous risk takers and critical thinkers.

Founded in 1968, the IB has become a widely recognized and respected international education organization, setting a global standard of academically-rigorous learning, teaching and assessment. In March 2019 IB programmes are currently taught to more than 1.4 million students in over 5,000 schools in 153 countries. During our 50th anniversary celebrations, we had the chance to showcase what has always inspired, driven and strengthened the IB by bringing people together and hearing how they contribute to the IB’s mission—to create a better world through education.

At the start of 2018, we held the #weareIB campaign (https://ibo.org/50years/welcome-to-weareib/we-are-ib/) – where we saw educators and students alike thank the IB educator who had inspired them throughout their lives. It was great to see so many thank you messages shared by the IB community across the globe. Later in 2018, the #generationIB campaign (https://ibo.org/50years/this-isgenerationib/generationIB-in-action/) brought together

students from all ages and backgrounds to tackle some of humanity’s greatest challenges. The students were asked to showcase the ways they are working to find solutions for these global issues involving the environment, education, health and migration. Students asked questions, fostered community and leadership in their groups, and came up with many inspiring solutions. We are immensely proud of the way IB students consistently seek to apply their learning to improve the world around them.

We celebrated IB educators at three IB Global Conferences in Vienna, San Diego and Singapore where educational leaders, decision makers and practitioners from schools, universities and governments from around the world came to showcase collaborative skills and share innovative ideas surrounding the mission of the International Baccalaureate, focussing on international education. This year, again three IB Global Conferences are being held – this time in Hong Kong, Abu Dhabi and New Orleans. We are also holding our first European Education Festival in Croatia, after the successful pilot event —‘African Education Festival’— held in Ghana in 2018.

We also published our 50th anniversary book: 50 years of education for a better world (https://ibo.org/news/ news-about-the-ib/new-book-celebrates-50-years-ofinternational-education/). The book gathers together some wonderful stories from the IB community – stretching right back to the very founding of the IB in 1968. Our special 50th anniversary edition of IB World magazine was published in October, featuring many interesting stories from within the IB community and showcasing interesting milestones of the IB over the past 50 years. We were honoured that four wonderfully impressive IB alumni were featured in our celebratory video campaign. These alumni have gone on to change the world in their own unique way – journalist Aernout van Lynden, activist Maryam al-Ammari, musician Falana, and astronaut Akihiko Hoshide – who told their IB stories beautifully, and offered encouragement to current IB students. Have a look at the alumni trailer video we made (https://player.vimeo.com/video/264569586).

And finally, rounding off the year, we had a 24-hour social media event (https://ibo.org/50years/all-events/ happybirthdayib/) where schools in almost all of the world’s time zones sent us their personal #happybirthdayIB messages to share on Twitter and Instagram. Looking back, we are very proud of the wonderful achievements of IB students, educators and schools over the past years – and we look forward to more inspiring collaborations in 2019, and beyond.

Mickie Singleton is Communications Administrator at the IB Global Centre in The Hague [https://ibo.org/]

Email: communications@ibo.org

AP ® International Summer Institute San Jose, Costa Rica

July 2-5, 2019 • AP Biology • AP Calculus AB • AP English Language and Composition • AP Spanish Literature and Culture • AP World History

July 2-4, 2019 (Blended course model) • AP Macroeconomics /Microeconomics combined

If you are interested in writing an article for International School magazine, we would like to hear from you!

The editors of International School, Prof Mary Hayden and Prof Jeff Thompson, would like to encourage teachers and leaders/managers/administrators to consider how they could contribute to this magazine. We would love to hear from you with your article ideas. Articles have as their focus the sharing of ideas and good practice which may be of relevance to others with an interest in international education in schools – whether international schools, or national schools and other organisations encouraging an international dimension to education. We will be pleased to receive articles relating to international education including: • good news stories • articles about good practice • articles about interesting initiatives • provocative articles that will stimulate discussion and debate Please get in touch with us at editor@is-mag.com. We look forward to hearing from you.