Approaches to Learning
Human Ingenuity
Health and Social Education
Community & Service
In order to awaken the intelligence of students and teach them to connect school subjects with the world outside, the IBMYP program is based upon five overarching themes. These themes are called Areas of Interaction. These are not extra subjects. The themes are used to connect all subjects. Thus, these themes are central components.
Students are expected to turn in quality work and be committed to learn how to learn.
Intellectual and Moral Values:
- The ability to do methodical work
- The sense of effort and self-discipline
- Care for a job well done
- Care for language, for adequate and precise vocabulary
- Coherence of thought and expression
- Self-sufficiency and responsibility
Social and Cultural Values
- The ability to communicate experiences
- Team spirit
- An open-minded attitude toward the world, its people, and respect for one’s own culture and the culture of others
- A critical view of humanity and society
- A democratic spirit
Students are confronted every day by the global issues of environmental threats and related problems of a political and economic nature, which require balanced understanding. They also have to cope with everyday environment-related situations at home, at school, or in their immediate surroundings, which require attention and involve decision-making.
Students should develop:
- An understanding of conservation
- An awareness of their own and other people’s interdependence with the environment
- An acceptance of responsibility to maintain an environment fit for present and future generations
Studying Environments encourages students to try to contribute to a global environment in which people can live in harmony with one another and with the natural world, making best use of its resources.
Students need to assess different sides of an environmental issue with an open mind to be able to reach considered conclusions and act accordingly. Students should learn to identify the values of the environment and understand their own influence on it. Students need to acquire ways to investigate environmental issues and discover how they themselves can contribute to possible solutions for an environmental problem.
Human Ingenuity is concerned with the products of the creative and inventive genius of people and their impact on society and on the human mind. The purpose of studying Human Ingenuity is to develop opportunities for students to appreciate the human capacity and drive to invent, create, transform, enjoy, and improve the quality of life over time.
Students are encouraged to see the relationships among science, aesthetics, technology, and ethics.
Students should be aware of and appreciate:
- The development of scientific and mathematical thought through time
- The ethical development of people through time
- The changing perspectives of aesthetic judgments
- The human ability to create change and to respond to the consequences of such changes
Health and Social Education aims to educate the whole person and should prepare students for a physically and mentally healthy life. They should develop a sense of responsibility for their own well-being and for their physical and social environment. The program should help students to get along well with themselves, with others, and with life in general by their ability to make choices from alternatives and to evaluate and make informed decisions about health hazards they may face.
Objectives:
- Know and understand one’s body, including how to keep healthy and prevent diseases
- Speak intelligently about health and problems
- Accept responsibility for oneself, one’s family, ones’ community and the environment as a whole
- Distinguish needs from wants
- Make informed decisions
- Understand the consequences of substance abuse
- Analyze values, attitudes, positive and negative influences
- Gain self-esteem and self-confidence
The educational philosophy of the International Baccalaureate Organization stresses the development of the whole person.
Community Service:
- Encourages responsible citizenship in the world outside of the classroom.
- Helps students increase their own awareness of the world around them with first-hand experience
- Fosters an altruistic attitude
- Increases students’ sense of responsibility and self-esteem
- Gives insight into different social patterns and ways of life
- Uses talents and skills developed in school and elsewhere
Characteristics of a Community Service Program
- The program must be non-competitive
- The program should involve a measure of self-evaluation
- The program should be flexible
- A record or diary should be kept and maintained by the student
- The program should be well-structured and carefully monitored by the school
- Students, teachers, and parents should be made aware of and concerned with the program
- The program should reflect the developmental stages through which a student progresses