C21: Learner Profile First Steps

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 Emirates

​I 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, Australia

I 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, USA

I 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 Attribute

​I begin the unit by taking time to unpack the learner profile description.
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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

• Social Studies:  Our beliefs and values are shaped by our culture
• Science:  Many of our beliefs and values shape how we look at the objects in the sky (sun, moon, stars, seasonal changes, water cycle)
• ​ELA:  Cultures have created understanding of the world through myths, legends, and folktales
• Math:  Our beliefs and values about decimals shape our behavior when spending money. 

Learner Profile connections

• Zoom into the learner profile descriptor that you will focus heavily on during your unit
• Break down what it means to be open-minded to other cultures and respecting their differences
• Examine how your students make daily decisions that are influenced by the beliefs and values of their culture (dress, food, traditions, literature, holidays, ways of thinking, etc.)

• Younger students:  provide some pictures that represent how it might look in different contexts and your focus on beliefs and values.  You choose the images to guide the thinking.
• Older students:  allow them to research different variations of the descriptor on the internet.  Help them to weed through misconceptions and connect between ideas. ​Then, ask students to create possible ways on how we can exhibit the attribute during the unit of inquiry 

Wall of Fame

My 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. 

• Unpack the learner profile descriptor, so students can paint a picture in their mind of what the attribute looks and feels like
• ​Then, nominate a person: real or fiction; alive or dead
• Describe how this person emulates the learner profile attribute in a variety of ways and post it on the wall.  
• As students become more proficient, make relevant connections by nominating someone within the class and/or school community.
• This is how we make the attribute real and provide everyday examples

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. 
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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 Goals

One 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.
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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.

Reflections

​Reflection 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/