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1. I am currently in my first year teaching at an American International school in Cochabamba, Bolivia. Prior to this big move, I taught English in Northern California (East Palo Alto and Berkeley) for the last 16 years. I'm stepping in mid-year to a well developed 11 and 12th grade IB program and consider myself a good teacher, but don't understand the complexity of the program.

2. The most pressing question I have is what is it that makes IB English different from a standard English Classroom or an AP Lit or Lang class?

3. As an IB neophyte I look forward to wrestling through these topics with other people trying to get a grasp on it all.

4. At the end of the workshop, I hope I will have achieved clarity on the IB English classroom, Portfolio, and how we are helping students be successful moving toward the IB Diploma

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1. Collaboration

2. Remove Barriers

3. Conceptual

4. Inquiry

5. Local and Global

6. Assessment

It is incredibly difficult to rank these, since all six combined are ultamitely what makes for student success. Although I have assessment at the bottom, without informal and formal assessment it is impossible to know where students are at and meet them successfully at their level.

With that said, by "Removing Barriers" and differentiating a classroom, it helps assure that everyone is able to access the curriculum and make academic and intelectiual gains at their current level, which cannot be done without assessment.

Although I rank collaboration highest, in these situations students are collaborating around authentic inquiry, local and global issues, and core concepts, so those are all factored in. Nonetheless, strong and well structured collaboration between students helps them develop their critical thinking, see each-other as assets, and deepen skills that they will need to be successful in all aspects of their lives. By understanding the value of positive interdependence and by learning to listen and engage with peers, they are making gains they wouldn't otherwise.

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What ideological biases exist in the IB mission statement and how do you know this as a reader?

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What ideological biases exist in the IB mission statement and how do you know this as a reader?

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The phrase "intercultural understanding and respect" communicates a bias in favor of multiculturalism, indicating that all people and their myriad believes should be respected and understood, instead of approaching the world through cultural biases and false-moralizing/cultural relativism.

Furthermore, "[challenging] education and rigorous assessment" pushes the belief that all students are capable of rising to high expectations, given the right support, scaffolding, and differentiation. It focusses on teachers pushing young people to go beyond their comfort zone and grow as academics and humans.

The idea that "other people, with their differences, can also be right” is paradoxical in the sense that the IB mission pushes the idea that two conflicting truths can exist at the same time. It furthers a listening stance, in which the student approaches situations with an open mind and compassion.

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What is the dominant reading of this text and what might be an oppositional reading of the IB learner profile?

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What is the dominant reading of this text and what might be an oppositional reading of the IB learner profile?

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The dominant narrative is that students naturally want to learn and, given the opportunity to follow their own inquiry and communicate ideas through various mediums, they will continue to be life long learners. Additionally, the program is providing students with a way to approach the world through an ethical and compassionate lens. That students have the power to do incredible things in the world if that is fostered correctly, instead of shut-down, and that school can be a vehicle for creating compassionate, open-minded, and reflective human beings, acquiring life skills beyond the academic and approaching the world around them with empathy and courage.

An oppositional reading is that students have core skills and concepts they need to learn and to open class to their inquiry, whims, non-traditional assessments, etc, will get in the way of assuring that they have mastered the academic skill set they require to be capable of being successful in college and the world beyond it. That not all students are naturally curious, empathetic, or compassionate, and to spend class time trying to foster these elements of intelligence is a poor use of instruction.

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What is the tone created in the aims and assessment objectives, how does the author create it, and why?

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What is the tone created in the aims and assessment objectives, how does the author create it, and why?

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The aims and assessment objectives create a tone of the celebration, highlighting the value well-earned academic acquisitions and higher level thinking skills.

This is initially established through the use of the verbs "engage," "develop," "appreciate," "communicate," and "foster," followed by a variety of academic modalities and both educational and life skills. All of these verbs connote a sense of growth, commitment, and triumph.

