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by Lu Gerlach  Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family and friends. For many Canadians and Americans around the world, today is a special day we celebrate to honor our past and reflect on our many blessings. Canadians celebrate their holiday on the 2nd Monday in October and Americans on the last Thursday in November. I would be remiss on this particular Thanksgiving to take a moment to share my gratitude for my relationships, health, employment, and plentiful opportunities to grow. With this in mind, I’d like to extend my gratitude to you. Thank you to all of the educators around the world who…
I’d like to extend my gratitude to the International Baccalaureate (IB) for creating amazing programs: Primary Years Programme, Middle Years Programme, Diploma Programme, and Career-Related Programme. These programs stretch our learners in ways they wouldn’t in a traditional learning model and I’m so proud to be a part of it. I’ve been asked numerous times why I love the PYP so much. It’s simple, it's a program that looks at all children with endless potential to create meaning from their learning and to make connections to the outside world. Who wouldn’t want to be a part of that? I’m grateful that my PYP journey has not been easy. I went through a huge learning curve like many of you as I learned the new terms and ways of teaching that were different than what was being prescribed by my state curriculum. I had to read, research, test strategies, reflect, and modify while dealing with the uncertainty of if I was doing it right. This process helped me to develop a resilience to major obstacles that have come my way. At times, my over exuberance for the PYP has not been well received by fellow teammates, school leadership, and parents. The one thing that helped me to move forward was the smiling faces of my students. My greatest saving grace was I found different ways to share my passion with the world that were outside of my immediate situation. I began by becoming an IB educator who led workshops (face to face and online) and as a site team member to visit schools seeking authorization and evaluation. As I became proficient in these roles, I craved more opportunity to grow. I took on the role of PYP Coordinator which helped me to look at the program differently. Now, I share my ideas through this podcast, blog posts, videos, content creation, presentations, and more. I’m grateful that we are beings who are able to create, connect, and share with each other. If you are like me, find the way you are most passionate about sharing your voice about the PYP or inquiry-based learning if you are not at a PYP school. It will greatly help you to find your center again. This podcast has helped me to dig deep to make new connections to ideas I had not considered before. It has made me a better educator and I know it will help you too. Thank you for listening to my confessions about the PYP and taking them into your lives. May you have a blessed day and see you soon.
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by Lu Gerlach You’ve unpacked the learner profile attributes, now what? Do you just use them whenever time permits or can you plan with them in mind? In my personal observation over the past twelve years, I’ve noticed that most PYP teachers use them as behavior attributes. So our challenge is to look at the learner profile in a new light and try to consider them as a teaching tool. Here are some examples in relation to learning spaces Attributes in the Learning SpaceWhen we are thinking of the learning space, we are considering more than just how the furniture is laid out and how the walls are decorated. We are examining how the learning space has been designed to reflect the learner profile attributes. Are there places where students can take open-minded risks? Here are some possible suggestions: Thinkers: an inquiry table is an excellent way for students to play with ideas and make connections based on their prior learning. An inquiry table has materials from the various content within the unit. Students examine and make predictions on what the unit is about and how the objects are connected together. Inquirers: an inquiry station has random materials and a question is posed to provoke the thinking. Possible question: What can you create with these materials to show force and motion? This open-ended task allows students to express their curiosity and hone critical thinking skills.
Attributes in the School LibrarySince the library is the hub of all learning, it sets the tone for reading as a lifelong learner. It can also set a tone for developing the learner profile attributes.
Attributes in the School HallwaysThe school hallways, office areas, and other communal spaces provide a blank canvas for the exploration of the attributes. One challenge is to make it interactive and relevant to our students, instead of pretty wallpaper.