The assessments showcase the value of higher level thinking skills heralded by the IB program through words like "know," "understand," "interpret," "analyze," "evaluate," and "communicate," all of which focus on refined skills rooted in depth, development, and intellectual perseverance.

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What words or phrases have a highly charged connotation and what is the effect on the reader?

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What words or phrases have a highly charged connotation and what is the effect on the reader?

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The word "celebrate" connotes joy and accomplishment. The phrase "construct meaning" and the term "constructivist" illustrates the value in creation, in making something where it that something did not exist prior. "Cycles of inquiry" emphasizes the cyclical sense of learning and that through continued engagement students will find the 'answers' the seek. The term "democratic" indicates an ideal where students are equally as engaged in their education and have as much say in the approach as their teachers. "Life long learned" emphasizes that a curiousity and passion is fostered that won't soon come to pass. Lastly, the phrase, "learning is the central tenant" pushes the messages that school is not just rote, routine, doing, but in the IB program is rooted in a continual focus on learning and development, not to be confused with "knowledge," which is often stagnant.

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What words or phrases demonstrate the ideological perspective of this text?

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What words or phrases demonstrate the ideological perspective of this text?

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To begin, the words "creativity, activity, and service" are quintessential. "Creativity" represents that students are stretching beyond the traditional aspects of a high school classroom. "Activity" indicates purposeful engagement and agency. And "Service" communicates the importance of giving yourself to the betterment of others. Within the text, the concept of a project based in "raising awareness" is steeped in service work and creating a more informed and just society. Likewise, the example of audiobooks for the "sight impaired" communicates that not everybody has the same abilities, and it is necessary to give time and support to those who are differently abled, as opposed to just being focused on your individual success. Additionally, the inclusion of "younger students" cements the idea of the providing a baseline and model for the next generation and the importance of using your time to aid and assist others, whether lower skilled, with greater needs, or simply not yet at your education level.

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What are the three things you want to make sure you do when you design your own course?

Three Things I want to make sure to do when I design my course are pick rich texts, both canonical and non-canonical.

I want to choose both texts that continue building on eachother conceptually and are in conversation with eachother. And, I want to provide opportunity for student autonomy regularly.

The two principals that stood out the most to me were variety and autonomy. I think students need to be exposed to a wide variety of texts from a variety of places and perspectives, and I think students are much more engaged in the work they are doing if they feel personally connected to it and as if they have agency in their own educational experience. These will be incorporated in what students read and view over the course of the year and how they reconcile the larger concepts we focus on.

Regarding the practicality, one question I still have is how to strike a balance-- ie. how much canon vs non-traditional, how much autonomy in textual decision making vs how much teacher decided.

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Texts:

Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart

Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing

Marjane Satrapi Persepolis

Jesmyn Ward's Salvage the Bones

Benh Zeitlin's Beasts of the Southern Wild

Jumpa Lahari's Interpreter of Maladies

Toni Morrison's Sula

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Good analysis of stills/shots with solid description for listeners-- contrast between representation of promiscuity between genders.

"ummmm" is killing me.

Providing examples-- very essay like, but open choices as far as the text she chose and the global issue she's connecting it to.

Feels highly scripted, so I'm wondering why she keeps using "um" as a filler/pause.

Introduction of Poem with key lines. A lot of "this shows" good analysis of brackets and the reasons why. Nice job bringing it back to the show.

"degradation of religious expectations"

Nice look at the ambiguity of "lamb to the slaughter"

How is this different than a more developed, prepped version of "Essay Two"

Strong Topic-- assuming it needs a more "traditional" text source and media

Question section-- Didn't expect this.

Teacher provides follow up questions to prompt critical response and to assure a depth of understanding. Didn't expect this and like that it requires an unscripted response. Student does a great job with this piece.

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Strong GI

Male dominance to demean women-- good image analysis-- body language-- "sense of possession and control."