by Lu Gerlach Yay! Our podcast has reached 500 downloads. Considering I didn’t think anyone would download my ramblings, I’m humbled that so many people keep returning for more ideas.  For curiosity's sake, I decided to look up the locations with the most downloads. To my surprise, the top 3 are all places that hold a special place in my heart. #1 Sharjah, United Arab EmiratesI lived on the border of Sharjah in the neighborhood of Al Qusais for three years. The richness of the culture, the smells in the air, and the smiles of the people still take me back to a special place. I’ll be forever grateful for that time, because it’s where my international teaching experience began. #2 Melbourne, AustraliaI had the opportunity to attend Melbourne Uni to finish my bachelor’s degree due to a generous scholarship from Rotary International. It was a defining year of my life and eventually led me towards becoming an educator. I met mates that I will have for life, I learned things about myself, and I carried a brolly everyday, so I was prepared for the four seasons in one day. #3 Houston, Texas, USAI moved to Houston to be closer to family after a decade teaching abroad. Little did I know that I’d grow exponentially and refine my practice as a PYP educator. I’ve come to love this great city with its ice houses, quaint neighborhoods, and annual flooding. It makes the journey more memorable. As I was reflecting on these experiences, it reminded me of the power of the learning profile and how the ideas, not terms, can change our behavior. They allow us to see beyond our current capabilities and strive for more. Each place above holds a space in my heart, because it’s where I grew partly into the person I am becoming. How magical is that? This is what we want for our students too by using and reflecting on the learner profile attributes. Let’s explore the next steps of making the learner profile more a part of your daily practice. Besides using the learner profile attributes as part of your school’s behavior plan, that’s a topic for another podcast, we want to see how you are using them each day. You heard me, each day. If we aren’t using them every day, we aren’t keeping the heart of the IB mission statement close to our practice. Think about that one. No pressure or anything. Here are some simple ways to implement the learner profile into your daily practice. Unpack the AttributeI begin the unit by taking time to unpack the learner profile description. Open-Minded Being open-minded is often mistaken for trying new foods, tolerating someone else’s beliefs, and taking on new experiences. This is part of the process. Being open-minded is looking below the surface and understanding that everyone’s life has a story based on a set of beliefs and values that were established by their unique culture. When we are open-minded, we seek to understand a range of points of view, so we can better understand our own. Unit Context: Who We Are
Learner Profile connections
 Wall of FameMy first PYP Coordinator, Kirsten Wickham, taught me a lot about the learner profile Wall of Fame. This is a great way to get students involved in understanding the learner profile attributes and what they mean. Here’s my version.
Younger Students Class 1G nominates Yoon (from My Name is Yoon) for being open-minded. She moves to America from South Korea and doesn’t know any English. She has a hard time, because life in America is different from her home in South Korea. She tries to find words to describe who she is to her new friends. Older Students Class 4G nominates Ms. Manners for being open-minded. She is always interested in learning about other people and how their culture is different from her own. She will ask us questions that make us think about our beliefs and values. Ms. Manners also shares her beliefs and values about different topics, so we can understand that different opinions are okay. She makes us look at how ideas and words can hurt someone else, so we are trying to learn how to be more respectful about different opinions. "Indiana Jones is a risk-taker. He tries new things, even when he doesn’t know how they work, like when he jumped into an airplane. He uses his imagination to get out of trouble. An example is when he put the flame from the candle on his rope. Indiana drinks from a special cup that could kill you. He does it to save his father, who has been shot. He didn’t just try, he did it. " - Ms. Gerlach's 3/4 Class Learning GoalsOne of the best things I’ve done is to get students to make goals based on the learner profile. We started off the year making self-portraits that defined who we are. Then, we unpacked the attributes and chose one to focus on with a specific task. The time frame was open-ended and we wrote the goals on post it notes. This was important, because students didn’t feel stuck with a goal that they had achieved and it wasn’t permanent. Oftentimes, our strugglings learners don’t feel they are progressing fast enough, because the timeframe is determined by the teacher and grading period. This change allowed for more student agency of the goal setting process. One of my favorite experiences with attribute goals was with Eddie. He was one of the few Black American students in a predominately caucasian/ hispanic campus and struggled to fit in. He wrote this beginning of the year goal, “I want to be principled because I only do the right thing when people are looking.” As I checked progress throughout the year, Eddie decided for himself that he was not ready to move onto his next goal. At the fourth grade awards ceremony, he was finally presented an award for being principled. What joy it was to see his beaming face as he crossed the stage. This is how we change dispositions.  ReflectionsReflection is naturally connected to developing the learner profile attributes. Through reflection, we make connections between our learning and are able to identify ways we still need to grow. This is so important if we want to bridge all of the ideas we have learned across the curriculum. Reflection should be a daily practice. You heard me correctly. DAILY. Not weekly like most people do. It’s during these quiet reflective moments that innovation sparks to life. We need to carve out time in our schedules to regularly allow our students to connect the dots.
I’ve created some reflection sheets to help guide the daily practice, self-assess our behavior, and look back at learning through portfolios and unit reflections. Reflection is not limited to these sheets, but they’ll help to get you started. Look in our Resources section at https://thinkchat2020.weebly.com/ |
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