Line analysis of irony in "18 years" kind of detracts. Rest of analysis, the lack of her power, feeding into materialism in solid.

Nice incorporation of the the "male gaze" to contribute to a sense of submission and objectification. "sinful" and "fantasy" feel like a misanalysis.

Reduction of Serena Williams is an interesting analysis.

Poem

Good line analysis and syntax breakdown-- needs to be pushed further answering HOW

2nd line breakdown feels repetitive (talking around the idea)-- got flustered and lost focus on lack of punctuation. Good place for a follow up question.

I like the reversal of power bit. Wish she would tie it back into her GI more and make a clear connection back to "Gold Digger"-- the two texts feel disconnected because of her approach.

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To The Foot From Its Child by Pablo Neruda

A child's foot doesn't know it's a foot yet
And it wants to be a butterfly or an apple
But then the rocks and pieces of glass,
the streets, the stairways
and the roads of hard earth
keep teaching the foot that it can't fly,
that it can't be a round fruit on a branch.
Then the child's foot
was defeated, it fell
in battle,
it was a prisoner,
condemned to life in a shoe.

Little by little without light
it got acquainted with the world in its own way
without knowing the other imprisoned foot
exploring life like a blind man.

Those smooth toe nails
of quartz in a bunch,
got harder, they changed into
an opaque substance, into hard horn
and the child's little petals
were crushed, lost their balance,
took the form of a reptile without eyes,
with triangular heads like a worm's.
And they had callused over,
they were covered
with tiny lava fields of death,
a hardening unasked for.
But this blind thing kept going
without surrender, without stopping
hour after hour.
One foot after another,
now as a man,
or a woman,
above,
below,
through the fields, the mines,
the stores, the government bureaus,
backward,
outside, inside,
forward,
this foot worked with its shoes,
it hardly had time
to be naked in love or in sleep
one foot walked, both feet walked
until the whole man stopped.

And then it went down
into the earth and didn't know anything
because there everything was dark,
it didn't know it was no longer a foot
or if they buried it so it could fly
or so it could
be an apple.

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1. Thinking

2. Communication

3. Social

4. Self-Management

5. Research

Again, all of these are intertwined, so the idea of ranking them is difficult, but I ranked thinking and communication highest with the caveat that social skills are already connected to communication skills. Nonetheless, our primary jobs as teachers is to help students develop the depth of their critical thinking skills as well as provide them the tools to accurately convey their though. However, none of this can be accomplished without social skills and self-management.

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Both texts represent implicit and explicit systems of institutional oppression, which have been established as a means controlling and disenfranchising a sub-population, beginning at birth.

0:12 — Mid fall. Foreground, background, figure and piano in middle, establishes setting, bleak, barbed wire, single outlier falling because of his contribution, poverty destitution, oppressive space, a space that is not designed for a human to grow and prosper within

0:22 March— different archetypes within communities of color— attempted uprise, unification,

3:32 Closing— Wide shot, only one person from original crowd left, white viewership, commodification and economic gain on the suffering of communities of color.    Factories— Environmental racism, littered bodies,  bourgeois clothing

1-6 Colorful, full of desire, THEN Opressive, violent facts of life— initial systems that trap and oppress a person.  “Keep”= repeated process

10 The final act, literal oppression, darkness (no agency), black and white (stapes connection)

15- 20 “Smooth toe nails”- luxury, promises and joy, can only stay smooth if not a member of working class, if time and money to maintain, like a soft palm.  Become Calloused- stifled, loss of innocence and individuality.  To “harden” and change— social requirements, survival instinct, trauma.  “Crushed”- dreams possibilities within a system— “gang banger” connection (staples connect)

35-42 Literal representation of institutions— labor, war, commerce, beurocracy, designed to keep population in check and citizens oppressed.  Joys stripped, no volition, no autonomy, only freedom in death.  Staples, remaining ‘marcher’ left to confront the glass, to have an awareness of being trapped and no power to change it (staples connection).